They're doing away with talent trees and bringing in a "Disciplines" system. Star Wars: The Old Republic | Developer Blogs
Some immediate benefits for us CR writers: Less variance. Without hybrid builds, we now have a more standardized idea of what each character will have at each level. This allows us to program around a few options instead of hundreds. Earlier access. Some builds, like Deception/Infiltration don't get their basic class ability until level 45. That puts the profile writer in a bad place: I can either program the routine with the less-effective ability as well (hurting max-level DPS) or I can program it without the less-effective ability (making the routine useless for characters under level 45). From the sounds of things, we'll be getting core abilities earlier, which means less of this. Separate routine sections for separate Utility choices. Think about this like the current Talents system in WoW. If I have a certain talent, it can change my rotation completely. With fewer but more impactful choices, we can now design custom rotations-within-rotations (think something Deception/Infiltration if you take talent A and Deception/Infiltration if you take talent B). I'm hoping for some bloat-trimming as well, although this wasn't promised.
Hmm i think this is going to make CR scripting nuts. Still when the dust settles you will get some descent builds and the rest is variation (the way i see it). Is it an option to get all abilities / buffs what this char can do, generate a build and bot according this generated build? This would get rid off all stuff in a rotation that isnt being used (which should be less resource thirsty?). Also i presume most spells we use now, will still be there or in tweaked form. Anyways lets wait for the dev blogs, then we know more, what they are really doing.
They're live-streaming about Disciplines this afternoon on Twitch. I'm teaching at that time, so I'm hoping they leave it up after they're done. It's possible to get all abilities, both Walter's and Joe's routines do it. Since Pure assumes that you're max-level, it goes with the optimized rotation. The talents will create some variance, but it will be easy to create different rotations based on talent selections (as long as we get something in the API that lets us see talent choices).
It'll be interesting to see how much of a change Buddywing will need in order to accommodate the 3.0 update. I would have thought this would make the routines simpler for CR in the long run.
I believe it will make it easier to code. More standardization, but the talents also give us some options. I'm looking forward to it.
