ZProtoss

Simply put, how do most guilds handle this? So much emphasis on DPS and fights like gruul/etc is poured into consumables and their net effect on raid DPS. Yet when reading people's comments, and looking at certain shots of damage meters, it's pretty clear many guilds take raiders that are *not* specced optimally for PvE. Which would (at least on the damage side), account for a gigantic amount of lost damage, even with full consumables burned. Do most guilds simply roll with this, or do they encourage/enforce respecs?

I realize too that depending on the guild this can be somewhat of a touchy issue, and if a guild had a base of extremely active pvp'ers, it'd be difficult to ask for respecs. However, that difficulty in asking for respecs would also be absolutely crippling to the guild when attempting content later on. Thus, the question is, does your guild currently require pve specs? And if not, how much do you think it hurts your guild overall if you have members that aren't speccing optimally?

 

Spades

I don't think many top-end guilds are letting Shadowstep dagger rogues into their SS raids. That said, there's a grey area for a lot of classes where you can strike a balance between PvE and PvP. I don't think many guilds require 100% PvE spec at all times, either.

"Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long."
-Rorschach, Watchmen

 

Twid

I prefer systematically guilt tripping my raiders into respec'ing for PvE, or developing an eating disorder.

In all seriousness though, if people are performing well, the tanks are living, the healers are not running out of mana, and the boss is dying, I don't inspect people's talents.

However, when people start slacking, I go over their gear, and talents to see what areas they could improve upon. Most likely the people will notice that they are underperforming and respec out of their own initiative.

I will say that I have spent many a raid commenting on how nice it would be to have survived the previous pull, and that the extra 1000 health from blessing of kings, or a quick NS heal would have saved the raid. I also ask our dps to freely critique the threat generation of our warriors, myself included.

Basically if people aren't willing to put forth the effort to focus on raiding, I just might not be willing to schedule them for raids. That should give them enough time for the PvP they so much enjoy. Then again, I get a terrible arena rating as payback when I'm trying to work towards the Gladiator's Shield Wall. I rely on pity to get me into arena groups, so turnabout is fair play.

"Who wants to take protection spec'd Grandpa this week?"

 

Dakous

We're not top end, any fight that we can't handle without (minor) consumables we don't do, and everyone is welcome to spec how they like (three people have been asked to lean their specs a certain way, but it wasn't required). It should be well known that I will invite and recruit around any paladin speccing retribution (at the risk of going off topic, but it's the one spec that's wildly off purpose in my raids).

Everyone wants to succeed, so it's not a question of, "WTF ARE YOU SUBTLETY?!" but rather, "You know, I think you'd do more raid damage if only you..."

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Hoel

My guild is pretty laidback with PvE speccs atm but I guess it will change in a near future.
The way we do it is that we invite people with the best PvE speccs, so for warriors its allways the 2 prot warriors getting into the raids, then the fury warriors get into the raid and if there is still a spot for another warriors the arms/prot hybrid gets in.

For other classes I dont think we have that much focus on it but it might change soon I guess, we have been working on Hydross for a few nights now with a best attempt on 25% 45~ seconds before enrage when I died and we wiped. We have also wiped to enrage at 30%. So for us to actually down it I guess we need everyone pulling the weight with PvE speccs, but one of our rogues wich has an odd combat varation specc with imp. sap for heroics got 2. on damage on one of the wipes.

My point with this ramble is that its very different from class to class and from player to player. Some people need a full PvE specc to do decent dps others do plenty dps with some off specc.

 

ZProtoss

Is it really different from player to player though? When you're asking people to burn a lot of consumables to get a fight down, if you have a player that does good damage while in a spec that utilizes maybe 75% of his potential damage with his gear setup, wouldn't asking that player (even if he is close to top), to respec to the absolute best greatly benefit your raid?

Edit: Main point is, I can't think of a single class in the game (at least on the dps side of things), that doesen't have a substantial drop off between it's best pvp and best pve spec. So if your raid is heavily specced pvp, it'd seem like even among your best dps'ers, you're losing a lot of raid power that *could* potentially be there.

 

Northerner

I spec for PvE because we are a PvE guild. A number of our members PvP competitively and that's both wise (for gear) and fun (which is wise). They either respec a lot or they deal with PvPing in a raiding spec, like I do when I head out that way.

In the end though of course, we look at the dps or healers that are not performing and talk to them about why. If "why" turns out to be because they are specced for PvP and are unwilling to respec for the content we are doing, they will need to find a guild that shares that philosophy.

 

ZProtoss

Yeah. This is the same philosophy our guild has right now pretty much. Of our active pvpers, they're usually going through 4-6 respecs in any given week because of raids. But anything less and they wouldn't have a raid spot. But judging from the first few posts in this thread and other posts along the forums, it seems to be the minority point of view.

 

Hoel

It would probably greatly benefit our raid if the rogue in question did specc for pure PvE dps. And if everyone else that wasnt specced optimal for the fight did aswell it would probably become noticable easier.

But if the rogue dont get his Trial quest completed because people dont bother to bring him to heroics because he is lacking imp sap we would be a good rogue short in the eye when we get there. What I am trying to say is if some raiders need a bit of an offspecc to be happy playing WoW its better to have him happy and focused during raids then unhappy and unwilling to raid if you force him to specc PvE. Tough I doubt this is the issue in my guild it might be for others.

All in all its pretty much down to how hardcore you are I guess and there shouldnt be a doubt for anyone that a pure raid dps specc for your DPS classes greatly benefits your entire raid. Healing gets easier and the raids go more smooth.

 

Lamaros

I spec for PvE because I want to and because it's my main focus. I'm lucky in that I can have a PvE spec that does decent damage, is useful in Heroics, and I can also PvP in.

Of course it's not the ideal spec for PvP; even if I kept the distribution the same I'd put points in different places, but it's still good.

Unless you're talking very competitive PvP then you don't really have to respec for it for a few classes.

I believe our guild also works on the "you spec how you want but don't suck or you'll have to respec/won't get invited" philosophy. Some people switch specs often due to raiding and PvP, some don't. But pretty much everyone who raids regularly seems prepared to spec for the best of the guild.

 

Dendory

Spec is a small part of DPS. I'm a deep frost mage and top our DPS chart every single time, with a fire mage following closely. We have 2 warlocks, one of them fights me for the top spot, the other literally does less than half of my DPS. I think they're both destro, I know the one with high DPS is.

 

Mondragon

get one of them to spec affliction, see how they perform compared to a frost mage

 

Alliera

All other things being equal, Fire does more damage than Frost--or at least it did when I played Mage.

I've heard Arcane can actually be competitive nowadays, and might even be the best raid spec. I don't think I've ever tried PoM'ing an AM, though...

 

Hav-

From my experience it still isn't. Of what I've seen people go deep arcane because they think the extra 100-150 damage they get weighs up the percentual benefits from deep fire for PvE.

 

Inkm

Weird specs can cause more wipes then most people give it credit for in my opinion.

If everyone on a given raid in a mid-casual-raiding guild had the right spec for their gear and abilities (eg. not the arena spec they love to use) shit would go down faster. There's no question about it.

And ahh "most people" doesn't really apply that much on this board :p.

 

Mearis

Exceptional players will always perform well even with extravagant specs. Exceptional players with good specs will perform even better, so 'beating the other damage dealers' is not an excuse to keep a substandard spec.

 

Schneeb

Its pretty simple with us, spec pve for raids - do what you want the rest of the time.

Afterall speccing 'pvp' will often help farming so you should be able to farm up 100g in a few hours..

 

XI-

Pretty much all of our members are full raiding specs, at least for progress. We've had people try and raid with non-raid specs (they were trying to farm, or finish up some quests), and usually they'll leave the raid and respec because they can't stand not performing as well as they usually do.

In addition if we come to an encounter that we think specs could make a huge difference, even if it's completely bizarre, we'll stop the raid to have people go respec (eg. when we first did Gluth, we sent 3-4 mages out to spec deep frost with Improved Blizzard, or the absolutely bizarre prot/fury/arms spec that we had a tank spec for our first patchwerk). I have no doubt this contributes a lot to our success. Spec's can definitely make as much of a difference in an encounter as consumables can when it comes to maximizing damage.

 

Nexus-7

Of course, if you're already bumping your head against the threat ceiling then it's OK to dump some of those minor DPS talents for some utility talents. There's no need to improve your DPS if you end up just sitting there waiting for the tank. Besides, some of those utility talents may end up saving you a wipe on some encounters.

I'd say that evaluating each raider individually and understanding his contribution to each encounter you slam up against is more than just reading the numbers on the damage meter, and often times there is more to a person's spec than just the damage or healing they put out for you.

 

Leto

If your guild is competitive at raiding, your members should want to maximize their contribution of their own accord, otherwise they probably don't belong in your guild. If you have to force people to spec for raiding frequently, then you probably have bigger troubles to worry about.

It's not fun being in a guild that's trying to be more hardcore than it is.

Rogue at heart.

 

• Playered

We used to have perhaps 2/6 rogues being PvE specd, the general location on the DM'ers was as you would expect.
After some threats of "prio on raid spots due to spec" and basicly saying if they had PvP specs... they could fuck off and do that instead, they all (bar 1 who got phased out) went PvE spec and generally the top 6 of the DM always contained atleast 4 rogues.

We were never that fussy on weapon spec for them however (Dagger v Sword) despite some having obvious advantages at one point or another.

I personally started off with swords because at the time dagger was somewhat slightly inferior I believe, then when I found out about the upcoming changes to dagger spec I quickly started adapting my gear for that and took the first dagger that dropped (HoD), and then thanks to DKP got the first DS (thank god no AQR/CTS/CoTBD ever dropped I guess).

My spot as generally #1 on damage came from willingness to spec and gear (not to mention research) my character towards being the best for PvE I could possibly be, no matter how much I despised the spec in question (daggers, *shudder*)

Not everyone went that far into that kind of extent, and still pulled off near top DPS, however putting that extra bit of effort into being the best gave me the result of being the best and I dont think I would ever do it differently.

Its pretty easy and obvious to notice people being PvP spec'd while raiding, and shaming/bullying has its uses on these occasions.

 

thejdawg

Maybe, and maybe not. Would your raid benefit from having more NSes from the feral/balance druids and enhancement shaman? Sure, but if you're at a point where you need 4-5 NSes within a 3 minute span, chances are it's execution holding you back, and not specs. For example.

 

Inkm

Yes, that's true.

I do think it's a bit class-specific as well. A sub rogue will be very, very subpar compared to a combat rogue for instance. The prot warrior should be able to perform (quite a lot) better then the MS warrior as a tank and <insert best mage spec> will be better then <insert worst mage spec> etc.

Your example is more of a min-max situation where as I was thinking broader. You are correct though .

 

Randor

Personally, I think there is a greater disparity and challenge in finding a working solution to between being specced for raids and specced for instances (especially heroics) rather than pve vs pvp.

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kycan

I don't mean to pick on this quote in particular, but it hit a pet peeve of mine that I would like to touch on.

Spec is everything for dps. Gear amplified the spec. PvE specs are called PvE specs for a reason. They maximize the contribution of your gear and skill to the raid. Simply put, if you are topping the meters with a deep frost spec, followed by destro warlocks, you either vastly outgear your fire mages and affliction locks, or you need to find new fire mages and affliction locks. That said, your fire mage could be a pvp spec fire mage. I don't really know.

Point is, pve specs will always beat pvp specs at raid dps. Fire will always beat frost. Combat will always beat subtlety. And so forth.