Phantasmique

True, even for a hunter class such as mine, having the optimal PvE spec for raids gives a higher boost than using a Hybrid PvE/PvP spec, usually the optimal PvE spec gives around 15% up to 20% more dps

 

Vazu

Many people seem to think content in this game can't be overcome without the vast majority of your guild "speccing" for raids. I won't disagree that there are better specs for PVE from class to class. Look, I read these forums. People design spreadsheets down to the .01 seconds of some rotation to squeeze out 5-10 more DPS. It's really not my thing, but I'm glad somebody starts the discussion. Hell, I'm happy when our Mages/Warlocks show up with adequate +hit gear most nights to break the 500 DPS mark on Gruul. But we don't force players into speccing for us, and never will.

(Oh, and for a "Felguard specc'd Warlock", I'm usually between 600-650 DPS for that encounter with no shadow Priest debuffs.)

It has still been my personal experience that great players make due with their PVP specs and guilds like ours (centered around PVP) work within those limits. Am I suggesting that feral Druids do our healing or that we have a DPS Warrior tanking Gruul? No, I'm not. However, we feel very strongly as a guild that people should have fun for their 15.00/month. If that means content takes us a little longer and more consumables to overcome, so be it. You only have to look at Gruul in his pre-nerf form to understand what I'm getting at. Blizzard has a track record with new encounters of making them overly difficult for 1-2 months, and then nerfing it into the ground once the bleeding 5% edge of PVE guilds get their kills. I think some people refer to the other 95% of us as "casuals" right?

Our focus is not end-game PVE. We're not enticed by "server firsts" at all. The PVE content we participate in gears our players (especially healers) for PVP. The core of our guild are attracted to 2k+ arena ratings and active discussion and participation in the PVP community for our Battlegroup. We're grateful that somebody else does the work of writing up boss strategies, drawing pictures and telling us what buttons to press for our purples.

 

BeeLz

I don't think many people think they _have_ to spec pve to make pve progression. But a lot of raiders just can't stand the fact that they are not performing to their best when they need to.
Back in vanilla wow when the mage patch and naxxramas was introduced I specced elemental for a bit and I was still the highest mage on dps. Then when we started with naxx and I decided to test the new combustion. Now I could actually keep up with our rogues and even beat them.
I could have stayed elemental and keep outdamaging the majority of our damagedealers but not performing 100% just didn't feel good as a raider who wanted to make progress.

 

Brista

I would challenge the notion that speccing for raiding is not fun. It's fun if your priority is raiding. Your priority isn't raiding and it sounds like your guild works exactly as your membership wants it to which is great.

If your priority is raiding then it's very un-fun if you feel people aren't pulling their weight. I've found that sometimes not speccing for raiding goes with never bringing consumables, frequently forgetting to repair and /afking out of AV and asking for a summon once the rest of the raid has arrived at the raid instance. That makes the people who are trying their best wonder why they bother

Where conflicts arise is where some people spec for raiding and some people don't where the membership is not in universal agreement about which is the main priority

I don't think your guild is typical. I think most guilds of medium ability and dedication have raiding as a vague priority but leave it up to individuals to decide how committed they want to be. The tanks > prot; healers > resto; everyone else > freespec model is from my experience on a few of the EU servers the most common model for raid guilds. Not world first raid guilds obviously, but there are no guilds even close to that on my server and many guilds such as I have described

 

ZProtoss

First of all 600-650 dps as a warlock is terrible. With a good raid comp/setup you can easily pull 900 at a minimum in a 0/21/40 build, and well over 1k if things go right.

That aside, I simply see it as this. You will be spending a large amount of time raiding regardless of your guild philosophy. To me, I couldn't raid if I knew I was letting down the other 24 people by playing something I *knew* was worse than what I could be capable of achieving.

I guess it's different philosphies, but I'd challenge you to look at it like this. You're going to be spending hours upon hours each week in PvE. Would you rather have tons of mindless wipes due to people purposely not giving their all? Or would you rather people bring their best possible to the raid to make the best use of everyones time, and generally make things go smoother?

Meh.

 

Vazu

I'd rather bring people who understand their class and spec (reasonably) however they want to enjoy their 15.00/month. The people who we raid with give their all. But I'm not gonna ask our MT (who is part of an arena team) to spend 200g/week to re-spec. Instead we use a feral Druid now, primarily. There are always work-arounds. You state that 600-650 DPS on Gruul is "terrible" for my class. I tell you this. We will kill that boss, possibly this Sunday. It may take us a few attempts, but we're not gonna tell everybody to go out and abandon their PVP specs so we can drop him faster. The people who you claim may be "let down" are in other PVE-only guilds on our server. That's the beauty of this game. If you really enjoy serious end-game raiding, there's stuff out there for everyone.

Edit: if anything, we look at people's specs for arenas and keep them out of our groups if they have -threat talents and stuff like that. Because like you say, they're obviously not giving their all by speccing for PVE when we're trying to progress in PVP.

 

ZProtoss

Something you may wanna consider though, philosophies aside. You may be able to drop the nerfed gruul, but what about a fight that's much more of a dps benchmark now in Hydross? Hydross was most certainly tuned for a group that'd include high caliber dps. If your casters are pulling 500 dps on average instead of the 1k they could be putting out, don't you think you're going to hit a brick wall in terms of ability to progress?

I understand Blizzard goes back and retroactively nerfs encounters, but in the switch to 25 mans, a lot of the slack that used to exist for that is no longer there. Which may mean your guild is going to be at a crossroads, which is that you'll want pvp items from certain pve bosses in SSC, but you won't be able to beat them because of your pvp specs.

Say overcome all you want, but I really don't think the later end content in the game will get nerfed so severely that a raid consisting of almost full pvp specs is going to be able to drop it. You're simply losing far too much.

 

Lumi

To be honest, I've yet to meet a good player who didn't respec for content pushing. Its honestly cheaper in both time and money to spend 200g in respecs a week for arenas than to wipe over and over because of bad tank specs.

 

Northerner

Honestly, what it tends to boil down to is that there will be tremendous resentment from the people that do spec for PvE advancement towards those that don't bother to eventually. For every 2% wipe, every tank that gets killed with a heal landing .3 seconds too late, every wipe because the survival hunter likes to multishot random mobs to see what happens... for all those bad outcomes, it is easy to point a finger.

At finger-pointing time, you don't want to be a minority.

If your guild is PvP focused or even PvP orientated then of course that's a different thing entirely. You have common goals and everyone is on the same page. If you are PvE focused though and especially if you are on a PvE server and so focused, then frankly you are being a bit of an ass towards your guildmates if you spec in a way detrimental to the implied contract. I do tend to pick on people based on results but hey, even if you are middle of the pack for the dps with a pvp spec, that still tells me that your priority is you and not the team.

/shrug

 

Vazu

We were at a crossroad with Naxx. Nobody wanted to put in the time of farming and re-specs (for 40 people) to make something like Loatheb possible. That's just it though, right? Blizzard, IMO, will always make the "hardest" content stay that way. Sure, they'll tweak The Black Citadel some, making it more available to casuals, but it won't ever get super-nefed. Just like Naxx was, before the end. It's always been Blizzard's intention to keep their most difficult end-game content (and right now that is Serpentshrine and The Eye) very challenging and then easing up when something new comes out. Do I wish we had cleared Naxx, from a loot standpoint alone? Yes! I wish I had 2 pieces of Plagueheart to itemize with right now. But again, that's just not how our guild operates. I'd say a good 60% of us care more about PVP and 40% are a mix of both. For the most part, DPS has been (and will continue to be) a sore area for us in raiding. Because healers spec for healing anyway in arenas, and we're using feral Druids who love that spec as tanks. Oddly enough, before BC, we had 4-5 fairly dedicated Warrior tanks. We now have 1, and 4 Druid tanks.

 

levk

A deep frost mage spec is a good general purpose pvp spec that does very well in pve due to water elemental scaling. However if by 'pvp spec' you mean arena success nothing beats arcane power. This is why I absolutely loathe the arenas and the stress it puts on class make up and specs.

Now if you're talking basin or gulch, it's a whole other matter.

 

Quixotic

Ummm... no. Frost is not a good pve spec.

If you want to pvp, pay the 100g a week and set a day for your team.

 

levk

I'm not saying it's the best, it's something I'd consider a reasonable compromise for people not looking to push the bleeding edge of raid progression anyways. Compare that to AP...

 

Quixotic

AP builds are better than deep frost without winters chill, and most pvp mages dont take winters chill for a pvp arena build.

 

Yes

Let me put it this way to end all discussion.

For patchwerk 2.0 and loatheb 2.0, for the first two kills you will want to be pve specs with consumables. Afterwards, you will one shot these meterstick bosses because dps progressively gets better and better with time. Because let's be honest here, how many of us, on our third plus patchwerk/etc kill ran into a dps wall? Heck, we took people to buy loot by the fifteenth week that sat in a corner and counted their gold. Really, it is only first kills that count, and you set your priorities then. The rest of the way, gear will carry you thru.

 

ZProtoss

The patchwerk standard doesen't exactly apply anymore though. The gear upgrades now are not as substantial as they were in Naxx, and 25 mans have significantly less level of slack in the raid than 40 mans had (as a by product of making 25 mans as hard as the old 40 mans). So yeah, I wouldn't say "gear will carry you through" just yet :o

 

Namaste

To add a bit of reality to this, tonight was our 2nd night in SSC and we had Hydross to 17% on a wipe with maybe 2 minutes left before enrage or berserk (w/e it is he does after 10mins) and decided to call it a night after that due to flask timers. Afterwards 3-4 people weren't afraid to say on vent that if they hadn't been arena specced it would've given them a significant boost and could've been the difference. I know 18% is more than 3 or 4 people respeccing, but it'd be our first kill and aside from one early death we really have nothing else to blame it on other than the repetetiveness of the encounter not sinking in yet so it's not 100% stellar transitions and add pickups just yet.

Do I look down upon those who chose to roll into a progress raid with arena specs? Of course not. But in the end I can't help but wonder just how much we were held back.

- Smaq

 

Tristanian

If you had him down to 17% with 2 minutes to spare, you should have easily beaten him. Whether it would be much or marginally easier to do so with all people specced for PvE is a question only you, can reliably answer.

 

Lumi

Er... he did answer. He said it would have be much easier in his own post. No need to sound so mysterious!

 

Kytrarewn

Exceptional players can often manage to overcome their PvE specs in PvP.

That sounds stupid, perhaps, but it's more useful than its inverse, depending on the class in question, especially because PvP has always seemed to be more a matter of "skill and teamwork" than "individual performance".

Can a PvE specced warlock no longer fear or dot-kite? Can a PvE specced mage no longer sheep or fireball?

I played from January 2006 through August 2006 (took a week after the rogue review as seal fate again, yay) as Combat Daggers. 16/25/10, and then 17/28/6 (Yeah, mock me all you want, but I still did respectably in PvE without AR, it's not as big a difference as it was made out to be except in controlled burst, or at least it wasn't with my gear at the tim). Combat Daggers (until the review) was probably among the worst PvP specs of any class before the review. (No cold blood, no ambush, no CP gen, weak on energy, no evisc, etc.).

Did that stop me from PvPing with guildmates, friends, or, on very rare occasion, puggies, and doing very respectably? No it didn't. I think that many people (not necessarily on this thread) have to realize that your guild brings you to your raids to do a job, and it's in your best interest to do the best at your job that you can while you are on the clock. After that, it's your own time, but when it comes raid time that it's inappropriate to go deer hunting with an Uzi, and pick the right tools to do your job.

 

Davidson

While nice for DPS classes and healers, protection warriors can't really do anything in pvp that compares to what arms/fury can accomplish. With so much focus on pvp, I wish blizzard would allow us to save two builds, so people can swap between a pvp and pve build without spending ridiculous gold, just because their class is not viable in pvp with certain specs.

 

Kytrarewn

I logged many more hours in WoW 1.0 than I have in 2.0/TBC. But I'll say this much, seeing a full wrath/TF/cardoor+ prot warrior as a flag-runner made for some of the most difficult WSGs I've ever played, though I have not, of yet, partaken in the Arena system in WoW2 (or, for that matter, gotten around to hitting 70, though I have only something like 4 hours left to my ding).

 

Sapphrina

Warning: Anecdotal post inc.

I was hemo leveling up my rogue (way before it became popular as well, reached 60 around the time Xgen did his first premed vid if that rings a bell for anyone). Respecced premed daggers when I hit exhalted AV. When we started doing co-op MC runs with another guild, they had a sealfate dagger rogue who I really had to work to keep up with, when he wasn't there I was #1.. Perd dropped first Raggy kill, I had most dkp, decided it'd be a waste of such a fine weapon not having lethality, and I was closing on 5pc ns as well, so respecced to vigor/sealfate.

Fast forward to chrommy/nef, new rogue joined guild, combat swords pve build.. Some fights he could out-do me, others I'd still be ahead.

Another fast forward, to early naxx, new rogue joined again, classic combat daggers (same guy I competed with in early MC, hey ND! ), and yeah. I was still wearing my 5pc ns with vigor, and he would quite consistently have a 8-10% lead on me, more in situations where bf/ar could be used to full effect. The other rogues were starting to catch up at this point as well, so I respecced combat daggers to stay competitive.

A month later (and the long-awaited goodbye to 5pc ns), I'm taking stock of things, and noticing I'm still a bit behind the new combat dagger rogue, but ahead of everyone else. So I respecced back to be more effective grinding/pvp-wise.

Seems like the fact that I enjoyed my build made me focus that much more on doing things optimally in regards to positioning and energy management, that the respec to the obviously superior build didn't provide the payoff I expected.

The only legitimate use of the BLINK tag:
Schrödinger's cat is [BLINK] not [/BLINK] dead.

 

Amera

Well, the main difference is that by being less than optimal in PvP, you get your loot a few weeks later, but you still get it, and incur no real additional cost. In PvE by being less than optimal, you may incur hundreds of GP of repair costs and consumable costs, hours spent wiping, hours spent farming, and so on. At worst, you may simply never kill the boss, stop progression, and have a guild implosion.

That being said, if your goal in PvP is to just "be a top team" rather than "get loot," then no, most PvE specs just aren't going to cut it regardless of how good you are. A mage is going to have a hard time overcoming no iceblock, a warrior can't 5v5 without MS, etc.

 

Cyrithor

My situation is a bit unique I suppose, compared to a lot of the experiences shared here with guilds and spec requirements - we've always had people who have wanted to respec to help the raid progress, in almost every circumstance since the days of early Molten Core.

When we were coming up on Patchwerk, and I was PvP'ing, I was told by our guild master that we would need "everything the dps could give" for the encounter, and I was excited to help; so of course I spent the dkp on two new daggers, and respec'd combat daggers to help the guild. Since then, while we were learning Naxxramas, I was tired of going back and forth between a very sub-par Seal Fate pvp build and my combat daggers build, and the straw that broke the camels back was when after a weekend of pvp, I went into Naxx and we started on Patchwerk and the Abom wing that evening, after looking at my peers (rogues I've played with since MC) who I can easily equal if not surpass spec'd Combat, and watching them outpreform me; I asked permission and left the raid to respec. I came back to the raid and was much happier to be giving my maximum to the raid for the rest of the evening, and the subsequent respec.

We've had priests go shadow for Thaddius, mages all respec fire in the days of rolling ignites, warlocks respecing sometimes 4 times a week to get the most dps out of their characters after the talent revamp, warriors spec'ing fury in the days of amazing fury warrior dps, and our Rogue team as always, does everything it can to be 'the best'. So we've always been spec'd for maxing PvE dps when we are raiding. Most of us get disgusted with poor preformance due to PvP specs and wind up respec'ing pre-raid or sometimes (as in my case) in the middle of one.

As far as spec enforcement goes, for a long time (since learning BWL really) we were vehemently against having shadow priests, feral druids, moonkin (or balance before the moonkin was implemented), ret-a-dins, and tank-a-dins (these last two only in the case where they were doing things other than healing) in our raids. Since the release of BC, and rise of the "Offspec" synergy such specs aren't frowned upon anymore, and in a lot of cases welcome. We have a Feral Druid tank that we use on a regular basis, as well as a Prot Paladin who has MT'd several Karazhan runs, and we always use 2 shadow priests for our 25 man raids these days. I would say that we as a guild are more strict of DPS classes specing for PvE content than the others listed above, as a lot of encounters become dps races and pulling the most from your raid, is ideal, if not necessary. For DPS in our guild, you earn your invite to the 25 man raids and if you can't bring to the table what others are bringing, you won't have an invite until you can.