I'm all for giving players two talent distributions to switch between under one condition: one is strictly for PvP and becomes active automatically in an Arena or BG. The ability to create a PvP talent tree should probably be free as well. The vast majority of reasons people respec is for PvP, and the nature of Arenas and raids requires it if you want to do both. No spec is ever going to be optimal in both, and with their lowering of respec costs in real terms Blizzard definitely is encouraging it. Through the intelligent discussion here, I've come to realize that this is going to be a fundamental part of the game, and leveling an alt really isn't the same thing (although it's still what *I* would do). There would be at least some in-game justification of such a system as well, perhaps that the character that takes part in PvP isn't really the same as the one outside PvP instances!

I still believe that changing your PvE or PvP spec should be very expensive if done frequently, although my reasons lie primarily with an over-arching sense of Role-Playing that players should fix themselves that many WoW players (like many on EJ) don't believe should be forced on them and I understand Blizzard's motivation that they'll get more customers if they abandon their artificial barriers to gameplay that are based on supposed "Azeroth physics". Thus, I highly doubt what I feel is best for my experience is ever going to be implemented, but at least I hope that those that complain about respecs eventually don't get their "respec at will" that somewhat destroys any sense that talents are in anyway permanent.

One thing that definitely needs to be changed is the interface and the requirement you unlearn all your points. They need to somehow implement an interface that resembles the talent calculator, allowing you to input your new spec before you unlearn anything, and have the cost of the retraining be related to the number of points changed. I'm not a programmer, but if they can do it on a webpage and encode the talent tree in a URL it doesn't seem that much of a change to compare the string of digits as well.

Yes, I am. Exaggerating, I mean. There's no way Blizzard would implement such, especially in arenas, but if you make the only requirement to head to the trainer, with no cost in gold, people will argue that that takes too much time. Any cost will be seen as too much, simply because the cost is so little.

Anyway, I'm conceding this debate. I do still believe that respeccing should incur some cost, but it's easy to see I'm in the vast minority on that front. For character and gameplay consistency, I don't believe the ability to change between two specs 'at will', with a cost on changing each spec, is a positive move, but it's long since this game has been seen as a true RPG, so I can live with it. Simply allowing talents to be swapped with no cost, however, I don't think anyone can argue would be a good thing.

A few points:

- People already can hearth out, respec, get resummoned. There isn't even any time delay on it. If you have the money, you can be that paladin who has avenger's shield for one boss and crusader strike for the next. Talent specs are no barrier to the rich.

- I don't buy the inflation argument, because I don't think there are too many people who will go out and aggressively make more money than they need, but even if removing respecs did cause inflation... so what? Is it a big deal that my alt hitting 70 four months after the expansion is released has an easier time getting an epic flyer than my main did three months earlier? Each expansion will effectively eliminate the consequences of all inflation anyways.

- Is a character any less "unique" and "authentic" because s/he is defined by two specific talent specs instead of one? The point that you can have to choose one spec stands - even with free respecs (which I wouldn't advocate, but also wouldn't have a problem with) I can't have every talent at once. I would have to choose a healing spec, choosing certain tradeoffs (spell warding versus holy specialization, etc.), and a different priest would make different choices. I'm not unique because I'm a healing priest and some other priest has chosen to be shadow; that's a "uniqueness" that's only as deep as 50g. I'm unique because I've chosen these specific holy talents. (And of course it's a cookie-cutter build and a thousand other priests have chosen the same, but that's an issue quite irrelevant to this particular discussion.)

Ummm, what?

The price for an epic flyer is static. The amount of gold you get from dailies is static. They are not affected by the actual value of the currency. The only thing removing any form of coin removal system would affect is auction house prices (which are incredible to begin with) because people with more money are willing to spend more for the same goods. The producer can then charge more and still sell, which leads to higher average prices. And seriously, the whole "everything will be fine in the next expansion" argument is flawed in so many ways even though it keeps getting brought up.

Regardless, trying to debate with some people is like repeatedly running into a wall (incidentally what PvPing as PvE ret specced felt like for me tonight). I actually really liked the idea for specific "PvP" tagged specs that switch on when you enter a battleground or arena. I don't think you should be able to (while in a raid, for example) swap specs with no consequence based on what fight you're going to. Why have some people as "rare" specs (for example a prot pally) when you can just give prot gear to a holydin and have him swap every fight? If anything it would make "offspecs" even more rare.

What's your point? If I don't have time to earn however it is much gold I need to respec constantly via the various ways and means in "The Art of Making Gold", I don't get to respec as much as I like, but the guy next to me with several free hours of time can.

TBC has seen some stark changes in the casual catering business: I can't argue not having enough to run my Arenas, I can't argue not having enough time to get some great raid quality gear without raiding, but it's certainly a pain in the arse to have to take a 1 hour bite out of my playtime whenever I want to respec.

It's not that I don't already do the dailies anyway, but instead of that gold being used to help my epic mount fund, it goes to the Paladin Trainer.

Nobody is arguing about being able to go to the talent window and click "Reset points!" at will. The run to a trainer is fine. Tacking on a half-hour cooldown is fine as well (with an optional 25 gold emergency respec now fee). This achieves the desired effect without putting in an unnecessary time sink that penalizes certain classes/playstyles moreso than others.

I hope you can see the difference between a half hour cooldown and a half hour enforced time sink. Once you see that, you see why we push for this.

Poeple will naturally gravitate to a spec that suits their desired gameplay anyways and spend most of the time as that spec. Even if I could respec at will, most people know me as a holy paladin. It's how I raid, more then 80% of my groups have been as holy, it's how I pvp. Being able to respec for no monetary cost is not going to change much other then allow people the freedom to enjoy more of the game.

The end.

/applause

We are not arguing that. We didn't even start "our case" with that position and use that as a false straw man. We immediately opened with a reasonable compromise offer.

We are agreeing to incur cost. We'd like to pay it once and not have to pay it every single time. And, no, we don't want an expiring weekly or monthly token. We are seeking a compromise. We are willing to pay. We are putting in a burden (trainer visit and cooldown) to make this a non-abusable benefit.

With regards to respec costs. It may very well be true that removing respec costs; and thus removing talents as character defining may very well hurt the game more than most think. It is still a role playing game; even though most don't realise it. Though the current situation with a huge benefit from respeccing for whatever activity you want to take part in; and a fairly high cost and forced gold farming as a result isn't optional either.

Only real solutions I see myself is either removing respec costs (including the pointless hassle of travelling to the class trainer); or to increase them so much its not feasible to respec weekly even. Either way would be fine; but raising respec costs alot is likely better for the game. Though at the same time that option would force the designers to make the different spec's more equally viable for PvP/PvE/Solo/....

Of course the game needs gold sinks. But the basic problem with this game is that gold isn't needed for anything after the first few weeks at 70. When you first get to 70 there are alot of things to buy. The Epic flying is the best example perhaps but not the only one. You also train professions and use up materials so everything doesn't get AH'ed or vendored. Most players seems to buy one or two crafted epics to get started also.

Though after a few weeks at 70 there isn't much to buy with the gold at all. So of course gold just keeps accumulating. Even if all you do is the PvP daily, Heroic daily, and perhaps cooking if its easy you more often than not end up with +50 gold a normal evening without trying.


So clearly gold sinks are needed. Respec costs just isn't a good gold sink because its not fun and feels like a punishment. There must be good gold sinks though. Personally I think the best option is just to start selling items players want to buy in vendors. For instance making Season 1 and Tier 4 available on various vendors for just gold. Perhaps 1000 gold/piece.

And add lots more rare and limited supply epics for large amounts of gold to wandering vendors. Like a sword with equal looks to Zin'Rokh, and similar stats as season 2 gladiator maybe that spawns maybe a few times/week on average and can be bought for 2k gold from a vendor that walks around in some obscure location.

Sure such a solution would make combatting gold selling more important perhaps but making more things people want to actually buy from vendors is the way to remove gold from players for sure. They could easily add a gold requirement, say 200 gold, for buying either PvP or PvE epics from the Honor/Token vendors. That would also feel like a resonable gold sink. You are still spending gold and getting something nice out of it.

In any case I don't think using Respec costs as a gold sink is nice. It breaks the fun of the game. Options would be to either make frequent respec impractical by raising the fee ALOT; or to remove the cost altogether.

The problem there is that the devs seem to contradict themselves a bit in that area. Devs have said in the past that they intended the respeccing cost as a means to make people "choose a defined path for their character".
So the spec you chose, should be sort of a "big impact" choice on your character, and not too easily changed/reverted/swapped. Hence the high respeccing cost.
On the other hand, the devs state that they want as much viability of each each spec in each part of the game, so the player can "fully experience" all facets of their game, while adding to that that some specs (tanking warrior for example) will never be fully viable for arena.

Add your suggestion to that statement, and you leave the tank in the dark. He's now stuck in a spec that is not viable in arena, and Blizzard admits never will be either. So he's either forced to play insane amounts to ever play arena, or choose either one of them and stick with it, which hurts Blizzards attempts to make every character give the "full experience".

I'm not at all worried about "inscription" in regards to all this respec cost talk, but this was the easiest way to go into my point. In 2.4 they're making you learn the highest rank (and possibly all the in-betweens, but not as of the last time I was on the PTR) of the talent spell/ability upon putting that talent point into your character. Why not just have every level 70 character know ... every spell and ability once trained? Make the talents activators to allow you to use the abilities, and they're greyed out otherwise. The functionality is already there (see warrior stance/weapon requirements). Seems like a no-brainer, and would certainly alleviate at least part of hassle that is respeccing (having to put all that shit back on your hotbars again, jesus christ).

Tanking specs might become viable in Arenas. They're looking at eventually exposing threat to the UI so that raiders won't need to depend on the 3rd party addons. If threat becomes some variable that's as obvious as mob HP, they could add deep-tree talented abilities that would treat threat like combo points, converting X amount into damage at some ratio. They could scale it so that it wouldn't be terribly useful in PvE, since the conversion ratio would be a net loss of threat on the mob even after counting the new damage, but it will help tanks get some bursty damage for PvP.

Also would help with any future Inner Demon mechanic.

I really just wish they'd get on with it and let us stable a secondary spec. It's a hassle, a punishment for people who want to play more of the game. I can't see how it would hurt the game. I'm in a blind terror of expectancy for how they plan on reducing the variety of gear outfitting for various specs and classes.

I agree here, why not?

With limitations of course:
- time cooldown (yet not longer than 1 hour)
- you need to do it at NPC

You want add gold sink to that? Sure! I will gladly pay weekly/monthly fee for that as long as I will be charged for TIME not for NUMBER of respecs.

Here's an example of something that would get awfully weird with free at-will respecs:

If all I have to do is zone out to respec quickly, why wouldn't I do it all the time to switch specs for specific fights? Deep protection has a number of abilities that have some very specific uses. If I can respec around all the time, I won't be specced Improved Defensive Stance most of the time. I'll jump out and respec before boss fights that involve major magic damage. The rest of the time, I'll spend those points elsewhere in ways that improve my threat output.

So it's not just changes between trees that are a factor here, but changes between choices deep in trees. If you have to go to a trainer, you'll never make those changes on the fly, because the cost of *time* in moving to respec makes it very much not worth it, even if respeccing is free gold-wise. (Although, I can imagine doing it sometimes for specific situations if it's free and remote, with the new summoning into instances changes: Imagine Maexxna—I never spec Improved Shield Wall, because it's pretty much never worth it to improve that level of "oh shit" cooldown ability. But on Maexx, those extra seconds of shield wall would come in really really handy.)


I think that my personal opinion is that Blizzard should make it more painful to respec again. Mainly, I think this because it will force the developers to really deal with the problems various deep specs have. As deep prot, I'm in much better shape now than I was a while back, but things are still weird. (In other words: I can solo grind better now, and I don't feel *completely* useless in PvP, but DPS wars can't for crap due to aggro issues, mainly. And prot warriors can only do meaningful DPS in raids in very special circumstances.) It's worse for DPS warriors wanting to tank than it is for tanks wanting to do other things, at this point, but the problem is still there. By choosing to allow respecs to become more-or-less trivial, Blizzard has essentially made respecs mandatory for certain activities.

Spec choice should change the tenor of your character, it's true. But it should do it in interesting ways that don't prevent the character from carrying out the available roles. Sure, someone specced deep in a specific tree should have specific strengths and weaknesses—but a protection warrior shouldn't be abysmal at DPS, and a DPS warrior shouldn't be abysmal at tanking. Likewise, any paladin or druid ought to be able to heal or tank or DPS effectively, though not as well as one who specializes in that. Optimally, each spec choice should change *how* you do something, but not *how well* to as great a degree as it currently does.

If Blizzard were forced to address this sort of problem (and I don't know, perhaps they plan to for WotLK), then specs would become richer overall. As it is now, all we have are a few real choices of specific "best in class" specs and many many choices that aren't just suboptimal, they're abysmal. This is a false choice: you always choose one of the best core specs, with a few points sprinkled around in places where it's a matter of taste.

I was excited before BC came out to try a fury/prot hybrid build—but it turns out that such a build is neither good for tanking or good for DPSing. I'd just as soon we entered a world where there are many meaningfully interesting choices to speccing, and I don't think that will happen as long as Blizzard can just look at things and say "Well, you can always just respec to do that other things, it's cheap."

I suppose the most likely outcome is that things go on as they have been: Talent choices are cheap to change, but not so cheap as to be totally trivial. And, a real lack of ability to make interesting choices in speccing. The game will still continue to be very good this way—but it could be oh so much better.

Not every talent needs to be amazing, nor every tree at every point in time. Look at something like Magic the Gathering and its metagame, which through the power of newly printed cards is in a general flux and change and is only represented by what is strongest at that point in time which as people adapt, develop counters and become accustomed to fighting it gradually gets hated out, and new things come up and then those are eventually pounced on or in some cases nerfed because they are too abusive. Yet the ideas that go into those decks don't go away, they often mutate into offshoot decks with the same general idea only with tricks, or simply wait out the printing of something new to boost the overall power of the deck and bring it back to prominence.

WoW mirrors this in alot of ways, with PvP specs/teams that find success because they are setup to counter the current strong teams, with abilities buffed/nerfed in response to player clamor and ingame testing. On the PvE side of things it's shown in the fact that some classes have been better than others at various points in time for what raid zone was current, ala DPS warriors being absolute monsters during the 'rage feedback' days before the mechanic change, or raid stacking mages for rolling ignites during Naxx era, or the rogue situation of early BC with 360 cleaves, low hp and low dps due to not having crafted gear making them very undesirable and almost a liability, or the rise of hybrids such as Shadow priests and both Elemental/Enhance shaman to raidworthy status.

These are all a combination of factors dealing with available content, whether it be against players or NPCs and as such as content changes so does the potential viability of talents. Blizz has to make sure that the talents we get are either:

1. Solid, predictable and inflexible. Staples of the class, contributing to the primary function of the class defined by the talent tree.
2. Tricks and abilities that either counter issues that the tree has dealing with or bends the rules of the tree slightly to add an extra dimension to it.

They've done a decent job of trimming the fat from the talent trees as we knew them at release though I imagine there's a few oddball talents here and there that need addressing. I guess what I'm saying is that the fun and challenge of the current 'all or nothing' situation that specs put us in is that you ARE limited and subject to your choices, you can't have your cake and eat it too but at the same time that it all might be obsolete tomorrow and we must adapt to the demands of the current PvP/PvE situations in whatever fashion we choose to play them.

As for respec tabs, I'm all for them. Makes things easier and more enjoyable for everyone which can't be anything but good. Yes goldfarming is easy but I'd really like Blizz to address this timesink in a way closer to how they handled the general availability of gold and the use of consumables. I'd really like to see them script out a flowing, alive questline that succeeds or fails based on your individual and perhaps faction/server wide participation, with ramifications for both success and failure. If we're going to do random farming let's make it have some kind of impact on something more than how many pages of items are listed in the auction house.

No raid is going to have you port out and be summoned back after each boss. Especially not if there's just enough cooldown on the spec-swap that it's useless to do so. And also, with the "talent stable" concept, you can't "min max" your prot spec for two different tanking jobs unless you want no PVP spec. If so, great, enjoy it. Have a magic dampen spec and a threat spec. Most people are going to have a PVP spec and a PVE spec. If you are allowed three specs there is a little more chance of gaming the system, but really, our paladins could realistically have three specs without being abusers (tanking, healing, ret/PVP).

There are numerous ways to avoid abuse (think "you have entered too many instances") and I'm sure they can be handled.

Depending on the 'real' cost of respecing your tabs, it could become standard practice to respec both your tabs twice a week for two PvE builds and two PvP builds, and you basically have a similar situation to what we have now, except people that do so have an additional advantage in being able to respec (within a framework) on a fight-by-fight basis. So you basically end up with the same situation we have now, but even more so, because paying for respecs allows a more optimizable character. In fact, even with prohibitive respec costs, the same problem occurs any time someone chooses to not PvP, or not PvE. It's more common than you think, especially on PvE servers, and for arena-only characters.

And yes, a raid will have you port out and get a summon after a boss if it makes you better for that boss, at least until it goes on farm status.

Why not just make 2 tabs then? One is pure PvP. It activates when you enter a BG or an Arena or outdoor PvP zone (Lake Wintergrasp). One is PvE. It activates when you're in a raid or instance or flying around. You eliminate any potential for abuse and the whiners can keep their free PvP specs.

I can absolutely guarantee that you will have min-max raiders abusing free instant respecs on a boss-to-boss basis. I'd do it right now as a holy pally; speck Shockadin for Bloodboil for Sanctity Aura for my prot pally then go back to normal Holy/prot split for the rest of BT, then go prot for Hyjal trash waves then go ret for bosses but holy for Archimonde.

But hey, with how much the game is heading towards an ultra-casual appeal system I can see this happening.

And seriously, this is kinda the wrong place to be complaining about the evil raider trying to keep the casuals down. The WoW forums might be better for that kind of stuff.

Does not account for world PvP, and consequently fails.

You could do it now, if your guild is really serious about progression. Never mind that Blizzard has plenty of options for preventing this, which have been discussed at length already in this thread.

It doesn't make terribly much sense to complain about "casuals" and then whine about content that you perceive as being casual vs. hardcore. This isn't a casual vs. hardcore issue anyway, unless you feel that "hardcore players" don't care about PvP beyond their minimum ten Arena games, in which case you're just projecting your own attitudes onto every other T5+ raider on the planet. This is about letting players enjoy what the game has to offer without arbitrary and artificial obstacles.

I don't really feel like responding to every post, toastr, but your argument has already been handled. We've suggested a cooldown such that if you switched for Hyjal trash you couldn't switch back for bosses. Problem solved.

In fact, a variant of the instance-reset function would also work. First switch, 30 min cooldown. Second switch, 60 minute cooldown. Third switch 120 minute cooldown. Plenty of ways to cut abuses down.

We are talking about ways to make the game more fun and less painful for, lo, more than a million people people who are in this situation. Once you can summon inside instances and respec more easily (already coming regardless of whether you get 2-3 specs), you can min max however you choose with your own gold.

In my guild, and I supect many others, you'd become horribly unpopular by the way if you said "port me" and "summon me" every 10 minutes so you could respec for some absurd level of min-maxing. And we are advancing through content at a reasonable pace with 3 raiding nights at this points. We don't raid stack or min max. For a guild that does, obviously the experience would be very different. In fact, this change might allow them to stop having 10 people standing outside all night. Again, I'm struggling to find people who would object to such a change.

Not entirely Blizzcast related, but Drysc is posting a lot of (non)info in this thread: WoW Forums -> If you could ask a CM anything...

He talks about the tameable spirit wolf nerf, armor rehashes etc.

And your system of running to a trainer to respec while you tell the big tauren warrior who just tried to gank you to ait 5 minutes so you can get your PvP spec ready does? Hell, if you go by your great system you can't switch in combat either, so in reality NO SYSTEM COVERS WORLD PVP. *gasp*

And I suggest that you can take 30 minutes out of your day to do dailies (5 dailies and you have more than your respec cost without even touching an epic mount) and people complain "I don't want to do that, I don't have time". Sorry, but that comes off as extremely casual to me.

And again, if you have a system that gives you a free PvP spec for arena how does it hurt "hardcore players who only like 10 games a week"? I'm utterly confused by your (lack of) logic.

How is adding a 30/60/120 minute reset timer on respecs not an "arbitrary and artificial obstacle"?

Your attempt to minimize the situation fails as well. It's not limited to ganking and counter-ganking, particularly after Blizzard includes a larger emphasis on it in WotLK.

Assuming a respec back, that's ten dailies, and most definitely not an insignificant chunk of time spent when your goal is to *enjoy* some PvP. Your standpoint is not "hardcore"; it's just stupid. "Hardcore" isn't defined by "enjoys grinding the shit out of boring tasks until they feel they've 'earned' the right to have fun."

And I'm still confused how you consider this to be a casual vs. hardcore issue. You continue to look at this issue in terms of shelling out gold vs. not shelling out gold, just to get weekly Arena points, in spite of what people are telling you they want out of the game to enjoy it. This includes occasional world PvP, and frankly I'd like to see it include spec switching just for the sake of variety, even if that's not what a lot of posters here have suggested.

I'm fine with arbitrary and artificial mechanics that satisfy design requirements while making the game more fun. Call me crazy if you like. Pretty much anything beats this system where you're stuck thinking about how much grind you're going to have to do to "pay" for having some fun outside of your primary spec.