Malleus

Ghostcrawler stated at Blizzcon that part of the intent of the dual spec system is to let players "tank during the week and PVP at the weekends". If you have to pay a fee each time you switch between your specs, the dual spec system is not offering any more flexibility than the current system of visiting the trainer.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

Ghostcrawler also never mentioned the word "free." There's basically two options: either it still costs 50g, or it's going to have a 24 hour+ cooldown on it. Any other option is (in my arrogant opinion) sheer insanity.

And they didn't say flexibility. They phrase it as convenience. You don't have to remember where the points go and enter them without error. You don't have to set up your action bars again. You don't have to go to the trainer. They have most pointedly not said "you don't have to spend any gold." I listened to the panels on WCRadio, and any comment on the cost was glaring by its absence.

I fully accept that I could be proven wrong, since I was proven wrong on the whole idea. But this is still what I believe presently.

 

Voley

Maybe it will cost 20g or so, if it costs 50 everyone will just respec at trainer.

Twice Scarab Lord.
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/5237/sigyt7.jpg

 

Copernicus

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - The restrictions "dual-spec" needs to succeed

Current thinking is free, no cooldown, and doable on the fly (Arena and in-combat restrictions should apply). Everything is still subject to change.

 

ZulazeeluIcecrown

Well, I guess I was wrong. They really are insane.

Not to start/restart a horrible argument, but... how exactly does this not result in all the most dire predictions of angry Rogues coming true? Why on Earth would anyone take a Rogue to a raid with unlimited free respecs for Druids or Paladins to let them do the damage and switch on the fly to whatever else was needed?

It makes zero sense whatsoever. And my main is a Paladin.

 

Vihermaali

Well first of all, all the druids and paladins are healing & tanking. Someone needs to do dps! Also, rogue is supposed to do (equal skill AND gear!) more damage than "hybrids" anyway. A true min/maxer (one that would *ban* rogues according to you) wouldn't take 5 druids to do melee dps if you had option of taking some rogues into mix?

..unless all rogues on that server sucked at WoW or something?

Also, I admit I haven't played any "pure dps classes" so I don't know to what length this is true, but a quote from bluetracker linked above:
Since dps is your primary concern most of the time, this gives you a way to have say a trash spec and a boss spec, or a cc spec and pewpew spec without hurting your performance on either.
Most "hybrids" have one kind of dps spec and thats it. Beastmastery hunters could like spec switching on bosses that are very pet-unfriendly, for example? (dunno how the whole exotic pet thing would work out with this)

 

• Nisu

Lots of people will. I likely will continue playing my Hunter as my main, despite having a Priest and Druid at 70, because I enjoy the Hunter more. I'm looking forward to the dual-spec feature to allow me to keep a PvE and PvP spec I can swap between. This doesn't mean I won't play the Priest and/or Druid and enjoy having multiple specs... but I'm not giving up my Hunter to play something that's, well, not a Hunter.

 

dinesh

Ugh, not this again. You can read all about it on the rogue pve thread in the class forum if you want, but here's a top three answer:

1- Rogues bring plenty of utility other than DPS to the table already, some of which is unique, some of which can be provided by other classes, but as a whole no single other class provides a superset of rogue abilities.

2- Even with greater class overlap on loot, if you stack all hybrids, it will take you longer to gear everyone up because of RNG on drops.

3- There is no fight that requires 25 tanks, or 25 healers, or 25 DPS. There is therefore no need for 25 hybrids. Bring good players, not good specs.

 

Douglas

If you're in a progression-oriented guild, don't be too surprised if they ask you to maintain a min-max DPS spec and a Survival-centric Replenishment spec handy, instead.

That's the angle I'm worried about. If they're not careful, then they're going to end up ruling out one of the things they very explicitly wanted to make provisions for -- people who switch between PvP and PvE specs. If a class has two different PvE specs that bring very different things to a raid, this certainly encourages guilds to pressure players into keeping both of those specs "handy".

 

Sydane

I don't think Blizzard really cares if that happens. They don't need to make the game easier for the hardcore crowd, because they know plenty of that crowd actually likes things being annoyingly difficult. The average player will get to make use of it in the convenient way it was intended. If the hardcore player uses it to tweak one buff or continue to min/max the same way they always have, good for them. If as a result they don't get a free pvp respec, I don't think anyone in the design team is going to lose any sleep over it.

I think there's a perception that there's a second tier of guilds that tries to emulate the top end guilds by instituting stupid policies and mandates, and pushing their players in similar ways that the top tier guilds do, only with less success. Beyond the fact that I believe those guilds are mostly a myth, they are also terrible and no one should want to be in them. The absolute top guilds do what it takes to accomplish their goals, but they understand what it actually takes and why, not just arbitrary stupidity. Look at the quotes on this very forum from the guild leaders of those guilds and you'll see that. They didn't leave out ret paladins "just because ret sucks," they left them out when they weren't useful and as soon as they were, they were the first to bring them back in. The typical guilds, the one that are 80% of the raiders and still have plenty of success, don't do stupid things, they have always brought players as much for individual ability as anything, and all the LK changes are only going to make it easier for them, not harder. The segment of the population that thinks they can make their guild elite by acting stupid will continue to fail as they always have.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Malleus

You mean the angry Rogues who can now PVP and raid without shelling out 100g per session? I think they'll cope. The classes who have real reason to complain are the ones with more than one optimal raiding spec. Most of them won't care, though; unneeded tanks can use their PVP healing or DPS specs for an increase in performance over what they do now. The only players who'll really give a damn are the ones who want to PVP and be main spec in more than one role.

 

Vernichter

Malleus is correct. The only players who might still have a reason those who PvP and PvE in more than one role. But for those players, the argument is still moot because the dual-spec system is still a noticeable improvement. In short, it is a win for everyone at the cost of a minor profitability hit to Inscription.

 

dinesh

No one else liked it the first time around, but here was my idea for respeccing in a way which was "fairer" for those who have multiple roles in pve and pvp, for whom 2 specs isn't really enough: Consolidating Raid Utility (Raid-wide totems? Curse of Vulnerability?)

It still seems (to me) to hold up favorably compared to what was announced at BlizzCon, except that I'm not sure how easy it would be to have glyphs and action bar configurations be coordinated with "hot swappable" specs. The UI design to allow saving an unlimited number of specs would have to be somewhat more complicated than one which is hard coded to allow only two specs, and it might be more difficult to get the glyphing hacked in there too.

 

Arakan

While it might look favorable to you, and I must say it has some form of charm, I dont think it would benefit the game much. It would completely take away the aspect of specializing in something. While dual-spec allows for a lot of freedom, you're still limited to those specs (outside of the normal trainer respeccing ofcourse).

Unlimited respecs in any situation would just completely change the feeling of the talent points system.

 

Opioid

He makes a valid point, not necessarily whining about rogues, but more about the imbalance of the versatility some classes bring compared to others. I don't deny rogues have their own nice superset but look here:
http://dwarfpriest.files.wordpress.c...8/09/raid2.gif

If you have a druid with the dual spec system, you can switch between say feral and balance, which satisfy 5 or 6 requirements each, or a paladin between holy and retribution which is similar, vs. all the possibilities for a rogue which is covering almost the exact same territory between the three specs. Rogues get 3 major responsibilities from what I can see, one of which is essentially guaranteed to already be provided by sunder armor.

No ones saying anyone can match exactly the rogues superset, but bringing 2 or 3 major responsibility roles to a raid in one class does not compare favorably to bringing more hybrids, and not just because they're hybrids, but because the number of responsibility roles in the buff/debuff scheme is simply broader and thus the chance that they'll be able to cover for something else when another raider dies or has to leave or whatever is greater, and also because with dual speccing, they can actually somewhat change the debuff/buff slots they can cover on the fly whereas rogues do the same 3 things regardless of spec and can't change significantly even with a dual spec

 

Ralnar

That seems to be missing:
"Physical Vulnerability" that combat rogues can provide
"Spell/Melee Crit Debuff" that assassination rogues can provide
"Threat Redirection" that all rogues can provide (and it's a nice DPS boost option too)

Rogues have as many things to add to the raid as warriors/hunters/paladins/etc...

 

mrmojo892

I agree with Sydane on this, but I'm also not sure that two pve specs will even be necessary. They've recently stated they don't want another Sunwell in terms of accessibility. They've also stated that they aren't designing raids around the idea of having two specs available. The only way I see a need for two pve specs is if they make really tough content that requires min-maxing, but I don't see that happening if they don't want another Sunwell.

 

sovelis41

There will certainly be some push and pull with those classes that have a PvE Spec (A), PvE Spec (B), and a PvP Spec. However, all players within that class will not want all 3 in many cases. I, for example, never PvP, ever. If I want to in this new system I'll just use the traditional trainer respec, but I find that unikely as I've entered an arena about twice in the past year. So I'll have my 2 PvE specs (likely resto and enhance) to use at will.

This will be the case for a lot of 'hybrids' (including priests,warriors,etc) who can farm/quest/grind in their dps-centric offspec. There is still the other option of having two great PvE healing-centric specs for a class, but I think if an encounter requires that kind of specialization to beat, you can just use guild bank funds and a trainer. If it came down to that for me, I would probably bite the bullet and solo around in my resto spec (or pay to respec until I have no need for it).

Edit: Looking at that raid stacking chart, and as a raid leader I can see some corner cases where I would want someone to spec into something they don't normally play, but, as was said above, it would only happen if we were really short in one area on a given night.

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

Valerian

How is this dual spec "outrage" any different than what is already present? You can respec (albeit not freely) as is with a simple port/summon anyways. All this does is save the raid time and the hybrids some gold.

Recall also you need gear for all those other specs (except maybe feral dps and tanking which looks similar for a number of pieces). Basically now instead of sitting your useless classes for other players you can let your good players just fill in the roles as needed.

I suppose it will allow smaller guild rosters, which would be a bad thing for the mediocre people out there but I don't think that concern is terribly relevant.

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

It will never be optimal because there will be people who have 2 of the exact same spec with literally 2 points shifted somewhere else for the sake of the extra .001% dps it will give them from the last fight to the current one. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's very friendly to the playerbase of course, but even in the context of the argument "I can't do pve+pvp spec because I have to do pve dps + pve healing" there will be plenty of minmaxers who will be doing pve dps + pve dps +1% more damage on xxx bosses.

 

Arakan

But I think we can all agree that it isnt a problem that there are people that make that choice? It allows the min maxers to min max without paying 50g for a 2 point shift, hybrids to respec on the fly, and the pvpers to both raid and pvp on the same day every day.

In short: It appears to be a welcome improvement compared to the current situation.

Edit: There is even a separate thread that encompasses the dual-spec system. And it would be best to continue discussion on it in >here<

 

dinesh

I guess my response to this is: so what? I get that some folks think of talent spec as a permanent character RP choice, and for them I agree this proposal is sucky. But Blizzard is already heading in this direction - talents have never been permanent, and now they are getting even less so. If not for RP reasons, what exactly is the value for having talent spec be more permanent rather than less?

This forum is filled with comments on the order of "no longer do we have to bring specs, we bring players." The change I propose is a natural extension of this belief. I guess we haven't seen any official acknowledgment that this is a design goal that Blizzard shares, but it sure seems like they do, given what they have hinted at thus far.

I intended to finish with a statement such as "this is the rationalization for rogues. I'm sure there are similar arguments to be made for the other 'pure' DPS classes as well, but I don't play one so I'm not well equipped to make the case for them with complete conviction", but I completely forgot.

Moreover, I disagree with the second half of your quote above, for the two other reasons listed in my original post. There is a gearing reason to bring a wide assortment of classes rather than stacking hybrids, and at some point you have enough hybrids to cover any reasonable requirements for healing/tanking/dps, even including in fight deaths and adjustments, so at worse from that point on there is no real value at all to bringing another hybrid, but there are drawbacks (as above).

 

Katria

Well, there's also the gear consolidation that allows pretty much the same set of gear for DPS and healing casters. And, currently, there's a good reason for taking pure DPS specs over hybrids, since they do more DPS. In wrath, that won't be the case, or if it is by a much much smaller margin.

And having the switch be useable "on-the-fly" will make a big difference for many players. I don't respec much...it's a hassle having to re-do buttons on my hotbars, etc. If this was available now, my pally would have tried out a healing spec. I've gathered a bunch of gear for it while tanking, but the thought of redoing the talent tree and re-organizing my buttons etc. has stopped me. The idea of doing it regularly seems crazy to me. I know I'm not as hardcore as most of the regulars here, but I doubt I'm alone.

With the ability to save my current talent set-up and my button set-up and try a new spec, I'd use it. More people will try out different specs, and with it being completely cost and hassle-free, people will be expected to use it. Even out here in mediocre-land (as all hardcore guilds have been doing nightly respecs since their first raid...heh, I mean that tongue-in-cheek, but being fairly casual I am often surprised and the lengths bleed-edge guilds go to). I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing pug 5-mans kicking hybrids for not swapping to their tanking/healing spec since it's free and easy.

So with all hybrids being a 2 for one sale and offering just as good dps, yeah, it makes pure DPS classes somewhat uneasy about their place in the world.

 

Douglas

And this is why there's a downside for hybrids, not just for "pure" folk.

Any time you lower the cost of an action, you raise the expectation of that action, even for people who aren't interested.

Worst-case scenario is, the days when any PUG would randomly whisper a warrior on the other side of the world trying to get them to come tank may be coming back. Hopefully not, but as a worst-case scenario I can't rule it out.

We'll have to see whether Blizzard is worried about that, and what they'll do about it if they are.

 

Pheroz

If thats the worst case scenario, its an awesome change. The warrior has the option to say 'yes' or 'no' and all is right with the world.