The answer – the reason – is PVP. If the Rogue and the Mage out-DPS everyone, then those are going to be the majority players in that aspect.

Now theoretically these are balanced by defense and flexibility. The Druid in DPS mode theoretically balances the DPS shortfall by both resisting and healing some of the other player’s DPS. The “pure” healers were supposed to be able to neutralize so much damage their relatively tiny DPS would be at least notionally equivalent. That’s theory, but we all know the difference between that and practice.

So the great equalization – the reason hybrids are for all intents and purposes as good as pure in the respective “pure” roles – is due to PVP. Is this good? Bad? The value depends on where you’re standing, of course. shrug

The problem with making rogues and mages the absolute best on killing things all the time is that, then you have the problem with why would you bring a hybrid class? So you have to balance classes so everyone has a fair shake… but now why would you bring a rogue or mage? It’s a problem the game has had for a long time.

As far as dual specs… I say keep the level requirement and I would like to see the gold level lowered. I haven’t hit the level cap yet on my main and remember a few short months ago how painfully expensive it was if I wanted to TRY to heal or TRY to tank in their respective specs. Now I have some money where I could do it, but I’d never get my epic mount. They should also make it so that you have to be at a lexicon or trainer in town, need a regeant out of town, and it’s not usable inside an instance or raid (I can see leaving it usable outside as this would making PUGing easier if someone needed to drop out).

You’re missing the main reason why I want a mage and rogue in my raid. They are played by my friends. (The fact that they are 1 and 2 in dps in the raid doesn’t hurt either).

Additionally, I think people are too quick to gloss over the inherent differences in the classes. Yes, they are smaller than they used to be, but they still are significant.

I think this is something that will have to go out into ‘primetime’ to see how it actually affects things. I can see a number of outcomes, some as bad as you predict, and others where everyone still has a primary ‘raid’ spec and then a non-raid spec. For me personally, that’s what I’m looking to use it for. I’m currently raid cat, but during the non-raid days, I would LOVE being able to switch to tank. I’ve done it occasionally but the 100g (50 each way) fee is just too much some days. So to me, this is a godsend.

My personal take is that they need to give the ‘pure’ DPS classes forms of utility that hybrids can NOT bring. There are some there already, in being that only the pure classes have aggro dumps, which lets them push DPS harder. However, with the way the game is currently, the utility they bring isn’t enough to truly justify them, when considering that Blizzard has stated that they wanted everybody to DPS at approximately the same level. However, if they perform at a much higher level, then why would you bring hybrid DPS, especially on new content when you’re racing against enrage timers and the like?

I honestly don’t understand the rage. As a druid, you can, right now, through mods achieve something very similar to dual specs (except for the glyphs) by teleporting to Moonglade, respeccing, and being summoned back. It’s 100g a pop, but the people who care enough to do that don’t care about the cost.

This is nothing more than a little more of a convenience and an up-front payment.

Indeed, PvP seems to be among the greater influences of class balance discussion. And that’s fine, since it is a large part of the game. For me (a raiding mage with no interest whatsoever in PvP) it does suck to see the occasional nerf to my chosen role based on an aspect of the game I choose not to participate in, but hey, it’s a part of the game and nobody’s immune to the nerfbat (Iceblock only lasts 10 seconds!).

That said, great post B^3! It does bring up some interesting considerations, and I know that many among the “pure” classes fear for their raiding slots with other classes being able to pull more mileage out of dual specs. Time will tell, but in the meantime I’m happy with where my class is, and doing my best to make sure that even if the mage class is never the BEST dps out there that at least I can be the best MAGE available for the raid. And that’s something any good raid leader should take seriously when choosing his roster. :)

There are some limitations to dual speccing that seem to be ignored by those who hate it or fear it.

The first is gear. Quite simply, people will tend to not give offspec gear to someone when there’s a mainspec who wants it. So sure, a druid can have a healing set, a cat set and a moonkin set – but either they’ll be collecting each set far more slowly, or they’ll be concentrating on one. Whereas that mage has one set from the getgo. This doesn’t matter on farm content where everyone has tons of offspec gear – but it’s farm content, so who cares? There are some cases where there will be some gear overlap (feral cat/bear, moonkin/resto, spriest/holy, elemental/resto) but even then the gear isn’t optimally designed for both specs in most cases.

Now if you have a raid where anyone can get anything regardless of the time they play in it, you’ve got other problems. I assume that gear is basically equitable, and that at the end of raid X everyone had the same chances to get about the same amount of gear.

The second is raidbuffs. Rogues and mages have unique abilities that are not easily provided by other classes, and provide and gain unique synergies that aren’t easily provided. Same with hunters and warlocks. This is true for all classes, mind you, but it’s true for them quite a bit.

The third is types of DPS. Mages are a lot better at AoE than a moonkin is. Rogues are a lot better at single target than a cat is (even though they’re behind).

The fourth is simply desire. I know of very few prot paladins who have any desire to heal as holy. I know of a lot of druids who have no desire to go moonkin or resto or feral.

As a raid leader I’d want to bring the top players first. If that means that I’ll favor hybrids sometimes, that’s likely true – but I’d favor those players who excel at playing hybrid roles. Those are pretty rare, and they’d be favored anyway.

As was already said, if you give one class a dps advantage suddenly youll see raid composition with all mages/rogues. I operate in a serious raiding guild (although it is a ‘casual’ serious raiding guild – we complete all heroic raids in one day and only go for achievements if loot is better) and we bring classes based on what buffs they bring to the raid. Replenishment buff, Paladin blessings, Druid buffs/auras, etc…

Aside from that, if your DPS we expect you to do a minimum of 3k DPS on all fights and then it’s first come first served. Everyone else goes on standby. Sure, we could narrow down the roster and have only druids and paladins from now on and could most likely clear Ulduar with that composition but I think as long as you can put up the numbers you’ll be fine.

What makes a person choose a ‘pure’ class over a hybrid? Skill, utility and probably personality. If I enjoy raiding with someone I’ll be more inclined to bring that person.

Personally I’m going with a PVE Healing and PVE Moonkin spec for my druid. Since our raid really outgears Naxx right now I find myself not having to cast a single heal in most situations. But Sarth3D is a different story. Plus being able to do dailies is going to be nice.

I promise i will be good this time. So here goes

I play a mage, dual spec for me – frost aoe trash, ffb for bosses. I am quite happy to leave tanking/healing to alts
Warlock – apparently a warlock tanks one of the dragons on arth 3d there is a video somewhere – so demonology for off tank, destruction/affliction for bosses. or destruction for trash, affliction for bosses
Hunter – beastmaster for offtank, solo, general overall coolness (ask pike) mm for fights where you can’t use pet (lurker below) and sv for trapping and now apparently uber dps
(sorry i don’t know rogues, but my rogue mate is always respeccing for 10/25 man, not sure why tbh)

I don’t miss the hybrid nature of my ele shammy when on my mage, i love all the oh shit buttons (blink iceblock etc). As for finding spots in pugs, never had an issue on any toon. Once you have run with people and they can see you know your stuff then you will always find a spot.

I am looking forward to the change, one of our healers is afk for a couple of weeks, so i will be repeccing my shammy resto/ele at least 4 times this week (ouch). Plus last night we had a shortage of healers, i would be happy to respec at the touch of a button, but the time to reglyph reset bars, etc discourages me (a little lazy i know). TBH i think this is a little “the sky is falling” syndrome and won’t be anywhere near as bad as peoples think. I heal as ele now, carry multiple sets of gear now, only difference is i will do the job better.

As you can see very pve focused but thats how i wow so a little biased.

But, as always, an enjoyable read.

Some good points, both here and in FoN.
Me concern with dual specs is slightly differents. Suppose a Raid Leader be pickin’ his crew, and he’s got two choices fer an off-tank. Both good tanks, both well-geared. But one gots lotta extra time in between raids, and done used this ta farm heroics fer a set of dps gear, plus spent the money on gems and enchants and glyphs. Obviously, this bugger’s gonna be more attractive ta the RL. So, could end up raising the bar on what be expected of tanks (and healers). Means there’s gonna be winners and losers, and it ain’t at all clear ta me why we needs that.

I have to disagree with you here, Bear. I don’t think dual specs will suddenly send hybrids to the top of the VIP list.

Let’s take the example of a Naxx-25 run. Every encounter needs at least one tank. Some require as many as three. For healers, I would say the required amount ranges from three to six – the exact numbers are not important, let’s just use these for the sake of argument.

You’ll have at least four non-DPS players per encounter, and at most nine. Right now, this means you bring three tanks and six healers to the raid, and have the “extras” in a given encounter DPS to the best of their ability – i.e. poorly – in tank or heal spec. When dual specs are available, those people will be able to switch to a DPS spec for those fights.

With or without dual specs, you have fifteen raid spots that will be all DPS, all the time. For these fifteen people, having a second spec would provide absolutely no utility. If I show up to a raid that’s only looking for DPS with my dual balance/resto spec and say “take me over the Rogue/Hunter/Mage/Warlock since I can heal!” they will probably say “we already have all the healers we need. who cares about your healing – how’s your DPS?”

“Why would a Raid Leader want a Rogue or Mage anymore? The Rogue and Mage bring nothing but DPS.”

For those fifteen raid slots, DPS is all they need to bring. And before someone brings it up – between Tricks of the Trade, Master Poisoner, Savage Combat, Arcane Intellect, Focus Magic, Blood Pact, Fel Intelligence, Replenishment, Ferocious Inspiration, Trueshot Aura, and Hunting Party, they’re all able to bring a bit of raid utility as well.

In summary, I don’t see dual specs as giving hybrid DPS an unfair edge. I see it as giving healers and tanks the ability to DPS when it would be more helpful. If anything, it places a burden upon hybrids who are healing or tanking to have viable DPS specs and gear when they raid.

I just thought I would note:

“Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec. Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration. It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.”
(http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/dualspec.html)

Now, how much do you suppose Scribes will sell that shit for? Considering a lot of people don’t really feel like starting a new toon to pick up Inscription or dropping a main profession (especially if their guild depends on them for their materials and professions). I just feel a lot of the complaining, while valid, doesn’t take into account that most hybrids that tank/heal will make their specs tank/heal so as to free up possibly heal/dps hybrids. I know that’s how my guild is going to function. As for the dual-dps specs…well, just means they can do more fiddling around with their specs, eh?

I posted this int he OP thread, but I’ll do it here as well…

As mentioned above hardcore a-hole guilds already do this (make players switch with an alt mid-run). If you are playing in one of those guilds, you know what you are getting into. And probably have an alt that fills your future “dual-spec” role.

For the rest of us, I don’t see it as an issue. Except maybe the risk of having a bunch of noob DPS, healers and tanks running around in nice gear but no skills.

Bag space isn’t much of an issue. I currently carry 4 full sets of gear in my bags now (Druid) plus a couple of special pieces (extra hit for cat, extra sta for bear, etc.). Who needs bag space once you are done questing? And once I figure out what two specs ill stick with, I’ll drop the other two sets in the bank. I’ll probably have to start collecting grey items just so I don’t feel so empty.

From a DPS player standpoint, (I have Hunter and SPriest), I’m looking forward to this for one reason and one reason only: Healing.
I loves me some Shadow damage but there have been FAR too many times where I couldn’t find a healer for an instance to save my RLife. With Dual Specs, when this situation happens, I’ll be able to say “Heck, I’ll heal, bring in some more DPS!” and not have to miss a dungeon or raid.
I can see where in the larger raids this new ability could influence Raid Leaders to pick some over others but I have to say, from a leveling or new 80″s standpoint, its all win.

The foundation of what you have mentioned, BBB, is something that has had me concerned and grumbling for quite some time. All of the way back to TBC coming out in fact. I can see where Blizzard wants to make everyone feel like they are included. However, due to the way they constructed the game in the beginning (ie Rock, Paper, Scissors), trying to fix it now is nearly impossible. Does it being impossible mean I’m ok with it? Not in the slightest. I want the game to be perfect and I hope they can figure out how. I don’t think dual specs is the way to fix it. I do think it is a nice feature but it will have some serious ramifications.

I can imagine taking more hybrid healers/dps on a progression raid. I can see it becoming the standard in fact. Imagine that you have one boss that is a DPS intensive fight (Patchwerk comes to mind) and then you have another fight where each mob needs to be off tanked and deals a bunch of damage. If it only takes 5 seconds to switch from DPS to healing or offtanking, isn’t that faster than making a corpse run because you didn’t have enough DPS on the first boss and/or not enough heals/tanks on the second? Wouldn’t you prefer to take a class that can do multiple rolls as well as a class who can only do one? I would think you would… and that’s not a good thing for the “pure” classes.

@Rayvynn Currently on the PTR there is no reagent requirement spec switch. You just have to be out of combat and a 5 sec cast timer starts. At the end of the 5 seconds everything switches from one spec to another.

I like the idea behind dual speccing, but I agree, implementation sux. There are certain fights where I can see a definite advantage to having people swap roles.
(grobulus to reduce melee multiple slimes, KT to cut down on melee in the 10 yard range window. (have ferals respec to resto/balance for more healz/caster dps, have heal priests swap to shadow to cut down on excess healers, pallys swap to resto if they aren’t going to be main/add tanking)

I wouldn’t set it for anytime anywhere as long as you aren’t in combat, I would have a summonable trainer pet/respeccing device/engineer item that costs 10g each time it’s summoned, on a long cooldown (a la portable mailbox.. which is too long), and could be used by anyone present. (like the scrapbot/repairbot) The summon would have the option to let you respec main spec, respec alt spec, or swap.

While on the subject of scrap/repair bots.. can we please get the inventory of the outland version of the repairbot updated? Where’s my spineleaf???

Guildwars (which is a far cry from wow, or even from competing with wow) allows you to change your spec/action buttons (you only have 8 total) only when in a city, and is totally free.

@Rayvynn: Currently in the PTR, once you buy the dual-spec capability, you can do it anytime and anywhere without reagents or cooldowns unless you’re in combat, BG, or arena. As of now, Scribes play no role in the dual-spec process.

@Bear: To clarify – is your argument that the newfound ease of switching specs puts a higher importance on pure DPS classes excelling in comparison to DPS-specced hybrid classes? If so, I disagree.

Don’t get me wrong – I agree with you that, give or take a few encounters that favor specific abilities, all the damage dealing classes should scale more or less equally well with gear. Why bother to play class X spec Y when class A spec B can do the same job, but better? The fact that some damage class/spec combinations drastically outperform others is just as unpalatable to me as it is to you.

However, I don’t think that dual-specs will aggravate this problem. Right now, 50 gold (or 100 gold for a “round trip”) is not difficult to come by. Between a quick hearth and summon back, I can go from resto to balance in something like two minutes. Now I can do it in five seconds. Do those two minutes and 100 gold really make that much of a difference? They were never a real obstacle, just a borderline-trivial hassle.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if my Balance Druid DPS exceeds a comparably geared Arcane Mage’s DPS, or vice versa, then it’s a major issue and needs to be resolved ASAP. Whether or not I can easily switch to Resto between fights doesn’t enter the picture.

BBB – maybe you could ask these mages at premonition about whether their DPS is okay or not. This was the top kill on Patchwerk, so I figure most of their players are good. Don’t know what else to tell you. Our mages typically top our charts against our DKs and hunters, though whether that says good things about our mages or bad things about our hunters and DKs I’m not sure.

I do think that rogue dps is a bit low relative to others, but I’ve seen no indication that mage dps is particularly low at the moment. It does seem like it’s harder to play a mage well than it is to play a DK well, so maybe mediocre mages are worse than mediocre DKs?

As as noted by others, hardcore guilds do this already and pay the respec cost and wait 5 minutes. It’s inconvenient, but if utility beats convenience, so be it.

A thought: perhaps the “out of combat” requirement is only there *for now*. As in only on the PTR, for testing purposes. Certainly, doing so makes it much more likely that PTR characters will bother with the system and consequently give it a workout.

I know I’ve been pretty excited about dual-spec, but my expectations were that it would be a long cool down or some other inconvenience to swap from my intended “Deep Tank” build and “Deep Kitty” build. Personally, I’d like the ability to assess my utility to the party before the run and pick a spec that is strong for that intent.

As an aside, I love the Off Tank role and happily step into it, allowing our other tanks to main tank. I’ve been debating my “deep tank” inclination and wondering if my dual spec will be “off tank” and “deep kitty DPS” instead. I do know that if its “switch on the fly” between every encounter (as it is currently on the PTR), It’ll easily be “Deep Tank” and “Deep Kitty”. I imagine all other tanking classes will do the same (Tank/Ret, Prot/Fury, DK Tank/DK DPS) which will have an effect of making every tanking class equally desirable for that off tanking role.

I agree completely with your concerns about the “pure” classes. Its annoyed me that my off-tank kitty spec is competitive with the rogues and mages in our guild for DPS. That never happened in BC.

There is a problem with Wow. It’s somewhat broken, especially if you log on later at night when less people are playing. It’s the lack of tanks, and the severe lack of healers. At least on my server, and many others according to forum comments. What does this have to do with the conversation?

DPS looking for a group are a dime a dozen compared to healers and tanks. That is not meant as a slight on DPS. It’s just that there are so many more of them looking. I feel extremely lucky that I picked a druid. The other night on finishing our naxx run, I was main healing it. I have a powerful healing set. One of our tanks couldn’t come, and there we set, looking for a tank on Monday night. We happen to find a healer that can come, and boom, I switch over to tanking, which I also am fairly geared/skilled at.

The difference between what happened Monday and what would happen if dual specs was already out, is it wouldn’t have cost me 200 gold to do it. Cost me 50 to respect. I caught the AH at a bad time and bought several glyphs for over 45 gold a pop. It took me over 15 minutes to do this. Had I not been personally willing to spend the gold, all 9 of us, and that healer that had never been to Naxx before would not have been able to raid. The group would have broken up, all of us saved except for the new healer. Bummer. Not everybody is as diligent in farming gold as I am though, and not every body can afford or is willing to dump 200 gold on a respec for one night of raiding.

I totally agree that in cat form, even speced and glyphed for it, I should not pump out more damage then a mage or any other DPS only spec. Personally I’m terrible at cat DPS, no matter how much I read over at Runy’s site. I can’t be taught apparently. But even if I was good, Mages/Locks/Rogues/Hunters should always be able to out perform me with comparable gear. I do believe that.

But my point is, I see so many fury warriors, and shadow priests I have to wonder if given the chance to easily change in to tank or healing roles with out being penalized massive amounts of gold, will there be more groups running things? When ever I’m specced heals, I see groups in trade searching for a tank for H VH (or vice versa when I’m specced tank). I could totally do that, but is it worth 200 gold? (not to mention if I’m switching back afterward to play my main raid spec for my guild). I believe dual specs will make it so some of those shadow priests, elemental shamans, and balance druids will be more willing to go heal stuff and for those balance druids, fury warriors, and dps DKs will go tank stuff.. Thus, more runs for everybody including pure DPS classes, and more fun for everybody. A DPS person that has no problems getting groups because he is on during prime time or has guild runs all the time may have a different opinion. But what about the 5 dps DKs looking to run “any heroic” but can’t, because not enough healers/tanks are around?

Fore the most part I agree with the “bring the person not the class” that blizzard is pushing. But, um, you can’t bring anything if you can’t find a dang healer or tank. If more are available, more runs for all.

Were you a mage in an earlier life?
I’ve never ever read a rant from a non mage with such a compassion and understanding for our situation.
Thankfully enough I’m in a guild that wants me for some reason, in spite of my uselessnes compared to a hybrid class. But yeah, Blizzard really should think it through once again what the purpose of mages are, except for taxi serivces (which nowadays to great extent are provided by the permanent portals anyway.)

I’m not keen on the idea being able to switch specs at the drop of a hat. I agree with both you and Dinaer (who, incidentally is my GM and I had no idea he ran a blog) in that it definitely defeats some of the purpose to speccing. I was okay with the idea of having to do it at a Libram or having a Scribe be able to summon a temporary libram (with the assistance of other players) for raid changes. But this recent announcement has gone too far.

That said, I’m still supremely excited about dual specs. My main is a Druid who, right now, is talented sub-optimally for tanking. While I spend most of my group time running around as a bear (and loving the hell out of it, something I never thought I’d say a year ago) I also hate running my kitty tail around out in the solo world and thinking, “If I could move my talents around a little, I could be so much more efficient at this.” Also, when going on instance runs as a cat, I constantly am embarrassed by my insanely low dps. Yes, I mostly tank, but there are other tanks in the guild that need gear, too. And for as much as I love the challenge of being a tank, sometimes it’s fun to let loose and just shred some mobs to death. (No pun intended.) I’m a penny miser, though, so I never pay for respecs and just do the best I can. (Yes, my specs would both be feral…one optimized for bear and the other for cat.)

And then there’s my Shaman. Once he became a serious alt (rather than a justification for buying BC while I was still around level 45) I decided he was going to be Resto at the top levels. But when leveling, rep grinding, or generally questing, Resto is just tedious. Especially for my play style. I’m all about Enhancement. He just hit 80 last week and I find myself between a rock and a hard place. I want to switch him over to resto so I can start running dungeons and getting him geared up to maybe run a raid or two when I’m not needed as a tank. On the flip side, even though I’ve been compiling a resto set while leveling, it’s not that great and I know I still have two and a half zones of quests that can give some very good blue rewards for heading into the 5-man stuff. But the idea of continuing to quest while specced resto is 100% unappealing to me given the time that I spent doing that in BC. The dual spec system is a god-send for this toon.

Thanks for the link, BBB. I don’t rant very often. Maybe you inspired me. :)

Also, I appreciate what you said. I have a lot of problems with the implementation of dual spec, including the ones I ranted about on my blog as well as others that you brought up. However, if I had pointed out that rogues were going to be hurt by this, I would have been written off as QQing. That point coming from you, who stands to benefit, gives the complaints more legitimacy.

In point of fact, I do not personally stand to be hurt by this at all. I am in a casual guild, top dps in the guild, and GM to boot. I’m not going to be left out of raids in favor of a dual-spec hybrid. So my concerns are not founded from personal whining.

I just don’t like the direction the game is going. Some point out that hardcore guilds were already doing this, but this removes the inconvenience. You know what? Let it stay inconvenient. If guilds want to min/max the raids, let them have to work at it. Why does everything have to be so easy?

I’ll go back to my chess analogy. Its inconvenient to me that rooks can only move left-right or forward-back. It would be easier for me if they could move in every direction. Yet no one would play chess with me if I replaced my rooks with queens. Even if both sides changed rooks for queens, thus keeping the game balanced, it would just seem wrong. That’s how I feel about this change, along with a host of other changes that have come along. It just seems wrong.

We’re losing our identities. Would you rather be know as a feral druid, or just a druid? Are there going to be such things as holy priests anymore? Or will they just be called priests from now on?

I think its a fantastic change, and I cant wait for it. Dont get all the rants though I know they’re mostly in fun. I agree with some other posters re dps classes – I’ve seen a lot of mages play their class really badly since wrath. I blame the player, not the class. Having just swapped guilds to a more hardcore one, the average raid dps is 20% higher, even though everyone is wearing exactly the same gear. Noob dpsers will always be noob dpsers right?
Personally, I’ll probably dual spec to resto – that will be my pvp spec. Dont fancy raid healing too much.

I have had three primary concerns about the upcoming dual specs, but I’ve really struggled to put my finger on them as effectively as like you just did. I put together a small piece explaining the my concerns and sent it off to a WoW -related blog, but they didn’t do anything with it, so I’ll summarize below:

(1) I apparently don’t understand what purpose dual specs is designed to solve. Current respec costs are very low. Fifty gold is EASILY earned by spending an hour or less doing dailies (even as holy/resto with frequent stops to gather, skin and/or mine.) The only significant expense that I can see is the glyphs which is easily solved if blizzard treated glyphs similarly to how they treat abilities. )My appologies to scribes, but it looks like you’re getting a rough deal with dual specs anyway.) Dual Specs is NOT be a solution to a financial problem because there really isn’t much of a financial problem to start with.

(2) The proposed dual spec setup doesn’t provide relief for what I consider to be the biggest (only?) problem with the current setup. Players who are still leveling should be able to respec more easily than players at the level cap. Why? Because leveling players need to have the opportunity to explore their classes full potential, try new things and make spec mistakes. With the relative expense of respeccing for low(er) level characters being significatnly higher (I mean RELATIVELY because 50g/100g is far more accessibly for a level 80 than a level 30) two things result:
– characters are boring min/max’ed cookies cutouts, there is no experimentation or variety.
– new/uninformed players have 10 points in each talent tree by level 40 and have to dance on a mailbox for 3 hours or are stuck with a gimped character.

(3) The “I will need on gear for my other spec” problem is going to take today’s frustrations of running PUGs and raise the pain up to number eleven.

Throw in the extremely valid point in BBB’s post and this whole dual spec thing is starting to look like a bad idea to me.

Then again, I’m pretty down on WoW at the moment. Not sure why… I do know that I definitely miss Outland :(

Darn. I shouldn’t have rushed that post. Look at all those errors :(

I disagree with pretty much everything that the linked post said he was worried about. if I was in a raid group that said respec or don’t raid I would leave that group. As for the hybrid dps debate, because that is what this is, any dps spec needs to be equal to other dps specs in order for both to be brought. Also your not factoring in skill. Ill take a talented high dps rogue over a druid that can switch roles to a dps but sucks as a dps.
Maybe its wierd of me to let people play the specs they want to. I bring 4 tanks into naxx because that’s who we have and that’s what they want to be. Guess what, we still kill things. When duel specs come out I’m not going to expect one of those tanks to go dps if they don’t want to, and that’s what the problem seems to be. let people play how they want to play. There is no need to force people to do somthing they don’t want to if things are dying like they are susposed to.

I think people are over thinking this particular issue. Yes, hybrids can satisfy more than one role in a raid if they have the gear for it. However, this has ALWAYS been the case. Dual spec doesn’t add a new function, it just makes and existing function easier.

Also consider… DPS is MUCH easier to find than tanks and healers. Why would a raid leader bring a mage or a rogue? Because there are mages and rogues EVERYWHERE.

If anything, it’s those people who play hybrids in a **DPS** role that should be worried. Now when the call goes out “LFM OS 25″ and I reply that I’ll go as a Ret Paladin, I guarantee there will be times where the reply will be “can you come as holy with your dual spec?”.

From what I’ve noticed pure DPS classes are already less desirous, at least that’s true for rogues. Pre-Naxx, ret paladins and DKs out DPS rogues while bringing other utility to a group. I’m not really sure how dual specs is going to make that better or worse.

Personally, as a rogue I want dual specs because I have about 5 to 10 points different between my PvP Mutilate spec and my raid Mutilate spec. At the moment I usually am specced somewhere inbetween as a compromise which means I’m a slightly gimped jack of all trades.

Oh, and evasion tanking = hell. I fricking hate doing it and can’t believe someone would suggest that as a sane idea. Without a doubt it is the most tiring thing I’ve done in WoW.

Not sure I ever said that my comment was all that friendly, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Sorry if I came across as a dick. :(

I guess my experiences with mages at least differ significantly from yours when talking about high DPS. They’re consistently top or at the top of encounters we have, and the classes that challenge them are warlocks and hunters (or the occasional warrior or ret pally depending on the silliness of the encounter). That seems pretty reasonable to me. I do think that DPS-only classes should be head and shoulders above any class that can spec to tanks or healers either; this was the situation in TBC, and it ended up meaning that unless you brought significant raid buffs that buffed those already awesome DPS classes you weren’t brought; you were really hurting your raid.

I really don’t want to have to cancel raids because the enhancement shaman isn’t there to buff the melee group, or know we’re going to take about a minute longer downing a boss because our rogues didn’t show up. I’d rather bring people who can do reasonably equivalent damage in the class and spec that they want to play, and if that means that rogues and mages do the same damage as cats and moonkin, so be it. I don’t think I really want to punish someone because they fell in love with playing shamen but never really want to heal.

I dunno. I kinda feel like this sort of thing gets ironed out in the end by priorities. If someone wants to dual spec and do both things equally, they’re not going to have the gear that the person that concentrates in one does, so they’re not going to be as competitive in that role. A mage is always going to be going after DPS gear; a moonkin who also wants to do resto isn’t. A rogue will be going after DPS gear; a feral that wants to bear and cat won’t be. Until everyone’s got all the gear they want it should be the case that the people that have no interest or ability to play multiple specs will be better off than those that do. And when everyone’s got the gear they want, does it matter that much that mages and moonkin do about the same damage if they’re about the same skill?

Perhaps I am overly optimistic but thinking about it logically, I would implement the dual-spec options first, THEN go back and tweak/balance classes, especially the DPS classes. I could see them wanting to see the pattern in particular behaviors and they said before there would have to be tweaking after dual-spec goes live. Blizzard has shown they’ll throw a fix in quickly so there is no reason to assume Mages (who do well on my server) and Rogues will remain broken.

All classes had their time in the spotlight. As you said Hunters weren’t told they would be DPS gods but what happened? They topped the charts, right? Perhaps part of the solution is scaling all the classes back (ie: Hunter nerf), implement the dual-spec, and see what happens next. Many of the Mage changes aren’t even on the PTR yet. This is why I strongly suggest that people get on the PTR and speak up, especially Rogues because they really need some help.

Also keep in mind that just because people can hybrid doesn’t mean they will. I CAN (as a DK) tank but I don’t. So I might have the same problem as Mages and Rogues – because I don’t dual-spec they won’t accept me. Even if I did dual-spec to tank it doesn’t mean I’m good at it.

About gear issues – yeah, that’s going to be a mess because people are greedy and think they can do whatever they want because the internet is anonymous. That’s a behavioral problem, not a game problem. Wise guilds will get on the ball now tighten things up because dual-spec hits live since it is nipping bad behavior that doesn’t need to be there in the first place.

My fear of the dual-spec is of the potential to funnel the players into more and more narrow roles. If our choices on character and spec are dependent on the approval of a Raid Leader accepting us; then we were are in competition with each other to get access to game content. If the sole advanced content is for 10 and 25 man raids; then we must adhere to the standards set by the perceived solution to the problem. I object to this!

If the game evolves so one must be an uber-gamer and a master of several roles, geared and an expert in tactics then the end game content is not varied enough. Being in a hard-core raiding guild moves us beyond the idea of “game” into “lifestyle” which really isn’t a bad thing on the short term. Still, the idea that we have to get more and more specific and exact in our gear, spec and play-style feels that our universe is getting more narrow. I object to this. All too soon, “game over.”

While I might dream of Blizzard opening the cap to level 90 or offering a bunch of interesting hard level 80 five or three man instances; I know that won’t happen. All the variety of leveling, choosing where to go to level, exploring new lands and finding recipes and critters and just plain strange stuff is reduced to a very big herd of cattle racing through content to get to Uldaur when one hits 80. They say 80 is where the real fun begins, I’m not so sure. This illusion of urgency is breaking apart guilds because we feel the fear of being “less” than the next player. We have to compete against each other to get to content ~ this blows.

Not that it’s particularly important, but in all the raids I’ve seen, with some pretty equally (but well) geared people, our top dps (say in the top 3) have been:
Hunters
Mages
Warlocks
Enhancement Shaman
and a DK.

Rogues are definitely gimped on dps right now in pve. Supposedly it’s because they’re too overpowered in pvp if they’re buffed in pve.

Last I saw, and I’m not well-read on this, was that there was going to be a 1-day cooldown on spec changes and you had to use the lexicon of power to swap specs. I haven’t fully read the dual spec info since yesterday, so my info’s a little old.

I know I’m not one of the people that will be taking advantage of the dual spec option. I’m a priest, I heal. I don’t dps. I have a mage to do that. My druid is a bear, she swaps to kitty when needed and has a pretty craptastic healing set for when that’s absolutely necessary. And my mage is for pve, not pvp… so only need one spec. I don’t think it’s worth 1000g to swap to specs I don’t use.

However, by the same token, I know a warlock in my guild who does arena on a regular basis, spends 300+ gold a week on respecs. He obviously will benefit from being able to swap specs to pvp when he wants easily.

(dammit I wish they had an “edit comment” button)

I just wanted to add that I 100% agree with the “pure classes” thing. I rolled a mage instead of a hybrid because I wanted to chuck fireballs into faces and watch things die and die fast. I rolled a priest as my healer because in my eyes, it’s the “pure” healing class. I picked them because I expected them to be among the best at what they do. So when the “balancing” began… I ranted for a while about how it wasn’t fair that an elemental shaman in much less gear than me could dps more than my mage. My healer was being out-healed by resto shammies and their chain heal. It’s not important, but it was just kind of rocking the boat of preconceptions I had.

I fully agree that when you roll a character, you should be choosing whether you want to be the best at one thing (or among the best rather), or pretty good at multiple things. It should be a conscious decision that isn’t whined about when you hit max level and your hybrid can’t dps as well as the “pure” classes.

Dual spec sounds cool for people who want to PvE and PvP, I totally think it would rock for that.

I have questions/concerns how it will work in raids. I have a Tankadin, Resto Druid and Warlock. Right now, i run a lot of PUGs and have been successful getting into them.

My main worry is that people are going to expect every tank/healer to be the opposite spec as their second spec, “since DPS classes are a dime a dozen”.

Are PUG leaders going to only take straight dps classes as dps and ask/expect that hybrids have to spec into heal/tank?

How about loot drops in those runs, right now it typically is main spec roll, then off. This works since you have to make a choice as to which spec you want to take to a raid. If i am asked to tank on my Resto Druid and Majestic Dragon figurine drops, do i get a shot at it? I imagine sometimes this would be discussed in raid, but often it happens in whispers from the Raid Leader to you.

As shown by BBB’s post on the no other rogue raid leader, loot is an issue and often in PUG’s it is not a group decision….or not everyone is involved in the decision until it is to late.

I think your wrong, Just because your mages and your rogues might be having issues doesnt mean that all rogues and mages are having problems. I checked 5 WWS from my guild. Who makes up the top 10. Mages/rogues/hunter/warlocks. The 4 pure dps classes. Who else is their. The titan grip warrior who just got nerfed, the dw dps dk who just got nerfed and ret pally. Note I am not talking about pre- naxx. I am talking about players who have the best enchants and are wearing 90% Best in slot. Blizzard doesnt balance around undergeared players who may or may not be playing as well as they could be.

[b]I also knew that Hunters and Warlocks were good ranged DPS… but they weren’t expected to be AS good at DPS as Mages and Rogues [/b] Blizzard disaagrees with you on this. Their isnt three teirs of dps only two. Pure dps and hybrids. Hunters and locks are pure dps.

Personally I wil be using my dual specs for holy and pvp holy because thats what I flick between week afer week.

Even in the worst case how is this different from the poor prot pally we used to have in sunwell, He would tank the 1st boss, sit out for 2nd, Tank 3rd boss, Spec ret for 4th and 5th and go holy for KJ, then back to prot for BT. Was this a good thing for him? No he would rather be prot the whole time.

With dual specs, pures will only get benched for hybrids when:

MAX – MIN > HYBRIDS

Where:
MAX – The highest optimal number of DPS among all encounters you plan to run
MIN – The highest optimal number of DPS among all encounters you plan to run
HYBRIDS – The number of hybrid classes that you’d end up bringing to a raid anyway.

It’s pretty unlikely that the delta between MAX and MIN will ever be higher than the number of hybrids you bring to a group incidentally. Even if it were the case, realistically pures still wouldn’t get benched as guilds who are min/maxing their raid composition to that degree are likely going to be willing to swap whole characters out between encounters, and they’re going to bring whichever specs are best for an encounter regardless of whether they belong to a hybrid or pure class.

Hybrids absolutely do get a bit of a free ride in flexibility, but that’s got nothing to do with dual spec, and will literally not make pures any less attractive to groups.

(All other things being equal, of course. If rogue dps sucks, they’re obviously going to get benched. Because their dps sucks, not because their diminished relative utility due to dual specs)

@Korso and Neil: Ahh, thank you for the clarification. I haven’t been able to access the PTR as of yet and have done minimal reading due to obligations. But I would hope that this would be changed to fit the FAQ link. It’s like saying “Hey, we have this in writing, but now we’re going to go back on our word, okay?”

@Manxome: I agree that maybe this 5 second cast thing-a-ma-bob is for PTR purposes so that people will try the dang thing out. I like that theory, and I pray to whatever higher being there is out there that it’s true.

@Copey: You, sir, put into words exactly what I was getting at more succinctly than I ever could.
/cheer
/cookie

I, personally, agree with you BBB. (Thank for you being sane. It really means a lot me.) I played a druid for almost 3 years then swapped over to a hunter in the last year or so. I brought quite a bit to a raid back in the old MC days. Even without dual specs, I saved a few hides. (I was feral back when it was massively un-popular. :D) I was often invited to raids because I could bring more to the table. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hunter. My druid was just more flexible.

If I was a cold hearted hunter-hating RL, then in my book I would just bring hybrids. Why? Well, assuming that people use the duel specs, and keep fairly decent gear, etc. for both specs. I can use the DPS for bosses that enrage, but switch over some of my DPS-warriors to tank-warriors when I need more tanks. Why would I waste a slot on someone like a hunter who’s buff don’t stack with anyone elses’, and can only DPS? I wouldn’t.

Also, this may not be such an issue for raiding guilds. You have a personal connection with your guild members. But what if you’re not in a raiding guild, or you don’t even belong to a guild? What if you have to rely on PuGs? A PuG RL might not be as forgiving because there isn’t that personal connection.

I’m not saying that this is the end for pure DPS classes. There are so many other factors to think about. (Server population mentality for example.) I’m just concerned… Sorry if this post was really long. I have some strong feelings about this being a DPS class. Oh and BBB, hunters = pure DPS class. :)

I didn’t read through the slew of comments, so forgive me if this is redundant…

Insofar as Rogues, Warlocks, Mages, etc go – the dual spec versatility has some perks that I can see. For instance, if you are speccing as a raider, you’re going to be going pure DPS. On my Warlock, for instance, I would spec a pure Destro build to raid with that foregoes a lot of “survivability” talents in order to produce maximum DPS. Good for Raid, bad for solo grind – or PvP. BC, I did a similar thing with the Rogue and used a pure DPS Combat spec that lacked things like dodge and parry that are useful for solo grinding in favor of DPS enhancers. Thus, you can now have a “killing machine” spec and a balanced, survivable spec as well – or a pvp one. Additionally, the ability to tie in glyphs for certain things with these specs further enhances the pvp aspect, as what works well there – well, we all know that isn’t always the case for raiding.

However, I primarily play a Shaman and a Druid. From the Druid standpoint, I’ve always maintained a set of healing gear, so the Bear / Tree tradeoff is cool to me as I enjoy playing both specs and really only switch between them when raid signups are heavy (or lacking) one way or the other.

As to my Shaman, I love raiding Resto, and hate soloing Resto, so I’m ecstatic that I will be able to swap to Ele. That, and I honestly like 5-mans more as Ele as well. I’ve spent 500g to date on respecs in WotLK, not to mention glyphs. Yes, this will be most welcome – and I might even get to DPS the odd fight, which will be *really* fun if I can top a good chunk of our regular DPSers, honestly – as the Healer guy, I feel like I have somethig to prove!

I think a real driver for this, that a lot of people may not have picked up on, relates to the whole gear mainstreaming process. When everything became “spellpower” instead of damage or healing, this gained viability. Bear Druids in Rogue gear, you know the drill. Thus, your one gear set (with a few pieces swapped out) really can work for two sets. Is it a menace to collect it all to do it right? Yeah, but if stuff is getting sharded heavily on your runs anyhow, why not?

The danger, as you mentioned, is for min/max people and guilds. I’m not one of em, and most of us won’t be included there, but they exist. these are the people who commanded the whole guild to be Leatherworkers in BC for drums, or kill Shamans before the pulls for the Reincarnate Glyph buff. They aren’t sane. As far as I’m concerned, discard that influence – it’s like throwing out the highest and lowest scores from a figure skating judge. Stick with your median segment and see what it does. If someone is really that concerned about both of your specs and gear, it’s just easier to spot the asshat IMHO.

BBB said… “Until I hear one Mage or Rogue honestly tell me that he has no problem, in equivalent gear progression, to matching DPS with Hunters and Death Knights, then I call BS. “

Ok since you asked ;) I’m a mage in a 10 man raiding guild, but I join in on a lot of 25 man raiding guild’s runs as well, so I have experience in both.

In my experience, whether or not I’m on top of dps depends on such a variety of factors that I find it difficult to agree with a generalisation that mages (I can’t speak for the other pure DPS classes) are *always* struggling to match the other classes. Sometimes I’m 1st on the DPS meters, sometimes I’m 3rd, sometimes I’m close to last. Some of these factors that spring to mind are :

1. Quality of player. Some players are far crapper than me, some are far better. how do you determine this? not by DPS alone, but it’s one indicator
2. Quality of gear. However – there’s been a lot of reference to “equally geared” but I’m interested as to how you determine how two different classes with totally different playstyles and specs can be considered “equally geared”. Equally geared on imba.hu? Equal number of ilevel 225 or 213 items? It’s a difficult comparison to make. Notwithstanding the different chants / gems that come into the equation as well.
3. Mechanics of Encounter. I’ll do far more DPS on Loatheb than I will on Noth (for example) due to the mechanics of the fight (i.e. me being the primary decurser on Noth). So for the purposes of DPS comparisons, the *only* encounter i’d be using as a guide is a straight tank and spank with no other interruptions – so Patchwerk, basically.
4. How lazy / into it i’m feeling on any given run – technically this is related to point 1, but even a good quality player will have runs where they are tired / distracted / jsut plain failing for unknown reasons :)
5. RNG – can only speak for myself here, but as an FFB specced mage my DPS on patchwerk can vary by a range of over 1000 depending on other raid buffs and how many of those sweet sweet hotstreak procs I get :) That can be the difference between 1st on the DPS meters and 6th or 7th

So to summarise : in my opinion, dual specs will not change the makeup of raids or the classes that are brought to raids for these reasons :

1. The hardcore guilds would have been respeccing anyway mid-raid as suggested above. So they’ll still take the same players
2. The smaller and less hardcore guilds are more likely to be bringing players based on friends / guildies rather than group composition. This point is most open for debate I guess but it’s my opinion, and it’s absed on my experience.
3. I’ll grant you that pugs may get a little more homogenous. But really, who cares about pugs :)

I guess my impression of this dual spec thing is simply that more raids will be run, not that existing raids will change their group makeup significantly (or even at all). As a mage, I certainly feel no threat to my usefulness in a raid environment – perhaps I should take off my rose coloured glasses ;)

Cheers

Rob(damage)
Drama Free Society (GM)
Dath’Remar (Oceanic)

Yeah, I’m totally agreeing with the bear here. I liked the idea of dual specs originally because it would allow folks like dedicated healers and tanks to solo when they wanted to or to make it easier to fill out your raid with the players available to you.

The fact that GC said it would be ‘easy to do in a major city’ and ‘less easy to do away from one’ made me feel a bit better. We wouldn’t be expected to switch specs before every raid fight. I’m hoping this system is only in the game to to test it out on the PTR and after that we’ll go to something like a 1 hour cooldown or similar. I do not feel like spec switching becoming a mandatory part of raid strategies.

As far as the more extended Hybrids vs. Specialists and the effect of dual specs on them discussion. Well, personally I feel the game is in a huge mess right now. GCs ‘bring the player not the class’ approach has backfired horribly. Class homogenization has simply thrown everything out of whack and Raph Koster’s ‘Players Optimizing the fun out of the game’ rule is in full effect and running rampant over the game.

I guess we can just wait and see what happens.

One of the things that some of the non-hybrid classes had as the extra thing going for them was crowd control. Of course, those are largely useless (or at least often unused) abilities now as a result of the buffing of AoE tank threat. I am glad I am in a guild like ours, cause I can look forward to the personal advantages of dual spec while not being too concerned about the sort of forced respec type issues. My primary toon means much more to me than just a bunch of pixels which can be adjusted at a whim of a raid leader – so I am glad my raid leader is the kind of groovy guy that would never do that.

(Hi BBB, been reading your blog for a while now, thanks for writing it)

Ontopic:
Blizzard agrees with you and wants PURE dps classes on top. If you see classes not in this order its due to gear and/or skill. Picking a “hybrid” brings more flexibility but less DPS and raidleaders will still take pure dps classes cause you only need a certain amount of flexibility.

Blizzard agrees cause Ghostcrawler posted the following in the shaman forums:

As far as the dps target for Enhancement in an idealized PvE setting, yes you should be just below the rogues, mages, locks and hunters and even with warriors, DKs, druids, etc. On some fights you will do better than that and on some you will do less. Really talented Enhancement shammies with excellent gear should be topping the meters. Less-talented Enhancement players will do a whole lot worse. This is still a whole lot higher than the target we had for you in BC.

I’m not sure I have any place to comment here, as I’m not a raider, but I have to say I agree with BBB completely regarding mages and their DPS. When I rolled a mage, it was the appeal of being able to decimate things from a great distance. When I fling my fireballs/frostfire bolts, I want things to die screaming in agony. In return for the ability to do that, I’m perfectly OK with wearing a dress, and dieing every time someone sneezes on me. Those things balanced out for me.

As time has gone by though, and (so it seems) in the name of PvP balance, it seems like my ability to do that has been diminished, as other classes have gotten better. This saddens me because A) it seems to be happening in response to a portion of the game I could care less about and B) my mage just isn’t as much fun to play as he used to be

As far as dual-specs go, rather than being able to switch between heals-dps-tank, it would be nice if they made it so that your pvp spec only worked in pvp, and then they could balance the classes around pvp all they wanted to, without screwing up the PvE game that I actually pay to play.

But hey, I suppose that is what alts are for, and eventually the great circle that seems to be class development will show mages (and rogues) a little love again.

You know, something occurred to me after initially posting, and Ruune kind of got at it too – it’s more specific to Mages, but how about this: 1 spec for raw damage dealing, say deep Arcane or FFB, and use your second spec to go deep Frost and thus add CC utility for a fight like Gluth? Just thinking out loud here, but to me there’s useful Mage stuff if you look at it.

“Until I hear one Mage or Rogue honestly tell me that he has no problem, in equivalent gear progression, to matching DPS with Hunters and Death Knights, then I call BS. “

I’m a Mage with no problems matching DPS with other DPS. In fact, our Mages normally take the top 3 spots in all WotLK raid content encounters. With the new Dual Spec feature, I don’t feel like our roles in raids will be lessened because we don’t do anything else but DPS. The new feature will just make it more convenient for players who normally respec alot.

As for why you would bring a Mage over a Hybrid?

Polymorph, Counterspell, Decurse, AoE, Arcane Intellect, Food/Water, Portals.

All in one class, with one spec. To get all that from other classes, you would need a Druid for Curses, Shaman for Interrupts, Warlock’s Fel Hound for Intellect, and Hunter for CC (not spammable though). Warlocks, Boomkins, and S.Priests can cover the AoE. That doesn’t even cover the Food/Water or Portals.

i have to agree with kal.

i have been playing a mage and a druid, have been with both to kara, gruul and the eye. did pve and pvp. i stopped amost a year ago and just came back.

what i always thought was bad about blizz implementation of raids was, that it was more important what class you chose at the beginning (chose my mage nearly 4 years ago- nobody knew anything about raiding back then) than who your friends were. dualspects reduce this problem a bit and i think it is a step in the right direction.

even as a mage i would have profited a lot by dualspecs. for raid i would have been able to go fire for max dps and for pvp frost.

as i detest healing i would not have switched builds on my druid but well…

As a resto druid, I most likely won’t be bringing anything extra to a raid.
Yes, I am a hybrid. However, I plan for my offspec to be a feral build that can allow me to solo old BC content, as well as being able to kill regular 80 mobs (without taking hours as resto).

My primary gear set will be resto. My off-set will be a feral set. However, I find it unlikely that my offset (which will be rolled on after people’s main sets – just as it is now) will ever be good enough to even tank in raids. As it is now, I can barely tank heroics… <_<

I think, that with the way rolling is used (although DKP can alter this a bit), main/offsets will still be used much similarly to the way they are now, just without the hassle of having to actually having to go and respec (choose your talents/reconfigure action bars/replace glyphs) each time.

I would disagree slightly… I believe Blizzard’s aim is to make it so the raid leader doesn’t have to care what classes are brought to a raid… that seemed to be the point of 3.0 talent builds and so forth… and the raid design for WotLK… so long as you have the basics covered, you could bring anyone… and each class brought something unique to the party to make it different and worthwhile to be any class.

This seems to be a step in that same direction, espcally for smaller guilds who can field 10-12 people for raiding… such as my guild. In Naxx I would be switching between bear, Kitty (thank God for kitty swipe!), and a respec to healing to cover extend the mana of our two healers for patchwork… Needless to say, my respec bill is quite high, even with donations from other raid members (since I was making it possible to progress) I look forward to this change big time, and look at it as giving us a little wiggle room for small guilds in raiding.

I would also argue that the pure DPS specs would possibly benifet from this… Survival hunters with their mana regeneration talents… or potential Marking buffs for marksmanship (dodges BRK). Frost crowd control on mobs is a potent strength on some bosses with tons of adds, while no add bosses would be a fire paradise…

Although I would tottally agree to let warriors have a medic tree (combine fury and arms as a damage tree), that way Gnomes could have a healing class that involve bandages, potions, and the latest tech… then they can stop whining.

Amen to your rant! Couldn’t agree more although I don’t think my hunter will like it~. :)

I was looking forward to Dual specs, I’m a MT in my guild, but we’ve recently started running 25 man content with another guild. These runs I’ve been relegated to kitty DPS. Now I’ve been keeping my kitty gear, my secondary set, pretty up to date as much of it is mixed and matched situationally with my “tank” gear. With my potential secondary spec I intended to set up a real kitty DPS spec, drop a few of the more DPS oriented talents from my tanking spec to shore it up a bit more. Or… During a lot of runs I’ve also picked up a pile of caster gear. Heroic stuff just going to shard? Mind if I take that for off spec? It’s better than whats in my bank. Cool. Not even sure if the set of gear is viable for boomkin, I upgrade it piece by piece without a real view of how the set of gear is working.

The one thing that recently bugged me about it was the sudden 1K cost. I got over that fairly quickly, fine it’s going to save on respec costs in the long run, but then it occured that I haven’t been respeccing so it’s a flat out big cost. Honestly, when the 3.1 talents hit I was planning to respec to grab the bleed crit talent (whatever it’s called), I think this respec will cost me 5G. On my Shaman, which was my main in BC, I respec’d quite often between elemental and resto. Resto was horrible for questing, but we needed the heals in raids. So the idea of dual spec was appealing for that too.

Then they removed the reagent cost, no more bouncing to a city or needing the not-yet-implemented portable Lexicon. No cooldowns. Now you can respec anytime, anywhere. WTF? It really takes the accountability out of choosing your spec.

One other note, I know people think that the hybrids like Druids, Shaman and Pallies are getting the biggest value out of this but I’m not so sure. I think it’s the opposite, we’re getting an extra ton of junk dumped on us. Elemental and Resto shaman have much in common, but I can tell you that you will find yourself very dead very fast with a resto sham in elemental gear. Likewise Trees in Owl gear. There is overlap, but not as much as people think. Tree/Owl is miles from Bear/Cat. Ele/Resto is miles different from Enhance. Last I heard from my Pally friends there is almost no overlap between Ret, Prot and Holy. I’m going to /palmface the first time some raid leader says to me “What do you mean you don’t have a tree offpec and gear?”
Druids do it like animals! Rawr!

/signed

Not being pissy about it, but this could very well spell the end of WoW for me. Why should I have taken the time to learn my class, tanking and tanking as my class to have some other joker just flip a switch and claim they are a tank? What was the point in me learning the craft of tanking, or healers doing the same? Dedicated DPSers tend to extort amazing amounts out of their class by virtue of having spent the time to learn it.

And what about gear? “I’m rolling need on this for my dual spec.” Like we don’t have enough loot problems already.

well I’m a hunter, have been for over 2 years. I spec and gear to put out the highest dps I can. I have almost all best-in-slot gear and I have my rotations nailed down with lots of theorycrafting and practice….

I’m never top in raids (unless PUGs). I work my arse off but still get beat by mages, fury warriors, feral / balance druids, shadow priests, dks and ret pallies. sometimes I come in the top 5. Mostly I fall in between 5-10 position on the damage meters.

I dps, It’s all I do. If I wasnt topping the damage meters due to skill, then fair enough. But thats not the case. If in a raid group with equally skilled and geared classes hunters cant top the recount. We normally take 5+ mages to raids as they are the best dps class hands down. All i ask is blizz fix it so that I have a chance to compete, especially with hybrids.

Since hearing about being able to change specs wherever you are I’ve had a bad feeling about this.

We’ve all been requesting an easier way to change specs for years, but seems Blizzard have tried to one-up themselves, without thinking through the full connotations.

If it was limited to cities only (maybe the lexicon of power) I’d be 101% behind this.

My two cents. They already said Ulduar is gonna be much tougher then naxx or all the raid content out right now. And that CC is gonna be needed again (at least i think i read it somewhere). More utility for rogues and mages right there, CC. I think the “AOE the fuck out of everything, the tank should hold aggro even if i nuke in the first second of the fight” thats going on right now is gonna be dead on the next xpac. AND maybe some strategy will be back in the game.

If you boil down the argument, it really is, “Should hybrid DPS have a role in the end game of Raids and PVP?” People who say hybrid DPS should do substantially less DPS than pure DPS classes are basically saying hybrid DPS should not be viable in the end game of raids and PVP. This was born out in Classic WoW where the only tanking class was warrior and the hybrids (paladin, priest, druid, shaman) were effectively pure healing classes. So in the end game, hybrids weren’t hybrids, but basically pure classes synced to their strongest spec which was healing.

In TBC you saw more tanks become viable (druids and paladins) but hybrid DPS still was not up to par. As such, a complicated and powerful buff system was introduced where hopefully the buffs a hybrid brought would justify a raid spot. The problem was that the healing spec could still bring the same buffs. Certain classes were discriminated against in favor of raid buffs (ie stacking shamans for bloodlust/heroism). Hybrids were still left out in the cold and were effectively pure healing classes except for Paladins and Druids which found niche tanking roles.

Now we are in WotLK where hybrids have truly become hybrids where they can fulfill the role they want to specialize in. So to answer my own question. I believe hybrid DPS should have a role in the end game and as such, do comparable dps to that of pure DPS classes. Otherwise, hybrid DPS will be locked out just like in classic WoW.

Here a more absurd way to show why penalizing hybrids for being hybrids is bad. There are 4 tanking classes. Druids can be tank/healer/melee DPS/caster DPS. Paladins are tank/healer/melee DPS. Warriors and Death Knights are tank/melee DPS. Its not fair that druids and paladins have such hybrid flexibility. There for tanking:

Warriors and Death Knights are benched at 100% effectiveness for tanking. Paladins are 75% of that tanking benchmark. Druids are 50% of benchmark. This is the penalty for having extra flexability as a hybrid. ie the hybrid tax. If this came to pass (which tankfully we know won’t), there wouldnt be any more druid or paladin tanks. All tanks would be death knights and warriors.

Likewise for DPS, if pure classes were benchmarked at 100% for DPS, then
Warriors/DK/Priest would be 75% (2 viable specs)
Paladins/Shamans would be at 50% (3 viable specs with shamans having 2 dps specs)
Druids woud be at 40% (only class with 4 specs)

hybrid DPS would cease to function as pure classes would be the only ones chosen for the DPS role.

If we penalized druids the same way for healing, then druids would be a useless and redundant class as well as paladins and shamans. Therefore a hybrid must be competitive for the role the hybrid specializes in to be able to participate in the end game. They cannot suffer a performance penalty. And its not fair to pick and choose which specialty is viable – all should be if that hybrid has access to it.

Mages and Rogues got the shaft due to PVP. Dual-spec has little to do with it. Thy both have high DPS and several CC/defense/escape mechanisms. That’s what they do. I agree with buffing them in raids, but asking hybrids to take a penalty is foolish. Why bring a hybrid then, ESPECIALLY with the advent of dual-spec, because the hybrid will possibly have the “need” (please notice the air quotes) for 3 gear sets (or more for us druids).

Dual spec is an issue for raid leaders/guild leaders to deal with. Period. It’s great for the game, becuase a casual player like myself can play PVP again without being required to do “chores” (daily quests) just to afford it (and I have RL chores to do, I want my playtime to be just that — PLAY). It great for the game because your 3rd tank in a 25-man will never be asked to sit in a corner for Najentus (one notable instance) because his DPS is so low that he’s not worth the healing required on any melee unfriendly fight. It’s great for small time 10-man folks who are stuck on a few fights due to low DPS, who don’t have reams of player at their disposal, or have the time to re-roll. Large guilds will be uneffected, other than having a potentially even easier time blowing through content and having more loot issues. A simple “spec decalaration” or “tiered DKP” or “Eff it all just roll in the window and let the dice decide” system is all that is needed. Loot wh0res are now easier to spot. Good. Black list the folks that can’t decide on a main spec and move on. Gold star the folks that are willing to spec swap to fill a role as needed by the group.

I really can’t understand what all the fuss is about. Other than 1000 gold price tag. That sucks. But hell, at least that’s a target I can grind toward in whatever manner I want.

Grats, you and noob inspired me to rant as well.

I wanted to clear something up too… Warlock pets DO NOT = Hunter pets in terms of DPS. We’re more mage-like now than we’ve ever been… it just takes us longer to kill stuff through dots…

Even a full demo specced lock is not going to kick out the pet damage of a basic huntard. Our pets are sort of a joke right now. Some decent buffs, nice to have around for a chat, but not all that and a bag of mana biscuits in a fight. We had some wicked scaling issues at the level cap before gearing up too. Horrible DPS numbers. This whole change is a big slap in my face. FTL.

It’s probably pointless to comment further on this, as people just skip them all and post their own comment. But, I have one thing to add to this; what is all this “Raid Leader FORCES me to go resto…” stuff? Nobody can force you to do anything in this game. Period. Don’t like being a resto druid? Then don’t spec into it. Feel like your guild is not letting you run because you refuse to change specs? There are 100s of guilds on your server, go find one. Or make your own. Nobody on your server when you play? Transfer servers to one set to a different time zone.

I personally will go dual spec tank/resto. I’m already geared and experienced at both. And I hate, hate, hate DPS.

I really feel mixed about dual specs. On the one hand I cannot wait to be able to heal when not need as a doomkin (4 horsemen as an example). However, I knew this nightmare of a loot situation was coming. It have almost come to hate raiding because people are rolling on gear that was never really meant for them because they “need it for an offset.” My wife and a rogue friend were screwed more than once in Naxx thanks to the future implementation of dual specs.

Our rogue friend is so irritated he types in, “Oh I need that spell druid gear for my healing offset O.o” as a little stab at the greedy people. When asked what the hell does he mean, he replies that he’s speccing healing rogue and running around bandaging people during fights lol

As a person who never raided before WoTLKr, I think I know see what all the hardcore raiders are complaining about now. Everyone and their half-witted friend can raid now for the most part. I can’t tell you how hard I worked to gear for Naxx only to see people in greens and blue get pugged into our group at the last minuted to fill a dps slot. Even more irritating is that the pugger will invariably win a roll on a purple drop that is my only possible upgrade in the game! All of that effort and grinding to be geared and that idiot gets a huge upgrade for being carried through Naxx by the rest of the DPS? It’s sickening really.

This dual spec thing is probably only going to make things even worse for raiders, raid leaders, and guild leaders. I honestly think Blizzard is killing the game I love in order to make it “more accessible” to casual gamers. I’m really not liking where this is heading. Has anyone tried Warhammer Online?

No where in those FOUR YEAR OLD descriptions does it say ‘best’ or ‘top’. Its says massive. I’d call 3k DPS massive REGARDLESS of that a hybrid can do.

Also this guy says it better than I can: http://www.slashhug.net/dual-specs-an-anti-rant

I have to respectfully disagree with you BBB, both on dual specs and on hybrid DPS.

My guild is a “casual” raiding guild. “Casual” in that we raid two days a week, for 6-8 hours of raiding total. Because we only raid a little, we take our raid time seriously. People have to be fully repaired and in raiding spec/gear. We don’t min/max for raiding, beyond having 4 tanks, 7 heals, and 14 DPS. Some nights, when we have 5 tanks sign up, one of the druids gets to be kitty all night long. Some nights, we’re taking 11 melee DPS to fight KT.

Right now, due to RL, we’re in a healer crunch. Two feral druids, two pallies, and a spriest have all volunteered to switch to heals on the nights it’s needed. Dual speccing will not ultimately change how my guild raids; it will simply change how we raid in extenuating circumstances. Loot will will still go to main spec first (and everyone has one main spec). We’re not going to be switching specs between boss fights for max DPS — we don’t do that now and have fully cleared 25Naxx. I’m looking forward to being able to take whatever raid comp we get and being able to down KT, even if we have 11 “melee”….who are able to switch for that fight alone.

As for hybrid DPS and how it should be less than pure DPS, that’s a dangerous road to head back down. In vanilla WoW, this was the case. How many raiding boomkins or kitties or enhance shammies or ret pallies were there? Very, very little. If you could heal as a hybrid, that’s all you could do to raid. Simply because a class has an option to tank or heal doesn’t mean that’s the only option that should be raid viable. It also may not be what the player wants to play. I’m feral — I love to OT and only heal if the guild absolutely needs it. We have a tree who doesn’t even roll on feral gear because he will never go feral. We also have a boomkin who only wants to play a boomkin and only heals under duress. As long as you’re above the tanks and healers for DPS, my guild could care less about DPS numbers. Stuff dies and people survive. That’s all the matters. Where you are on the meter only serves one purpose: self-satisfaction. For me, taking down dragons and monsters with people I call friends is enough.

Lot of stir in the community over this. People way smarter than I have commented on the potential fallout for raids or pvp or gear controversies, and that’s all good food for thought. While I’m not happy about dual specs turning out the way they are (why not a two-hour cooldown? That would solve plenty of issues), I’m more concerned about what might happen to the five-man PUGs …

Think back to when DK’s were first loosed upon us, and think of how many thought that simply because they were wearing plate and had a taunt they could tank. Think about how AWFUL they were … remember that? I see that happening with every hybrid class. Now every boomkin will think he can tank, every paladin will think he can heal …

I wonder how I shall save enough gold for dual specs when I’ve got so many high repair bills to look forward to. The concerns of regular raiders and all are valid (although I think the way gear distribution works will still keep most people in one role), but I’m finding just as much to hate in the world of PUGs.

My guild leader brought up an interesting point. While his main is a feral druid, he also plays a mage with some regularity. His point was that in addition to pure DPS classes dual speccing for PvP and PvE, they could also choose to spec for trash and bosses, boosting their AE and haste rating for trash, then switch to a “boss” spec focusing on single-target damage and hit rating. This could possibly ensure pure DPS classes are ahead of hybrids at least in PvE. They may not bring the utility that a hybrid who could respec to tank/heals, but they could at least provide optimal DPS in any situation.

Myself, I’m iffy on dual specs. My main is a DK tank, and I utterly loathe DPSing as a DK. My main alt is a BM hunter and I have no intention of switching to any other spec – therefore the only use I myself have for dual speccing is possibly switching from PvE to arena specs. Is it worth shelling out 1K gold? Possibly, if I intend to regularly do arena and BGs, but I doubt I’d utilize it much myself. What I see happening is more forcing people into playing specs they didn’t originally set out to play – say I played an enhancement shaman and was continuously forced to dual spec into resto for lack of heals. Yes, I could have resto as my secondary spec, but does that mean I want to raid as resto? If I chose not to switch spec for that raid, would I get my spot replaced by someone who was willing to switch?

We’ll see what happens when dual spec comes out, but I’m very much on the line about it.

Ah, another point—what’s to become of people below max level? As things stand, you have one spec at max level, and switching is expensive and difficult. If you want to fill another role, traditionally you’ve had to roll an alt. And while the grind back up to max level was exhausting and sometimes boring, at least it didn’t leave newcomers to the game stranded and unable to find four other people to accompany them into Deadmines or group up to kill Hogger.

Now much of the community has two, three, even four characters at or near max level, AND the ability to switch specs. Plus the DK, who starts at 55. Isn’t this change really cutting off newbies?

Someone probably already pointed this out but if i wanted to go to a raid as a hybrid in any spec, I should be able to perform just as well as any other class in the type of spec I am playing.
Otherwise there is no reason for the raid leader to ever bring any hybrid class at all to a raid because that hybrid couldn’t tank/heal/dps as well as a not hybrid class.

As for the increase of loot rolling for nonspec/other/off spec, raiding spec should always get priority and if in doubt, check before raiding.

With the duelspecs coming, I am looking forward to being able to level some of my alts without the need to level prot or holy to be able to group for dungeons.

*omg, I have only ever had one good pug group, most of them disolve after the first death or two just inside of the instance

Malphailuron,”Ah, another point—what’s to become of people below max level? ” yes and no.

Not sure if you you realize it but you can dual spec from 40. Over the years ST and BRD were where you started to feel the pain healing as shadow or ret or tanking as ret. I have done things like 3 ret pallies and 2 warlocks for zf and tanked & healed RFD as a enhance shaman at the same time in the past and it was fun. Thats the NO part.

On the other hand instead of taking a shadow priest to heal Sunken temple with a Fury warrior tank- and doing fine, People will soon expect hybrids to have the dual spec they desire. /w level 47 ret pally, Can you come heal Mara, Sorry I am ret, Why dont you have dual spec noob. So YES I can see less acceptance for hybrids below Max level who dont have mains to twink them.

But you get comments like Kal’s, the tone he uses, and the arrogance that just seems to drip from the page… and his reaction when I suggest he should be friendly… “Not sure I ever said that my comment was all that friendly.” No, you didn’t, because it wasn’t. And if you know you’re not intending to be friendly here… why ARE you here? No, don’t bother answering, I don’t care.

I did apologize. It wasn’t my intent to not be friendly, and I didn’t mean any ire.

I don’t honestly know what I did wrong or where the tone of my post was so horrible. I did think that you were wrong and I did think that it was pretty easily provable, and it does bother me when someone decides that something is one way when it’s very easily shown to not be. That’s a personal failing of mine, and I admit to it. I probably should’ve just taken it to my blog instead of commenting. For that and for rubbing you wrong, I apologize.

I realize that this seems to be a continual pattern between you and I. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong other than correct you when you got some issues incorrect publicly, and this misunderstanding that I have to get why you’re so easily upset by me is my failing as well. I don’t know how to correct it, so I’ll bow out and cease commenting on your blog. That will likely make us both happier.

Continue the good work and good luck with your new job, and best wishes to your family.

There’s another massive issue here, in that dual-specs are great for say, Naxx, as it wasn’t designed for it. It’s awesome that the off-tank can help out with DPS or healing on a fight where only one tank is needed.
I always loved running Kara as off-tank as I’d kitty-dps (with dps gear) when only one tank was needed, and strap on healing gear to help HoT the tank for Maiden. But it was fun because it was optional. It gave us a little boost.

The problem will be if Ulduar onwards are *designed* with the knowledge that players have dual specs. Currently Naxx 10 seems to be built for 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 dps, then you switch to 2 healers and 6 dps as you gear up to make things quicker. Some fights only need one tank. Others can be done with 2 healers quite easily. But that’s all fine, because the thing is balanced around you having 5 dps players.

You let people change specs on the fly, and the design has to change, or things become far too easy. You can’t not balance the encounters around people switching specs, because everyone will, making it trivial. But if you do, suddenly everyone needs two full sets of gear to be effective.

I think this goes back to the “pures vs hybrids” question. Your commenting that mages and rogues should be top dps because they do nothing other than dps. My elemental shaman doesnt do anything other than dps either though, my prot warrior does nothing other than tank, so does that mean just because i can respec resto i should be doing less dps or since i can respec tank i should do less damage?

Why?

I hate dpsing on my warrior and i dont really like healing on my elemental shaman. But just because i can people ask me to respec to resto sometime and I dont want to do it. Honestly i think the dual spec will be nice for my warrior but i dont think im going to get it on my shaman. Why the warrior? because when you have 2 tanks in a 10 man and the boss only needs one, i would rather do 2k dps than 1k that i do as a tank specced warrior. I would honestly rather tank but our prot paladin has no dps gear and is worse off than i am when it comes to dpsing because of mana issues.

Why should i be penalized just because i chose a shaman and chose to spec him elemental. you’ve never raided as an elemental shaman in BC im guessing, if you did you would have a different prespective of things. Heroics were out of the question because of lack of CC, raids above tier 4 were out of the question because everyone else did way more damage than us etc. It was frustrating to say the least. Now however i can actually do competitive damage. I was top dps the other day in a 10-man naxx. Now before you say “nerf shaman”, note that in the 25-man naxx i did a couple of days before I was 5th on the damage meter. It was because our mage, lock and hunters(rogues really do need a boost, no arguing about that point) kicked my ass in dps.

So whats my point? skill vs class is the real issue, if im more skillful than a mage, shouldn’t i be doing more damage than him/her? If i geared better, read EJ and learned my class, whereas the mage was basically just winging it and didnt know anything about rotations, specs etc should he/she still beat me? this was the case in BC. Even if i played my heart out i couldn’t get into heroics because of lack of C.C for one thing and also I couldn’t match a geared mages dps no matter what i did.

So this is another case of bring the player not the class. If a moonkin and a mage are equivalent in gear but the moonkin is more consistent and a better raider, im going to take him instead of the mage. the mage might do more damage but i couldn’t care less. I’m going to take him for his dps not for his non-existent healing ability. My paladin,shaman and druid healers are great at what they do and I’m going to take them because they are great healers, not because ret pallys do more damage than a shadow priest.

I take the player to my raid, not the class or spec. On a side not my raid group dps is mage/hunter/moonkin/ele shaman/lock. and they all are very competitive when it comes to dps and they are great people to raid with. The lock is the best dps though because he knows exactly what he is doing. Perfect rotations, perfect spec, perfect gearing. Its insane. I have never asked the moonkin or ele shaman to spec anything other than what they enjoy. They are collecting resto sets now because they want to, and if my healers ever want to switch on a night for fun, they are welcome to.

I agree with you BBB.

I Played a mage for 2 and a half years in this game, slowly leveling a paladin alt who hit 70 during the end of TBC, Once i got to 80 and started raiding in Naxx (i’m in a semi-”Hardcore” Guild) Seeing the Ret pallys and Druids beating me on damage while barely trying really discouraged me from being a pure-DPS class, so i switched to my paladin. I truly do have sympathy for the rogues and mages out there who do not have the versatility that Us Hybrids do.

No human is able to tank as well as a dedicated tank, heal as well as a dedicated healer, and DPS as well as a dedicated healers. Its pure hubris to imagine that you can play all three rolls as well as someone that does just one, full time.

The capacity of the class does not equal the capacity of the player. You’ve probably met a Ret Paladin that can out DPS a rogue. That same Ret Paladin cannot out heal (in his dual spec holy set) the dedicated paladin healer, who in turn, cannot out DPS that same rogue (when dual-spec’ed Ret).

If your worried about someone else taking your spot – start learning how to play your role better. This goes for everyone – pure class or hybrid. If you can do your job better then anyone else, you are still the one getting brought to a raid. Not the person that pretends to do another job sometimes – they will still get sat out when their main spec isn’t needed, on difficult content, for someone who does the needed job 100% of the time.

I think it relatively balances out as the “Hybrid” can only spec one spec at a time and if he is greatly Worse in that one spec than a Pure class, then why would anyone take Hybrids along?

He can only perform 1 role at any given time, like a pure class, but the pure class is better.

The way Hybrids were meant to work originally was to spec somewhere in the middle of atleast 2 of their specs and offer an offtank/offhealer/offdps to raids, but the way Blizzard made raids and slowly changed the class, and the mechanics behind specs they have forced us into speccing 1 role. And in this 1 role we are (meant to be) weaker than pure classes 1 role, making us last choice.

Dual specs may counter this.

(My post is refering to the idea that Pure class = Better at Hybrids equivalent role… I totally understand this is often questionable.)

Just as Warriors have been forced to get with the times in the tanking world, so too are DPSers going to have to wake up and realize that the playing field is different. Frankly, it makes no sense that you’re worried about this. If someone can switch from being a healer and then move to a dpser and be a BETTER dpser than you. You deserve for your spot to be taken.

I’ve been mastering my class as a tank for years. I still learn little things and come Ulduar I know I’ll be learning all kinds of new things about tanking all over again. It’s no different with dpsing. You don’t just fall into a role and suddenly be amazing at it.

I think that a lot of the pure dps classes complaining about this are being rather shortsighted about the possibilities for dps performance. The class I am most familiar with is Warlock. I am specced affliction currently while raiding Naxx. It owns most boss fights, under ideal circumstances I am able to out dps the other warlocks with different specs. But, on trash, I am terrible, and there are a few boss fights where I am completely abysmal as well because they require a type of burst dps output that the affliction spec is bad at. I will love it when I can make a second spec that caters to burst damage versus DoT’s for fights and trash that favor it. It will improve my overall dps immensely and ensure that I can be top dps on nearly all fights. It adds a level of complexity and decision making to my game play.

I’d assume most other pure classes will have similar options. The problem right now is that the benefits to hybrid classes are obvious, but the pures also need to get out of this mindset of “well, it’s only good for having a PvP spec for us”. Because, I think, when explored deeper, this will provide more utility and damage output capabilities for pures that creatively use it.

Just my 2 cents… I welcome the change as a pure.

Let me make some clarifications:

The Mage brings and Int raid buff and food/water and a portal.
The Warlock brings health stones and summoning.
The Hunter brings party buffs no matter what the spec.
The rogue brings nothing to the raid except dps with the liabilty of being in meleee range in leather.

Time to put my rogue on the shelf for the 3.3 nerfs/buffs I guess.

My main is a paladin, guild’s main tank, and has been prot all the way until recently, when I started using some of my ‘well, if it’s just going to be sharded’ off-sets for some playing around. Long story short, I now carry around *5* gear sets (Tank, PvP ret, PvE ret, PvP holy, PvE holy, plus some extra tanking bits for optimising the role), and tend to respec 2-3 times a week, despite having only one raid role.

Main problem with this is that the guild has a tank shortage, so if I’m not prot, that’s often a heroic run that can’t happen. Dual specs, to me, mean I can go and heal battlegrounds, but still be available for guild runs. (I like instances, I like tanking. I’ll do something else if they need me to, but they like my tanking…)

I’ll spend the 50g/100g for a repec if raid progression requires it, but I won’t for an hour of battlegrounds. This isn’t opening up any new options – it’s just making them more convenient, and thus making my life more fun. I can’t complain.

(Our raid progression *has* in the past required that a couple of our players respec mid-raid, and they’ve done so without complaint, but it does take time and faff. Also, we’re a casual guild of friends, and we used to do a LOT of switching alts in and out as we farmed BC raids, in order to make sure as few drops as possible went to waste, since well over half the guild had at least one raid-capable alt).

As far as loot policy goes, when I’m doing loot assignment, my policy is ‘pick a main spec for the purposes of loot assignment, and you’ll get priority on that gear. If you’re in another spec for the sake of the raid, I’m not about to penalise you for cooperating in that manner’. Conversely, it’s only one spec they get to prioritise. Can’t see any reason to change that policy, really. I’d run the same for PuGs, but probably use pen and paper to keep track of what people claimed as their main spec – *before* they saw the drops. I tend to avoid any PuG raid that isn’t Vaults.

I will immediately admit to skipping down the page (I read the first 1/2-2/3 but only have so much time). And as near as I can tell, the problem is not dual specs so much as it is parity in dps. Like most everyone else, I am looking forward to dual specs. I have an 80 druid and a 44 spriest that I really want to be able to heal. I have no use for it with my 80 lock, but there is not a lock shortage (actually… on my server there is, just nobody seems to care). Dual specs may just exacerbate things as they will potentially create more competition for DPS slots in a raid.

Now here is what annoys me as a dps class (my lock was my first toon); looking at the tank nerfs coming up bears, it is looking very likely that I will go resto. I used to pvp on my lock and when that went to hell I switched to raid dps. Going into a raid with comprably geared ret pallies and dk’s, I would have to fight tooth and nail to top them on the dps charts. I do not feel the need to be at the top of the charts, but as a dps class I would prefer to be. Finally getting to the point, I got tired of dpsing on my lock. I have my druid so I could jump on him to tank (if I could find a willing healer), but what if I did not have a druid? Then I am SOL. Tired of doing “meh” dps using a dps class? Too bad. That is your only option. Contrarily, I do not like what I see coming out with feral tanks. With them, I can change over to dps. Or heals. There are options for what I can do and I love it. And you know what? I do not expect to be the best dps out there. If I had a huge armour advantage over other dps classes (such as leather and bear/moonkin forms or plate armor), could heal better than them, AND could dps as well as them it would be unbalanced. And not just in pvp, but in soloing and raids as well.

Do you people who think all dps should be on pretty much equal ground honestly find it fair that when leveling toons, a hybrid would the same damage output as well as greater damage mitigation and/or heals? Let me change the to just “and”, because I have yet to do anything with a dps warrior that complains about not having dps as good as mine. Pallies and DK’s (yeah, I am calling out specific classes here) seem to complain the most, but I guess right now they also have the most to lose. Druids seem to roll with the punches and acknowledge that we will never be Blizz’s favs (but would still like new skins, please). Making dps fairly uniform across the board IS unbalancing the game, not balancing. Increased dps makes up for lack of survivability.

Back to the dual specs widening this gap. Let us assume that all classes have the potential to put out equal dps (I have no idea why this should be expected as nobody expects every class to tank/heal equally well). Now, there are 9 non-dps positions (3 tanks 6 healers), then let us look at the numbers. Tanks only have a 3/25 chance of making the raid, and healers 6/25. On 5-mans they were each 1/5 of the make-up so there will be a slight problem with having enough healers, which seems to be what dual specs is all about, and a slight excess of tanks. That leaves 16/25 to dps. Look at how 5-mans are arranged. All the way up until the endgame, it is designed that 3/5 of players on dps, a difference of 2/25. Compound that with the straight dps now having to compete with the odd healer/tank (more likely tank) that was not needed this particular time. We are already theoretically in excess of dps, but now tanks and healers can jump in and say that they can do that too. Please do not tell me about gear either, the raiding content is such a joke these days that it is not that hard for anyone to have good enough gear for any given spec. My guild has a prot pally with enough healing plate to do 25-mans easily just because plate drops with nobody needing for main spec is a common enough thing.

My point is that there is already too much dps and this only adds to it. I am not asking for the main dps classes to be monsters with 1k dps higher than hybrids, but is it really too much to ask that they have some slight advantage to make up for the fact that those are the only slots for which they CAN compete? Oh, and that little thing I threw in about solo content as well. Making every class have near-equal dps IS unbalancing the game, Balance will occur when classes that can do nothing else but dps have the leg up in that category.

As the Big Bear Butt, Larisa at the Pink Pigtail Inn, Aurik at /hug, and many others have mentioned in recent posts, Blizzard’s tweaking of Hybrid class performance along with dual-spec implementation is making Pure class players wonder what their future holds.

I believe there are two inherent problems present in this situation that will keep this type of balance issue from ever being completely solved…

I have an 80 mage, and I’m quite looking forward to dual-spec myself. I currently run with the 57/3/11 spec, meant to maximize arcane damage in raids. However, its use is limited outside of said raids–say, when I’m doing my dailies and have to worry about Horde a-holes cramping my style. This is really where things like Improved Counterspell, 80 extra spell resist, instant-invisibility, Slow, and increased damage to slowed/snared targets would come in VERY handy. In other words, I need a spec that, while I probably wouldn’t use it exclusively for PvP–being the squishy type that I am, I tend to avoid it–but would get me out of a sticky situation in a pinch if I needed. And I will gladly pay 1000g for that privilege, ’cause gawd knows I’ve spent hundreds enough trying to make a hybrid raid/questing spec that won’t leave me running for my mage trainer every day.

Duel specs opens a big money maker for inscribes or those looking to level inscription. The glyph market is going to be doing well right when they are llaunched, so it may be a good idea to stock up on inks and glyphs to sell during that time.

I wonder what the point of classes that have 3 different specs for one thing only, DPS, is if all others can spec between TANK/DPS/HEAL or at least two of the options easily.

I know that in former times hybrids were not brought along because they could not compete in the domain of pure classes, but this is no longer true. It probably never was in terms oh HEAL specs, and in DPS specs, a slight lead in DPS … is this really an incentive to NOT prefer a hybrid class that can offer 2-3 much more distinct styles of gameplay?

I like that summoning the lexicon to switch the class at least requires a group, but I think that Hybrids are favored by this system, and many new players will rather go for the Hybrids if they do not blindly just pick a class before checking if it is doing OK or has issues.

I should also add, I played a Paladin BEFORE they got some really sound buffs, but my Warlock became my love and main char. I am no longer playing WoW for various reasons, I do not like the direction the game is taking, less because of some issues I have with class balance.

People usually use Health Stones as paperweights and often do not use them, or I have to produce them like a factory… erm well. My debuffs are not special anymore, many classes can provide now the very same buffs/debuffs under different names, to make it easier to create a raid group and so on.

My friend played a rogue before he switched server and became a shaman… he felt even less useful, he said in instances his stun/CC abilities were no longer needed, and that he cannot AoE as well as a Warlock or Mage. It was not really a solace for me that players of certain classes even felt more useless.

Mages can live very well with dual speccing due to their amount of unique extra abilities that they bring to the raid, portals and healthstones also have some use… Rogues also have some abilities, but not that much in comparison.

Still, can this beat switching between roles like TANK/HEAL/DPS easily? I bet many people would not have gone for a very specialized class if they had known that classes that were Jack of All Trades now can switch between different specs for Master of All Trades. This dual spec feature is favoring hybrids to the extreme. I.e., which rogue can spec heal or tank or dps as needed, they are rogues, they have no choice in this matter. They did not know that the future would bring something with such far reaching and game changing consequences like “DUAL SPECCING”.