See squawk meta… See mass engi re-rolls for viscidus… See extra healers on Saph… See mandatory Wbuffs for pug raids all of classic… See meta comp representation over off-meta representation in arena… See rocket boots meta for Mother Shaz
You can’t deny that the top 1% has WAAAAY more of an effect of the majority of the playerbase in today’s community than it did in the past. The ease of information via streams/logs makes it easy for raid leaders to try and replicate what is working for the best players in the world. And when it means consistently securing quick kills, average Joe guilds are totally making the right move by copying them.
It’s ridiculous to think you have the same playerbase from 2009 and you shouldn’t be suprised when making changes based around the past doesn’t work in the present.
Now who is delusional, there are like 10-15 people minimum with boots in most pugs. LOADS of guilds had many players re-roll for sappers to guarantee easy viscidus kills. All of it easily visible in logs.
You see what you want to see, nothing more. I’m done
I said Blizzard doesn’t balance the game around the extremely hardcore and you brought up a bunch min/max stuff that is either irrelevant or stretching the truth. I am literally in a dad guild and we first week’d mother with like probably less than 2-3 people having boots in the raid total. Nobody cared at all.
Similarly, I killed Viscidus every week with very minimal actual engineers in raid. Yes, it sometimes made things a little interesting, but we got the job done and we weren’t even that good.
Saying mentioning these kinds of things like they play some kind of role in the conversation of designing the game is just silly.
It doesn’t matter if YOU had a different experience. The fact is there is empirical evidence openly available showing that a LOT of players DID. So a bunch of players to engineering to get viscidus down? Could be a coincidence right? Totally not related to the top 1% employing and demonstrating how easy it makes the fight… only we see how guilds started stacking squawks when the top 1% did… And again with Mother Shaz. Now it’s not so much of a coincidence.
My point originally being was adding arbitrary limitations to a system (one that already had no real limitations) that can easily be overcome by degenerate gameplay will cause the 1% to show how now making and maintaining several copies of the same class but with different specs will help the raid adjust to the harder fights in WotLK allowing guilds to secure kills earlier in progression and subsequently bring in more loot. This will then have a knock on effect as people try to imitate them.
In the end all blizzard would accomplish is making it harder on the casual pug player base and mid-upper level guilds.
Orrrr they could leave the system as it originally was and people will do the same thing but with a whole lot less angst toward blizzard and with a whole lot less time wasted.
This would irritate me. I mean it hinges on whether they follow through with removing the RDF, but I liked to queue up for a dungeon in one spec - usually more PvP oriented and then switch to the better PvE spec once the queue pops. I really feel like Blizzard is making up problems for them to find a solution to.
In the spirit of saying “In the spirit of” I think they should stop saying “In the spirit of.”
Also Blizzard should probably consider making as few changes as possible, and only make changes that improve the game overall. Things like server performance, population balance, bug fixing, and minor QoL things.
I think the best restrictions they could add to dual spec (if they add any) would be to make a spec lock for raids. If you kill a boss as, say holy priest, you get a 8 hour lockout in that raid that prevents you from entering that raid as any other spec but that spec for 8 hours. This way you can’t really change mid raid, but you could change for the next day of the raid if need be.
Or you could just go to your trainer and change your spec and get summoned back, like people already do. Please, think of more ideas that defeat the purpose of Dual Spec.
Or, just maybe understand that the reason they are thinking of adding restrictions to dual spec is because they want hybrid play to be more viable because of how dual spec (as it was in wotlk) made them unviable to have any type of hybrid build.
The more I think about it the more these types of moves make an odd kind of sense. Wrath was way easier in terms of player progress than the Vanilla/TBC combo. Having the foresight that an authentic Wrath is basically fodder with todays audience theyre altering the script which is a prerogative they’ve already flexed repeatedly with the Classics.
Plus they are well aware that modern WoW is but a speck of what it was when this franchise peaked - in Wrath with their great RTS villian and end of good Warcraft lore. Its almost like theyre trying to protect some kind of legacy, which again, is certainly their business and no one else’.
Dual specs with a cooldown and no RDF just isnt enough of a deal breaker for me to pass on Wrath.
Im still passing on Wrath tho.
Removing all 10 man versions of all Wrath raids seems like a more interesting and controversial topic than taking the training wheels off with half baked additions like dual spec and RDF.
Making changes like this because of the 1% of sweaty, tryhard min/maxers was, is, and always will be a terrible design philosophy.
By the way, that 1% will ALWAYS find ways to maximize the ‘fun’ out of the game. You think putting restrictions on dual spec will stop that? It won’t, and the average player is the one who has their experienced altered and suffers.
Hybrid builds were dead by 3.3.5, there is simply too much player power in the final tiers of any talent tree.
The only some-what hybrid builds that sees any kind of play is “Preg” paladin in PvP and some spell dmg DK build in PvE. Otherwise your “hybrid” builds are simply changing the way you spend your final 20 points… Hardly hybridization.
Locking specs won’t promote bringing hybrids either, what it will instead promote is kicking players so you can get the right amount of healers/dps you need for any hard mode boss. In today’s meta people won’t compromise on someone who is sacrificing 30% of there dps so they can be 60% of a healer o some fights >.>.
All adding a CD will do is promote degenerate gameplay to get around some arbitrary restriction that doesn’t affect the hard core but kicks the casual player in the nuts. Stop punishing players for playing the game how they want, when the want.
And what “hybrid” builds were even played in 3.1? A hybrid build that does not help fill two roles shouldn’t even be a concern lol. They would still be able to use a “dual spec” build to play that hybrid spec… perhaps the only reason they played those specs in the first place is because they were performing better than a pure spec because of janky pre-3.3.5 balancing…
The hybrid argument is an INCREDIBLY weak reason for adding arbitrary restrictions on the use of Dual spec
In early 3.0 there were loads of janky DK hybrid builds due to their insane power levels, spell dmg DK is even kinda still a thing you can do in 3.3.5… but it’s kind of a moot reason to lock dual spec since your just another dps spec…you can’t exactly tank + dps any better than the other dps specs, so your just a dps that takes talents form half frost and half UH…
Same argument for disc/holy priest hybrids. The spec doesn’t really let you dps in it… So the dual spec restrictions would just stop you from switching to dps when your guild needed it. Doesn’t let you do both within the same spec.
Don’t ruin dual spec by adding annoying restrictions like making you go back to a city to change. If I shell out 1k gold on my characters I want to be able to swap specs even in raids. What’s the point of spending 1k besides changing your action bar if I still have to go back to a city to swap? People have been begging for dual spec even throughout tbc, don’t ruin such a beloved feature in WoTLK.
What if there’s a fight that only needs 1 tank and I am the offtank? Why can’t I swap to a more useful spec so I’m not just hammering away at the boss doing pathetic dps not not really contributing? What if we need an additional healer for one fight and our enhancement shaman has a resto offspec? Instead of just clicking a button I’m gonna have to go back to a city to swap specs?
Most people are only going to play optimal builds, the idea of someone sacrificing throughput and being less effective at their specific role to be more of a hybrid has been dead for a long time.