I mostly agree with you. On a scale of “meh” to “jesus christ” most of what Blizzard has done so far is towards the “meh” end. I just don’t trust them to occasionally pump the brakes in the future. You know they are going to try and squeeze us, right? Shadowlands is underperforming so they are going to make up the shortfall somewhere.
And since it’s a slippery slope every snowball fight inevitably ends with people putting rocks in the snowball. It’s out of our or blizzard’s control
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As a retail player I do love the idea of dual spec. I play all three specs of my Death Knight because I enjoy tanking and the other two dps specs feel different enough to change up how I play every so often.
In Classic, I main a Warrior, and recently do to the tank shortage I decided to switch over to Prot from Arms. I do like tanking and did so while leveling to 60, but due to the requirements I can no longer just put on tank gear and head into a dungeon. Personally I would enjoy Dual Spec because it’d allow me to play my class freely and learn how each spec works.
But I also understand how others feel about this, and I still enjoy Classic this way. The only way I can think to solve this for myself would be to create another Warrior and use him as a dps.
(You could just say to make another class, and yeah I could do that, but what if I only wanted to play one class?)
We have classic as a clear example of where this game is headed. If not having LFD, dual spec, LFR, etc. was making the game better then a lot more people would have stayed behind. Truth is those features improve WoW, at least for me, and that is where we are headed with wrath; it offers the best of both worlds from pre-cataclysm azeroth to post-cataclysm azeroth.
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For me as a healer who likes a healing spec in dungeons dual spec is important enough for me to risk it. Questing in a healing spec isn’t fun for me. Many tanks feel the same and many who both pvp and pve do too. That’s why there were numerous threads like this in the early years of wow and why blizzard eventually added dual spec
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yes, and for all the talk about BC being the best expansion and all the complaints about Wrath I’ll bet that the “perma BC” servers are as dead when wrath comes out as the perma classic servers are now.
There’s a good chance you are right. I personally think it’s just a matter of numbers and players wanted to check out the “latest” content. Objectively there were just more people who played BC than vanilla. That stands to reason that more people would be nostalgic about BC than vanilla. Also, of course people are going to race into BCC to check it out. It’ll probably be a similar deal in two years when they get to Wrath. I’m not convinced that classic vanilla servers being empty right now has anything to do with feature set. Let’s see what things look like in 6-12 months. That’d probably give us a better picture of what is going on.
Instead of interacting with other players and working together blizzard gave you a tool to solo more often. Instead of working with another player to do whatever you need to do, you press a button and have a different character better suited to minmax take care of whatever situation you’re facing.
If you enjoy playing heals or tanking, why can’t that be fun in questing or farming or pvp? MMORPGs should give you reasons to need to group together. They should not give you tools that make it so you can solo more often.
Dual spec is one of many of the reasons retail killed MMORPGs as a genre.
Maybe it is for some people but it’s not for me. I do it on my main, my priest, but I won’t do it on my druid. I healed resto in Wrath but I’m going feral in BC classic. And not healing dungeons. The game is now less fun for me and less fun for dps on my server as it’s more difficult for them to find a healer. And if you’ve played this game since vanilla you should know it’s not just me. There are many tanks and healers making similar choices.
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Maybe they’d prefer to play as DPS when out in the world. Maybe they’d prefer Disc over Holy for PvP.
It’d be one thing if characters could progress in game doing the activities they preferred. My warrior would probably always be Arms, because PvP. But as it stands, the better gear, and leveling, require me to play essentially, a different part of the game. I PvE in order to PvP, as do many in my friend group. If we could compete against players without ever setting foot in a dungeon, we would.
Exp from gathering + BGs were a very welcome addition to the game, in my opinion. And dual spec helped those who enjoy the entire game.
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I can’t wrap my head around player created inconvenience in game would result in me playing a different class or different role than I enjoy to try to compensate.
If you love playing druid, why would things out of your control in game make you want to play a different class? Or different role on that druid.
Do you not have a strong preference for your class and the utility it has? If small inconveniences in game lead you to respeccing or playing a different class it makes me think you aren’t even interested in the game you’re just going through the motions doing whatever comes simple and neatly.
Since when does class choice have so little meaning? It’s so flip floppy in today’s community. I don’t want to respec my shadow priest to fill in a healing role because I specifically made a shadow priest to do utility and dps, why would I even entertain the idea of healing? Why would I do something I don’t find fun in game in order to squeeze out some reward whether it be an item or raid spot. You guys don’t care about anything and that makes the game feel like nothing matters and it gets boring very fast.
No one is forcing or asking you to make that choice. You do not have to respec if you don’t want to. For me, I enjoy tanking and dps but due to the game design I can’t fully enjoy everything my class has to offer.
Your class offers 3 specs that make you different then others that share your class.
You want everything beyond everything to the point it trivializes the illusion of specialization entirely.
When you have to commit to something and depend on others as a consequence to that commitment, that makes the game come alive. It’s called class interdependence. Needing one another in an mmo is what makes it an mmo. What you describe is being the hero of a single player game able to carry himself without anyone else helping all the way to victory.
I was in a similar boat. I mained a prot warrior in BC and my alt was a holy priest. I was stubborn and leveled them as prot and holy respectively. lol. Yeah not optimal in the slightest. When I got sick of trying to massage mobs to death with wet noodle prot attacks I’d always turn to my friends for some help. Go do some rep farming or whatever for me, then be their personal tank for them in return. Is this not an option for you on your druid or you just don’t even want to heal on your druid?
Personally, I’m super stoked to play a restro druid now that BC corrected so many gearing issues and all that.
Dps specs often make comments like this. I saw it on the vanilla forums. It’s because they can play all parts of the game pretty well with one spec. Healers and tanks can’t. We have to pick one part of the game, dungeons, to play well and suffer though the other parts or not play them. So I pvp on my hunter or my rogue but I don’t on my holy priest. With a dungeon healing spec I suck so much at pvp it’s not fun.
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The specialization of it comes from learning and perfecting each spec. You’ll need gear for each spec and mastering its rotation is what makes you stand out.
Anyone can play a different spec but putting time into it and actually being good at it can make you stand out.
Edit: You could have alts of different specs and roles. If you were locked into one spec and one day decided, “Hmm, maybe I want to try healing,” would you want to be able to try that out on your same character or level the same class to max, gear it out and have two priests?
Why would you play a tank or healer if you don’t enjoy doing tanking or healing?
If you want to be the dps you could play the dps.
Why do we need to destroy talents and their meaningfulness in the game when doing so turns the MMORPG into a more solo experience? It’s a negative all across the board it does not help the game it separates us and makes our choices not matter.
The mental gymnastics are ridiculous.
Video games aren’t difficult man. No video games are hard. Anyone who wants to be good at wow can be good at wow.
You want to kill the creativity in an MMORPG in the name of epeen and trying to say only some make dual spec look good as a consolation to the elephant in the room how dual specs facilitates a single player game and less RPG.
Why are you even here? Go play Skyrim
So what do I do if I enjoy all 3 roles and would like to play them?
Also, as you said, this game isn’t hard. You can get to max level solo and just pug and never really socialize. Everything lies with the individual.
Why are you going after him? Nothing in what you quoted is unreasonable. Most specs within a class play differently from each other. And he’s right, it takes time to master rotations and get the right gear… at least if you want to stand out as a great player.
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