This gets claimed a lot but I don’t get how all these people who don’t normally tank, are time poor and can’t afford respecs are suddenly going to want to devote their second spec to tanking and have a fully gemmed and enchanted Tanking set lying around and can afford Tanking consumes. I don’t think the claim adds up.
That’s the claim, but I don’t think it does, and I don’t think it will. I’m yet to see any convincing evidence that it will do much to solve the problems people claim it fixes. It didn’t back in the day.
This is a trade-off, being able to have versatility and fill multiple roles is a benefit that precludes being a specialist and feeling like your character choices are a special niche.
They are different design goals - TBC class design follows the latter and WoTLK follows the former.
In this game you’re simply not meant to feel like you can fill any role and do anything yourself (unless you’re a Druid). It’s meant to feel like an important choice.
literally every hybrid has multiple itemsets because they are expected to perform/fill multiple roles
there is no longer a spec locking for the general population. everyone has multiple specs for them to play.
every paladin will be expected to tank, and every shaman will be expected to heal.
and I’ve played rogue for 15 years, the difference between combat and shadowstep are night and day, its not worth bg queing as pve spec, unless ofc you spam av and just rush drek towers and wait but av marks are worthless.
Imagine playing the game within the constraints of the games design?
“I know that may sound like I just want to make life tougher for players, but that’s not really it. I think constraints can be a good thing for the game and ultimately more fun for players.”
Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) having second thoughts about Dual spec: 5/3/2017
A lot of classes actually do, maybe not for BG’s but definitely do in arena. For example rogue’s do horrible in pvp as their raid spec, warrior that play fury, have to respec arms to have mortal strike.
You can always say “well you don’t have to be meta” but I mean, there is a point where yeah you kinda have to be the right spec to be even remotely competitive or useful. And seeing how arena is ranked, no one is gonna play arena as fury warrior, or Combat sword rogue.
Speaking for myself, I am only prot a couple days in the week, maybe. I’m generally retribution. I really enjoy tanking and generally PUG at least a few times a day when I am prot. If I’m not pugging I’m helping guildies with drops/attunements/badges and bringing along PUGs. However, I have to be ret for raiding because of the 25 man ratio reduction for tanks and we needed a ret paladin for my group. If dual spec were implemented, I could literally be protection whenever. Now, I’m not swapping out of ret until I get a few days of breaks between raid times. It’ll probably be less when T5 is out. So yes, dual spec will definitely help the tank shortage. The only question is to what degree.
Lol that is the worst quote ever, and ghostcrawler isn’t the end all be all for whether dual spec is good or bad.
Blizzard likes things that increase playtime, and they think forcing people to waste time, looks good on metrics because it keeps them logged in. Farming gold for respec, doing torghast, farming anima, farming conduits, regardless of the expansion they like things that eat up time and keep you logged in…
I take your point, I feel like I’d Tank less and DPS more if I had a Dual spec personally - my suspicion is that it would basically cancel out how various players would use their second spec. If it helps at all it would only be to a small degree. In WoTLK, they still needed a cross realm group finder + Tanking badge bonus incentives and even then there were still issues with group times.
I’m not a GC fan but I thought that was one of his better comments personally ;p
I don’t think that this is a strong claim for dual spec. But I also don’t think it’s the claim that most dual-spec’ers are making.
I think the claim is, “Why not?”
And with regards to it adding more tanks, the counter claim is simply, “Nah, it wouldn’t.” And it probably won’t add more tanks.
Introducing Death knights early however, (particularly of the flavor of early wrath death knights, when each tree was a viable tanking tree) would breathe life into the leveling areas of TBC Classic and almost certainly add more tanks.
This seems like a pretty good reason to be a proponent of dual spec, imo. If dual spec leads to reducing friction for those playing, then it’s difficult to argue that it wouldn’t be an improvement, imo.
While, I personally think that dual spec is not a good solution to the problems it aims to solve, I can see how it’s somewhat better than single spec at solving those problems, regardless of what side effects dual spec may bring.
I don’t blame you. I don’t want to spend 2 hours (or however many seconds, minutes, hours, etc.) farming some arbitrary thing to be able to do the content I want to do, either.
That doesn’t mean that my behavioral profile doesn’t show that I am more likely to continue to do a thing, if from time to time I have to do something I don’t want to do in order to keep doing the thing I want to do, nor that I wouldn’t stop doing the thing I want to do if there was nothing preventing me, or slowing me down from doing it.
Yea, I would never argue that it would completely solve any tank shortage, but I don’t see why people wouldn’t tank more considering how easy it is to get groups as a tank. It would just be a small effect, not the large one that some proponents claim. Back in original wrath I was ghetto tri-speccing during naxx depending on what role was needed on my pally, but normally tanked (especially for 5 mans).
And I think it costs a lot in terms of feeling invested in your class and spec and in terms of needing other people to fill the gaps you can’t fill (without the added versatility). Not just in raids or dungeons but questing and grinding too.
It changes the way we engage with each other in the game to such a degree that it harms the feel of the game.
It’s an intended constraint of the game and negotiating it shapes the way we play. It’s not a solo game so it matters.
LFG: LF Tank [dungeon]
Me: !
Also Me: Goes to respec
Me: I’ll tank
Group: sorry, just filled
Me: np
LFG: LF 1DPS [dungeon]
Me. !@#$
That’s why either Dual Spec (unlikely due to the amount of time it’d take to implement Dual Spec into a Legion/BfA Client that’s already heavily modded) or 1g capped Respecs are needed.
Retail gets it. While I don’t particularly like it. At least Retail lets to switch roles ‘on demand’.
I feel like people are just making the cliche “back in my day, we walked to school up hill both ways IN THE WINTER!” argument for why things can’t ‘be better’.
It’s more the inconvenience of needing an addon for tracking other specs and potentially action bar set ups, and having to go to a trainer every time.
The same is still true with or without it when you can just respec. What actually happens is that you aren’t massively inconvenienced. People who don’t tank/heal still won’t tank/heal, and people who aren’t flexible will continue not being flexible.
But for those who are more than willing to respec (and for those that do PvP/PvE regularly), it’s a huge convenience and allows them to do what they’re already doing without as much annoyance.