Is your spec a RP choice as well?

Lore World's End Tavern: Role-play and Fan Fiction
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Just for fun, I know that classes aren’t set in stone and specs even less, but i was wondering if people write the spec as part of their character story and personality.

Maybe a worgen that is a fury warrior to unleash the rage, or maybe he is an arms or protection warrior because he wants to keep his fury contained?

Maybe this Orc was a warrior and suddenly heard the call of the elements, meaning he is more likely to become an enhancement shaman.

Or your rogue isn’t exactly a stealthy assassin, but a fierce pirate and that is why you pick outlaw instead of assassination or sub, or maybe you’re a SI:7 agent and therefore sub is your spec?

Or maybe your character is just a warrior that dual wields depending on the mood.

So, is your spec a RP choice as well? Or just there for gameplay?

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I never really thought about it this way, but now that you mention it, I always managed to incorporate the spec for each of my characters without even realizing it. There are too many to mention, but I think that all of their specs play an integral role in their identity as characters. I would encourage everyone to consider this very interesting aspect for RP; specs can make a real (and fun!) difference in RP opposed to just the general class.

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Yes and no. I generally pick my spec primarily for gameplay reasons, but I’m also one of those lunatics who’ll eventually level every single spec to 120.

Ultimately, though, I like RPing things my character can actually do mechanically, so usually I play my spec. Rare exceptions do exist, like where I made my frost DK an elven spell blade, since it fits well enough aesthetically, but mostly, my chars are as they are on their sheet, with personality (or in Karaatu’s case, lack there-of) and life experiences on top.

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I tend to play race/class combos with specs that are influenced by Warcraft 3 units. I don’t know why–I guess because of the nostalgia I felt as a child when WoW was first announced, and I thought to myself “Now I can finally play my OWN customized version of X unit, or Y hero unit!”

So my Dwarf Shaman for example is spec’ed Enhancement for that Wildhammer Gryphon Rider vibe. My male Night Elf Druid is spec’ed Guardian to be RP’ed as an old school Druid of the Claw. I’m also slowly leveling up a Bloodhoof Tauren Arms warrior, using only spears as weapons, for that Tauren Chieften-esque aesthetic.

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The high I get when my character’s IC class/spec matches their avatar’s cannot be described, but it happens only about 50% of the time.

If I plan the IC character prior to making the OOC Avatar, then the spec matches the character. If I make the OOC avatar prior to putting a character in it, then it’s a toss up. I don’t really need game-mechanics to match the character, because I do everything through text.

Some of my characters wind up dual-classing, and a few of them don’t even really play the class they were put into. The worst offender of this is my ren’dorei (hi I’m falothorin and i’m an elf addict) monk. This was the start of BfA. I wanted to make an Alliance Allied-Race monk. I didn’t have DI Dwarves, so ren’dorei it was!

She was supposed to be a scout and courier. However, she was introduced into the Fourth War, so “scout” was mutated into “spy”. She fights with glaives and can make herself invisible with Void magics. Her primary mode of attack is stealth strikes. She’s really hitting on that “ninja” vibe, so, mechanically, she’s really more like a subtlety rogue. I’d say she’s 2/3 sub rogue, 1/3 ww monk. Or maybe 3/4 and 1/4.

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A spec can be played in a variety of ways.

Take Beastmaster Hunter for instance. One can go the Tarzan route as in boy and his dog model. Another way is that of a Beastmaster who sees their pets as extensions of themselves. They don’t need to name their pets any more than you give a name to your arm.

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I think it really depends on the class and the lore around the spec. IC my girl here favors the water and wind elements over fire, earth, or anything ancestors related. In that respect she’s more akin to a Tidesage than a resto or enhancement Shaman. Admittedly, I also play her as a Stormwind human and not Kul Tiran so Tidesage isn’t totally accurate.

On the other hand, one of my DKs favors mixing the host of plagues available to her through being the DK skill set. She’ll throw out blood, frost, and unholy plagues and rarely rely on her martial ability.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with just divorcing IC character preferences with OOC preferences. You can say your OC loves being an arms warrior while you personally prefer being a fury warrior.

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I enjoy all three Warrior specs, though I main Prot, so I RP with Prot themes but do not limit my abilities from other specs

Same with my DK. He is Blood spec, but can summon ghouls and use ice spells in RP.

I find RPing only to spec is extremely limiting

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Yes and no.

For my mains, usually no. I try to state active and competitive in PvP, or use to far more often, and some things just don’t work that well no matter how hard you try or if you don’t have the right people to run with, I’m sure its the same with raiding too. However, to make up with this I do have an IC spec often for a character thats further incorporated. Kinda strange for an Apothecary, who’s a warlock, not to run affliction or an aggressive shaman not to be enhance or elemental despite resto often being the only stable and useful spec.

For my alts, absolutely. They’re created with a spec in mind and will hardly deviate unless I’m really trying to do something, or its so bad atm. I remember times making my Draenei arcane mage work in PvP during MoP? Wod? Either way, I refused to switch specs even for WPvP cause arcane was such, and still is, an integral part of him.

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In most cases I don’t see the specs as exact in-universe constructs but rather collections of abilities, traits and archetypes that may be found in the class as a whole. In other words I see in-game specializations mostly as mere game mechanics; to me there aren’t, say, Protection Warriors in a strict sense in-universe, but rather warriors who may possess many or most of those traits and attributes.

With that said, most of the time my spec choice may inform about some of my characters proclivities but they are usually not defined by that spec and its kit. This is especially true of my Mage characters, as all the Mage specs are at their core just different flavors of the same school of arcane magic. Defining a Mage only by their in-game spec would seem rather shallow to me in most cases.

Addendum: There are also some cases where my choice of spec is more removed from the character; like my Pandaren Warrior, who is Fury but encompasses nearly none of traits or themes that spec possesses. I also have some civilian characters, whose class, and subsequently spec, is often irrelevant.

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I don’t like using hunter pets in instances because they’re just messy, and using them out in the world is almost just as messy. Sure it’s a free tank but really they’re just a hassle for me.

So that’s why I specced into Marksman, it is really fun, fits my playstyle and that is how I RP’d (because the only PC I had to play WoW on melted D: ) Rizzy, as a Goblin sniper.

She was part of the Kaja Cola Consortium’s big push on Kezan as a Shadow Priest, then getting enslaved, pretty much dying after the boat went down and then the struggle on the islands before escaping…Only to see Gallywix remain a leader in the Horde caused her to split from the faction entirely for a time and repress a lot of her Goblin instincts, specifically the need for gold as she sees gold and the reckless chase for it as part of the reason that got her into trouble in the first place, and this mindset sort of put her at odds with her friends from the KCC. After splitting from the Horde and her friends, she ended up as a medic on the speedbarge in 1k Needles until she got framed for a particularly violent bar fight that ended with patrons dead because she was ‘too drunk to heal’ and had supposedly started the fight. In reality she’d been knocked out cold by a flying chair but she got the blame and had her medical license removed and she was kicked off the barge.

Afterwards, with her reputation as a healer for the various Cartels ruined and not wanting to join the Venture Co. she made her way back to the Horde and the Bilgewater Cartel, paid her penance and learned how to use a gun right around when Wardlords was happening, and found out she was really, REALLY good with a gun. So she became a sniper for the Horde, ended up on patrol duty in Mulgore during the whole Iron Horde incident, not getting to see any action on Draenor. But the good thing about being stuck in Cow Town is that she picked up a lot of tips and tricks and learned about treating the ‘Hunt’ as something special. She doesn’t really believe a lot of the spiritual baloney behind everything her Tauren friends say but…She started to approach sniping as more of an art rather than just spray and pray from long range.

She fought on the frontlines with the rest of the Horde soldiers during the events of Legion, and was part of the Horde detachment to Highmountain due to her history with the Tauren. After the conflict ended she just went back to hanging out with the Tauren, getting paid to be a sniper for adventurers, collecting a fortune out of her skills and not out of being able to market or con fools into buying defective products.

But with BfA and getting deployed with the Horde, she just hates Zandalar because seeing all that gold in the city makes her Goblin lust for gold start to kick in. After being away from Goblin culture and mass amount of gold for years, it was a big temptation for her and she idly caught herself one day wondering how she would be able to build and attach enough rockets to the ziggurats and carry them off into the sunset. So much so that she realized she’d actually started making a small pile of rockets.

When she realized this, she forced herself to remember how Gallywix jerked her around on a chain after Kezan sank and he betrayed the KCC and then almost drowning when the ship went down and the fight across the islands. All because she’d allowed herself to become distracted by the idea of becoming filthy rich and wealthy. She immediately volunteered for swamp duty with Tajanji and after that preferred to get lost in Vol’Dun and establish the Horde’s footholds on Kul Tiras rather than spend any time Dazar’alor.

That’s also because I personally hate Troll content and aesthetics. Hate the art style, HATE the accent, it just doesn’t do it for me. Plus Zandalari Trolls and Zandalar as a whole just strikes me as low effort in comparison to Kul Tiras.

She sided with Saurfang’s rebellion because of her Tauren ties, and while she didn’t really know Baine, she felt a level of solidarity with Tauren at this point. Even if she still wasn’t used to the interesting…smell that Thunder Bluff had. She didn’t get involved with N’Zoth or Aszhara, and now with the threats ended she’s just back to chilling in Thunder Bluff after a pretty grueling campaign.

So yeah, I play a sniper because I love the gameplay of Marksman and having a lot of single target DPS, so I focused on building Rizzy’s backstory around it.

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All three of the Warrior specs are baked into my backstory, but seeing as how I am a Warrior I use the three as I see fit.

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Not at all,

Vencio is just a formidable & independent fighter that learnt how to wield the light through sheer will power as opposed to faith.

He’s no part of any knighthood or church of the light, Just a fighter and a wielder of the light like “the force”

Vencio wields a variety of weapons but not to an extend of expertise or above.

What Ret has an impact on him is being direct, straightforward fighter combined with some light abilities, nothing else beyond that

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not at first which is why i switched to alliance. i always wanted to play a shadowhunter and the closest thing i can get is enhancement shaman. however they cant use swords or glaives or spears. the closest i can get is those fist weapons that sort of look like glaives (the fist fighting animation doesnt feel right at all to me). that being said with the new expac having wildhammer dwarfs i can finally do that to the fullest extent. i mean i can transmog fists to maces now so i can be a true dwarf. So now all i have to do is server swap to something more alliance based and rebuild my story.

what im working on now is a wildhammer who joined during cata, didnt go to pandaria, mabye went to dreanor (not sure yet), stayed hime during legion and fought of demons in highland, and rejoined officially for BFA. (i know so detailed lol) its going to take some time and research to figure out my relation to the allied races and what im going to do for shadowlands but im excited to finally play an old love to the full extent.

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Yes, and in fact, all my characters are created with a specc in mind from the beginning…

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