Yup. Wrath is a very differently designed game than TBC. It was the beginning of the ‘Bring the player, not the class’ type of design. Which I think was horrible, but that’s beside the point. In any event, TBC wasn’t built for dual spec. Some players just can’t accept that.
From Nethaera in 2006:
We would like to continue to support the idea that respecs should be very carefully thought out strategic decisions.
I don’t care what pirate server “devs” (lol) think is “best” for the game. I also don’t care what contemporary players think is “best” for the game.
I care what the original creators of the game thought when they were designing it.
If you don’t want it, don’t use it. Pretty simple.
Those of us who do want it WILL use it. How does that hurt your game? Spoiler, it doesn’t.
Before the problems that initiated the development of Dual Spec in TBC were able to manifest. Here’s what they had to say about the release of Dual Spec:
Nethaera: Why are we allowing players to dual spec after all this time?
Ghostcrawler: We really felt like this was a great way to increase the flexibility available to players and encourage them to take part in more aspects of the game. To use just one example, some players like to participate in both raids and Arenas, which is awesome behavior that we want to promote. But, there are some talents which are more useful in one part of the game than another. Currently, players have to pay respec costs and go through the process of setting up the desired talent spec and action bars whenever they switch.
History is repeating itself. Instead of respeccing to participate in multiple aspects of the game, players are simply not playing the game. We’re down to four Full servers across NA/SA/OCE already, with a nearly dead Arena scene.
So stop asking for dual spec if you don’t want history to repeat itself.
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Having to re-spec all the time isn’t a problem. Therefore, Dual spec isn’t a solution.
Next.
If you mean by dual spec having a cheaper respec price, then yes.
This is a debatable option.
But adding dual-spec on a whim whenever and wherever you are will destroy the game. The raid encounters simply aren’t balanced towards it.
Hahahah, no. I’ve already debunked this bogus claim and I’m not going to bother wasting my time doing it again.
…what? This doesn’t follow.
Motivation to play alt characters comes from a desire to not play your current class/character at all. I roll alts because I can’t do things on my Druid that I can on my Mage, Paladin, Priest, etc, which includes class specific things as well as profession specific things.
As a Druid I have access to every form of play in the game on a single character, and yet such access doesn’t make me not want to step over to my Paladin and AoE grind or over to my Rogue and stealth-farm and PvP.
Only hybrids really can say that with Dual Spec they don’t feel as compelled to roll alts if they only roll alts to do other PvE roles, but even that is highly limited among the reasons why people play alts.
This isn’t a downside. This is entirely neutral. People who would roll alts before Dual Spec would continue to do so after.
This response makes no sense. Delimicus literally gave a reason for adding Dual Spec, straight from Blizzard, which we see right now. Any “strategic” reasoning for speccing a certain way just doesn’t fly because the choices are too distinct from one another and folks just opt out rather than play suboptimally.
…what are you talking about? Be VERY specific, which raid encounters?
Nobody needs to play this game. Everyone who plays it, does so because they want to.
Safe to say if anyone asks for anything in this game, it’s because they want it. Not because they need it.
Lilkursis is not polite and is completely dishonest. Just another “go back to retail” parrot who can’t seem to push his Warlock beyond level 22 for whatever reason.
Can you actually explain how or do you just want us to accept this statement on faith?
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So did you quit when they introduced the Drum changes? What about the Paladin Seal of Blood/Seal of the Martyr changes? These changes fundamentally alter the underlying gameplay while dual spec is an optional quality of life feature.
It’s laughable to think you care about what the original creators thought.
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We could easily avoid any balance problems whatsoever by simply disallowing switching in the middle of instances.
Arguing that any QOL feature leads to retail, or is a bad feature, is unfounded. Consider that TBC already contains ample convenient QOL features. Do you hate these inbuilt features and think they detract from the experience? Consider meeting stones, flight paths, mage portals, warlock summons, portals in Shatt, mounts, and even the auction house. All these might be considered features which only add convenience. Technically, everything in the game could be completed without any of these (except maybe areas that need flying mounts or whatever). And they are good features, without which the game would be worse off.
If we removed respecializations completely this would add a lot more consequence to talent choices. But I think most would agree this would be bad for the game. It would completely prevent people from interacting with content (pvp spec trying to pve or vice versa, for example), etc. So adding consequence for the sake of consequence is no better an argument than hating a convenient feature just because it adds convenience.
The barrier to respecializing talents currently is high enough that it discourages many players from interacting with content rather than cross the barrier to do so, which is bad design in my opinion. The more players interact with more aspects of the game, the better.
Then they are just lazy. Maybe this game is not for them?
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An alternative solution is to implement a limited dual specialization system which would completely preserve game balance and lower this barrier to improve the vibrancy and interaction of all types of content tbc classic has to offer.
I agree 1,000,000% leave it alone. NO ‘DUEL’ SPEC. Sure it helps the tank and healer pool but it also helps the lock and mage pool, guess which is larger. To me the boost is inconsequential at 1 per account. I always wondered before the boosts were released why they never had one per account for each expansion before. Most other games have this available that have been around for a while.
In all the xpacs I used a boost in Legion on my BrM Monk when they neutered it to a 4 button rotation, played for 30 minutes and noticed Tichondrius had become a care bear server, logged out, rolled a vengeance demon hunter and never touched my monk again until the end of BFA. I still have my retail boost that came with SL.
All these other things being asked for, not just no, hell no. Even the LFG tool is bad, the add on is already better OR just read chat and make a macro to turn /4 on and off. Not hard. I have macros for /1, /2 and /4. I never, ever turn off Local Defense, that’s plain bad on a PvP server - up there with key board turning and wand mages.
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Before considering alternate options can you give any examples of how dual spec upsets game balance?
I can give you a great example. Through talents I can either melt mob faces in short fashion OR become an unkillable demiGod that is bane to all but rogues or other Locks by simple talent swap. Get ready for a hurting from Locks, mages, druids and warriors if this becomes a thing because their PvP and PVE specs are completely different. SL SL does poo poo damage in instances besides SoC spam but all Locks have that and Destro / Demo while strong in PvP aren’t the demi God 31 30 aff is.
Sure.
I personally find compelling arguments others have brought up. For example, it might slightly devalue a feral druid which inherently can switch between dps and tanking mid dungeon/raid, arguably more effectively than a prot paladin or warrior can, since the talents overlap. A prot warrior switching arms/fury would perhaps increase their value somewhat to a raid or dungeon group. In some raid encounters which require fewer tanks or healers, those classes could switch to do more dps, which might arguably make the encounter slightly easier. They could then switch back if a later encounter requires more tanks or healers. There might be other examples.
I would prefer dual spec not affect class balance at all. We could avoid all these by disallowing switching mid raid/dungeon/bg