And don’t get me wrong, if we had any RPG element to the game left, I too would scoff at the title. But at this point, why not just let us take three specs on a toon so we can play that toon more. Here’s a hypothetical.
I love elemental. I love Affliction. I hate Enhancement and Destruction. So why not let a single toon carry both specs? In practice, what harm would that create? I’m only ever one spec at a time. So what difference would it make if I had some weird option to switch over to?
I had initially thought “well baseline abilities…” but even then, only get the baseline while in that classes spec.
The only reason I’m going with this is because I keep hearing “play the class, not the spec” or “if there are two specs you’ll like, there’s a better chance of being viable.”
Yeah ok, that’s logical, but why not tailor a toon to a player? That’s some real selection.
Well besides the massive technical overhaul that would be needed to do for something like this. Or the fact different specs uses different armor types. And the legion class quest/order halls would be really messy. On that note, covenant abilities would work very oddly too.
Might also decentivize Blizzard to balance the specs since nearly everyone can and will just play the OP ones.
But other than that, idk.
4 Likes
Neat idea. Impossible to implement.
impossible for blizz to implement but not impossible
This guys got it. It’s a cool idea but WoW would have had to been built from the ground up with this in mind for it to have any chance of being even remotely functional.
2 Likes
Well therein lies a hidden advantage (i think) if you see a spec that’s got a <5% take-up rate by the playerbase, that sends a clear message that you’ve lost the thread on the role of that spec.
It would create a good opportunity to either take it in a new direction, or scrap it and move parts to an existing tree. In some ways the “class” props up dead specs because you can’t eliminate a spec you’re clueless about - even if its for the greater good.
No different classes use different armor types different specs use the same.
Unless you are talking multi class and in that case I believe the stronger armor wins out
I think he meant in the scenario I presented.
1 Like
Reminds me of talent trees in early rift. Every class had 8 trees to choose from, but you could only have 3 active at a time. You got to pick which 3 though. Then they changed it so you picked 1 tree and had 2 more assigned to you based on the 1 you picked, it was much less fun imo.
So basically you are talking multi class
FFXIV really has the best solution to all of this.
2 Likes
I don’t know what that means, but you - Waidmann - at the selection screen would get to choose your 3 specs. But that’s what you are once you enter the world.
You wouldn’t switch later one to some new, 4th spec.
Make every class identical with no talents and let you be them all?
2 Likes
That’s not quite what I was getting at, no. FFXIV lets you learn multiple jobs on a single character.
That would harm a lot of things, for starters each class has it’s own identity, it’s own resource, it’s own lore.
If you think every class is identical in FFXIV you’ve clearly never played the game.
I meant that there are no talents or ways to make any class different from someone else of the same class.
Every class is the same for everyone, and you can have them all in one toon.
1 Like
Ah okay. Still, I would argue that’s somewhat true in WoW as well. Pretty much every spec plays the same as every other player with the same spec. While we supposedly have some choices in talents, in reality there’s almost always one talent in each row that is far and away the best choice.
Apart from armour and weapon types you ain’t really wrong, which honestly is the whole issue behind current class/spec design in WoW.
Obviously this is something they wanted to address in SL, however I don’t really believe they are looking at it in the right manner. (They are trying to homogenise the specs by overlapping abilities as opposed to ensuring the they simply match the identity of the class and are simply “specialisations” as they are supposed to be)
Either Blizzard really hones down on the class fantasy which would involve actually breaking down to specs, or they might as well look into build-a-bear characters where we can specialise however we choose.
If this harms things, then they deserve to be harmed.