Looking at QOL changes they could bring in that don’t (IMO) diminish the quality of the original release yes 100% +1 for dual specs.
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I watched this video and I voted in this poll actually
Lack of dual spec means as a mage, I can’t swap back and forth in bwl and mc between fire and frost. You are one or the other or do some elemental build. But you have to choose. Granted that content is easy but I’m illustrating a point. If dual spec existed, I would be expected to be able to be frost or fire at any given moment to optimize damage. And elemental build wouldn’t really have a place since it’s a hybrid spec. Another example is rogues would switch to daggers for vael, then back to swords for the rest of the instance.
People don’t respec mid raid unless they absolutely have to because there is a time and gold cost. That barrier is enough that 99% of guilds don’t bother respecting constantly mid-raid.
Dual spec without restriction will mean that the hardcore and semi-hardcore guilds will requrire two raid specs to swap between, which alters the TBC meta.
I think the best solution would be to add a CD to swap dual spec (1 hr is probably fine) or once you’re saved to an instance, it locks your spec to one “side” of dual spec. This means you have to have spec A or spec B switched in depending what is saved. However, you would still be free to go to the trainer to modify the spec you’re locked to. You just cant use dual spec in raids.
I like the CD more because I bet it’s easier to program and works for all types of gameplay, not just raids.
Dual spec is meant to help people swap roles between pve and PvP/farming. It shouldn’t be allowed to warp the raiding meta.
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The biggest difference in your example though is that if your guild wanted you to switch between fire and frost mid raid you would have to portal back. Either a team would have to go outside the raid to summon you back or you would have to fly / run back to the raid. In TBC, you can be summoned back from inside of the raid. So let’s say there are 4 mages in your MC run. They all portal to Org, change their talents, then get summoned back by a warlock wherever they are while doing trash.
For the same example for rogues, if they were sword spec for Razorgore. As soon as the boss dies they take a mage portal that would probably already be up, run to their trainer, respec daggers, and get summoned back before Vael even finished his “Woe is me” dialog.
The issue isn’t that Dual Spec would remove the need for an elemental build, it’s that your guild tells you that you can’t be elemental because it’s not as high damage / utility as a fully specced mage in either fire or frost.
Now also in TBC, there are some talents that are skipped in PVE that are almost mandatory for PVP. So you could have a hybrid PVE and a hybrid PVP spec. The fear is that the guild you’re in wont let you be sub-par for a fight. So you want the system to be structured in such a way that you can be less than, and not let your guild complain about it, because you need to be specced that way “just in case” for one-off situations.
This is aside from the fact that the argument you make is invalid for TBC since you don’t run into those specific issues for elemental immune bosses. There may be 1 or 2 that i can’t think of at the moment but not entire raids instances immune to an entire mage talent tree.
I’m just saying the barrier right now is significant enough that people don’t min max changing specs boss to boss. If you add dual spec, even if it has to be done in rested areas, it removes the barrier enough that people will start using dual spec for two raid specs.
In a raiding meta where dual spec can freely be switched, I can easily imagine a scenario where a mage has an arcane spec and a fire spec. Or an AoE spec and a single target spec. Or utility spec (stun talents) vs. standard spec. A healer could also swap between throughput vs. longevity depending on the boss. Or if Prayer of Healing is super great for half the bosses in a raid, one spec would be talent to power up PoH and then you’d swap out to another spec for fights you don’t use PoH.
These are marginal optimizations that people don’t bother with now except for the super sweaty guilds and I don’t even know if the super sweaty guilds do that.
Right now I’m specced for improved Amp Magic for one boss in Naxx. I sacrifice some optimization for having that talent. With dual spec, I could just swap in my sapphiron spec for that boss then swap back to my standard boss spec for the rest of the raid.
Dual spec without limitations would introduce this type of meta that was non-existent in TBC. I know this for sure because this is how I’d use dual spec for my main raiding character. I’d pick the two best specs for the current progression raid to swap between. Hell it could be a trash spec (focus aoe talents) vs. single target raid boss spec and I’d still do it.
So in this scenario though, depending on the class, then both specs for the priest are “healing” and sure one may be optimal for AoE vs ST. Or efficiency vs throughput. But then they wouldn’t be able to swap to a DPS spec when you don’t need more healers, or have the ability to easily switch to a PVE farming spec. You lose the ability for warriors to go between tank and DPS as needed (or paladins, or druids to a lesser extent). So there are still trade offs with the system. There are still places you wont be optimal for the raid. And there are still places for a hybrid to exist.
In the example of the priest going Single Target vs AoE healing. In Classic now, the argument is you may spec hybrid so you can smite spam in dungeons / raids when you don’t need to heal, you can solo quests / farm easier, etc. If classic had Dual Spec today, though you say that the hybrid spec for that priest would be they would have to be AoE vs ST, OR Healer vs DPS. In both of those scenarios, there is a tradeoff where they are not optimal at something. If they go Healer / DPS specced then they wouldn’t be optimal for AoE or ST if they were a hybrid healer spec (the standard ones). Or they could pick up some of the AoE talents at the expense of others. But they could quest / farm easier. But on the flip if they talented AoE vs ST (or Regen vs Throughput) then they wont have those smite talents to do the farming.
If they went hybrid smite / ST and smite / AoE for their 2 healing specs they wont be optimal at either but still be a hybrid. There are ways to play into the system. The talent system in general offers a variety of talent choices, the meta is what dictates how the players play and what they do or do not choose to play with (look at all the threads about how rogues wont be invited to anything for all of TBC… Not that they can’t be good, just that they don’t fit the meta anymore).
Plus, we aren’t even discussing the super hardcore guilds because they will swap players / classes between boss fights to get the edge. This happened back then and it happens all the way through retail. It’ll happen in Classic TBC too. So for them Dual Spec wont matter since they’ll have people who have raid ready alts (of even the same class if they have to).
Not to mention in any of these scenarios where people are picking between 2 PVE specs, then there is a gimp to their PVP abilities too. So even if you let people swap in front of the bosses with Dual Spec, there will still be hybrid specs or specs doing off roles.
I know that classes are designed differently in WOTLK vs TBC and the paradigm shifted to bring the player, not the class. But even then when Dual Spec was introduced, there wasn’t rampant one-size-fits-all to the raiding scene. There are plenty of hybrid specs in the game. Even on retail where specs are locked more you will find people using certain builds that aren’t meta or optimal. They just wont be at the top of the DPS leaderboards basically.
I know my guild is not alone in this but we don’t know, and wont in TBC be forcing people to spec a specific way to fill the role they have chosen. We run with a boomkin now in classic because that’s what he wants to play.
I think my point is that people want dual spec so they can easily swap between pve/raiding and farming or pvp or whatever.
But if dual spec is unrestricted, then hardcore and semi-hardcore guilds will expect people to bring two different raid specs and swap as needed. Yes you still have to compromise because you can’t have everything for every scenario, but having two specs opens up a lot of possibilities and changes the meta.
And that defeats the whole point of why people want dual spec. People followed the world buff meta. They’ll certainly follow the dual two raid spec meta. If a significant restriction is added, then dual spec can be used for it’s intended purpose.
So you said in your reply to me that you want a 1 hour CD, and that it being in a rested area wouldn’t be a big enough inconvenience to stop it being abused.
So then i ask you. What is the difference between a mage, using a portal or teleport (or hearth) to get to a rested area, hit the “swap spec” button, and get summoned back. And the mage, using a portal or teleport (or hearth if near a trainer) to get to their trainer, hit “respec”, use an addon that auto selects their talents and action bars, and get summoned back.
I don’t use these addons but i did a quick google search for “wow classic talent addon” and i got this: Talented Classic - Addons - World of Warcraft - CurseForge It lets you auto select talents based on templates you’ve made and can share.
The other thing that Dual Spec does is an action bar template. So here: Bartender4 - Addons - World of Warcraft - CurseForge This addon will let you save action bars / show / hide / all sorts of things.
So now the only difference between Dual Spec and not, is paying 50g at the time of respec. We have already established that for the most part, 50g is trivial for most players, especially once TBC comes out with dailies. Also, the barrier for Dual Spec, as seen in WOTLK is 1000g to purchase. So if you can afford 1000g for Dual Spec, you can afford 50g for a respec.
So if the steps to use Dual Spec or Respec are the exact same… how does Dual spec change the meta, but not dual spec not change the meta? Is it just that the “idea” of dual spec makes people fee like they need to be better at multiple things instead of having a split spec for different roles? Because that’s far more abstract of an argument.
Don’t need tanks for a fight, change to dps. Next fight, back to two tanks. Fight after that have two healers go dps.
Convenience. It’s very un TBC like to have people swapping specs between fights.
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That doesn’t answer the question i asked the other person. The ability already exists in game already… you just need addons as opposed to it being a feature of the game.
You act as if
is as convenient as 5 second cast w/ 30seconds rebuff…
Like… come on.
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Well now people have to have a mod, and then it has to adjust keybindings properly. It’s a bit more of a barrier than simply porting to town and clicking a button. For every barrier, the desire to respec has to increase that much to make it worth it. At that point it’s probably not worth respeccing in most cases unless the benefit is great. And you know, the super sweaty guilds may do that if they leave the ability for warlocks to summon people from outside the instance to inside.
I wonder if they may remove that ability since it doesn’t work like that in classic now. My memory is fuzzy about that change.
This feature was added in TBC originally so it’ll be there along with the ability for summoning stones to summon someone to a dungeon without the need for a warlock at all. This feature is not available in classic as it wasn’t around in vanilla.
Well it would be the same as going to town and clicking a button, and addons are not difficult to manage with all the different addon managers out there. But your argument is basically: if i can install an addon to do something then that’s okay… but if wow lets me do it, then it’s not okay. so the same feature is okay if an addon does it… that is the gist of your argument.
I don’t think dual spec is ok. It wasn’t in TBC originally. It doesn’t belong in TBC classic. I’m trying to think of compromises that preserves the integrity or raiding. Maybe requiring a rested area to use dual spec is enough of a barrier because now mods with warlock summons can accomplish the same thing.
However, I think it’s a big ask for someone set up a mod, go to the trainer and pay 50g to respec, get summoned back constantly compared to port/hearth out, click button, get summoned. 20 respecs is 1000g. 1000g for dual spec isn’t much over the course of an expansion but 50g ends up being a lot if you do it enough.
The barrier in the first scenario is bigger than the second scenario no matter how much you try to argue.
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TBC Dual Specs should absolutely be included.
It was arguably one of the best features that came in WOTLK. Zero reason not to do it now.
Hybrid specs and pvpers dreams to have a way to optimize both without resorting to endless respeccing costs.
The people who are against it are the same fools that thought bringing in batching would be great fun for ‘authenticity’.
That’s fair. But that’s an opinion. Which you could argue wanting to have it in is an opinion too. But if we are talking about it already being in “essentially” then why not just add it in as a feature vs “but i don’t want it” then we wont ever come to any middle ground because we’re not having the same argument. That is more of a general comment vs a comment against you in particular.
Yes and no. It may require more up-front time in that you would need to install the addons, and go to the trainer as opposed to sitting in any rested area. So it would for sure be an advantage for mages (or shamans with a heart near a trainer as they have 2 hearts essentially) as not everyone will have their hearth set to a capitol city.
I know the average person is lazy and may be too lazy to go respec to take advantage of something the addons offer (or may not know that the addons exist). But is that worth giving an advantage to people because other people may be lazy and inconvenienced?
This is true for sure. It really depends on how often you respec. If you do it once or twice a week that’s 100g a week. But with dailies giving like 10g each, or the raw gold from raiding / dungeons. Or farming or doing anything else in game, is 100g a week really that hard if you try? You can probably sell herbs you find in the open world and get that much gold or more.
Yes but i guess… in the end… does it matter? While yes some people might have 2 DPS or Healing specs for raiding… is that worth “inconveniencing” enough than someone who wants to play healer / DPS? they main a DPS but they see a group that is looking for a healer and can swap to heals and get in the group as opposed to having to let the group keep looking for a healer. Just to stop that mage from switching between frost and fire specs on raid bosses by having to leave and get summoned back to the raid.
When it comes down to it, the classic experience is inconvenient. LFD tool is convenient, but people wanted to return to the original mmo experience of actually having to talk to people.
Dual spec was added in WotLK. That can be a feature for that classic expansion.
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Mate dual specs should have been in classic too.
So should a whole range of things, like removing spell batching, little things like not having to macro /dismount into every ability.
You can keep the TBC experience or whatever better with dual specs. It opens up a whole world of possibilities for healers.
Try doing dailies as a holy paladin lol.
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Well… ending on an “agree to disagree” then, i will say with this statement i agree in that, LFD tool is convenient. But even with Dual Spec, that doesn’t mean people stop talking. And with how classic is right now, a majority of players are buying boosts with gold and not leveling in dungeons. So while not everyone else of course, i think the idea of people want it the old way is disproven.
You can’t really even argue that it’s all “retail” people (used as a derogatory term of course) are the ones buying boosts, because you need to have that gold from somewhere. And while some may have purchased that gold i doubt they are starting a level 1 toon for the first time and immediately buying 2k gold to boost the toon to 60.
But that’s not the argument we’re having here, this discussion is about Dual Spec so bringing up LFD doesn’t really count.
I have an addon for that 
It was just an example. I’m not 100% against dual spec, though if I had a choice I wouldn’t put it in the game. However, it has a lot of benefits that encourages people to explore different playstyles. I’m just against it being available to change any time outside of combat. I would like to see the barrier be enough to ensure there isn’t a dual spec raid meta. Maybe having to go to town or an inn is enough to prevent that. I don’t know.