dual-specs
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Scattered Shots: The Future Soon: Hunters in patch 3.1 and beyond
Welcome to Scattered Shots, the weekly Hunter column which is written by a guy who doesn't generally spec for said talent.So. I'm here. I'm not completely wrapped up in Wrath, I promise. In fact, just to show how much I am not wrapped up in the here and now, in the long lines for the queues and prospect of getting a beautiful worm pet and all that good stuff, I'm going to predict the future! Let's look at some of the promises and perils that 3.1 and other future patches will bring for the Hunter.
Ask A Beta Tester: Spirit, AoE, and raid loot
I'm going to start off this AABT by stealing a question that Alex actually took last time, mostly because I started laughing when I read it yesterday. I have, oh, conservatively, billions of Wrath screenshots on my hard drive at this point, but there's one I remember all too well.Marathan asks... Some time ago, there was a talk about new player character models for Wrath - and even some bugged pictures. So the question is, are they going live? Are we finally going to get improved graphics on our characters?As Alex wrote, Blizzard used one beta build to test the ease of implementing new skins and some of them...didn't turn out too well. Imagine you're me and you get a beta key. Budget a few hours of anticipatory excitement while your main copies over. She's a 70 Tauren Druid who has been with you since day one, your sole 70, and you think she's the most beautiful thing in the game even if to everyone else she's an ungainly 8-foot heifer. Now imagine booting up the Wrath beta for the first time and being horrified to see your beloved character with a Glasgow smile, like the developers had seen the Joker in The Dark Knight and thought, "Hey! We could make that work!"Holy water did nothing. Neither did crucifixes, garlic, a wooden stake, waving the Bible in the direction of the laptop, or sobbing quietly in a corner.On the plus side, here was finally something in the game to which Tauren cat form was an actual graphical improvement.
Ask a Beta Tester: Leveling, the Taunka, and mounts
All of us here at WoW Insider are staggering around somewhat zombie-like in the wake of BlizzCon with the patch (probably) coming tomorrow and the amount of information we're hoping to get out in the next 24 hours. So in all truth I don't know whether the answers to today's questions are completely factual or just stuff that started swimming in front of my eyes at 1:00 this morning. Arthas is actually a girl underneath all that armor, just like Samus Aran. The zone music to Icecrown is "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. The Hateful Gladiator cloth belt is a pink tutu. Flying bunnies will be available in the next expan-(Sound of a short scuffle in the background, followed by a whip crack)Thank you, Dan, a little perspective is always useful in these difficult times.Jason asks...Will Northrend be accessible at 68 like Outland was accessible at 58? Or do I need to be a solid 70 to quest and instance in Northrend?Technically, Northrend will be accessible to anyone with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion installed; you can hop a boat or zeppelin on any character of any level. There's no "You must be THIS HIGH to cross through the portal to Outland" restriction, but you won't be able to pick up any of the quests available in Northrend until level 68. Could you grind your way to 68 in Northrend from the mid-60's? Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Ask a Beta Tester: It's all about the money
We have a lot of profession questions today, but also a few about Achievements, the Beast Mastery 51-point talent, and what happens when you push Death Knights off a cliff:Riley asks...How is the Shaman Hex ability working? Does the target still have control of movement and does the PvP trinket work against it?Hex is a the crowd-control spell for Shamans referenced by the devs at the class panel here, and it's been tinkered with a lot since we first heard about it. It was originally meant to be more of an emergency-only, short-duration CC. In its present form, Hex's duration has been increased to 30 seconds and it doesn't necessarily break on damage. However, in PvP the target can control where they go, the PvP trinket does work (you can also shapeshift out of it as a Druid), and it's considered a curse and can be dispelled by Mages, Druids, and restoration Shamans (who will have the ability do dispel curses with a 31-point talent Cleanse Spirit). Think of it as a somewhat odd combination of Counterspell, Fear, and Polymorph.
More on dual specs at Blizzcon
In the midst of a mostly unrelated post about the Druid Balance tree, Ghostcrawler let slip the following: "The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we'll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live." Now I don't know about you all, but as someone who plays a healing class for a main, I am very interested in the dual spec idea. Knowing that we'll get more information on it at Blizzcon, just a few days away, makes me a happy priest indeed. But what could she mean by the dual-spec feature shining more light on talent design? It's a slightly mysterious statement, but my interpretation is that when everybody can have two specs and switch between them either freely or at least cheaply, the load each spec needs to carry lessens. It's OK if Holy can't solo, because you can just switch to your Shadow spec for that. It's not such a big deal if Combat isn't as strong in PvP; just swap out to Assassination for the BG weekend, and swap back in time to raid. The trees no longer have to be strong in all areas of the game. But that's just guesswork on my part; GC may well have meant something else entirely. Either way, we'll see in Anaheim this weekend, and WoW Insider will keep you posted with live reports.
Breakfast Topic: Which two specs will you be choosing?
When we heard back in June at BlizzCon International that players will be able to switch between two specs easily in the expansion I thought to myself "no brainer." Not just the concept, but I knew which specs I was going to choose. Being a Feral druid, I could already tank and DPS. I just needed to choose Restoration and I'm covered.Flash forward almost four months later and Tigole confirms the functionality is coming in a patch shortly after the expansion. But suddenly I'm not so sure about my choices. Come Patch 3.0.2 major class changes are a coming. I switched from Restoration to Feral during TBC and learned to enjoy tanking, but I fell in love with cat form. Now Blizzard is buffing cat DPS in a big way. Unfortunately, it's at the cost of tanking talents. So do I go cat and bear for my two specs or cat and tree? And the Moonkin DPS got a good kick in the feathered ass as well. The choices! Given how the classes are changing and many more specs are becoming viable, which two specs are you considering for your main?
