spec
Latest
Forum post of the day: Great idea, poor implementation
I'm still moderately excited for dual specs on my level 80 characters, it should be handy for switching between raids/instances and dailies. Cvarto of Proudmore began a thread about poor implementation about only allowing level 80 characters to use this feature. He fears that players will level as a single spec and have to relearn the other options for their class once they hit level 80.GC's reasoning is that MMOs are overwhelming for new players to learn without working with two specializations. Cvarto contends that it still more difficult to learn a completely new aspect of the game, such as tanking, at level 80. I'd like to add that most players have little patience for inexperienced tanks and healers at max level.
Ghostcrawler: Sorry BM Hunters, our bad
Well, well, well. As a guy who currently plays a BM Hunter, I'll try not to gloat too much (to tell the truth, I agreed that BM Hunters needed a nerf before 3.0.8, though I did think we got hit a little too hard afterwards), but Ghostcrawler has something to say to all of you Beast Mastery Hunters out there: We're sorry. On the forums, he says that Blizzard has had a long talk about it, and they've determined that yes, they nerfed Beast Mastery Hunters too much. He says Marksman is in a good spot, and Survival might be a little too high, but they're still looking at all three specs.Gloat if you want (BRK is probably very happy), but Ghostcrawler specifically says that they're fessing up to this partially in the hopes that it builds the devs' credibility in the community -- when they mess up, they'll let you know. And with that attitude, we can't really blame him. He was wrong -- let's move on.So where next? He says BM is due for buffs "before Ulduar." Steady Shot is likely staying where it is, but Kindred Spirits and Serpent's Swiftness will probably be improved a little bit. I wouldn't look for us to go back to where we were pre-3.0.8 (Volley will not be re-buffed, I can tell you that), but BM will definitely be a little stronger than it is now. Oh, and I hate to keep harping on this one, but can we get that Cower bug fixed now? Please?Thanks, Tribadala!
Spiritual Guidance: What each type of Priest can do and arena musings
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week, Matticus looks at what a Priest can do and reflects on his experience so far in arena. I managed to get myself into a pickup heroic Naxx group the other day. No, it wasn't on my Priest. The Priest is my baby and I can't lock him into such raids while we're still raiding. It was my Shaman that I took into heroic Naxx. After Flame Shocking and Lava Bursting my way through both Spider and Plague Wings and the first two bosses of the Military Quarter, we came across the Four Horsemen. (Yes, there is a point to this, keep reading!)
The healer shortage and how to fix it
The Tank Shortage is a topic that's come up a few times before, though thankfully, since the release of Wrath, Death Knights have more or less solved the situation. But the issue facing us now is just as dire: a Healer Shortage. Ghostcrawler acknowledges that there may be such a shortage on the forums, and he gives two reasons: first, lots of people are still working their way up to level 80, and the majority of healers may still be leveling through Northrend. And second, they've beefed up and changed a lot of DPS builds lately, so many pre-Wrath healers may have respecced DPS to try it or to level a bit, and haven't gone back yet.Later, he backpedals a bit -- not everyone is experiencing a healer shortage, and while he's already told us Blizzard is working on ways to make healing more "fun," he also points out that some people enjoy the whack-a-mole game. Still, just because a problem isn't affecting everyone doesn't mean it's a problem: it's true that lots of groups are having trouble finding healers, and lots of healers would rather not watch health bars all day.We're very curious to see what changes Blizzard might have in mind for healing -- we discussed quite a few on the healer podcast a while back, including making healing spells a little less attention-intensive, and giving healers some UI ways to keep their eyes on the fight rather than their party members. And of course, if the rumors are true, we'll hopefully have a new healer Hero class to come and fill in the blanks. GC says this isn't a matter of tweaking things in one patch, so we are definitely a few patches away, but there is hope for healers on the horizon.
3.0.2 for Feral Druids
In a few hours, when the servers come back up, patch 3.0.2 is going to hit, and WoW will change drastically. Every tree is get revamped to a greater or lesser extent, and extended up to 51-point talents. The Feral tree changes, in my opinion, fall somewhere in the middle in terms of how radical of a shake-up they are. The big change, philosophy-wise, is that we're going to be able to be main tanks or top-tier DPS, on par with the best warriors or rogues. The catch is that we won't be able to do it with the same spec; we can spec to be DPS or tank, and do as well as anyone at those rolls. We can still try to spec somewhere in the middle, but then we'll get back to our old "master of none" status. In my opinion, this is good news, especially considering we'll be getting dual-spec capabilities in 3.1 (the first post-Wrath content patch).
Tigole confirms dual specs are still in the works
Many people have been wondering about when the promised dual specs will appear in the beta. For those that don't remember, back at the World Wide Invitational the developers said that they would be rolling out the ability for players to switch easily and quickly between multiple specs. At the time one of the main points was that these quick changes between specs would not require gold.Tigole confirmed last night that dual specs are currently being worked on. They are figuring out all the details internally still (which is a good thing). When a poster asked "I imagine by this stage we wouldn't see it until a patch after release?" Tigole replied "Most likely in a patch but it's not too far off." Now you can interpret that different ways. Perhaps he means in a beta patch or a patch immediately following Wrath's release. Either way the fact that these dual specs will eventually be here will make many people quite happy.Last night I was talking to some guild mates about it and the word that was thrown around was "game changing" for Protection Warriors and other low DPS specs. Since the Protection Warrior would just be able to flip into a DPS spec for farming, he would no longer need a farming alt – significantly changing the way the game is played.
Insider Trader: Armorsmiths vs. weaponsmiths
I received a question over the tip line from an armorsmith this morning who is considering switching to weaponsmith because he is dissatisfied with his profession. Player regrets surrounding a chosen specialization, or even profession, are common and happen to almost everyone at one time or another.JDT writes that he is "extremely disappointed" with armorsmithing and what he is able to make, and that one of his reasons for possibly switching to weaponsmithing is that he theorizes it would be helpful to be able to pass down weapons to his alts that cannot wear plate. Unfortunately JDT, anything that you craft as either a weaponsmith or an armorsmith is not only bind on pick-up, but it also requires you to have that specialization in order to wield/wear it. That being said, there are blacksmithing plans for weapons and armor floating around that are bind on equip and can be passed along, but those can be made by any blacksmith regardless of specialization. This week I will begin comparing the various armorsmith and weaponsmith pieces to the first non-crafted upgrades in order to illustrate the value of each item and help each class and spec come to an informed decision when it comes time to choose blacksmithing specialties. Next week I'll finish out the comparison, as there is more than I can fit into this week's edition!
Skill Mastery: Thunderstorm
Upon dipping into the Wrath beta for the first time about a month ago, I quickly realized being a Resto Shammy wasn't going to cut it for leveling from 70-80 (don't worry too much, though, dedicated Restos, as that says more about my lack of patience for the spec than the actual strength of the spec itself). I switched Elemental the first time I got in there, and haven't looked back since. And while I'm finding all kinds of fun little strengths in the Elemental tree (my spell crit is much higher than it ever was, obviously, and Lighting Overload, even though it's not new in Wrath, is a lot of fun), the real standout is the 51-point talent, Thunderstorm.Here's a spell that does its darndest to focus on two issues caster Shamans have had in the past: running out of mana and getting caught in melee. The name could probably use a tweak (it's more of a Lightningstrike than a Thunderstorm), but the spell effect is great, and while it's gone through a few tuning iterations in the beta so far, odds seem good that it'll come out being one of the best-used tools in the Elemental Shammy's arsenal.
Try a Wrath of the Lich King talent spec on for size
Blizzard is making it easy for you to start planning for the launch of World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The official WoW website's talent tree calculator now represents the current WotLK build's talent trees for all classes, including the new Death Knight prestige class.You can try on all sorts of new specs taking into account the talent tree changes and new abilities coming in the expansion, which is due out later this year.The most interesting aspect to this is the ability to really explore in detail what kinds of abilities are available to the Death Knight. The information has been public for a while but if you haven't been following every single interview, it's cool to be able to go to one place and interact with what's there.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: I still love you, Titan's Grip
Dear, sweet Titan's Grip, be thou not angered at me. Dost thou remember how our affair began, as news of you first broached the shores of Europe and invited the whole world in? Yes, I have aired my doubts of you in public before now. For the truth is, my fair one, you are not perfect. You can indeed withhold from me that sweetest of rage, which I use to rend my enemies in twain. But in truth how could I ever stay alienated from your beauty? For you do allow me to hit my enemies with two great honking weapons at the same time!And that is wonderful.Yet there are other wonders than Titan's Grip waiting for you warriors at the roof of the World of Warcraft, the ice-tinged continent of Northrend. What awaits us, you may ask? Well, ask or not, here comes a day's observations of what awaits us. (Also, if you're wondering why I'm using Gorehowl and a shield in that picture, let me just say, Shield Slam doesn't use the same cooldown as Bloodthirst. Also, fury tanking! More about this in the post itself.)Now that I've done the expected and obligatory gushing about TG, what say I talk about the state of things warriorish in Wrath of the Lich King's enthralling beta? (Yeah, yeah, it's not a word. Sheesh, you people.)
Forum post of the day: Heals and heels
Decent healing is often a key factor in determining victory and defeat in a battle ground. Resto and Holy specced characters have quite the job set out for them. Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans regularly face a healing quandary. Is it better to spend time and man healing another player or continuing to do as much damage as possible. Zanhart of Medivh believes that any character than can heal in the battlegrounds, should heal. He finds it particularly insulting when a player heals him or herself while comrades die around them. Some agreed with him that anyone who can heal should, but most people dissented. There were several themes to the responses: Paying a subscription fee allows any player the right to play however they like. DPSers in substandard gear are a waste of heals and mana. Non-healing specs often have such poor healing abilities that the battleground is better off with them continuing to dps. Some people just don't find healing to be fun.
Totem Talk: How will you grow?
First off, some news that may be good, may be bad: Paralysis is going away. As we remember, Paralysis was the deep elemental talent that added bonus spell damage and a chance to paralyze to your lightning and chain lightning. At this time, I have no idea what they're replacing it with or why it's being taken out: Since there's a deliberate change to the coefficient on lightning spells in Wrath as well, described as being there to balance out new abilities that provide a nature school debuff (whereas previously LB and CL had a higher coefficient because there weren't many such abilities), I find myself wondering if Paralysis simply wasn't scaling well enough to be of use. Since I can't test this (curse you, Beta gods) I'll just have to take it on faith that Paralysis' removal is a good thing.Obviously this isn't a huge deal... it's beta, stuff gets changed... but it does have me thinking about how leveling from 70 to 80 is going to feel. To a degree, leveling a shaman is like being starving at an all you can eat buffet: you have so many choices that you might end up not being able to choose at all. Even as someone who really, really enjoying leveling enhancement (so much so that I did it twice) the pull of trying out a restoration spec under the new spell power rules has its appeal, or just ouright committing to the pew pew of elemental combat. (Part of it is that I just like typing elemental combat. In my head it's like the theme song from the Mortal Kombat movie, only with Neptulon and Ragnaros instead of Sub-Zero and Johnny Cage.)
Bornakk says more about two specs per character in Wrath
On the WoW forums this morning, there was renewed gurgling about the desire to be able to respec more easily, specifically between PvP specs and raiding specs. Blue Blizzard poster, Bornakk, reconfirmed what had already been discussed at the Worldwide Invitational -- that the developers are working on a way to have two swappable talent specs. They are still working out the details but it sounds like something that's definitely coming because the Blues could've easily let this thread just die of atrophy. I'm not sure I agree with some posters who say that respeccing is a "huge pain." It's an inconvenience, yes, but then so is flying from one zone to another or waiting in line for battlegrounds. Also, as for the cost, 50 gold is merely a grain of sand to someone at level 70. (And if it isn't then, dude, what the heck are you doing out there? Buzzing on Bash Ale all day?) Conversely, how would having two different specs at your disposal make the game "too easy," as other commenters posted? My eyes are rolling so much that they may come right out of my head. (This is exactly why I try not to read much of the forums.) There was much musing about how the respec mechanic might be best implemented -- by player posters, not by Blues -- including ideas for 24 hour cool-downs, respec token systems, higher costs, lower costs and, for some reason, portals and summoning.Regardless of what mass opinions are, Blizzard's developers seem to be looking hard at what the ramifications of twin specs would do to the game's balance. They obviously spend a lot of time studying how PvP and PvE are played and seem to have an affinity for splitting these two gameplay styles and I don't think they will make it as simple as a mouse-click in Wrath.
Addon Spotlight: Talented
Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight, the quiet home of mod enthusiasts amongst the whirlwind of breaking news that is WoW Insider. Reader Kyle "strongly" suggested that I profile Talented, an addon that replaces your talent interface and opens up some extended features for talent planning.Considering the tone of his suggestion, I would venture to say that Kyle has grown frustrated by his fellow players' tendency to screw up their builds or they're taking too long to respec. This can, indeed, become an issue when one is respeccing for raiding, arenas and different roles for hybrids. This is where Talented, and its companion Talented_Data, can save you time and a little money if you're prone to selecting the wrong talents when you're in a hurry. This addon allows you to build talent templates, which can be applied via one click after a talent wipe. I do this when I switch from a PvE Retribution spec to Holy for progression nights or arenas. I have to say, it helps reduce the risk of mistakes, which can leave me free to spend more time remembering to grab the correct gear out of the bank.
Forum post of the day: Too OP or not too OP
The news and analyses keep rolling in for Wrath of the Lich King. We've all got our pet talents and abilities we're psyched about. Everybody's going to get a shot in the arm. While Blizzard will balance and rebalance until release and then even after, some abilities stand out ad more exiting and powerful than others. Issenaril of Blood Furnace is afraid that Titan's Grip is going to be an over powered ability. The ability allows Warriors specced 46 points into the Fury tree to swing two two-handed weapons at a slowed speed. With a maximum of five points in this ability, the weapon speed will be decreased by 20 percent. He believes that this ability will massively increase Warrior DPS and make imbalanced in PvP. Liganu agrees that a 50 point Fury build will be helpful in battlegrounds, but it won't be as viable in arena combat.
New AoC feat calculator lets you submit and browse specs
The Age of Conan community site has brought a new feat calculator to our attention. Hosted at IGN's Age of Conan Vault, the calculator offers features found in other popular options, but one notable addition as well. Users have the ability to submit their spec to the Vault's database, which players can use to research their own builds. You can search the saved templates by level, class and name/description. People have already started to save their submissions, and hopefully this feature will prove to be a valuable resource as more players follow suit.
Two talent trees for the price of one?
Ripped from the WWI Dev Q&A comes news that I think is, frankly, massively important for the future of World of Warcraft, At around 7:30 central european summer time, the following question and answer exchange tried to slip under the radar:"7:34pm CEST: Q: Any plans to be able to switch between Talent specs easier? A: We are working on a plan to give players access to two Talent specs. More details in the future."Reread that. Because every time I read that passage, with a prot spec warrior as my main, I get ludicrously giddy. Two specs? Access to two specs? You mean I can go tank spec, and then switch to fury? Can I do this in an instance? If yes, holy heck. The viability gets even more ridiculous for hybrid classes. Imagine if you arrive at a raid on your elemental shaman, only to discover that the raid is down a healer. You no longer have to go respec. You just throw on your healing gear (and with Universal Spellpower coming, you might not even have to switch gear) and you're good to go. Need another tank for one particular boss? The healing paladin has you covered. The flexibility for raiding this would allow is almost impossible to underestimate, and the freedom it brings for people to grind, quest, PvP or raid depending on what they want to do becomes mind-numbing. You would no longer have to worry as much about balancing all class' specs for PvP, PvE and soloing, since each character could have two specs to help them make the transition easier. "Well, I need to grind some primal ice for my Northern Hammer of Ragnarok, so I'll just switch to retribution for a few hours."Of course, we have no idea what will actually be implemented beyond the statement that players will be given access to two Talent specs. How will they be given this access? How often can you switch between them? Is there a fee, or do you have to find a talent trainer for the switch? How on the fly is it, exactly? But it's still incredibly exciting news.
Build Shop: Shaman 18/43/0
Today on Build Shop, we're going to take a look at a Shaman build that's a little different from the usual since we've already covered the basic cookie-cutter specs of Elemental, Enhancement, and Mike Schramm's personal variant of Restoration. The Enhancement spec that we'll tinker with will try to focus on the built-in synergy between some Elemental and Enhancement talents, as opposed to the more familiar complement of Restoration talents. This Enhancement build is focused on dealing damage, with less focus on the raid or party utility that Restoration talents provide. You can take a quick look at the build here.Shock and aweFor optimum DPS, an Enhancement Shaman's spell cycle should be punctuated by shocks, which are instant cast damage-dealing spells that don't interfere with a Shaman's swing timer. The biggest problem with utilizing shocks as part of an offensive spell cycle is the prohibitive mana cost, which can make a dent on an Enhancement Shaman's relatively low mana pool. To alleviate this , we take 5/5 Convection from the first tier of the Elemental tree, which reduces the cost of Lightning and Shock spells by 10%.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Playing with talents
The Care and Feeding of Warriors has a big post in mind, but wants some time to work on it. Well, okay, The Care and Feeding of Warriors has nothing in mind. It has no mind. It has no soul. It is just a weekly column written by Matthew Rossi. If it had a mind it might hate him for having told you that it doesn't, but since it doesn't, it can't even respond. Wow, this is getting kind of odd. Anyway, here's a column.The other day, while grinding some of the new Sunwell Plateau dailies on my PvP warrior (this is him just before getting his season one shoulders) I happened to get into a discussion of specs with a warrior who had chosen a 51 point fury/ 10 point protection spec. It didn't last long enough for me to ask him why he chose that spec, unfortunately. Being that my 'PvP' night elf has a pretty unusual spec himself, although not as unusual (in my case, that spec is the result of wanting soloing viability for skinning mobs and I freely admit it is not maximized for PvP, I just haven't wanted to spend the money to respec a character I don't play all that often, comparatively) I was interested in the why of that spec.There are cookie cutter specs, of course, and one of the reasons that there are cookie cutter specs is because they work. I'm going to emphasize that. The reason for cookie cutter specs is because they work. There's nothing wrong with choosing one. Tanking with an 8 arms/ 5 fury/ 48 point protection spec is nothing to be ashamed of. But since you're not always tanking, and you're not always going to be running with your Arena team where you've essentially promised them you'll be at your best, there are times when you can sacrifice some efficiency for experimentation. And with the new dailies, coming up with 50 gold for a respec is not hard. I've respecced my human warrior six times since the IoQD quests dropped.
The Gaming Iconoclast: The Road Less Taken
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.-- Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"Unless you've studiously avoided the forums and fan sites for a particular game (wait, hold on a second... you're here already), you've probably heard endless variations on "the best" build or style for a class of character. "So-and-so should be race X, and spec Y, and wield Z." There are veritable ruts hewn in the terrain from people flocking to established builds and gear sets for most any class you care to name. But what if you don't want to follow the herd? What if the "you" in the game eschews conventional wisdom, strikes out on their own, and, with apologies to both Frank Sinatra and Johnny Rotten, does it their way? Are you thus destined to spend your gaming life shunned, a scarlet letter, or never-stylish [Noob Hat], branding you as an undesirable companion? Do you, in short, have cooties?
