f13.net

I've been thinking about his a lot lately and it just makes sense to me.  Since we see a huge issue with lack of healers and tanks in the game due to people wanting to dps, why not let them do both, in a fashion?

Think about it.  Get a group together and hash out who will tank, heal, dps.  Then those people jump over to the trainers and respec to what makes sense.  They then go grab the gear from their bank that makes sense and hit the instance.

This doesn't allow people to surprise opponents in PvP matches and it really doesn't provide for any other advantage other than reducing the amount of gold leak you have in your personal v-wallet. 

Hell, they don't have to make it free really.  Just make it a gold piece of something so it stops people from respeccing 10 times a day (although I still don't see why that would be a problem.)

Warrios could then be DPS while they solo and then tanks when they group.  Priests can be dark ganstas while solo or DPS if needed in a group or heal if necessary too.

This basically gives each class 2 out of 3 things they are good at.  Heal, DPS, Tank.  The only class that can do all three relatively well is the druid, but they still have to make a choice on specification before heading out for an instance/quest. I suppose you could argue Paladins, but really their DPS is subpar to all other chars in their own DPS builds.

This would also prolong the "gear game" for many since you would be all that more inclined to grab gear for your multiple builds.  2-3 sets wouldn't be out of the question.  Most have 2 sets now anyway.

The only drawback I can even imagine is breaking immersion since I guess talents are supposed to represent how your character "grew up," but that notion has been thrown to the wind way before now.  People already respec multiple times in a character's "life."  Does it really have to be as painful as 15 gold a pop?

EQ2 has some new device that you can stick in your apartment and switch between two specs, that actually is a nice compromise between free for all and being locked into either raid or solo/dps modes. (Or will be if it ever gets into the game or anyone discovers the recipe for it.)

But absolutely. Spec's are way too confining in WOW. They need to lighten up on this.

forcing you to go to a trainer is a pointless unfun timesink.  you should be able to respec on the fly as long as it isn't mid combat.

I agree. I thought about something like this after the daily 'money' quests came out -- at that point it WAS possible to respec on a whim (warriors: respec MS for arena, respec fury for solo farming, respec prot for raiding) and a lot of people with enough gold did start respeccing multiple times a week, doing daily quests to cover the respec costs. Why not make it free, then, and limit it to X respecs a week (or add a token money cost, like you said)? You can only respec inside capital cities, so there's no real pvp advantage to this. This'd make forming pugs a LOT less painful.

The current respec situation is kind of unfair. Some classes (ESPECIALLY tanks and healers) have to respec all the time if they want to be effective at pve/pvp, other classes have pve/pvp talent builds that are slightly more efficient by shuffling around a few points, but not game-breakingly so, and yet other classes can pve/pvp with exactly the same build.

Aside: I've heard of warlocks 'respeccing' before arena matches and leaving 1/2 points hanging, creating a 'normal' soulwell when entering a match, then using the 'free' talent points to get improved healthstone and create another set of healthstones for the team (you can have multiple healthstones, as long as they heal for a different amount). Excessive micromanagement? Yes. Giving them a slight edge against the other team that might win them the game? Yup...

Edit: Unless this was supposed to be green, the trainer is necessary to train the higher ranks of the talent-specific skills (which could also be automated, true). It'd also be a bit nasty in battlegrounds to have a warlock respec to destruction (probably using a mod to insta-assign the talent points), itemrack in a full destruction set and kill the guards really quickly, then hot-swap to a soul link build / gearset and hold the node until reinforcements arrive. Or a rogue switching between gank and combat builds on-the-fly (stealth = out of combat, all they need to do is vanish). Etc.

However, what COULD work is just requiring the player to be out of an instance when respeccing. This could create unfair/broken world pvp encounters, but nobody at Blizzard cares about world pvp in the first place, anyway. :p


-- Z.
(for the record, my main is a warlock, but I do have a warrior I like to tank and pvp with)

I think for the most part it's painless enough to keep respecs up. 100g here and back is under one suite of dailys in one day.

I do think they should facilitate the exercise by allowing you to save talent builds in-game. One easy button drive-by the trainer versus having to stand there sticking points in and making sure you're not Arena'ing with R1 MS would be a boon.

That's the thing, "one suite of dailies" [which usually only means ogri'la and skettis, as you need an epic flying mount in order to have access to netherwing] takes at least one and a half hour of gametime, more if you aren't a proper farming spec. If you need to do that every time you respec, it becomes very tiresome very fast, especially if you're a class that needs to respec often (warrior being the prime example here).

It'd be a lot cleaner to just cut the respec costs out entirely and add a template system like Guild Wars along with auto-buying spell ranks. (seriously, why do I need to buy up 5 ranks of MS every time I spec pvp?) Dailies, even as a relatively efficient gold source, feel really monotonous and every time I do that stupid skettis bombing run I think about other fun things I could be doing right now instead. :P


-- Z.

Free respecs have kept me in the game longer, as long as they could manage to make it so you don't have repurchase skill/spell ranks every time you did it.  That just gets annoying.  Some folks don't have time to do the daily quests.. well.. daily.  It would have been very handy to be able to spec resto/feral as my guildies needed it instead of trying to tank/heal in the less optimal balance spec.

My "piss off I don't want to group" reply would have to end up being "I'm going to log off soon" rather than "sorry, moonkin".

I think it'd be a terrible idea.  There is some immersion to my reasoning.. I don't see it as how the character "grew up" , but what he's concentrating on at the moment.  Also, if you provide respecs for free, why not just make all talents available to all characters at all times?  Why wasn't it designed that way from the beginning?  For that matter, why not just provide a vendor that gives free epics? OK, that last one was a joke.

But really, I think the answer is that it gives you some semblance of strategic choices.  If you want to respec frequently you need to set yourself up with a gold stream.  If you can figure out how to spec to do two things well, you have an advantage.  It makes things more interesting.

That's from my perspective as someone who would never have time to do PvP, raid and 5 mans in the same night.  I barely get to do all three in the same week.  If you spend 12 hours a day in game and are reaching for something to do, I can see the attraction, but I don't have a lot of sympathy.

I did think of the 2 spec idea mentioned that is in EQ2 (I didn't know that,) while writing what I did, but didn't want to complicate things or lead the discussion.  I do think having two spec builds with all related training saved would be a good compromise.  Pay in full 2 full specs that could be toggled for a minimal cost at a special NPC in the major cities could be the solution.

To compromise, any changes to those 2 spec builds would have normal costs associated, but toggling them would just be something in the order of 30 silver.  Make the toggle requirement in the cities to prevent surprise changes during combat.

That seems viable to me.

I'd love to see multiple-specs, like the TR cloning thing. However, even with the 25g respec cost, the bigger investment is the gear itself. Building up multiple sets of gear relevant to different specs is no small task for some classes, depending on the role you'll play.

I think it'd better if they just allowed players to clone their character, even if they charged $25 for it or something. I'm not advocating they charge for it of course. But short of serious competition entering the genre with this feature enabled, there's no compulsion at all for Blizzard to actually do it otherwise.

I play in no longer than 2 hour increments 3-4 times a week now.  When trying to get a group together in my guild at any given time it always comes down to lacking a healer or a tank or both.  Nobody plays enough to keep a gold stream going to go change specs on a whim, so we are stuck not playing.

As far as immersion?  You are entitled to your opinion, but WoW lost that a very long time ago.  You say yourself that people respec all the time now, but that seems to only be fine if they are able to afford it?  I have a problem with saying you have to "earn" the right to respec at will.

Doing dailies for over an hour to get 100 gold is not a trivial thing for me or countless other casual players.  I'm not saying I won't do it periodically, but I'm doing it to save up for something big like an elite mount, not the ability to respec when I want.

It sounds like a good idea, and it will make it a lot easier to switch between raid-ready, grind-ready, and PvP-ready, provided that one actually has the gear needed in each case.  Talents don't really mean that much if you're not geared, and getting the gear is still what's most time-consuming about the whole thing.  I'd go for free respecs, sure, but I'd also like enough bag space for 3 sets of gear (and I suppose we already have the mods for switching between the sets easily, even if that feature isn't supported by the Blizzard UI).

I think that free respecs is like giving everyone 122 talent points instead of 61; they might as well do that and save us the trouble of having to click/reclick.  Also, remember that some talents give you rank 1 of a spell, and you then have to go to the trainer to get ranks 2-6 or whatever, so respeccing won't be "instant" for everyone.

Other than prolonging subs...

Allowing characters to have 2/3 the talents all the time is a pretty big change that would throw balance way out the door.  This might not be a big deal for a lot of classes but think about a Paladin that is specced in both heavy healing and protection.

Gear is a big deal, but for Paladins that would be huge thing towards unbalancing themselves.  Hell, druids could do Boomkin/Feral?

Jumping from just allowing a certain build at a time to having 2 builds all the time together is a pretty big leap.

I don't see how free respecs would really change gameplay at all if you still had to go to a trainer. That would preclude silly on-the-fly respecs and keep the analogy from breaking, for what that's worth.

I'm under no illusions that WoW is some kind of roleplaying mecca, but I think there is more to the immersion thing than you give it credit for.

In this case specifically I'm thinking of identity issues.  My main is a 70 frost mage.  That's how I identify my character in the game, and it defines some stuff I can do and what I'm good at.  If respecs were free, it would only make sense to say that I have a 70 mage.  What do you want me to specialize in today?  To me that removes some of the individuality of the character.

That very issue is why some games don't (or didn't) allow respecs at all; if you don't like your build, roll a new character. That has merit, but the downside of course is that you don't know how to play, by definition, when you are making the choices that matter.  So how do you balance the two requirements?  Make it painful, but not too painful, to respec.  Sure, there are people who "abuse" the system by having enough time to play that they can have their cake (big ticket items like epic mount) and eat it too (respec all the time).  IMO, that's more a problem than a feature that I'd want to see made available to the masses.

I don't see the problem here.  No one would be forcing players to respec.  If you like your toon the way it is, don't change it.

I have a crazy idea, why not just make the specs more balanced such that they are viable in BOTH environments?  Oh, I know why... because YOU CAN'T HAVE BALANCED PVP WHEN IT'S NOTHING MORE THAN A PLAY SYSTEM TACKED ON TO A PVE GAME!

 :grin:

That's a lot more work than free respecs, particularly with the whole new class coming.

People always complain about the ability of other players to make choices. The whole get-off-my-grass everyone-does-as-I-do-so-I-can-win crap. Screw that noise. Nobody's going to quit WoW if they implement free respec. There's no logical reason why this'd be a universally bad thing. And there's a bunch of logical reasons why they should do it.

Unfortunately, there's also the big $$$ reason why they probably don't see the need to ;)

Not to drag this out too much, but mages are one of the classes that would benefit the least from free respecs.  I don't see a driving need to have them change around really.

Can you DPS with any build?
Can you AOE with any build?
Can you sheep with any build?
Yep, you're good.

Although, I can foresee an issue with Frost Mages in the upcoming expansion.  Seems like all those new creatures living in the frozen north might not be all that affected by cold spells.

I see this as a boon to healers and tanks only really.  The Hybrids would be affected the most really.

Well, my new main is a warrior, so I would benefit from it, but I still don't like it.  There is some persistence to the game, some worldiness to an otherwise very game-y product, and I like that part.  I'm not a fan of any move toward being more gamey and less worldy.

I'd probably be more open to it if it were like Planetside with their 24 hour timer, but free respec.  What would you think of that? 

Time limit wouldn't be a big deal if that was the compromise I'd have to take.  I tend to go more towards gamey than worldly though so I'd rather it just be open and free.

We'll just agree to disagree on this.  I used to care more for the "wordly" part of MMO's, but with age and responsibility (kids, etc) creeping in on me that has faded.  I look to MMO's for more of a quick sessional fix, but long term persistence.  That's why anything that gets in the way of me logging in and getting something done in an hour session hurts my enjoyment of the game.

Free respecs would help in just one aspect of this with tailoring groups on the fly to speed up instance startups.  It just irks me to see my guild having 10-20 people logged in every single night, but not a single instance being done.  I just feel there needs to be more reasons we can group together rather than can't.

Seems like an easy fix would be to create an item that grants a free respec and either have it drop (mob or quest loot) or perhaps have it craftable by engineers (since they don't have much to do as it is). 

I think respecs should be conviently obtained but they should require some mechanism to obtain such that the decisions in respeccing are still at least minimally meaningful. 

Have them drop off the last boss of heroics like Nethers. That would work for me.

Only the elite get to play, eh?

Heroics aren't that hard.. really.  If you've got blue gear, you can run them just not in quest greens.  The cockblock used to be the grind for rep, but with the change to 'honored' you can get the key just doing quests while leveling.

You know, I understand you hate my raiding politics, but COME ON. Heroics? They are five mans for god's sake. If you do nothing but solo all the time, why the hell would you care about respeccing so much?

Heroics, except for maybe some of the level 70 5 mans, really aren't that hard at all.  You just need to devote half your attention to the instance instead of just dozing through it. 

PUGing them could suck, sure, but it's not like that's any different than running them non Heroic. 

I'd actually like to point out that, for the first time, I ran some of the Tempest Keep heroics last night.

They aren't as hard as the others.

Seriously.


I don't know if it's because the 'Normal' versions were quite challenging or what, but I breezed through Botanica.  Odd.

Heroic Botanica is perhaps one of the easiest ones (the satyr boss can be nasty). Heroic Mech isn't too hard either... but the first boss in Heroic Arc was a horrible, scarring experience.  :ye_gods:

For other heroics, Slave Pens / Steamvault / Ramparts [for the most part] are also easy, but I don't want to pug Shadow Labyrinth / Crypts / Durnholde / Black Morass / Shattered Halls, ever.


-- Z.

I never want to run Shattered Halls ever again, never mind Heroic.

It's the worst one they made for the expansion.  And the end boss gives me headaches due to the fucking lava you fight over.

Considering I'm suggesting free respecs due to the fact it is difficult to get groups formed, I really don't support making grouping be the requirement for free respecs.  If you are able to get a group together and run a heroic quest, free respecs probably isn't a big deal to you.

I almost suggested that, or making a sellable or craftable token, but I realized that those solutions are just layers of complexity on top of what we already have. 

In the time you run an instance to get a respec token, you could have farmed 50g for a respec under the current system.  If you have to craft or buy it, that's just a variation on the current pay-directly-to-NPC-vendor system.


On another note, I think I came up with my core objection to it, weak as you may believe it to be: it doesn't fit with the tone of the game as I see it.  That's hard to put into concrete terms because it's more of an artistic, fuzzy, gut feeling sort of answer, but there it is.

It's not whether Heroics are easy or hard enough to support a drop-based respec system. It's just how much that breaks down into "time". It could take someone 25g worth of time to get a Heroic run group together. So keep the current system and do the drop.

And yes, soloers want to respec too, just because they can.

People always say Heroic Mech is easy, but I'll be damned if I know the secret to making those little bomb tossing demons not take out one of my group every pull without using a Lock or Priest to MC something to die for the cause. Please tell me, pretty please  :cry2:



Shattered Halls is the Paladin Tank instance. Where warriors and Druids are stressing, Paladins are hitting consecrate+holyshield and snoozing. 95% Melee mobs with little LoS protrusions to easily bring in the other 5% ranged/caster mobs? Sign me up.


The First boss in Heroic arc is basically saying "Tank have a shadow resist suit? No? Get one.". I don't think you actually 'need' one after a certain point gearwise, but it makes it a lot easier.


I think that's my issue with most of the heroics, the difficulty of the dungeon is greater then the gear it produces. Heroics are often 'easy' for the people who don't need the shit that drops in them. They also have too much of the 'You didn't bring a <whatever>? Welp, you're screwed" in class composition. Which is doubly frustrating since mostly the classes/specs that aren't the <whatever> are the ones that can only find gear in the heroic versions for the most part.

Only person in melee range should be your tank. And your tank should be running around in circles and hopping around, the bombs hit where their target was when they start their throw, so if you hop around enough you miss them. Have ranged burn them down one by one with focused fire, ranged stays a little bit apart from each other to avoid too much damage from the charge.

They only bomb people/pets that are within 10 or so yds.

I agree with this. I can't really see the greater survivability of a Frost Mage being that much of a "required/often" spec change from Fire, who's primary survivability is killing the target before it kills him. If you're dying a lot on Raids as a Fire spec, most like you're doing something wrong in a way that neither spec is going to significantly change your odds of not dying. And your function on that Raid is entirely independent of your spec. Mages DPS and sometimes CC.

That's very different from Tanks and Healers.

They are giving ALL mages ice-block in 2.3.2, so the "I don't have ice block, dude!" excuses fire mages have used in the past for dying on raids won't work anymore.

So if your DPS is mostly melee, your mostly screwed?  :|

Soloers might want to spec for farming and pvp differently.

How can I possibly hate your "raiding politics" when I have no idea what that means?  However, your attitude does bother me.

Are you really that unable to see that people who don't play the game the way you do might actually have good reason to respec?

Look, I don't begrudge you your raiding stuff - it's fine with me if you want to chiefly raid; I'm not advocating taking a thing away from you.  What do you care about my game?

I mentioned heroics as an option for a free respec because you have to do something to make it non-trivial. If you just give away one respec a day when you log in, what's the point of speccing at all? At that point, just remove specs from the game. I'd love that idea far and above "speccing" my toons. I hate the whole idea of that forced system into a certain playstyle for certain classes. The reason most people want to respec that much is because they are engaging in two different activities, often pvp/soloing and raiding instances. In that case, many tanks or healers are forced into specs to run instances, and they can't enjoy the rest of the game solo.

I can't really imagine people wanting to respec three to four times a week unless you were running in groups to acheive two different goals with mutually exclusive specs. Most of the dps I know can do just fine pvping and soloing and raiding in their spec without any shift. Feral Druids also don't seem to have any problems. Warriors, Priests, and Paladins are a different matter.

If you don't like having it heroics, make it a daily quest chain or something. I don't really care where you put it, just don't make it truly sit on your ass and do nothing for it free.

I agree - a quest would be fine.  What I didn't agree with is having it be necessary for people to run a heroic.

I'm fine with that as well.

I don't agree with a quest.  Well, I guess it would have to be a bombing run quest, because with anything involving killing, the very classes that that could use the respecs the most will have the most trouble getting them.

The discussion was really about making the respecs free, and I thought it was about that because we started with "let's make respecs easier" and then figured that there's no point in not going all the way to "completely free".  But I guess there are a few points, which is OK.

The easiest way to make respecs easier for Blizzard would be to reduce the fee, say from 50g max to 25g max.  They already have it set up where it incrementally goes from 1g to 25g, then stays at 25g for 10 respecs, then continues up to 50g where it stops, so they HAVE made it easier.  They could just cap it at 25g and it would be a nice change.

As far as quests, heroic drops, or other ways to make respecs "free" that still require work, I'd like to see them all added as options, all of them.   And it would still suck unless they make respecs collectible, so that in the course of normal gameplay over a month I can do a bunch of quests and heroics and collect 100 of the things and be set.

And honestly, if they do that, if they let me collect 100 respecs in a month for no effort other than regular gameplay, they might as well make them free.  Cause, regular gameplay, I'll do that on my own anyway.

Honestly, I don't understand why this has to be turned into an ordeal. Not everyone is a 70. There are reasons to want to respec at lower levels--maybe the lack of tanks might be solved if people had a chance to use a tank spec while tanking before they are 70?

Forcing you to go back into town and to the trainer is sufficient ordeal for a respec, particularly since most people are simply going to be switching between a solo and group friendly one.

Exactly.

Oddly enough, I found the pre-70 BC instances to often be harder then the lv70 ones; that's because I did them with my guild when we were leveling, and had fury warriors tanking along with feral druids / shadowpriests healing. Even if the only concession made was to have a 'pve instance spec' (holy, prot, restoration, combat) and a 'non-instance spec' (shadow, arms, elemental, subtlety) that automatically switched when you zoned and had separate respec costs, it'd help a lot.

Seriously, this problem REALLY hurts healers/tanks/hybrids.. and honestly, who wants a prot warrior outside of an instance?


-- Z.

Beating the dead horse here, but I just have to say again, I'm for free respecs.  Saying there is no place for specs at all if they are free doesn't make sense to me.  The only way they hold vaule is to make them cost gold to change?

As I said, the game doesn't change at all.  You have to go out of your way to go physically get the talents changed.  That's enough.  Now you are locked into a set of talents and choices before hitting an instance or going out to solo.  If you just let everyone do everything all the time, THAT would be hugely different from anything we have today.  The two suggestions aren't even close.  I don't understand the comment, "If they are free, you might as well get rid of them."

I really just don't understand the driving need to make respecs hurt.  So you want to keep an identity on your toon.  Great, keep it.  Just because it iis free doesn't mean you have to change it.  Yes, you will be asked to do so, but you can man up and hold your ground if you choose.

Yes, this really only affects warriors, paladins, and priests.  It could also affect Druids in that going fully resto really does hurt your solo career.

My ultimate issue is that if you choose to be a specific build that you enjoy when doing instances with a group, you automatically have to suffer the rest of the game because outside of a group, you are subpar.  I have a healadin and a holy priest.  I like to heal for my guild.  I enjoy it.  Yet, I'm a very casual player, so getting ahead in the game outside of doing instances is extremely tough/slow/boring. 

I constantly hear the question of why there aren't as many healers and tanks.  There is your answer.  While there are plenty of people wanting to fill those roles, their gametime outside of those roles has been made less than ideal.  I know this due to the comparison to my Rogue and Warlock.  Those two classes can go out and solo content quicker, more effeciently, and feel powerful the whole time doing it.  They are fun.

I'm not suggesting making those classes everything all the time.  I'm suggesting that they be given the opportunity once or twice a day to switch up and spec appropriately for what they are trying to do.  I will get more prolonged enjoyment out of those characters and the game.

Make it so you can change for free 1-2 times a day.  More will cost money.  That way if you want to stay in your spec, you can tell people that  "I already burned my free daily respec," so they leave you alone.  My vote is for 2 since I'd want to change to my solo respec and back again or vice versa on a daily basis.

My other favorite idea is choosing two builds and being able to switch between them for free.  This still requires a visit to a trainer, but does lock you into at least deciding what alternate build you want to choose.  The actual picking of talents for certain builds is what costs money, but toggling there after is free.

The point was that if your system is so stupid as to require someone to respec constantly just to be effective in the entire game, then you need to fix that system. Making it easier to respec isn't fixing the system; it's putting a band-aid on it. I'm not in favor of it because I'm not in favor of that as a solution. Respecs should remain costly and the specs themselves should change, not the other way around.

Prot warriors shouldn't exist. There is no reason why every warrior shouldn't start with these basic tanking abilities like shield slam and devestate. Just take that line out and replace it with another form of DPS, or add more dps abilities to that line.

Healers shouldn't have to spec healing either. It should be a given that they have the healing capabilities, and they should get to choose what kind of dps they can do like everyone else. Why is it that the other classes have 3 types of ways to spec dps, but we can't do that with the backbone classes of raiding?

Well, "free respecs" is easy to implement, and revamping several talent trees isn't.

I don't know about tanking, for priests, they ALL have all the healing capabilities regardless of spec.  What they get from holy-disc builds is 20% less threat, 15% bigger heals, and 15-20% more mana-efficient heals, but otherwise they all use the same spells (I'm not even gonna include lolwell and the other junk in this discussion).

Could Blizzard give all priests 20% less base threat, and boost their base healing spells by 35%?  Hell yeah, easily.  Everyone would cry foul, though, and ask for nerfs, and ask for a re-tune of the end-game content to be 30% more difficult. 

Ideally, I'd love to see Blizzard re-do the priest talent trees the following way: 

- Discipline should be about threat for all spells and mana regen and efficiency of all spells,
- Holy should be about Holy DPS only (and we should have a heck of a lot more holy DPS spells, less than but close to a mage's variety of choice),
- Shadow should be about shadow DPS only.

In addition, make Holy DPS spells function on the crit/burst-damage principle, and keep Shadow DPS spells on the DOTS/utility principle.  Let the healing spells function equally well in any spec, and make Discipline enhance aggro/mana/casting overall, not just holy or just shadow.  Like mage talents, dammit!  I don't want a mage's DPS, btw, just to be clear, I just want our talents to be organized the way theirs are, and I want a variety of holy DPS spells and a variety of shadow DPS spells, even if they are weak compared to a mage's.

I think it's been suggested on the priest forums, repeatedly, in detail, and long ago.  Think they'll do it?

What Ajax said.  I'm going for what I think they can do without much interruption to the game.  Revamping the trees for select classes is obviously another solution, but I wouldn't place a nickel bet on that EVER happening.

So, what I'm hearing is that given the choice of:

1.) Free Respec, no change to talent trees
2.) Keep Respecs as they are because you aren't making it so respecs are necessary overall.

You choose 2?

In either case respecs are made trivial.  One way just isn't the method you prefer so ignore the issue?  I don't understand that.

I do understand what are saying about the talent trees being as they are.  I just don't think we'll see any improvement there anytime soon.  Am I a proponent for them, yes.  Do that and I don't care about free respecs.

Nobody chooses 2. It's simply what the status quo is. I don't don't want them choosing 1 as a fix because it doesn't address the problem.

Specs suck as they are right now. Respeccing all the time proves this. People constantly dumping cash into the system just to be effective isn't the answer.

Talents are the worst thing in WoW.  They should ALL be converted to base class skills, the the classes should be balanced as necessary.  When customization and fun conflict, fuck customization in the eye.

Don't like doing things that exist only to waste your time?

Wow is not for you.

Wasting your time is fine, but I think specs hurt that more than help it. I'd probably try to play more and pvp if I could, but I'm a prot tank and I don't want to have to play the swap dance 5 times a week.

I think their answer is Hero classes; the shadowknight with them runes seems designed to be able to switch "specs" on the fly.  Dunno if they'll even have talent trees.  And, depending on how similar their next MMOG is to this one, they may start using WoW to test "features" of the upcoming MMOG, like CCP is doing with the "avatars inside the space stations" stuff for EVE.

Seeing things go from "awesome, differences" to "omfg specs are stupid!" in just 3 years is amusing.

One of the bitches about EQ used to be that every warrior, rogue, druid, etc was the same.  From gear, to play to spells.  Specs were implemented to allow some difference and some flavor to each class.  The idea was that each spec made that player 'unique' and played a bit differently from the other players of the class.

Of course, like all good ideas, the min/maxers came in and gangfucked it into a sad, gibbering set of rigid guidelines where 'this sucks' and 'that's ok.'   The same thing would happen if all spec talents were core abilities.  Only the 'uber' abilities would get used, and you'd be a tool for using the other ones.

Talents were supposed to be unique but powerful attributes for definining your chacacter, but it also means certain specs are shoehorned into a role or gimped in other roles because of their spec.  Gee, sounds like it's working right to me.   Your talents have defined your character. Your role is now 'X' 'Y' or 'Z'.  Change spec and it's a different role.

The biggest problem is once again min-maxing and designing encounters and content based around that.  If Tank-SpecX, Healer-SpecY and DPS-SpecQ are able to crush content in a god-like fashion, it'll be designed around that group.  Meaning TSy, HSz and DSr are fucked because they're less optimal.  They don't seem to give a damn about that in 5-mans, but for raids it suddenly matters.

That's before you get ito PVP, but if you don't Min-Max in PVP you're just messing around anyway and probably don't care as much.  :awesome_for_real:

I'd like to be able to choose my role based on my gear. Not based on my spec. That's where the specs fail. I have plenty of dps warrior gear, but my spec puts me at a huge disadvantage to using it in raids. How great would it be for all warriors to be able to tank when needed and dps when not, like druids in feral? That's what I want. Viability so we don't have to swap out people in raids for tanks and healers or more dps.

It seems like the really bad problem is that some specs can't solo.  As it is now, some of those healing or tanking roles are mutually exclusive of being able to do anything on your own, and doing things solo is part of the fundamental appeal of WoW.

I know this is just another variation on the "fix the specs" argument, but what if you could effectively solo with a pure tanking build?  A pure healing build?  A pure PvP build?  Then respecs would only be necessary to switch to a polar opposite sort of role, like DPS to healing or PvP to PvE.

I think they planned the stances to be your switching roles on Warriors.  It missed horribly though since being really good at any of the roles meant diving so deep into one branch of the talent tree doomed you to that life.  The difference in stances are not even close to overcoming the talents you choose.

We've had this argument of min/max ruling the game.  It happens in every game that has come out.  I've said before, that they should just accept the fact that players will find the best template and just use that to death.  Why give them those options?  Just make the classes all the same.

The options should not come  in the way of changing roles or effectivity.  The options should play to the players sense of style, interests outside of combat, interests in the lore, etc.  Make the choices you have only effect your look, your clothing styles, your attitude, your walk, your background/lore.  Make those choices be non critical to combat or your central game component that drives everything else.  If you want to make the choices more important, then make them only involve the utility spells/abilities.  Players can choose how helpful they want to be to either themselves or the group.  Think adding some oomph to crafting skills (Blacksmith gets +1 to all magic items he/she makes to all stats on that item.  Cook can make food/drinks that give even better stat/effect bonuses.  Medic can make more effective bandages than others.)  Think travel (move faster, transport, summon, etc.)  Think death/res (easier ressurections, mass resurrections, double soulstones, etc.)  The number of ideas are endless.

As said, the items can be the thing that makes people stand out in one way or another in certain roles.  If you want to min/max, do so with the item system.  That makes you play the game.  Spec's just make you find that one sweet spot that everyone else copies.  A huge pool of items with minute tweaks on stats and effects like they have along with minute changes you can make with enchantments, gems, and oils/stones is where people can tailor the combat system to their liking.  I'd like to see them add in more crafting tweaks that would take this massive system to another level.

I don't think they will do any of this.

Make respecs free.  :awesome_for_real:

Holy feature creep out the ass, Dren.  That stuff may be fun and roses in a 'world' game, but in a 'game' game they get goofy.  Not to mention all the balancing and tweaking and shit that'd get done around it.

Look, specs define a 'role'  The biggest problem is for some classes, it over-defines it and creates a weakness. (Healers, & tanks)  Expanding/ tweaking those specs so they're at least viable in other aspects is a far bigger win than tossing out the system, imo. (First time I've EVER seen folks say "we don't want choice! Make us uniform and bland!")

I treat specs as a way of changing the way my character plays. As a rogue this is fine, but for a lot of classes it isn't - one of the reasons I like rogues. It's the closest thing WoW has to the ability to reroll at max level.

You had a choice. There were nine classes to begin with. You picked one and played it. Then, you get to the max level and decide what your role will be. Will you solo for crafting mats and gold? Will you raid? Will you pvp? You collect gear along those lines to better define your character. That's enough choices. That's all the choices I need. I don't need to shoehorn myself into a role due to my spec. That's not a choice, it's a burden.

I prefer having a ton of options in the spec trees, and not have gear be so damn crucial like it is in WoW. Some templates are severely underpowered without the best and hardest to find armor and weapons. Base stats/specs in and of themselves mean little, and I hate this game because of it (eh, among other things, I mean).

On one had you seem to be saying you want the freedom to be many things at once, and on the other hand you seme to be saying "instead of limited by specs we shou be limited by class".

I really see the point.

I'm kind of in both camps here, but I don't think the issue is the choices themselves, but that you can choose to specialize an already specialized class. I believe it would have been far better to make the traditional "trinity" roles have some very specific base skills that defined their PvE role, then had three trees of choices that -didn't- improve their base skills. Warriors without Protection and Priests without Holy.

Give them three flavours of damage and utility, just like Mages got. They could incorporate different improvements to the base role skill set, but not in the way current trees do, not one tree for each possible role, because their role is already set in PvE. They get to add something on top of what they already are, not significantly expand it. Paladins and Druids get the advantage of being able to tweak their trinity roles, as they are essentially both hybrids.

You would still get min/max builds, that's inevitable, but playing in the trees won't gimp your primary PvE role to the point where you can no longer efficiently perform it. Most classes (save hybrids) have flavours of damage/utility, but that's because that's their role. You can't have three healing trees or three tanking trees. Priests should kick ass at healing from the get go, it shouldn't be a choice when you've picked the class that says "Zomg, I R healer" all over it. People know what the classes are about and they don't really need to be able to change their mind about their class' fundamental function. If they didn't know, it'll appear to them by level 20, long, long before any real talent builds come into play. Talent builds do very little for the retention of new players, they're too clueless to know whether their choices are good anyways.

Furthermore, both warriors and priests, the would-be specialists, deserve being a little "better" overall than other classes, considering their importance to the game's core gameplay, the Diku. If that would make them more attractive as choices when rolling new characters, all the better, as most realms are low on these roles as it is.

I want the freedom to participate in all aspects of the game, not be many things at once. Some classes get to do this with impunity. Some don't. The only barrier to that is SPECS.

Warriors cannot heal. Mages cannot tank or heal.

There is no such freedom to participate in all aspects of the game. Without talents classes would be even more limited.

Unless you want to change the game funadamentally. Which wont happen. It's Wow. It has shitty things like levels, tank/dps/heal, etc, etc.

Deal with it.

I don't think that is what Paelos means.


Like your a warrior, but your not arms? 'Why are you even trying to PVP' kind of freedom (or lack of).

Well, my point by saying all that was that all of that IS pie in the sky and won't be implemented.  That's why I'm suggesting something that is easy and gets done what I want done.  That was my point.  It isn't the final solution, but I want something to change and if that is my choice, do it.

We aren't saying "we don't want choice!"  How is saying giving people a choice to spec how they want, but lock them into it so they play one specific role and no other role having choice?  That is much more restricting than saying you can be adequate in all aspects, so go choose to do something different today.

This is an item-centric game.  Pretty much any game out today is item-centric.  That is where the differences are.  That is what makes your warrior_234 different from warrior_432.  Expand that and go with it.  Talents should just allow you to show your interest in a specific area, but not make you worthless in others.  As said, many classes don't have this problem (Druids, Rogues, Warlocks, etc.)  Why make it a problem for the key roles that are necessary for a functional group? (Priests, Warriors, etc.)

What the hell are you talking about? Seriously, I don't know how I can make this any clearer to you. When I say aspects of the game I mean grouping, raiding, soloing, and pvping. That's WoW in a nutshell. Many classes have the freedom to do all of these without limits. A few don't because they are totally gimped by their specs. A prot warrior could never pvp effectively. A healy priest can't solo for shit. That's what I'm referring to.

Do you get it now? Do I have to dumb it down another shade? It has nothing to do with wanting to heal or tank. It has everything to do with opening the game up for the few classes who actually carry most of the load in the raiding game. That's not a fundamental change. That's simply revamping the current ridiculous specs. I'd love for specs to go away forever, but I realize that is unrealistic.

I think he gets it but doesn't agree with you, no sense re-explaining it.

It would have been nice if all WoW classes started as DPS classes at their core, and then the ability to tank, heal, and CC were secondary abilities.  And then, if the only thing that could be changed via talents was the flavor of DPS that your class could do.  Priests would have been mages-with-healing (mages: DPS-with-CC), warriors would have been melee-DPS with taunt abilities (as opposed to rogues: melee DPS with CC), and so on.

May have been a different game though.  Isn't WAR trying to do this, every class DPS'es at its core, etc?

Well, it makes sense considering EVERYTHING about the game requires DPS to succeed outside of crafting. (Except for the fact that many items are only obtained through .... DPS.) 

I can't think of any one quest where you get to Taunt or Heal Your Way to Victory!  (Excluding the medic quest to cap 300 skill.)

1. Remove buffs and buff specialist classes.  Focusing on target debuffs is more proactive and often more fun.

2. Give everyone the ability to self heal.  Having one person that does nothing but stare at health bars while spamming keys is a mistake.  Allow players to make the tough choice of knowing when to heal and when to dps. 

3. Every class should have at least one type of useful cc (I think they have this one covered).  ALL CC SHOULD BREAK WITH DAMAGE (especially in pvp). 

4.  ALL CC NEEDS AN IMMUNITY TIMER.  Being perma-stunned/mezzed/rooted sucks.

5. If you give any class the ability to become hyper-specialized, the playerbase will find a way to use this hyperspecialization to their advantage.  The cry for free respecs is proof of this.  Players want to be hyperspecialized for every available situation rather than accepting the cost-benefit of a versatile spec vs a specialized one.     

Shamans don't.

So you don't mean for them to each to be able to do these things equally well? Just to be able to do them moderately well?

Fair point. But I think those issues don't stem from talents per se, but rather from general skill design and game mechanics. Which are rather too fundamental to change at this point.

If everything can DPS then the things that can DPS and do something else will become better... unless you force usefulness in some way. See Shadow Priests and Warlocks in early TBC. Mages were only useful for Sheep, Rogues mostly useless, while Druids Tanks were preferred over Warriors and Pallies over other healers.

Now, if you just want everyone to be able to do everything in the way Paelos said.. they can righ now. They just have to spec a specific way and will not necessarily be better at it than another class.

Talent removal will not fix the issues you have. You'll just have them with the classes themselves. Then they'll give each class all the talented abilities, have to rebalance the entire game, and end up with a situation where one class is clearly better than another in every way, thus pissing off a significant portion of the player base in a far more substantial way than your current complaint.

Anyway, like ajack said. I understand your complaint, I just think you're being very narrow sighted about the game mechanics.

I wasn't sure here... my shaman is tauren and they get the racial.  They also get a snare totem (which I consider to be cc).  Splitting hairs here, I guess.

And.. FROST SHOCK!

Useful CC for a instance/group. My druid has 3 casted forms of CC. All moot in 90% of dungeons.

I think PVP is the main concern of Shamans. That snare is pretty much useless. Druids, on the other hand.. Well, both hibernate and the root are on a regular use basis. Bread and butter skills. Never played enough to get the cyclone thing, but that looks just as useful too.

Yeah, I always felt that sucked for Druids. There's a lot of stuff that needs tightening -- as a Hunter I have several aspects that are uniformly pointless, and two useless traps, but at least some of them are okay pretty much anywhere.

I agree, but it goes further than that.  It isn't the players that want to be hyperspecialized.  They designed the game so that if you don't have those hyperspecialized characters in your group for instances, you will fail or at least have a really hard time of it.  Because of this, groups won't pick you up if you have some kind of "this build just feels right" variety because after the 3rd wipe, people tend to get pretty pissy.

Tanks - get hurt so quickly they either can't be healed in time before death or burn through the healers mana too quickly.
Healers - not big enough heals or they are constantly running out of mana.

Sometimes you can deal with one or the other, but if you have both?  Failure.  If you are talking about Heroics or 10-man or higher, don't even try.

I was thinking "nobody will just DPS and everybody will be able to "do something else".  The classes that don't have "tank" or "heal" as the "something else" will definitely have CC (which could be debuffs, or movement-impairing abilities).  No pure DPS'ers, every class does about the same damage, and everyone DPS'es while they do other things.  Depending on the encounter, your tank could focus on keeping aggro, your healer could elect to use his mana for heals, and your CC'er could mash buttons to keep several mobs frozen, but at any given moment they could switch to burn-it-down! mode instantly, because the DPS (primary mode) part of their class doesn't get diminished or disabled by their secondary abilities.

Tanking would have to be changed from a passive ability to an active one, so that it's the same as healing or CC'ing.  The tank would normally be an otherwise-easy-to-kill DPS class; no ungodly armor, no extreme stamina, no passive doge, parry, shield block, etc.  If he chooses to tank, then yeah he can activate damage reduction / absorbtion abilities, he can use rage to fuel short-term stances to parry / hide behind shield, or cast short term immunities, whatever, but he won't be doing DPS while he does that, and it's all activated, nothing passive.

It's not as funny if you don't link the vid.. I'm sure most have forgotten or never seen it by now.   (I'd link it but I'm at work and youtube is blocked.)

What are you hibernating in PvP these days? Not having it tied to Control of Nature (Balance Talent) combined with the 'all PvP CC is 10 seconds now!' and new mend pet on hunters makes it pretty darn useless most of the time. Catching another druid with it is nearly as difficult. In TBC, I use it on the odd ray in heroic slavepens and to stop the random animal from interupting my herb harvesting.

I only use it for herb nodes because Soothe Animal is a giant pile of ass compared to Soothe Mind. (Long ago they had to nerf Soothe Mind because people were using it to farmsploit instances to quickly, so they gave it a cast time and a chance on resist. When they did this, they also did the same to Soothe Animal, for umm, completeness sake I suppose. Well a little later, they un-nerfed Soothe Mind and made it instant again, keeping the chance to resist... but they never undid the change to Soothe Animal. To this very day, this vexes me!)


Cyclone is mostly a way to get people to break their keyboards in frustration in PvP. The only way to break it, is via your PvP trinket. Nothing else can do it. Not even a Paladin Shield or a Mass Dispel. Six Seconds, 3 Seconds, 1 Second, Immune till DR refreshes. When something is cycloned, nothing goes through to it, be it damage or heals. It's part of why Resto druids are such Giant PiTA's in 2v2 arena.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpoGKw6L4cM (http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpoGKw6L4cM)