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From WoWinsider, interesting, if unsurprising look at talent spreads.

Link to WoWInsider Article (http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/05/03/armory-data-popular-and-unpopular-specs)

That's pretty much expected as far as I can see.

I think it is the first real use of the armory I've seen yet.

Whoa, hang on ?  Dark Pact least popular ?  I love Dark pact !

 :cry:

76% of (holy) priests skipping Improved Death & LOLwell and 83% skipping Circle of Manablow.   Who'd have thought? 75% skipping Pain Supression surprised me until I remembered IT CAN BE FUCKING DISPELLED.  :roll:

5.1% of hunters spec survival.. and then skip the Wyvern Sting talent.. buh?  I can understand skipping the insta-cooldown one, since it affects so very few skills.

Any mages care to enlighten me why the 41-point arcane talent blows so much?

Slow ?  Isn't it dispellable too

Slow is it?  See I didn't know what it actually was and didn't go looking it up.

Dispellable or not, seems a waste as a mage spell when you can just cast some ice that does damage AND slows.  That explains it then, thanks.

lolwut? Feral is the preferred leveling and grouping (tanking) spec considering most people don't like being a healer.  Plus you can do decent DPS in cat form.  It's not a really the best PVP spec by a long shot.  I guess he said that since the most popular spec isn't the healbitch, which funny enough is probably the best arena spec.   Feral is simply the talent spec that makes the most sense for any druid that isn't a poopsocker.

The popular "dreamstate" build is probably what's skewing the druid 41pt talent numbers for balance/resto.  Trees being mostly a pvp/solo pve gimmick and tree form's utility being questionable doesn't hurt either.

Kind of surprised that most priests are holy.  Shadow is just so strong right now.

I'm staying shadow on my priest when I hit 70.  I was looking to go Holy for the guild, but I'm not so sure that would really help them.  I can put out some crazy DPS and heal as shadow right now.  Plus, it is 10x more fun than holy imo.  I'm surprised holy is more popular too.

It slows attacking and casting speed too, an d it's instant/no cooldown.

But totally useless in BC. In the "old world" you could cast it on most bosses in MC and BWL. Now all the new bosses seem to be immune to it. And it lasts about 5 seconds in any organized PvP before it gets dispelled.

That article's missing some of the interpretation that the guy who did the research actually posted on the priest forums as he posted his results, namely that when he's saying "percent that skipped the 31/41 point talent" he means people that put 31 points into the tree, but avoided the actual 31 pt talent, and chose something else from the tree instead.  He's not talking about priests who went shadow because holy sucks, he's saying that "of those priests that put 31 or more points into holy, 76% avoided the lightwell talent like the plague."

Link to original on the WoW general discussion board. (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=100510812&sid=1&pageNo=1)

I just cancelled my sub but before I did I went holy to see if that would keep me in the game, man does it suck.  I basically had to sit in a city until I got a group because I was next to worthless outside of an instance.  I could barely kill the mob that spawns when I create a piece of spellcloth.  I would have had to bring up a hunter alt to farm for me if I stayed holy.

I like healing a lot but the price is too high.  I just don't understand blizzard's insistence that they will never allow some system of multi specs.  Everyone should be able to have three specs which take effect based on your location.  A world spec that you have to use when outside, an instance spec which takes effect on entry to a group/raid zone, and a PvP spec that takes over if you are in a battleground or arena.  What is the harm in that?

I was a FEMALE dwarf holy priest, and pretty much quit the game after the expansion. It sucks and gets no love. My rogue wasn't much better.

Holy is mostly worthless, this is nothing new.  My hybrid Holy/Disc build (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alleria&n=Sabilene) has let me farm plenty well, however.  (Granted, nowhere near as well as pure shadow did.)   The only part that sucks is needing to store two sets of gear, one for healing one for soloing.  (The profile is my current damage gear.)   So far I'm at +1005 in healing stuff, and have yet to pickup the mooncloth robe or a few other good, easy upgrades from quests in Shadowmooon & Netherstorm (I ground instances for 68 & 69, so I have both zones to go through.)

One thing I WILL bitch about, however, is mana cost.  I need to go back and run an actual comparison, but just from healing instances in the last week (I hit 70 on the priest last Thursday) I notice that I'm going OOM a fuckton faster than pre-BC, and actually NEED to pop potions and Shadowfiend in simple non-heroic boss fights.   I think the higher-rank heals are actually LESS mana efficient than their old version.  That's fucked up.

Shadow is fun and soloable, yet more priests are holy. THANK YOU, RAIDING ENDGAME.

Fuck that noise. I wouldn't do a Discipline spec because there's just not much there that isn't meant to support other specs, and Holy means you get to be everyone's heal bitch.

Unless I'm mistaken, a lot of priests are shadow for raiding now.  It's a more desirable spec due to utility + dps.  Paladins, shaman, and druids seem to be the ones forced into healing roles currently.  This is all what I've read/heard though, I don't have firsthand knowledge of the raid scene anymore.

lol @ all the warriors in Prot spec. Have fun with that nonsense.

I looked up a few of the priests in the uberguilds on my server, one of whom had a world first bosskill around Naxx, and they looked mostly holy.  As such, wasn't sure how much of that is theorycrafting and how much is reality.  My sample size was really small though (5 folks) and I dobuted I'd done enogh reseach until I read this poll.  (fucking slow as hell armory)

Nobody needs another DPS class in a raid but healers are as rare as ever and therefore needed. Even the ones with crappy talents.

IMO, Priest/ Pally is the best main heal combo for the small raids. (At least until the Insp. nerf)  Druids go OOM PDQ tossing big heals instead of regens, and shaman are good multi-healers with chain heal, but all I've ever heard is how mana inefficient their single target is.

Yeah, I think that's the case right now because a shadow priest will provide DPS, and mana to paladins who then can heal (and can deal with aggro better).  I think they'll nerf the whole mana thing and paladin healing, though, in the next patch, so we'll see who ends up being required to heal after the patch.

Edit: maybe not.  The quotes at the top show 54% of priests holy, 13% discipline, and 33% shadow, and these are L70 characters, so supposedly they're end-game (raiding, or PvP).  Not sure what the ratios were pre-BC, for L60's.

Raid specs for Healing Priests: 23/38/0 for the Divine Spirit bitch(es) and 20/41/0 for everyone else. You have a Shadow Priest or two around to help the healers out (along with a tree Druid in the tank group) and that's pretty much it. Shadow Priests are probably on the top of the niche support food-chain though. Also, the only change they're making with regards to VT/VE is that Paladins won't receive mana back from being overhealed. They're still getting a ton of mana back from regular VT (or when they actually get healed).

On Pain Suppression, I honestly rarely see it dispelled in arena games (and you're going to have the dispell resist talent anyway), in a crowd of people it looks just like PW: Shield (except for the blue shields around the middle). From the top arena teams that actually have a Priest though, they're all 41+ in Holy with Circle of Healing: it's just such a big boost to HPS that it doesn't really matter... since you're going to die first anyway :(.

It's basically the spec if you don't give a shit about pvp. I don't, and I happen to enjoy tanking instances with groups of people I know. Oh and phat lewts or some shit.

http://www.geekboys.org/arena/ is another site that uses the Armory to find the most popular specs in top arena teams.

Kind of surprised to see the shaman specs, there.  As far as I'm aware, restoration is generally the demanded raiding spec, elemental is generally the PvP spec, and ehnancement is the solo grinding spec... yet on that sheet they're pretty evenly balanced, with enhancement being the most popular by a slight margin.  Is there some raiding role for lv.70 enhancement shamans that I'm not aware of?  Or are we talking about a third of all shamans getting to 70 and quitting before they respec, or something?

Some people don't raid.

Yeah, so what are they doing, I mean?  Maybe I'm reading the tree wrong, but to me it looks mostly like enhancement is tilted towards efficient DPS, which is not really the most sought after role in PvE groups (since other, very common classes can do it better) or in group PvP (where "efficient" doesn't count for a whole lot).  I just respecced out of enhancement because I felt like a third wheel in every group I joined, and I wasn't aware that there was that much solo content at 70.

Shadow is a mixed bag.  I played shadow for a long time, but am actually doing a Holy DPS build for fun right now.  The problem with shadow is that its all about DPS, and has low burst damage (this was helped a little with the inclusion of Shadow Word Death).  For pvp, burst damage is king, and in the wild melee of target switching that is PvP, you rarely have time to get vampiric embrace up and do much damage to that target.  You also burn through your mana really fast, and healing becomes much more difficult and mana consuming (which is bad, because heailng in PvP is a major scale tipper).  In short, Shadow I have always felt is a PvE spec.  Its good for grinding and good for Raiding.  Many people just PvP end game in WoW for their entertainment.

I can actually do some insane burst DPS with surge of light right now.  I often get it to chain proc, letting me hit a warrior one time for about 1900 damage 5 times in a row in the course of 4 seconds.  Single handedly dropping him that fast was good times.  Of course, they are fixing that bug next patch, which will really suck.

A lot of the top end guilds have switched over to running with 1 holy priest and 2-3 shadow priests. Holy priests just don't bring much to the table that Paladins, Druids, or Shaman can't do as well or better whereas shadow priests bring something no one else can give (mana battery) and with the length of fights in 25 mans it's becomes and more and more beneficial to have shadow priests for all your healers and casters. A lot of middle and lower tier guilds take longer to catch on to the "new trends" and are still stacking holy priests out of sheer pre-tbc habit when holy priests were the best healers.

The mana a shadow priest provides is just...insane. Divide a shadow priests dps by 4 and that's how much mp5 they provide to each group member. Raid buffed I'm usually running a minimum of 800 dps..that's 200 mp5 to every member of my group. At this point in time, shadow priests are actually one of the most desirable members of a raid. They are niche no longer for raid leaders that know how to use them. They do extremely good dps and their mana battery alone is enough utility to outshine most other classes. It's just a matter of guilds learning the value of shadow priests.

Also of note is that there is a small problem of the data that seems to have not been mentioned in thread. The guy who came up with the data mixed up the Warlock affliction talents and had another talent set as the 31 point talent instead of Dark Pact which is why it came out as unpopular.

I was sure it had to be something like that.  Dark Pact is just awesome.

Further, I'm Prot Spec and always have been.  I have no fucking idea what you're talking about with the 'that nonsense' comment.  Really.

I lol at the fury/arms warriors trying to hold aggro.  We all got a boost in the last patch for threat, but before that it was a real fucking joke.  Prot was 100% neccesary unless you're group was tight.

I imagine prot and holy talents being so prevalent is not so much about raiding, and more about heroics. I know a lot of warriors who have told me they don't even bother with most heroics unless they're prot as it's just too painful. Priests... well it's not because of power that they are holy. Holy is viable but shadow is seen as equally viable in everything but 5v5 arena. I've been getting lots of "wanna come mech? if you shadow?" these days because people are catching on that shadow priests rock, and I even got a kara invite the other day from a guild wanting to take a shadow priest. I guess a lot of priests just want to actually heal, and the "zomg I want to DPS" priests were just the vocal minority all this time?

For me... I'm actually liking shadow now when I never did before. I guess the "lol shadow" part of me wasn't against shadow persay, but against what I saw as an unviable spec. I still would rather be holy because I prefer healing, but having a viable dps build is nice for when you need/want it. Right now for instance I'm specced PVP shadow because our 3v3 is mage/enh shaman(gearing up for elem)/holy paladin/me and it just didn't work the first day we tried it with me being holy. Soon as I specced shadow we pushed our win/loss to ~2/1 and we haven't played together for half a year. As an aside I totally rape paladin healer teams, in seconds I can have 4+ debuffs on everyone in their team with 16% dispell resistance and I'm pretty good at dropping the mass dispell on their shield. We've also moved away from the focus fire method for these teams, if we split dps focus between 2 players and the 3rd taking dot damage it's just way too hard for the paladin to keep up while having a really good shaman locking them down and soon enough someone dies. Hardest team so far has been UA warlock, shadow priest, warrior. It's just really hard to keep people alive against them.

A lot of the appeal of shadow in heroics is that mind control is just such a good cc/dps spell, you can take one of the very dangerous trash mobs out of the fight, let the mobs kill it while doing insane amounts of dps = win.  And i guess it works better for shadow priests or something.

Besides damage approaching non-combat rogues, improved windfury/grace of air and a pretty much constant 10% increase to your group's melee attack power?

Nope, can't think of why anyone would bring one to a raid.

Every smart raid leader wants one.

Not sure what kind of gear most shadow priests roll around with, but I imagine the Mind Controll works better for Shadow Priests comes from the fact that:
Shadowpriests prefer lots of +damage and +hit on their gear (since crit is only margianally usefull, due to lack of crittable spells)
Holy/Disc priests prefer lots of +heal and +crit (since they spend their time healing, and +hit is meaningless because you cant miss a heal)

Anyone who did naxx raiding would probably have figured out that the single key to getting the max efficiency out of MC (for Tanking Instructor) is +hit (spell penetration has no effect, +hit helps land the spell, and keep it up when the resist check ticks come for breaking early)

So since shadowpriests probably roll with lots of +hit, they get full duration out of MC more often.

Absofuckingloutly.  Which is why I told my Guildleader he was a dipshit for demanding any shaman who wanted to raid be resto.  Fucker finally stepped down.

True, they do try to get +hit for mind control, but as I recall, Shadow Affinity also helps alot in that regard, which is why they have a bonus to it.

It's Resto or go home, currently. But they've said they wanted an Enhancement shaman, so I'll start snagging some of that gear.

I showed up to a raid as Elemental the other day - Totem of Wrath, the whole 9. I said to the raid leader in whispers 'don't you want to put me in the group with the mages for the totem of wrath?' and he said 'there is no place on my raid for elemental shaman, so no'.

Yay.

Tell your raid leader:

a) to think outside of the box since he's a hidebound retard
b) to go peruse Death and Taxes, Nihilum, Fires of Heaven Armory profiles to see precisely how many EVIL shaman specs they bring
c) that you quit

Elementals are a little iffy but still bring such amazingly good gear overlap that I could totally fit one in a raid. One Enhancement is such a must have that I'm floored people are still thinking thumbs down on them.

Are you horde? I've heard that horde guilds are way less flexible about shaman specs than their alliance counterparts; most of the forums posts you see about restorestoresto are horde by a large margin.

It's a delicate balance with the hybrid classes as a raid leader. The majority of them need to be in raid spec, with a few that can be offspec. One feral druid in a raid doesn't matter, but it's tempting for most druids to want to go that way because now they can raid and solo. Now, where you could have taken one or two, you can't take them all because they've just become collectively fucking useless. Same goes for DPS warriors, Shadow priests, Ret pallies, Elemental shammys. One or two won't kill you, but deciding who gets to be "special" enough to do it sometimes really sucks, and if it sucks enough with a bunch of whining assholes, you just make a blanket "fuck you" policy and nobody gets to try and be special.

That would be my thinking. I've personally never had to deal with it much, but I at one point I was getting weary of only feral druids signing up. That shifted though when it became apparent that our healing situation was less than stellar.

You're wrong about ret pallies. Those objectively suck.

Meh, I tossed them in there for kicks. I've never had one.

We had one guy who just swore being a ret pally was going to be the shit and, well, he barely (BARELY) outdamaged our tank. It was pretty awful. I don't think he's raided since.

That was Karazhan. I can see more of a role for them in 25s with the whole judgement refreshing thing.

Yeah ret pallies have their uses but despite the propaganda, Damage isn't one of them.   Judgement refreshes and improved sanctity aura are about it for their tricks. 

Pallies are just lulled into thinking they can do damage, because ret DOES do more damage than other specs.. it's just that compared to DPS classes they're not worth it.  Anyone who's played both a ret pally and a dps class can tell that right off.

I'm a witness.

I'm Horde.

We've also had some bad stigma in our guild associated with Elemental Shaman. Out of our previous people who wanted to be elemental - one is on the 2nd Place Arena Team (the HUKs), one stopped playing, and one got gkicked. So, there you go.

As far as 'off-specs' are concerned, our raid leader has a hardon for Shadow priests, so we have 2 or 3 in every raid now. I don't mind, personally. The passive healing and mana regen is a-ok in my book. We also have 2 feral druids, for offtanking and dps/emergency tanks.

None of our Paladins are dumb enough to actually go ret, methinks. They know better then that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm reading in this thread is that if I don't spec my toon the way that raiders want, I'm unlikely to ever raid with a competent group.  Seems like me, as the customer, should be able to spec my toon in a way that I find fun/entertaining without having to incur the wrath of the min/maxers.  I guess I can better understand why some people don't like the Armory.  Skilled players are more likely to discriminate based on spec and gear meaning that those choosing to play differently will be relegated to more casual groups. 

With the wrong spec you'll stand out and get booted from the competent group for underperformance, Armory or not.  This game provide a Best Way to harvest epic drops from end game instances, if one isn't willing to abide by those rules one risks being ignored by the hardcore.  Armory just lets the non-hardcore discriminate as if they were hardcore, and or makes it blindingly obvious to those left out why they've been left out.  Most folks enjoy a touch of ambiguity or anonymity in their WoW playing.

Healing effectiveness is a possibly reason why Shadow Priests are desired by raid leaders.  As primary healers they never have mana when they are needed, you can only count them as half a healer.  As dps they also count as half a healer, but they also deal serious damage.  Stick two shadow priests together and they get a synergy bonus to boot (as they still run out of mana too quickly by themselves).  The group healing from Shadow lets the primary healer concentrate on the guy taking damage now and lets the passive healing keep the raid topped off.  Shadow priests have a great deal of additional utility to a raid, over say a rogue, and their damage is easier to dish out (less work and risk for the button masher). 

You're not "unlikely to ever raid", you're just unlikely to raid cutting-edge.

Raid encounters are balanced assuming that your stats are at a certain level (in terms of HP, mana, endurance, regeneration, etc.), and this level is higher than what you'd get with just greens at L70.  So, you must either boost your stats with equipment, or by picking certain talents.

If you raid a lot, you'll see that what happens is that as you get more and more geared, your talents matter less and less, and eventually the encounter becomes a breeze and you're ready for the next tier.

Unfortunately, a lot of guilds are forced to get through content at a certain pace.  Finish up with Karazhan within 2 months of starting.  Why?  Because their members will get bored and want different things, and leave the guild if they don't get it. 

So, if you want to stay within this group that breaks each place in, you have to have the talents because you don't have the gear yet.  Once you get the gear, you could respec, but unfortunately everyone's bored and wants the next thing, so they move on and you need your talents again, despite your gear.

It's a forced march, more or less, if you want to keep the guild together.

Sort of, but not really. I've always been against Blizzard's inclusion of three spec trees, but only one spec option, since it just breeds contempt amongst people in a grouping environment. The problem lies in the fact that Blizzard only lets people spec one way instead of being able to swap them based on locale. I don't think Blizzard would lose any customers by letting people have two specializations (One World/PvP spec, One instance spec). No raider really enjoys having to wander the world in a Protection or Healing spec, and no PvPer/Soloer loves the fact that they can't find a group to save their lives.

It'll never happen though. Blizzard would never let gear be your spec. That would make too much sense.

No matter how many viable specs there are, there will always be one "best" spec from a min/maxer point of view.  It's endemic.  There's a "best" weapon in every FPS, a "best" strategy in RTS, and a "best" spec (WoW) or combination of skills (UO) or build (AC).

If you go with an offspec, either you will discover a new best and everyone will emulate you (0.5%) or you will not do as well as the cookie cutters (99.5%).  Raid leaders know which side of that equation they want to be on, especially since given their choice, 90% of players will try to be the unique snowflake, making almost everyone sub-par.

One other aspect is that some specs are best for PvP, some are best for raiding, some for soloing, some for 5-manning, etc.  So it's not as bad as some other games where an offspec means you can't do squat.  You have to really TRY to come up with a downright retarded spec, if you know anything at all about your class.


BTW, to Paelos' point:  this is the second time I've seen that idea floated around.  Personally I'd hate it.  It makes a gamey game even less immersive.  Your spec should be your spec IMO.  Love it, hate it or spend the gold to change it.

Kinda funny that you'd hate it Jayce, since everything you just said would be a great argument why specs should never exist at all in the first place, let alone two types.

EDIT: To go further, I hate specs. I despise them to my very core. Why? Because it's a game where only one really matters, and by giving people all these "choices" you're not really giving them anything at all. You are just locking down their overall gaming choices in the long run. Specs are just fine in single player games where you are the hero, but in games where you have to group up with others to succeed, they are the Devil's nuts.

I'd say that Blizz did a pretty damned good job of making all the specs pve viable, though, with the expansion. Besides Retadins, Boomkins, Survival hunters and deep subtlety rogues I can't think of anything that flat out sucks; even Balance druids have a place sometimes.

And shadow priests are the bee's knees. Current thinking is make your healers paladins, bring one holy priest for fort/spirit and pack in another two or three shadow priests for the mana regen. That's the min-max angle.

So what's more important, player skill or spec?  That's the root of my question. Just like driving a car, most people think they are good players (which obviously can't be the case).  I'd think that a raiding group would be more interested in attracting good players than they would in attracting players with the right spec.  The Armory seems counterproductive to this end.  If your spec prevents you from ever playing with other skilled players, then how the hell are you ever going to demonstrate your ability?  While I realize that a good player with a subpar spec is less effective than a good player with an optimized spec, there is still the issue of good players vs. mediocre (or bad).  Seems to me that the safest way to avoid the whole issue is to just migrate from game to game with a set crew... but isn't that counterproductive to the whole make-friends-online-to-aid-in-retention racket that the MMO developers yearn for?

So that people don't think this is a personal question here, I don't play WoW anymore and I have no interest in a PvE endgame.  I'm just looking at the whole thing from an academic perspective as someone that once enjoyed EQ and is intrigued by the direction things seem to be evolving. 

My angle is that even if you have a PvE or PvP spec it doesn't keep you from doing the other stuff, you just won't do it at your most efficient.  The reason that I don't like multispecs is that the specs as they stand are an interesting choice, because the more spec'd you are at one thing, the less of a generalist you are, and vice versa. You get to pick how much you give up in one area to get where you want to be in another. Also you can adjust your playstyle and abilities based on your current focus.  It also (with some classes, notably mages and warlocks) packs essentially two or more subclasses into one class, providing a lot of variety.

To Nebu's question, from my experience a good player (and that involves a lot of different stuff outside pure clicky, for example a good trait in a raider is ability to follow instructions) with a subpar spec is WORLDS better to have than a bad player with the best spec in creation. 

Especially given that you can respec at the drop of a hat, a good guild leader is looking for someone with a good spec only to demonstrate game knowledge. If they are teachable and have good personality traits that counts for MUCH more than current spec to a smart guild.  In fact my guild is currently considering someone with a spec some people have cringed at, but he seems to be a good mature and helpful individual, so he has a good chance at getting in.

Pure balance druids really only have a place right now (in raiding)  if you want nothing other than DPS (which they do massive amounts of) with a smidge of utility.  Their DPS can be crazy.  I don't see how they wouldn't be considered "viable" though.  Not optimal, but at least they're not going to be tickling a mob like some of the other specs mentioned.

Out of boredom I respecced from feral to boomkin and with mediocre gear I can lay down a lot of pain.  It's a really fun PVP build.  Their lack of aggro management is already evident, but outside of a heroic or raid they can take the hits.  I'm not too big on having to get Subtlety as a form of aggro management, and I won't likely get it. I mainly took this as a PVP/"I'm bored" build fully knowing I would be making myself a grouping pariah. Not about to take 5 points off a great tree in order spam wrath and starfire in an instance and I'm never likely to raid.

A balance druid can likely heal any non-heroic, just most closed minded individuals would rather not have them try. One of the most popular raid druid healing builds has more balance than resto (like 34/27).  They retain some ability to do some damage outside of healing and are probably the best single target healing build for a druid.

I sympathize a bit with Nebu.  But I've taken a stand on how I'm going to play these games after my last bout with raiding. I'm going to spec how I want to, I'm going to log on when I want to, and I'm not going to be playing for 4 hours at a time.  I've gotten a lot of "hey, you should join our guild" and when I tell them my stance, the inquiry ends.  So be it, I'll be fine in my podunk casual guild filled with folks that just play how they want to.  I like doing instances and I liked raid instances when I raided, but my first priority is having fun that doesn't fuck with my other priorities. 


Ohh they are.  Just when they find out you're a good player, they bust out the "play this spec" mandate.  Right now you're just railing at the nature of the beast and until Blizzard can insert more raid friendly options to all specs (and people pull their heads out of their asses), off specs suffer. 

Here's what I find amusing.  I'm a pretty well-educated and analytical guy. Yet every time I play an MMO, all I run into are self-proclaimed experts.  If they can convince me WHY they feel that a particular spec is more effective, I'm always willing to listen for the sake of better understanding mechanics.  What gets my goat are the kidlettes that insist that people play a particular spec in a particular way without ever giving any thought to why they think that way.  It's like WoW has created some dogma that just begs to be accepted without challenge.  The psychology of it fascinates me almost as much as it irritates me.

I don't know what's worse: those, or the people that can and will go on for hours about the niceties and subtleties of various aspects of every corner of the game.  I am obsessed about theorycrafting as any fanboi (ok, maybe not ANY fanboi) but there is a point where I realize it's a game, and it's fun, not life.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7143.msg192929#msg192929

Most are unwilling or unable to discuss how different specs actually help the raid.  A lot of this has to do with a decent number of guilds conquering by emulation rather than innovation and skill.  The spec you're required to have and the method for fighting that boss?  Yah, your guild leader read about it somewhere and watched a video on YouTube.

Simply because Horde raid leaders have always seen Shamans as one talent and one talent only: Mana Tide. The only thing a lot of people saw them as was healer/caster support. They may have leveled up as Enhancement or Elemental, but at 70 it was once again, where's my Mana Tide and Earth Shield, bitch? (Usually from the other Resto snobs.)

Alliance's only experience with Shamans was when they were leveling all the way to 70, and they got to see how they were pretty good DPS and how much of a help Unleashed Rage and Totem of Wrath were. They didn't have the officer core that had preconceptions about what Shamans could bring to the table, and to help out Enh/Ele even more... their only real memorable experience with a Shaman was getting decked by Windfury crits in a BG, so they knew first hand their damage potential.

The story is sort of true on the Horde with Paladins, although it's mostly go deep Holy or go Home, but really the Prot tree is a victim of the fact that no tank can really hold aggro well in 5-mans, just not enough incomming damage, so people threw out the idea of a Pally tanks pretty early for the most part.

Interesting. How horde paladins were being treated was my next question but it's tough to overlook just how good Holy is at what it does.

They speak crazy talk.  There's a guy in my horde guild, catassed up a BE Paladin to 70 pretty quick.  Protection specced, he makes an awesome 5-man tank.  He can just run into packs of mobs, and I flamestrike away.  He's (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Astinus) holy at the moment, but spec-swaps so often we can still do 5-mans.  With him, 2 mages, a shadow priest and any other class, we destroy instances.

With the 60% increased threat from holy damage/spells, plus consecration, reckoning, and all of the porcupine damage protection spec gives, paladins can hold aggro well.  If you are still thieving threat, throw in Blessing of Salvation.

I hate doing 5-mans with a warrior now because we have to go so slow.  Even a feral druid is better.  For me as a mage at least.

Those of you having trouble wrapping your mind around the "Most effective spec" idea need to think of it more like a deck of Magic cards.  There are, what, 4 viable top-end decks at any point.  If you're in a tournament you're playing one of those decks, right?  The same is true of high-end raiding.

 It may not be that you developed that deck, but you know it works and you learn how to use it, until something else trumps it.  Wow specs are the same way, but new cardsets are item drops or talent tweaks (or much more rarely, revamps).  It can be fun figuring things out and experimenting after the newness is introduced, but eventually it comes down to a handfull of the most potent.

Those discussions you crave DO happen, Nebu.  They happen at places like Elitist Jerks, FoH and other uberguild sites.  To a much lesser extent you can see echoes of them on the official forums, but you have to wade through a lot of drek to find them.  The high-end typically aren't the ones discussing them there, however, because they hate those boards as much as we do.  What you're seeing is usually someone parroting the information from another site.

On top of all this metagaming, however, wow has an added problematic layer. Raids are designed with very specific methods in mind, because of cockblockiness.  (And that's really all it is.)  Devs and designers want content consumed at a certain pace, and they tune for the 'most effective' specs and group loadouts, so you have to be overgeared to do them as anything less than that narrow-definition.   If they were to drop that elitist stance, things would be a lot better all-around, but it's not happening any time soon. 

Were they to do that, the high-end would chew-through and discard the content even faster than they do now.  We've seen what Blizzard would rather do with the upcoming Alchemy nerf.  Rather than say "Fuck it, potion quaffers will just blow-through while less-insane people can do things at the level we intended" they're kicking down the sandcastle in a tantrum.  The same holds true of tuning content for 70-80% of the playerbase rather than 10%.   It's a legacy of EQ that hasn't been overturned by anyone yet.

Now I will say in Blizzard's defense that a good raid (with my normal caveat of ignore the RAIDS SUK LOL since it's not germane to the argument) is designed with tight math involved. X dps in y amount of time with z amount of healing, perfect. And when it works it works really well (see BWL after initial fuckups). When it doesn't work it's a disaster (see original Gruul and, fuck, everything post Karazhan in BC).

It's why I have no confidence in LOTRO having decent raids since they can't even get their crafting right and why I hold out some hope that Blizz can get it tuned properly. Some. Small.

Your Warrior Sucks.

If I was being beaten at tanking (even multiple mobs) by a Pally, I'd kill myself.

Seriously.

A Paladin can just generate so much threat on multiple targets as Prot, passively I might add, that they blow a Warrior or Druid's multi-target tanking ability out of the water. When one of our Paladins was 30 Holy/31 Prot, he used to tank the dancer pulls by Moroes with absolutely no problem. As long as the mobs start off on him, they'll stay on him for the duration.

There are just too many healers spec classes that I wonder why some guild leaders went over board with 'Shaman must be resto'. I've never been horde but I got my draenei to 60 with enchance, switched over to elemental and never looked back.

The amount of dps they bring by themselves may seem to be 10-20% less, but when you consider +101 spell dmg & heal to all casters in grp, as well as +3% spell crit and 25 MP5 Mana spring totem. As well as burst dps added to the party with 30% cast & atk speed buff every 10 mins, that's quite a lot of reasons to have an elem spec shaman to a raid. On the spot chain heals & Light heal wave also helps to cover tough spots. I've never been in a situation where my guild told me, 'I'm sorry we don't need your spec in this raid' since I can do off heal & dps quite fine without any mana problems.

I've yet to meet him.  Could be because I've always been horde and our pallies aren't there yet.

:)

What multithreat passive options are you alluding to ?

And the argument people usually bring up when I tell them this is : 'It's clutch, most raids can be done without these buffs'
I don't feel like explaining all over again why Blizzard cannot balance a raid over one class ability to buff, but whatever. I've done all my Kz runs with no resto shaman and I'm fine. so be it.

Protec Warriors are hard to find these days, so I've been forced to use pallies quite a bit.  None of them have been good enough to hold aggro. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the players I'm finding, but my priest gets pwned by adds as soon as I toss the first heal.  They split off the pally and beat me to death, not fun.

The multithreat options he's talking about would be some combo of Improved Consecration (purifying power) Holy Shield and Improved Righteous Fury, I suppose.

  RF increases holy threat by 60%, and IRF adding another 50% onto that, which really buffs Consecration's aggro.  Holy Shield is a 4-charge version of Shield Block that does 155 damage per block @ 70 and adds 35% threat (before RF).  Not exactly passive, but they're not as active as "Taunt" either.

The other problem is that good raiding guilds have no shortage of applicants who want to get in, usually there's enough skillful ones who are the spec the raid leader prefers so off spec's wont get a lot of chance anyway. Besides, if you were a leader, who would you let play an off spec? Someone who'd been with the guild already a few years playing the needed spec when the guild needed them too, or someone who considered it an imposition to even suggest they spec that way?

It depends on the guild.  Everybody likes to pretend that doing your dues for the guild will benefit you in the end, but the truth is that for a lot of guilds it's uncertain whether the guild will still exist a week later.  As an example of what people really feel, nobody likes to gear up a main tank and then see that main tank leave the guild, even though he tanked for them every raid for like a year, as they "geared him up" and so he put in his dues.  The guild will always "need" the reliable player to play whatever spec is needed, and will never let him/her go off-spec.

But anyway, all this stuff above is a tangent, only mentioned to illustrate that the whole "spec" thing is a complex social decision, much like everything else.

Funny enough, there's one guy in my guild that pretty much just does instances all day (a holy priest) and does pickup Karazhan with another guild and he disapproves of the moonkin (his direct quote was "sad :(" and hasn't grouped with me since) Everyone else in the guild's main comment was "awesome, dance!". 

Heh, just like the feral, the moonkin takes down 2 and sometimes 3 person elites with ease (even took down a mob I couldn't handle as feral), but he does it with pure DPS rather than bear form with a bash/heal.  Itching to see what I can do in instances.. but I get crickets after the person asking me fails twice to guess my spec.

As for offspecs and raiding, wouldn't it be somewhat beneficial to a guild to have people playing specs they like?  Would the morale boosts offset the dissatisfaction of not always getting in the raid?  Would there simply not be enough prot warriors and heal specced healers?  Would new effective raid makeups pop up that would have otherwise been squashed?  Do not apply the above line of questioning to "server/faction/world" first guilds.  I expect them to lead with the flexibility of a read-only spreadsheet.

Edit: this is brought to you by the knowledge that to get my faction epics, I'm going to probably have to respec back to feral (or resto.. bleh).  :|

By passively, I meant that he doesn't actually have to attack the mobs to gain threat on them, they kill themselves:

Consecration (standard holy PBAoE)
Blessing of Sanctuary (Reduces damage incoming and causes Holy damage whenever you block an attack)
Holy Shield (Increases block chance and causes Holy damage whenever you block an attack)
Spiritual Attunement (Turns healing received into mana and is threat credited to you: just like when a Warrior gains Rage)

Add in all the things that make Paladins good single-target tanks and yeah... Warriors simply can't compete as their only options are Tab+Sunder while Paladins have that whole list AND being able to switch between targets.

In 2.1.0, they'll be changing Avenger's Shield to be basically a high-threat, 3-target Cleave and just a general increase in Holy damage done which will help out even more.

Keee-rist, that's crazy.  I wish they'd unnerf the damage and re-add a threat multiplier to swipe.   Multi-mob tanking for bears is kind of a pain in the ass.  Lots of tabbing maul/mangling (swipe is shit aggro currently), taunting when something inevitably breaks loose (better not be two mobs heading toward the healer), and praying that you're not grouped with complete retards (KILL THE SKULL, FUCKNUT).  Do some priests just not know where their fade button is anymore? 

Don't forget they get a 3-target taunt.  I've seen them throw the shield at mobs breaking towards the healer as well, has a nice threat component already.  Reckoning helps a ton too (on packs, not as much on single target)

They just aren't the best single target tanks.  Crazy how that works, but I hope they embrace that dynamic, and design around it, not break it.

Don't forget Righteous Fury/Improved Righteous Fury that decreases damage and increases threat from holy damage by a ton.

Also, reckoning is great now, especially coupled with Seal of Light and judged SoL.

Also, Judging Seal of Justice on something prevents it from leaving combat with you.

Also we've got that 3 target taunt...

Seriously, I can tank crazy numbers of mobs solo for pretty much infinity with AH +mana gear.

This is not correct.  Again, I hate to be elitist, but if your prot specced warrior is only tabbing and sundering, he sucks balls and you should tell him so.  Hell, if your FURY warrior is doing this, he also sucks balls.

ThunderClap, particularly improved, all the shouts pretty much, the bleed effects, piercing howl.

The problems that you guys are bringing up here simply do not apply to me and I'm a little bemused.

Of course, our healer is my wife ;  if even one guy gets through to her, I don't get a blowjob for MONTHS.  I'm probably the best tank on the server...

It wasn't that Warriors (and Druids now) have a problem with large pulls, it's just that Paladins handle them a lot better. A few pulls in Kara didn't suddenly become impossible when one of our Pallies respec'd, but the Locks and Priests can't just throw DoTs around and expect to come out unscathed anymore.

Also, Tab+Sunder was an oversimplification, but really, it's Tab+Something for both sides. Yes, our tank Thunder Claps (Imp too), Shouts, and all those good things (although he had to repsec to pick up Piercing Howl for Kara), but those also activate the GCD so you can't Tab+Whatever AND throw out the AOEs at the same time, it's one or the other at any one time. With a Paladin, outside of the initial cast of Consecrate, your multi-target stuff is going on at the same time as you're swapping from target to target.

Fair enough.  On the GCD if nothing else, I totally agree.  Far too many of the warrior abilities are tied into this.

Hell I WANT pallies to be great tanks at 5 mans. I'm sick of those freaking places now and most of the other warriors get tired of every poopsocking rogue or hunter who couldn't get a group on a dare asking us to try and run them through Arc/SL/BM for their Karazhan key.

I'm so glad paladins and druids can tank normal 5mans reliably now. I seriously have not had a single warrior tank that wasn't guilded with a friend of mine since I hit 70. Every last one of them I ask is only interested in heroics or not at all.

I recently respecced my Pally alt from Holy to Prot just so some of the new people and slow levelers would have a tank to run normal 5mans. Pretty much all our warriors AND druids hate to run them now.

There's a reason. We're all burned out on the regular runs. It's freaking MAY now. If you were a regular tanking 60 warrior when the expansion came out in February, you've had 4 solid months of nothing but tells asking for help. It's annoying as shit.

They need to route all the returning 60's to separate servers.  Hmmm, perhaps a new type of server.  Free transfer, but only for L60s.