Posts with tag wow-dual-specs

Sometimes the title of the post says it all. Is your raid leader requiring dual specs? If not, is he or she planning to?

While I've retired from my raid leading responsibilities, back in the day I probably would have "asked nicely" a few people to pickup dual specs, even going as far to have the guild pay for it. Of course the people that I asked would have likely been doing it on their own anyways. For instance I had an awesome Paladin tank who did just as good as DPS.

Right now the primary situation where dual specs are useful revolve around 10-man groups. Some fights are quite healing intensive and less of a DPS race. Those would benefit from having a hybrid switch from DPS to healing. An elemental shaman switching over to resto to heal the raid can make a major difference.

So how about it, is your raid leader making you dual spec?

We heard a ton of news about the incoming dual spec feature last week, and for the most part, players were pretty thrilled -- besides the fact that we're finally getting the option to have two specs at once, we're also getting the much-awaited ability to preview our specs before they're saved, and the official Itemrack functionality that we've heard about for so long. But there was one thing Ghostcrawler said last week that hasn't sat well with many players: that we'd need to be max level before training for the dual spec feature.

For many players, the main reason they wanted dual spec was to be able to switch between "leveling" and "grouping" specs, and obviously if you're already max level, you won't have much need for a leveling spec any more (more likely you'd be switching between "solo" and "raid" or "PvP" specs). Ghostcrawler's stated reason for requiring a max level was that they didn't want lower level players to be confused by having access to more than one talent spec too early, but as Zarhym says, Cvarto makes a good point: if a player uses only one spec for 80 levels and then gets the dual spec feature, he/she may not have enough experience with different specs to have any clue about how to choose another one.

I know what you're thinking right now, WoW player. You're thinking "Boy, now that I've got a full set of offspec gear from running the only three raid instances available for the past two or three months, it sure would be nice if I could switch specs at will and make use of it with Blizzard's promised dual-spec system!" Then your cynical side inevitably kicks in, though, and you say "Harrumph! Blizzard has promised me many things in the past, on which they didn't deliver!" Then, you remember no one ever promised you player housing and it's a dumb idea anyway.

Dual-specs, though, are a fantastic idea, and cynical though you are, you may appreciate Nethaera's candor regarding just how soon we'll have info on this excellent new system sure to solve everyone's problems. Well, it's just "soon", but that's better than nothing. So stay strong, hybrids who want to DPS sometimes and anyone who wants to PVP and raid on the same day without going broke -- your day is coming!

Of course, wait ... the sooner this feature arrives, the sooner I can be asked to heal on my Elemental shaman without it being an inconvenience. Blizzard, can I ... can I have a quick word? No? All right then, how would you feel about discussing this with ... Mr. Franklin?

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.