The highest evolution of druid

Thursday 5 March 2009

Spec Speculation

Duel specs are apparently on the way *insert trumpets now*. How do we feel about the concept? Dunno, at the moment its a mixture of ambivalence with a dash of shrug and a smidge of oh dear. I have read a few eminent blogger's views, done some navel gazing, found a little bit of smelly fluff and then mused some more. Conclusion being drawn in the Boomdaddy's head is that the jury is still out. It solves some problems and is a nice luxury to have , for sure....but its not without some drawbacks, methinks.On a purely personnal note, I may well invest in the latest gold sink but......


As to what the second spec will be ,I am still clueless. I am balance.I have always been balance.I levelled from 1-80 balance all the way (apart from 2 weeks of resto to help the guild finish Kara, and I will say anyone that levels resto deserves a big Boomkin pat on the back).I chose to do this because I fell in love with initially being a druid and then with the balance spec. I love my feral brethren, but being a bear head banger or a sneaky kitty cat simply doesn't float my boat. Our guilds top tank is feral, he's great, so let him have it.....me, I don't know the dribbly end from the stinky end of bears. I'm balance, Im the Boomdaddy, I was there when Boomkins were laughed at and not allowed to raid. I strove to learn my craft, read all I could, practiced practiced practiced...and by the time my guild hit SSC I was consistently in the top 5 dps, sometimes top.

The appeal of the balance druid for me, has always been the challenge to excel and the utility of the class. Utility, yes. We are the finest class around because we are flexible, hard working and have a set of abilities that are finally seen by guilds as being very attractive in raids. The rush of battle rezzing the main healer, cross healing till they are good to go and then swithching back to deal more death is awesome, and many times raid saving. Ok our dps will suffer and we don't like to be out of top 5 BUT we regularly save the day. If a specific fight needed a cross healer, there we were. I say all this because I don't wont to be a leafy drood. I'm more than happy to cross heal, rez and bring that utility to a raid but that doesn't mean I want to heal as a lifestyle choice.So is there a burning desire to have healing as an off spec? Nope, not even a warm tingle. I fought to make the Boomkin viable for raids whilst being a Boomkin, not a Boomkin with a spare healer in his luggage. My fear is for some of my brethren boomers who may get TOLD to have resto or feral as their offspec, that raid places will be assigned to those that have dps/heal rather than the dps'r that heals.

The whole bullshit "bring the player not the class" is simply going to get worse. By homogenising the classes so much, dumbing down the game content and virtually destroying any need for diversity or crowd contol, Blizzard have not done the player base any real favour. Feel free to throw rocks at my head but that's the way I feel. All the classes were there for different reasons, with different responsibilities....now its all some soupy mish mash. I feel for the pure dps classes on this one. Unless they get a bit of love many could feel the chill when they are left out in the cold. Having a completely viable raid with 25 droods or 25 palaroaches strikes me as hysterical. The current content (hopefully Ulduar will be diferent) simply doesn't require the diversity of TBC and duel specs will make this even more apparent.


It will make raiding simpler, the great unwashed shout! Yes it will, and that bloodywell blucks. The content needs to become harder not easier to keep the game a challenge and to keep its product life cycle in growth ,not decline.

From a guild perspective, duel specs could be great for ensuring everyone has the opportunity to do instances etc that they need. It will ease tank and healer shortages, even if the majority of them are clueless how to play their role. It might be nice "for a change" too. All pluses, for sure. I think our hardcore social guild will tell everyone that duel specs are optional and raiding will continue based on current mains. If people want to duel spec, its completely down to them. My fear is that this will not be the case in all guilds and that's where the little bit of "oh dear" comes in.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with "bring the player not the class" as an argument- one hunter is not the same as all the rest. Even though we are all tarred with the same brush.
    Dual specs could mean i got for a PvP/PvE swap or maybe I just go back to BM cos I love my pets. I'll worry about that after.
    It could be usefull in raid situations where fight A requires more tanks than fight B for example. But If my guild was to force me down a path, If I objected and I was overruled maybe I'd look for me another guild. I wanna play how I want( and good dps is important to me) and that make for a happier more content person maore likely to be playing to their best rather than begrudgeingly.

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  2. Sadly, your predictions are true. If you are not one or another spec, you aren't allowed to run raids. I'm a ret Paladin and people look down their noses at me for being ret. I say, its my character, let me play it. Even though I can tank and heal, I'm a DPSer all the way. People have said there are to many DPS out there, I say, if you have enough DPS, then you only need one tank. I did just make me a boomkin druid and I really like it.

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