Are Dual-Specs Working Out?
Bastosa on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 41 Comments Tags: 3.1, DPS, Ulduar, bastosa, dual spec, healer, hybrid, raids, tank 
Now that 3.1 has been out for a while, and the dust is at least starting to settle, I think its time to take a step back and discuss how much impact the patch has really made on the game.
While the introduction of the Ulduar raid was obviously a big deal, I want to take a moment to examine how dual-specs has changed the way that we play. This feature, after all, changes the basic mechanics of how we play and will affect the game well past Ulduar and into future expansions.
At this point, I feel many of us have seen both the advantages and the pitfalls of this is action.
First the good, the increase is raid utility is undeniable. Instead of needing to sub people out for encounters because we need more heals, DPS, tanks or whatever we now just need to ask people to switch specs. I have found this to be particularly useful in 10 mans, where we can balance for 2 or 3 healers depending on the encounter.
Beyond that there are some unexpected advantages. For example the shaman who dual spec’d enhancement/elemental. While initially I thought this was the worst idea ever (great you can be DPS or DPS), it has turned out to be incredibly useful on several occasions. Sometimes having DPS at range vs melee, or having an extra buff can make all the difference in a close encounter.
There have been drawbacks too. As I think we all expected loot has been an issue. There are some players that are legitimately splitting their time between two specs. But does that mean they have a right to accumulate two sets of tier pieces while everyone else is working on their first? I certainly don’t think so, but they can make some convincing arguments. Additionally this added flexibility leaves some of the “bubble” players out of raids. Players that are used to being number 1 on the standby list are getting used less and less, as more people can fill more roles.
Personally I find myself changing specs much less often than I expected. While I can now go ret at anytime, I still find I am a tank 99% of the time, and often forget I can switch if need be. Although, being able to PvP whenever I want is certainly nice.
What do you guys think? Have dual specs been working out they way you imagined? Or are you using them much less or more than you expected?
Reader Comments (41)
I love duel spec. Being able to both heal and tank instances while I level breaks up the menotiny perfectly!
also first post
I play a gnome mage, main spec is PvE fire and my secondary spec is PvP frost. They work fine and I use them all the time. I have had no problems with them and I actually enjoy my dual spec =D
Certainly everything has advantage and disadvantages , dual-spec included. At the moment im on a break from wow, cuz of my examns and stuff, but i supose i can still share my opinion. What Bastosa pointed out , about the gear isue, is something i experienced a year ago when i played on a private server !!! before u all go, "i dont care" just read what i'm gona tell: there was an option for donors 2 transfer their BoP items between their characters, now i know the reader is asking "oke....what does this has 2 do whit the curent topic" well, its quite simple heres an example: back then i had a holy pala, and i went on a ZA raid (i gota mention it was awsomely scripted woah!) and there was a holy pala just like me , and he rolled on tanking gear, (the helm from Hexlord and the armor from Zul'jin) claiming that hes gona transfer it to his alt tauren warrior. Now if u think about it its sort of the same, here some1 could roll on any item, (unless master loot is used) and simply win it, and then tell "its for 2nd spec bro" , there "its for my alt", it could cause lot of whining, raid leavings and such..could get annoying. Hardcore guilds and those who have been playing together for a while wont have this isue i presume, but pugs could suffer cuz of this. =S
Ps: sorry for the long comment, hope the example made some point ;p
I love it and hate it at the same time. I'm a Tankadin (main spec) and Healadin (offspec). I love it when i get to play the spec I purposely wanted due to loots in the instance. I hate it when they want me to play the spec I don't want for that instance. I can't complain though because I can never run out of groups who wanted me to either tank or heal for them.
one thing i get annoyed me is it takes 5 minutes for me to finally play my character when i log on due to all those whispers trying to invite me. It really annoys me when people just send you an invite w/out even asking... grrr.
The Dual-Spec feature it very handy. Even if you are just a rogue. It allows for some experimentation without disrupting a raid, and alleviates a lot of the "gear to your spec" pressure.
Dual Spec FTW indeed!
Most of the gold i've spent was doing the "spec dance"... No more of that!
For now it's about 50/50 when using my DK tank or dps spec, mainly because i've been getting equip for both specs but i believe that sometime in a near future, one spec will come 1st, depending on the gear i get my hands on 1st! I'm hoping tank!
Now i always have a place in a 10/25 man since i can do 2 roles but when it comes to loot it's hard, since we(guild) always give 1st choice to someone that using the spec @ the moment and only after that to the off-specs!
Nontheless i give my "thumbs up" for Dual spec!
It is OUTSTANDING. As almost all the healing classes can atest to, trying to do dailies where you need to kill stuff is a slow tedious process. As a Pally, I still heal for our raids but thanks to the loot machine that is NAXX, I was fully geared in Holy and Ret so when duel spec came out I was set to go and love beign able to kill things in 3 seconds vs a min.
The only problem I had with dual spec was when I first bought it every time i logged out and would log back in, I would do so to find both specs COMPLETELY reset and I'd have to re-spend the talents in each spec. EVERY TIME I LOGGED IN!!!! God, what a pain that was.
Since that's been fixed by Blizz I'm LOVING dual specs. Fury for doing dailys or instances, Prot for instances. I am strictly a PUGger as well and, surprisingly, I haven't come across the loot drama yet.
Thumbs up on dual specs.
I just find a whole problem of it being 1000g. If it's that much.. then it should be 70+ only... not 40+. Though.. I like it alot.
Just my two cents.
I wish there were more than two specs available. As a paladin, I play mostly Ret or Holy. Each of these specs has a PVE/PVP spec associated with them. 4-5 specs would be ideal for me, but I'd settle for just one more.
The looting has been a problem. I find myself healing a heroic and a dps piece drops that i want....being the professional wow player that i am i will not need unless everyone doesnt want it. So im losing out on nice pieces for my dps spec which i have been since the beginning, for my heal spec which i am now doing 90% of the time. But overal i love it i have 2 80s one is dps/heals and another is tank/dps so i can do anything pretty much which is F@#@ING AWESOME
You and I are in the same boat Bastosa.
I think it's been great and 99% of the time I am tanking still as I am the most geared tank in the guild and have the most(ish) knowledge about the fights and all that jazz. I started out Dual Speced as Prot/Ret like yourself but found myself ending up Prot/Holy just because our guild has massive amounts of DPS players and it is more often that I will be needed as heals rather than a DPS (like Razuvius). That and I just hit 80 on my lock so now if I wanna DPS I just jump on the lock.
I haven't found that loot has been an issue but that is because we have pre-set looting rules that have been in place since before the patch. This really is where the powers that be in your guild needed to have a chat about what your guilds loot rules are before 3.1 hit just like guilds need to determine who is going to get first crack at the epic mace as it will avoid a lot of drama.
In our guild, we are still fairly open and relaxed, but we have a strict rule of main sets first and a main spec must be declared prior to raiding. I told the GM and my fellow officers that even though Dual Spec made it possible to switch between two specs at will (basically), it doesn't mean you have two main specs as that alternate spec was always there, you just don't have to go to a major city and drop gold on it every time you want to change. It is simply a convenience and nothing more.
So... TL:DR Dual Spec is awesome and shouldn't cause loot problems, offspec set is offspec set....
Since most of my guilds members raid with the guild, the loot issue has been mostly alleviated. People must choose which spec is their "main" and must spend roughly a month raiding as another spec for their "main" loot spec to follow them.
As a non-PvP Hunter, I use mine for raiding Surv spec and a soloing BM spec. Especially useful going from 70-80 but has become less so as I quest less and my gear makes Surv less of a pain to solo with.
My only issue is how much Dual's usefulness is weighted to hybrid classes. Having an 80 hunter and a lock en route, I feel like pallies are just laughing gleefully as they run by us and right into groups, where they'll take the utility of having dps/off-healer over a straight dps. It's a minor complaint, but its there none the less.
Honestly for dual spec isnt really need for me. As a rogue Im always going to be melee dps. Right now I have a pvp spec as a secondary spec which i will also use as an experimental spec. I have already got epic flying and had the money to buy it so I pretty much bought it for the achievement
i think it's been awesome, in terms of looting yea it may cause a little bit of problems, but as long as you establish rules going into the raid than it goes fine. espcially in guilds, if you dont get your piece ahh well someone in your guild did.
i love the dual spec thingy. i can switch from tanking to dps in an almost instant. i just wish they would bring in an ability to auto switch all yer gear at the same time. I.E.-one set of gear is set to spec one and than you have a second set for spec two. when you switch specs yer gear should switch with it.
absolutely loving dual spec. im currently lvling up a druid as feral/resto and being able to tank/dps/heal whenever the group needs me is just awesome. iv often found myself tanking instances halfway when our (usually dk) tank dies and i bear form it and the healer finds im easier to heal. sux rolling for gear as im competing with rogues, druids, hunters, shaman, mages, locks and priests. and i hav found alot of hunters roll both on mail and leather and mages love those spirit-heavy staves >.< oh well. its not like im lvl 80 yet
Well ive noticed a small problem with dual-spec lets say someone who has always been DPS desides hey ill heal naxx in a PUG when he starts to heal he doesnt know how to heal properly and evryone else suffers.And he gets into the PUG easily cuz he has the achievments from DPSing.
I'm glad for dual specs. Without it my guild probably wouldn;t be as far into ulduar as we are since i've been doubling as a tank since our other MTs have either left the guild or decided to stop raiding. So now I am tanking when needed for fights like hodir where only 1 tank is needed i get to switch back to my DPS spec and reclaim my top spot on the DPS chart. ;)
At first I wasn't a big fan of the whole dual spec thing, but my main is a warlock so she can DPS, or she can.....DPS. Yeah, she's kinda threatened by all the classes that offer comperable DPS numbers along with utility that use dual spec.
My shamman alt on the other hand is really loving it. I created him with the idea of being a 5 man or 10 man healer at 80, and I'm actually leveling enhancement. With dual spec on him I can switch over to a resto build and learn how to heal on ST, Scholo, Strat runs, then bounce back to enhance at the end of the instance and go back to questing. I've had more luck getting into instance groups now that I can heal, that's for sure.
@Radefa
In the same boat as you, sadly. I see all this stuff that'd be great for my enhancement spec (which always had been my main spec until my guild was constantly asking me for heals). As a result, there's a wide gulf between my healing gear and dps. And nobody really wants a dps anyway, because they're always wanting for a healer, so yeah... go figure.
@Fingolfin
Right there with you. Grinding dailies as a resto was quite a hassle. Now that I'm able switch whenever I want to without having to face the respec bill, I can get gold much more quickly. That in turn allows me to have more time to do any other dailies on my alts. Fun fun fun! :D
I <3 Dual Spec definietly the best thing that has ever happened bar new instances and raids etc.
I am a warlock, specced affliction and also a hybrid demo/destro class.
Although i push more DPS in affliction class around 3.9k, i have started using destro more often in some boss fights because of the major crits i receive for example on maly with 2xspark buffs i critted for 32k.
Also i was in ulduar last night on Ignis and i was on brittle add duty so i went destro to hit them for more than 6k this turned out to help the group loads.
Personally our guild is loving dual spec. I'm a tank (main spec) / healer Paladin. Our guild is primarily social (we all know each other IRL) and only has 10 people able to raid, so previously while we could do all 4 wings of Naxx (not managed to clear all 4 in 1 lockout to try Sapph or Kel yet) with only 4 dps, if either one of our 2 tanks or 2 healers were unavailable we were stuffed for anything, and we were a bit stuffed for military anyway with only 2 healers.
Now, I can shift to heal spec for 4 Horsemen, and our dps Warr can be the other tank. in all the other wings I can be a spare healer and the Warr can tank if we are ever a healer short, and likewise the Warr can fill in if we're a tank short for whatever reason. In those fights that really only need 1 tank or 1 healer the other tank or spare healers can shift to dps.
Dual spec has meant going from being able to have enough people free to raid about once every 3-4 weeks we've been able to do at least 1 raid every week, occasionally 2. We've actually had a pop at Sapph now, after getting all 4 quarters down.
when i got duel spec i got very excited at the prospect of being able to switch to heal in some encounters but i havent really found it neccessary yet.
Usually I'm a BM Hunter and, up until the pre-patch to 3.1, I and a fellow BM guildmate were the top DPSers for our guild and most of the Small Guild Alliance.
When the pre-patch came out she switched to SV, but I stayed BM. Our DPS output didn't change much to make a difference, only made us compete with each other.
When 3.1 came out with the dual spec, our DPS went through the roof. She went back to BM for soloing and we both made SV our secondary main spec for raids. I have noticed the DPS increase to the point where, once it took me maybe 10 or 15 Arcane Shots to top the 3K mark, it now takes me all of 3. For raiding, this has made encounters much faster (not just for me, but for other DPS specs as well) since we can usually put out lots of damage before you hear the call of "OOM!"