I'm maining a class.. not a spec.

[Kaver]

Picking a spec and sticking with is normal.

I disagree. Every since dual-specs were introduced it has been normal to change specs freely. Then suddenly in Legion Blizzard decided to make it punishing to play multiple specs. I think it's completely fine that some people just want to focus on one spec like many BM Hunters forexample. But it's wrong to punish people just because they want to optimize the use of their classes.

[Puupi]

I'm maining specs. The game systems don't support multispeccing properly. Planning on playing multiple characters obviously, but only single spec on each one.

[Ealyssa]

I see someone has never played a tank or healer in their life.

I think you are the one not playing them...

I play all the tank specs. And I agree with him. It's not because I play prot paladin that I should get ret for free. Your spec is your choice, if you want to play tank or healer, play a tank or a healer.

And tanks and healers not being able to do shit alone is a thing long gone.

[Justintime328]

I like that people have to actually stick to something. Awww your mythic raid group cant stack the most op class this time?? TOOOO BAD, whiney ass people will always whine about something. Play the game if you have fun, if you don't just leave and save the rest of us from your incessant complaining.

[Saltysquidoon]

I think you are the one not playing them...

I play all the tank specs. And I agree with him. It's not because I play prot paladin that I should get ret for free. Your spec is your choice, if you want to play tank or healer, play a tank or a healer.

And tanks and healers not being able to do shit alone is a thing long gone.

Actually, you do and you should and you have been able to since wrath. I've prog tanked raid bosses in a top 100 environment but the only reason I was able to do that is because of the ability to change specs (as I am my guild's off role tank for substitution scenarios or the rare three tank strats). If I couldn't do that I wouldn't tank and everyone in my guild would be the poorer for it.

Further, it's about convenience, I guarantee you the best holy priest in the world doesn't quest as holy. It goes both ways too, anything that makes tanking or healing more inconvenient to do is going to inevitably lower the overall number of tanks and healers available to the playerbase.

I like that people have to actually stick to something. Awww your mythic raid group cant stack the most op class this time?? TOOOO BAD, whiney ass people will always whine about something. Play the game if you have fun, if you don't just leave and save the rest of us from your incessant complaining.

1. Nothing about covenants will stop the top end stacking classes or power gearing alts.
2. You came into a thread voluntarily to complain about the complaint the thread is about. Who's the fool? The fool or the fool who follows him?

[Baneto]

I like that people have to actually stick to something. Awww your mythic raid group cant stack the most op class this time?? TOOOO BAD, whiney ass people will always whine about something. Play the game if you have fun, if you don't just leave and save the rest of us from your incessant complaining.

People like different things.

Also you're looking just like those "whiney ass people" you're complaining about with that attitude.

[Duroga]

I love WoW too, but it has always been like that in my eyes.
I just quit classic, because i couldn't afford to play my paladin as healer or tank or damagedealer
50g to respec in classic is alot harder than getting the gear in retail or leveling 3 paladins for every spec.
For me retail is perfect. I love how easy specs can be changed and equipped.
Recently i switched to Horde just for the story and loved it and now I have 6 Chars at 50 within 1 month.
Ready for Shadowlands. For the Horde.

I am no min max type of person, i only run heroic raid casual and M+ up to 12/13 so it doesn't matter at all, what covenant or what legendary.
Maybe for hardcore raiders it is different, but for myself its a lot easier nowadays than it was in the past.

[dcc626]

Says who? Why is the 9-12+ hours per week that is commonly put towards mythic raiding not enough for Blizzard to just... leave me alone? There's really no reason to make the lives of mythic raiders intentionally worse, it doesn't benefit anyone.

no real reason toi cater to them either. they are the minority, no mater how much you think otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -

I also get that feeling, i returned briefly in the latest patch but the systems upon systems have just made me not want to bother. It's like the idea in itself what they want is good but the execution feels lacking or aimed at the notion that your vast majority of spare time goes to just WoW and only WoW.

What is great if you are in your teens and early twenties but for folks older not so much.

wow is a game you can pick up and play for a bit. but dont expect to be on a similar level to someone who plays more. its not like wow is the only game thats like that.

[ItsOreo]

I think they’ve decided that their target audience is people who want to play hours a day endlessly.

As such, they’ve added in a ton of grinding and barriers to playing the fun part of the game.

If you’re a player like me, who views all world content other than leveling as pointless nonsense, but who likes playing alts, switching mains, etc. - the game isn’t designed for me so I’ve left.

This is why Shadowlands, even if it’s decent (it’s not going to be good, let’s just be realistic), won’t spur a revival in the playerbase. The people who play casual hours got utterly burned out in Legion and left BFA in disgust.

This post has not aged well

lol

[Battlebeard]

I love WoW. It's an awesome game overall ( disclaimer for the people who will say "Just stop playing the game if you don't like it" ).

However, one of the biggest issue I have with WoW since Legion is how tedious it have become to play multiple specs. I'm not even talking about alts here. It seems like Blizzard are incentivizing maining only one spec of your class.

Since Legion we have had the following systems which make it a lot harder to play multiple specs of one class:

- Legendaries
- Azerite armor
- Corruption

Unfortunately what we see now is that covenants will go into the same category. The covenant you pick will likely only be good for one of your specs. Some classes will get lucky (like with corruption) and have one covenant be good for all its specs but not all classes will be so lucky. This sucks in my opinion. When I pick I class I don't do it because of only one spec. I want to play all aspects of that class without being "punished" in terms of performance.

I absolutely agree with you, but personally this never became a problem as I can't stand either Outlaw or Sub, and mained Assassination since Legion. Feels weird to never swap tho, but hey it is what it is

[erifwodahs]

Actually, you do and you should and you have been able to since wrath. I've prog tanked raid bosses in a top 100 environment but the only reason I was able to do that is because of the ability to change specs (as I am my guild's off role tank for substitution scenarios or the rare three tank strats). If I couldn't do that I wouldn't tank and everyone in my guild would be the poorer for it.

Further, it's about convenience, I guarantee you the best holy priest in the world doesn't quest as holy. It goes both ways too, anything that makes tanking or healing more inconvenient to do is going to inevitably lower the overall number of tanks and healers available to the playerbase.

There is nothing preventing you from playing second spec. not in legion, not in bfa, not in SL. You won't be as good as a main spec. player but you can do it "off-spec".
You were able to change specs and tank for your guild. How? You had to get gear for tank spec. It's not like you could just jump in and become dual 2h wielding warrior tank stacked with critical strike rating or jump to ret and become dps God with one hand, shield, trinkets and defense ration on your stats. You also had to swap ALL YOUR GEAR, don't forget - intellect was only on specific items unlike now.

So yeah, back in the good ol' days...
Replace your full gear, which was way harder to get. intellect/Str/Agi was not on the same gear so it was even harder to acquire and only legit ilvl gear was from raids where offspecs were only allowed after everyone and their mother had their MS geared with those items.
There were spec. specific secondary stats on items which would be literal no impact on output if you changed specs.
You had to get a new tier gear if you wanted to swap the specs as your tier set bonuses were spec. specific.

Now you can just farm some m+ on your main spec. with different loot spec. Most of your old items will be alright so you only need trinkets and weapons and your average ilvl will drop only a little as opposed to the good old days where you had to wear dungeon items. Even if you have your loot spec. for your main spec. you can acquire gear for your OS because stats are changing between specs.

There were cross-spec. legendaries in legion and the drops got fixed by the time NH came out, set bonuses were changing on respec. Azerite is corss-spec. It's likely sub par, but again, it's not as unfriendly and requires way less work to get started and get it into raiding/m+ as an off-spec if you compare it to good ol' days.
I agree that corruption was crap and it was a real block, but it still was not as annoying as weekly raid lockouts and it still made a difference even if it was not bis for a spec. I could tank or do dmg with both mastery gear or TD gear, did not really matter if I was not doing cutting edge content.

[Ealyssa]

Actually, you do and you should and you have been able to since wrath. I've prog tanked raid bosses in a top 100 environment but the only reason I was able to do that is because of the ability to change specs (as I am my guild's off role tank for substitution scenarios or the rare three tank strats). If I couldn't do that I wouldn't tank and everyone in my guild would be the poorer for it.

I think you missed the point of the discussion here. Nobody is advocating not being able to swap specs. I obviously play DPS on a LOT of my tanks (mainly DH and DK for MM+ during BfA obviously).

What people are saying, and myself included. Is that swaping being a bit "inconvenient" (with legendaries, some borrowed powers, etc.) is ok.
Your other specs should totally be playable, but they shouldn't come for "free" either.

Even before all the systems modern wow give us each expansion. You simply had different gears for each spec (tank had "prot" stats with defense and block, healer had healing power and spirit, etc.)

[Baneto]

This post has not aged well

lol

Why hasnt it aged well according to you?

[erifwodahs]

I disagree. Every since dual-specs were introduced it has been normal to change specs freely. Then suddenly in Legion Blizzard decided to make it punishing to play multiple specs. I think it's completely fine that some people just want to focus on one spec like many BM Hunters forexample. But it's wrong to punish people just because they want to optimize the use of their classes.

Freely is relative.
In between dps specs? Yeah.
In between holy triangle? Well good luck. It was harder to change spec and jump into same level content as your MS was doing. (main stats, tier bonuses, secondary stats with only specific spec. benefits)

Legion and BfA was literally, swap specs and equip your sub par items. so you could be 20% worse than the top. (some extremes exists - fire mages you had to have mastery + mecha wrists for the spec. to work)

[Nachtigal]

I’m just happy Trump lost!

[Trumpcat]

At Blizzcon they said "de-homogenization", said you are a class not a spec and that there are no major class changes happening. All within few minutes of each other. There and then it was a sign that the "class not a spec" is untrue, because you can't turn a heavily spec-based system around without major class changes.

The result is specs sharing one or two useless abilities between each other without them being incorporated into the gameplay, they have no synergy with your other abilities and no talents affect them. In some cases those shared abilities even lose what makes them special in their original spec (such as Fire Blast castable while casting other spells), so from a potential extra ability you'd use, it's changed into an ability you won't use.

There are few outlier legendaries that have some synergy with the other-spec abilities, but so far they perform considerably below the legendaries that empower your core spec abilities instead.

So all in all, you are a spec at a time, not a class.

[Nachtigal]

At Blizzcon they said "de-homogenization", said you are a class not a spec and that there are no major class changes happening. All within few minutes of each other. There and then it was a sign that the "class not a spec" is untrue, because you can't turn a heavily spec-based system around without major class changes.

The result is specs sharing one or two useless abilities between each other without them being incorporated into the gameplay, they have no synergy with your other abilities and no talents affect them. In some cases those shared abilities even lose what makes them special in their original spec (such as Fire Blast castable while casting other spells), so from a potential extra ability you'd use, it's changed into an ability you won't use.

There are few outlier legendaries that have some synergy with the other-spec abilities, but so far they perform considerably below the legendaries that empower your core spec abilities instead.

So all in all, you are a spec at a time, not a class.

I don’t know man I’ve used fire blast as a frost mage when I’m too lazy to cast a spell and don’t wanna spam ice lance. Seems legit to me

[MrMatticus]

Just because I'm maining priest doesn't mean that I'm playing a healer.

Spec > class

[Baneto]

Blizzard seem to want to drive the playerbase in this direction lately.

If only they didnt lock so much of the player-power systems (azerite/covenant/soulbinds etc) to specs, this wouldnt happen.

[shoegazing]

At Blizzcon they said "de-homogenization", said you are a class not a spec and that there are no major class changes happening. All within few minutes of each other. There and then it was a sign that the "class not a spec" is untrue, because you can't turn a heavily spec-based system around without major class changes.

The result is specs sharing one or two useless abilities between each other without them being incorporated into the gameplay, they have no synergy with your other abilities and no talents affect them. In some cases those shared abilities even lose what makes them special in their original spec (such as Fire Blast castable while casting other spells), so from a potential extra ability you'd use, it's changed into an ability you won't use.

There are few outlier legendaries that have some synergy with the other-spec abilities, but so far they perform considerably below the legendaries that empower your core spec abilities instead.

So all in all, you are a spec at a time, not a class.

They also basically admitted the complete Legion redesigns were a mistake, and said that going forward they would make class design changes more slowly "in order to avoid disrupting players who have found a level of comfort"

IMO if the Legion redesigns were a mistake - which they absolutely were - then they should waste no time in scrapping them and starting over. They're only making a bad situation worse by hesitating to take action.

Then again, development time and budget is always limited for every expansion. Just imagine if they had left classes mostly alone and only made minor tweaks as needed, and instead focused development effort for the last 3-4 expansions on making awesome content.