There are benefits in being hard to switch specs and it might be why WoW does it.

[sweetbabygang]

So now, because I want to be able to help my guild out by covering roles as required, but still want to do the things I find fun, I must pay extra real money, as well as spending the extra time to get and maintain multiple gear sets? That's the alternative to spending vast amounts of time making gold to pay for this bright idea you guys have? Yeah, no.

It was a joke. People shouldn't even be able to buy gold.

[LedZeppelin]

When you have dual spec, people will ask for triple spec.

didnt happen in wrath

[Al Gorefiend]

How did you do it before dualspec?

By allowing more freedom you just end up with a system where no choice matters because everything can be changed easily. And then they have to introduce stupid systems like Covenants.

It was disgusting.

You want to run Maraudon as an Alliance? Well better fly all the way up to Darnassus from Nigel's point, go visit your class trainer (unless of course you were a Paladin, Shaman, Warlock or Mage then its off to Stormwind), pay the gold to respec, fly all the way back down to Nigel's point, enter your heal/tank spec then enjoy the next 10 mins waiting for the rest of your teammates to show up or at least one other to help summons, then for the next hour enjoy the pain of poorly finishing this dungeon because one of your 4 teammates never geared for that spec better hope it wasn't the healer or tank!

[Argorwal]

It was disgusting.

You want to run Maraudon as an Alliance? Well better fly all the way up to Darnassus from Nigel's point, go visit your class trainer (unless of course you were a Paladin, Shaman, Warlock or Mage then its off to Stormwind), pay the gold to respec, fly all the way back down to Nigel's point, enter your heal/tank spec then enjoy the next 10 mins waiting for the rest of your teammates to show up or at least one other to help summons, then for the next hour enjoy the pain of poorly finishing this dungeon because one of your 4 teammates never geared for that spec better hope it wasn't the healer or tank!

You didn’t even need a real “tank” for leveling dungeons in classic until the 60 ones like UBRS.

You just needed 1 non-clothie at the higher end of the dungeon level range. We did leveling dungeons with rogues, shamans, and Hunter pets as “tanks” throughout classic.

It was sad watching people wait forever for a warrior “tank” in a leveling dungeon that a rogue could tank no problem.

[Tyris Flare]

How did you do it before dualspec?

By allowing more freedom you just end up with a system where no choice matters because everything can be changed easily. And then they have to introduce stupid systems like Covenants.

...no they don't? You could just be able to freely swap spec all the time and it would be completely fine.

The opportunity cost already exists - it is called gear. It's rare that fully optimized gear for one spec is good for another, so there is already a barrier. And frankly, that barrier is plenty and pretty well accepted by the playerbase already. it doesn't need to be more complicated.

[sweetbabygang]

didnt happen in wrath

It happened for years.

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...no they don't? You could just be able to freely swap spec all the time and it would be completely fine.

That's what you can do right now, and they've introduced Covenants for exactly the reason that I said. Because they want there to still be some meaningful choice.

[Tyris Flare]

Iou can do right now, and they've introduced Covenants for exactly the reason that I said. Because they want there to still be some meaningful choice.

That's why they did it, yes. I'm saying that it isn't necessary. It adds absolutely nothing to the game.

[Eapoe]

didnt happen in wrath

I started in Wrath, and I definitely remember there being some envy about Druids having 4 specs, 1 for every role, and everyone else having just 3 specs.
I’m not saying it was some widespread pandemic and people complained about it all the time, but discussions were had.
People also have been talking/complaining about DHs only having 2 dps specs and have tried to theorycraft a 3rd spec for them.

[spalernTJ]

Wholly subjective. I love playing alts, trying out new specs ands builds. The fact this was turned into an absolute chore was what finally turned me off from the game, despite loving mythic raiding and mythic+

[Zantos]

I have raided for years. I've seen bad players and good players alike. Started in wrath, when you could only be 1 spec without really switching too often due to increasing gold costs to swap making it bad to swap too often.

First, your wrong. Having 1 spec you're forced into for what ever reason does Not increase skill. It won't make people suddenly know what they are doing. It wont make them sit down and read the spells they are using, what they do, how they function with one another, what their cds are or in some cases what the pet does. People need to Want to be better. It doesn't matter the number of specs. If they don't want to be any better, they aren't going to.

Here is a prime example: During wrath, I raided with a warlock who never respecced. Basically logged in for raid time, maybe the occasional soul shard farming, but even then just got those on trash mostly. She was horrible at her class. It took another warlock 30 minutes to convince her to stop using her void walker (the tank pet) and to instead use a dps pet. Didn't change much since she was still so bad, that she did less damage then the healer who had a talent that made her shields (a priest) reflect a small amount of damage back to the attacker. She refused to read any rotation guides or even learn how to properly enchant her gear. 1 spec. Still bad because she didn't want to do good. Her excuse "im a single mother and can't spend 15 minutes reading some guide on how to do a rotation". Her words. She also said she was too broke to swap talents due to never logging in to really do gold farming. Yet somehow, had hours to devote to raiding.

So no, there are no benefits. Unless the one playing wants to get better, they won't. Its that simple. There are guides out there detailing your rotation, cd usage tips, gemming and enchanting tips, optimal talent set ups and just in general tricks for the class to pump out the most dps / hps / mitigation.

Just thought of another story: Had a tank during MoP. DK. We had recruited him and had a lot of the raid on farm, so easy for us at that point. The bosses further in were still progression. After awhile, the healers started noticing that the DK would get rocked far more then I. They started to notice more and more as we got to harder progression fights. That is when 1 pointed out that he simply wasn't using one of his core mitigation abilities. They asked him and he had no idea what it did, so simply never used it. This guy had been a tank all expansion, but hadn't been using such a vital mitigation ability. Thus why he (as we later found out) kept getting kicked from raid teams.

[Iliena]

Games can become better if they are defined in a more strict set of rules; they become simpler for the average human to understand them; if you have a very strict and limited set of rules: then you can more easily optimize inside those rules and reach optimal performance in their confines.

In practice in this game: the average human playing is probably playing badly if they spec-hop all the time; they may have determined if they stick to 1 spec then they "get gud" more easily so to speak; it is therefore indeed a form of hand-holding but not only without benefits.

Nope I fully reject your argument, it isn't fun to be limited in such away, never was and never will be will be. It's just plain annoying as a raider and "get gud" isn't a good game design.

[LedZeppelin]

I started in Wrath, and I definitely remember there being some envy about Druids having 4 specs, 1 for every role, and everyone else having just 3 specs.
I’m not saying it was some widespread pandemic and people complained about it all the time, but discussions were had.
People also have been talking/complaining about DHs only having 2 dps specs and have tried to theorycraft a 3rd spec for them.

druids didnt have 4 specs in wrath

[Coniferous]

The question is, what is even the point of specs?

Depending on class the answer is different. On one extreme you have druid where you are switching between 4 roles, and on the other you have mage which is just three different ways to perform the same role.

When you have multiple roles you want to make it easy to change specs because most tanks and healers don’t want to be locked into that role for things like world content, so it’s useful for switching to be easy.

When you have three specs that fulfill the same role most people just switch to the best one. Doesn’t really matter in that case.

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druids didnt have 4 specs in wrath

Eh, they effectively did. One spec could fill two roles.

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While I acknowledge it's gonna be an ounce more tedious to swap covenants between bosses to optimize, at least I now have the ability to do it. Borrowed power does carry the price of optimization and making it feel bad if you commit too hard to it, but tbh the choice has to be there. I played wow for 10 hours yesterday because I felt like I could play the game. That's obv not everyone's experience, but oh wow, it felt so much better to be able to go venth frost and night fae fire.
It was even worse in legion, but they gave me the option to have all three artifacts, I didn't have to choose one. Meaningful choice really doesn't work for wow, and I think that's ok. Make it a story choice, cool, I'm down, but gameplay it's gotta not be a choice. There are a few restrictions that are good, such as shards only working on torghast, so returners for 9.2 don't need to farm them to optimize, but the baseline ability to make specs work and feel good needs to exist.

The whole “switching between bosses” thing is so overblown. How often are you doing multiple bosses in one night where the dps check is so huge that switching is mandatory? Yes, maybe you need a few specific things for one fight so a few players switch to dk for grip or something, but they seem to want that. They’re worried about people optimizing from fight to fight, which is an “oh my god! Who the hell cares?” problem.

Worrying about that is trying to solve a problem that by and large doesn’t actually exist.

[Lynarii]

Someone who genuinely wants to be a good player is only aided by the ability to play multiple specs. I played a druid, so I could effectively be whatever role I wanted. Now, I never was a top tier healer, I never will be, I know I don't enjoy it enough to get that good at it. But having played as a resto druid in a bit of easy content let me see what kind of things that tanks and DPS did that made healing way more difficult then it needed to be, which informed my playstyle on other roles and made me an overall better player.

You can't use systems to try and force bad players to be good. It doesn't work, it never has worked, and everyone knows that well enough at this point that suggestions to that effect are pretty blatantly an elitist attempt to push out anyone the suggester deems 'not good enough' to play the same game as them. Good systems allow the players that WANT to engage with them and improve the tools to do so. Restricting respeccing does nothing to give tools to players wanting to improve, it merely takes away some.

[Eapoe]

druids didnt have 4 specs in wrath

What was it, Cata? Whenever they separated Guardian from Bear.
Wrath there was still some envy from Druids being able to do all 4 roles.

[Kalisandra]

You didn’t even need a real “tank” for leveling dungeons in classic until the 60 ones like UBRS.

Sure you didn't. I levelled a Paladin as Ret in BC, but tanked everything. However, it definitely made life a lot harder for the healer because I didn't have the mitigation of Prot. The higher the level, the harder the healer had to work.

[Al Gorefiend]

You didn’t even need a real “tank” for leveling dungeons in classic until the 60 ones like UBRS.

You just needed 1 non-clothie at the higher end of the dungeon level range. We did leveling dungeons with rogues, shamans, and Hunter pets as “tanks” throughout classic.

It was sad watching people wait forever for a warrior “tank” in a leveling dungeon that a rogue could tank no problem.

The probability of finding someone willing to roll into a tank spec was far more likely than finding those few rogues or shaman capable of performing as a tank. Rogues needed to pull early to get threat high enough for the dps to not get hit with aggro, I remember that.

But I don't disagree finding warlocks and hunters was easier than tanks, especially druids

[Swnem]

Yes, i think limiting my play styles and fun is a great thing. Wouldn't want me to have too much fun.
I have FF for that afterall, where i can have all the classes in one character. Oh no, and i am dumb! I need to L2P cause i got so much choice! However will i cope? :P

[aceperson]

but it's literally never been hard to swap specs. even during the hardest period, it just cost increasing amounts of gold. that's not hard, that's inconvenient and used as a money sink.

something like covenants where it takes multiple weeks to swap after the first, free swap is making it hard. limiting the amount of times a person can swap by how much gold they can make isn't hard. at best, it's a disincentive.

[Surfd]

druids didnt have 4 specs in wrath

Ranged DPS
Mele DPS
Tank
Healer

That's 4.

Just because Tank and Mele DPs shared most of a skill tree in the "spec" division doesn't mean that they shouldn't be considered two effectively separate specs.