Ghostcrawler on the Dual-Spec System (Oct. 15th)

The posts are pretty long to be honest but have a lot of really nice information. Essentially you will be able to switch between two preset talent builds (you setup) on the fly but not during an arena or BG match and not during combat. They are reluctant as well to put a long cooldown of any kind on it as that may do more harm than good.

Our feeling is that any kind of cooldown just ends up punishing you for not being super organized, when the idea is to give you *more* flexibility.

Hey, can you provide the debuff in the boss this time?
You sure? Okay, let me switch.
No wait — I think we have someone else coming.
Oh noes! Too late! Now I have to wait an hour.

Hey, want to go do BGs until our heroic healer gets here?
Okay, let me switch specs. Done.
Oh look, the healer got here early. We can go do that run now.
Uh… I’m in PvP mode now. Sorry.

Remember that the actual talent swapping isn’t even the biggest part of the feature. Anyone with a little patience and a warlock can already hearth, respec and get resummoned. Cutting-edge guilds do it every fight. What we really want to offer is a way to remember what buttons you have on your bar for example.

I understand the concern coming from the pure dps classes. But those guys benefit an awful lot from a system like this too. Since dps is your primary concern most of the time, this gives you a way to have say a trash spec and a boss spec, or a cc spec and pewpew spec without hurting your performance on either. Most pure dps classes will still have more PvP vs. PvE builds too, and this lets you participate in both without jumping through a few hoops at the trainer.

Some threads have also pointed out the loss of gold moving out of the system, but really even at max cost, the amount spent on respecs wasn’t much. We haven’t inflated it to keep up with the rest of the economy for a couple of expansions.

We’ll let you know more when we have more details worked out. (src)

As a few people have pointed out, hardcore raiding guilds already respec in between bosses. All it takes is a little bit of patience, gold and maybe a warlock. The new feature just takes some of the busy work out of it by remembering say what spell you had on button 2 or button 3.

What the new feature really is supposed to do is let you change your mind. Oh, I was going to PvP tonight but now my buddies want to do Naxx 10 instead. I can flip on the fly instead of having to run back to Org or IF to respec and get summoned.

Very skilled or “into it” dps players absolutely can maximize their trash or boss dps through their spec. In fact, you hear a lot that certain talents aren’t good for bosses because they do things like improve your down time, AE or survivability. But all of those things can be great for fast clears. Players also sometimes say (silly) things like how they only care about how they perform on a boss. But if you want to do something like the LK equivalent of a ZA fast clear for the bear mount, you need to be fast across the board, not just on the 4 bosses. Players wipe on trash too.

We’re not going to make crazy fights where we expect the entire raid to respec into something weird. That was even asked at Blizzcon and the guy in charge of all of the boss design said simply “No” in reply. If we can’t assume you have a warrior or druid tanking, then we can’t assume you have a mage with an obscure talent build or 12 healers or something else abnormal.

Having to run to town to respec all the time between two common specs was a burden, just like pots and drums were a burden. Very few players enjoyed having to farm consumables for their raid night. (Though to be fair, some did). Players may have enjoyed the advatantage those consumables might have given them, but of course they forget that the encounters were designed around the expectation that the group was chain potting and doing drum rotations. The encounters should be of similar difficulty, with the major change being that you don’t have to farm (as much).

Likewise, I understand that some players like having to commit to a talent spec at least for the night. Those players may feel that this is a “catering to the casuals” decision, but it’s one we think is right for the game. The different needs, for example, of PvE and PvP combat were putting a lot of constraints on the design of talent trees. Every talent needed to be very useful in both modes, which also tended to make them overbudget. That’s not the only reason for the feature, but it’s still a good one.

We won’t let you change specs within an Arena or BG, nor will we let you do it in combat of any kind. When the feature is fleshed out more, we’ll let you know more details. (src)