The Glade 4.0

Figured I'd start a thread for talent specs and questions about them.

I have 2:

How does the dual spec work?

and

What's the difference between the Death Knight trees. All of them seem to basically boost DPS with minimal defense improvement options; they only seem to differ in what abilities they enhance.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Dual spec works like this: You pay the gold to unlock it, then you can have 2 talent builds(only one active at a time, of course) that you can switch between by pressing a button. Not sure if there is a cooldown on switching between the two specs since I saw little reason to purchase it. The main reason behind it was in case you needed another tank, dps or healer, you could have those hybrid classes switch their specs quickly, without having to run back to a town to respec. Or those classes that were complaining they had to respec after every raid so they could be effective in PvP(all valid reasons for wanting dual spec).

As for the DK stuff...have no idea. Never played one seriously.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Dual Spec is awesome. I have it on several of my characters, and wish I had Triple Spec available.

As Raltar said, once you purchase it you have two specs available- a main and a secondary. When you pay to respec, you respec only your current one.

I use it to swap between PvE/PvP, or alternatively between tanking/DPS/heals depending on the character.

It takes 10 sec to swap, you must be out of combat, and you will be at 0 mana after you swap, so you have to drink.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Generally speaking, DKs are DPS or Tanks. Any of the three trees is viable for either role, but not at the same time. Usually, a DK will have a DPS spec, and a Tanking spec.

Frost is generally the dual wield dps spec, and blood is generally the 2h dps spec. Unholy is lackluster for either. Blood or Frost can both tank pretty well.

Here's a link on Blood tanking http://pwnwear.com/2009/08/11/3-2-death ... ank-specs/
And a frost tank spec.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathkn ... k3Oe,10192

DPS builds will forego the tanking talents, Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation in favor of DPS boosting abilities.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Blood works on primarily physical damage. It requires more gear than the other specs.

Frost has the best AE tanking talent and arguably the best AE dps talent (Howling Blast).

Unholy has good AE damage, and decent single target damage, and good raid utility. It's not very gear dependent.

To tank w/ a DK, there is not really one tree more suited than the other, though some are better in certain circumstances than others. You'll primarily want the first tier talents from each tree for tanking (Blade Barrier from Blood, Toughness from Frost and Anticipation from Unholy).

If you are not tanking 80 heroics or higher, gear shouldn't be too big of an issue. Just packrat the plate gear you come across with defense/dodge/parry on it. You'll be fine to tank if you just keep a set of armor.

It gets a little more demanding at 80, but that should do you until then. I personally preferred blood for leveling. Between Blood Worms, Vendetta and the occasional Death Strike, there won't be much you can't kill. Here's what I built up to to level, filling out blood first:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMV0cIcfMf0stG0x0hZfM

_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Dual speccing is indeed very awesome. Especially if you work hard at getting gear for both specs and learning to play each spec exceptionally well. It opened up a whole lot more grouping/raiding options for me when I excelled at both melee and ranged dps specs. Quite a few times I was asked to swap between both roles in the same raid, but on different fights.

But if you do this, find out which spec they will allow you to roll on gear for. My main was a melee spec, but quite often I was put into a ranged spec for KT (or that giant toddler robot in ulduar) but I usually demanded to be able to roll for my melee (since it carried many people up to that point). Some raids will allow this, some will only let you roll on whatever spec you were in when you helped in that fight.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Yeah, most pugs will enforce that kind of thing and most guilds have rules for this sort of thing. Just make sure the rules are clear and make the choice for which one you want as your primary.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

What class are you playing Numbuk?

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcxMVZhxxhA0h0czoZ0x

Here's where I'm at at this point. I haven't bought a 2nd spec yet. This one seems to work well with my levelling playstyle since it boosts my survivability and damage. I fight in frost presence most of the time, and other than the mission where you have to fly on the dragon in the intro, I can count my deaths on one hand so far. I'm sure I'll need 2 more dedicated tank and DPS specs down the road though. This one also seemed like it would work well in PVP, but I haven't tried that yet.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The head DK of the guild Mus is in (and I was too prior to the semester starting) uses the following builds:

Unholy
Blood

And he is just badass.

_________________
Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I would bet either druid or shaman.

I think those are the only 2 classes that can melee or range.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

I was playing a shaman. Enhancement was my primary. Pre-Ulduar I was doing about 4.5 - 5k (sustained) dps with it consistently. I think I hit about the 3 - 3.5k mark with elemental before I stopped playing.

I play very efficiently with all fat trimmed from a fight, start to finish. I would prove time and time again that having the best gear doesn't mean nearly as much as understanding your spec and how to best play it. I frustrated far better geared shamans to no end when they'd continue to spit out mouthfuls of my dust.

This is where dual-speccing really shines. When you can take up the slack when you don't have the best gear for your off-spec. You will get noticed. You will never need to look for groups and raids for long. I never wanted to be an official part of the more hardcore raiding guilds. But I was always first on their list for invites, if I happened to be available.

Someday I'll resubscribe to WoW and get back in the game. I've always been curious as to what my dps would have been had I stayed because they added several improvements to save precious dps seconds (like the quad-insta-totems).

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Speaking of dual spec (which I agree is great), I've been starting to work on my Holy spec gear and set up. So far so good.

_________________
“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Haha, me too Dash.

I have a decent prot set and ret set, so now it's just to gear up Holy.

I'll probably just respec between Holy and Prot as offsets, now I just need to learn how to heal....

Any Holy paladin players got some build suggestions? I was looking at a 51/20 build for SS, but I hear at lower gear levels going into a 51/0/20 build for more crit helps more....

Here are both talent specs I'm trying to decide between...

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Orterra, Manadin, Sayrui are our excellent Healy Pallies on Tanaris.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Healing as a Holy Paly is actually pretty cool. Beacon of Light is a great mechanic. Kinda basic but I like this thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... eqU5llbxvy

I also find this macro handy although not sure what all the filler commands are doing exactly...




Oh and for learning to heal I thought the suggestion of healing in a PvP scenario was great. Any healing there is looked at as a bonus heh so nobody will give you crap more than likely.

_________________
“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I'm playing as a mage. Having a PvE dps spec (currently arcane and kicking ***) and a PvP spec at my whim is amazing. Dual Spec forever.

I now have something like 5 solid gear sets, I think. I have tank, holy, ret dps, PvP smash, and PvP heal sets. I still respec my offspec every now and again, but the ability to change it on the fly is *so* amazing. When I have to offtank for the guild, I can flip back to Ret for single tank fights. When we are short a healer, I can just go to the bank, get my gear, and go drop some gold to respec holy. And I can flip back to ret if someone shows up late.

Dual spec might be the coolest thing they have ever added to WoW along these lines. I suppose I play almost exclusively hybrids, but I imagine it's nice for a pure DPS class to have a PvP build as an offspec.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Holy ****! 5 gear sets? That sounds like a gigantic pain in the ***.

Anyhow.. I almost had a heart attack at learning that the cost for an offspec is 1000 gold. Right now I have a little under 250 on my DK, but I'm still levelling. I'd like to have 2 but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

After talking with some folks last night ingame, I'm thinking of switching to the Blood spec Rafael used for levelling. Frost has been good, but the word seems to be that Blood is even better for levelling. I'll probably modify it slightly though for my playstyle, particularly the frost and unholy portions.

Once I get to max level I'm probably going to go with a Frost spec for tanking, since Frost seems to have lots of defenses and lots of movement control. I'm debating about unholy vs blood for my DPS spec; I really like that Unholy spec Mus posted, and if Blood is truly gear-intensive that might not be the way to go for me. I doubt I'll be doing much big-time raiding.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As a paladin in a raid group without a Holy pally healer, the Holy set comes around pretty quickly. Healing plate drops, and it goes to me. The tank set took a lot longer to piece together, simply because we have a plate main and off tank.

I have to slash tires with another plate DPSr for drops for my main set though.

So far, in each expansion, my holy set has outpaced my main set until we start clearing the dungeon. Then my ret set outpaces it.

As for PvP gear, I arena weekly with friends, and generally PvP when I'm not raiding. Wintergrasp is fun for me, except when it's laggy as hell. The holy pvp set is kind of mish mash, to be honest.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

If you don't squander away your gold on stuff while leveling up, you should have somewhere around 3-4k gold by the time you hit 80.

Assuming epic flying (5k gold, though something you will definitely want, especially if your DK is a miner or herbalist) is out of the picture for the moment, your only gold concern will most likely be having 1k gold available when you hit level 77 to buy Cold Weather Flying. You should probably hit the 1k gold mark much sooner (level 70ish?) and have plenty of time to get back to 1k gold before 77.

I'm well over 300 already and the cash just keeps rolling in. There really doesn't seem to be much of anything to spend it on either. The DK comes with a fast mount and the flying mounts are kinda "meh" to me. I really don't see the appeal.

Back on the subject of talents though.. what's the current thinking on Hunters?

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I found getting around Outlands to be much less of a pain in the *** once I flew.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Flying mounts are required to get to some places(though, you can get a kind of free flying mount in the northrend zones you need them in, but I think it is as slow as normal walking on foot). In all honesty, there is nothing else to spend money on besides repairs.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I tend to mount up on my flier just to get to some mob 100 yards away =p I cant imagine not having one anymore.

_________________
“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe