How ‘hard’ will this go in cata? Up until now in wow classic every class had a metaspec you had to be if you wanted to be viable (translation: invited to groups).
Most prominent in vanilla, still very much so in TBC and albeit a bit less still a lot in wrath classic.
Iirc cata ‘fixes’ a lot of specs and makes them more like in retail, but how do you predict this will be in cata?
Yes I also play retail and yes I realize there, too, there are fotm metaspecs, but it’s also very much true you can play any spec up until the very highest of difficulties (as in mythic raiding and +20 keys).
For example I’ve played disc priest in wrath but recently swicthed to holy and the difference is crazy. In cata they gutted the current disc playstyle a bit and made holy much more fluid.
Cata has smaller talent trees. This means we also have fewer talent points. And finally, once you spend your first talent point in one talent tree, you have to spend a total of 31 points in that talent tree in order to unlock the 2nd talent tree. So for example, if you want to main spec Holy in Cata, you have to spend 31 points in the Holy Tree before you can spend any points in the shadow or discipline trees.
This effectively means that there is a lot of rigidity in your specs. You will have tops 10 points to spend in any other tree and usually there are mandatory talents in those other trees, and you can only play with 2-3 talent points.
If you go to Tauri-Veins, they have Cata guides for you. There you will see that effectively there is one spec for all healers with 2-3 talent points left for optional talents. The difference the optional talents make is minimal except for Disc Priest and Atonement. Because if you pick up atonement, you will include a lot more smites in your rotation.
My view is that for Cata, they got rid of a lot of useless talents but the locking of talent trees makes hybrid specs impossible. Anyhow, the most important spells for each spec are deep into the talent tree so there is a slim change for any useful hybrid specs besides the single meta spec you can have.
This rigidity is one of the reasons why people stopped playing WoW back in the day. Blizzard said that they might change the talent trees in Cata Classic but we will have to wait and see what they actually change if anything at all.
I feel you didn’t really get my point. I mean talent points aside I was talking about the specs, like in my example with Hpriest VS disc. Why would you bring a Hpriets now when you can have a disc?
Is ret pala good in cata compared to Vanilla (I mean I know it is but you get the point), is Fury viable or only arms? Or both like I asked in my op.
Idk about pve but in pvp i Believe every class has a spec that outperforms others such as affli being way better than demo, destro or mm Hunter being better than bm, surv. Some classes have all specs playable tho such as druid (even tho resto druid is considered bad compared to resto shamy). When it comes to pve theres a private server that has logs of all kills in like past 10 years of every raid tier. You can compare them i expect cata classic specs to perform similary.
If your question is whether Holy is a viable spec in Cata, then the answer is yes. For 25man, you needed a healer of each type (hpaladin, holy priest, disc priest, restoshaman and restodruid) plus a 6th healer depending on the raid. For 10man, a minimaxing group would bring a Disc over a Holy priest however.
Yeah I’m hearing this everywhere, which makes sense. I’ll probably go offspec disc for 10m but in guild 25 mans I’ll be Holy. I much prefer holy’s playstyle.
I don’t think that was his point. I believe he was talking about not being forced to play one specific spec to be raid viable but all 3 specs being viable and strong.
If there aren’t useful hybrid specs, then the ability to spec hybrid is irrelevant and so is its removal in cata. Thats not what people quit over. 99.9% of people even back then went to a website and copied one of the meta builds off of there, or copied one of the meta builds off of someone ingame.
What really caused the subscriber growth to first slow down and then reverse was increased competition, shifting market trends, and the original audience “aging out” (transitioning to a phase in their life with more responsibilities and therefore less time to play).
That’s patently false. 25 Man is more forgiving for comp but there you want to basically always run 2x hpal and 1x disc, the rest is free for all.
I doubt we will see groups running 6 healers ever beyond first progression, and if you’re a rshaman you’re probably going to have a bad time finding groups until DS.
For 10 man the Healer comp is pretty much fixed at hpal/disc. Playing anything else outside of a guild who specifically allows you to deviate from this is going to be nigh impossible.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but based on how many people play, nobody has ever, nor will ever, care about arena or rated pvp. Not only is arena irrelevant, it’s also so unpopular that all arena players quitting or the arena population tripling has no measurable effect on player numbers.
Cataclysm does have a lot of “viable” specs, but that’s not how it will shake out. There will be a meta comp and people who adhere to it for best results, like always.
Since we will start on endgame patch class balance wise and its original balancing was not done with the first raid tier in mind, it is unrealistic to assume the strengh of specs will be balanced. Even if Blizzard tries to balance things, from what we have seen in wotlk, the results are questionable.
It is likely to assume that specs will have different power levels and some will be less desireable when it comes to group building.
Cataclysm class design was juicy.
Give that Demo warlock or ele shaman or shadow priest or even balance druid
There is so many good specs in that expansion that many people will struggle to PICK one because most of them are a lot of FUN.
I spend 4 years on CATA private servers and i had a lot of FUN with cata class design
MoP is also very fun
And i’m not talking from a perspective overbloated and everybody had everything
i’m talking from pure FUN perspective so when you pressed the spell you felt the power behind it.
Example if you press chaing lightning right now you not gonna feel that juice
but if you press chaing lightning in CATA or MoP you will understand what i’m saying