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Specializing a must?

helleluyahhelleluyah Member Posts: 28
in World of Warcraft

Pretty simple question I guess. I can understand that if you want to be a Shadow Priest you have to specialize in Shadow Magic, and if you love Frost bolt you should specialize in Frost Magic or whatever it is called. But what if you are a Warrior? Paladin? Shaman?

I don't really get the point about specializing for those classes. Is it necessary? Can't you take a bit of all?

Can someone please explain to me why everyone is loving to specialize so much? Like I said, I do understand it for the Priest and Mage because the results are pretty obvious, but for the other classes the results are anything but in my opinion.

Enlighten me!

Comments

  • Unknown
    A must? No not really, but people will get on you if you aren't.  Probably speicalization is most effective theoretically, but for some generalization is the playstyle they execute best and therefore are better than if the specialzied.



    In WoW, you will need to at least specailize your gear.  But for talents while useful it not truly necessary.  A feral Druid for example is a usually a good enough healer to run an entire 5 man instance, if they are geared right.  If they have no +regen no +mana no +healing gear then they will be pretty much inadeqaute whereas a resto with crappy gear like that will be somehwat crappy.  Switch that around so that they both have good healing gear and the feral will need to be on the ball but is perfectly fine and its rather easy for the resto.



    However while this is the reality, it is not the perception.  So if you choose to generalize I suggest lying to people.
  • earthhawkearthhawk Member Posts: 247
    Originally posted by gestalt11

    A must? No not really, but people will get on you if you aren't.  Probably speicalization is most effective theoretically, but for some generalization is the playstyle they execute best and therefore are better than if the specialzied.



    In WoW, you will need to at least specailize your gear.  But for talents while useful it not truly necessary.  A feral Druid for example is a usually a good enough healer to run an entire 5 man instance, if they are geared right.  If they have no +regen no +mana no +healing gear then they will be pretty much inadeqaute whereas a resto with crappy gear like that will be somehwat crappy.  Switch that around so that they both have good healing gear and the feral will need to be on the ball but is perfectly fine and its rather easy for the resto.



    However while this is the reality, it is not the perception.  So if you choose to generalize I suggest lying to people.
    You dont have to specialize until you reach endgame. Then your specializtion will go one of two ways: PvP or PvE. Most guilds that do the endgame raids will want you to specialize in some form or another. For example: A 'Protection' warrior is great for endgame raids, but sucks for PvP. On the other hand, most guilds want a 'Restoration druid' if the have a enough tanks (i.e. Protection warriors). Personaly I've avoided the need to specialze by having two characters that are at endgame level. This way I can PvP with my feral druid, and PvE with my holy paladin. If you really like WoW I would recommend going this route, unless your are ok with having one specialized toon. Hope this helps.
  • AntipathyAntipathy Member UncommonPosts: 1,362
    Some classes have a few key talents buried deep in the talent tree. For example most hunters will either put alot of points into Beast Mastery to get "The beast within" or marksmanship to get "Silencing shot". These talents are important enough that any build that doesn't have one or the other is considered weak.



    However other classes such as priest don't have many such key talents. For example there isn't a key talent for the holy (healing) tree so alot of holy priests put some points into the discipline tree as well (since this gives them more mana efficiency).

  • ferofaxferofax Member Posts: 82
    ...this is basically a question of jack-of-all-trades versus specialists... i prefer specializing, because generalized characters with a lot of average levelled skills tend to be average. sure they can handle some situations, but having their skills spread too thinly amongst many wont be helpful.

    ---------------------------------
    be a sweetheart, help me dominate the world...

  • kaskuskaskus Member Posts: 105
    Originally posted by helleluyah


    Pretty simple question I guess. I can understand that if you want to be a Shadow Priest you have to specialize in Shadow Magic, and if you love Frost bolt you should specialize in Frost Magic or whatever it is called. But what if you are a Warrior? Paladin? Shaman?
    I don't really get the point about specializing for those classes. Is it necessary? Can't you take a bit of all?
    Can someone please explain to me why everyone is loving to specialize so much? Like I said, I do understand it for the Priest and Mage because the results are pretty obvious, but for the other classes the results are anything but in my opinion.
    Enlighten me!


     
    specializing helps a lot for a certain characters as you said..and there are some that need a bit of that talent for this..what you must do is look for some useful talents that will constitute the use of the skills of your character..in that way, you skills will be balance and more efficient..


  • baffbaff Member Posts: 9,457

     

    I used to be a jack of all trades. Essentially you will get less powers.

    You need to have a certain amount of points in each skill tree to get the really useful stuff. If you jack of all trades, all you get is aload of half cut powers.

     

    It sucks I knoiw, but specialise or be underpowered. The choice is yours.

  • Unknown
    Originally posted by baff


     

    I used to be a jack of all trades. Essentially you will get less powers.
    You need to have a certain amount of points in each skill tree to get the really useful stuff. If you jack of all trades, all you get is aload of half cut powers.
     
    It sucks I knoiw, but specialise or be underpowered. The choice is yours.
    Its a little quirky and really depends on the tree.  No doubt there are key talents to get.  Usually it follows the trend Baff stated.  But at the same time some exccellent low level talents are in a completely different tree and you are forced to branch out some.  For example there is a druid talaent that increases all damage and its in the balance tree, almost any feral druid highly desires this and often goes 11 points into balance for it along with the shapeshifting mana discount power.



    A similar trend is seen in the Resto tree where that Instant Cast nature spell talent is at 21 points, which for  feral druids helps them immensely as the can stun shift heal shift for far increased lognevity.



    But now with the 41 point talents things start to change more towards specialization.  In general it often depends on how valued the higher level talent in the tree is.  For the most part it seems like WoW's talent design is going in the direction of taller trees tends to give more power and therefore gimp generalists.  Frankly I think their design is a little sucky.



    But again its just WoW, its not that big of a deal.  I personally like to plan out a character to be as effective as possible, but in the end for a game like WoW it really doesn't matter that much.
  • kaskuskaskus Member Posts: 105
    basically you don't need to put a certain specialization to your talents..because you have to include  some of other talents  to be able to have a balanced toon dude..because not all talents (if you solidify your talents for a certain specialization )are nice to learn and some are just ruin your toon's talent..btw, you can add a talent that do not belong to your skill tree of specialization, but hence that you know that i'll help you and your toon...
  • helleluyahhelleluyah Member Posts: 28

    So if I understand right you should always have a good specialized equipment, and specialize your talent build at the endgame? And then you can either choose PvP or PvE?

    Sounds good to me. Thanks all for the info.

  • AntipathyAntipathy Member UncommonPosts: 1,362
    Don't worry about endgame until you get there. Many classes use a completely different build and different equipment for levelling  compared to the type used for endgame (e.g. a levelling priest may use a shadow build and use alot of +spell damage and +int based gear. At endgame a priest may spec for healing and use gear with good +healing and/or mana regeneration).

  • BadSpockBadSpock Member UncommonPosts: 7,979

    speaking from a warrior's perspective..

    talent build is very important for warriors, down to every single point spent.

    you can "spec" youself for pvp 100% if that is all you think you'll be doing. Or, you can mix and match a little bit, with 61 talent points to work with, you can afford to play around a bit. same goes for tanking or leveling.

    arms for pvp, fury for leveling, protection for endgame/tanking

    for instance, I don't PVP all that much, so I'm protection for tanking instances/raids for my guild.

    I used to be 5/5/51 which is 5 talent points in the arms, 5 in fury tree, and 51 in protection. I was quite the uber meat shield, however, my damage was crap and ability to generate rage (which warriors need to create threat and thus hold aggro) was not that good

    so I respecced to 10/10/41 which gave me more rage generation and better resistance to stuns/charm effects. I had to pick and choose a little bit more in the protection tree, focusing on talents more built towards raiding then running 5-man dungeons, but this fixed my problem with rage generation and thus allowed me to actually be better tanking 5-man dungeons at the same time.

    just an example of course, but hopefully i've helped you shed some light onto how important talent choice can be. it's different for every class, and it's really all about your playstyle and what you like to do.

  • Unknown
    Originally posted by helleluyah


    So if I understand right you should always have a good specialized equipment, and specialize your talent build at the endgame? And then you can either choose PvP or PvE?
    Sounds good to me. Thanks all for the info.
    In my opinion if you do not specialize your equipment you will just downright suck, especially for a class like druid/shaman/paladin.  Talents maybe maybe not.  More likely than not you will need to .  When i used to play my druid i carried around 3 sets of equipment.
  • AntipathyAntipathy Member UncommonPosts: 1,362
    Having multiple sets of equipment is particularly important for druids due to widely different roles they play. Classes more closely focused around dps - e.g. rogues, can get away with only a single set of equipment (although they would probably still want to swap trinkets when switching between PvE and PvP)

  • ferofaxferofax Member Posts: 82
    ...true, gear does make up for a LOT of a character or a classes' disadvantages. handling a class with very specific roles requires at least one set that fits that role, and maybe another set that makes up for weaknesses. speaking of gear, i kinda wanna get my paws on some real quick, but my gold really isnt gonna be much help. i was thinking of maybe buying from sites that offer stuff like that (like oloot.com), you think its okay? i mean, i dont mind paying, i can afford it... one thing i sure as hell do not have though is enough time to do instances/raids though. please dont flame me, im just asking. oh and, sorry if its a bit off topic.

    ---------------------------------
    be a sweetheart, help me dominate the world...

  • AntipathyAntipathy Member UncommonPosts: 1,362
    If you don't want to do instances then why do you need good gear? It's perfectly possible to solo with mediocre gear.



     Do you PvP alot? In which case just collect the PvP rewards. Some of them are quite good.

  • Unknown
    Originally posted by Antipathy

    If you don't want to do instances then why do you need good gear? It's perfectly possible to solo with mediocre gear.



     Do you PvP alot? In which case just collect the PvP rewards. Some of them are quite good.
    Um you do realize that is completely arbitrary right?  It could be made the other way around it could be perfectly possible to group with mediocre gear and solo only give the good stuff.  Like the hunter bow quest that is required fto be done solo.  Or they could be equal.





    In fact it has been stated by Rob Pardo that the gear differences are solely to encourage people to group. 



    Whether or not you need gear for any activity is soley based on how the designers decide to make gear.  They do not want solo to reward the same as group because they want people to group.  Same thing for raiding.



    So unless you think that the VP for design for WoW has no idea about rewards....



    It would be very refreshing if people would admit why certain playstyles are rewarded in an inferior manner.  But  I doubt that will ever happen.  I wish these games would honestly let people play as they like without stigmas and hidden incentives.  Or at the very least honestly admit what they are trying to do with players rather than only talking about it at developer conferences.



    But also wish they would get past the fallacy that more people = harder and that will never happen.  Maybe if we forced all MMORPG developers to meticulous scope out why recursion is more efficient on the Towers of Hanoi problem they might understand.   Or maybe if we make them read every single cartoon that has Catbert the Evil human resources director.  Nah they will never learn its been written in stone by God to be "obvious".



    Seriously these guys need to stop being so scared.  Even if the solo game rewarded the exact same I would want to group.  I mean do they think their content sucks that much?
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