Spec Attachment

I just recently changed Nycterenne from a feral off-spec to balance, and it seems to be working out much better.  I’m reminded of the situation where I picked up dual-spec for Ikotar, and specced Survival, and haven’t looked back.  This has me thinking about why I pick certain specs for my characters, and what I might be missing from merely reading about specs vs. trying them out myself.

Ncyterenne I was intending to keep as feral for an off-spec, since with Ikotar and gravesaur, I have range DPS covered.  However, I’m doing abyssmal DPS as a cat.  I’ll defiantely be revisiting the spec when I get to later levels.  It might be a case of not having all the usefull abilites yet, since my gear is decent for the level I’m at (by no means best-in-slot, but not 15 levels behind either).  This will also simplify my gear choices, and allay any guilt I might have at rolling for off-spec pieces that I may outgrow before I have much of a chance to use.  So far, LFD queues are pretty fast, so I don’t have to quest unless I want to.

With Ikotar, until relatively recently I was specced Beast Mastery with no intentions of rolling any other spec.  However, since I read a few blogs and forums, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was missing out by rolling BM.  For quite awhile I resisted what I was reading, happy with Big Red Pet, and Exotic Pets.  Then came the heroics.  I was usually #3 or 4 most runs, and I started to evaluate what I was doing.  Sure I was going to miss Big Red Pet, but I was rolling a wolf or cat, which I could keep if I went SV or MM.  After a bit of research, it became apparent that Survival is the way to go for lesser-geared hunters, and off I went to the trainer to purchase dual-spec (after all, this was only a test, right?).  I was surprised how much I enjoy Survival, and I’m pretty much SV full-time these days, even for questing and farming.  Now that I was doing better DPS, this change of spec has breathed new life into Ikotar.

I have had a really tough time trying to justify dual-spec for Gravesaur, since I’m attached to Demonology, and I shudder at the thought of questing without my Felguard.  This has some interesting parallels with my situation with Ikotar, even though the irrational part of my brain insists it’s different.  I’ll likely go Destruction, since burst and AoE seem to be the ticket for heroics in Wrath.  We’ll see how things shake out for Cataclysm, but I suspect the Felguard will be back for the grind to 85.

Well I gave Destruction a try, and I did more DPS on the target dummy, but it didn’t translate well to instances.  I ran 4-5 instances as destro, and was doing 5-10% less with a more complex rotation.  Maybe the situation changes in the 10- or 25-man raiding environment, but there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to destruction in heroics with my play style. 

I’ll have to test Affliction to see how that pans out.  I’m curious about this one, since I levelled and raided some as Affliction in vanilla WoW, and enjoyed it.

Musings

I’ve noticed that when I hit a milestone or try to decide which of my alts or mains to play, I have a couple good experiences, and then decide this is how it’s going to be going forward.  Then, a short time later, the RNG swings the other way, and I wonder if Fate has it out for me.

In the latest iteration of this, I had decided that I want to push to get my druid up to 80, since insta-queues are the way to go after praying for handouts as an unconnected DPS trolling trade chat and LFD.  Once I hit 58 I made my way to Outlands, and jumped into the queue for random BC dungeons.  Now before this, I found that I was spending up to 15 mins in the queue for old-world dungeons as a healer, and even sometimes getting into groups as DPS.  I was expecting this trend to continue more or less until Northrend.  However, once I was in the BC random queue, I got the window telling me that my group was ready almost instantly.  “Now that’s more like it”  I thought to myself as I zoned into Hellfire Ramparts for the first time in a while (most of my alts haven’t made it to Outlands yet).  I was blessed with a great group, good tank, sensible DPS, and I wasn’t overwhelmed keeping everyone alive.  We breezed through in 15 minutes or so, and ran it again right after.  After that I had to log  off.

I wish I had the schedule that allowed me to keep playing when things are going well, so I don’t feel as though I have to play when things aren’t going well.

Now, after the first few great groups, the pendulum has swung hard the other way.  I can deal with 1 clueless person in a group, but lately, it seems to be 2-3 morons in a group who are either trying to annoy the rest of us, don’t realize what they are doing, or just don’t care.

I strongly suspect this has a lot to do with the fact Death Knights start at 55, and are 58ish by the time they join the rest of us in Azeroth.  Coupled with the fact that they can (at later levels anyways) tank, and that queue times are non-existent for tanks, you get a lot of people queueing as tanks who either don’t intend to tank, or expect to learn as they go in Outlands.  I suspect a lot of these people are just avoiding queues, since from what I’ve read, you don’t get many of your tanking abilities until the mid-60s. 

Then again, I have seen warriors and paladins who queue as a tank, and have no clue what they’re doing.  Maybe it’s just queue-jumping.  I’m surprised at how many healers and tanks don’t seem to care about their reputation in-game.  Sure, with LFD you have a much larger pool of people to draw from, so eventually you’ll piss off enough people so you won’t be enjoying that instant queue that probably made you roll a tank or healer in the first place.  Good luck finding a guild at that point as well.

Well, I suppose that’s enough of a rant for now.

Falross

How did that happen?

I just hit 66 on Nyct last night, and I realized that in less than 2 levels, I’ll be off to Northrend. It’s really amazing how fast you can level with heirlooms and the LFD.

Hmm, with this speed, I wondor if I can get another alt to 80 before Cata drops …..

Falross