10-man Raid - Considering Alternative Specs

[Bigfish]

In my ever continuing quest to optimize my set up, I'm considering the merits of fiddling with some of the spec on my characters. The idea is to switch to DPS specs on most of my characters to promote synergy, despite the fact that their main duties fall out of the tree. For example, specing my Prot Paladin to Ret to gain 3% haste, Replenishment, etc. He'll still be wearing tanking gear, and trying to tank, he'll just be doing it from the Ret tree instead of the prot tree. Now there are obviously drawbacks to this (off the top of my head, I'm losing a fair chunk of Stamina), but I figured I'd bounce the idea off you nice folks, since I have a tendency to forget key assumptions and aspects that make a large difference in whether an idea is good or not. Anyway, without further ado, the plan!:

Switching my Prot Paladin to Ret: He still wears a shield, still uses Defense gear, the major difference being he's now using Divine Storm and Crusader Strike instead of Holy Shield and Hammer of the Righteous. I figure I pick up 3% haste from Ret aura as well as replenishment, among other things.

Switching my Tree Druid to Balance: He doesn't go in to Boomkin form (I'm going to get those buffs from Ret Pally and Elemental Shaman). The intent is that he keeps Moonfire and Insect Swarm up, keeps all his HoTs up on the tank, and spams Starfire when he has the GCDs for it. The big losses I see from this are the loss of Wild Growth and Swiftmend.

Switching my Resto Shaman to Elemental: The intent is to keep Flame Shock up, Lava burst when its off cool down, and spam heals. Obviously I lose Riptide and Mana Tide, but I gain Elemental Oath.

Switching my Shadow Priest to Holy: The intent here is to get access to some really good AOE heals, which will be enhanced even further with 3.1. I can still keep his DoTs rotating, add in a Holy Fire DoT, as well as keeping Renew and PW: S up on the tank. Not that I couldn't toss a PW: S in shadow form, it just kind of messes up his Telos. I lose his replenishment, but I have it again from the Ret specced Tanking Pally. This is my biggest change arguably, since it requires a potentially large amount of regearing.

A few other specs in their change as well, but they are largely a matter of BM hunter moving to Marks, and DPS classes slightly altering their spec but not their playstyle or function.

So in summation, I switch specs on my Pally to get some more synergy going, and switch my healers from uber-healing spec to able to drop a bit of damage but still spam heals, with one DPS class moving to that same position, so what I end up with is 3 Quasi-healers whose main function is healing while maintaining DoTs and Buffs.

[SmackedMeat]

If you have the dough, you might want to consider upgrading your toons to dual spec. I think that would give you the ability to customize on the fly and you can do some testing on different specs on the same run. From what I understand, it's a five second spell that will swap your spec. What I don't know is if you still have to pay if you want to tweak one of your two specs.

In direct response, it looks like you are going from specialized to hybrid (at least in the case of the druid) to hybrid. I guess what I am thinking is you are going from two dedicated healers to one dedicated and two hybrids. I am not sure how the math plays out but the marginal benefit of the DPS gain you get from the moves, might night be worth it. At least if you went dual spec, you could try it out and go back right away if it doesn't work. Anyway, that's the $0.02 from a rookie.

[nomenquis]

In my ever continuing quest to optimize my set up, I'm considering the merits of fiddling with some of the spec on my characters. The idea is to switch to DPS specs on most of my characters to promote synergy, despite the fact that their main duties fall out of the tree. For example, specing my Prot Paladin to Ret to gain 3% haste, Replenishment, etc. He'll still be wearing tanking gear, and trying to tank, he'll just be doing it from the Ret tree instead of the prot tree. Now there are obviously drawbacks to this (off the top of my head, I'm losing a fair chunk of Stamina), but I figured I'd bounce the idea off you nice folks, since I have a tendency to forget key assumptions and aspects that make a large difference in whether an idea is good or not. Anyway, without further ado, the plan!:

Switching my Prot Paladin to Ret: He still wears a shield, still uses Defense gear, the major difference being he's now using Divine Storm and Crusader Strike instead of Holy Shield and Hammer of the Righteous. I figure I pick up 3% haste from Ret aura as well as replenishment, among other things.


Very bad idea imho, ret specced you might be able to hold aggro fine, but you'll take a huge load more damage without holy shield. A typical prot paladin won't ever get any unblocked hits with holy shield up, and that's a huge difference (>>1.5k) per hit!



Switching my Tree Druid to Balance: He doesn't go in to Boomkin form (I'm going to get those buffs from Ret Pally and Elemental Shaman). The intent is that he keeps Moonfire and Insect Swarm up, keeps all his HoTs up on the tank, and spams Starfire when he has the GCDs for it. The big losses I see from this are the loss of Wild Growth and Swiftmend.

Switching my Resto Shaman to Elemental: The intent is to keep Flame Shock up, Lava burst when its off cool down, and spam heals. Obviously I lose Riptide and Mana Tide, but I gain Elemental Oath.

Switching my Shadow Priest to Holy: The intent here is to get access to some really good AOE heals, which will be enhanced even further with 3.1. I can still keep his DoTs rotating, add in a Holy Fire DoT, as well as keeping Renew and PW: S up on the tank. Not that I couldn't toss a PW: S in shadow form, it just kind of messes up his Telos. I lose his replenishment, but I have it again from the Ret specced Tanking Pally. This is my biggest change arguably, since it requires a potentially large amount of regearing.


I can not really see an elemental and a boomkin being able to heal for 3-4 minutes or longer. You loose so much efficiency in healing when not specced into it. Imo you'll run dry _very_ quickly, and heal for less in the process.
Now having a holy priest might help you here, but imo it would be a lot better to spec the toons for the job they're doing.
Also, you'll loose earth shield, which really is a nice buffer for your tank.

Just my 2 (euro) cents.
kind regards

[Bigfish]

I can not really see an elemental and a boomkin being able to heal for 3-4 minutes or longer. You loose so much efficiency in healing when not specced into it. Imo you'll run dry _very_ quickly, and heal for less in the process.
Now having a holy priest might help you here, but imo it would be a lot better to spec the toons for the job they're doing.
Also, you'll loose earth shield, which really is a nice buffer for your tank.

Well, I need to check on the Mana Regen, but I'm not turning the shaman and Druid in to off-healers. They are still healers, just providing a different buff.

Come to think of it though, it does sound pretty silly for some of those classes. I'm still interested in trying out Ret as a tank, but thinking about the trade offs, I AM losing a lot of healing power for spell buffs, but in hybridizing them, I only have 2 straight caster who would really benefit 100% from all this synergy I'm trying to stack.

[nomenquis]

Well, I need to check on the Mana Regen, but I'm not turning the shaman and Druid in to off-healers. They are still healers, just providing a different buff.

Come to think of it though, it does sound pretty silly for some of those classes. I'm still interested in trying out Ret as a tank, but thinking about the trade offs, I AM losing a lot of healing power for spell buffs, but in hybridizing them, I only have 2 straight caster who would really benefit 100% from all this synergy I'm trying to stack.

You're also missing out on the (imho) pretty great armor buff by switching your shaman to ele. And I'm not really getting why you want the druid to be balace. Imp. ff does not stack with misery you'd otherwise get from the shadow. The only thing I can think of would be insect swarm, but by switching your pala to ret you'll be getting such a load more damage that this won't matter much I guess.

Also, if you do the switch then you'll miss out on tol aura / imp devo aura (unless you spec as ret for it).

However, I'd love you to try it and prove me wrong, might be fun to tank as ret after all :)

kind regards

[Bigfish]

Well, the intent would be to get the priest out of shadow, which would make FF useful, and toss in insect swarm, moonfire, and add Earth and Moon, so I can switch my lock from keeping CoE up and do CoA instead. Switching the Shaman to elemental would give me +5% crit on my casters, but at that point, I've only really got my mage consistantly casting spells. The Lock too, but she has a rather complicated DoT Rotation to manage anyway, and how much the Druid would benefit from it depends on how much free casting time he has between DoTs and HoTs. The same goes for the priest, who would hit mind blast and smite when not refreshing HoTs and DoTs.

I mean, the thing is it COULD theoretically work, but it depends almost entirely on timing and how big my DPS windows are between my HoT casting, and whether HoT healing will outpace incoming damage, and whether group mana endurance allows sustained fighting. I might try out the respeccing tonight just to get a feel for DPS changes, but I don't really have a good measure of incoming damage until Noth and Archavon reset.

[nomenquis]

Well, the intent would be to get the priest out of shadow, which would make FF useful, and toss in insect swarm, moonfire, and add Earth and Moon, so I can switch my lock from keeping CoE up and do CoA instead. Switching the Shaman to elemental would give me +5% crit on my casters, but at that point, I've only really got my mage consistantly casting spells. The Lock too, but she has a rather complicated DoT Rotation to manage anyway, and how much the Druid would benefit from it depends on how much free casting time he has between DoTs and HoTs. The same goes for the priest, who would hit mind blast and smite when not refreshing HoTs and DoTs.

I mean, the thing is it COULD theoretically work, but it depends almost entirely on timing and how big my DPS windows are between my HoT casting, and whether HoT healing will outpace incoming damage, and whether group mana endurance allows sustained fighting. I might try out the respeccing tonight just to get a feel for DPS changes, but I don't really have a good measure of incoming damage until Noth and Archavon reset.

Just respec the pala to ret and go run utgarde on heroic. Pull the frist 3 trash pulls at once and have a look at how different things will go :)
One thing I completely forgot when thinking about how bad respeccing to ret might be is that you'll be missing judgement of the just. Thats a 20% reduction in melee dmg taken from a boss right there ...
And for trash you'll be missing redoubt I guess.

Aw, let me hear results, I'm really eager about it :)

[Bigfish]

Redoubt is fairly early in the prot tree, isn't it? I should still be able to pick it up.

[Bigfish]

Oh. Well then. Scratch that. This is what I get for speculating on specs after being static for 2 years...

[Deekhay]

My group is different from yours but two of the switches I've done are exactly the other way around :)

I switched my moonkin to tree and my holy priest to shadow. Shadow does a huge dps and all regen is just awesome. True that the aoe healing is incredible but tbh I prefer this way and I've moved further in Naxx.
Moonkin, I was never able to get decent dps from it and since I wanted to move the priest to shadow, he was the logical choice.

Don't give up on the ret pally idea too soon :)

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=A954C34C79DF10B6D34F130E643 A00C3.app06_03?topicId=7373950732&sid=1

I'll most likely do that. Fights I've seen/done so far I really regret the dps I'm losing (My MT is the DK). He ots very little really and since he has very good tanking gear I really believe the raid will profit from it. Kings is also coming as default to all Paladins in 3.1. I'm really inclined to do so for next week raids. This week I'm trying to down some new bosses and confirm the others.

[nomenquis]

Don't give up on the ret pally idea too soon :)

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html…373950732&sid=1

I'll most likely do that. Fights I've seen/done so far I really regret the dps I'm losing (My MT is the DK). He ots very little really and since he has very good tanking gear I really believe the raid will profit from it. Kings is also coming as default to all Paladins in 3.1. I'm really inclined to do so for next week raids. This week I'm trying to down some new bosses and confirm the others.

This thread on the wow forums is about ret as a second tank, not ret as a main tank. I assumed that the ret pala would be the mt for the poster. Imo ret should be able to ot most stuff fine, however I'd rather have the ret mt patch (hs tank gets hit a lot more) and perhaps kel adds might get interesting.

kind regards

[wowphreak]

Don't give up on the ret pally idea too soon :)

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html…373950732&sid=1

I'll most likely do that. Fights I've seen/done so far I really regret the dps I'm losing (My MT is the DK). He ots very little really and since he has very good tanking gear I really believe the raid will profit from it. Kings is also coming as default to all Paladins in 3.1. I'm really inclined to do so for next week raids. This week I'm trying to down some new bosses and confirm the others.

This thread on the wow forums is about ret as a second tank, not ret as a main tank. I assumed that the ret pala would be the mt for the poster. Imo ret should be able to ot most stuff fine, however I'd rather have the ret mt patch (hs tank gets hit a lot more) and perhaps kel adds might get interesting.

kind regards

Link doesn't seem to work properly


Bigfish: The only way yer gonna be able to get away with going ret with the pali is if he's already overgeared or just off tanking.
There just to many nice abilities in the prot tree that helps with surviving.

Think yeh would be better off having 2 dedicated healers untill yeh have what ever yer running on farm.
Also think setting em up as offhealers that dps and they will go oom to fast.

[Bigfish]

Well, I've tried it out, and I must say, it works better than I expected. In Ret tanking, my tank becomes an aboslutely beastly DPS in addition to holding aggro like a champion. Granted, I only cleared some trash in Naxx to get a feel for incoming damage (which only applies to Trash), but with a full healer and 2 off healers, its mostly a matter of fine tuning their HPS.

My only real conflict came in the form of how my Druid is specced. His damage is, at best, minimal, but the 3% spell hit he brought was somewhat important. On the other hand, I'm missing the hit-it-and-forget-it group heal from Wild Growth, so I expect I'll spec him back in to tree form and stack a few more points of hit on the casters that need it. The only catch is I'm going to have to do some serious regearing of my Priest and Shaman.

[Bigfish]

So Basically, my set up has moved from having a Shadow Priest and a Resto Shaman to a Holy Priest and an Elemental Shaman. Elemental Shamans are like freaking candy. Can't get enough. I did lose Replenishment from the Shadow Priest, but gaining it from my Ret Speced Pally tank, has made up for it, as well as giving me 3% haste across the board. The holy priest still needs some work, but I'm sure he'll do much better group healing than the Shaman, who did Ok, but had issues when it came to the whole group taking damage. (He still healed through fine on melee AOEs)

As far as raid wide buffs go, I've gained 5% spell Crit, 3% haste (basically a Boomkin without the boomkin) at a loss of 3% spell hit, and the shaman is much better at maintaining his damage than the Shadow Priest who had to wind up and build DoTs, and I was clipping his Mind Flays as well. In their previous spec gear, I was still pulling 2k more damage raid wide as well. It will be interesting to see how much that can get upped with some proper gearing.

I did end up speccing my druid back to Resto. I just lost too much healing power to really justify some DoT damage and 3% spell hit. Granted, I REALLY miss that hit, but I missed the healing even more.

I fully expect Ret tanking to catch on once Dual Specs come out. Its just crazy how much extra damage it brings for a relatively minor drop in Survivability. That survivability may be key in some fights, and I need to explore that more, but right now, I'm still impressed.

[rulemaker]

well your idea of Ret tanking sounds really interesting!

how did you specced your "new" tank?

[Bigfish]

Check Brightforge on Shadow Council if you want to see the gear and spec.

A couple of things I've noticed over the course of the weekend: This is a far superior out-and-about spec. Where as me previous Prot spec would be sitting OOM most of the time (not that important when you have a posse following you, but still...), now if I open with a Judgement I generally stay near full mana, or at least operable.

As far as damage goes, I've come to realize this is a very particular spec that won't work for everyone. Why? Because you need all your melee raid buffs before this spec really starts spitting out damage. Given boxers tendency to go with caster heavy group compositions, prot will generally be the better way to go.

That said, until I've taken down Archavon and Noth tomorrow, the biggest thing I've killed is Thrym in Zul'drak. (600k HP, hits for 3-4k) I don't anticipate any problems, but we'll see.

Edit: Oddly enough, you can even use a near 969 rotation with this:

/castsequence reset=combat Judgement of Wisdom, Crusader Strike, Consecration, Shield of Righteousness, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judgement of Wisdom, Shield of Righteousness, Consecration, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Shield of Righteousness

[KvdM]

Check Brightforge on Shadow Council if you want to see the gear and spec.With 21k health it might become a very rought ride vs some of the naxx bosses, but let us know how well it goes.

[puppychow]

Let us know how it works, my Pally tank is in 4/5 T7.5 and 31k hp unbuffed and i'd be interested in hearing the results. I'm guessing bosses are going to give you significant problems, since they hit a LOT harder than trash (patchwerk hits me in heroic mode for 15-20k swings). Also threat is an issue many times, I barely am able to outthreat geared DPS in the first 20 seconds of a fight (after that it is a lot easier), I suspect as ret you are going to notice that your DPS classes easily pull off you on longer fights.

[Bigfish]

HP is a bit low since I don't have the Stamina boost from the prot talents I previously did, but at the same time, I haven't had much time, (or incentive) to regear, and truthfully, its on the back burner until I finish regearing my priest and shaman, and at this point, its just a matter of swapping out a bit of avoidance for Stamina. (By my estimates, 28k after buffs is about where I SHOULD be, which has me still a bit low, but nothing I've fought has hit hard enough for me to think those last 2k are going to make a difference. This may change in the future)

How hard Heroic Patch hits doesn't affect me at all. since I have no intention of ever fighting him. My previous 10-man Patch attempts HP wasn't an issue either, its my healer endurance. If it comes up, it comes up, and that's all well and good. Its a quick Re-spec away. When 3.1 hits it will matter even less.

[Bigfish]

I was wrong. Way too much mitigation in Prot to trade off for the DPS in Ret.

[puppychow]

lol what happened

[Bigfish]

Trash slimes in Plague Wing hit REALLY hard, and those couple K extra from Noth started adding up. A Divine Storm DID pull the spawning skellies to the tank instead of the healers, but still ended up getting hit too hard. Those extra couple of seconds when you hit 35% health are also live savers. Still going to go 1-handed Ret when dualspecs come out for ease of gearing and mana issues. It just doesn't work that well on bosses.

[KvdM]

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/128347587844687500fail.jpg

;)