Dual Spec...Is it necessary?

[Diwa]

For both PVE & PVE.

For teams like: Tank+4DPS

Tank + 4 shaman
Tank + 3 shaman + Boomkin
Tank + 4 Ret Pallys
Tank + 4 Boomkins.
And others...

Why did you dual spec one of your team into DPS/Healer? What are the fights that you really need to shift one of your alts into a different role? Why isn't doable having Tank+4 DPS?


This is in soloing perspective not because you need to dual spec so that you can join raids or BGs with other people.

Please tell us your Tank+4DPS group and why did you dual spec your other DPS into a Healer.

I have enough Triumphs to complete my set and I wanna make sure if it's safe to go Healer first or stick to DPS just in case it's necessary to dual spec 1 of my DPS

Thanks

[HTeam]

For both PVE & PVE.

For teams like: Tank+4DPS

Tank + 4 shaman
Tank + 3 shaman + Boomkin
Tank + 4 Ret Pallys
Tank + 4 Boomkins.
And others...

Why did you dual spec one of your team into DPS/Healer? What are the fights that you really need to shift one of your alts into a different role? Why isn't doable having Tank+4 DPS?


This is in soloing perspective not because you need to dual spec so that you can join raids or BGs with other people.

Please tell us your Tank+4DPS group and why did you dual spec your other DPS into a Healer.

I have enough Triumphs to complete my set and I wanna make sure if it's safe to go Healer first or stick to DPS just in case it's necessary to dual spec 1 of my DPS

Thanks

I just went through this decision myself. I'm running 4 shaman and a friend is the tank. I have two big reasons for dual spec:
1. To have a separate set of hotbars for "healer mode"
2. Earth shield is a big win. It really let's my dps go all out.

So, I can have 3 dps going all out and one shaman healing without having to go through contortions with keys/macros. My dps rotation is easily accomplished with the first 6 hotkeys and my heals can be done with the other 6 (and a few other keys for targeting). I like to have every shaman set up the same way for pvp, so that any of them can take over as head, which makes it a little difficult to be set up to dps and heal from the same hotbar.

[Malekyth]

Most of my toons are dual spec for PvE/PvP: my prot pally goes ret and my demo locks go destro. Also, my druid tank and tree both have a moonkin spec, so for non-instance stuff I can run around as 5-dps and chew things up.

[HPAVC]

I dual spec for two tanking builds / glyphs sets. If your running a healer I would dual spec that dps.

Some people are really into dual specing for just glyph changes alone or 5 point shifts. I am just too lazy for that, though I could see it if elemental had more play in its tree.

[Fursphere]

Dual Spec Needed?

Short answer - No.

Long answer - All depends on what you plan on doing with your characters. I would say its required to have a dedicated healer for a lot of PvE stuff, but somebody always pops up with some "DK + 4x Ret Pally kills Heroic whatever" thread. Brute force is always an option.

[daviddoran]

I have my shamans dual spec PvE and PvP elemental, theres a few points that are useless for both, but essential for one, and i dont plan on playing resto or enhancement.

I have a priest thats shadow/holy, but i might ditch shadow and go disc for fun. It's a really good way to commit to a spec without committing to it...

[Drommon]

Although not tank + 4dps where dps is the same class ->

My team is warrior, priest, warlock, druid, mage

The warrior, druid and priest are dual specced.

The warrior is prot for pve instances and arms for pvp and pve questing.
The priest is disc for pvp/pve and holy for pve AoE bosses.
The druid is balance for pve and resto for pvp.

For the warlock and mage I canot find a reason to dual spec them. In fact I really didn't want to dual spec my priest as she was doing very well with the disc spec. This was until I met the AoE boss and I couldn't keep up with the heals. Prayer of Healing is too slow. I needed faster AoE heals so Holy I went.

[Powerwar]

At the beginning you will really need a dedicated healer for heroics. Once you beef your tank alot you will not heed healing at all or almost no healing, so the healer will be slacking doing nothing.

I have a pala tank and 4 shamans. All the shamans are dual spec elemental and then resto.

Here are things I can do:

1 tank + 4 DPS --> all heroics and some naxx bosses I can solo.
1 tank + 3 DPS + 1 healer --> OS 10 no drakes, ICC trash becomes a joke with this.
1 tank + 4 healers --> Lets say that I had a fight with Patchwerk that took 45 minutes.

Basically I switch from elemental to healer shaman when I see that healing to the tank makes a dent in the overall dps. If I have to heal the tank too much, then the group DPS drops alot. Switching to a dedicated healer allows for easy mode dps feast, but it's only good if your DPS is hurt enough to justify a dedicated healer.
Usually in almost all instances I don't need to heal my tank at all. For example, I can make a full gundrak run without tossing a single heal on the tank, not even on boss fights. 3 x healing totems + seal of light + judgement of light usually is more than enough to keep the tank topped all the time.