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....73950732&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.