Dual Spec and Zero Mana Concerns

#0 - April 16, 2009, 5:02 p.m.

When switching between specs your mana drops from its current level to 0.

I would like to know Blizzards thinking on this. I had originally planned on dual spec-ing Disc/Holy. After finding the zero mana condition I decided against it. Recovering a buffed mana pool of 25k is a time killer in raid. Personally I don't see this as balanced.

1) Druids healers can Innervate out of combat. Priest healers need something for a Fiend to attack for a similar amount of regen.

2) Pally tanks like to have full mana before a pull. A dual spec, druid/DK/warrior tank is not similarly hindered.

Non mana using classes have an advantage with dual spec now. So while all the mana users are in the back drinking... the rest of the raid moves forward. Is this really what Blizzard had in mind with Dual Spec?

Thanks,
Doc

Ghostcrawler

#7 - April 16, 2009, 5:41 p.m.

We wanted swapping specs to be a decision, but not too much of a burden. That's a pretty narrow space in which to have the design land. By "decision" I meant that we didn't want to encourage you to swap specs every single pull. It's more like "Hey, let's try this with one more healer," or "Hey, we don't need two tanks this fight."

We were particularly worried about it in the solo case. We didn't want say a shaman to kill a quest mob as Enhancement and then feel like what they are supposed to do is swap specs, heal, and then swap specs back to Enhancement to keep killing stuff. That feels like an awkward, painful way to play. In the current implementation there is no real motivation for doing that, so hopefully the specs feel more like "this is my role right now" and less like warrior stances or druid forms (I shift to cast a spell then shift back).

This is however a brand new and fairly game-changing feature for us. We'll just have to see how it goes and get some more feedback. You can look at the history of things like hearthstones, flight paths or meeting stones to see how big features can evolve over time.