WoW Petopia Community

Last night, friend and I were playing at 1 am PST (He has beta, I just watched a 16 sec delayed stream), and he found that he didn't need to pay a single gold for respeccing. He played Mage (Frost > Arcane > Frost), and Hunter (MM > SV > BM > SV). Not once did it pop up asking him to pay any gold. I asked him today, and he did it again without paying any gold.

Maybe they saw how stupid it was and removed it?

WerebearGuy wrote:Last night, friend and I were playing at 1 am PST (He has beta, I just watched a 16 sec delayed stream), and he found that he didn't need to pay a single gold for respeccing. He played Mage (Frost > Arcane > Frost), and Hunter (MM > SV > BM > SV). Not once did it pop up asking him to pay any gold. I asked him today, and he did it again without paying any gold.

Maybe they saw how stupid it was and removed it?

Did they respec their hunter pet? I believe thats what OP is referring to.

Fairly certain he did, yeah. He's not home right now, so I'll double check with him when he gets back.

I made another hunter to try out survival, and when i switched my pet spec to tank it popped up with that re-spec 15gold window again. But it did not charge me the 15 gold to do it.

Re-spec cost is officially going away/will not be in live. However, it seems we won't be as easily able to switch talents (or possibly talent specs, depending on how you read Watcher's reply)

We've definitely heard much feedback to this effect, and this is something we'd been discussing quite a bit internally as well over the past couple of weeks. In an upcoming build (hopefully the next one; if not, then the one after), the respec cost is gone, and players can freely switch between all specializations with the normal restrictions of cast-time, needing to be out of combat, and so forth.

Ultimately, the intent behind the respec cost (which isn't really a new concept, dating back to 2004 class trainers) was to help reinforce a bit of spec identity through declaring a "primary" spec to which you could always return for free, and to serve as a mild gold sink. But in practice, changing specialization is a pretty significant transformation in terms of action bars, optimal gear in some cases, artifacts, and so forth, and already not something that people were taking lightly. I suspect the cost will not be missed.

An area that has appeared to need a bit more friction, however, is actually talent changes. Especially with no reagent cost at all now, it can be all too easy to activate AoE talents before larger packs of enemies in a dungeon, and then switch back to single-target talents before a lieutenant or a boss. Or someone might switch to a passive movement-speed talent when traversing an area, and then back to something functional before entering combat. At that point, we're often hardly talking about a meaningful choice at all, but rather a nuisance of extra button-presses or UI navigation before you can use your desired talents.

And so, alongside removing the respec cost, that same upcoming build will also restrict the ability to change talents when away from a safe area (defined as an area that provides the Rested state). We currently plan to give Scribes a recipe to craft a consumable Tome that can be dropped in order to allow all nearby players to retalent freely for a time - particularly useful for group play.

From: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... ?page=4#72

I'm glad re-spec cost will be gone.

edited since it seems it was explained a bit more on that same thread and got a lot longer lol.

So wait, as long as I go to the safe area, I can change talents, but if I go to a location with the intent to do my usual murder spree, I can't change specs? It's just like when I forget to buy tomes.

Honestly, this is a good change. Free spec changes is a godlike thing, since my main is a warrior and I can't STAND the low IQ of pug tanks at times. I constantly swap between Protection and Fury, and prior to this correction, I was pretty upset that I (theoretically) would have had to pay EXTRA just to play effectively. It was borderlike Pay-to-Win, just one step away from requiring real money.


The best "fix" would be as such;

Rested Zone (Inn, Tent, etc) = Safe Zone
Dungeon Entrance = Safe Zone
Locations in raids cleared = Safe Zone (Kill one boss, every room up to that boss is now "Safe")

This would make the most sense. An inn is a location where you should feel at ease. At the start of a dungeon, you should prepare for the content you are about to face. Enemy forces cleared out of an area means it's now a safe location for you and your fellow troops.

WerebearGuy wrote:So wait, as long as I go to the safe area, I can change talents, but if I go to a location with the intent to do my usual murder spree, I can't change specs? It's just like when I forget to buy tomes.

Honestly, this is a good change. Free spec changes is a godlike thing, since my main is a warrior and I can't STAND the low IQ of pug tanks at times. I constantly swap between Protection and Fury, and prior to this correction, I was pretty upset that I (theoretically) would have had to pay EXTRA just to play effectively. It was borderlike Pay-to-Win, just one step away from requiring real money.


The best "fix" would be as such;

Rested Zone (Inn, Tent, etc) = Safe Zone
Dungeon Entrance = Safe Zone
Locations in raids cleared = Safe Zone (Kill one boss, every room up to that boss is now "Safe")

This would make the most sense. An inn is a location where you should feel at ease. At the start of a dungeon, you should prepare for the content you are about to face. Enemy forces cleared out of an area means it's now a safe location for you and your fellow troops.

They said at first it would apply to any place you get 'rested exp', so I would assume tent/inn should also qualify not just main cities. But then I'm not sure cause it's not actually implemented yet, so its hard to tell just where they're drawing the line at 'safe'.

But it looks like they got way more in-depth since my last post, so I'm gonna edit the link here too in case anyone wants to read

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/4121 ... e-keep-it/

Linking the Blue Tracker off MMOchamp, because that way you can see all of the blue post on it in one glance.

And so, alongside removing the respec cost, that same upcoming build will also restrict the ability to change talents when away from a safe area (defined as an area that provides the Rested state). We currently plan to give Scribes a recipe to craft a consumable Tome that can be dropped in order to allow all nearby players to retalent freely for a time - particularly useful for group play.


soo...wait...to save everyone else a button/bag space...they are making one profession have to not only gather materials but craft on demand an item so that others can retalent freely...but wait, theres more! If the item isn't BoP then it can be sold...and others can keep it in their bag for when its needed...wait...isn't there a tome like that already??

That won't work out well in my opinion. So if you're in a raid and used ability 1 for boss 1, and need to change to ability 3 for boss 2; you're going to have to hearth out of the raid and get summoned back? I think I'm not understanding this correctly or something. That just makes no sense to me at all. Even if it's just the spec swap that requires that; it's not a good idea. Like currently if you wanted better AoE you would switch to 1 spec, and then next fight is simply a single target fight. You would have to waste so much time waiting on group/raid members to port out, swap specs, and come back to the dungeon/raid. Or you have to deal with sub-par performances. I have to be misunderstanding this idea.

Sure, it gives scribes something to make that is valuable. But he said: "But, in terms of the materials required, we're thinking of something that's more aimed at groups, and probably not the sort of thing an individual is likely to carry a stack of and use freely."
So, you either have to waste an expensive item to swap specs/talents on the fly, waste a lot of valuable time with ports and summons, or play sub-par.

Tome of Clear Mind - Clears a talent choice.
Dust of Disappearance - Clears a glyph from a spell.
Gold - Spec swap, without the gold cost increasing each time you swap specs. Something reasonable for max level like 15 - 20 gold. Not like gold is hard to come by at max level.

I don't understand why we "Need" this change. Leaving a material cost to change out talents on the fly (as long as you're not in combat), tome of clear mind, is fine. I, myself, usually keep a full 200 stack on me at all times. I enjoy nearly every aspect of the game, and constantly swap out talents depending on what I'm faced with. I PvP, Raid, dungeons, solo old content, quests/dailies, pet tames (some of which require something special to tame). And having to either drop an expensive item to change out on the fly, or to hearth/fly to a "safe zone" to swap is a bad design idea. As an example for us hunters; you're out in the world farming/questing and you come up on a rare special tame. But you need binding shot or wyvern sting to tame it without getting one shot by it (or it suicide bombers you - I'm looking at you Tekton), and you have camo selected as your talent. Now you have to hearth/port out, switch your talent, and come back to see that someone else came along and already had the proper ability active and tamed your precious.

A spec swap gold cost, without an increase for each time you swap specs, is also not bad. Sure being free is better, but dealing with all that mess of expensive items or wasting time does not make the design better. It's bad enough that early on it will actually be detrimental to swap specs for anything. Because your artifact weapon for your non-main spec will always be behind in power to your main weapon. Eventually maybe you'll have your weapons all maxed out, and it won't be a burden. I get that they want people playing the game a lot more; giving you something to always do. Farming artifact power for your other specs weapons.

Eh, sorry for the rant. It's only my opinion. Hate sounding like a Negative Nancy, or one those people who always whine and complain about everything. But this is just a very bad design idea.

I guess that legendary that gives the same effects of Adaptation might be mandatory if we want to get around the respec cost, since it gives us the passive bonuses of all three pet specs, eh?

I expect the tome will be tradeable and usable by anyone. Like the tents that you can get at the LW hut now, except they will work in instances, I hope. If so, I think it's a much better solution to what they were trying to accomplish than their original plan.