Fascinating article over at Wowinsider about the most and least popular specs amongst the level 70 players.
Not suprisingly, I am one of the few priests that actually posess the 31 and 41 point talents.
Looking overall at the data, I think it’s pretty evident which specs need help (hello priests!)
One of the things that (kinda) surprises me is that Protection Paladins have outpaced Retribution ones. All in all, a pretty good read.
very interesting article.
strange; most druids i’ve known have always complained about having to be healbots yet the % actually specc’d resto is only 26. funny.
also it’s kind of humorous to me that most mages i’ve talked to (idk how many that is) always make fun of me for ice barrier cause i am an ice barrier whore - i always always always have it up; yet it’s the fourth most popular 31 point talent. <3
ps- i have a druid and a mage.
edit: what you were saying about priests skipping the 31/41 point talent; those percentages are pretty high!
Other than the 2 41-pt priest talents, Slow (Mage/Arcane) is the next highest passed-over talent on the list.
As someone who actually uses slow, I can say that at first I kept thinking it looked like crap, but it was my payoff talent, damnit, and I was going to make myself like it.
And sure enough, I actually like it now. In Arena PvP, it helps against hunters, but it’s a big trump against healers. In PvE, it can actually help quite a bit against various mobs.
Slow is pretty much worthless as a 41 point talent. It should be trainable, and something better (Brilliance Aura is a popular suggestion) put in its place. I would also like to see how the specs break down, as the author said:
For most other classes, the most popular spec is the classic raid spec (except for mages, and their optimal raid spec really changes from dungeon to dungeon.)
This surprises me. 10/48/3 or something close IS the optimal raid spec, and I have a hard time believing it isn’t the most popular spec, as I see it everywhere. Maybe the author thinks 33/28 (a very popular build) is optimal, but it most certainly isn’t.
The thing is, gleaning a single snapshot of talent distribution won’t tell you much. With over eight million players, that element of the game, on a per-player basis, is constantly in flux. With such a small sample size, he’s glimpsing the game in mid-stride. 6635 is small enough to fit into a single server. If I really wanted to get the information he was looking for, I would poll repeatedly for several weeks, until I got some steady trends.
Also, if you take over 1000 hunters and compare them to about 300 shamans, you enter ambiguous territory if you try to determine if Hunter Spec A is more popular than Shaman spec B.
Hey, don’t roleplay too hard guys!
I’m happy to see that I’m totally gimping myself by going Ret.
I’d like to see a bigger sampling, though, as he only took a bunch of random names off Allakhazam.
ya, allakhazam is the worst of those sites. you would not catch me dead there.
You’ll be dead wherever I want to place your corpse, evan.
I have a 49 pally on a pvp server that is more ret than anything (though I still stuck 17 or so points in holy for some of the goodies there) and I enjoyed the spec while I was still playing her. I know it could use some refinement, but it wasn’t terrible by any means. I don’t know how it really balances out at higher levels than that though.
Well, my Pally is still level 20, but without burning any potions I was able to solo the Elite mobs in my area at equal level. Even took three of them on at once. That’s a nice experience. :D
I do have a question, though; is there a website out there with an actual numbers breakdown of all the different Paladin Seals and their %ages that aren’t listed? It’s so hard to decide which ones to use!
You solo’d three same-level elites?
Wow, I really suck at this game.
Three mitigating factors.
1 - I’m Mining/Skinning, and I sell all the proceeds from both. My armor, weapons, and trinkets are literally the best that I can find on the AH for my level. In fact, when I hit level 20, I already had a level-20-req 2H Mace in my inventory to switch to.
2 - I had to pop Lay on Hands, Gift of the Naaru, and Blessing of Protection to pull it off, but only one of those is really long recharge (Lay on Hands) and I didn’t need it again while I was hunting there.
3 - It seems that the lower level you are, the more powerful you are relative to monsters your level.
Paladins have so many toys to play with… :)
Ever seen two paladins duel?
You go to sleep five minutes in…
… wake up an hour later, and they’re still going at it.
Seriously, though, my Ret Pally at level 20 out-DPSes my Mage. When you’re talking about one target, that is.
Most classes have ups and downs throughout their levelling experience, so I wouldn’t put much stock in how your paladin performs at level 20. At 70, a mage will outdamage any paladin of any spec significantly.
I could stand there and heal myself with 3 elites on me, and would probably survive for a while. I don’t think they would die, though.
Last time I played my ret pally I was worried about getting 2-pulls of those nonelite demons at the Pools of Aggonar. For whatever reason, lately he feels about 1/10th as survivable as my feral druid did.
Yeah, I know. But at low levels, Paladins are just silly. :)
Gordon, I’m level twenty, remember that. :P