(The correct continuation of the title, by the way, is “Carmen Sandiego” said in a deep Rockapella voice. This shall not be disputed.)
One of the things that has been on the ol’ mind lately is the popularity or lack thereof of various specs and classes. Not so much in a QQ sense even, but in a “Man, where did all those [insert spec] here go? I kinda miss having one in my raid” sense.
These mysterious endangered species specs vary from server to server and even from personal experience to personal experience but here, I’ll tell you mine, class by class…
Death Knight:
I actually see all three DK specs fairly evenly represented. Unholy is probably ahead by a smidge. It’s the pet, I tell ya, people love ’em (more on this later).
Druid:
This is what inspired me to write this post. Where the heck are all the feral druids? I can’t even remember when the last time I had a bear tank was. The other druid specs are doing quite well. Trees are arguably the healer I see most these days (though not by a large margin… but I would put them in front), and I probably group with more boomkin than mages. Cats are seen frequently in lower level dungeons, and by the same token, bears are seen relatively frequently at low levels too because it’s easy for a leveling kitty to just step in.
But at endgame? Where are all you lovely fuzzy teddybears with a yummy 5% crit bonus hiding? My hunters miss you dearly. Seriously, let’s say I get into a VoA. “We need one more tank,” someone says. “Invite [so-and-so]”, says someone else. /who So-and-so. 40% chance it’s a paladin, 40% chance it’s a death knight, 15% chance it’s a warrior, and 5% chance it’s a bear. Why? I dunno. Ghostcrawler keeps saying they’re OP, how does he know if no one is playing them? =P
It is my hope that with the next patch and the improved forms, more people will be inspired to take Feral for a spin. I miss bear tanks.
Hunter:
I’m sure most of the readers of my blog know this one goes without saying. Survival is currently eating the biggest piece of the cake by far in my groups. Interestingly there seem to be roughly similar (though much smaller) numbers of Marksmanship and Beast Master. I sorta think it’s cause I’m on an RP server. We’re more likely to get the people who think about their character when they think about their spec, hence, more people staying BM. On the same token, I swear I am the only hunter on the dang server without a Spirit Beast in the stable.
Mage:
Okay. What I am about to tell you is going to blow your mind.
…
…
I raid with Frost mages more than both of the other specs combined.
It’s actually gotten to the point where I wonder what it’s like to raid with a non-Frost mage.
I think it’s the water elemental. Like I said, people love them pets.
Or maybe it’s because the poor frost mages are in the same boat with me, the Beast Mastery hunter, so all we do is PuG stuff. Who knows!
Paladin:
Paladins are living the high life right now, I swear. They’re so ubiquitous that being in a group without at least one is a surreal experience. “…where’s Might? Where’s Kings? Didn’t they come default with Heroics? Is this a bad dream?”
I see paladins of all three specs quite frequently, although I see Prot and Ret slightly more than Holy. Probably because they synergize together better so everyone dualspecs to those. Although, the Prot/Holy types who are good with both specs? They are to be feared. For being the most useful person in the world. Seriously.
Priest:
I see priests pretty evenly represented. Shadow priests are in vogue right now mostly because the good ones are Gods of Recount. Disc is still sorta that crazy spec that no one understands so they’re lagging behind Holy a bit, but I’ve seen them in my groups too.
My priest knowledge is roughly comparable to my knowledge of higher mathematics (“Oooh look guys, I can make my caluclator say “Hello”), so moving on…
Rogue:
I know nothing about the rogue specs. Like, Subtlety is for sneaking around I guess? I couldn’t tell ya who is what by playstyle though. Fortunately I’ve configured my XPerl to show me someone’s spec when I target them. As such, I have cleverly deduced that Assassination was all the rage at the beginning of WotLK, but since then the pendulum has largely swung back around to Combat, at least from what I’ve seen. Subtlety is pretty much extinct although you still see the random Sub rogue while leveling.
Did I mention I know nothing about rogues? I know nothing about rogues. The class is a completely foreign concept to me.
Shaman:
I have no idea where all the resto shamans are hiding, because I know they’re there.. I sorta think they all got scooped up by raid guilds the second they materialized in the game world because I never see any in PuGs, but I always see them standing around in Ironforge (never Stormwind) with super fancy gear and usually an Amani War Bear and a Hand of A’dal title. Hence my hypothesis.
Anyways, Elemental/Enhancement representation seems to be pretty even, with Enhancement gaining the edge in lower levels and Elemental gaining it at higher ones. I like shamans. I could never get into playing them, but I like having them in my group. *pets them*
Warlocks:
You’d think I’d know more about warlocks seeing as my boyfriend plays one and writes about them on WoW Insider. But I really don’t. All I know is that there are approximately 1395802462 times as many Demonology warlocks as any other spec, and I blame the Felguard. (See? It’s that pet thing again like I was telling you about.)
Sometimes I’m in a group with an Affliction or Destruction warlock that isn’t my boyfriend. It freaks me out. “Wait, you mean warlocks that aren’t my boyfriend use their imp/felpuppy? /boggle”
Warlocks in general are kind of an endangered species, which saddens me, because the world could always use more in-instance summoning stones, don’t you think? >.>
Warriors:
I am convinced that 99% of the world’s prot warriors either rerolled Death Knight, or respec’d to DPS. Yes, I have no idea where our tanky warrior friends went. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for prot warriors, they just looked like they were working so hard in Burning Crusade– no idea if they still have to work hard or not, but the soft spot remains. I’d like to see more of them just for that.
This one time I saw a Fury warrior dual-wielding Legacy and something else. I was kinda jealous. The End.
And that, as they say… is that.
This has been a Pike Incorporated Presentation. One’s experiences with various classes and specs may vary. Some restrictions may apply.
I know this is going to smack of EJ Syndrome, but what the HELL are they thinking? Frost is abysmal for raiding. o_O;
And Warcraftier stole all the bear tanks and merged them into the Super Mega Fighting Bear, Lerrielin! 😀
Edit/Doublepost: And yes, I completely confess – I sang the post title (and proper ending) as I read it on Twitter. God, the WITWICS gameshow on PBS was AWESOME when I was younger! \o/
heh, I’m seeing different things.
DK: Generally an average across the specs. They’re just OP in general given that with crap gear they’ve been able to outperform existing classes…
Druid: I see Trees, ThunderTurkeys and Bears all over the place. Every time I hit a 25Naxx with a friend of mine there’s at least a Bear and a Cat hanging around. And usually a Turkey hiding with the Trees….
Mage: I have to say I usually see Arcane Mages more than Fire more than Frost… I think it’s all the “Frozen North” thing… Leveling up though it’s like 85% frost… Kite Happy Little Jerks…
Lolad… er, Paladin: DPS or Healing… don’t often get a Paladin tank…
Priest: Actually had a run with 2 Shadow priests in the group… and those have been the only 2 I’ve seen at 80 in months. Everyone else heals people.
Rogue: Used to be big with the Rogue… till the end of BC then I went Shaman. 😉 I know from looking at gear out there I see a combo of Combat and Assassination, but not much Subt. Of course I think Combat is going to take a nice spike with the class getting Axes.
Shaman: Elemental and Resto. I hardly see any Enhancement unless I log into my Shaman. Not sure why that happened, hoping the “buffs” from 3.2 show some love…. But then again Blizzard tried to claim that “The Shat” was a class buff with those commercials…
Warlocks: I have one… and that’s about all I know. They do damage and that’s about it… I assume they’re Demon when they… well… go Demon. Other than that I wouldn’t know how to spot a Warlock other than by the creepy purple crap they fling everywhere and all specs do that….
Warrior: I’m seeing a good cluster of Tanks, but my guild also likes Warrior/Bear for tanking combos so I may be biased. DPS I don’t see many of unless they’re pimping the N25/U10/U25 gears… and from playing my Warrior, I can kinda see why… Arms isn’t all that spiffy at 80 without great gear and Fury took the 10% nerf for TG so it’s also been cut down… Usually I laugh when a Warrior wants to challenge me for DPS… and I cry when Shadow Priests out DPS me…
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Venture+Co&n=Ribbons
I’m a bear tank.
Sup.
@ Ribbons –
That’s something I probably should have clarified in my post. I see Bear tanks all over the place on Horde but not on Alliance. I think it’s cause you’re a tauren.
My guild has a few druids of all specs including a bear tank. We’ve got a ton of Paladins of all specs (out MT is a Paladin), we’re light on Shaman (lots of Shaman alts but only one or two mains), we’ve got a couple of Rogues, more Hunters than I want to compete for loot with and a few Warlocks (Destro specced all). Warriors are all DPS and the couple of Mages are Arcane. We’ve got good Priest coverage from all specs (one of our best healing Priests is Discipline) and we of course have DKs but not too many. Our main DK splits between DPS and tanking, whatever the specs are for that.
So all in all I think Banished has pretty fair representation of the classes, though we are Paladin heavy.
@Ribbons
Almost max LW but only 225 Skinning? 😉 Slacking a bit aren’t we?
@ Indigo –
Ha funny story about that.
I saw that druids were the best for farming herbs, so I was like meh, why not?
Dropped my max skinning >..>
@ My previous.. for some reason it edited half my post out. <..<
It keeps deleting half my posts. I guess the reason is a mystery none shall ever know!
<– Alliance progression raiding guild co-MT bear 😀
Been feral since before there really *was* a feral tree, heck I even tanked the occasional raid boss in classic (fyi, MCed bears on Skeram are HUUUUuuge). ^-^ We never seem to have another feral though, even a kitty-main. I think I scare them off… 😛
(Crap. My post died when the site, or my connection to it hiccuped… Darn it.)
I’m a Dual-Feral NE Druid~
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Greymane&n=Florelline
My server, Greymane, is pretty balanced on everything I think. I’ve seen practically everything. My guild has all the druids, a Holy Pally, our MT DK (I THINK he’s tanking as Unholy. Never sure, I never checked when he’s in Tank-mode. xD) We also have connections with the guild I tend to raid with a bit more due to timezones, so can pull in people from there if needed, and they have tons of 80s. )
I think we may have all your ferals in my raid group. We have /4/ feral tanks. 2 full time and 2 part time (tree and cat usually, respectively).
Personally I wish I knew were all the holy priests went. It seems every priest in my guild has gone disc. The shadow priests? Disc is their off-spec.
I has resto shaman! People are always trying to get me to raid or do 3s, but no one ever asks me to do heroics. 🙁 Which is fine ’cause I’d just be like, “NO” anyway.
I’d guess your theory is right, and also resto shamans seem to be high commodity arena team members also, so that might be where they are when they aren’t raiding or in IF showing off their toys.
Hi I’m Shagrat and I’m a marksman hunter/resto shaman/holy paladin/beast mastery hunter. (The last three are alts obviously)
I kind of agree with you for the most part on the representation of the specs. My raids have no less than 6 druids at all times: two chickens, two trees and two kitties. One of the kitties does off-spec as a bear tank but if I’m pugging something (which I do on my nelf) I usually never see bear druids at all.
Wall of text will crit you for over 9000.
the bears all but disappeared on our server. I know of exactly 3. my druid Used to be bear/kitty, but with that last part – even though supposedly they made it easier with that 360 degree swipe – I just couldn’t tank on her anymore. it was an exercise in frustration, so I went boomkin/resto and haven’t looked back yet (as someone who’s healed on all 4 classes – druids are by far the most versatile..and thus speaks someone whose main is a shaman O_O).
my main is Elemental/resto shaman, but yeah – resto shammies seem to be becoming extinct O_o. I think part of it has to do with lack of instant spells. it used to be that resto shammies spammed chain heal? now I find myself spamming lesser healing wave with riptides in between. it gets wearing. I have to have ridiculous amounts of haste to land that wave before other healers and T8 is sorely lacking it. add to that having to refresh that damn water shield every few cooldowns? /gurgle I’m still not convinced by sniper training for my hunter because of how much time I spend moving out of the bad stuff in Ulduar.
my warlock is affliction and will stay affliction. much like your preference for beast mastery 😛 but ever since 3.0 I’m like an oddity.. most every other warlock I see is running around with that damn felguard. Afliction can be a tricky spec to play though and while I’m usually ahead on bosses (god, affliction rocks on bosses) – I don’t do so well on trash. maybe those warlocks love those big numbers on trash?
most every raiding rogue is mutilate with them often going combat for trash pulls. most every rogue in heroics is combat casue its a lot more forgiving to play then assassination. that said – I want moar rogues! on our server, what you see with warriors, I see with rogues. they are going the way of the bears and becoming extinct 🙁 it seems like everyone has a rogue alt in there somewhere (me included) but very few play one as a main anymore..
holy pallies… oh my…. where can I buy one? my pally alt used to be prot/holy, but I specced hare prot/ret yesterday. I don’t know how full time healers do it, but I’m getting seriously burned out on healing. it seems that if you dare to spec healing as one of your specs – its the one you’ll be playing most often. pally healing is more challenging now and more fun, but it still has the issues that resto shammies have. except pallies get more faster cast options (flash of light as holy always feels faster then lesser healing wave to me) and no AoE (though with the current trend of spread out – I only get to use chain heal on just a few specific fights anyways). playing holy well IMO is the hardest healing choice at this time.
warriors. there’s less of them since the recent patch and at least half of them switched to arms from fury as dps. even though one of our tanks is a warrior, more often then not he ends up dpsing with pallies and dks taking the tanking spot.
priests – I have the same experience as Hana – most priests I know are disc/shadow. there are still holy priests around, but its no longer THE healing spec to have.
“Although, the Prot/Holy types who are good with both specs? They are to be feared. For being the most useful person in the world. Seriously.”
Hey, I raid as Holy, Prot, and Ret! yay! I’m useful!
I never see feral druids or warlocks anymore. Its been weird. I love healing bear druids.
Back when I was still on Silver Hand, the only tanks I ever saw were DKs and paladins. Paladins because well, my fiance is a prot paladin, hence 100% of runs I went on would include at least one prot paladin. In situations where we needed two or three tanks, the others were inevitably death knights or other paladins.
The main tank of my previous raiding guild re-specced to Fury when Wrath came out =(
But my Naxx raids were always OVERFLOWING with druids. In any given 25-man run, we would have 2-3 trees, 2-3 cats, and 1-2 boomkin.
The only time I ever saw a bear, though, was when one of the druids was pretending to be Kel’Thuzad for the purposes of raid positioning demonstrations (Grr! I am big and scary! Melee, position yourselves appropriately!) or when one of the ferals panicked and shifted because they thought they were going to die.
I’m a resto/feral (hybrid) and I’ve got to say this far outweighs holy/prot pallies. I can effectively tank, heal AND dps naxx no worries and I am not that great. For some reason all the millions of trees dual specced chicken so that’s why there’s so many of them on my server.
Also on rogues, I think deep subtlety specs are an in thing. Honor among thieves (hat) gives you combo points from other peoples crits. At least this is what I heard.
Priests – I know a good whack of heal crazy priests specced disc/holy for tank and raid healing. Mad peeps.
Nephis
Well, my guild is controlled by the crit-chickens and the trees, but we hunters have a clever plan to exploit their allergy to arrows. Our leader is a bear tank, but he’s taking a break from the game.
I see loads of pallies, trees, hunters, and critchickens, with the occasional priest and mage. Warlocks are rare, and rogues are rarer. Holy pallies appear to be an endangered species (obviously their natural predator is the tree).
I like shamans too. I feel incomplete without at leat two of them in my raid.
As someone that plays prot warrior, combat rogue, and crazily BM hunter I need to make a comment: some classes and specs take nerfs in ways that hurt them in specific aspects of the game which might make a spec or job hard or nearly useless in the name of balance- we have no HUGE problem with that (we warriors don’t like it but we can deal with it) but what we don’t like is being crappy at every role (assuming equal gear level and averaging the types of boss encounters). That might be a little of the reason u see less prot warriors around. Fixing to work on my 77 holy pally when I get my hunter geared.
In my guild (not sure about the servor as a whole) our main tank is a Prot Pally. We also have a Prot warrior and a couple of DK’s to tank if they so choose. Our main healers are Resto Druids although we do have a couple of resto shammy’s that step in from time to time. We used to have a bear tank but he left us and now does kitty dps with another guild.
Our main tanks are all warriors. There is a Bear and DK off tank. The Raid leader is a CritChicken/Tree, and the Main Healer is a Holy/Disc. We’ve one Warlock (no clue as to spec), an mage fire/frost, a couple of hunters BM/SV (me), and another BM/SV as it goes. With a resto shammy here, and a resto shammy there and one little Retadin which is nice to have. It is a casual raiding group, so people bring what they want. I spec SV for the replenishment, if the ret pally doesn’t show.
I’ve been in a Heroic group w/ 3 (THREE) Spirit Beast! Kinda makes you sad. All the hunters in our guild have the SB (the first, not the ghost kitty).
Z
I LOVED that show! 😀
“That’s something I probably should have clarified in my post. I see Bear tanks all over the place on Horde but not on Alliance. I think it’s cause you’re a tauren.”
Yeah, I’ve noticed this too–Horde bear tanks seem to know what they’re doing a little better too, for whatever reason. (I’m BM right now because I kept pulling off of the guild beartank with my SV spec.)
Could it have something to do with the extra health Tauren get, so more of them are rolled with the firm idea in mind of becoming a tank?
Also: I have BM Hunter, Resto Shaman, Prot Warrior, and Feral Druid. Yay me? xD
Druid wise I’d agree – only I tend to see a fair few kittys ever since the kitty spec became the new rogue. The only decent feral tank I know is our guild MT (who has something stupid like 60k health in stam gear)
I rarely see frost mages and bm hunters outside of pvp and most the mages I see tend to be Fire because their t8 set bonus works better with it.
DKs I never seem to meet many frost ones that arent tanks (and godawful tanks at that)
I never used to see many ele shamans until I got one to 80 and now I seem to find 5 in every voa im in 🙁
Hunters I tend to see loads of BM(generally levellling) and loads of survival. As MM I tend to get lots of questions if I join anything, I even had a pug threaten to turn me away unless I respecced – so I lied and then did 50% of the dmg done before anyone noticed they had TSA.
Pike,
I have a theory why one does not see all that many feral druids in endgame “cats or bears”.
They all got tired of us hunters always trying to tame them as pets 🙂