Some players find leveling in WoW unpleasantly difficult. With patch 9.0, there is an “old, new” method.
Leveling a character in the current World of Warcraft is not particularly difficult. Most classes can handle multiple enemies at the same time, and there are rarely obstacles that require other players, such as elite quests or dungeons. However, some players make leveling especially challenging. They simply choose no specialization.
How does that work? Since the pre-patch 9.0, new characters do not automatically receive a specialization upon reaching level 10. This also applies to allied races. Characters must manually choose a specialization at level 10 in order to access the corresponding abilities.
As far as I know, I’m the first level 50 warrior without a spec gained from leveling. from r/wow
What are the consequences? Without a specialization, characters in World of Warcraft miss out on many abilities. While all classes have a certain basic package, characters are hardly playable in a meaningful way.
This results in significantly lower damage dealt, meaning that the lifespan of individual enemies can increase from a few seconds to several minutes. Especially monks seem to struggle, as they have very few options to deal any damage while unspecialized.
However, the monk without specialization does have a few special traits, as they can cast exuberance (a healing ability) and spinning crane kick (an AoE ability) without cost or cooldown. Unfortunately, the abilities do not become significantly stronger, which is why enemies tend to live much longer.
Why do players do this? Most do it simply because they are looking for a challenge. Some also just want to impress a little by playing a “pure” class without specialization. After all, when looking at such characters, you only see what class they play, such as “warrior”. For all warriors with a chosen specialization, that would also appear in the description. This is a unique feature on many realms.
Is this completely new? Yes and no. It has been possible to level without choosing a specialization in the past. However, since patch 9.0, even more spells and abilities belong to the specializations than before. Therefore, those who don’t choose a specialization only have a very small basic kit of abilities. This is in some cases more extreme than it was back then.
Could you also imagine leveling this way? Or does it look like a waste of time to you?
Have you seen why a professional guild just switched from Horde to Alliance?
