the numbers on dual specs

These are the correct figures on dual spec adoption. The mistake in the original post was mine (those left outer joins will get you every time) and not a fault of the armoury. The sample size is small, so the sampling error may be large, but the general pattern  is clear enough from these numbers.

Sample size: 30K level 80s who have been played since 3.1. Choices below 2% are not shown.

Class	Specs	Popularity
Death Knight	Frost and Unholy	10%
Death Knight	Blood and Frost	8%
Death Knight	Blood and Unholy	7%
Death Knight	Two of Frost	3%
Death Knight	Two of Unholy	3%
Death Knight	One Unholy	28%
Death Knight	One Blood	21%
Death Knight	One Frost	17%
Druid	Balance and Restoration	23%
Druid	Feral Combat and Restoration	18%
Druid	Balance and Feral Combat	5%
Druid	Two of Feral Combat	7%
Druid	One Restoration	16%
Druid	One Feral Combat	14%
Druid	One Balance	13%
Hunter	Beast Mastery and Survival	10%
Hunter	Marksmanship and Survival	7%
Hunter	Beast Mastery and Marksmanship	3%
Hunter	Two of Survival	5%
Hunter	One Survival	42%
Hunter	One Beast Mastery	21%
Hunter	One Marksmanship	12%
Mage	Arcane and Fire	11%
Mage	Fire and Frost	11%
Mage	Arcane and Frost	8%
Mage	Two of Fire	3%
Mage	One Fire	29%
Mage	One Arcane	22%
Mage	One Frost	15%
Paladin	Holy and Retribution	19%
Paladin	Protection and Retribution	16%
Paladin	Holy and Protection	11%
Paladin	One Retribution	21%
Paladin	One Holy	16%
Paladin	One Protection	13%
Priest	Holy and Shadow	26%
Priest	Discipline and Holy	12%
Priest	Discipline and Shadow	11%
Priest	One Holy	22%
Priest	One Shadow	16%
Priest	One Discipline	8%
Rogue	Assassination and Combat	15%
Rogue	Combat and Subtlety	5%
Rogue	Two of Assassination	9%
Rogue	One Combat	32%
Rogue	One Assassination	28%
Rogue	One Subtlety	7%
Shaman	Elemental and Restoration	28%
Shaman	Enhancement and Restoration	18%
Shaman	Elemental and Enhancement	4%
Shaman	Two of Restoration	3%
Shaman	One Elemental	15%
Shaman	One Enhancement	15%
Shaman	One Restoration	15%
Warlock	Affliction and Demonology	12%
Warlock	Affliction and Destruction	8%
Warlock	Demonology and Destruction	8%
Warlock	Two of Demonology	3%
Warlock	One Demonology	26%
Warlock	One Affliction	22%
Warlock	One Destruction	16%
Warrior	Arms and Protection	18%
Warrior	Fury and Protection	16%
Warrior	Arms and Fury	6%
Warrior	Two of Arms	3%
Warrior	One Protection	25%
Warrior	One Fury	15%
Warrior	One Arms	14%

Oddly enough, my conclusions are exactly the same as last time despite the different numbers:

• Take-up of dual specs is much lower than I was expecting. I published figures a while back which showed that 30% of level 80s did all three of PvE raiding, BG PvPing and Arena PvPing and the vast majority of level 80s did at least some mixture of PvE and PvP. I would have thought that anybody who did PvE and PvP would want two specs – which basically means everybody.
  Perhaps people are waiting for the talent-resetting patches to stop. Perhaps the need to lay down the one large (in the Tony Soprano sense) is holding people back. Or maybe it is just too early to see where this feature is going to take us.
• The most enthusiastic adopters of dual specs are players who want a DPS-and-support combination, where “support” means tanking or healing. Nothing surprising there. Take-up amongst the pure DPS classes is lower on the whole. So only 25% of hunters have a dual spec but 50% of druids do.
• One limitation of my data is that I can’t yet sort the actual builds into raid and PvP builds. If I could do that, the picture we see here might be a bit different. An interesting question is what pure DPS classes are doing with dual specs. There seems to be two alternatives: a) having the off-spec as a spec-in-test and b) having a PvE and PvP DPS spec. So when we see that a warlock has two demonology builds, that could just mean that they are testing the second build or that they are trying to run as demonology in two different areas of the game. I’m still working on a solution to identifying builds by their intended role so I can get an answer to this question.

Azeroth’s got talent

I finally have a way of presenting talent builds that I’m reasonably happy with. But the presentation is a bit… um… complex… sigh… Maybe too complex; I’m not sure. Perhaps you could help me out by having a look at the tables here and telling me whether studying them has lead you to:

1. enlightenment
2. befuddlement
3. a migrane
4. all three

Anyway here we go…

(Caution: the examples here are from pre-patch-3.0.2 data.)

We start with the basic x/y/z builds for a class and their relative popularity. For example the most popular level 70 priest build is 20/41/0 at about 14%. So we want to know what actual talents are used in that build. And we want to know how many points the average 20/41/0 priest puts into each talent (what I will call the points “spend”). That is, not everyone puts 5 points into a 5-point talent.

So for every popular build, we want a table with these columns:

Tree

Tier

Talent

Popularity

Spends

There will be some variation across these columns. 20/41/0 is just three sums and within the 20 and the 41, priests have made various decisions around a basic group of talents.

The most simple case is when there is consensus around a talent. For example, the vast majority of 20/41/0 priests take Unbreakable Will as a tier 1 discipline talent. So we get this:

Tree	Tier	Talent	Popularity	Spends
Discipline	1	Unbreakable Will	97%	5 of 5: 98%

Only 3% of 20/41/0 priests don’t take Unbreakable Will. Of the 97% who do take it, only 2% of them don’t put the full 5 points into it. Capische?

Then we have talents where there is less of a consensus.

For example the tier 5 Holy talent Healing Prayers is taken by only 39% of 20/41/0 priests. And those that do take it are split about how many points it deserves: just over half think it is worth the full two points and just under half think that it is only worth 1 point. So we get a line like this:

Tree	Tier	Talent	Popularity	Spends
Holy	5	Healing Prayers	39%	2 of 2: 59%	1 of 2: 41%

These lines by themselves are not overwhelming; it’s when they all come together that we get information overload. Note that only talents and spends taken by at least 10% of the sample are shown, otherwise the table would be beyond comprehension.

Here is the full analysis for the 20/41/0 pre-3.0.2 priest: Behold!

Tree	Tier	Talent	Popularity	Spends
Discipline	1	Unbreakable Will	97%	5 of 5: 98%
Discipline	2	Improved Power Word: Fortitude	94%	2 of 2: 99%
Discipline	2	Silent Resolve	88%	4 of 5: 46%	5 of 5: 34%	1 of 5: 12%
Discipline	2	Improved Power Word: Shield	34%	3 of 3: 90%	1 of 3: 10%
Discipline	3	Meditation	99%	3 of 3: 99%
Discipline	3	Inner Focus	94%	1 of 1: 100%
Discipline	3	Absolution	21%	1 of 3: 80%	2 of 3: 13%
Discipline	4	Mental Agility	94%	5 of 5: 78%	4 of 5: 13%
Holy	1	Improved Renew	99%	3 of 3: 99%
Holy	1	Holy Specialization	91%	5 of 5: 59%	3 of 5: 16%	2 of 5: 15%
Holy	1	Healing Focus	89%	2 of 2: 97%
Holy	2	Divine Fury	95%	5 of 5: 97%
Holy	2	Spell Warding	11%	5 of 5: 63%	2 of 5: 19%
Holy	3	Inspiration	87%	3 of 3: 89%
Holy	3	Holy Nova	23%	1 of 1: 100%
Holy	4	Improved Healing	99%	3 of 3: 99%
Holy	4	Holy Reach	75%	2 of 2: 93%
Holy	5	Spiritual Guidance	98%	5 of 5: 94%
Holy	5	Spirit of Redemption	94%	1 of 1: 100%
Holy	5	Healing Prayers	39%	2 of 2: 59%	1 of 2: 41%
Holy	6	Spiritual Healing	100%	5 of 5: 99%
Holy	7	Holy Concentration	92%	3 of 3: 91%
Holy	7	Lightwell	15%	1 of 1: 100%
Holy	8	Empowered Healing	100%	5 of 5: 96%
Holy	9	Circle of Healing	99%	1 of 1: 100%

Still with me? Please do take a second and tell me if a table like that is genuinely useful. If it isn’t, I’m happy to have another go at the problem.

patch 3.0.2 talent builds

… can be found here.

It will be a little while before I do another armoury scan; I want to wait for the data to settle down a bit first. Sorry! But there is a site that is doing some early amoury scanning for the new talent builds – which is exactly what you need now. I’ve linked to it in ‘Other Data Miners’ to your right or just click on the link in this post.