Will that be unleaded sir?

Spec. Tank. DPS. DoT. Aggro. Talents.

..do all of those terms leave you with a feeling of "must get around to looking at that stuff one day"?
Well, if you're anything like I was up until very recently, the answer is most probably a resounding 'yes'.

What I'd like to do in this article, is try to make all of these spooky concepts a little easier to understand, and in doing so try to help you 'spec out' your WoW toon as best as you possibly can.
So let's rip into it!

Okay. I'll start with an analogy (gosh how unusual for me):
Your toon is a machine. Depending on the circumstances at the time, you need to fit your machine with certain implements in order to best serve the task required at the time. And also (importantly) you need to fuel that machine with the right type of petrol at the right time.

With me so far? =)
Let's think about it in terms we can all relate to.

Take my current toon Amana. She's a L45 Warlock. The most important thing to remember already, is that this means she's a caster.
Why is that an important point? Because it means she dishes out damage (and lots, of a certain type, of it) but she does so from afar. All of her energy is put into spell casting, which leaves precious little of it left for protection. In other words, she's a damage *dealing* machine, but she has virtually no inherent damage *protection*. And, in the game, this is portrayed by way of her only ever being able to wear cloth armour.

Still with me?

Okay - so what does all this mean?
Let's take a couple of situations from the game that you are likely very familiar with: Instancing, and Soloing.

Let's say that Amana has joined up with a party to venture into Uldaman. Hopefully, the party has been put together with some thought and contains other classes which, when combined, make for an efficient team.
So, in this party is a 'Main Tank'. The Tank's job is to take all the aggro (explained in a minute). Remember - Amana might as well be wearing soggy tissue paper for all the damage protection her cloth gives her so, she can't afford to have any monsters (mobs) physically hit her, right? Right!
So, the 'tank' is a character that can handle a high amount of physical hits, and that can attract the attention of all the mobs in the vicinity. In simple terms, we want the 'tank' to head on out and get the attention of all the mobs, and *keep* that attention on themselves. By being a Warrior or Paladin class toon, this 'tank' can be wearing armour (such as plate armour) that can withstand multiple mobs beating up on him. And by so doing, this tank keeps the attention of the mobs on himself and away from any casters.

So! With the tank out the front surrounded by mobs, we have a situation where the tank is taking all the aggro, leaving the caster relatively safe and sound at the rear.

And now Amana comes into her own. Because she is a caster, she has range. This means she can sit at the back of the group and start casting nasty spells, from afar, on the mobs attacking our tank out the front. Still with me? Good.

The tank has the aggro. (yay! now you know what that means!) And, therefore, the aggro is being kept off the caster.
Because Amana is a Warlock, her specialty is Damage Over Time. This is where the term 'DoT' comes from, but what does it mean?

DoT's are afflictions and curses that a Warlock can place upon mobs. For example, a Warlock can put a Curse Of Agony on a mob. This curse starts to slowly eat away at the mob's health points, doing damage over time. Think of it like this: if I filled a 1.25 litre bottle with poison, I could do two things with it in terms of causing you damage:

1. I could hit you over the head with it
2. I could put a needle on the end of it and stick you with it

In the first case, I'm causing you up-front damage - all in one go. A high damage once-off hit. This is called Damage Per Second (or DPS). In other words, in one second of time, I have caused a high amount of damage. Once the blow has finished, it's over, until I fill another bottle and hit you with it again.

In the second case, I'm causing you very little up-front damage (in fact you may not even realise you've been jabbed!) but, as time goes by without you removing the needle, more and more poison leaks into your bloodstream and before you know it, you are slowly dying with precious little you can do about it. This, therefore, is Damage Over Time (or DoT). Small amount, but over a long period of time - infectious and nasty. (muhahaha)

So getting back to Amana's Curse Of Agony.. this curse slowly builds it's damage rate the longer it's left on, and eventually runs out.
Fortunately for a Warlock, there are a range of DoT curses and afflictions that she can cast on the poor target, which simply begin to slowly eat away at their health.

Okay! Hopefully you're still with me - let's recap what we have so far:

• The tank is up the front taking all the aggro and getting a beating
• The Warlock caster is therefore safely sitting at the back slapping curses and afflictions onto those same mobs as the tank beats the crap out of them with his sword or mace

Easy right?

Ok next up is the Mage. What's the difference between a Mage and a Warlock? Well you kinda know already - the mage is a super-dooper-DPS machine! In other words, all of a Mage's energy goes into creating hard-hitting up-front high-damage bursts of instant damage.
Like, for example, a fireball.
When a Mage draws upon her energy pool (mana - more on this later) she winds up all this power and focuses it into a single point all at once, and let's it rip at the mob! She'll send a batch of doom flying through the air at a mob and WHACK - super high and instant damage. Massive damage over very little time (not to be confused with the time it takes to pool the energy required to do so; we're talking about the amount of damage done during the time of the actual attack, ok?).

So, to recap again:

• Tank has aggro, taking high physical damage and dealing it out to whatever mobs he can at the same time
• DoT Caster (Warlock) is slapping on nasty curses from afar to slowly sap the helpless victim's life away over time
• DPS Caster (Mage) is pummeling the mob from afar with high-impact blasts

Easy, right? Right!

So next, we need to think about the poor tank up the front getting the crap beaten out of him. Surely, his armour is eventually going to give way, and he's going to start taking hits to his health yeh? Enter the Healer class.

The healer class is slightly more complicated because there are many variants and substitutes. I'll go into that later but for now we'll stick with the most efficient and powerful healer class there is: a Priest.
A priest is essentially also a Caster, and because of this can also only wear cloth armour. So, she's super-vulnerable to physical attacks just like the Warlock and the Mage, and therefore also needs to have the aggro kept off her, right? Right!

A good priest will also sit back from the action, and carefully monitor the health of all other party members but will place a priority on the Main Tank (MT). Why? Because if the tank goes down, what happens?
That's right! All the mobs will suddenly look for another hapless victim, and it's most likely that they will turn their attention to one of the two damage-dealing casters (Warlock and Mage).
And, as you now know, if that happens it's all going to be over very quickly. If even only 2-3 mobs decide to start beating up on a Mage or a Warlock, it'll be over in a matter of seconds. EVEN WORSE would be that the mobs eye up the Priest. Why?
Because the priest is our source of life AND, is our main source of life after death. Whilst a Paladin and a Druid can resurrect a fallen comrade, they cannot do it with the speed and power of a Priest.
If the priest goes down, and there's no Paladin or Druid ready, the party will be killed off very quickly (also known as a 'wipe').

So! Another recap:

• Tank taking aggro
• Warlock casting DoT
• Mage casting DPS
• Priest healing and reviving fallen party members

Easy huh!

Now, because I want this to really be about how to 'fuel' your character (spec) I wont start delving into the intricacies of the dual classes and other party members (like Paladins, Druids, Hunters, and Rogues) just yet. I promise I'll write a second article to get down into the next level of detail but for now, lets just assume that any other member of the party is going to simply contribute as much as they can to the overall cause. ie:

• A Hunter may sent his pet in to the aggro'd mob with the Warrior to help out, and might sit back and take shots from a distance with his gun
• A Paladin might get up the front with the Warrior (due to being able to wear high armour values) and even help out with some of the healing
• A Druid might also help out with some healing, but also may take a bear form and get up the front to help hold the aggro off the casters and to dish out some damage

So let's now talk about 'spec' and 'talents'.

I'm going to bring you back to Amana, the Warlock.
In the situation above, where she's in a party, think about what's going on:
She's solely focusing all of her energies into her casting, right? She doesn't have to (ideally) worry about putting any energy into protecting herself as the tanks are holding the aggro off her, right? Right! Not only that, but she's also relying on the Healer to keep her health up should any stray mob decide to wander over and take a bite. Ok!

Therefore, returning to my analogy of a 'machine', Amana needs fuel to power this situation: she needs fuel for casting, not fuel for protection. And furthermore, any fuel spent on protection is being wasted in this situation, as that same amount of fuel could be used for casting, right? And trust me - all the other party members relying on Amana to deal out DoT will be pissed off if every single drop of fuel isn't being used for doing so.

Therefore, we need to 'spec out' Amana in the best possible way, for this particular role, at that time. Raise your hand if you understand. =)

So how do we do this? Easy! We have a custom outfit for her, especially for when she's in a party.

This is also a good time to talk about a different situation that Amana will find herself in lots of times: soloing.
What is soloing?
Well, as the term implies, soloing is when you're out in the world on your lonesome, doing quests. Aww, all alone.. grinding your way through waves of Worgens and masses of Murlocs trying to find an item or kill 10 of them for a quest giver... you know the situation well. BUT - what's different here, compared to our situation above?
It's obvious right? Amana doesn't have anyone else to rely upon to take damage, hold aggro, or heal herself. She's all alone, and she has to perform all of these tasks by herself.
**Note: yes, out there in the big bad world, you will come across other players willing to temporarily group with you to help, but in terms of covering your bases and being best prepared for all situations, you need to assume that you are going to be alone at all times yeh?)

This means she has to turn into a slightly different machine configuration than the one we talked about above. You get it right? With nobody around to take care of all the aspects we went through in the party discussion, she has to make up for them herself.

So, she needs a different 'spec' for soloing, than the spec she needs for being in a party.

And it works like this in simple concept:
Partying
I will buy items and equipment for Amana that have 'Spell Adds', over items that have high armour values or character stats. When she's in the party, I need Amana to be focusing all of her energy into creating bad-ass high-value damage spells and curses.
So, for example, I will outfit her with a robe that has say

• 35 Armour
• +21 Fire Damage

over a robe that has

• 55 armour
• +5 Agility
• +5 Stamina

Why?
Because there is no point putting energy into the Armour Value. The tank has all the aggro and, if he dies, my armour (no matter how high it's value is) is still only cloth and I cannot sustain damage for any length of time.
Same with Stamina. STA adds to your health points directly. What use it that when I'm standing at the back of the group dealing damage from afar? And, like the armour value of my cloth items, a few more points on my health aren't going to keep me alive any more than one second longer when faced with 3 or 4 angry instance mobs.. so both stats are wasted in a party situation.
As is the Agility stat, which adds to my melee attack rating (melee attacks are ones that use your staff, club, sword, axe etc). It's highly unlikely that I'm going to be going one-on-one with an instance mob in a melee fight, right?

Keeping up? Good!
Another useful stat for me in a party is Spirit, which adds to the regeneration rate of my health and mana. Intelligence is also useful as it adds directly to my Mana pool. So, if there is a robe which has spell adds and one character stat, I would take Spirit or Intellect over Stamina or Agility.
So in other words a robe like this:

• 35 Armour
• +21 Spell Damage
• +5 Intellect

would be perfect for fuelling the role I need to play in a Party. Yay!
Let's look at soloing now:
Soloing
I will outfit ('spec') Amana with gear that allows her to be more self-sufficient when out and about on her own. Different to the party spec by a large degree.
Whilst Amana will always be dealing damage from afar, even when soloing, when she's on her own she has to accept that a mob is going to come over and start beating her up.
Different spells have different 'threat' ratings. Some create little or no threat whilst others, normally the higher damage ones, create a lot of threat. What does this mean?
It means that whilst she will normally start off an attack by sending out her minion, eventually she will cast a spell that has a high threat value, causing the mob to lose interest in the minion and turn it's attention onto Amana herself. When this happens, whilst the mob will have been weakened greatly by the minion and by Amana's DoT curses, it will start to beat up on her.

To best counter for this, she needs to be wearing items that have a higher Armour value. If she is to survive a beating until the effect of her curses kill the mob, she needs protection.
Therefore I would equip her with a robe like

• 55 armour
• +10 Stamina
• +10 Intellect

over

• 35 armour
• +21 Spell Damage
• +10 Spirit
  

Why?
55 armour points will last longer than 35 - that's pretty obvious right? When it comes down to a choice between armour vs spell damage, a soloing outfit needs to have the armour, or there simply wont be any Amana to solo with. ;p
She also needs the Stamina as it adds directly to her health total. This, combined with the higher armour value, literally means that the mob has to take longer to wear down Amana's health - and this is good as it allows the curses to run their course and reach maximum effect. Make sense? Yay!
Similarly, the Intellect stat will simply add to her mana pool, giving her more fuel to fire off more spells of higher damage ratings. This is preferred over Spirit (which aids the regeneration rates) because it is rare that a mob will last longer than the mana pool. Once the mob is dead, Amana can take all the time in the world to regen her mana reserve. Again, it's not ideal, but it's about choice. When in the throes of a fight - I'd prefer to have MORE mana, than have less of it regenerating faster. Yeh?
Also, a Warlock can tap Health Points, converting them into available Mana in a hurry (we like pain..).

So there you have it! YAY!!

2 specs - one for partying, and one for soloing.
I realise I've only covered the Warlock, but you can use your noggin to work out two specs for your own class I'm sure.
A Mage, for example, needs Mana, Mana, and more Mana in a party. She needs to wear whatever she can to boost her reserves (Intellect) and do whatever she can to keep it coming quickly (Spirit) but also needs to wear gear that adds as much spell damage boosting as possible.
When she's soloing, it's very much like the Warlock - increase the armour and grab as much Spirit, Intellect, and where possible Stamina (in that order) as possible.

But as I mentioned earlier, this was really meant as a guide to help you understand the concepts, rather than provide a detailed spec for each class. When I get time I'll scribble that down too.

Oh - speaking of which - I've not yet covered off your Talent Tree have I..
I think that topic also deserves a separate and more detailed article, but for the meantime:

The Talent feature allows you to further spec your toon down three trees specific to your class. My generic advice is to choose two primary ones throughout your early life (10-50) and spread the points around. Then, post 50, you can go back and re-spec the tree to your chosen style.

For example, Amana is specced 16/4/14 or something.. I'm obviously concentrating on two trees and testing out what additional benefits they bring. But, come L50, I know I am going to put the majority of my talent points into my 'destruction' tree or my 'affliction' tree, as life after 50 will be more specialised towards performing a specific role in high end raids.
This is why you may have seen discussions online about 'talent builds' or been asked "what talent spec are you?"

So there you go! If you made it this far, congratulations for reading my diatribe!! I sincerely hope it's helped to clarify all of those yucky and confusing terms, and that you now know which fuel you need for your toon depending on whether you are partying or soloing.
I also highly recommend the 'Outfitter' plugin to make it easy to switch between the two with the click of a mouse.

Please feel free to ask any further questions by posting a comment, or by contacting Amana or Zarres in-game. I'm always happy and willing to help out wherever I can.

=)