Spec loyalty or lack thereof

With that annoying business over at BRK trickling down (I particularly like the apology to Rilgon by Drizzit & Co.), the tool has informed me that I "still don’t get it. [He] spec[s] to what will bring the most dps to the raid."

Okay, that's nice. Go for it, what do I care, if that's how you have fun. But then why are you bitching about BM nerfs if you are so willing to change specs?

Fundamentally, I have no problem with players of neutral spec devotion. What they enjoy is not what I enjoy - they respec often and may have many alts to satisfy their needs for diversity. They love the class perhaps, but are of no strong feelings towards any tree.

In that case, it is perfectly acceptable to be angry about overall nerfs to a class, but when you start bemoaning a nerf to a tree, then your neutrality is faltering. Now you have a bias, and in the case of many BM hunters in BC, this bias turned them into assholes. With 2.0, now they had an unbeatable 5-point talent, how great is that! Man, being overpowered is awesome! Patch 3.0 came along, and now pretty much all hunters are overpowered, but BM just took it and ran with it, with the ability to combine TBW with Readiness and pets that evaded the normalization.

I've said it before: being OP is fun. If you have ever Volleyed dozens of mobs at once and watch your dps spike up to 7k, those 3k crits popping up all over the screen, it's a great thrill. But there is a difference between accepting your OP state and being dependent on it. Once that dependence happens, you can't stand the thought of loosing it. The now overpowered tree is being pushed down to being on-par with the rest of the talents, and those that are dependent on it whine and bitch about loosing it. That is not spec neutral.

If you enjoy switching up your spec on a regular basis depending on the needs of the raid, that's great - it's your type that fill the progressive guild, no doubt about it. But the majority of players are not like that. We are most comfortable in one type of play style as typically dictated by one type of tree. We don't like imbalance between the trees, because it means we are potentially forced to spec out of the tree we enjoy. All through BC, MM and SV hunters were obligated to switch to BM to take advantage of that overpowered damage, creating false concepts that certain trees were "made" for certain aspects of the game. With the introduction of Wrath, we celebrate the return of choice and the fall of those statistical anomalies, and we see who and who did not become dependent on that overpowered state.

If you love a tree or a class, then no number of nerfs should change that. If you are truly neutral, then you are free to come and go as you please. Just don't claim to be neutral then tell others what tree is "the best."