Why is it there are PVP and PVE specs, surely if you spec to fight against real ppl (who are more of a challenge than NPC's) then surely you should be able to use the same spec against NPC mobs.

PVE specs often focus around fighting a boss, so a dps who won't be focused by a boss may well choose to ignore some survivability skills that they would take for pvp. Also skills that stun or knockback/pull mobs have considerably less use.

Similarly for tanks they may prefer survivability to dealing damage in a boss fight compared to pvp and healers would be more likely to ignore survivability/control abilities in favour of improving healing.

My DPS Concealment Ops spec doesn't change between PVE and PVP, but there is one skill I use exclusively for PVE only - stun droid.

 

That's about it.

Why is it there are PVP and PVE specs, surely if you spec to fight against real ppl (who are more of a challenge than NPC's) then surely you should be able to use the same spec against NPC mobs.

 

It mostly has to do with threat mechanics. PVE specs tend to be focused around the optimal group setting, where only the tanks are taking damage and are highest on the threat list.

 

Because that's the scenario, most talents that provide defensive bonuses to non-tanks are far less useful.

 

Conversely, in a PVP setting, there's real people that aren't interested in threat mechanics. Tanks still have some tricks up their sleeves with Taunts, but it doesn't entirely prevent a group of opponents from running up and ganking the healer.

 

So, to compensate, some of those defensive abilities and cooldowns, along with things like slows, stuns, and crowd control, make much more difference in PVP.

 

In short, a PVP player has to know how to handle a wide variety of scenarios. A focused PVE player is much more likely to specialize in one particular job and focus on that exclusively.

So, to compensate, some of those defensive abilities and cooldowns, along with things like slows, stuns, and crowd control, make much more difference in PVP.

 

That's pretty much it.

 

Additionally, PVP is about bursting a ~25k health target down as fast as possible. Sustained DPS is much more important for PVE as boss fights can go 5+ minutes.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Infalliable