What if hybrid classes are supposed to play hybrid?

[Fladrif 14]

What I mean here is simple and straightforward: what if "Vanilla WoW class balance" in PvE was designed to be a little more profound than tank-heal-dps ?

What if hybrid classes were designed to fulfil different roles in the same dungeon?

Imagine that warrior is always supposed to tank independently from the spec (otherwise you won't roll a warrior), and a priest is always supposed to heal. Then the mage, the rogue, the warlock and the hunter are all designed to bring Damage (dps in wow jargon) in different ways.

Why should the druid, the paladin and the shaman perform exclusively a single role in the same dungeon?

For example, I think that a druid should be healer, kitty or off-tank depending on the specific pull that the group is engaging.

So, when we create the usual 5men group, ideally we should look for:

• 1 warrior,
• 1 priest,
• 1 mage/rogue
• 1 warlock/hunter (hunter if we have the mage, and warlock if we have the hunter in order to provide different kinds of damage -melee or spells-)
• 1 druid/paladin (play support-healer and off-tank and dps depending on the specific needs of the group and special buffs)

In this way, it should be possible to play the unpopular spec without problems because the group will always have support-healer and off-tank.

Fury warrior will be a good enough tank and the shadow priest will do good as well... because of the support classes. Also, retribution paladin could do good as well since he's not main-tank nor main-healer. And people will stop saying druids are almost useless.

Druids are almost useless in a game structured for a tank-heal-dps base groups because this model is too simplistic. This understood model forced blizzard to heavily modify their original ideas of "support classes" so that a druid and a paladin could legitimately play as main-tank and main-healer. That possibility was eventually contemplated, but as you know it requires a specific devotion of talents and gear that not many were supposed to invest.

This is just an opinion of course. Nothing more than a suggestion.

LF5M ---> 1war, 1priest, 2dps, 1 support .... instead of the usual "tank/ heal/ dps" were support classes are forced to play a role that is not theirs.

What do you think? What if this game is more profound than we always thought?

I apologize for my bad English grammar.

 

[(TheReal) Krom 7]

If you have decent players, you can bring anything you want in 5 men instances, as long as there is heal, tank and dps ("The Holy Trinity"), but usually you don't for loot, utility (need rogue cc, mage poly, priest shackle) or efficience/smoothness reasons.

But it's only fair that multiple roles fulfilling classes are worst than 1 role devoted classes, in further content.

Otherwise the game would be full of Paladins, Droods and Priests only.

Edited January 4, 2017 by (TheReal) Krom

[Suprfli6 3]

If you compare vanilla WoW to other MMOs at the time like EQ1, the difference is that hybrids in the other games were force multipliers to a much greater degree than in vanilla WoW. Plus some of them provided unique things that the typical roles didn't. WoW moved in that direction more over time but for the bulk of vanilla content hybrids just don't provide enough.

[Fladrif 14]

2 hours ago, (TheReal) Krom said:

If you have decent players, you can bring anything you want in 5 men instances, as long as there is heal, tank and dps ("The Holy Trinity"), but usually you don't for loot, utility (need rogue cc, mage poly, priest shackle) or efficience/smoothness reasons.

 

This is definitely true, but considering that ANY class can do damages of some sort, you're not really talking about a trinity as much as the "Holy Couple": the tank and the healer. When you have a tank that engages the mob and a healer that keeps the tank alive, you could even rely on another priest to be focused on damage: it will be a quite long process though.

And since the best tank is always the Warrior and the best healer is always the Priest -and when I say "best", I mean that they shouldn't struggle too much with equipment and talents to achieve a good enough level-, you can see that "dps" could be pretty much everything.

In the ideal group that I outlined, you have 4 combinations:

• Warrior, Priest, Mage, Hunter, Paladin/Shaman
• Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Paladin/Shaman
• Warrior, Priest, Mage, Hunter, Druid
• Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Warlock, Druid

And, as you can see there wouldn't be unbearable conflicts with Loots (for example, the support class Druid wouldn't need the +int cloths because he's support, not healing and a warrior won't need a plate with +int). You have good enough CC and most importantly a secondary tank and a support healer.

But this cannot possibly happen if people always think in term of "tank, heal, dps" because the druid, the shaman and the paladin will be forced to encapsulate their class in a single role all the time in PvE. They are forced to choose a specific spec to fit in a specific role: you see druids shapeshifting into a cat at the entrance of the dungeon and never do anything else to maximize damage and truly BE the dps class.

 

2 hours ago, (TheReal) Krom said:

[...]

But it's only fair that multiple roles fulfilling classes are worst than 1 role devoted classes, in further content.

Otherwise the game would be full of Paladins, Droods and Priests only.

 

Absolutely true.

The point that I made here is that we should consider the archetype of the "support" class and not to force hybrids classes to be dps, heal or tank. Why none wants a feral druid in a raid group? Because he's recruited as a dps / tank AND he can't possibly be a good enough dps or a good enough tank, unless he has amazing equipments. But a feral druid can heal when needed, he can tank an elite and he can do some dps: he's support class.

People rarely understand this and that's the reason why I won't roll a druid, even if I like the class: I won't because almost none would understand my role as a party member.

 

1 hour ago, Suprfli6 said:

If you compare vanilla WoW to other MMOs at the time like EQ1, the difference is that hybrids in the other games were force multipliers to a much greater degree than in vanilla WoW. Plus some of them provided unique things that the typical roles didn't. WoW moved in that direction more over time but for the bulk of vanilla content hybrids just don't provide enough.

If I consider the powerful buffs of the paladins and the shaman's totem, plus Mark of the wild from the druid and if I consider that they can play different roles when needed, I can't really see how they don't provide enough. They empower the all group with buffs and active roles instead of just being there so that others benefit from their mere presence (as in other MMos).

[(TheReal) Krom 7]

I see your point on the "support" role, but this is indeed more of a 2004 thing.

Today every serious guild would see your subpar spec as a deliberate shoot in the foot. Your best chances as a special snowflake raider, are Nightfall Shaman/Paladin, Shadow damages boost priest or even Moonkin Aura Druid.

Or just find people that don't care so much. Early Nostalrius I've raided as 2h Arms Warrior, locking 2 debuffs for delicious dps HUEHUEHUE :) 

Edited January 4, 2017 by (TheReal) Krom

[Fladrif 14]

1 hour ago, (TheReal) Krom said:

I see your point on the "support" role, but this is indeed more of a 2004 thing.

Today every serious guild would see your subpar spec as a deliberate shoot in the foot. Your best chances as a special snowflake raider, are Nightfall Shaman/Paladin, Shadow damages boost priest or even Moonkin Aura Druid.

[...]

 

Yes, this is the reason why I'm posting here. I want hybrid classes to be more enjoyable, but for that to happen we all need to consider things from a different perspective.

First time I played wow, I was taught by players how to go for a dungeon: look for tank, healer and dps. That was back in 2007, I think. I never questioned the model: it works. Is there something else to say?

Blizzard listened to us and made WoW more player-friendly, working at encapsulating each class in the tank-dps-heal model because none understood the value and the role of the support classes. That's how Blizzard works on WoW: by responding to players expectations... Just look at what retail is now. "People don't understand support class, ok just turn them into something different" was what someone said back in the days. Vanilla is the only WoW that needed some sort of "interpretation": from tbc onward, the game gradually listened to players more and more.

Serious Guild means a group of dedicated players, and I'm not aware of anyone who actually considered the idea of having party members who play different roles in rotation, nor even tested if it works or not: they've been taught to play according to a model that works, but maybe there's a more efficient way. Why not try?

[(TheReal) Krom 7]

Caus serious people care just about efficience and profit.

C A P I T A L I S M :p

Your dreams won't never be fulfilled in a serious guild, because the game is just designed to get faster from A to B if you swap the support for a decked dps.

But serious guilds are for no-lifers anyways, just find people who enjoy more the fun than the ladder :)

[Fladrif 14]

32 minutes ago, (TheReal) Krom said:

Caus serious people care just about efficience and profit.

C A P I T A L I S M :p

 

 

:-D LOL

Isn't this just for chinese farming goldesellers.

35 minutes ago, (TheReal) Krom said:

[...]

Your dreams won't never be fulfilled in a serious guild, because the game is just designed to get faster from A to B if you swap the support for a decked dps.

[...]

I think that to definitely assert that to swap the support for a decked dps would be the best choice, we should at least try it and make a decent comparison. "Serious Guilds" looks like some elitist group of players who know every single details of this game, like a sort of WoW intelligentia. LOL we're all just players.

How many people did you met that actually had to sort out by themselves the proper way to get trough a raid by testing support classes? Not many. We all learned from someone else in the long lineage of the whispered tradition that goes directly to the first raid group in retail Vanilla WoW. 

[(TheReal) Krom 7]

We are both right, in a certain way.

I admit never have it tested myself seriously before, but it's not rocket science on a 10 years theorycrafted game, that for exemple... A Druid.

Feral = can't compete Warrior tanking, can't compete Rogue dps. Feed him gear and consumables to be viable ? Hard to find gear, stolen to more beneficial classes, waste of money. Well Rogue is soooo hard to find !

Balance = can't compete casters, decent dps but oom in the minute. Feed him gear and consumables to be viable ? Hard to find gear, stolen to more beneficial classes, waste of money. Well Mage is sooo hard to find !

Restauration = Surprise, Modafuka ! You can compete, and even get dedicated tier gear. Aye, Matey' !

Congratulations ! Your hard, to be meh hybrid evolved to a competent and easy heal raider !

 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by (TheReal) Krom

[Fladrif 14]

Yes, that proves an intelligent craft of the early developers: if a druid, the paladin/shaman was really tired of playing hybrid, he was given a chance to specialize. But by no means they could become decent dps because there are way too many dps class.

edited

 

 

Edited February 11, 2017 by Fladrif

[Bobtri 2]

I plan on finding a casual raiding guild and going shadow priest. I'm really put off by all this no fun allowed min-maxing stuff. Long live the raiding feral druids, ele shamans, shadow priests, retridins!

[Undertanker 88]

On 1/5/2017 at 8:34 AM, Bobtri said:

I plan on finding a casual raiding guild and going shadow priest. I'm really put off by all this no fun allowed min-maxing stuff. Long live the raiding feral druids, ele shamans, shadow priests, retridins!

Even the top end guilds will need a Shadow priest.  Guilds usually have 1 shadow priest if they are 100% attendance, or have 2 shadow priest and they take turns sitting if there are others on standby as well.   This is only after the debuff slots are extended to 16 slots.   Before then, even if you want to be shadow, you should be holy/disc spec healing in raids while you collect your SP gear.

[Reyus 0]

I think your head is in the right place, and maybe once upon a time that may have been the intent of the developers, but I just don't think that is the way the meta evolved.

Thr problem is, even if Druids/Paladins/Shamans brings nice buffs/utility to a group, having another DPS that can kill stuff faster will always be better. There is no need for utility if everything is dead. That's why you always want to enhance your strengths rather than sheer up your weaknesses.

i think if this was the original intent of the developers than what they should have done was given the hybrid classes the best CC. That would have made their utility much more necessary. But as you would have it, the best CC actually belongs to Mage/Rogue.

[taladril 43]

How about this for a different viewpoint. Using ferals for example. Ok so you could get another rogue maybe instead of the feral. Your dps output may be higher but one nice thing of the feral over the rogue is itemization. He is scooping up the loot others don't want. So he gears faster and your other rogues gear faster. If you have a lot of the same class then loot rots but there's need for specific items. Some people would gear faster and others would stagnate (and slow the total dps because of it). I'd argue that the gain of utility and gear and everything else is better than pure optimization. Cause lets be honest. We'd have a very different raid setup if we truly truly wanted to maximize dps. Pick the top dps class for melee and caster and screw everything else. Same as healing and tanking. Bring one of every buff class. Done. Optimized. But we don't do that.

[Kailas 5]

Improved totem shaman is viable IMO following the logic that in most situations you don't need all healers to heal but sometimes you do.

You can use nightfall when healing is not as needed and switch to healing gear when it is. 

The problem for me is finding decent healers, not wanna be enhancements. In guilds I was part of leadership in the past my requirement for anyone to play imp. totem shaman is to master resto shaman. 

Resto/feral druids can follow same logic if you use set ups with few tanks / dps warriors with no tank gear. But usually when you need an extra tank you need an extra healer at least during the start of the fight while all targets are alive.

In both cases you need an extra try hard player for the role. Why? Well you need two sets of gears and two sets of consumables, UI that can accommodate both roles. 

Reality is other classes perform better and get the dps spots in raids far easier. The effort required to play hybrids is rarely noted and their benefit rarely appreciated by raids

Edited January 24, 2017 by Kailas

[Fladrif 14]

On 20/1/2017 at 9:34 AM, Kailas said:

Resto/feral druids can follow same logic if you use set ups with few tanks / dps warriors with no tank gear. But usually when you need an extra tank you need an extra healer at least during the start of the fight while all targets are alive.

In both cases you need an extra try hard player for the role. Why? Well you need two sets of gears and two sets of consumables, UI that can accommodate both roles.

In fact, the druid class is so deeply misunderstood that ppl play it as a rogues or as priests...

Having a druid doesn't mean that you get another DD, nor another healer, nor another tank. You get a player who can easily cast HoTs (saving priests mana) and deal decent damages in a fight. You get a player who can SS into an off-tank and help with problematic pulls. You get a player with powerful buffs, meaning that he helps you doing more damage.

In my opinion, to play a druid with rogue/priest gears is a product of misunderstanding.