The Hybrid Heroic Challenge
 

Hello.

A discussion in my guild chat one day led to a member making the assertion that hybrid classes can't perform certain roles in Heroic-difficulty instances. Specifically, he stated that a paladin can't successfully complete a heroic Underbog run as tank; a druid can't successfully mainheal the same run; and it's inconceivable that they should be able to do it in the same run.

Have you, a prot paladin/resto druid, successfully maintanked/mainhealed a Heroic Underbog run? Have you this same for any heroic runs? From a theorycraft standpoint, how difficult would it be for a paladin to get the required amount of damage mitigation? How much HPS can a resto druid put out?

If you could provide screenshots of relevant information (or a movie of one of these challenges), it would be greatly appreciated.

Now, I'm curious as to the extend that hybrid classes can perform core-class tasks in Heroics. Since in raids these classes are (mostly) pigeon-holed into optimized roles for their raid slot, I wonder how much effort Blizzard put into tuning these instances for non-core classes. How feasible is it for a paladin to tank heroics in general, or shamans to main heal? What types of gear and play-styles need to be focused on to make these things possible?

EDIT: As a further note, the rest of the group can be of any makeup you like.

I don't see why a paladin would be unable to tank Heroic bog. Paladin mitigation is almost identical to warriors, the largest difference between paladin and warrior tanks is base health. That said, I plan on trying it soon. A friend of mine is a fairly well geared prot paladin and I'm rather confident that I can keep him up in Heroic Underbog. If we end up doing it sometime soon I'll post back here and let you know how it went.

I've solohealed a few heroics with my 46p feral spec :E

Also, which classes would you consider "hybrid" in this case?
Every single class capable of tanking or healing in this game is hybrid to some extent.

Most of my Heroic runs have with been with a Druid tank and a Druid healer.

Our standard group config is as follows:

Pally Tank
Pally Healer
Shadow Priest
Mage
Lock

We've run all the coilfang heroics, farmed mech repeatedly, and done ramparts and blood furnace. I unfortunately have no grounds for comparison re: damage taken compared to a warrior or druid, because we've never needed one. The pulls just before the last boss in underbog and blood furnace are a little hairy, but I get the impression they're just as bad for everyone. As for screenshots, I can grab a few tonight if you really want some.

Gearwise, we're all blue but for one or two kharazan epics.

Fantastic.

Sulliwan: Druids, Paladins and Shamans would be the classes I'm interested in.

The only real problem is that Hybrids lack CC and CC is the king of Heroics.

When I was enhancement and I did heroics, I would bring both healing and DPS sets and DPS unless the situation was vastly improved with 2 healers. Now to be honest, I don't think I could have pulled off solo healing a heroic with enhancement spec, so in that aspect, we'd be restricted to the core spot of a backup healer, but it gives an extreme flexibility to the group. Wiping because we're taking too long? Switch to DPS. Can the boss almost one-round the tank? Healing. In a snap, the group goes from 2DPS/2Healers to 3DPS/1Healer and back. Pretty nice since some scenarios are damn near ridiculous with 2 healers.

In my experience with heroics, your success is more directly linked to how well you CC than how well you tank and spank. There are simply too many large packs to be able to brute force your way through, no matter who your tanks/healers are so being able to control your enemies brings a lot more to the table. That said, since almost all the instances have a majority humanoid mobs, IMO a mage is the most important class to bring. Sap, MC, and seduce are nice, but don't work nearly as well (or at least as reliably) as sheep.

we did Underbog tonight with this group setup:

- holy/disc priest
- arc/fire mage
- hunter (with imp traps)
- sPriest
- feral tank (and my gear isnt upgraded from any quests beyond the Terokkar quests, granted i was fully buffed whole run, but excellent healing was of course the make-or-break factor)

It was our first run into heroics Underbog, we had some trouble in the begining (the first pull past the flying beasts^^) and on the first boss (we drank one greater Nat res pot to solve the issue) and the rest was smooth - untill the big giants just before the last boss, when sPriest had to heal me too.

Judging from our run, i wouldnt dismiss any specc, as long as there are people in the group who know how to use even the slightest of their CC or kiting abilities :)

I'ld be more interested in how more hybrid aligned groups did in things like:
Botanica, Arcatraz, Shadowlabs, Shattered Halls, Setthek Halls, Mana Tombs, Blood Furnace.

Rather than how they fared in the 'easier' ones, purely because the other ones generally are laxx on requirements and the 'harder' ones are alot more unforgiving on non-ideal setups.

I'ld imagen no mage on Shadowlabs or Shattered Halls, or Blood Furnace would be somewhat interesting

I have run all heroic mode instances without a mage and often with just improved sap for crowd control and finished them all. Polymorph is not as important as many would believe and very often the hard hitting monsters are not beast/humanoid type. (Example: demons at the end of Blood Furnace, Shamblers in the Underbog, etc.)

Kiting is also a very viable form of crowd control, for example, and is optimal for many guard type monsters, which are immune to any other form of crowd control. (Example: the pull just before the first boss in the Underbog)

If less people believed so rigorously into the power of the sheep and opened for different approaches, hybrids would have a much easier time.

Botanica does not have that many big packs, your primary concern are the mechanical type monsters that sometimes smack your tank with arcane damage.

Arcatraz is almost exclusively demon/elemental/mechanical type, I can't imagine a use for sheep there. Vampiric embrace, however, makes a lot of pulls trivial. Also you might want a hybrid that changes to healing for the last boss in case he does his beloved double-stun.

Shadowlabs admittedly, becomes the less painful the more crowd control you bring, however tank death is not as threatening as healer death due to losing control of the pull, which can easily happen if some form of crowd control gets resisted or breaks early. I have also done that one with only one improved sap as CC but we had enough DPS to burn pulls down fast.

Shattered Halls is also doable without sheep. A freezing trap and misdirection often allow enough time to burn one or two adds down before they even reach the waiting tank. Your worst problem in SH is unfocused DPS and random deaths due to losing control of the pull rather than one extra mob on the tank.

Sethekk Halls is rather trivial, the hardest monsters are the guards/ravenguards and they are immune to all crowd control except kiting.

Mana Tombs is easy enough to not even bother with sap till the later parts and mana burning type monsters. Indirect heals via LOTP or VE make the first boss a lot easier, however.

Blood Furnace's worst monsters are demon type, sheep doesn't help there. Sheep would make the second boss easier but is in no way necessary.

This is just from my experience.

I would trust at least 1 of my resto Druids and prot Paladins to perform that role on a heroic run... I haven't gotten a chance to since one of them is out of town right now, but based on my experiences with them in Karazhan and raids in general, I don't really see why there would be a problem with them.

It is hard to keep up with the healing in heroics at times, but there are some really skilled resto Druids out there that can do it. I've seen some quite impressive tanking Paladins as well, but it does require someone who really knows what they're doing and has solid gear.

Obviously, I'm a Mage so naturally all the heroics I run are with Mages. ;)

I've succesfully mainhealed all of my Heroic instances. Getting fed with mana from a Shadowpriest sometimes, but not always.

Edit: I've cleared the following Heroics with me as mainhealer: Slave Pens, Underbog, Steamvault, Furnace, Ramparts, Shadow Labyrinth, Mechanar, Auchenai Crypts, Mana-Tombs, Botanica and Sethekk Halls (sorry for the somewhat awkward sorting.)

Here's a question. Since heroics are so variable in the nature of the challenges they present, is it possible that hybrids are more effective in this setting than core classes because of their versatility?