I have been trying to calculate hybrid additions to raid in order to see what class belongs to what group and so on. All this is pretty common knowledge, and widely used on guilds. Estimations indicate that hybrids bring pretty good additions to raid performance. Shadowpriest as classic example of perfect hybrid, brings good personal DPS, giving great raid DPS increase trough shadowvulne/misery and offering reasonable offhealing and manaregen while doing damage. Shadowpriests are effective raid members, everyone knows and loves them. But how about other hybrids? I recently had shocking collision with the most succesful guild in the world, yes Nihilum. Because of the following quote (Interview of Awake on WoW Insider).

To make it clear, I am not trying to discredit their achievements. They have done great job so far. Im just not convinced by Awake's description of their most efficient raid setup not including any "offspec" hybrids. There is no right and wrong raid setup, thats pretty obvious. All guilds are different. But lets try to see in rough estimation how hybrids really effect raids. Because I just cant agree with the statement "way below the standard classes"

I gathered totally random DPS numbers from Praetorian's WWS thread, while using common sense on avoiding AoE DPS numbers and such. Keeping the 10 class average DPS numbers what average player could do in X raid (I used many EJ WWS reports as they seem to have pretty solid playerbase). I lack "samples" from hybrids, as it was shocking low how people actually use hybrids as dps. (I had false expectations as our guild uses moonkins/ferals/ench/ele/retri on regular basis trough all bosses in TK and SSC). I would appreciate if said offspec players could give WWS reports of their raids to add in more samples for hybrids.

Here are my flumsy results so far...



Speadsheet available: http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/wow/perfect_raid1.ods
(Open Office)

So from my rough calculations, hybrids seem to perform better than core classes due raid additions they bring. By no means these are exact and perfect simulations of hybrid contributions trough moonkin/feral auras, improved faerie fire, improved sanctity aura and sanctified crusader. All those skills had flat +% dmg according to their crit modifier. If someone wants to enchance that spreadsheet to get more accurate numbers, feel free to do so. I used +% as it was close enough to give example of the contribution (Some raidleader gave even higher increase in DPS than the increased crit rating when evaluating different class skills).

I made randomly created "Nihilum" raid, without hybrids and their raid DPS would be 100% (I tried to get their exact raid setup but havent been succesful finding it, so I had to throw this setup from my head). Then I changed 1 Rogue and 1 Warlock to Moonkin and Paladin, what gave 3,24% increase in raid DPS. On other example Paladin got swapped with Feral Druid, what gave 2.07% dps increase when comparing to non-hybrid "Nihilum" raid. From these calculations it seems that using hybrids is extremely valid option, as it is not to use them (Nihilum has been the most succesful guild without using hybrids so far).

Be gentle, Im not perfect and there may be some small calculation errors. But from previous experience these nubers should be good enough to draw some conclusions of hybrid raid contribution.

Not sure if I am on topic, but wouldn't a shaman be better for group 1 than the druid?

Most likely yes, MT group was just built up randomly. As it has little to no effect on the DPS contributions.

Saying Hybrid raid contribution is good is pretty well known. I think the main issue is that there are other factors in play - Ret paladins will always be threat capped before DPS capped if they're good, for example.

There is also (generally) a lack of itemisation for some specific class roles. Not every talent tree gets the amount of drops that DPS warriors do, or are itemised as well.

The other issue is finding people who are both reliable and highly skilled who play those classes. There are very, very few Moonkin druids on the server I play on, and of those quite a number focus on PvP as their priority. This cuts down on the number of people who are actually available in those roles.

For Enhance shaman examples try looking for WWS parses by the guild Celebrity (EU) and look for Stigmata, and from the US look for the guild Juggernaut and the shaman Sebudai. Both of these enhance shaman are in Black Temple and Hyjal and are pushing well over 1000 DPS on every fight.

Not to poke too much at Awake, but he's been known for making some pretty inflammatory statements about raiding in general. Many here will recall his claims that Alchemy/Herbalism concerns were "overblown" and that its "not hard" to farm all the herbs you need for a week in "an hour or so" for full consumable use on every fight while only having herbalism at around 75 on his own character.

Never mind. I should probably read, instead of skimming.

Are shadow priests no longer considered hybrids? Holy must be the hybrid spec nowadays. :P

http://www.celebrityguild.com/forum/wws.php for some of our WWS parses - unfortunately there aren't really any great ones (the best are probably solarian/void reaver) there and they're all a bit old. Voltan is elemental, Stigmata is enh.

Another issue with itemisation being lacking from offset pieces would be the demand on tier sets, each ret/prot pally that was geared up would mean one less holy pally getting that gear or the moonkin being geared up would be less set pieces for your tanks. (before t6 obviously)

A mage friend of mine who loves theory crafting worked out that my buffs (4% hit, 3% crit +121 damage) equate to around +250 damage for him (full frost spec) as long as he gears around it (stays 4% from hit cap).

I'm usually grouped with 4 mages, or 3 mages and a boomkin, even if my buffs are only equal to +200 damage per caster, thats still +800 damage to the caster group, I usually do around 70-80% of the best mages damage, while keeping my group alive.

We are very mage heavy (just got our first leo kill 6x mage 2x ele shaman 1x lock 0 shadow priests)
Add in heroism and +12 mana/2 I feel i'm contributing more than another mage would, but far less than a shadow priest if we could get one!

Interesting idea, i do think most guilds run full SSC or TK with 4-5 tanks tough so only bringing 3 warriors would barely work. (It's prolly possible if done clever, but i dunno, say Karathres with 3 tanks? Same on Al'ar prolly doable but complicated, VR seems easier with 4-5 too, etc etc)

It'll be different from guild to guild what you bring to fill the tank slots, my guess is that 2x prot war, 1x arms war and a feral for the last slot with an optional fury war or feral for the 5th slot is the optimal raid.
You also only have one shadowpriest and you put him with the warlocks, while putting him with the healers is usually a better choice.

I suggest you reduce this two doing maths with only two groups as it seems simpler and fairer.
1) Melee dps group with 2-4 rogues, and then compare the other 1-3 slots filled with enhc shaman, warrior (dps aka imp bs), feral, retri pallie.
2) Caster dps group with 2-4 mages, and then compare the other 1-3 slots filled with ele shaman, moonkin, retri pallie, spriest (mana regen will have an effect on dps in most fights), destro lock.

I think that'd give you a better overview to compare the dps. Basically it boils down to comparing raid dps of the main dps groups when you replace a pure dps class with a hybrid one.

Putting a moonkin with 3 holy pallies and a shadowpriest sounds interesting as well, but even more complex to calculate.


Would be interesting to have a raid simulator spreadsheet, but i got the feeling it's nearly impossible todo.

That depends on your loot system to some extent. If your ret paladin is replacing a rogue, for example, you have the exact same number of people who want paladin/rogue/shaman tokens.

Yea, I think that's mostly what's stopped people from gearing hybrids up nowadays. No one is really sure how much damage their "off-spec" can do, and in order to test it reliably, they'll need T5 equivalent pieces in every slot. But to obtain the best gear, they're going to have to sacrifice gear for their "pure" role and waste tokens for a spec that they may not even stay.

A look at the other accepted hybrid classes loot availability:

DPS Warriors: Full array of slots available from crafted to boss-specific drops to benefit both Arms AND Fury.
Shadow Priests: Can get a full set of T5 equivalent gear without even zoning into SSC or TK.
Feral Druids: Close to a full set of specific off-gear available for every slot.

Now, let's look at some other hybrids:

Enhancement Shamans: Shares drops with rogues, warriors, and hunters.
Elemental Shamans: Some specific drops, but mostly share with mages and warlocks.
Ret Paladin: Some specific drops, must take others from established hybrid (warriors).
Moonkin: Very few specific drops, must take items from "pure" DPS classes.

I think there is a correlation between raid viability and availability of drops.

As for our raids, I would love to have a geared Moonkin and Ret Paladin; but drops simply do not allow it. As far as hybrids, we have 3 very active shadow priests (avg: 2 per raid), 2 feral druids (1 per raid), 2 elemental shaman (0-1 per raid), and 3 DPS warriors (100% attendance).

I feel that adding a shadow priest with a 5% damage buff to all of those casters and another 10% buff to the lock would probably outweigh a 30% increased casting speed buff for 40 seconds for a single group, once per fight. I can guarantee that a shadow priest would add 200-250 mp/5 rather than a flat 30 mp/5 from a totem.

TBC raids favor balance, not class stacking.

Ret and Holy are pretty terrible raiding specs at the extreme high-end just due simply to inflexbility. Prot healing is terrible, and Prot is the worst offtank choice, as Prot Paladins generate abysmal threat when not blocking.

But Feral Druids and Shadowpriests are invaluable - 2 Prot Warriors and 2 Feral Druids are our standard raid makeup. Feral Druids are so flexible its insane to not have any.

But speaking as a Paladin, and seeing first hand how bad Ret is (our ret paladin was #3 on DPS on Mag - holding back a whole bunch. Then he pulled aggro and died.) in a raiding environment - it just isn't acceptable to bring them to raids until they fix it.

Prot Paladins are in a whole other boat, in that they aren't the best MTs, and are terrible offtanks - espescially compared to Ferals who can dual role with minimal gear swappage.

EDIT:

Per the comment about Alar - just use a Holy Paladin to taunt, and a Feral to peel. Works just as well - and you get additional DPS when the add is down from the the bear who can switch roles instantly, instead of a nigh useless raid member when not tanking. Same goes for Tidewalker - I put up IRF and spam heal to lock down any loose mobs, but usually a Warlock ends up tanking anyways so it isn't a problem.

I'm confused why you think Prot Pallies are terrible offtanks...they are excellent offtanks since they have the best multi-mob aggro gen in the game, plus incrediblly fast threat gen. What are you basing your assertion on?

Edit:
Guess we are doing the Al'ar adds differently than you...after about 50% into phase 1, we always have multiple adds up for the rest of the fight. There really wouldn't be any opportunity for a bear to DPS using our strat. =)

There are other subtler effects. Here's my favorite example: I absolutely love raiding with enhance shamans. Why? Because if we don't have one, I have to drop WF/SoE for the melee group. And if I have to do that, it means no shadowpriest for me. With a spriest, on any given boss fight, it is almost assured that I will be #1 on effective healing, except for very specific cases like the PoH priest whose Gurtogg group is eating two Bloodboils every phase cycle.

It really is no exaggeration to say that on a healing intensive fight like Teron, Gurtogg, (hell, even Void Reaver as melee healer), etc., I can do two healers' worth of pure healing IF I have a shadow priest (and no, it's not a case of the shadow priest saving me gold -- I drink mana pots like water as a given). We did Gurtogg with 7 healers this timer and I was good on mana until the end. If I'd had to drop WF for the melee, I'd have been OOM and completely unable to do things like bloodlust my healer group and spam max-rank HWs for 30sec on a Fel Rage'd mage 7 minutes into the fight.

Stuff like that is not remotely as apparent on the face of a WWS parse.

In response to what Gokey wrote, the amount of drops available is due to itemization being rather poor, this is nothing new, it's always been like that for certain classes/speccs, and so it continues in TBC.

I doubt it's intentionally done by designers to sort of hint the raidgroups out there about what to bring and whatnot as you seem to suggest. Even though it might seem so due to older drops, with the numerous fixes to hybrids along with 2.0, it just seems they failed a bit at adding enough loot "designed" for those "off-speccs".

Berserker stance is a passive deaggro. Ret needs one.

They are terrible OFF-tanks. This is because a lot prot Paladin threat is reflective (Holy Shield, BoSanctuary, Ret Aura, Reckoning), so if the Paladin is not a frequent target of the mob, their threat generation is really quite poor. I think its pretty widely acknowledged that paladins do an excellent job as the primary target for AE tanking and similar tasks, but they just aren't set up to OT very well at the moment (and don't have the advantages of a warrior for MT, etc. etc.)

Offtank has two (main) meanings:

A) To offtank a mob, which is separate from the main boss. In this instance, prot paladins are very good, but if theres "downtime" in between tanking (i.e. Lurker), they aren't as effective as a feral tank.

B) To be a second tank on the boss, such as Gruul, Supremus (although I think this is health based more than threat based), or EoS P2. In this case, protection paladins suck as they block one hit every 10 seconds or so (or even less), which heavily reduces their threat production. Feral tanks work much better in this case.

Edit: This thread is moving at a ridiculous pace.

Because all of the raw stats are higher, TBC has magnified the effects of percentage-based abilities a ton. Paladins don't get any useful passive deaggro like Fury Warriors do, so their relative threat ceiling is actually very low compared to "real" DPS classes, and it's only aggravated by the fact that they're the single burstiest class in the game.