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.

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.

Great, thanks for input. I will look for them and add to the samples.

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.

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.

This is a silly thing to say in my opinion, since there are times when certain "non-optimal" hybrids are going to do a far better job than one of the more "pure" classes. For example, a Protection Pally is a far better tank for adds on Al'ar than either a Druid or a Warrior, because they have a ranged taunt that hits multiple targets. Druid and Warrior don't even come close to this kind of utility in a fight like this. Hydross and Tidewalker are other examples where a Prot Pally on adds is just vastly superior to any other option.

I guess if you are trying to create a single group of 25 raiders to clear all content in the game, you could take the hard-line approach that Awake is taking above, but I don't think even Nihilium has the exact same 25 raiders show up every night. Certainly those guys know what they are doing when it comes to raiding, but that comment is short-sighted and stupid, imho. Hybrid specs may not be the best choice for 100% of the encounters out there, but for select encounters they can really trivialize certain difficulties.

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).