Hey, I'm just responding to posts. I'm not arguing that druids should be able to do everything, I'm arguing that they're boring to play and should match the class description, and that TBC is going to highlight this with deeper talent trees.

I pretty much agree with you. It seems there are three possible outcomes:

1) you find the right number of people willing to spec the right number of ways to perfeclty serve guild progression. This is fantastically unlikely.

2) you enforce specs. This is at least consistent, but the guy forced to do something he doesn't like is going to resent the other members of his class, and that's a problem.

3) you have a free-for-all. Most people spec for DPS + 20 or fewer points in some other role, and only heal or tank when it's absolutely required. This is also going to cause resentment, especially if you have a forced upgrade policy - think about the Tier 4 sets, for example. You can choose your DPS reward or your healer reward. Your raid is leaning on you to choose the healing reward because they need more healing, but you hate healing and now that DPS is buffed you feel much more viable, plus it'll help you solo and grind and farm... It's not going to be pretty.

I don't disagree, however, the encounter design we see plays a massive part in this. The complete lack of variety in MC killed any real need for anything outside of a focused role, and there wasn't much of an improvement in BWL except that you need more tanks than before. AQ is a marginal improvement, but Naxx is the real dealbuster. There's a completely different "ideal"' raid set up for almost every single boss within the zone, which sounds like a great way to promote hybrid use. You know you'll want/need 8 tanks for 4H and at least 2 healers per group for Sapphiron, but you still have to get through Patchwerk with only 16 slots left for DPS classes. Using hybrids appears to be the answer on the surface, but the problem is the encounters are so maddeningly difficult that the difference between cat or retnoob DPS and true rogue DPS can be the difference between victory and defeat. If the requirements for winning each fight in Naxx were loosened by about 10%, then really focused guild with deep benches would beat it much more quickly by swapping people in and out, but at the same time it would make the fights much more hybrid friendly. Hybrids will never defeat a deep bench of focused players, and that's a massive problem with the perception of how quickly raid content is completed by the player base.

Yeah, I understand that argument, I just don't buy it. Player skill and intelligence (including the insight to pick up proper gear) has always been an order of magnitude more important than talent spec, and I don't see anything in the new trees to significantly change that.

And setting things up so that hybrids are useless in any role except the one they're specced for would be phenomenally poor game design. Blizzard has come up with some boners, but they've never done anything that stupid.

The thing is: hybrids *aren't* useless in any role except the one they're specced for in non cutting edge content. And that's good - letting them be hybrid in 5 mans is actually very good game design.

Letting them be hybrids in 25 mans is not good game design unless it's a role specifically *requiring* a hybrid, taking advantage of their breadth rather than depth; if you need depth to be valuable (as in the existing raiding game) then making hybrids valuable is poor game design because it'll tend to eliminate the pure classes.

And here I disagree.
Yes we all know that there are guildies who resent to heal, or tank and would rather dps.

Heck, i for one have only 15 points in prot ... because up till now (we're not on 4HM yet) it IS enough unless you are the designated MT of your guild.

But point being, if a deep prot tank is enormeously more effective than a half assed prot tank. I WILL spec deep into prot. Because I really enjoy tanking. And I know many paladins/druids/priests who REALLY are into healing. These are the people who I will play with. And there will be no shortage of these.

And it is even made more easy, as apparently Blizz plan to give a place to some offespecs too. As someone noted there should be no place in a raid for more than one retribution pala. But one should not forget that there are 25 places for 9 classes. So bringing 2-3 palas with "only" one being retribution specced ... I see no wrong in that.

regards

I can only speak about my own guild. As far as I know, all of our druids are planning to stay restoration. A few paladins have expressed an interest in retribution, but I am certain that they will all stay holy if that's what ends up being best for the guild. On the priest end of things, I'm the only one in the guild who intends to raid with shadow. The reaction that this decision has received is very interesting - there are a number of players who trust that I've done the math and think it's worth a shot, while there are others who are convinced that switching to an offspec will be detrimental to the guild. I would expect that this situation is a very common one. In any case, I'm sure that we'll have the final word on offspecs within a month after the expansion. If they are worth a raid spot, then I am quite sure that members of my guild will respec as necessary and step up to fill the role. On the other hand, if offspecs don't live up to expectation, it'll be business as usual. I have spent quite a bit of time collecting shadow gear, but if my raid performance isn't what I want it to be, I will not hesitate in immediately switching back to holy. I expect that the story will is the same for a lot of people, and in the end, this is more about your guild than it is the mechanics of the game. Good players will do what's needed of them. Bad players won't. Take a look at your guild today. Have a lot of druids with moonkin and hunters with wyvern sting? If so, you might be in trouble after the expansion. If, on the other hand, everyone is sporting an optimal raid spec, you probably have nothing to worry about.

No it won't. In fact, the hybrid classes are specifically designed not to replace pure classes. Look at Blood Frenzy, Sanctified Crusader, and Leader of the Pack. These talents all add to raid dps, but they're useless unless you actually have dps classes available to take advantage of them. A Ret paladin might boost raid dps by as much as a rogue or a mage, but to do that actually depends on having rogues and mages there in the first place.

That exact design that you mention that Blizzard seems to be pushing hardcore for (powerful offspecs, but their power lies in enhancing pure classes) has its drawbacks, noticibly, incredibly poor stacking. One paladin for judgements refresh might be useful but two aren't. This is what I was in part concerned about, since I imagine a lot of people will be wanting to be that 'one' paladin, while the rest end up healing.

The warrior who replied with a 31/5/15 spec is exactly what I imagine expansion looking like. People taking 'enough' to be able to fullfil their mandatory raid role if required, and the rest DPS or PvP talents; the equivalent of 0/30/21 druids, etc, basically builds that are sufficiently proficient at raiding but give a nod to pvp and being able to be independent.

just a heads up, i think he was referring to "pure" healers and tanks. To further develop your idea, it would only make sense if shadow priests and other offspec healers could provide some sort of buff to the tank that increases healing done to him to offset their decrease in effectiveness. In that case hybrids or offspecs would be "enablers" for main specs.

The talent specs make me think that Blizzard is trying to make it viable to bring along at least one off-spec person to any given raid. Right now in Naxx, you take a pretty big DPS hit by bringing along a shadow priest or a balance/feral druid or even a mortal strike warrior.

However, with the new talent trees, if someone is MS and has the Blood Frenzy talent, all melee DPS goes up 4%. That makes up some of the difference from the fury warrior that you could have also brought. A shadow priest with Misery adds an additional 5% spell damage to a fight. A balance druid with improved FF adds 3% hit to all melee.

It's not a world where you would stack your raid with shadow priests, balance druids, and MS warriors. And these particular classes probably won't put up damage numbers much bigger than they can already. They won't likely start dominating DPS charts. Overall raid DPS should be impacted less by bringing in the occassional off-spec.