I've been shooting the breeze with guildies a fair amount in WoW during the holiday season, it seems like in the absence of raiding we talk about raiding probably more than we did when actually raiding lol . . .

One subject we always, always turn to eventually is the role of hybrid classes and how they could theoretically play out in the current pre-TBC environment or in post-TBC content. Nothing new but we're not raiding much for a few weeks, and people are going outside of standard raid specs and just enjoying themselves in 5-mans or PVP or relatively old or easy raid content (e.g. i've forgone a few mana efficiency talents for lolzpvp talents).

Those who play druids claim they can match rogue dps with a feral spec, those who play priests claim they can contribute to DPS as much as another caster class, etc. - Naxxramas (like the raid zones before it) has us focused so extremely min/max'ing around tanking, healing, and DPS, for better or worse we just don't really encourage thinking very far outside of the box (especially with classes that can heal) in terms of talent specs and gear.

ANYWAY, What i was wondering - Factoring out 1) gear and 2) the need to min/max in one aspect (i.e. for a druid, spec'ing resto for healing rather than spreading talents) for difficult raid content: Are there talent spec's that allow a "hybrid" class or someone playing outside of strict & traditional raid roles, that allow them to be relatively competent (not neccessarily at 100% optimal performance) in more than one of the basic functions of tanking, healing, and dps. Not as strong as they could be in one particular area, but fairly strong in 2 or 3 of those funcitons.

Or to put it another way - i know someone can put 41 or 51 talent points into any tree of a hybrid class and they should be very strong at whatever that tree's talents are structured around. But are there clever ways to divide the points amongst the trees or to spend points in a different manner to really bring out solid performance in a few different raid roles :P Thoughts, experiences and links to talent specs greatly appreciated ! and happy holidays.

There are several threads detailing out the uses, concerns, and changes to the classes mentioned for both pre and post 2.0 and into the expansion. Try searching such tearms as "Shadow Priest" ("The Shadow Priest Thread" is a good place to start for us... oddly enough) "Feral Druid" etc. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the variety and detail of discussions available.

i've read through many of these threads and i haven't seen very many posts interested in balancing various group / raid roles. usually people construe one function (say, leet DPS) as a strength without really discussing the weaknesses in other areas (say, damage mitigation) or being very clever about them. yet i know that there are many many players who think about these things. i also thought there might be some merit to discussion of all classes in one thread to see if there's any common schemes or themes :P

One of the most prominent things I've noticed in beta was the deeper distinction between specs for a hybrid class. For example, while a paladin offers a great tank as protection spec, trying to make a holy or even ret spec paladin main tank often had pretty horrible consequences. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we could respec for free, but it felt that the hybrids were very restricted by their specs to the point of refusing to do anything except what that spec called for or at least do it very reluctantly.

The difference is probably greatest between the melee/caster hybrids, as melee and caster stats essentially do not agree with each other at all, which will definitely mean two completely different sets of gear in most every slot. Caster/healer hybrids (such as priests or moonkin) have it a bit easier as stats one would desire while nuking (+dmg/heal, +mp5) would still be quite useful while healing.

Honestly, as we get more and more talent points and trees become deeper as we add expansions, I worry that hybrid classes will lose their hybrid-ness and simply become 2 or 3 different classes. Imagine what the difference would be like at level 100 many years from now, with 71+ points in one tree. The only difference between the different specs of a hybrid and completely new classes will be that one would not have to re-level to 100 (or whatever level is the cap). The gearing and talent differences will be so great that one will not easily move from one spec to another at all.

Honestly all we've got in common is the game we play and the fact that most raids would rather that HybridX were doing JobY while certain players wish to also play as JobZ. Hybrids are all very different critters. Paladins Heal/Tank. Druids Heal/Tank/DPS, Priests Heal/DPS, Warriors Tank/DPS. Only the druids share the common themes of all, but frankly they've got limitations imposed simply for being able to do any role (at least partially). There are similarities in how their perceived as alternatives, and there are similarities in how they have or have not come into and out of "fashion" ... but overall all you can say about hybrids as a group is that it's a very er... hybrid... group.

You're not going to find many people who advocate full alternative specs (Someone, afterall, must heal) for the whole raid and the majority of the threads I've read, at least regarding shadow priests and feral druids, acknowledge the differences between thier variety of dps/tanking and the more traditional classes jobs in doing so.... in the threads dedicated to the discussion of each kind of hybrid.

To use you're example I'm pretty sure that the differences between feral and warrior tanking and the armor/mitigation/avoidance discussion have become something of a dead horse, but it's a dead horse that's perfectly ressurectable if you have new information and thoughts on it. Druids got mucho armor/hp. Warriors got mucho avoidance. The differences are relevant in many fights and if you know the fight you can make an educated decision on which kind of tank you'd be best taking.

For a long time as a shaman I had a 16/14/21 spec (clearcasting & imp shock cooldown; 2H weapons, +5% melee crit, & imp GW; imp LHW & NS). It was intended as a compromise spec for pvp/grinding/healing, although then I levelled a rogue to 60 to do most of my grinding for me, and later I went and got mana tide because it seemed like the guild really needed it as we were progressing through BWL. While I had the tri-spec I really liked it though; but it's hard to seperate out how much of my effectiveness was spec vs gear (as a raider, I had better than average equipment for a horde pvper at the time) or experience (or the overpoweredness of pre-nerf WF!). It did seem I was rather unique among the pvpers, almost all of which had heavy-enhancement builds (0/30/21, usually).

That was all back before they revamped the shaman talents, and back then the resto tree was a rather sad affair so only having 21 pts in it didn't really impact my healing ability that much. Now in TBC, the trees (with the exception of elemental) really encourage heavy specialization - all-out resto or all-out enhancement. The top-tier talents are too good to pass up, really. It's a bit of a shame, really. :)

One thing I'd like to add in regards to hybrids splintering off into seperate classes of their own - equipment & consumables can make up for deficiencies in your spec. My alliance alt is a druid with no epics of any importance, who was mostly resto and is now all balance, and I've put on my bear suit in AV and successfully tanked galv or the warmasters (who hit very, very hard) when I've had to (i.e. all the warriors standing around with their 2Hers getting mowed down). I wouldn't feel comfortable MTing a 5-man with those specs, but I could probably do a decent job if I tried. At the very least you can still off-tank reasonably well with zero points in feral. I imagine the same is true of non-protection paladins.

For paladins.. In my opinion the viability of a serious end game Healing/Tanking hybrid is totally stuffed by having parry and imp judgement in the retribution tree. Improved judgement and 5% parry are complete must haves for tanking as far as I'm concerned that means 12 points in ret. Which only leaves 49 points to split over holy and protection which just isn't enough.

The tree's are over specialized with too many must have talents at the end of the trees. Viable end game healing without holy guidance and lights grace forget it... Viable tanking without Imp Righteous fury, Holy Shield, Sacred Duty forget it.

Sure for 5 mans you could probably spec anything and it wouldn't make a rats pee pee of difference but for end game raiding you won't be tanking without 12 ret/41 prot.. You won't be an effective healer without 40+ holy. You'll just be a filler for your raid buffs aura's and blessing and substandard at either healing or tanking. Basically the same as it is in live now.

So far my experience in beta 5 mans (normal and heroic), and karazhan is that you end up preferring pure classes over hybrids for hard stuff.

For the regular 5 mans, pretty much any 5 man combo works ok. The instances are easy and as long as the players are not retards you will do fine.

For heroics, its hard. You have a much easier time doing with warrior tank, 1-2 healers, a mage, a warlock (for some), and 1 more. Yes, lots of stuff to sheep and/or enslave/banish. A druid tank does ok if they are really good at druid tanking, it gets miserable fast if the druid has never tanked before. Things go pear shaped quickly with a paladin tank, as they get 1 shotted frequently or lose aggro easily.

For karazhan, you absolutely want pure class composition and everyone raid spec'd. The few times I've tried it with hybrids have ended in disaster. The mobs and bosses hit extremely hard and rapidly, so the whole idea of "ok... you tank for a while... then heal... then tank..." is out the door - tanks tank, healers heal nonstop, DPS goes all out. Similar gimmicks as naxx (lots of movement, cc, de-aggro, fears, MC, etc).

Keep in mind though that there isn't much organization on the beta servers so the quality of players is varied. Perhaps in a more controlled guild environment hybrids will shine more. So far however the game seems exactly like regular WoW - from 60-70 you can do whatever you want easily. At 70 and raiding, healers heal and warriors tank.

I think itemization still needs to be worked out, there seems to be little feral epic gear yet, not sure about paladin tanking gear either.

Now that enhancement shamans have Unleashed Rage (+10% AP buff to group whenever the shamans crits, 10 sec duration), they are a great hybrid supporter in a group of melee'rs. Unfortunately elemental has nothing like that whatsoever.

I'm not sure if this thread is going to work, so for now I'm going to go to bed and not give a crap.

Before I do though, know that I better not wake up in the morning to see more posts without proper capitalization or Santa is going to leave a nice, shiny :redhammer: in your stocking for Christmas.

I think the OPs point is being missed by most of the replies here, but i could be completely wrong. I may be reading into what i want to read into it, as what i think you're talking about is a topic i find very interesting which few others seem to.

When i think of a hybrid i think of the Druid of the Claw from Warcraft III. If you're not familiar with this dude, basically he does two things: He tanks, He heals, and he does both exceptionally. All he needs to do is hit the shapeshift button while in Druid form and BAM, he's a mean Bear tank with big HP, and pretty good damage. Lucky for him he doesn't need to worry about gear either.

Can you create a spec which combines a bit of each tree, allowing you to fill in multiple roles in one fight?

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000120000000

I cooked that up in about 30 seconds, if you don't know much about Paladins then don't worry about it too much, and don't waste time critiquing it since it's just there to illustrate a few points using a few key talents available to someone who tries to spec as a hybrid.

Anyway, if specced as such you have a few DPS boosting talents in Ret, with SoC, Conviction and more efficient and more frequent Judgements/Seals. In Prot you have the benefit of Kings, a little more mitigation and improved Righteous Fury for extra aggro generation. In Holy you have Illumination and Divine Favour, as well as general stat increases and a little +healing. How good you will be at any one role with such a spec will rely on the gear you choose. But i don't think that's the issue. We want this Paladin to be geared so he can perform all of those roles. Thus he will need a hybrid-set of gear - perhaps akin to the 2.5 set, with a few other items added in here and there to ensure he has a good mix of every single stat he needs. Because he will need them all. He will need stam and defense if he's going to tank as well as int and +heal for healing when his mob is dead, and then strength crit and AP if he's going to want to DPS on the final mob and so on.

Is this enough to warrant a raid spot? Is there room in a raid for someone who isn't a main healer, main tank, main dps, main anything, but is able to fill whichever role he needs to at any one time and in one single fight?

In raids at the moment the spec and gear combination isn't really desired at all. In almost every case you'll be able to grab a Warrior or Feral bear, tell him to put on his tanking gear and tank. 5-mans however i think they excel in. A group would be made up of:
1) Main Tank, specced and geared for the role, hopefully
2) DPS 1
3) DPS 2
4) Hybrid
5) Main Healer, preferably specced and geared for the job.

The hybrid in this instance would assess each fight as it comes. If there's extra mobs to be tanked, he tanks. When they're dead he DPS or he heals as required. All he needs to do is switch into bear or equip a shield and he's set. Hopefully his hybrid spec enables him to be good enough at any one of those roles, but he's not taking the main spot. He's backing up the healer, he's offtanking when there are too many for the MT to handle, and he's dpsing when the previous two jobs aren't required of him. Given that he's specced as a hybrid he's better equipped to handle these multiple roles. He's having more fun too since he's not doing one thing all the time. His gear will also need be mixed and varied to meet these roles.

I'd like to think that even raid instances would be designed with this in mind, but min/maxing for both gear and spec seems far to prevalent and the encounters to date encourage this playstyle. Furthermore it's pretty well accepted by the public that there are only 3 roles in WoW: Tanking, DPSing, and Healing. There is no 'hybrid'. Thus my entire post is full of lies and deceit, and will only serve to confuse.

This reminds me of Ye Olde Shadow/Holy Build. Every time someone sneezes at the trees, some bright young priest gets the brilliant idea to spec half and half holy and shadow. Hell I spent time theorycrafting it myself once. Thought it was the holy grail. (harhar) I have a fine dose of cynicism on the viability of it after watching people go through it over and over. It's not the viability that's the problem. Most people cannot STAND playing as the purest of hybrids for more than a short period of time. Why? General assumption- most people like to be "good" at "what they do".

The problem comes in the definition of "good" and "what they do" when you define hybrids.

Hybrids are "good" at doing more than one thing. Well okay. Reality demands that they be LESS "good" at each individual thing than a pure spec/class because otherwise they unbalance the game. (Hey, I don't make the rules, I just play by them). So you're good at being less good than everyone else, but you can do a little bit of everything poorly.

So when the damage meters are proudly posted, you're last. When the healing meters are posted you're last. When people BS over a beer about how cool it was that X,Y,Z saved the day- you're never the one in the spotlight. Inevitably some guy with blinders on starts complaining about how you're always the WORST player at something even if you're doing 2 other things at the same time that you don't get credit for. Even if your raid leaders understand, the overall perception that you suck at doing pretty much anything because you're trying to do everything gets really really old really fast.

Some folks have rhino skin and don't really care about their perceived contributions to the raid. As long as they know what they're contributing and it's good enough for them- they're fine. They're the exception rather than the rule. Most folks would rather be recognized as being good at doing X, even if X is as narrow and backhanded as "he's really good at healing the main tank... (but man does he have attention problems)"

Which leads to a few choices.

1) You can spec back to whatever traditional role your class offers and be pretty damn good at what you're designed to do, but pretty crappy at whatever alternative your class has available.
2) You can chose the alternative "hybrid" spec that sacrifices a lot of the traditional role for the alternative role (These are your "pure" shadow priests, full Feral druids etc. ) but you're able to get a hell of a lot closer to competitively "good" at your classes alternative rule.

1 is always the easiest choice. You never have to justify your raid spot as a holy priest. You never have to do comparative analysis of your healing vs. some other classes healing just to get on a trial for a guild application. You can do all of that, and there are some phenomenal minds out there working in traditional specs to wring every last ounce out of each class's potential for whatever they do naturally best. But in a pure dps class or a traditional role for a hybrid (generally healing) it's accepted as a rule that you will be doing whatever it is that you're class normally does. You won't run into many raid leaders screaming at holy priests because they suck at dpsing. as a general rule any time someone comes to me with a sob story about how their life is so hard as a hybrid and they hate it and make everyone play NICE and don't they know they need to love and cherish their off specs?... I try to (as gently as possible) suggest that they simply might not be cut out for the task of constantly trying to justify their own existence.

Can a pure hybrid exist? Sure. Many can even reasonably justify their raid spot if you've got the time and patience to listen to the relative weight overall of being 16th in healing and 16th in dps. How does that relate to being 1st in just dps or healing? It's hard to quantify, but a lot of people have tried. They tend to burn out or get replaced by leaders who don't have the time or patience to debate the relative weight of each point of hp healed and each point of damage done when the raid is calling for the blood of the "worst performer" after 17 wipes on a nasty boss.

I spent a lot of time doing that. It was something of my little crusade. Then I apparently won the lottery in 2.0 and suddenly my alternative role has suddenly launched itself clear of the "hybrid 50/50" argument and landed face first in the top 10 dps on Patchwerk. Suddenly I have to do a lot less arguing about how much each point of my VE heals are worth compared to each point of my mediocre dps. Cake or pie? Screw it, I'll take one of each. With whipped cream. Thanks.

With the alternative roles being shoved face first by blizzard into the limelight over the last few months and being questionable favored for the expansion (bear tanks tanking, shadow priests dpsing oh my...), the 50/50 hybrid is a very lonely person =(

You couldn't pay me to spec shadow/holy... or 33/33/33 healing/tanking/dps as a druid. Blizzard made that fence pretty high- it's probably best to simply pick a side of it to sit on.

The funny thing is that the key talents you mention (SoC, Conviction, BoKings, Illumination+Divine Favour) were all available pre patch 1.9 to 20/0/31 spec'd pallies. That was the last time I felt like a true hybird. I was topping damage meters in 15 man UBRS runs, I could tank a 5 man, and I would throw on my healing gear (paladin in a dress) and be up there on the meters for effective healing in 40-man raids. No matter what the situation, I didn't have to change my spec to fill a key role, I just had to change my gear.

Post 1.9 that totally changed and my druid become my raiding main because I couldn't fill all those roles without having to respec constantly on my paladin.

For paladins in TBC, the 41 pt trees are just forcing people to further specialize and move away from being a true hybrid. Spreading your points out across all 3 trees means giving up too many key talents that are designed to keep you on par with other lvl 70s. I'm thinking the optimal will be to give up on one role and spec towards being a 2 way hybrid. These pallies will be the guys and gals that spec something like 31/30 or 35/26.

Please note that I'm not in beta and I always look at my characters from more than a PvE raiding viewpoint. For raiding progression, my guild has the same problems as many guilds. Don't care your spec, we just need the warm body that knows the startegy so we aren't attempting this with 35 people. I'm sure it will be the same in TBC for a while and hybrid classes that level quickly will find themselves with a raid spot.

Gear is one of the main things holding back the idea of a "hybrid" role in a raid, so I can't see it being factored out. T4/5 comes in a few different flavors, but none of them really let you do two things at once very well. The only exception seems to be Feral (spec-wise as well), and most bear tanks I've talked to weren't too thrilled with their T4.
If you could change gear in mid-fight, sure... But right now it's only possible to change effective roles from one battle to the next, and even then it works out better to figure out which role comes up more often or importantly, and spec primarily for that. There are little exceptions -- a prot paladin can take Spiritual Focus and heal uninterrupted, but he can't take SoC and expect to do any sort of serious damage to a mob being tanked by someone else.

They're both useful talents for Ret, though: Parrying works when you're using a two-hander, and the hasting effect on a parry makes Deflection an offensive talent as well. And Imp. Judmgent has obvious benefits for Ret dps.

The bigger problem is that if you're a Prot paladin and you want these vital tanking talents, you have to spend five points in Tier 1 of Ret, which gets you pretty much nothing that helps you tank. If they'd switch Deflection with Improved BoM, you could grab Deflection and Imp. Judgement with seven points in Ret instead of twelve. That opens up quite a few more options for a serious tanking paladin to add a modicum of hybridity to his spec.

Of course, moving Spiritual Focus back to Tier 1 Holy would make even more sense, but one rant at a time.

This is because in the run-up to 1.9 there were a bunch of people on the paladin forum making loud noises about wanting to be able to specialize. The developers unfortunately have a habit of listening to the wrong people at the wrong times, and the result was a lot of decisions like moving Spiritual Focus a tier deeper in Holy, which forces a tank-healer hybrid class to "specialize" just to be able to heal while under attack.

Just to add another thing to the discussion:

Paladins (and Shamans I guess, but I only have experience with Paladins) are better suited to play Hybridish in most cases. Paladins use their mana to tank, DPS and heal after all so the gear overlaps alot more than that of a Feral Druid trying to heal (low mana pool plus added mana cost to shift back into forms although I am not sure how the new T4/T5 Feral set works with that).
This alone should make a Paladin wanted for raids IMO.

To re-iterate my point above: so far, in the difficult raiding encounters in TBC, there are no situations where you need a person to tank, then to heal, then to tank again. Every single complex encounter so far in Karazhan requires 1-3 tanks tanking or kiting until their mob is dead, and every single person with a heal spell spamming heals for long periods of time. Gruuls lair is not very difficult and can easily support hybrids, but its tuned for level 66-68 so frankly any 25 players in any spec and gear can eventually do it.

I have done Karazhan with a druid off-tank (plus 1 warrior MT), but he was spec'd feral, had good green tanking gear, and was only tanking (we got to the 3d boss).

Almost every boss has some sort of deaggro/fear, some sort of AoE, and is very hard hitting. So everyone is taking constant damage and the tanks are taking spectacular damage on the level of patchwerk. This does not seem to support any sort of role-switching in combat.

By the way it was nice of Blizzard giving fear only to alliance once more and claiming its not that important - more than half of the heroic/karazhan bosses fear.

Perhaps Serpentshrine, Prince Kaelthas, or Hyjal will be different in encounter design, none are open in beta right now.

Their buffs alone would make Paladins wanted already, even if they wouldn't do anything else ;)
Paladins are very well suited to fill in more than one role, because they get a lot of abilities of all roles as core abilities, and don't need to spend many points to fill in one role okish and can concentrate on one other role to shine in. The gear also supports this. My experience with Shamans is limited, but as far as I gathered they don't have it as easy to fill more roles, because they have to invest a lot of points to really make a tree/role worthwhile. Druids fall somewhere in the middle ground, having their forms and heals and damage spells as core abilities, but them being only mediocre without the talents to support them. Their playstyle is also far more "fractured" if I may say so, they can switch the role very quickly, but not act in several roles at the same time.

Personally I think Paladins are the only ones who could justify a true x/y/z spec in endgame raids (and count as Hybrids), while Druids, Shamans (and Priests) would need to invest far too many points to make all aspects worthwhile, forcing them to concentrate on one role. Shadow Priests, Enhancement Shamans, Feral Druids in raid? I can imagine it easily, yes, but Shadow/Healing Priests, Enhancement/Healing Shamans, Feral/Resto Druids? Unlikely if the gear isn't specifically designed to counter the lack of talents (making it worth far more than the ilevel would allow).

There are only a couple of hybrid specs that work out okay that I can see. A druid with 11 in feral can be a decent enough offtank and can hold aggro on something that's not being dps'd hard from the get go. A shaman with 11 points in enhancement can at least swing a big 2 hander and do some more damage while still being able to drop totems, heal, shock and the like.

Most other specs require a heavy investment. While I don't know about Paladins, an elemental shaman isn't very powerful without lightning mastery which means you're spending 30 points in the tree. A priest won't do a whole lot of damage without shadowform, and won't have much utility unless you get shadow weaving, misery, and vampiric embrace and maybe silence, all of which require a fairly steep investment. A druid without mangle (or at least shredding attacks while grouped with a mangling druid) won't do much damage at all.

This isn't really a problem per se since you need to sacrifice other talents in order to get that kind of power, but most "hybrid" specs just aren't very effective

Shadow priests are acceptable dps only because of the Base*coefficient*1.15 *1.10*1.15*1.05 and arguably a last *1.10, but we don't control curse of shadows =P

*1.15 -20 point investment in the tree
*1.10 -30 point investment in the tree
*1.15 -31 point investment in the tree
*1.05 -40 point investment in the tree

You're losing 32.25% by only going in 20 points for a pure hybrid build, and by the time you get to 30 points, you might as well hit the 31st and put a hole in hopes of pure hybridization. Once you've given up hope of a 21 point talent, the pickings are slim enough to make Misery a respectable alternative. Once you have misery it's pretty much a crime not to take VT for raid dps.

It culminates in a very solid dps package at full investment, but partial investment just doesn't create the kind of returns you'd expect for the sacrifices you have to make in the healing trees.

In short a partial shadow priest is pretty much just a shadow of the full strength capabilities. You're far far better off speccing holy dps and filling it out with whatever healing talents you can grab for cheap on the way up. You sacrifice all the raid based goodies that make shadow priests attractive though for mediocre dps and mediocre healing (if you're true to 50/50 dps healing).

It is a hybrid of sorts.... but when's the last time someone asked for more smites on the boss? Seriously =(

An 'acceptable' hybrid build works well enough for groups, but not really for raid DPS.

I intend to stay 10 holy/41 shadow to level up in TBC to still be able to cast 8/8 trans 2.5 sec gheals when healing instances, and the disc talents are killers for PvP but are pretty crap PvE outside of instances. 2.5 second gheals make healing in instances MUCH nicer.

For raid content, this is much harder, as you HAVE to commit to a role to be good at it, which is why fury warriors raised so much outrage with their top notch DPS and ability to tank nearly every single content in the game.

A point Bekah raises however is interesting. You cannot have everyone be offspec, since in the end, someone has to tank/heal. I wonder how that will work; for example, out of the people in our guild that expressed interest in rerolling shamans, most want to be the designated enhancement guy. Most of our warriors are hardcore DPS'ers, and tanked when needed. Considering that the offspecs very often are more viable PvP, just as viable PvE, and a fuckton more viable for grinding, I wonder how you will choose who gets to be the lucky guy with the offspec.