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Old 12/24/06, 3:56 AM   #16
PsiVen
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Dwarf Paladin
 
Kilrogg
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.
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.

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Old 12/24/06, 4:21 AM   #17
Cathela
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Human Paladin
 
Earthen Ring
Originally Posted by Ragnor
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.
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.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

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Old 12/24/06, 4:27 AM   #18
Cathela
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Earthen Ring
Originally Posted by Brunswick
Originally Posted by Replica
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.
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.
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.

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Old 12/24/06, 7:51 AM   #19
Tyvi
Never, Mags. Never!
 
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Turalyon (EU)
Just to clarify, what exactly are we talking about?

1) Utilitizing multiple roles in one fight?
or
2) Utilizing multiple in a raid split between different fights?

To 1)
Obviously only works well with roles that have play style/gear overlap such as damage casters and healing casters or tanking melee and DPSing melee. If you try to start healing in your full feral gear, you won't get many heals off before you go OOM. Likewise you won't stand a chance if you try to tank a raid boss in your Resto gear.

To 2)
This is basically an extension of 1) with the difference that you can swap gear now. The same combos as in 1) will still work here. Balance and Resto give OKish synergy to work. Feral until HotW works OK for Resto as well I guess although it is way inferior to Moonglow for healing purposes. Resto gives utility in the first 3 tiers. Any higher and it offers you jack for non-healing purposes.

If I was going to spec some sort of Hybrid, I'd go with the first 3 Resto Tiers as basis, then go from there. Feral gives you the melee Hybrid aspect, Balance the ranged caster DPS aspect with better Healing. Here is what you have to decide. Speccing into all 3 trees is, in all honesty, stupid (not counting the 11 points in Feral for FC a Balance/Resto might pick up for PvP). I am not too good with creating Hybrid specs for level 70, so I'll leave it at that but the old well known Melee/Healer hybrid is a variation of 0/30/21 (HotW+NS).
[list=1]
Back in the day when I was a fresh level 60 Druid with Balance spec I joined an LBRS 10 man PuG. I ended up tanking with zero points in Feral because the only Warrior in the group happened to be that type of Warrior that would hold his Sword with the sharp end and swing at mobs with the blunt side if the game didn't forbid it. Well anyways, we got to the Ogre boss you have to summon and the main healer happened to die. I stunned the mob I was tanking (I think it even was the real boss mob) and CRed the healer and resumed tanking. We managed to kill the boss and I was like "Wow, what awesome hybridity!".
</Old Geezer voice>

But in hindsight I have realized two things:

1) This doesn't work with bosses that cannot be stunned or hit hard (my Feral gear was pretty crappy at that time).
2) This is not being a Hybrid. Any Druid spec could have done the same I did. Bash and CR are trainer learnt after all.

Regardless, there are still times I love the different roles of my Druid - but it's a shame I have to do 5 mans or have to duo Scholo to be able to see it because of how the end game raids work.

Originally Posted by crimsonsentinel
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.
I sometimes do get the impression Druids are 3 classes that share one name. Just take the Druid forums as example: You'll find a battle royal between Balance VS Feral VS Resto Druids in nearly all posts. Balance will tell everyone that he is the best for PvP, Resto will tell every "off spec" to L2P and that Healing is the true way of the Druid. Then there are the Ferals who will claim that shapeshifting is our role, and that Ferals are the real Druids (add some: "I have been Feral pre 1.8" emo here). I am not sure if I am supposed to be proud or ashamed of this.
On one hand, having so many play styles will obviously cause animosity between the different specs and you could argue this is a good thing because it indicates that Blizzard succeeded in creating a multi role character.
On the other hand, I am ashamed to see posts such as "Ok, nerf Feral because Balance is inferior!". I mean, do those people forget they are still one class and that every buff/nerf to any tree is a direct buff/nerf to them, too?

I am sure you can find this behaviour in nearly every class forums; even the Warriors who are reluctant to admit being hybrids have their own DPS/Tank-only trolls.


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Old 12/24/06, 8:14 AM   #20
Tyvi
Never, Mags. Never!
 
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Human Death Knight
 
Turalyon (EU)
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.


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Old 12/24/06, 9:04 AM   #21
spronk
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Blackrock
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.

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Old 12/24/06, 11:29 AM   #22
Decius
Von Kaiser
 
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Earthen Ring (EU)
Originally Posted by Liar
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.
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).

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Old 12/24/06, 12:41 PM   #23
Lord BEEF
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Tauren Druid
 
Mal'Ganis
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

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Old 12/24/06, 1:15 PM   #24
Bekah
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Mal'Ganis
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 =(

Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news.
Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men.
Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts.

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Old 12/24/06, 1:51 PM   #25
Mearis
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Defias Brotherhood (EU)
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.

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Old 12/24/06, 1:52 PM   #26
Emily
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Well, I could see a Paladin with just enough in Prot to improve Righteous Fury being capable of keeping aggro on mobs when needed, similar to a druid with a small Feral investment. As a healer, he'll have a shield on anyway, and a ranged taunt is invaluable for picking up loose/deaggroing mobs.

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Old 12/24/06, 3:33 PM   #27
mutagen
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Proudmoore
Way back when, not long after I hit 60, I tried a hybrid priest spec. It was a little better with the old trees, healing wasn't gimped quite so badly with it. But as Bekah points out, Mindflay is very weak without all those multipliers. This came home to me when the newly released damage meters showed a wand spec priest beating me while dragging someone's alts through ZF. Now granted, I sucked back then and he had a nice wand but still, wands?

Not too many months later, secure in my old style Disc/Holy build, I was doing something with another 'Hybrid' priest and was happily out DPSing them with Smite. Now this was the old and slow Smite and I didn't have much, if any damage gear at the time.

Blizzard's talent revisions certainly have made classes more specialized. I get the feeling they didn't want people to do stuff like 31/30 builds and intentionally set out to avoid some of the most powerful ones, either by putting shiny, must have talents 41 points deep or by rearranging talents.

Originally Posted by DeeNogger View Post
My two (not-so-informed) sents.

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Old 12/26/06, 3:24 PM   #28
 sordee
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Sordee
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Originally Posted by mutagen
Way back when, not long after I hit 60, I tried a hybrid priest spec. It was a little better with the old trees, healing wasn't gimped quite so badly with it. But as Bekah points out, Mindflay is very weak without all those multipliers. This came home to me when the newly released damage meters showed a wand spec priest beating me while dragging someone's alts through ZF. Now granted, I sucked back then and he had a nice wand but still, wands?
I've done a Tri-spec twice, once going all the way to silence, and the other just to mindflay (oh why can't Mindflay be trainable).
And each time I never thought my mindflay would be great damage (although extended SW:P was nice).

To me it was mostly about having the slowing proc, and additional chances to proc blackout.
Which worked well for me while I was pvp'ing a lot. Great for slowing/stopping a flag carrier.

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Old 12/26/06, 3:47 PM   #29
Risingstar
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Human Mage
 
Draenor
The problem is that you can't talk about hybrid specs or raid viability without itemization and the actual encounters. So I think I'd wait till the expansion to actually wacking braincells about it.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato

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Old 12/27/06, 6:22 PM   #30
Boevis
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I ran with a 19/11/21 spec while doing the PvP grind on my druid back around patch 1.10. It's an amazingly useful PvP Hybrid spec, which means it fails horribly with raiding. I was still a decent healer, always top 50%, but that's more of a statement of my gear and skill than the spec. I was best off wearing warlord gear and switching from nuking to catform once oom if I wanted to do DPS, and Tanking was pretty much right out.

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