Timely discussion as far as I'm concerned. I'm currently bouncing back and forth between keeping my mage main and switching to a shaman (this is ignoring whether or not I can do the 1-60 content for the eighth time in two years but that's another issue entirely).
A huge part of my decision is going to rest on whether I can get a confluence of gear and spec to be good at what I need to do when I need to do it. I'm not cut out to be a straight all the time healbot; I'm simply not very good at it. BUT, I can look at the choice of gear available with Tiers 4 and 5 and figure out that I could spec Earth Shield, get the elemental gear and probably be pretty damned good at both healing and nuking. Or get the ele gear with an ele spec and be good at healing. As was stated above somewhere caster dps and healing tend to go together pretty well.
So I don't think that you can ignore the itemization issues when discussing this. Rather than simply being a part of the discussion I think it's the main point in the discussion; hybrids shine only when they can use itemization to bridge the gap. Thankfully there's now a choice in the raiding sets for the hybrids out there.
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
Now, that is no longer true really and I have a harder time rationalizing a druid who gives up Treeform or other upper teir talents. They have gained extrodinary ability to specialize but seem to have lost their hybridity. I am not sure as a druid if I would find this great or not. The feral/resto druid of pre-2.0 was probably the last and best hybrid spec, ret/holy paladin close second, and I have yet to see anything close to it in 2.0.
I think that this 30/31 spec has many of the strengths of pre-2.0 feral and takes advantage of some great changes to the resto tree as well. You get medium DPS, strong tanking, and strong healing with the bonus of HotW for everyone. I'm still pondering it because I hate to lose Mangle (which I've become addicted to in PvP) but it seems like it would be an ideal hybrid "I can do anything well" spec.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
I think what Blizzard is doing is taking hybrids in a direction different than what the term has meant historically.
It used to be when you thought of a hybrid that it meant the class was intended to be a jack of all trades, master of none.
Because of the existence of talent trees Blizzard has been able to take hybrids in the direction of one class that essentially has the ability to be three classes without needing to reroll. This is especially true for druids.
For a few gold I can change from a plate wearing nuker, to a very good healer and what's even better is the added synergy with other classes I bring with either spec. With the decrease in raid cap to 25 you'll see a lot of these hybrids being able to pickup multiple sets of gear for each of their roles too.
I don't see it being farfetched that a hybrid will be respeccing often to fulfill their needed role with the apparent influx of gold we will see in TBC. By all accounts it seems 50g is a pittance and attainable in a 45 minute run of a trivial 5-man (for raiders, correct me if I'm wrong about that). And if the Naxxramas consumable requirements don't continue to be a raid content trend I can see guild banks being fat enough to fund the changes as well.
I just don't know if hybrids will be struck by the choice of "Should I specialize to be good at one thing or mix and match to bring more versatility to the table?" Especially if they can change from pew pew lasers to turbo healer with the click of a button and very little buyers remorse.
Some trees need work to make them more widely acceptable but I think the other hybrid devs should take notes from whoever designed the druid talents. Each of their trees offers unique abilities and makes them more than capable and attractive options as either DPS, Tanks or Healers and each of the trees offer bonuses to the other DPS and Healers they are grouped with.
I think that this 30/31 spec has many of the strengths of pre-2.0 feral and takes advantage of some great changes to the resto tree as well.
Not by much coincidence I'm looking at 0/31/30 as a Shaman to provide good melee DPS while retaining the majority of my healing power. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a lot of Shamans and Druids that eschew their 41 pointers to attempt to find a balance between two roles, though I'm not sure the same will hold true for Paladins.
All four healing classes are quite capable healers when you spec deep in their respective trees now. Shamans were a bit lacking but Earth Shield is undeniably awesome and is the missing link we have been looking for, and with the re-balancing of the talents to include +healing, any of the classes can be the primary healer for a 5-man instance relatively interchangeably. The real trick in my mind has always been finding a point at which you can still be a very competitive healer and retain parts of your other roles, which is no mean feat. I don't think there is anything wrong with playing a healing class like a healing class, but you don't take advantage of the other aspects of your class that are available when you do so.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
19/0/42, bare minimum in Resto to get all the juicy stuff, 19 in Elemental to round out punch-packing. Optional 16/0/45 to get +3% more spell hit. Wear Elem gear and retain solid damage and healing power together. Great for grinding, too.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
19/0/42, bare minimum in Resto to get all the juicy stuff, 19 in Elemental to round out punch-packing. Optional 16/0/45 to get +3% more spell hit. Wear Elem gear and retain solid damage and healing power together. Great for grinding, too.
But I like my oversized axes :(
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
19/0/42, bare minimum in Resto to get all the juicy stuff, 19 in Elemental to round out punch-packing. Optional 16/0/45 to get +3% more spell hit. Wear Elem gear and retain solid damage and healing power together. Great for grinding, too.
But I like my oversized axes :(
I think you are facing the same problems Feral Druids face that want to hybridize with Resto: The gear and talents just don't synergize well. Balance and Resto, however, do as does the gear needed for it. I assume it's the same for Shamans.
In one way the Elemental/Balance gear synergizes with Resto, but in both cases both abilities are both tied to the same pool as Resto: mana. You don't run out of white damage on melee swings, even if you have to throttle back on your yellow damage to conserve mana. Priests are pure casters for better or worse, and Paladins are pretty fortunate that +dmg is an extremely effective stat for both meleeing and casting, they don't need nearly as much gear distribution as Druids and Shamans do.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
I'm not sure much will change between now and 70, obviously this is all speculation anyway. However, the most viable hybrid now, and probably (don't ban me) the most viable hybrid in the future will be the dps warrior/offtank. Especially with the buff that improved thunderclap got and the reduction in points necessary to get all of defiance, I've already found myself playing with all sorts of warrior utility talent builds that try and bring all things to the table.
Paladins are pretty fortunate that +dmg is an extremely effective stat for both meleeing and casting, they don't need nearly as much gear distribution as Druids and Shamans do.
Yes to be a hybrid we only need
AC
STM
STR
INT
AGI
+DMG / + HEAL
CRIT
SPELL CRIT
RESILIENCE
DEFENSE
...
Basically at an end game raid level, being able to do 2 things well heal/tank or heal/dps or even dps/tank for paladins is completely impossible without a full gear switch and completely hindered by the power of the 35+ talents and the position of key talents. If they wanted paladins to be the healing/tank hybrid they completely failed. A healing spec'd paladin must go 40+ holy to be effective and thus can't dps, tank or mitigate damage for nuts, a tank spec'd paladin must go 12 ret, 35+ prot and thus can't dps or heal for nuts.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
So even though the concept of a viable end game "hybrid" is dead in my eyes, you can at least specialize and be decent enough at one thing and provide enough group buffs to command a raid spot.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
Paladins are pretty fortunate that +dmg is an extremely effective stat for both meleeing and casting, they don't need nearly as much gear distribution as Druids and Shamans do.
Yes to be a hybrid we only need
AC
STM
STR
INT
AGI
+DMG / + HEAL
CRIT
SPELL CRIT
RESILIENCE
DEFENSE
...
Basically at an end game raid level, being able to do 2 things well heal/tank or heal/dps or even dps/tank for paladins is completely impossible without a full gear switch and completely hindered by the power of the 35+ talents and the position of key talents. If they wanted paladins to be the healing/tank hybrid they completely failed. A healing spec'd paladin must go 40+ holy to be effective and thus can't dps, tank or mitigate damage for nuts, a tank spec'd paladin must go 12 ret, 35+ prot and thus can't dps or heal for nuts.
Actually I think Paladins will be pretty decent tanks, just for specialized situations. Deep Holy is pretty good in helping out with threat generation, and mitigation is pretty good due to Improved Righteous Fury and perhaps Blessed Life. In multi-target situations where Redoubt can be constantly triggered and Consecrate can generate lots of aggro, I think Paladin tanks would be ideal, even if they're not deep Protection. Really, deep Protection doesn't provide a lot of talents that benefit paladin tanking that much (past 21 points) - even Holy Shield is pretty lackluster in the ideal Paladin situation (lots of weak mobs) due to the 4 hits/10s limit.
It's true that Paladins would need a great deal of gear focus to handle MTing the big bad boss, but they're probably the best choice to hold onto his 6 adds, even without super-specialized tanking gear. The main issue in those situations would be to have decent tank stats, a good shield, and sufficient threat generation (+damage). Agility, crit, spell crit, int aren't a big factor. Considering the nature of the Paladin taunt, this seems like the niche we're being steered towards.
Basically at an end game raid level, being able to do 2 things well heal/tank or heal/dps or even dps/tank for paladins is completely impossible without a full gear switch and completely hindered by the power of the 35+ talents and the position of key talents.
So to be extremely effective at 2 things you need more talent points than what you're given? No way! Every other class has more than enough talent points to get all of the extremely effective talents in 2 trees. :rolleyes: Not sure you got the memo, this is a thread about filling multiple roles in such a fashion that you aren't useless at them with the understanding you won't be the best at any of them.
If you aren't tanking raid bosses (and why would you be) you need AC, Stamina, and +dmg. The vast majority of threat generation is non-melee so Str and Agi are luxury stats, certainly less important than Dodge/Parry/Defense/Resilience. Crit and spell crit are not essential for holding aggro or improving mitigation, but they help. Essentially this means you can focus on the same tanking stats as Warriors with the addition of +dmg if you wish to tank and heal reasonably well, or pure caster/pure melee style plus +dmg stats to switch between pew pew and healing. In contrast, +dmg does nothing for Druids in feral forms which rely on melee style stats, and +dmg has a very minimal impact on Shaman melee-style DPS which relies on basically every stat that isn't blatantly defensive in nature. +Dmg is never NOT highly useful to a Paladin, Priest, or Elemental Shaman which reduces both the amount of gear required to carry and the severity of the shift in focus depending on the gear you are wearing at the time, but all 3 of those styles run in to problems with mana because they are reliant upon it both to DPS and to heal.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
Paladins are pretty fortunate that +dmg is an extremely effective stat for both meleeing and casting, they don't need nearly as much gear distribution as Druids and Shamans do.
Yes to be a hybrid we only need
AC
STM
STR
INT
AGI
+DMG / + HEAL
CRIT
SPELL CRIT
RESILIENCE
DEFENSE
A Paladin has use of these stats when DPSing, tanking or healing:
Stamina
Intellect
+DMG/Heal
+Spell Crit
Regardless of what you do, you can always use those stats. Want to see a list of stats that a Druid in all forms and in caster form uses all the time?
Paladins are pretty fortunate that +dmg is an extremely effective stat for both meleeing and casting, they don't need nearly as much gear distribution as Druids and Shamans do.
Yes to be a hybrid we only need
AC
STM
STR
INT
AGI
+DMG / + HEAL
CRIT
SPELL CRIT
RESILIENCE
DEFENSE
A Paladin has use of these stats when DPSing, tanking or healing:
Stamina
Intellect
+DMG/Heal
+Spell Crit
Regardless of what you do, you can always use those stats. Want to see a list of stats that a Druid in all forms and in caster form uses all the time?
Stamina
Uhhh... that's it.
Just because a paladin can always use those stats doesn't prevent them from having to keep multiple sets of gear the same way a druid does.
And I know this board's audience is mostly PvE oriented but have you ever tried to PvP with 3500 mana and no Natural Shapeshifter? Intellect can be important for feral druids too.
The stance I've taken on my role in this game is that I don't have one. I have three. I, personally, would rather do one thing well than two in mediocrity so I've resigned myself to keeping a cache of gold set aside for respeccing, and doing it often if needed.
One thing lower raid caps affords hybrids is the ability to pick up multiple sets of gear quickly due to lack of competition. And with the new hybrid itemization there is no lack of gear for us anymore (at least it seems from perusing thottbot at work daily). I think some people may be discounting the fact that blizzard is specializing our gear and it seems, at least from a druid standpoint, that it will in turn force us to specialize our talent builds. Gone are the days of 5 stat 10dmg leg slots with high AC. I for one welcome the change. The much lower stamina values on the druid pvp sets angered me.
Which raises another question. How will most raid guilds handle people picking up offspec sets of gear (i.e. a feral druid taking balance or healing gear). Better it goes to a feral druid than rot no? I think a reduced, or 0 point cost on offspec gear sets would be a good solution, but that could raise an entirely new issue.
What if the only non-token (read: non-set) leather items dropping are balance oriented but you don't have a balance druid? Do you allow the feral in your guild to take them as offspec gear for reduced point cost or free, then watch him respec because his balance gear is far more effective than his current feral? Thus allowing him to horde all his DKP to snatch the good cross-class items such as rings/trinkets/weapons? Anyway, sorry for the off-topic digression, just seems interesting.
Hear is my build I am looking at for my druid. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=MZxGusczRxZxxszeqz0o
Ultimately the decision came down to what is better, swiftmend or 5% to crit. I opted for swiftmend. I will probably level with 41 feral then switch to this build for PVP. Heals > big crits in pvp.
AC
STM
STR
INT
AGI
+DMG / + HEAL
CRIT
SPELL CRIT
RESILIENCE
DEFENSE
A Paladin has use of these stats when DPSing, tanking or healing:
Stamina
Intellect
+DMG/Heal
+Spell Crit
Regardless of what you do, you can always use those stats. Want to see a list of stats that a Druid in all forms and in caster form uses all the time?
Stamina
Uhhh... that's it.
Just because a paladin can always use those stats doesn't prevent them from having to keep multiple sets of gear the same way a druid does.
And I know this board's audience is mostly PvE oriented but have you ever tried to PvP with 3500 mana and no Natural Shapeshifter? Intellect can be important for feral druids too.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware that every Hybrid needs different sets. I was merely stating that a Paladin has more stats overlap than a Druid has that wants to do all his jobs in one fight. Neither Druid and Paladin are optimal in wrong specs, but atleast the Paladin can design a Hybrid set better because he has to focus on less stats.
Don't get me wrong, I am aware that every Hybrid needs different sets. I was merely stating that a Paladin has more stats overlap than a Druid has that wants to do all his jobs in one fight. Neither Druid and Paladin are optimal in wrong specs, but atleast the Paladin can design a Hybrid set better because he has to focus on less stats.
Your not going to be a star healer (in feral gear), but with my above talent spec, but you can heal well enough due to nurturing instinct. It gives you 150+ healing at 300 Str. With a quick weapon swap in combat you can easily get another 300 healing in TBC. Your big limitation would be your mana pool. It is only going to be 4500ish with Heart of wild, but that 4500 should be able to have an impact.
19/0/42, bare minimum in Resto to get all the juicy stuff, 19 in Elemental to round out punch-packing. Optional 16/0/45 to get +3% more spell hit. Wear Elem gear and retain solid damage and healing power together. Great for grinding, too.
That's precisely what I was thinking: go deep resto but pack on the elemental tier 4/5 stuff. It strikes me that at some point packing on the excessive +healing just isn't going to bring good returns due to the downranking of heals change. The set bonuses are a different matter but I've never been one of those guys where set bonuses are gamebreakers.
Can you post a link to the build you were thinking, Quasar?
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
19/0/42, bare minimum in Resto to get all the juicy stuff, 19 in Elemental to round out punch-packing. Optional 16/0/45 to get +3% more spell hit. Wear Elem gear and retain solid damage and healing power together. Great for grinding, too.
That's precisely what I was thinking: go deep resto but pack on the elemental tier 4/5 stuff. It strikes me that at some point packing on the excessive +healing just isn't going to bring good returns due to the downranking of heals change. The set bonuses are a different matter but I've never been one of those guys where set bonuses are gamebreakers.
Can you post a link to the build you were thinking, Quasar?
There's room for personal preference, such as tier 1 elem, or reverberation vs. lightning crit (prefer Reverb for PVP use), or stun resist, etc in resto. But generally speaking that's what I'd be gunning for.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
Im a shadow priest, but i have 14 in disc, for Meditation, Inner Focus, Imp Fort. Everything else is in shadow. Does this make me a hybrid?
Our guild has a couple other people who are pure shadow spec, and bug me about my spec, but I will not give up my 14 in disc. It is by far the best bang for your buck for 14 pts. Not mention if I'm forced to heal during raids, it helps negate my lesser efficient heals in a raid situation.
I'm at 35/0/21 as a shaman, moving towards 40/0/21 for level 70, and at least for now I'm enjoying the ability to nuke (especially to burst nuke) and still be able to heal tolerably well (having a terrific crit rate on my gear for Ancestral Healing procs doesn't suck). It's very flexible, and I see that the tier 5 elemental set bonuses at least are geared towards exactly that role for elemental shaman, nuking and buffing and stepping in with heals when necessary. I may well do 100-150DPS less than a mage in the same job for sustained damage, especially holding mana back for heals rather than shocking to try and keep my DPS up, but the mage doesn't bloodlust, wrath of air, NS-healing wave to keep someone alive etc, and when it comes to bursting some adds down in 5 seconds the elemental shaman is potentially the #1 guy.
When I started this project I thought it would be just for levelling, but stuff like mana tombs (at 65, in a party of warrior/rogue/warlock/resto shaman/elemental shaman) has convinced me it's an excellent 5-man build at least, and conceivably a very viable raid spot, but I'll have to see how it works in practice in actual 25-man raids.
From my experience so far (from 5-mans but should apply to at least 10-mans):
A feral druid can keep up with other dps classes while providing some extra utility in ILotP, combat res, buff, offtanking.
A shadow priest can NOT keep up with other dps classes, but stamina buff is crazy and vampiric embrace+vampiric touch does wonders for our groups health and mana, so bringing one is usually pretty good.
A balance druid can NOT keep up with other dps classes, the damage is udually lower than the shadowpriests, and they provide far less utility, so not really worth it.
A retribution paladin i'm not really sure of, damage is probably a bit too low for them to be worth it, but for 5-mans you usually want something apart from the main healer which can emergency heal etc. If we are missing our usual ILotP+vampiric embrace to help out the main healer it's a decent alternative to bring a retribution paladin.
These are the offspeccs that i have played with so far. As for hybrid speccs, i just don't see the point. They will be gimped whatever they try to do. The only hybrid specc i could see working good is some kind of dps/prot warrior.
EDIT: a 40/0/21 shaman build isn't really a hybrid build imo. It's an elemental build where Nature's grasp is chosen over the 41-pointer.
MatsT, you are mostly describing how offspecs do in a given situation but I didn't really wanted to hear that. :)
RK's analysis is basically what I had in mind when asking if you can hybrid it up in instances as in doing more than 1 job at one time. We all know that works poorly in WoW 1.0 raids so I was curious to see if that changed and Elemental/Resto shaman was one of the hybrids I expected to do well because of stat overlap.
If you guys got more stories to share, I am much interested in that.
12/28/06, 1:24 PM
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