I don't think there is a single druid who would not accept the distinction between role shifters and hybrid. Seriously, we all have to make that distinction every time some QQing fury warrior is crying about how he's not the best tank in the game anymore, and how we can top the dps, tanking and healing meters all at the same time.

In one of my above posts I mentioned that the best *hybrid* druid spec is balance/resto, as it has the most amount of stat overlap. I understand the desire to spec and gear yourself as a feral/resto hybrid but you're really fighting an uphill battle. There is no stat overlap and you'd probably be pretty terrible at both roles. In addition to that, I don't think there is any encouter in the game so far that forces you to do more than one thing in one fight like that.

I'll be honest. At this point I don't know why we're even arguing. Maybe my perception of the last few posts is different from yours, but from my view you initially came out championing the idea of watering down all our stats to become generalists, even though we have the least amount of stat overlap. The one hybrid druid video (29/11/11 spec) was your frame of reference to gear, spec and playstyle.

And maybe I read it wrong, but it appeared that you were arguing against a guy who made the very same distinction between role shifting and hybrids that you are now talking about.

A shadow priest and a elemental shaman combined can certainly pump out more healing than the holy priest and mage combined or more DPS than the holy priest and mage combined, so you get the flexibility of more DPS when DPS counts and more healing when healing counts.

If you have one healing exclusively and one DPSing exclusively than the holy priest and mage will probably pump out more combined damage and healing in a raid setting (in a 5 man, the shaman/priest will own the face off the holy priest and mage since the advantages of the priest and mage are in mana sustainability, not raw output). HOWEVER, the shadow priest/elemental shaman provide way way more buffs to the party and the raid to make up for it.

Because of the buff factor, I would say the fairer comparison is holy paladin and mage vs shadow priest and elemental shaman, which is going to start coming down to how many other paladins and shaman are in the raid.

Hybrids are a blessing and a burden to any raid as well as a blessing and burden to themselves. Prior to Talent changes and updates in the last few months before the release of the expansion, very few offspecs were viable in raids and the pure classes and main specs of those hybrids were stronger with an exception in the fury warrior. The Fury warrior due to several game mechanics that have since been nerfed were scaling higher than any other dps class in terms of damage.

The burden that hybrids have for themselves is that they each have a clearly defined main role. Regardless of spec, Warriors are tanks, Shamans are healers, Paladins are Healers, Druids are Healers, Priests are healers. Specced into those main specs they are the strongest their class can be and even when not specced for those main roles, the roles will still haunt them and they will be forced to play their main role either once in a while or often in raids, 5 mans, 10 mans wherever. The best Hybrids will be those who know and excel at doing their main role as well as whatever they are specced for.

Now, since the review of talents for all classes, many new viable hybrid specs have risen. Mechanics via lvl 62-70 abilities, 32+ tree talents and more importantly smaller (25 man) raids have rewritten how we define a viable raiding spec. Almost every Hybrid spec in its pure form (41+ talents spent in a tree) has become viable (many specs arguable, but thats another discussion) and because of this, many of these players specced in these ways will be seen in raids because of useful buffs/debuffs/utility that they bring to the raid. Many combinations of classes in each of the 5 groups will be reviewed over and over again for different fight mechanics for maximum dps, maximum healing, maximum tank mitigation or whatever the different group is needed for. Shadow priests with their group mana and health regen will be strong for casters and healers alike. Retribution paladins providing a 3% spell and melee and ranged crit buff to the entire raid as well as maintaining all judgement with Crusader strike will be a strong choice. Enhancement shamans teamed up with a feral druid, 2 rogues and a fury warrior will likely be an amazingly powerful dps group by combining all the different class and spec mechanics. The list goes on and will be tested, thrown out, retried until each raid group finds its balance and most powerful way of doing things.

On topic now, hybrid specs consisting of relatively even amounts of points spent in different trees generally speaking wont be very strong for some classes. Some ~31/x/~30 or some similar combination specs such as a 36/0/25 Druid spec will be interested to bring a 3% hit buff to the entire raid while still being a strong healer from combined talents from the balance and resto trees. Will that healer be as good as a full Resto tree druid? Perhaps not, but perhaps they will with increased healing and increased regen from the balance tree to offset the resto giant healing talents.

I think that condemning any spec before its tested in the field is silly. While some specs may look like they are obviously bad, who knows until you try them whether they are good or not. On a final note however, while all these brilliant new things come of having all these hybrids are blessings to the raid, they can also be a burden if those same hybrids either dont know how to or actively dont want to play their whole class and more specifically their main role when the situation calls for it. Hybrids are dangerous creatures.

I think the main thing about this statement I disagree with is the assertion that the other hybrids were "not as strong" as primary specs except for the fury warrior. The other hybrids were raid viable before, they just were not as obviously useful as fury warrior because fury warriors had the big red bar (damage meter) to show their worth. For example, as a shadow priest pre-2.0 i might only land in the low teens in damage (were I healing the entire time, which never happened), but if one considered that I buffed 5 locks damage by 20% and mitigated a large amount of damage, I more than earned our place. The same could be said for the feral druid that our guild ran. He roamed between tank, rogue-wanna-be and healing depending on the situation and often buffed the damage of a party of melee. Even a chicken increasing the damage of four high damage casters by 2-4% provides a solid boost. My point is that fury warriors were not unique, it was just easier to recognize their worth in battle.

And I'm sure that Aedak screaming and whining all over the place about how 'uber' fury warriors were over the last 18 months helped too.
I think you are missing the point that Blizz has tried to cram down our throats. Blizz has made it apparent in 2.0 that no non-pure damage class is stereotyped in a particular role. To a certain extent, I think Blizz has pushed so hard to break the Holy Trinity that they have overpowered some of the hybrids and are having to reign them back in. Just because a class has heals on its bar does not make it a "healer". The fact that they can heal provides additional advantages to the party/raid that would not exist were they straight dealer classes. A shadow priest is probably 55% as effective at healing as a holy priest. Slotting them in a raid as a general healer is a misuse of the toon.

Ok, I'm rambling now, my point is that judging hybrids based on damage meters is a mistake, and that because classes can heal does not make them healers. I am also not saying that a skilled player with a hybrid spec cannot effectively fill a healer role, they are just not as effective at the healer role as an equivilently geared/skilled heal specc'd toon.

I'd like to see these proposed 30/0/31 specs you speak of; I checked both profiles but didn't see one. Mind posting a link over to Wowhead so that I can see which abilities you're focusing in on? As I approach 70 and consider a respec for more raid viability, it would be a nice change to try something from a full resto if what you say is true and you can push out considerable DPS.

This is where your perception is wrong. Blizzard buffed druid and paladin tanking to be on par or better than warriors in certain situations (stated by Tseric). Specialist classes are not the optimal choice by default anymore, Paladins, already being excellent threat generating tanks, will have a huge advantage on Undead encounters, where druids, unable to use their new threat generation move, will be at a disadvantage. Druids will, arguably, be the best Physical mitigation tank in the game (on par with or better than warriors) with loads of mitigation, avoidance, agro generation and HP to perform that role very well. Warriors are king of Spell mitigation, buffing/debuffing while tanking (Sunder Armor, as well as a few other buffs like Shouts etc.). There is no specialist class anymore, they don't exist. sure that might be a prime class that performs the role better in most of the situations (in this case warrior), but the one and only specialist class? Nope, that time is over. There will be several encounters where smart people will think "hey maybe we should have a druid tank here" (having a hard time finding a paladin pro atm. though so using a druid example, multimob tanking is perfectly doable by druids and warriors or tanking teams, as well as paladin mitigation and HP is lacking a bit behind gear and base-abilitywise atm.).

I think we can agree here with pointing out the fury warriors pre-2.0's massive flaw - agro reduction. Its really a historical debate now anyways. ;)
I'm not implying that hybrids should not be casting heals, only that they really can't be classified as "healers". Its inefficient to use the toons that way. Now, I've personally crucified shadow priests in my raids for not dropping form (which costs nothing) to save a life. I agree 100% that far to often hybrid players think their specialization removes the responsibility for keeping others alive. A dead rogue does no dps after the spriest/shammie/chicken runs out of mana.

Paladin tanking has become the 4+ mob tanking pro. Sure druids can do mutli mob pulls up to 3-4 without a problem. But get 5 or more low damage but fast hitting mobs and a paladin tank will hold them in their sleep.

All of their tanking talents start to outpace the other tanks when applied in a situtation where there are more mobs, the more mobs, the better the paladin talents become. (Reckoning, Deflection, Holy Sheild, Concerate, etc.)

They are also the only tank left with scaling threat. Our mitigation looks to be a bit worse but on a mob that needs a high level of threat generated we are kings, and will continue to be so as our threat scales with +damage. Where the other tanks are based on static values.

Paladins = Zerg Tanks

This is the critical quote that should be stuck up on the gates of all future hybrid threads (it can even be stuck on the warrior hybrid threads, just replace healing with tanking).

Hybrid advantage over pure classes is the ability to adjust. An enhance/elemental/shadow/feral/moonkin/ret that never heals, that doesn't constantly watch for a moment where the most useful thing they can do is change gears and throw a heal (or change gears and just keep healing), should be replaced. By the same token, I think a resto/holy that never assists with DPS (or in the case of druid/pally, picks up and tanks a loose mob) when the healing is covered? Also not good, just less noticably so.

A raiding hybrid DPS player probably needs more situational awareness than any other class to get the job done well, since they need to be as in-tune with the "whack a mole" bars as any other healer while also getting their DPS job done. But played well, they should be really valuable. Instead of having an extra healer "in case", you have an extra DPS who becomes an extra healer when and if "in case" happens.

I'm of the opinion that every class in the game is a hybrid.

A usual group will need DPS, tanking, healing and CC. But I think that's too broad a stroke. Depending on the content, we need sustained DPS, and burst DPS for adds and aoe DPS. We need high threat tanking and high mitigation tanking and spell mitigation tanking and aoe tanking. We need HoTs and we endurance healing and we need throughput healing.

People say hyrids that know how to perform multiple roles require more attention and skill than pure classes. But this is typically how you distinguish good players from the bad of all classes. A shit mage sits there and mashes frostbolt, a good one does that and frost novas loose mobs, keeps tabs on their sheep, AoEs, and decurses.

Are there any instances in the game however where there are 5+ low damage mobs that are non-trivial? For example the non-elite trash in karazhan (ballroom, etc) or the plant non-elite packs in botanica can be tanked by a mage, warlock, etc because they die so fast.

Contrast that with the hallway trash in shattered halls heroic - druids with 20k AC/13k HP die easily to these packs, I have not yet tried with a paladin tank but don't really see how they could survive the hits.

So for my experience with paladin tanking has been very poor. It is trivial to pull aggro off a paladin tank and they die very easily to mob enrages or special attacks. My experience has been very limited though so would love to hear other anecdotal stories, especially paladin tanks in steamvaults/shadow labs/arcatraz/morass, heroics, and karazhan/gruul.

I get occasionally annoyed by the smugness in replies on any topic regarding hybrids, how people who play hybrids are by far the better players because they are used to taking on a more difficult role, or how hybrids tipically have to work harder and are more dedicated and appeal to more intelligent players, etc etc etc.

It always pollutes the discussion and makes reading them annoying. An excellent player will be an excellent player regardless of the class, and no hybrid in WoW is extremly difficult to play or to play well.

If you are referring to me, I apologize, that is not my intention to come across as smug.

My point with better players is that it takes a better player to play a hybrid effectively. Any idiot with a holy spec and fair gear can play a decently effective healing priest. Now, I'm not saying good, I'm saying decently effective. But that same idiot with equivalent damage gear plays a poor spriest in a raid and is more trouble than they are worse in addition to the fact that they will likely put their raid in danger. If you think about it, a non hybrid simply has to understand one role. To be effective, a hybrid must understand multiple roles and know when to switch between them. That by itself dictates a "better" base player. An excellent player is still an excellent player, but the bar is set higher to be "effective" for a hybrid vs a non-hybrid. A skilled healing priest is a godsend to their raid, and I by no means intend to put these people down (I've been one myself, or would like to think I've been one). Does this make sense?

One can fall back on the argument that "no" role in wow is difficult, hybrids being no exception, but if that were the case then the majority of players in this game wouldn't fall into the "suck" category. And I wouldn't be so awful attempting to tank with my warrior alt.

The point that you made that I disagree with is that hybrids don't have to work harder. To be effective, hybrids must maintain an additional set of gear. This set of gear isn't purely situational such as a set of Resistance gear, but a set that the hybrid might have to effective work in for long periods of time. That by itself denotes a stronger time commitment.

Is that a PvP hybrid spec? I would think you'd want unrelenting storm over reach or flame totem buff for PvE DPS.

Edit: Something like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hE0zqc0aVZZxcfkVxop

I'm more inclined to agree with you. I'm not sure that improved reincarnation is really worth the two full points placed in it, when you are more than likely still just running back to the 5-man instance if you wipe. Agreed on Reach; kind of a PvP related thing.

Tidal Mastery and Call of Thunder together make for a nice crit boost. I was messing with talents last night before your post went up and had a kind of "eureka!" moment...

A question though; why did you decide for 2/5 Totemic Focus over Tidal? Do you feel like you're having to drop totems more than you are healing, when called upon to heal in a run? If the typical 4-5 mob pulls consists of you dropping four totems at the start and then tossing anywhere between 8-14 heals across the group, wouldn't Tidal play a bit of a role there?

edit: Disregard my question. I ran the math; Tidal only kicks in near around the 20-cast mark

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GEczq00aVZZxcbpVLot

My ctprofile has not been updated to reflect the expansion, but here you go. This looks the same as some of the other posts, except the Eye of the Storm part. This build is sort of PvE centric and I think the reduction to elemental spell damage to be a more worth while endeavor. The only area of play here is what you do with mid range talent points in the resto tree. I like uninterruptable healing for things akin to the vael encounter, but thats my preference. I will say though that I prefer the totem spare points to the cheaper heals just because you will use totems both when healing and when dpsing and also, wrath of air is pretty expensive.

I'm fine with all other hybrids playing however they want. My original point was that I don't see there being a "shapeshifting non-hybrid", I saw his distinction being one of gear choice. I did misunderstand him as distinguishing between hybrid classes, when it was more "talent specs within a hybrid class". (Calling the non-hybrid, "shapeshifter" didn't help my understanding.) I also think gear is more important than talents for being effective, but that'll send us on another tangent


Even the feral druid example he used could do alright in Cat form, or could shift his gear so that he is "good" at both forms. (Tank/DPS hybrid!) To the extent that he is "gimping" himself with that gear choice by not being in ideal Bear/Cat gear - hybrids are "gimped" by not being specialists in the first place.

The mitigation is an issue, at least while people are in the gearing stage, most paladins I know tanking armor pre TBC consisted of deathbone from scholo and some cast offs that none of the warriors wanted.

It will take a while for paladins to get up to warrior level stats, but since thats simply an itemization barrier I believe that it can and will be overcome. Blizzard simply needs to itemize for it.

As for threat, I mean no offense, but that must have been a pretty terrible paladin. When I tank the mobs come lose when/if I die or Im not paying attention, otherwise they are on me never to come off.

TPS I can easily hit the 600 range, and Im not heavily tanking speced. (14 in protection). With salvation on the DPS and the 20% ranged buffer, I have held aggro on much higher level and much better geared DPS. Aggro is not a consern, and the one pally weakness pre TBC of aggro dropping mobs is gone with the advent of a taunt.

The real issue is the mitigation, right now we are the paper tigers of tanks. Threat is big, but without lots of healing we go down too fast. This is all about gearing, the talents are there, we simply lack the gear to keep up.

I haven't had the time to get a full Arcatraz run in; so far it's been "kill the first boss so people can get the Karazhan attunement bit". I've been the sole tank for full clears of Steamvaults, Shadow Lab, and Morass (multiple times). Last night I tanked the horse for the Huntsman boss in Karazhan without putting any undue strain on the healers. We had a druid tank Attumen both before and after the transition. Haven't been to see Gruul yet; we're still working on getting the guild up to 70 and geared. Also haven't done a Heroic yet since I haven't had much time for rep-grinding.

I have to agree with Vinsent on threat; if you're easily pulling aggro off of Paladin tanks, they're either (a) not specced for tanking, (b) poorly geared, or (c) just not very good at it. Generating enough threat to stay ahead of dps isn't hard at all; the only times when I lose threat are when I'm 5-manning and trying to conserve mana a bit by downranking.

I haven't seen an itemization problem yet. There's no blue tanking plate TBC that says "Classes: Warrior" that I'm aware of. There are a few quest-reward items that have spelldamage and defense on them; you can combine these with a spelldamage weapon and a set of standard tanking plate to make a very strong tanking set. I've done that and tanked Karazhan trash and the first boss just fine.

I played shaman before the talent changes, and I was just used to totems costing a ton of mana. Honestly I just needed somewhere to throw the points, and having cheaper totems helps solo/grind better than cheaper heals, and I drop totems a lot on my shaman. In a group I always try to find 4 totems that fit the situation and keep them down, and then swap totems as necessary, going from grounding to winfury/goa, etc. as the situation calls for. No real math involved, just thought about my playstyle and what other talents I had (combination of unrelenting storm and mana tide made me think with decent gear mana wouldn't be an issue for long term healing).

I am not going to reply to the "Hybrids got better skills" or something, but Hybrids did have alot more work to do to gather the appropriate gear. Wanted to be a competitive PvE tank? Go PvP and get your exalted AB and WSG pants instead of rolling on or having T3 defaulted to you because of your class. From my experience, offspecs do invest more cash and time into their gear than pure classes do - because they have to. The odds are stacked against them to begin with so you'll see them putting more effort into acquiring or enchanting gear than the average pure class player does. I am not saying a pure class couldn't do this but they had less need to because noone was going to doubt their classes capabilities which had been proven time and time again. I still get mocked if I tell people I put an Animist Caress (back when it was very expensive) on blue pants just because I got 20 HP more from it than a +100 HP enchant.

Anyways, derail over. :)