There has been a lot of discussion on hybrids and how they make good secondary healers/dps in small groups, but where do they fit in past the initial bump of heroics and Karazhan?

The 25 man content in TBC hasn't changed very much from 40 man content we've previously done. For the fights that matter, it's going to be a lot of min-maxing and are people actually going to consider taking ret paladin over a rogue if the fight requires a lot of dps? The mentality before was simple; if the fight requires more dps, swap a healer for a dps. Is anyone actually going to consider bringing a ret paladin or an enhancement shaman to a fight like Gruul?

Gruul is actually a very interesting example as its a great match to the role of a hybrid. The fight requires a ton of dps and as it progresses, the tank requires more healing. So technically, you could have ret paladin (or something equivalent) dps while the damage modifier is low and then have him switch to healing the tank at some point. Would there be any point to that? Seems pretty viable, but the restriction on changing gear in combat will probably make one of their roles almost negligible.

Do any of the guilds that have killed or are actively trying to kill Gruul bring hybrids? Or do you encourage "raid" specs?

I don't know much about ret paladins, but an enhancement shaman, on his own, not counting any added DPS from his group buffs, is top tier DPS on fights that allow melee. Solidly top 3. I want one enhancement shaman in any raid I run. Similarly, shadow priests are obviously incredibly useful for their synergy with both warlocks and other healers in general.

I am less convinced about the merits of elemental shamans, balance druids, or feral druids that are DPSing in catform, but I'm open to persuasion.

Gruul is funny, because as you mentioned he's actually the exact kind of fight in which hybrids excel. I'd rather have a Shadow priest than a holy priest for most of the fight, and I definitely want at least one in the raid if only for misery/shadow weaving. Ret paladins with Sancitifed Crusader can provide a DPS boost early and then swap to healing as things get messy, and a Feral druid is definitely better than an extra rogue to get LOTP. I'm actively encouraging people to spec into synergistic hybrid builds to maximize what our raid is capable of.

Feral Druids doing cat dps have proven pretty effective for us in other encounters, but I can't speak to Gruul yet. I completely agree on the others though and am at a total loss as to what to do with all of our moonkin lovers.

Yeah, I wouldn't put shadow priests in the same category as other hybrids since they're probably up there with the best dps classes without even looking at the debuffs (Misery/SW) and returns (VE/VT) they provide.

I don't have much experience with enhancement shamen, but from experience, ret paladins and balance druids seem to be a little bit behind the curve and wouldn't be able to keep up with the straight dps classes. Feral druids seem to be putting out decent catform dps with the right gear on though, and if you add LoTP plus a quick shift-out innervate, they could actively fill a melee dps spot.

One big headache at the moment is spec'ing/organizing for heroics, karazhan, and 25 mans. You can support 3-4 shadow priests if you run multiple karas and for heroics, but obviously taking all off-specs to gruuls and beyond is not viable (we tried a few runs at maulgar with mostly offspecs, it was comically disastrous). Really wish Blizzard would allow 2 specs, its stupid to ask people to respec multiple times a week or postpone 25 man raids until everyone is mostly done with heroics.

One interesting thing, fury/arms warriors. Is anyone else seeing them lagging far behind on damage meters in karazhan and heroics? Rage issues?

Be interesting to hear from nil and DnT on how mag/serpentshrine is. So far the raid progression experience is that bosses hit harder and harder and harder, which leads to further specialization and stacking it seems rather than more variable raid compositions.

Ret paladins can contribute their benefits (Imp Sanc, Sanc Crusader) while sitting in full heal gear. This is either a benefit or a failing given your perspective, probably. I don't really see the value in having a Ret paladin DPSing so far in either Kharazan or Gruuls.


And I agree with the Heroic/Khara and 25 man spec problem. I need Light's Grace to heal on Heroics for some bosses, and at least 14 prot points to off tank anything, yet having Ret is useful in 25 man raids and other things, and I dont really need anything above Illumination there.

Ah, choice - what a terrible burden.

For our Gruul kill 2 nights ago we brought along 2 shadow priests and a feral druid. The druid is amazing for taking Hurtful strikes, the 25k+ armor they have mitigates them very well. You can have 1 healer solo healing a druid taking hurtful's until a 5-6 stack on Gruul.

I'm just a stupid hunter and speak mostly from five-man- and a little bit of Karazhan experience but after levelling together with a protection paladin, I must say I'm amazed with paladin tanking right now. Especially the ability to quickly "gather up" mobs using consecration and the fact that a paladin with a certain block value will receive almost no damage on AOE-pulls really makes the class shine at this.
Ardent defender is a nice talent to avoid being blown away by damage spikes and has saved our asses countless times. It's situational but really great in situations where a warrior tank would be killed by a mob's regular melee hitting directly after that all-devastating Mortal Strike from Hell.
The only drawback is that a protection paladin's hybrid viability is severely reduced by the gear choices you have to make to archieve a viable mitigation leaving you with mostly +def and +block value gear and a little spelldamage so you won't be able to switch to healing or DPSing during a fight while a bearform druid might at least switch to catform and still do viable DPS in the same gear.

Edit: Forgot another thing. Paladins don't have any short-cooldown abilities to break or resist fear effects which unlike much-cited blue statements claimed are still haunting us even in the BC 5-mans.

Our top enhancement Shammy (very well geared, including Drakefist, etc) is going to spec back to resto.

His damageoutput is superb. But the big problem is he can't control his aggro. At all.
Every crit = extra aggro on every mob. WF's come and go as they please. Last night (when he had to repair midinstance) was the final drop, so it seems.

Shamans need a big fat threatfix to become viable DPS'ers. Their potential is huge, but useless if it means their mobs become untankable.

There was a lot of talk of Unleashed Rage generating large amounts of extra agro, although I'm not sure this is the case or if it was fixed. We've had an enhancement shaman DPS with good success in Karazhan.