Some commonly used terms, when comparing damage across classes, are “pures” versus “hybrids”, and some people think that there should be a noticable difference between these classes. A hybrid is a class that is able to cover more than one role in a raid – a druid can do damage, tank or heal.
A pure, naturally, is a class that can only furfill one role ever. Back in the days, a hybrid would be a “jack of all trades, master of none”, and was viewed as slightly behind the pure classes with the roles they offered. In Vanilla-WoW, druid tanks were nearly non-existant, and while they could be used as tanks in The Burning Crusade, they fell short on some fights, specifically those designed around warrior abilities.
But the whole problem with hybrids was that people asked “Why bring them when X can do better”? Why would we bring a shadowpriest when a mage can do more damage? Why use a feral druid to tank when a warrior does it better? People was annoyed by the fact that they weren’t “just as good” and was left out, or forced to get into another role.
A major argument is that, while a hybrid can change his spec and completely change his playstyle, a rogue was still just a rogue no matter what he did. So in one regard, it was unfair that a hybrid only had to level one character, and be able to play the class in many different ways, while a pure was “stuck” with the playstyle he chose when he made it – perhaps at a point where he or she didn’t know excactly how playing their class would be at endgame.
On the other hand, the people rolling a hybrid wouldn’t know, that they would be forced into one viable spec if they wanted to raid, with their two other specs often inadequete for raiding. Healer classes especially – priests, druids, shamans and paladins – weren’t really usefull as anything else back in the days, and that limited their options anyways. Would a new player roll a druid if he knew that he couldn’t do as much damage as the “pure classes”?
Hybrids today are quite a lot closer to their pure class counterpart. Tanks especially are balanced to being as close to equal as possible, and fights are made to be tankable by any tank class, even if one is better than others on some fights. In regards to damage, Blizzard has often claimed that pures should be slightly ahead of hybrids, but in practical matters that is simply not how it is. Some hybrid classes has been dominating pures for quite a while – feral druids and death knights spring to mind. Other hybrids are quite equal to their pure idols (moonkins, amirite?!), while there is a group of hybrids (enhancement shamans and shadow priests especially) have been left out, and are far, far down the meters. So if it is Blizzard’s design to handicap hybrids, they haven’t executed this concept correctly.
But which classes are actually hybrids, and how should they be taxed? In reality, we only have four pure classes: Mages, warlocks, hunters and rogues. Every other class can support more than one role in a raid. Warriors and death knights can DPS or tank, priests can heal or DPS. Paladins can heal, tank or do damage, and druids can be casters, melee DPS, tanks and healers. Should we be taxed more if we have more options? Should warriors have a 5% tax because they can DPS? Should paladins be taxed 10% across their specs because they have three to choose from? Should druids be the weakest class because they can play the game four different ways? Then, on the other side, should rogues have a tax aswell, because one spec is predominately better for PvP? Should mages have a little nerf, because they can change their spec to fit a fights mechanics, where a moonkin is still a moonkin? I am sure you are getting my drift.
And while the level 80 warlock can only play as a level 80 warlock, and has to level a whole new class if he wants to change his gameplay, you have to apreciate the amount of effort that a hybrid has to put in to be viable in both specs. I have to maintain both a set for moonkin aswell as a whole different set for tanking. Thats a lot of gold, and a lot of time to accumilate these items and the gold needed for enchants and gems. In truth, the gear I get for my offspec is gear that nobody else wants, and usually not the gear that the real feral tank has, so in a way I have a slight tax – I am not as capable a tank as our main feral tank.
In the end, lets look at how realistic the whole argument is: I have never, ever had to switch out of moonkin form to toss a few heals on the tank. If we are at that point in a fight, it is usually lost anyways. Heck, I dont even pop a rejuvenation on myself when we run back from a whipe, cause I will get any health back once I eat my buff food. Even though I *can* support different roles in a raid, I rarely do. And while I suppose I could heal a 5 man instance, I doub that I will ever offer to do so. While I can respec to feral tanking, my gear is not as good as those of my fellow druids, and I couldn’t excactly just stroll in and tank Trial of the Grand Crusader on 25 man. Yeah, we have a slight benefit from having multiple playstyles to choose from, but that comes with a price.´
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how silly the idea of hybrid classes is now. Having played since Classic, I’m well-acquainted with the idea of being a hybrid class. I chose to level Aarisa as feral and was pretty content that I would not be able to compete with rogues in damage, but I had tried leveling a rogue and simply didn’t get very far with it. In Burning Crusade, Aarisa was our guild’s top tank for a long time and capable of topping the DPS charts when we got some more tanks. Aari was more than capable of switching into bear form in her DPS gear and offtanking when necessary.
Also during Burning Crusade, I leveled Xiera, intending for her to be capable of DPS and healing using the balance tree. Her primary role was DPSing, which was mediocre at best, but she would often throw out a heal or two during certain fights, particularly if a healer was crowd controlled.
Wrath has changed much of that. Now, talent trees are even deeper and we have dual specs. There is no conceivable way for any class to be hybrid now. If you want to switch your role, you need to switch your spec and your gear to be a viable option. Obviously, this can’t actually happen in the middle of a fight, so our role as “hybrids” has been effectively diminished.
We’ve arrived at the point where you are either a damage dealer, or a healer, or a tank for any given fight. There is no in-between, there is no hybrid. So I really don’t see a reason why any hybrid class should be inferior to any other class. All healers and all tanks are roughly on the same level, each capable of handling certain situations better, so why aren’t all damage dealers on the same baseline?
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the true difference between DPSers these days are those who are heavily dependent on RNG for procs and those who are much less dependent on RNG. I would argue that those who are RNG-dependent should have higher top-end DPS and lower low-end DPS than those who are not as affected by RNG. In an effort to seem less biased, I’m going to take moonkins out of my comparison here by using fire mages and arcane mages as my example.
Fire mages are heavily dependent on RNG. The core of their DPS rotation is watching for Hot Streak procs and hitting their instant Pyroblast. Hot Streak is doubly dependent on RNG because it requires two rolls to proc, namely two crits in a row. Another layer of RNG is added by Ignite, which is a fairly powerful talent, giving the fire mage more damage per crit than any other class. To offset the RNG involved in their rotation, fire mages have a cooldown Combustion that increases their crit chance.
Arcane mages, on the other hand, have very little RNG in their rotation. The DPS-optimal rotation is simply spamming Arcane Blast, but that results in poor mana efficiency. They have two ways of improving their mana efficiency — using Arcane Missiles to drop the AB debuff or using Arcane Barrage to drop the AB debuff. Their one prime element of RNG dictates which of those two spells they’ll use — Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage has procced (a chance on hit, not chance on crit, mechanic) or Arcane Barrage otherwise. Their two cooldowns directly increase the damage they cause from their normal rotation — Arcane Power increases damage directly and Icy Veins increases their haste (yes, it’s a frost talent, but how many top arcane mages don’t have it?).
If fire and arcane mages have the same top-end DPS potential, then arcane will almost always be better than fire because there is less RNG involved in that rotation. If, however, fire has higher top-end DPS potential and lower low-end DPS potential than arcane, fire mages will prevail in some fights, arcane mages will prevail in other fights, and they’ll be equal on others.
Is this my blog or yours?
Haha, with my track record with Macbook and Sunfyre’s blogs, I’m surprised you weren’t doing everything in your power to keep me away.
In all seriousness, though, I just like trying to contribute positively to the moonkin community. I try to take a realistic approach (as opposed to so much of the whining one might witness on the WoW forums or elsewhere) and prefer to focus on logic and math. I do most of my “work” on the TMR forums, but I enjoy the more intimate discussion and unique ideas presented by your blog and others.
Cheers!
I enjoy responses to my posts, even if i dont reply to them in full (to be fair, i did write a very long blog post anyways
). I only complain when i have something i disagree with, and besides that, i enjoy that people take their time to post a response to whatever i write 
I don’t agree on the “a moonkin can only dps” argument (i’ll use that example as that’s what i’m playing). Yes, it would be stupid to give a moonkin a full healing role in content that isn’t ridiculously overgeared. However a moonkin can switch out of form and dish out some heals in case of urgency, and those do count.
You might opt not to do it (and it’s probably the best decision in 95% of the situations), but that option does exist and can transform wipes into kills.
Actually, i would agree that the more advanced the content you are doing is, the less usefull that option is. Heroics just when we were finishing levelling was probably the place where i used it the most, it did happen to be usefull at times on KT when people were being stupid and so on. The principle is quite simple, if you are saving a dps then you’ve probably already won in terms of overall dps output. If you can keep a tank alive for 1-2 more swings, you have probably kept 1-2 dps alive and also rentabilised things (looking at how bosses hit now a moonkin’s heals won’t help on the tank anymore, but i guess you get the argument).
To be honest, i don’t remember switching to heals in the last few months. I still don’t agree with discounting that ability totally.
Does it justify a penalty ? I tend to think that yes, and it would be somewhat hypocritical to say no since hybrids were all begging for higher dps saying “if i can’t dps, why would they take me” ? It’s the same for pures, if they do the same dps but have less options (second spec, offspec skills, …), why would anyone take them ? Of course it’s only a case of mib-maxing guilds, but it’s an important population enough to be meaningfull i’d think (especially looking at the number of people who just blindly follow what top guild say without addapting it to their situation)
But not a big one like in BC. I want to be able to contribute meaningfull damage, ie be in reasonnable range of the other dps’ers (ie a gap small enough to be bridged by a difference in skill). This means that i’m actually often going to be in the top 5 of my guild most of the times.
As you came to realise, Dje, switching out to heal is really not doable, especially with more advanced content. Tank health bounces so much during fights that if you wanted to help, you’d be bouncing in and out of form constantly. If healers go down, you won’t be able to replace them effectively and the time it takes for you to switch out of form is long enough for the tank to die. Even switching out to heal a DPSer or healer becomes silly because true healers are so adept at what they do.
So, yes, there really is no such thing as a hybrid class any more.
Please try to not make me say the opposite of what i’m writing :/ I’m still standing by my initial point.
While i agree that it’s less and less usefull, it is still usefull and you can construct scenarios where the moonkin can transform a wipe in a kill (let’s say the PC healer dies on Anub10 normal or hm for example).
It’s not a problem of this happening often or not, it’s a problem of “why take a dps if i can take a dps + X”. Even if you don’t use X often, there’s no point in not taking it.
Tbh I agree with most of what Qieth says here, good valid points gj with it. I think though, that people are not taking into consideration PvP capability. Boomkins can heal in pvp, so if they had the same amount of dmg as other classes, that would be quite OP there. I don’t know though, I think it’s stupid to let us have worse dps, but I haven’t had a problem keeping up with skills.