I am enjoying classic, but I admit the thing that was stopping me from playing it for a long time was Blizzard’s really terrible balance philosophy with regards to hybrid classes. They put far too much weight in the value of being able to theoretically perform a role and not enough into the versatility within a given role that you lose by playing a Hybrid spec. Most hybrid DPS/tanking spec talent trees are numbers buffs (they have to be, since the base values are really terrible) and you still don’t really get there even after investing a bunch of points in them. You’d think you’d get utility for speccing Balance or whatever since utility is supposed to be a Hybrid selling point, but there’s just not enough room in the trees because you need 40 points just to get your damage to levels that aren’t a complete joke. Actually “pure” classes tend to walk away with more utility for their talent investment, too.
If you’re a Rogue or Mage, you have 3 entire trees worth of goodies that improve your ability to DPS and provide amazing solo and group utility on top of that. If the raid you’re doing sucks for your spec, you can spec into one of the other trees and continue to do your job. Utility for hybrids, a theoretical selling point, actually isn’t. Moonkins and Ret Paladin utility is niche and the benefits of them are mathematically dubious. The best stuff is all baseline. There aren’t really benefits for choosing one tree or another.
Imagine you’re a raiding Elemental Shaman. If a raid has bosses that resist Nature magic, then the Elemental Shaman just sucks for that raid. They have other roles to fall back on in those cases, but your raid theoretically loses a DPS player and gains a healer they may not have needed. A mage can go Frost or Fire or Arcane. A Rogue can spec combat or assassination.
Role versatility is actually worth very little in the Classic era, even if it worked properly. Group compositions and raid needs are fairly static, and if your DPS player suddenly needs to start healing instead you’re probably about to wipe. I’m not saying it’s never useful, just that it’s not something you form a raid group around. You don’t count on that need arising.
So the “tax” paid for being able to perform multiple roles gets you very little in return except for good soloing, until you hit cap and you can’t solo for anything because all of your gear and talents are set up specifically to heal a raid group. Your spec changes a bit over time, but mostly you’re just picking and choosing talents from other trees that boost your raid healing. The loss of versatility and utility within your given role does hurt a hybrid class more than the ability to deal Rogue-like damage would make up for because your ability to DPS or tank is set up to work in very narrow circumstances (short fights because you run OOM, or the boss doesn’t resist your only nuke school, or you can’t drop aggro because you don’t have vanish, or whatever) and you aren’t even as effective when those arise.
For the record, I’m not asking for any changes. I’m just lamenting the fact that this great game is stuck with such a black mark on it. Part of the reason I’m team BC is because more specs became useful and gained actual gear to support them.
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For pve maybe. For pvp, it’s priceless. If you came to classic for PVE, I can only ask, why? Retail has better PVE balance by far.
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Granted I’m only 55, but if people actually embrace the hybrid, it is worth the tax, in most content outside of raiding. Raiding is a different story in classic, for sure.
I can’t remember how many times I have saved the group from a 10 minute wipe from popping some heals and cds as dps, or tanking as heals when tank gets wheeled or slept etc.
The problem is the whole meta community who just sees numbers but doesn’t take the whole picture into account.
Wait for pvp though, a good hybrid in phase 2 and 3 will be super valuable. Particularly Druid.
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Because it has been homogenized & pruned to the point of idiocy in retail.
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I don’t disagree here, but gearing a hybrid for PvP is really difficult. Especially feral and balance Druids. The gear they need is difficult to obtain and not itemized for them.
The PVP and AQ sets are passable when they come. But I feel you on that.
While they built the hybrid classes, they never built hybrid/support roles for them to fill, instead sticking fast to the holy trinity.
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Vanilla = unfinished symphony
There’s a reason BC was my favorite. IMHO they attempted to finish a bunch of stuff that they just had to roll with for vanilla. Unfortunately also was the beginning of their slippery expansion slope.
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Homogenized yes, pruned… Classes have never had much going on for them. It takes a lot more than just gear to perform in the 90th percentile in retail. DPS was easier in vanilla.
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Unfortunately, the min/max mindset has taken over. That’s the real issue. Hybrid classes were originally designed to play like hybrid classes.
You didn’t make a ret pally to be the ultimate dps. You made the character to have multiple functions. Did it play out like that? Well, you can raid heal (whether people are accepting it or not nowadays), solo dps/small group dps, or occasionally tank.
In raids, that class gains a unique function on fights like Chromaggus–purely cleanse (or w/e the pally version is, been a bit) and cast buffs repeatedly. It has a unique role.
So in short, there is no tax. You get varied play style depending on what you’re doing. You chose a class without a focus on dps, you do not get to focus on dps when max dps is called for.
Embrace the fact that you, as a hybrid, are needed for your innervate, your bubbles, your unique buffs, totems, or whatever fits the class. That’s what you’re there for, and your additional heals are a bonus. In theory, a little added damage can be a bonus in place, but in raids, your buffs and heals kind of get tied together. And out of raids, you’re whatever you decided to be.
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By the way, I’d argue that the healing trees are the least “hybridy” trees hybrids have. You can always throw a heal out, even if it isn’t very good. But there’s no utility in bad damage or dying in a couple of hits. You purport that playing a hybrid class is about playing to what’s effective in the moment but with they way they’re designed, there’s not a lot of opportunities to contribute that way. I didn’t roll a class with a DPS focus but I chose a class without a healing focus, too.
I mean I’m playing a mage. But yeah.
I also don’t claim that doing max dps is necessary. I just wish that bringing a hybrid dps was a good idea and not just something we do because we are charitable.
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Aww… a whole thread about me.
Anyways. I rolled a Druid so I could do whatever my guild needed. Of course, I always assumed that would be tanking or healing, as dps have always been a dime a dozen. So I looked at all of the classes that could do those roles, and chose one that could perform both roles viably throughout the game, and one that I thought was fun - Druid.
It looks like for the forseeable future, I will be tanking, as there’s a lack of tanks now. If that changes, I know that I can go over and heal viably instead.
There are only a VERY few times when you try to perform a role as a hybrid that you won’t be accepted by 95% of the community: Ret paladin, balance druid, protection pally(raids only). And even with those, you add enough to a 5man group that many group will accept you.
I think the hybrid tax is fine in Classic, and am looking forward to being able to perform whatever role is needed viably.
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BTW I appreciate the civility of most of the responses. 
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Retail PvE is a convoluted and frustrating treadmill where there aren’t classes so much as there are roles.
There is melee, ranged, healer, and tank. The classes and specs themselves feel like nothing more than recolors of others sharing the same role, all following the same builder-spender/combo point rotation design that was originally unique to rogues and feral cats.
The pacing of combat is also annoyingly hyperactive, lending to what makes WoW feel like an action game. Class rotations are like playing guitar hero, and AoE is overabundant rather than being the niche of a few specs.
There’s also the fact that, due to PvP talents, you are locked out of playing a quarter of your class unless you are engaging in PvP. Like your character just has convenient amnesia upon stepping into an instance portal.
Really, it’s the lack of class distinction - both in gameplay and what they bring to a group - that kills retail for me(well, that and story/aesthetic directions that I detestable.) At most, a class will bring one or two unique capabilities to a group, but they are purely optional to the point where there is no sense of loss without them, and no sense of gain with them. Things like death grip are useful, but highly overrated in the impact they create.
Choices only matter at the highest level of play, whereas the rest of us who don’t live and breathe MDI tournaments or whatnot are playing a game rife with apathy.
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Drinking game: Every time a retail player starts a post with “I love classic” and continues with demanding things to be easier like retail.
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Classic is easy too so dunno where youre going with that
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Really? Then why so many retail players demand it to be easier?
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I don’t play retail. The last expansion I played was like mists and the most recent one I own is Legion.
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Cause theyre bad? Your guess is just as good as mine but if you think Classic is hard then that says more about you than the game.
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