Yup. Thats why BC is the better expansion and a lot of us are anxiously waiting for it’s release.
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You think mages have healing talents? Read what you replied to.
So you don’t know how tanking works in classic.
Then maybe you shouldn’t be talking about it.
And lol@ the idea that a warrior tanking is just sitting in defense stance with a sword and board.
Warriors are dual wield tanking Onyxia.
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As I suspected you are not talking about tanking. You talking about Warriors using 2Handers or two 1 handers in DStance and being a defacto tank because they have threat abilities and more armor than most. That doesn’t make them the tank experiencing a hybrid tax. I could put 40 priests in an Ony fight and someone will be “tanking” it. You are arguing two different things. You asked if I think a Warrior would be doing poor dps behind this idea that because they are a hybrid and aren’t suffering a tax, ‘see here you’re wrong you don’t know what you are talking about attitude’.
But you are veiling this position behind not explaining you are talking about a Warrior who is actually not spec’d in Defense gear, with a Shield in the Prot tree where the tax would exist. I had to drag it out of you to figure out what the hell you were talking about.
Lets not kid ourselves here. These are DPS Warriors acting as defacto (by default) tanks.
I actually think that much of the problem was that originally World of Warcraft was designed as an MMORPG. Except NOT the RPG we experience now in Retail that consists of nothing but numbers and three roles. The original game was meant to be played as an RPG where your role was Mage, Warlock, Druid, etc. and I do not think anyone actually thought there would be a whole cadre of people who would keep looking “behind the curtain” at the man rather than playing the fantasy RPG game that was presented to them.
It was only once the min/maxers and spreadsheet jockeys started stripping the game down to just a bunch of bare numbers that hybrids started looking a little pale by comparison. And again, they only really look pale in specialized areas of the game that compose less than one percent of the content available… the raids.
I remember running into a Druid player way back in Vanilla in Astranaar. She asked if I would help her with finding the entrance to Black Fathom Deep. While we were partied together she mentioned how she found it hard to get parties because Druids were considered hybrid characters and due to the “hybrid tax” that “no one wanted to party with a Druid”, in her own words. While I knew that Druids were hybrids and that hybrids had a bad rep with the raiders, all I could think of was, “Wait, you can tank and heal? I cannot do either of those things on my Mage. Let’s party!!” I did not care so much about any number discrepancies between us. I was more into the fantasy image and gameplay of running into a companion who could shore up my weaknesses and watch my back while I watched hers.
Alas, you will find this imagination and immersion gone from most players and developers of the modern game. But from what I have read about the original developers, it was part of their vision to offer this fantasy world to those who previously only had their imagination and some dice, pencils, and paper to actually play in one. For those who can still accept the magic and fun of that fantasy world, there is nothing wrong with a hybrid class.
For those who only know and appreciate the cold, hard math of the game… Well, those people are usually never happy unless ALL the numbers are equal and it would be impossible for that to happen unless they homogenize all the classes as they have done in Retail (and even THERE the numbers are never equal. LOL!). Classic really was not meant for the spreadsheet jockeys, in my opinion. It was meant to be enjoyed as a fantasy role-playing game where your role was your class, not what numbers your class generated. 
TLDR: The min/max mindset and spreadsheet jockeys were not who Classic World of Warcraft was designed for. For those people, Retail is a much better fit. Classic World of Warcraft was designed for those people who wanted to immerse themselves in a magical, fantasy role-playing game and in that context there is nothing wrong with hybrid classes.
Thanks.
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If a Protection Warrior respecs to a Fury Warrior they will do excellent dps.If a Protection or Holy Pally respecs to a Ret Pally,they will do crap dps.That is the hybrid tax.
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What is the Ret Pally fantasy role?
This isn’t even remotely what I’m saying or asking for.
Here’s a reiteration of the primary points:
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having multiple roles doesn’t matter in endgame pve because there are 40 players and you’re only needed to play one.
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respeccing as someone who only performs one role has a lot of value and utility for your personal performance and for the the group.
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hybrid baseline healing is overpowered.
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people arguing against hybrid DPS spec buffs overvalue inter-role versatility and undervalue intra-role versatility, despite the fact that one of these is obviously stronger and more desirable and useful in the current state of the game. a mage going from frost to fire when your guild reaches AQ40 or Naxx does a lot more for you and your guild than a Druid changing from any spec to any spec at any time post-MC. role versatility does not provide equal utility to versatility within a role, bottom line.
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people arguing against hybrid DPS spec buffs also consistently try to reframe any argument for it as druid/shaman/paladin players wanting to do rogue DPS when no one ever asks for that and we primarily ask for a.) hybrid utilities to be spread out among specs more fairly and sensibly, such as mana tide totem being an elemental talent or battle res being a feral talent and b.) a gear path that makes sense and doesn’t leave us in suboptimal armor levels with poor stat distribution.
Here is what I’m not saying:
“I want to do as much DPS as a rogue and tank like a warrior and heal like a priest all in one.”
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Gear is really the limiting factor on hybrids in vanilla. Hybrids like ret, feral, balance, and ele are really good when they get epic pvp gear or AQ gear. In pvp they are great, because they fill the role of a true hybrid. In raids, min/maxing is usually what works best so hybrids dont really shine. But even in pve, something like a 30/21 druid can heal very well and then swap to bear and tank whenever needed mid fight.
I have seen this exact same sentence posted, almost verbatim, like 20 times in the last week.
I am all for the idea of parallel thinking, but I would bet it would take me like 10 minutes of watching youtube to figure out why this is being parroted.
A rogue and warrior look and feel more similar in classic than in retail.
My guild has 3 raid groups running MC each week, there is almost zero spec diversity from class to class. Does a mage have more identity because it has spells that aren’t used?
I don’t disagree that BFA class design has issues, but I sincerely believe are just talking to hear themselves talk about these issues.
The MMO the parrots would create would be god awful and directionless.
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This has always bothered me too. Vanilla WoW has almost zero spec diversity.
What I do think Vanilla WoW has over BFA is a better buff philosophy. I like classes having individualized buffs. I also think that in retail’s attempts at making classes feel more mechanically complex, they’ve lost a little bit of identity because a lot of rotations feel like some dart-board combination of “keep buffs up,” “spend combo points,” “spam best nuke” and “watch for procs.”
In a weird way the simplicity of spamming Frostbolt is actually better at maintaining class identity because there are only so many ways to build a damage spec, and there are 29? specs in retail now.
I don’t agree with a lot of points these sorts of players make, but consider Travel Form and Ghost Wolf. Travel Form was designed to be an in-combat mobility tool, and Ghost Wolf was designed to be a mobility tool that is used primarily between encounters. The problem is that the Druid Travel Form is also used for that, making the Shaman one effectively inferior. In Vanilla, we’d say: that’s fine, Druids are the shapeshifting class. In BFA we’d say “yeah that’s true but it makes Ghost Wolf feel super bad” despite the fact that it really isn’t, it’s just worse than travel form.
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this is false. many people have asked for all dps to do roughly equal dps, just like in wrath.
There’s a way to balance that, but I don’t think it would make most players happy.
Currently – if changes were to be made and I realize they won’t be – the best way to do it is to buff the worst-performing DPS hybrids to a respectable (though still lower) DPS level, make sure they have gear, shift some baseline utility into the end of their tree.
Again, being able to theoretically respec to DPS doesn’t matter half as much as being able to respec frost to fire. It’s a much bigger deal to be able to do that. Roles are overvalued.
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not without completely redesigning the classes from the ground up. better for those people to just wait for wrath.
This is an interesting statement, “supposed to be a Hybrid selling point…”
Who supposes this? Why is this a supposition?
If this is a selling point, who is making the sale? Who came up with this selling point? Who is the intended customer?
So, if you play a class that has only DPS specializations available to it, you can be pretty sure that one of those specializations will be viable for content, but not necessarily the particular flavor that you may prefer.
If we generalize the trees into flavors instead of roles, and call them equally flavor A, B, and C, is there ever a situation when literally no combination of A, B, and C will provide a viable specialization for content for a given class?
Following this, it sounds like what you’re saying is, if you decide to play a hybrid for raiding, specifically, you should be prepared to specialize in the role it is best at.
When Legion came out, I had decided to main feral druid, because I was most comfortable in arenas as feral, and had read up on Legion artifact weapons. I was worried that Blizzard was trying to push classes into selecting a single spec for all content, and decided that I’d go with the spec I liked best for the things I liked best, which at the time was arenas.
It was no secret that PVE was important for gaining access to gear, and leveling artifact weapons with artifact power, and they also introduced Mythic+ dungeons. While I did struggle a little on some of the boss fights in the initial raid, The Emerald Nightmare, I was able to top meters on most of the bosses, with a great deal of work, practice and preparation. However, feral was just not viable whatsoever for lower level Mythic Plus instances.
Literally every other druid spec was viable though, and my own insistence on playing Feral for all content, and thoughts that I would have to select only one spec for all content was the limiting factor for me to enjoy Mythic+ runs. In retrospect, I see that it was me who made those choices, and set those limitations.
I would think that would be
Damage comparable to a good warrior if the Ret is extremely good and with comparable gear. This is probably what RET would want.
Currently, Ret healing in damage gear consist of maybe 8 flash of lights that would heal for 150, not much healing there. Ret in heal gear would basicaly hit like a wet noodle against a rock not much damage to happen.
So not big threat of them being the killing healer machine everyone thinks they are.
But again, its Classic and all the Ret knew what it was if they were here in Vanilla.
this is relevant
Blizzard tends to agree - which is why they ‘fixed’ this in later expansions.
However, I’d argue that the real problem was never the ‘hybrid tax’ - it was raiding.
In a 5-man (or even 10-man to some extent), your entire arsenal of abilities matters. The fact that a Druid can do things a Mage can’t is important in many situations. But when you expand the group to 40 people, the value of versatility vanishes because whatever a Druid can do someone else can do better - and you just have everyone do what they do best.
What Blizzard really should have done is leave the ‘hybrid tax’ in place and make the endgame centered around 5- and 10- player content rather than mass raids. Alternatively, if they were going to make mass raids, they should have been logistical ‘raids’ like the opening of AQ40 rather than simply plunking 40 warm bodies in the same room so they can dodge the same set of fireballs.
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I agree with a lot of whats said here.
For buffs, a lot still exist and mainly shamans, paladins, and warlock curses arw the ones left out and could use some love.
Warrior battleshout is still there.
Mage arcane int
Priest Fort
Paladin somewhat with wisdom but i know its not the same
Innervate
Monk and DH bring their own unique buffs (or rather debuffs)
There are also new niche utility that can change a dungeon or raid strat like warlock gate and rogue shroud.
Things like treants, grip, ring of peace, and such for dungeon utility.
I feel retail blindly gets labeled with “all classes are the same/homegenized” because they all do competative (relative) damage and rather than looking at their utility, damage patterns and specialities, buffs/debuffs, etc.
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All these responses…there’s a game that “fixed” this right?