Burning Crusade 
And what “fixed” tbc?
The point is that the philosophy of the classes, not the order/amount of abilities they have.
Strip away all the spell visuals, and you’ll notice every DPS spec of the same role in modern WoW has the same idea. Use cheap/free light hits to build 1 resource, spend said resource on another while the others recharge.
All of these abilities, at the same time, just do only one thing. They do damage. They don’t benefit from anything else, interact with anything, have nothing interesting about them, but the fact they do damage in differing quantities. What little unique aspects these abilities do have are very simplified: almost “too easy” to understand, leaving very little room for experimentation.
As far as utility goes, unless you are a healer role, you have all of a couple tidbits of utility that are often way overrated in the benefit they’ll provide. Greater Blessing of Wisdom is 1% mana and health every 10 seconds; in the quick-paced environment of PvE and PvP in modern WoW, that amounts to nothing that will be felt.
It’s pure placebo. It’s not just these blessings, but also most other “utilities” such as death grip and shroud. Unless you are trying to squeeze out absolutely everything in mythic raid server first races or extremely high keystones, the game does not seem to care what decisions you make in the class/spec you choose. It all boils down to the same mediocrity in the bigger picture. I don’t feel any different with or without Death Grip on my DK in the long run, since it doesn’t even make a difference to what matters according to the game anyways.
In Classic, even something as trivial as leveling or farming will make you care what choices you make in your class and build: all the way down to the individual pieces of gear you wear.
The gear itself is another issue that is very “bland” in modern WoW. Almost every item is stam+primary stat+a budget of 1 or 2 secondary stats. There are very few items with unique capabilities that break free of this droll paradigm, very few that have special interactions with particular classes and specs; none of them are memorable outside of how they look.
There is a reason why simply spamming frostbolt or backstab can feel a lot better than pulling off the most high APM rotations in modern WoW. These reasons are not in the numbers on the screen itself, but what goes on behind the scenes to achieve those: the specific, unique combination of gear and talents, at the right scenario.
Having more classes being able to do many things in similar ways isn’t diversity, it’s destroying diversity. No two specs can do the same things, and I’m not even talking about numbers.
Squak-squak buddy, that’s the whole point. The goal is to be directionless; whatever direction a player or community has must be put upon themselves, by themselves. The lack of a clear direction leaves the world feeling much more natural and organic.
When it comes to an RPG, you don’t want it to actually feel like a video game, as weird as that sounds. You want it to feel natural. The fact that WoW Classic is so unpolished, so janky, and so directionless is what I love about it.
It’s supposed by almost everyone who believes hybrid DPS specs shouldn’t be useful. As for why it’s a supposition, I couldn’t say, but there are really only two ways to properly balance hybrid classes. You can give them great DPS in exchange for having relatively lean toolkits for the role, or you can keep their DPS modest but provide them with superior support and utility. Great DPS is overwhelmingly unpopular even despite the hybrid DPS/paladin tank toolkits being really lean.
You’re really testing the limits of the analogy, aren’t you?
Here’s the bottom line: everyone always asks why you’d roll a Mage if Moonkins were good at their job, but no one ever asks why you’d roll a Druid. If your answer is “because they are versatile,” I’d challenge that claim. If your answer is “they’re good healers,” I’d ask why you’re not mad on behalf of Priests everywhere. If your answer is “because you play what you enjoy,” I’d ask why that isn’t enough for Rogue players or whatever.
Utility and support have to be the “selling points” because otherwise there’s nothing left.
No, but that isn’t really the point. A “pure” DPS class’ specializations offer some degree of long-term usefulness at level cap depending on what you want to do. Several hybrid specs offer very little.
Also, hybrid trees are roles. Rogue trees are flavors. Hybrids don’t have individual flavors, which is the whole point I’m making. That’s what they give up to be able to do multiple roles.
I’ll grant you that I definitely feel a social pressure to be able to contribute.
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I think this is sort of the heart of the point you’re making, and also precisely the bone I have to pick with your point.
Other things aside, like who is making the claims or suppositions, sales, etc., etc.
I’ve enjoyed playing a druid, and consider warrior and druid equally my mains, and mostly always have. Where I think druid, in particular shines, among hybrids (I notice that warriors tend not to be classified as hybrids, and wonder why, though that’s an aside), are that they can perform in multiple content well, as different roles.
For example, for 5-man instances, druids are excellent tanks. For raiding, druids are fine healers, and excellent off tanks. For PVP, druids have a lot of options, depending on content and what is being done, but watching the Classic Dueller’s League on Faerlina, it’s interesting to see the hybrid playstyle in 1v1s, and how well it does, depending on match up, and of course, who is playing.
So, here’s the point that I would like to make, if you are playing a hybrid, whatever and where ever suppositions are made or coming from, just as with every other class, there will be different specs for different content that shine. They may not always be the same role, and some things will just be ridiculous.
Now, to finally address the point that I quoted, there’s one major reason why someone (well, why I personally) would play a hybrid, and what appeals to me as a selling point for druids, and that is that I can perform different roles effectively for different end-game content. I can tank 5-man instances, heal raids, and be an effective hybrid for some PVP content, and be a specialized flag carrier for other PVP content. How many other classes have such role diversity at end game?
Anyway, I want to say that I feel your pain, and no more so did I than in early Legion, when I wanted nothing more than to play Feral in all content, and was even able to in a raid setting, but not for Mythic Plus, and I hated that (but in retrospect, I could have just gone literally any other spec for M+ at the time, and performed quite well).
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This so-called “hybrid” tax is something that was created by the player-base, not the designers.
Progressing through MC/Ony back in the day was a lot harder. The players weren’t as knowledgable, and the game has gone through a number of revisions since (recall that 1.12 is a very polished version of Classic!)
Seeing that a well-organized group of sub-level 60 players in quest gear were able to completely clear MC during the first week should indicate that not everyone needs to be pulling max DPS in order to clear content.
The game is plenty balanced enough to allow for boomkins, ret paldins, feral druids and various shamans to raid without ill-effect. I suspect that raids can tolerate 5-8 hybrids and be just fine.
Having mixed raid compositions will probably make things more interesting, and will probably make things much nicer when gearing!
I always wondered this too. How come it’s perfectly acceptable for warriors to be top tier tanks and dps but Ret, Balance, Shadow, ect get left out in the cold?
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Its because various influential people at Bliz were warrs in EQ.
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Yes because when you log into classic, and click on a random player at level 60, they aren’t using a cookie cutter spec, they are playing a unique and flavorful build. Why do people make this argument at all? It’s so disingenuous it just makes your motives as clear as day.
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Those are specializations, not a class (shadow is pretty amazing, btw). But, rephrase that to “paladins, druids, and priests get left out in the cold,” and it makes no sense at all, because they don’t. They are all excellent classes.
Ok, but my point still stands. Why isn’t Ret as viable as Warrior dps? Why isn’t pally tanking as viable as warrior tanking? What makes paladins, druids, and priests ”hybrids” when warriors are simply top tier tanks and dps?
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I’m not sure what your point is/was, but perhaps your questions here are them?
Why isn’t Ret as viable as Warrior dps?
Are we speaking strictly for end-game raiding content, or?
Also, I’m not quite sure that this question deserves a reasonable response, but paladins have access to skills and abilities that warriors do not, including self heals. There are several trade offs to choosing one class over another, but asking a question like, why isn’t spec A as viable as spec B doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere useful.
Why aren’t warriors better healers? I don’t know, but they aren’t, and I’m pretty sure we all knew that going into Classic 
Probably mostly due to a lack of taunt, though there may be some other reasons as well. I’m really not very familiar with WoW Classic paladin toolkits.
Hybrids are healers.
Hybrids have access to multiple roles.
Because that’s not a role warriors have access to. Seems like a silly question to me.
So do warlocks, but you don’t see their dps suffer because of it.
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LOL talking about prunning when playing classic. The autoatacking/one buttom rotation game.
And idk each spec and class feels completely different from each other to me i dont think you know what homogenized means. You wanna talk about homogenization, think about MOP era, the one everybody keep saying its the apex of class design. Thats because every class had the same tools. You barely could tell the difference between a warlock and a mage.
Well, there we go
Hybrids aren’t for noobs if you go against healing. It’s for more advanced players.
They’re demanding it be less tedious, not easier.
They’re two completely seperate things.
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/10chars
The problem there is you are using Retail comparisons for Classic, no offense meant. Retribution is just one of the set of talents that the Paladin class has on offer. The fantasy role is “PALADIN”, that valiant crusader against evil that stands for righteousness and justice. Towards that fantasy role, a Paladin can choose talents from three different trees to customize how they want to play that role.
The whole “Ret Paladin, Fire Mage, (insert spec here) Class” system is part of Retail. I have talents in Arcane and Frost. Am I an Arcane or a Frost Mage? The answer in Classic is “none of the above”. I am a Mage with talents in the Frost and Arcane magic schools. Doesn’t mean I cannot still use Fire magic, I am just not as talented with it as I am with the other two schools. The same would be true for a Paladin who chooses to take talents in Retribution. They are still a Paladin, they just are more talented in using Retribution skills than a Paladin who chooses not to take those same talents.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Only 1 of the specs (at least for paladins) are viable (well if you min/max) and that is Holy. Other than a Holy Paladins, the other 2 Trees did get left out in the cold. Prot has no Taunt and most of the raid bosses need to be taunted, so that killed them as viable Tanks for raiding. And Ret got the dps hammer so they were not overpowered in Pvp with their heal button, but because of that they were frowned upon as raid dps. So 2/3’s of Paladin specs were left out in the cold. At least on any Leading Edge raiding guilds.