Incorrect.
Your memory sucks and you fail at defining singular words that are the prime subject of the debate you’re attempting to have (in bad faith).
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Lot of things predate WoW, but it didn’t become relevant in WoW until the first expansion as class roles in raids were made more flexible.
You know what, I’ll take the high road.
I’m going to actually define important terminology here for you, despite the fact you seem incapable of doing so for other, simpler words.
Hybrid tax refers to the gap in performance a class incurs at a role because they have the option to do multiple roles. The reason it was present in vanilla is because in later expansion they relaxed the hybrid tax by making classes able to perform no matter what spec they were in. Respectively, most consider the hybrid tax to longer exist today (in retail), or at the very least the game is not designed to have one.
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No, classes weren’t even allowed to do certain roles in raiding in Vanilla. You can’t tax a role that doesn’t exist.
Nobody is disallowed from doing anything. Paladins can raid ret. It doesnt mean it’s good or viable.
Just like any class can exist in a raid taking up a slot, that also doesn’t make them good or viable either.
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https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/20677330431-hybrid-tax/
“This philosophy largely evolved in Wrath of the Lich King and is the design we plan on carrying forward to Cataclysm. In vanilla WoW, every class typically had one role. In BC, we tried to promote other roles for some classes, but we still didn’t make everyone play by the same rules. Warriors, and I hate to pick on them, were intended to be the best tank while also deliver dps that we would now label as competitive with rogues. By contrast, druids, paladins, priests and shaman were intended to be competitive healers, but have dramatically lower dps than pures and warriors. Likewise, druids, paladins, priests and shaman brought many unique and powerful buffs that were intended to compensate for their low dps. We spread these buffs out to a much greater degree in Lich King, and plan on refining that implementation for Cataclysm.” - Ghostcrawler
According to him, the hybrid tax didn’t really become a thing until Wrath. I was being generous saying TBC.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding what the “hybrid tax” is, definitionally.
You say you played back then but I can’t be sure if you seriously missed the boat on the hybrid tax discourse.
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I literally linked a post by the old lead Game Dev saying hybrid tax wasn’t a thing until Wrath and you still argue.
Ok, I’ve fed you long enough. I’ll just leave after my checkmate.
Cheers.
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You absolute dingus, you don’t even read your citations, do you?
He’s literally talking about how the hybrid tax went away by the time Wrath rolled around.
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Every single class should have a dps spec that can compete for the #1 dps slot, with that competition being based on gear dependancy. By that I mean every class, being in its %100 optimal Naxx BiS /w enchants and dps spec etc, should be doing essentially the same damage when compared to each other.
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This is called retail.
Classic WoW is a role playing game, where warriors and rogues will always do the most damage in a pure single-target fight.
Mages and warlocks carry the multi-target damage.
And hunters are in between the casters and the melee in both aspects.
Roles should be by spec not class
Yeah, that’s retail. Not Classic.
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Don’t get me wrong, I’d be playing TBC if they had done a server for it. In my opinion, it’s closer to a ‘complete’ vanilla in terms of class design.
Demonstrating for the class that you can’t read…
The bolded part is the hybrid tax.
The fact they could do different roles, resulted in them not being able to do all their roles the best or as good as other pures.
The reason Warriors were an “exception” is because they were, by technicality, a hybrid that could do both of their roles optimally in a raid setting.
The hybrid tax went away as expansions moved on because they began to balance it so that any class in any role could compete. That is a lack of a hybrid tax.
To be clear:
Vanilla - Hybrid tax in full effect
TBC - still kinda there but not as bad
WOTLK - mostly gone
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Hell must have frozen over because I actually with Zaalg here.
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There’s nothing to agree with because he’s just plain factually incorrect about history and he’s not really arguing any sort of point.
He’s saying basically that all classes have a place in a raid as a way to defend that many specs are useless.
I actually agree with the sentiment in the sense that I’m never going to ask for, as an example, ret paladins to get buffed so they compete with rogues. I’m fine with them sucking butt at the bottom of the meter forever. That’s just classic design.
The problem is his argument about “viability”. This completely depends on your definition of the word “viable”. Like are we talking “won’t cause the raid to wipe single-handedly due to their attendance” or “can compete with others in their role”?
It’s two completely different conditional terms and in general, saying all classes are viable isn’t even really true, but it depends on your definition of the word.
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You’ve got the logic backward. Hybrid Tax doesn’t just mean a class’s kit for a job has tools that are weaker. It can also means it has less tools in general, or even no tools, for that job. In the latter case, the job has been fully taxed out of the class’s capabilities.
Rogues have one job: melee dps. They are completely taxxed out of healing, pet utility, tanking, and ranged/caster dps. Because they are so severely taxxed out of these other roles, they are considered the purebred for WoW’s melee DPS job. Because of this, they should in virtually every case perform the highest at that one job.
This is Classical RPG basics.
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Specifically, ‘perfect’ viability.
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A lot of the classes were not close to viable. A lot of them ran out of mana part way through a fight and had to wand/melee which is unfun and bad dps.
Mage, rogues and warriors did significantly more dps than all other dps specs so why bring those other specs if you didn’t have to.
Some specs couldn’t be played at all because their dots would continuously be knocked off by the debuff limit. That’s not viable at all.
You seem to miss the point of being a dps, if you can’t do damage and feel like you’re aren’t contributing properly ofcourse you are going to have an unfun experience which is counter to the point of playing a game.
Your definition of viable needs some work or you just have the nostalgia tinted glasses on so you can’t see the problems that harm the game.