Rogues do not have increased threat generating abilities or a taunt. So no. DPS Warriors do.
We’re not talking about PvP.
But yes in the context of PvP yes Ret, Shadow, Boomkin, etc are hybrids and Warriors are not.
In PvE content which is what this discussion is about Warriors are absolutely hybrids.
I’ve saved a wipe on my Fury Warrior because the tank died, I went Defensive Stance taunted the boss and shield walled while the tank got rezzed and rebuffed.
A Rogue could not do that unless they were already 2nd threat.
seems like kind of an arbitrary line to draw in the sand
warriors cannot tank in dps spec. They lack the gear and talents to do it. Only feral is really a hybrid here, being able to wear a lot of agility/dps orientated stats and tank and dps in the same fight, largely because they get a passive 6% reduction to be hit/crit via talents in wotlk.
Hybrid as a term means doing two things at once. If your class can perform multiple roles but there is no crossover in those roles, you just arent a hybrid. Vanilla balance reflected this. Healing is the fundamental basis for being a hybrid, because you could do it in any spec in a meaningful way.
A pet can also growl, a holy paladin can also cast taunt… like the taunt ability itself doesnt make you a hybrid. A feral absolutely can dps and tank in the same fight but no other class can. Popping a defensive for a few seconds doesnt make you a tank. A rogue can evasion tank a boss. The raid can even misdirect to him if they so desired (lol). A shadow priest can tank algalon’s big bang. None of that makes any of these specs tank specs.
Think about the word “hybrid” for a moment. If we had a world were a fury warrior could function like a feral and bounce between tanking and dpsing then you’d have a very strong point but that isnt how the game works. Warrior is a multi-role class. An elemental shaman is a hybrid. A feral is the closest thing we have to a hybrid that can tank. DKs are not hybrids. They are a multi-role class.
And Rets cannot heal in dps spec. They lack the gear and talents to do it.
Then explain how in what world Ret is a Hybrid? Casting 4 heals and going oom is exactly the same as “Popping a defensive for a few seconds”
And yes I completely agree that Feral is far more of a tank hybrid than Warrior/DK is.
But if you’re trying to argue that a Ret casting a couple heals is a hybrid then a Warrior/DK tanking for a few seconds is also a hybrid.
Why cant warriors be happy with being middle of the pack dps? Your expansion was vanilla and late TBC. Why must you whine all the time.
Priests were never top dps in ALL OF CLASSIC, but you dont see them whine all the time about it. Neither were paladins, shamans or druids
Some of their mistakes only showed up later on, like in wrath classic, now that players are far better at maximizing the class rotations and gearing. Also starting on the last patch caused issues, where the original wrath was making balance adjustments each tier to keep things more even.
A hybrid can do two things at once, like a hybrid car. An elemental shaman can heal for example, sometimes to very strong effect. Also brings lots of buffs and utility. A DK or Warrior are multi-role classes. They can tank, but the gear and spells from speccing tank have no bearing on their DPS spec. The defensives they have as a DPS are the same defensives that rogues, hunters, mages, priests, etc all get from their dps specs as well.
Think about a shadow priest versus a mage. The priest can heal, cleanse, bubble, etc. Think about a Ret v a warrior in vanilla - paladin can heal, freedom, bubble, etc. If the hybrids do the same damage it makes hybrid objectively better in all scenarios, hence why hybrids need a tax. The warrior’s ability to tank with a respecc however has no bearing on their encounter so its a multi-role class. If somehow being a tank provided the same power and utility that having the ability to heal did, then they’d be a hybrid, but they dont and as a result, are not.
You can say this all you want but it doesnt change the fact that for multiple expansions the “tax” was directly connected to how powerful the hybrid powers made a class. As hybrid powers were diluted and non-hybrids got more hybrid type spells, the tax for hybrids went down.
Youre conflating two terms. Multi-role and hybrid are not the same, and the design choices for a long time confirmed it.
Also this is the most logical approach. Why tax a multi-role class when that other role doesnt provide any benefit to its current spec the way being a hybrid does? That would just make multi-role classes objectively bad and underpowered.
It literally is just “can respec into a different role”
Because in raiding, the side stuff is rarely relevant. When you are min maxing a comp, you don’t pick a class that does bad DPS, but a little bit of healing, or a defensive cooldown. If you need healing, you take a good healer. If you want damage, you take your good damage. Hybrids don’t get used as hybrids in raids.
The pure DPS also have good utilities. Locks bring battle rezzes, health stones, utility curses, the best SP buff in the game, and no one questions them being good at DPS.
No hybrid is particularly benefitting from their hybrid abilities in a 25 man raid setting, so it doesn’t make sense to penalize any of them for it harshly.
That’s why the hybrid tax only looked at what you can respec into, not what side things your DPS spec can do. If you are fighting for a DPS slot, all of the classes with a DPS spec need to be able to get the spot on their DPS alone. This is especially true with Blizzard’s goal of creating buff/debuff overlap to remove earlier emphasis on utility in raiding.
Rets are a high utility spec. Can still offheal but its less impactful that prior expansions, but you get the salvs, blessings, crit/haste buffs, sacs potentially, bops, freedoms, etc. Theyre in a similar category to elemental and feral - classes that still do a lot of dmg but arent as high as the classes that dont have a battle rez or raid damage reduction cooldown…
To the same effectiveness that a dps warrior can off tank so it’s irrelevant
Brought by the other Paladins
Brought by other classes
Crit is brought by Prot Pally, Ele, Assassination
Haste is brought by Boomkins which are generally brought
They have to spec into Divine Sacrifice which is a massive dps loss making the entire argument irrelevant because they wouldn’t even be better than Warriors
So now that we’ve covered that most of Ret’s utility is covered by other classes lets talk about Warrior utility since it doesn’t matter if it’s covered by other classes or not to be relevant utility.
5% Physical Crit, Sunder Armor, interrupts, Commanding Shout (Blood Pact is only other one), Attack Speed Reduction (Thunderclap), Demo Shout
And if they want to spec into utility like Rets can with DSac then Warriors can get Commanding Presence to make Commanding Shout better or Imp Demo Shout for an AoE improved AP reduction.
I’m talking about warrior because this is about warriors. But I do have the same opinion on that yes. I’m not saying I’m against warrior buffs, just that it shouldn’t what your enjoyment hinges on.