Here's the thing. I knew plenty of paladins who raided as ret. Difference was, they didn't play retribution paladin. They played a paladin.
I can't remember how many times a quick cleanse, heal, bop, or loh from one of the rets saved my guild mates from an untimely death.
I also know many rets who washed out of our guild because they tunneled the meters, didn't pay attention, and in general just didn't play well.
No one has ever said it's about tunneling the meters, and you and the rest of the purist trash need to get that through your damn heads already and stop parroting that nonsense.
Damage + Utility = overall value
Hybrid DPS have poor overall value... It's NOT all about damage, and you look like a moron by trying to insist that it is.
So yes, I'd rather take a druid than a frothing at the mouth guy who does nothing but compare meters and talks about entire classes as "terrible, sub par, waste of a raid spot".
And you would be mathematically wrong for doing taking them, and even more mathematically wrong for wasting gear on them. That isn't debatable, it's basic facts.... As for frothing at the mouth? Yeah, I get a bit upset when purist trash actively try and sabotage Classic by doubling down on the exact same bugs/mistakes that vanilla had, rather than working to address the actual problems/issues with certain specs, and get them working at a level where they don't get laughed at for wanting to play the same damn game everyone else is playing.
Tell me how you would balance hybrids without breaking them elsewhere.
I've already done so in a half dozen or more threads in the past few months.... Rets, Enhancement, and Elemental are all fairly easy to fix... and in ways that wouldn't break PvP.
Boomkin I admittedly don't know well enough to comment, nor Feral, beyond a baseline of nerfing Manual Crowd Pummeler and Wolf'shead Helm (as those two items make feral impossible to balance... as if feral ended up viable without them it would be overpowered with them)
For hybrids that leaves Shadow (which greatly depends on whether the debuff limit is altered or not... if debuff limit was removed Shadow would be very easy to balance... if no debuff limit changes are done, then shadow is a very tricky one to deal with).. And it also leaves Protadin which is another stupidly easy spec to fix. I've covered all of those in other threads (save boomy/feral) but if you really want to be a stubborn little tool I can once again type out how to fix them here...
As for Pures.... Lets see...
Rogue already has 4 viable dps specs... Seal Fate daggers, Combat sword/mace/fist, Combat Daggers, and Deep Sub (which is the weakest of the 4 but has actual utility in the hemo debuff)
Warlock already has viable Affliction and Demo based builds (though this is admittedly arguable as both builds are arguably Ruin-Destro based with deep into demo or aff for a passive modifier)... In any case, Fire Destro is the only one "missing" here, and the solution there is to simply make Searing pain only cause bonus threat with a specific warlock curse active by the lock casting searing pain (say doom or agony).... Now locks can spam searing pain as a fire spell filler for deep destruction, but still keep the threat utility of searing pain for bosses like Twin Emps where a lock typically has to be the magic tank.... Beyond that, Locks would need (like shadow) a change to the debuff limit to really get anything more.
For Mages...
Fire and Frost are already viable... and I think the elemental build also worked in PvE (though that might have been PVP only)....I would try and make Fire mage ignite specific to each mage, but it depends on how the debuff limit works. Arcane is the one that needs love, but I don't have enough mage experience to comment on changing that.
Warriors..(for some reason counted as a pure despite being a hybrid)
Rage normalization is the #1 issue for them.... Feedback loop scaling is broken as hell... and the rage system working like that is a main factor in warrior leveling sucking hard. Normalize rage and warrior leveling sucks a whole lot less, and super geared warriors stop scaling like crazy at end game... Win/Win.
Beyond that, Arms is the spec that needs the most work, but also the most problematic to change... Again here the debuff limit is a major concern.... Testing after rage normalization and allowing the usage of Mortal strike would be needed to see how much Arms is behind Fury, and/or if there aren't other ways to provide the overall value they'd need for PvE, without doing something nuts for what was already the strongest group PvP class in the game.
That leaves, hunters? I didn't play vanilla hunter, and couldn't tell you a single thing about them... The primary factor I can speak of for hunters (and this would also help with hybrids in general and keeping warriors more in line) is simply reverting the late vanilla threat/taunt changes that essentially uncapped threat generation.... Keep those things locked into a Naxx-Exclusive zone wide buff if they really need to be kept at all.... but Hunters being able to feign and drop aggro was their primary utility... and one that rendered worthless when threat capping started becoming impossible.