Originally Posted by
zenga
Assuming there are 4 roles in the raid: ranged dps, melee dps, tank and healer - if you are a hybrid you play another role (from ret melee to holy healer), as a pure you still play your same role. That is a substantial difference. I for one am much more comfortable swapping from SV to MM or swapping from destro to affliction on alts that I hardly play, than that I am able to swap from ele to enhance on my ele shaman that I've been playing for years. It's much safer to assume that one can play 2 specs within the same role at a high standard than 2 different roles.
Your 'most guilds' statement is largely based on the guilds that you know, but matter of fact is that every guild I've played in or that I know, are/were fine with playing a single spec as hybrid. Even guilds that are so called hardcore. Obviously there are plenty of guilds that require you to play multiple classes/multiple specs as well. Point being is that there is no real data to make such a claim, as it's based on personal experience.
My theory is that it's based on the player in combination with the roster. Our shadow priest is one of the highest ranking spriests in the world, patch after patch. He plays spriest since release, never played anything else, nor does he have any alts. Our boomkin is the only hybrid who can swap between feral / chicken and play at the same standard. My guild just recruited a new resto shaman as our 4th healer; something that in theory I could've played. But my mindset is totally different from a healer, it would take ages before (and if) I could reach the same standard. If our gladiator disc priest decides to play shadow on farm, he is dead weight, we might as well 9 man it. If our incredible holy paladin plays ret, he is behind on dps, even in bis gear. But our mage, hunter, warrior, rogue, lock are swapping specs around like I'm changing underwear. In my experience only a minority of the players are able to perform at the same level across multiple roles (I want to leave off tanking out tbh). but it's very well possible that those players are clustered within the top 50 guilds.