GC: In vanillla, hybrids could only heal (except warriors)

[Breimann]

My guild raided into Naxx40 back in the day. One of our offtanks was a Paladin. There were a few times where he MT'd MC for us earlier on. We also had a Balance Druid and a Ret Pally who I remember putting up competitive numbers. They wouldn't top the meter, but they'd be in the top 10 dps most of the time.

Of course, the norm was if you could tank, you tanked, or if you could heal, you healed. If you had both, you healed. That doesn't mean that there weren't players that did well in other specs... they just weren't meant to.

[Deleted]

ITT OP pretending he played vanilla.

Moonkin form was added in TBC.

Tree of life form was added in TBC. Moonkin form was added in vanilla. Check your facts, or try reading a guide in a language you will understand: http://druid.wikispaces.com/Alamo+teechs+u+2+play+DURID!

[Zstr]

GC wasn't even around in vanila

[Deleted]

He was talking about roles, Mages were DPS no matter what, and still are of course. They were Frost in MC and BWL, and for highest damage output they'd spec Fire once you hit AQ40 and Naxx.

All of the mages I knew back then in Naxx were frost as their main spec. They actually went fire very rarely, only for a few encounters.

I guess it differs from guild to guild, player to player.

---------- Post added 2013-01-02 at 07:41 PM ----------

GC wasn't even around in vanila

He played the game and he was a designer, just not for WoW.

[Deleted]

I do remember people using shadow priests because of their aoe mana regeneration.

[Miedo]

Now now now, in vanilla, you could tank as arms w/talents.

Also, you had 40 slots- there was 1 of each class that specced the 'wrong' spec IF it brought a buff. My raid group was not hard core, and we still only had 1 shadow priest (who raided MC/BWL + AQ40) and 1 caster druid, the rest were healers. We had 1 warriors who was arms, and he would tank as arms, because whatever talents were possible to get when he was dps specced as well. Then we had like 3 other warriors who would tank. I heard of one raiding shaman who was enhancement- in the serious guild Juggernaut- who got teh 2handed legendary. It was awesome to hear the QQ on the forums when he pvp'd. Rogues raided as combat, because mutilate wasn't in game yet. You could still spec 20 pts into though to get what you needed.

For the most part, hybrids only healed in vanilla. Priest = healer, Druid = healer, Paladin = healer (with a ret spec for pvp!), shaman = healer (with 30 pts into elemental if I remember right). Also as I remember, ret paladins weren't worth bringing more than 1 of at least until sunwell- and then to keep up judgement of wisdom and if they were good at seal twisting, they'd do decent DPS. But you'd still have 3 healing paladins, and 1 with tanking gear for trash + the boss after brutallus (unless you could find a GOOD tanking paladin).

[Nairobi]

Long, pointless, and inaccurate diatribe.

Why is it that EVERY. SINGLE. POST. you make is a complaint about ret. Here, you managed to find a topic focusing on a largely accurate blanket statement, and somehow bastardize it to villainize the ret paladin. I'm assuming from this post that you are a (bad) rogue who lost his raid spot to a ret pal and has never gotten over the grudge. I know most people have a tongue-in-cheek joke about GC hating on retpals, but Jesus tap-dancing Christ, you take the cake. I'm not sure at what point in time you got your panties in a bunch about one spec of one class, but it may be time for a new hobby, or at least some new facts...

Having raided in Vanilla and cleared all content at 60, hybrids had very few roles. I played a DPS warrior, which was (as GC mentioned) the ONE real exception to the rule about hybrids. SPriests were rare, but were the only other exception. Here is how hybrids worked:
Druid: Heals only. Casts rejuv on ONE target (cant stack hots in vanilla!) and RG/HT when your healing party was not re-genning mana (aka wanding)
Paladin: Buff only. 5 min blessings, 40 targets, individual buff only. Also acceptable to stay OOC to rez.
Shaman: Put in melee/tank grps for WF totem. (Only raided as alli, so not sure beyond that...maybe purge?)

That was it. Through all of MC/BWL. If you were in some scrub guild, or raided after the nerfs, or just had a casual guild that did MC when AQ was current, then sure you can bring in ferals or ret's for tehlulz, but nobody serious did that. Hell, mages were frost and frost ONLY. The amount of vitriol and misinformation you spew is sickening, and the fact that it's presented as fact is funny, in that "we worry about your sanity" kind of way.

[Komie]

Just throwing this out there. Moonkin form was added in Burning Crusade.

Moonkin spec = Balance Spec.... Balance has always been there.

[Otaka]

You my friend, got it all wrong.

Hydrids can have 3 roles, warriors only 2.
Paladin: tank, heal, dps
Druid: tank, heal, dps
Shaman: heal, melee dps, ranged dps

And hydrids can do any of these 3 roles in one spec, albeit not efficiently but they still can.

Warriors are NOT hydrids.

[Deleted]

"In vanillla, hybrids could only heal (except warriors, who were special snowflakes)"

This is the statement of GC, and it is actually wrong. Sorry. It is flat out wrong.

This is just another incident where Blizzard posters try to out-do the "ministry of truth" in 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia! This was always a raid-only game!

Given that only an insignificant minority of players ever actually raided back then, and given that even fewer raided content, where min-maxing was actually necessary, saying something like that GC quote, is basically ignoring the 90-odd % of the playerbase, who simply did other stuff and liked it. Even as ret-pallys (of whom i can remember quite a few, since they made my smites go bigger, yes, i as a holy priest would sometimes do dungeons as dps and nobody cared) and moonkins. They were perfectly viable for anything outside hardcore raiding... so they were viable for 90-odd % of the playerbase. And most players back then, simply never thought about alien concepts like "balance".

And, just to get one thing right here, now that it is admitted that moonkins did exist in vanilla, do not lie again and tell that it was just at the very end of vanilla. 10 of October 2005. BC was released on the 16th of January 2007. That is less than 11 months after the initial release in the US (and 8 months after European release) and 15 months before BC came out. 14 before the BC-Prepatch. So it was well in the first half of vanilla.

[huth]

While i did raid MC as balance druid, that was mainly because we usually fielded between 8-10 druids and it plain didn't matter.

[Enosh]

I think people are playing semantics games here

yes moonkin form was added later iirc, but when someone says moonkin in 90% of the cases they refer to the whole balance spec which i am quite sure existed from beginning (god knows I've never actually seen anyone in it for obvious reasons)

so "we raided with a moonkin" really means "we raided with a balance druid"

[volrath50]

"In vanillla, hybrids could only heal (except warriors, who were special snowflakes)"

This is the statement of GC, and it is actually wrong. Sorry. It is flat out wrong.

This is just another incident where Blizzard posters try to out-do the "ministry of truth" in 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia! This was always a raid-only game!

Wow. Comparing Blizzard to a totilitarian government. I'm going to file this in my "way over dramatic analogies" folder.

[Deleted]

You my friend, got it all wrong.

Hydrids can have 3 roles, warriors only 2.
Paladin: tank, heal, dps
Druid: tank, heal, dps
Shaman: heal, melee dps, ranged dps

And hydrids can do any of these 3 roles in one spec, albeit not efficiently but they still can.

Warriors are NOT hydrids.

Hybrids are any class with more than 1 role.

Warriors and Priests count.

[Deleted]

There was a video posted where only druids were brought to kill Onyxia. This was back in Vanilla of course. So indeed, druids could tank heal and DPS. It was possible with Shamans as well, apparently. But it was certainly not the norm. @OP, I don't think you should take GC's comments out of context and its mentioned a number of times in this thread already, if you were a hybrid class, you were mainly expected to heal...to do otherwise required you to roll on gear used by other pure dps raiders, such as rogues, mages, locks and hunters. You can imagine the discontent associated with both the player and the guild if there was a lack of a healer and the druid demanded he play a dps role? Both parties lose out. I think GC is trying to outline the progress made since Vanilla with hybrid classes.

[KrazyK923]

GC is right.

Anybody who played in Vanilla isn't delusional knows this.

You could play the non-healing specs, but you were subpar at best. Congrats if you beat the status quo, but you were dragging your raid down regardless.

[Sturmbringe]

There was a video posted where only druids were brought to kill Onyxia. This was back in Vanilla of course. So indeed, druids could tank heal and DPS. It was possible with Shamans as well, apparently. But it was certainly not the norm. @OP, I don't think you should take GC's comments out of context and its mentioned a number of times in this thread already, if you were a hybrid class, you were mainly expected to heal...to do otherwise required you to roll on gear used by other pure dps raiders, such as rogues, mages, locks and hunters. You can imagine the discontent associated with both the player and the guild if there was a lack of a healer and the druid demanded he play a dps role? Both parties lose out. I think GC is trying to outline the progress made since Vanilla with hybrid classes.

I 'd like to make pretty clear that I have nothing personal against GC, who is my favourite Dev by far. Sometimes I tend to disagree with his views & decisions though.

[tiporispit]

Moonkin isn't a spec. Balance is a spec. Balance existed in Vanilla. You could play anything you wanted in Vanilla, but no serious guild would let someone raid as anything, but Restoration.

[FeedsOnDevTears]

Saying that hybrids could only heal in vanilla is technically correct if you are talking about end game raiding. But what GC is missing about then is the same thing he keeps missing now. WoW did not become popular by being a game that was all about raiding. If you just wanted to play and maybe do a dungeon once in a while hybrids were fine. And that was how most people played.

[Puri]

I am not sure what you want to prove, yes, you could play as ret or balance or ele during vanilla.
And yes, many guilds also allowed some to.
Every single guild on my server during vanilla had that "special snowflake", and everytime the ret got a weapon there was the discussion if it would have been better on a warrior.

But the sets were completely designed for their healing spec, and for nothing else.

And just to iterate how irrelevant this was: In our mc and bwl raid, group 8 were those who were longer than 15 mins afk.