Gear in Warlords - Have they just killed pure dps classes?

[Wolfheart9]

You people must not know players very well.. It doesn't matter if gear was completely gone and there was nothing to stop you from becoming a fully viable raid tank or healer if you were DPS.. players still wouldn't switch because they like the spec they have, or they just don't have the mindset for it. Pure DPS classes will be just fine, because they already expect hybrids to gather extra gear 'just incase', nothing will change. EVERYTHING outside of Mythic is going to be flexi now, meaning that unless you have a full 25 players, you're not being sat. If you're being sat to bring in a hybrid PURELY because he's a hybrid, not because they outplay you, you need a new guild.

[Fluorescent0]

You people must not know players very well.. It doesn't matter if gear was completely gone and there was nothing to stop you from becoming a fully viable raid tank or healer if you were DPS.. players still wouldn't switch because they like the spec they have, or they just don't have the mindset for it. Pure DPS classes will be just fine, because they already expect hybrids to gather extra gear 'just incase', nothing will change. EVERYTHING outside of Mythic is going to be flexi now, meaning that unless you have a full 25 players, you're not being sat. If you're being sat to bring in a hybrid PURELY because he's a hybrid, not because they outplay you, you need a new guild.

You probably don't know competitive raiding either, where in a single tier you have huge disparity between healers needed (3-4 for sha of fear heroic, 8-9 for empress heroic), and where melee-ranged disparity on fights is huge. Being able to either switch from healing to dps or from melee to ranged (shamans and druids) is a huge flexibility which can not be disregarded.

[Johnkie]

more wellfare. I dislike this, and it will bring complications to pure classes.

[Urza29]

why not eventually do what rift did for its classes? like for rogue have a tanking talent tree, where you become a Voidknight or something, void shifter, where you have talents and abilities to tank and hold aggro, and reduce damage taken, and then also maybe toss in a support healer spec, able to offheal and toss some heals and what not while doing dps, like a monk but not a full healing spec, like attonement healing, as you dps it heals people around you?

Mages could have a healing spec, able to wield dps/healing spell hybrid spells, like imangine instead of firebomb, a life bomb that deals massive damage to enemies but also heals allies for a bit, or an acid rain that rains down damage to enemies but healing to allies? make it optional of course

priests could become like "runic priests" of D&D and cast incantations and wards that tank and reduce damage, a caster/tank hybrid be pretty cool, priest that channels powerful power words to different effects, like power word: holy barrier (protects from damage and any ally nearby or that passes through it, gets healed)

Shamans could be tanks, they already wear a shield, lot of shamanistic type effects, Warlocks could demon tank, Hunters could have a beast spec where you become a beast yourself or can control your pet to tank and what not, be badass to shape into a huge wolf and tank for a raid or even a devilsaur etc

there is a ton of customization they could come up with, but they dont cuz they dont want to change things up so much, but i'd be ok with it, for a new talent/class choice for everyone, where everyone can adapt to anything or any situation, so u can have any heals or any tanks on any class. Be really interesting.

[Coldkil]

-snip-

I agree with what you say - a perfectly reasonable scenario.

Still, in my guild we try to spread out drops no matter what your class or role is. We want everyone to play, and don't keep people behind just because it happens they like a pure class instead of a hybrid one.

Unfortunately, i can see how many high-end guilds and all the ones that think they are doing like you say, feeding classes that can cover more roles with more loot or at least preferring to assign a piece to them. personally, if i was in a guild like that i would have left long time ago - maybe this is exactly the reason my progression now is very small if non-existant; i prefer friends and fun over heroic (and soon to be mythic) bosses.

Very likely my vision is biased by the situation/guild i play in.

EDIT: also we are in a very bad place - plate users have all 2 or more roles; cloth users have 2 at max but with 2 pure classes; mail users have only shaman that can cover more roles; leather users can do literally everything but rogues. Our class is in the worst place :P

[Crookids]

What OP is saying is why have a Pure DPS class (3 trees of DPS) when the guild can have a Druid who can do DPS, Tank, or Heal, and have the same boss gear at all three?

The answer will really depend on what incentives and utilities Blizzard gives to rogues, hunters, etc. Otherwise I could see myself rerolling.

Hopefully other stats will follow. So switching between three different specs for encounters will be a benefit instead of obsolete due to statistical restraint.

[ymirsson]

You probably don't know competitive raiding either, where in a single tier you have huge disparity between healers needed (3-4 for sha of fear heroic, 8-9 for empress heroic), and where melee-ranged disparity on fights is huge. Being able to either switch from healing to dps or from melee to ranged (shamans and druids) is a huge flexibility which can not be disregarded.

To be honest, Mythic raiding is out of scope for most players. And when you already have the mindset of bein at the optimum, you most likely have more then one character on your account, so you can switch too.

[Odina]

Even with pure dps classes there are specs in those classes that demand one spec higher than the other. For example Frost as a mage is imo dependent on a LOT of haste. Fire you need to be crit capped and Arcane is more focused on the mastery stat being your main focus.

This! If they tune raids properly in WOD then what they can do is have fight with say lots of AOE so you go fire to spread combust, then they can have a fight that NEEDS big burst so you swap to arcane but 90% of yoru gear is good for arcane rather than "fuck I can't go arc I pasted on all the gear that was good for it" and then say they make a fight that you need to controll adds you can swap to frost... ALL in pretty much the same gear. One of the worst things in this game is being a pure and needing to swap SPECS of all things and having your gear be SHIT...really made no sense before and now there may be the posibility to swap spec's and not have to worry about the "wrong gear tax" even as a pure!

[-Raer-]

Is this really a Rogue thread subject? Sounds like it should be over in the Warlords of Draenor thread >.>

My opinion is that I'll play what I want to play. My guild doesn't need that, ok bring in someone they need and we'll rotate in and out week in and week out. Gear won't change that.

[Kael]

Is this really a Rogue thread subject? Sounds like it should be over in the Warlords of Draenor thread >.>

It's of particular interest to rogues as the only pure melee DPS. I still think it will only impact the very top guilds, in terms of who you give what to, or what classes you bring, and those will be determined by what's needed by specific encounters, and how DPS performs in ~half Mythic gear... this supports hybrids particularly for the very very top guilds who have extremely limited time to gear and are limited by how many toons they can have appropriately geared 1-3 weeks in, but if you're looking at end-bosses (of the highest difficulty) after 10, 15 weeks, it's not an issue at all to bring pures (and hybrids really perform 1 role).

[Nosferato]

maybe pures gets secondary stat changes depending on spec, since they always have different desired stats for each specs, its the least they can do since hybrids gets the most benefit from this.

[Verain]

maybe pures gets secondary stat changes depending on spec, since they always have different desired stats for each specs, its the least they can do since hybrids gets the most benefit from this.

This would be good, but even then it's not obvious. Ex: your reforge for mutilate is different than your reforge for dispatch. If all you care about is execute damage, you can reforge such that it goes up at the cost of overall fight damage.