So, who Owns the Melee Charts now?

[Aonix]

Cleave still tops the meters, lets buff it even more.

[Deleted]

My rogue is pretty much doing what she was before damage wise DKs and other "lesser" melee classes can't keep up with her however mages and loks hand deliver my ass unto me on a silver platter

[Wingwraith]

Everyone that can fill more than 1 role in a raid by respecing is a hybrid class and therefore suspect to the hybrid dps tax.

They've pretty much done away with the hybrid tax.

[Deleted]

I find the hybrid tax crap, I chose my paladin because I wanted to heal, once I got it too 80 I specced holy and healed that't it.
You don't choose a class because it can do multiple things you choose a class because you LIKE the class.
You choose a rogue because you find it fun to be sneaky, choose a paladin because you like all the holy stuff (or a priest) and you choose a shaman because you like all the elemental stuff or just because it appeals to you.

You do not choose a class because it's the highest dps, if you do I'm sorry you ain't playing this as it's a game anymore.
P.S. this is my opinion don't mean to offend anybody with this.

[Deleted]

Myeaa stop quoting hybrid tax as they've basicly scrapped that idea alltogether. I think that if the choice was between overpowering one or the other they'd lean towards the pure but they won't try to balance people 5% behind of others.

There's also no point in crying about raidslots as there's no point what so ever to have a raid that's "hybrid heavy" assuming you got reliable raiders.

[AetherMcLoud]

What is a hybrid tax? Why is there a hybrid tax?

I'm going to sticky this since it gets brought up more than almost any other topic.

We only recognize two types of classes for PvE purposes:

Can respec to fulfill a different role = hybrid.
Cannot respec to fulfill a different role = pure.

The roles are tank, healing and damage.

In our design, having two healing trees (priest) or half a tanking tree (druid) or three dps trees (DK) does not put these classes in different categories of hybridness. A hybrid is a hybrid.

It's the roles that your class lets you do that is important, not how those roles are organized into talent trees. The paladin is one way to organize the trees (a tanking tree, healing tree and melee dps tree) but not the only way. However, there is a reason we don't do this for every class -- it would be boring.

In our design, the pure dps classes (hunter, mage, warlock and rogue) should do slightly higher dps than hybrid damage-dealers all things being equal. All things are rarely equal. Player skill, gear, raid comp, latency, random luck and most importantly the specifics of the encounter will often favor one class, spec or player over another.

The reason we want pures to so slightly higher damage is that pures can only fulfill one role. If your guild or raid has no more need for damage-dealers, there is no way for these classes to raid with you. By contrast, the six other classes always have the option to respec for another role either temporarily or for the long haul.

The Blizzard definition of hybrid in this context has nothing to do with whether you can perform multiple roles within a single fight or even within a single raid. It has more to do with the potential for your class to ever fulfill more than one role.

Likewise, the Blizzard definition of hybrid in this context has nothing to do with the power of certain buffs or class synergy. We want all classes to bring useful tools to the raid.

Just because you’re not interested in doing anything other than damage does not qualify your class as a pure as long as the option to change roles is there. For the pure classes the only option is to reroll. We think the pure classes would start to disappear over time, at least from high-end raiding, if there was no advantage for being a pure. The hybrid advantage is flexibility.

There is not a “5% rule” that says pures should be 5% higher than hybrids in every circumstance. Again, most of the time other factors such as the encounter specifics will have a greater effect. The “5% rule” was either something a player suggested that stuck or something we threw out at some point as an example. It isn’t a hard and fast rule. We aren’t going to provide a hard and fast rule because players would then attempt to invoke that rule every time they thought their damage was too low instead of exploring other ways to improve their character’s performance.

This philosophy largely evolved in Wrath of the Lich King and is the design we plan on carrying forward to Cataclysm. In vanilla WoW, every class typically had one role. In BC, we tried to promote other roles for some classes, but we still didn’t make everyone play by the same rules. Warriors, and I hate to pick on them, were intended to be the best tank while also deliver dps that we would now label as competitive with rogues. By contrast, druids, paladins, priests and shaman were intended to be competitive healers, but have dramatically lower dps than pures and warriors. Likewise, druids, paladins, priests and shaman brought many unique and powerful buffs that were intended to compensate for their low dps. We spread these buffs out to a much greater degree in Lich King, and plan on refining that implementation for Cataclysm.

TLDR:

Hybrid = can respec to fulfill a different role (damage, tanking, or healing).
Hybrid != can fill multiple roles at the same time.
Hybrid != has awesome, amazing buffs or utility.
Hybrid != pure. Beyond that, there are no shades of gray among hybrids.


In general, we ask that players focus their feedback more on class mechanics and what is fun or not fun about the classes and not simply on “My dps is too low so you must buff me.”

From: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...77330431&sid=1

And as far as I know that post still holds true, it even mentions that they want to hold to that design in cataclysm.

And I'm perfectly fine with that. The hybrid tax isn't 5%, it's rather that in a perfect vacuum pure classes should do slightly more damage than hybrids. As we all know, fight mechanics, player skill, equipment, lag, etc. has much more influence on dps than the hybrid tax ever could. Again, it's a design philosophy, not a hard-and-fast rule.

And yes, for 99% of the guilds it probably doesn't matter what classes they take to their raids, as long as they have the neccessary roles filled, and the players behind the classes are good/nice to raid with. But for the 1% left, the world-first guilds like Nihilum (or whatever they call themselves now, Ensidia?), Paragon and what have you, they SURE AS HELL would switch classes for a almost not noticable dps increase.

Those are the guys that had everyone drop their profession and go leatherworking in TBC for the drum buffs. I've even read of people changing professions BETWEEN BOSSFIGHTS, just so they could have a 0.0001% higher chance of downing that boss.

I think for those people the hybrid tax exists, because if it wouldn't then those people would just stop bringing hunters, rogues, warlocks and mages alltogether, especially now that the buffs those provide are also covered by other classes and tricks/misdirect isn't permathreat anymore.

For your average joe guilds the hybrid tax doesn't even matter.

[CrunkJuice5]

I find the hybrid tax crap, I chose my paladin because I wanted to heal, once I got it too 80 I specced holy and healed that't it.
You don't choose a class because it can do multiple things you choose a class because you LIKE the class.
You choose a rogue because you find it fun to be sneaky, choose a paladin because you like all the holy stuff (or a priest) and you choose a shaman because you like all the elemental stuff or just because it appeals to you.

You do not choose a class because it's the highest dps, if you do I'm sorry you ain't playing this as it's a game anymore.
P.S. this is my opinion don't mean to offend anybody with this.

bawwwwwww


blizzard loves paladins.stop your crying please

[Seagrams]

bawwwwwww


blizzard loves paladins.stop your crying please

You do know hottank just said that you should pick a class you like, not because it is the 'best,' right?

Idiots.

[Huckfealing]

People look at unholy dk's and see that we dont bearly crit over 18-20k on average with are highest hitter and ppl freak out and say WE SUCK NOW. But here is the thing everyone needs to realise, yes we are not critting high numbers, but the speed at wich we are throwing out those 12k average hits is amazing especially with haste. are dps is much higher than others because we are not waiting 3 sec for a 50k crit, we are doing a TON of damage in those 3 seconds, they are just realavitly small numbers, but alot of them.

---------- Post added 2010-11-04 at 09:08 PM ----------

Also, in accordance with the "Hero class" discussion. Hero class was the worst business move blizzard has ever pulled. Making a class with the potential to be the best. I think we all found out that if played correctly, any class can top meters (unless there are very obvious mechanical issues with spells.