Let's talk about "Hybrid tax"

[Synthium]

Disclaimer - this isn't a proposition of changing anything, this is merely to spark the discussion about Jeff Kaplan's idea of hybrid tax and him being under the impression WoW was going to be a tabletop campaign or something.

In the past, Blizzard had a stance of "hybrid tax". If someone is unclear as to what that is - it's the idea that hybrid classes should do less damage to offset the utility they bring in various other areas. Like, a druid should do less damage by principle of having healing spells, buffs, CC and the ability to switch to a bear and maybe hold some adds on him for some time, something that a rogue cannot.

When it comes to vanilla, I have always disagreed with that principle for 2 reasons:

1. No class would ever switch between specs in the middle of an encounter, so having you have to specialize to do damage, or to tank or to heal shouldn't affect "class balance" or make you regret picking a pure dps class just because if you picked a druid you could've healed aswell.

2. Hybrids for some reason (in WoW) had a very finished and fully developed healing spec. Everyone always says they are jacks of all trades but masters of none, but it seems to me they have been pretty much masters of healing. So isn't it unfair that while their healing specs are properly polished and finished, their dps and tank specs were lackluster and useless?

[Aggrophobic]

Think of it this way then. If all classes did the same damage but shaman could also bring a totem that increaded everyones damage by 5%.
Why would anyone play anything but a shaman?

This has been fixed in retail but there really is no way to fix that on a classic server without massive redesigns of pretty much every class and spec. And then we're back at the issue with classic being nothing like vanilla and whats the point then? Might as well play retail.

Oh, and priests were the masters of healing. If the "hybrides" had no ulitily then bringing them would be pointless. You'd just bring a full set of priests. But the same is true here. If the other healers could heal just as well then why bring a priest?

[Deleted]

The thing that people because of narrow mindsets and egoism don't see is:

If your class brings a buff that increases damage of a DD by 5%, you are basically doing these 5% more damage, because without you this portion is not there.
The problem here is that this DPS done is not counted in your own damage meter but in the rogues ones which makes you think you didn't bring something to the raid.

So in Short. If your Raid does 1000 dps more because of the buffs you can apply, you basically brought 1000 more dps to the raid.
You can basically view the classes that are affected by your buff as your pets that do increased damage.


So the Hybrid Tax is just a shifting of damage from your own class to another class because of the buff. In my opinion a good design that current WoW is totally missing because of narrow minded players who were never able to understand the mechaniques behind buffs.

[Echocho]

If someone is unclear as to what that is - it's the idea that hybrid classes should do less damage to offset the utility they bring in various other areas. Like, a druid should do less damage by principle of having healing spells, buffs, CC and the ability to switch to a bear and maybe hold some adds on him for some time, something that a rogue cannot.

The only things in the druid toolkit that should affect their damage is the crit buff they give to others. Because of this they should be a little bit lower than the others in their group.

What about battle ress? Well then warlocks should get nerfed for having soulstone.
What about mark of the wild? Well then mages should get nerfed for having arcane intellect.
What about innervate? Well then shaman healing should be brought down to druid levels for having mana tide totem.

[khalltusk]

Think of it this way then. If all classes did the same damage but shaman could also bring a totem that increaded everyones damage by 5%.
Why would anyone play anything but a shaman?

This has been fixed in retail but there really is no way to fix that on a classic server without massive redesigns of pretty much every class and spec. And then we're back at the issue with classic being nothing like vanilla and whats the point then? Might as well play retail.

Oh, and priests were the masters of healing. If the "hybrides" had no ulitily then bringing them would be pointless. You'd just bring a full set of priests. But the same is true here. If the other healers could heal just as well then why bring a priest?

Personally I would like it if they retuned enhancement a little to make them a little less RNG with WF and more reliable as a DPS. I originally played enhancement with the idea it was a DPS class who would buff the group and in an emergency could throw some heals for a very short period. But the reality was that the DPS was so piss poor that the only thing I brought to the group was the enhanced totems.

But being realistic they won't do this on release. Maybe down the line they might tweak some of the numbers. As during Vanilla many classes had entire revamps done to them.

[Aggrophobic]

Personally I would like it if they retuned enhancement a little to make them a little less RNG with WF and more reliable as a DPS. I originally played enhancement with the idea it was a DPS class who would buff the group and in an emergency could throw some heals for a very short period. But the reality was that the DPS was so piss poor that the only thing I brought to the group was the enhanced totems.

But being realistic they won't do this on release. Maybe down the line they might tweak some of the numbers. As during Vanilla many classes had entire revamps done to them.

There are a few threads about this but in the end, if they start changing how one class works then they need to rebalance everything, including how bosses work, items and so on.
That would take classic far, far away from what vanilla was. So again, whats the point of classic then? Might as well play the game we have now.

Now, I played shaman as well and I know what you mean. But having vanilla back was the goal here, not a brand new game.

[Deleted]

Personally I would like it if they retuned enhancement a little to make them a little less RNG with WF and more reliable as a DPS. I originally played enhancement with the idea it was a DPS class who would buff the group and in an emergency could throw some heals for a very short period. But the reality was that the DPS was so piss poor that the only thing I brought to the group was the enhanced totems.

But being realistic they won't do this on release. Maybe down the line they might tweak some of the numbers. As during Vanilla many classes had entire revamps done to them.

RNG is NOT a problem. It evens out during the course of a fight.
Also what you basically wanted is an overpowered class that could do everything on par but simmultaniously. That can't work, it would make every other class obsolete.

Totems were exreme DPS and survival increases for the raid but were never intended to be solo buffs.

Like I have posted above. Hybrids were supporters that were able to provide significant DPS increases. Those increases were higher than the pure DPS classes could provide (otherwithe noone would bring them instead of a mage or rogue) but the DPS was not counted in your own damage meter but spreaded out towards the people affected by your buffs and their dps.

That is a suporting role. If you want to be that guy providing the raw numbers and nothing else: Play a DPS class. A support class had a different gameplay in mind back then.


The ONLY issue I see with this system was a technical limitation that prevented these roles from being fullfilled properly: Debuff slot limit and not stacking buffs.
These are things that, when properly changed in classic, could create a flousrish hybrid scene with great gameplay away from personal dps races.

[Deleted]

Man, Classic WoW will be a rough experience after so many years of constant improvements.

I doubt too many people outside of hardcore Vanilla fans that played private servers will enjoy going back to the MMO stone age.

[khalltusk]

There are a few threads about this but in the end, if they start changing how one class works then they need to rebalance everything, including how bosses work, items and so on.
That would take classic far, far away from what vanilla was. So again, whats the point of classic then? Might as well play the game we have now.

Now, I played shaman as well and I know what you mean. But having vanilla back was the goal here, not a brand new game.

You do know that items and charcters in Vanilla underwent huge changes right? If they for example released Classic wow and did it to the last Vanilla patch before the TBC pre patch, then you would walk all over the earlier raids and dungeons. As items had huge changes to them (rogue boots having INT not agility for example in early Vanilla). This makes it so players have more power relative to the earlier boss tuning.

So most likely they will have to test this out and make changes before the game goes live. This might include some minor balance tweaks to these classes, but most likely only tuning changes to raids/dungeons. Think of it more along the lines of increased HP for bosses and maybe increased damaged outputs on certain boss abilities if required. This does not mean talent revamps or major changes to the game like you suggest.

[Storfan]

Disclaimer - this isn't a proposition of changing anything, this is merely to spark the discussion about Jeff Kaplan's idea of hybrid tax and him being under the impression WoW was going to be a tabletop campaign or something.

In the past, Blizzard had a stance of "hybrid tax". If someone is unclear as to what that is - it's the idea that hybrid classes should do less damage to offset the utility they bring in various other areas. Like, a druid should do less damage by principle of having healing spells, buffs, CC and the ability to switch to a bear and maybe hold some adds on him for some time, something that a rogue cannot.

When it comes to vanilla, I have always disagreed with that principle for 2 reasons:

1. No class would ever switch between specs in the middle of an encounter, so having you have to specialize to do damage, or to tank or to heal shouldn't affect "class balance" or make you regret picking a pure dps class just because if you picked a druid you could've healed aswell.

2. Hybrids for some reason (in WoW) had a very finished and fully developed healing spec. Everyone always says they are jacks of all trades but masters of none, but it seems to me they have been pretty much masters of healing. So isn't it unfair that while their healing specs are properly polished and finished, their dps and tank specs were lackluster and useless?

Part of the beauty of Vanilla WoW (or most old MMORPGs for that matter) is the idea that choice of class (and even Race) matters ALOT. It means you are uniqe and bring purpose to the group, raid or even guild. You cant have uniqe classes and races and at the same time av complete balance between all specs, classes and races. If everyone can do any role and easily switch between roles on the fly (read: Dualspec) then you can throw uniqeness out of the window.

Class/role/race-homogenization of TBC and onwards is one of several reasons WoW simply isnt uniqe and interesting anymore. You have what now? 5 tanking classes, 3 of which also can be very competent healers and ALL of which can be damage dealers aswell.

[khalltusk]

RNG is NOT a problem. It evens out during the course of a fight.
Also what you basically wanted is an overpowered class that could do everything on par but simmultaniously. That can't work, it would make every other class obsolete.

Totems were exreme DPS and survival increases for the raid but were never intended to be solo buffs.

Like I have posted above. Hybrids were supporters that were able to provide significant DPS increases. Those increases were higher than the pure DPS classes could provide (otherwithe noone would bring them instead of a mage or rogue) but the DPS was not counted in your own damage meter but spreaded out towards the people affected by your buffs and their dps.

That is a suporting role. If you want to be that guy providing the raw numbers and nothing else: Play a DPS class. A support class had a different gameplay in mind back then.


The ONLY issue I see with this system was a technical limitation that prevented these roles from being fullfilled properly: Debuff slot limit and not stacking buffs.
These are things that, when properly changed in classic, could create a flousrish hybrid scene with great gameplay away from personal dps races.

First, you don't know what I want so please leave bullshit out of the discussion. As I said I wanted to be able to provide buffs and some fairly decent damage. What we got was some good buffs and piss poor damage that made it not worth being specced into enhancement passed the totem buffs and instead being made to heal only.

Second, Did you play enhancement in Vanilla? The DPS I did personally was so sub par it was not worth me doing it. You were better off only putting talents into the improved totems then the rest into resto. You basically were a healer that provided slightly better totems than other shaman. This is exactly what I was doing, being in the rogue and warrior groups sticking with them providing buffs and keeping them alive during raids.

TBC made this role a lot better (we were still quite a lot lower than pure DPS but that was fine). Our damage was better overal and the spec was fun to play (certainly when totem twisting).

I am realistic enough to know blizzard won't change this and probably should not change the classes up. I do think they will re-tune bosses to account for the change in classes and gear that went on during Vanilla.

[faithbane]

First, you don't know what I want so please leave bullshit out of the discussion. As I said I wanted to be able to provided buffs and some fairly decent damage. What we got was some good buffs and piss poor damage that made it not worth being specced into enhancement passed the totem buffs and instead being made to heal only.

Second, Did you play enhancement in Vanilla? The DPS I did personally was so sub part it was not worth me doing it. You were better off only putting talents into the improved totems then the rest into resto. You basically were a healer that provided slightly better totems than other shaman. This is exactly what I was doing, being in the rogue and warrior groups sticking with them providing buffs and keeping them alive during raids.

TBC made this role a lot better (we were still quite a lot lower than pure DPS but that was fine). Our damage was better overal and the spec was fun to play (certainly when totem twisting).

I am realistic enough to know blizzard won't change this and probably should not change the classes up. I do think they will re-tune bosses to account for the change in classes and gear that went on during Vanilla.

I played shaman throughout vanilla and I can tell you there was no problem with enhance shaman damage at all. I actually dpsed in a few fights in Naxx since with the gear I had at that point my AP and crit% was of the roof that made wf procs hit like a truck, that burst was enough to make my sustained dps on par. We had many other problems tho.. such as very low mana recovery for shocks and bolts on long fights, no melee movesets/coherent rotation, lack of melee dps set bonuses or agi and str on shaman sets except for AQ gear, lack of agro dumping moves, doing horrible horrible dps in resistance gear due to lack of inherent dps moves, no class dps trinkets etc..

[khalltusk]

I played shaman throughout vanilla and I can tell you there was no problem with enhance shaman damage at all. I actually dpsed in a few fights in Naxx since with the gear I had at that point my AP and crit% was of the roof that made wf procs hit like a truck, that burst was enough to make my sustained dps on par. We had many other problems tho.. such as very low mana recovery for shocks and bolts on long fights, no melee movesets/coherent rotation, lack of melee dps set bonuses or agi and str on shaman sets except for AQ gear, lack of agro dumping moves, doing horrible horrible dps in resistance gear due to lack of inherent dps moves, no class dps trinkets etc..

You said you had no issues with enhancement DPS then listed a load of the issues enhancement DPS had. A40 gear made it so we could perform better for sure, and having some Nax mail DPS items might have helped you. But you were in a minority.

Don't get me wrong we tried a few times and it just was not enough to really justify a DPS spot for a shaman. It was best for us at that point to bring a healing shaman with improved totems. My guild was doing MC/BWL clears and had got up to Princess in AQ40. The gear choices for enhancement were limited. If we had some more optimised items then I could see us performing better.

At least I will take what you say with a pinch of salt. I'm sure you did well enough, I certainly would have loved to have played more enhancement at a raid level in Vanilla as I enjoyed that spec a lot.

[Super Kami Dende]

Think of it this way then. If all classes did the same damage but shaman could also bring a totem that increaded everyones damage by 5%.
Why would anyone play anything but a shaman?

Because people play Videogames for fun?

[faithbane]

You said you had no issues with enhancement DPS then listed a load of the issues enhancement DPS had. A40 gear made it so we could perform better for sure, and having some Nax mail DPS items might have helped you. But you were in a minority.

Don't get me wrong we tried a few times and it just was not enough to really justify a DPS spot for a shaman. It was best for us at that point to bring a healing shaman with improved totems. My guild was doing MC/BWL clears and had got up to Princess in AQ40. The gear choices for enhancement were limited. If we had some more optimised items then I could see us performing better.

At least I will take what you say with a pinch of salt. I'm sure you did well enough, I certainly would have loved to have played more enhancement at a raid level in Vanilla as I enjoyed that spec a lot.

I was trying to say that the core of the issue wasn't "damage" itself when it came to shamans being heals only in raids, after a certain gear level , shamans hit like a truck (also in pvp actually). The reason why I spent years spamming healing wave and chain healing instead of dpsing was all the other issues like lack of rotation, melee moves, mana management, agro management, lack of set bonuses etc etc.

[tankbug]

The hybrid tax never made sense because of the way it was implemented. Pure classes also had a lot of CC and survivability. Basically it rendered hybrid classes pointless, unless they had that "key" skill, like Blood Lust, I guess. My dps warrior suffered from this design in TBC, where I was only given charity spots in raids/heroics. Rogues did more damage, and had the 100% necessary CC. The tanks couldn't survive taking on many mobs at once. Fear was a guaranteed wipe, and the things I had going for me, like plate and the ability to hotswap for sword'n board added very little value. The role you chose should set the potential for your contribution, not the class you want to play.

[Halyon]

Part of the beauty of Vanilla WoW (or most old MMORPGs for that matter) is the idea that choice of class (and even Race) matters ALOT. It means you are uniqe and bring purpose to the group, raid or even guild. You cant have uniqe classes and races and at the same time av complete balance between all specs, classes and races. If everyone can do any role and easily switch between roles on the fly (read: Dualspec) then you can throw uniqeness out of the window.

Class/role/race-homogenization of TBC and onwards is one of several reasons WoW simply isnt uniqe and interesting anymore. You have what now? 5 tanking classes, 3 of which also can be very competent healers and ALL of which can be damage dealers aswell.

That's a weird way of saying 'pigeonholed'. Unique means that you, specifically, are one of a kind...except here you'll be doing the same as everyone else of your class choice. Priests will heal, Warriors will tank, etc... And raid comps. are a thing. There is no uniqueness. Arguably, there never has been. There has always been a recipe distilled for what is 'best' by whatever authority you look at.

Nowadays, your choice is broad, what you pick is flavor...which is good. Back then, you pick a druid for dps'ing? Too bad, you suck at it, 'heal' instead...heal the priest's mana so they can heal everyone. Yeh, grand.

[Kynario]

Think of it this way then. If all classes did the same damage but shaman could also bring a totem that increaded everyones damage by 5%.
Why would anyone play anything but a shaman?

This has been fixed in retail but there really is no way to fix that on a classic server without massive redesigns of pretty much every class and spec. And then we're back at the issue with classic being nothing like vanilla and whats the point then? Might as well play retail.

Oh, and priests were the masters of healing. If the "hybrids" had no utility then bringing them would be pointless. You'd just bring a full set of priests. But the same is true here. If the other healers could heal just as well then why bring a priest?

Well said. I agree.

- - - Updated - - -

Because people play Videogames for fun?

That's true, but at the higher-end (hardcore) levels where people only care about numbers and clearing content as fast as possible, it's certainly a valid point.

[Deleted]

First, you don't know what I want so please leave bullshit out of the discussion. As I said I wanted to be able to provide buffs and some fairly decent damage. What we got was some good buffs and piss poor damage that made it not worth being specced into enhancement passed the totem buffs and instead being made to heal only.

Stop acting so personally angered just because people lay out the flaws in your argumentation which, in my case, was based on your describtion. So yes I do know what you want, you told it. Maybe you meant something different but was unable to communicate it.
What you didn't understand is that you indeed preovided significant damage. You did that by your buffs. It was just not counted towards your damage meter.

Also wether you was brought as healer or enhancer was soley reliant on the fact if the raid allready had enough healers or not. But since healers were allways more rare than DDs, classes that could heal were prefered to actually be healers. That would not change if you as an enhancer woudl provide 90% damage of a DD class, because even than, if your raid lacks healers, they would ask you to heal or search for another healer.

So in short: Hybrids were viable DPS from aq40 upwords BUT so were all pure DPS Classes. Hybrids however provided the ability to play healers aswell, pure dds didn't so who do you ask to spec heal? The Shaman or the Rogue if your raid lacks them?

[khalltusk]

I was trying to say that the core of the issue wasn't "damage" itself when it came to shamans being heals only in raids, after a certain gear level , shamans hit like a truck (also in pvp actually). The reason why I spent years spamming healing wave and chain healing instead of dpsing was all the other issues like lack of rotation, melee moves, mana management, agro management, lack of set bonuses etc etc.

Ah I see, that makes more sense then with what you said earlier. Mana management and a lack of a decent rotation not to mention earthshocks huge threat generation caused issues with DPS as a shaman. If those things were addressed we would have most likely seen more of us.

That does not mean I want them to change it for classic. I think that would be too much work in my opinion.