Let's talk about "Hybrid tax"

[Storfan]

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.

Yes ofcourse there'll still be 3 main jobs: Tank, DPS, Heal, but the difference in vanilla being that the skills and toolsets between classes are vastly different, which is my point. When everyone can do every role just as good it simply makes the game less interesting.

[deniter]

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?

1. Why would you roll a mage or a rogue if druids and shamans could deal the same damage in raids but had also tons of utility those 'pure dps' classes can only dream about? Besides, some of your damage output comes from your buffs, so your total dps is not that far behind the rest of the dps.

2. It would make sense to have hybrids for a support role, but there has never been such role in wow so healing is a natural choice for them to fill up.

[khalltusk]

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?

I was not angered at someone laying out "flaws" in said argument. You inserted I wanted an overpowered class which is something I never stated anywhere. You made up some bullshit and I told you to cut it out. Blaming me for you not understanding what I said is another matter, if you had issues with understanding any points I made feel free to ask as mistakes can happen.

As for the rest of your argument, some of it is interesting. I am fully aware of what buffs I gave to people. I mentioned it several times, these buffs provided real dps increases to my group. You mentioned I didn't understand that the buffs I provided gave a boost to DPS to my group. This is incorrect and if you re-read what I wrote you will understand that. The interesting part is where you think we should consider the damage buffs we give to other people as our own damage.

So are rogues now our pets providing damage? Obviously I am joking, but its is an interesting point you made.

Vanilla in a nutshell was like this, if you had a heal spec you were wanted to heal since they were indeed rare. Shaman were not so rare though (druids were like gold dust admittedly). Many times we had to decline enhancement shaman as we simply had other shaman who could provide their buffs to pure dps who would do more damage and these shaman would also heal.

I am realistic enough to admit that they should not change how the class works in Vanilla. Let people see the game for what it was.

[Molvonos]

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.

The inherent problem with this, especially with races during Classic, was that they weren't balanced around one another. A dwarf priest was, bar none, the best race to use for the priest class, alliance side, because of Fear Ward. You were severely gimped if you played, say, a Night Elf Priest, because Starfall (or whatever it was called) was an extremely shitty spell that did little damage and had no utility. Human priests, at least, had an 'Oh Shit' button in the form of of Desperate Prayer, but only for themselves.

The 'Classic' experience was all about pigeon-holing people into specific roles for each class. The Talents offered the Illusion of choice, because if you didn't pick the cookie cutter builds, you did crap for damage, had crap for survival and brought nothing useful to the table. A Resto-druid couldn't offtank anything beyond a single regular mob, for example, unless they severely overgeared the content. Enhancement Shamen and Retribution Paladins didn't get used often in raids (beyond the token One for specific buffs/totems due to talents) because they weren't optimal even for their chosen (DPS) role.

The reason, specifically, why all the homogenization happened in the first place was because of this, because people wanted to -play- what they wanted, rather than what they were forced into playing just to advance. A lot of people don't remember this, or choose not to, as a result, and now the squeaky wheel has shifted to those who disagree.

All because some racials or race/class combinations were too powerful or too weak. Horde-side, it was originally believed Tauren were going to be the go-to tank, until the fear effects and lack of fear ward forced people to play undead warriors, for example. You see this again, in Retail, with the Allied Races. Highmountain tauren are going to be ridiculous tanks with their racial abilities, compared to just about anything else.

At least now, those five tanks all play completely different while doing the same role. They have niche specialties, but can be used in almost any situation (with mythic raiders preferring Bear tanks over all because they're kinda OP this rotation).

[ManiaCCC]

For long time I thought hybrid tax was idiotic design, however after arguing with some other people, I had to agree, that hybrid tax is not as stupid as it seems.

In modern wow, we are used to fact, that Enhance shaman is pure DPS, we have two sorts of feral druids, protection palading is 100% tank. But this wasn't true in Vanilla. Enhance shaman had quite a lot of tools, how to help others, his heals were not useless, feral druid was actually able to jump from cat form and be emergency tank if things go wrong etc. This design should and probably will stay in Vanilla. So how is it logical to remove hybrid tax on Classic servers? It's not.

Basic premise of people, who are against hybrid class (me included in the past) is, that if you roll DPS druid, you should be doing same DPS as any other DPS spec - because you will fight for DPS spot in the raid but here is the thing. Trying to achieve this to be possible and balanced, things went downhill with whole homogenization. Enhance shaman's support totems were removed, heals nerfed, prot paladin got taunt, heals nerfed, auras too, feral druid was changed into two distinct classes and lost possibility to actually change roles on the fly.

While this fixed general balance especially for raiding, it impacted games in other areas negatively. In PvP, you had to fight differently against rogue and feral druid, because feral druid has this perk ambush you and then tank you, root you, move back and heal himself. It was really interesting that classes and specs meant more than just "you fit into one of these three roles". Yes, protection paladin wasn't hardcore raiding viable - but protection paladin was not useless spec. It was used, it worked in dungeon just fines, it was annoying in PvP, it had it's niche and charm for many people.

So is homogenization, what people really want? Do we really want be classes less different, so more specs can fill into raid spots? How important is that most of the tanks in the game are Warriors and Druids, while prot Paladin was played by enthusiasts and never tanked raid? How important is that Enhance shaman was filler in raids, not the dps monster?
In the end, every spec in WoW was played and was viable at least somewhere. Not every spec has to be raid ready...because when they will go this road, classes will lost, once again, their identities.

Or they will remove hybrid tax and hybrids will rule the world.

[Halyon]

Yes ofcourse there'll still be 3 main jobs: Tank, DPS, Heal, but the difference in vanilla being that the skills and toolsets between classes are vastly different, which is my point. When everyone can do every role just as good it simply makes the game less interesting.

Those 3 jobs are very solidified when it comes to raiding. Dungeons have a bit more leeway, but you'll have to go very out of your way to be better and have alt. gear sets for it.

When everyone can perform relatively equally, then you get more variety. There your argument if 'uniqueness' has more ground. It's not a good argument, but it's a smidge more reasonable as it is now. Being delegated to do the only thing you're actually capable of doing reliably is not being unique, it's being pigeonholed.

For long time I thought hybrid tax was idiotic design, however after arguing with some other people, I had to agree, that hybrid tax is not as stupid as it seems.

In modern wow, we are used to fact, that Enhance shaman is pure DPS, we have two sorts of feral druids, protection palading is 100% tank. But this wasn't true in Vanilla. Enhance shaman had quite a lot of tools, how to help others, his heals were not useless, feral druid was actually able to jump from cat form and be emergency tank if things go wrong etc. This design should and probably will stay in Vanilla. So how is it logical to remove hybrid tax on Classic servers? It's not.

Basic premise of people, who are against hybrid class (me included in the past) is, that if you roll DPS druid, you should be doing same DPS as any other DPS spec - because you will fight for DPS spot in the raid but here is the thing. Trying to achieve this to be possible and balanced, things went downhill with whole homogenization. Enhance shaman's support totems were removed, heals nerfed, prot paladin got taunt, heals nerfed, auras too, feral druid was changed into two distinct classes and lost possibility to actually change roles on the fly.

While this fixed general balance especially for raiding, it impacted games in other areas negatively. In PvP, you had to fight differently against rogue and feral druid, because feral druid has this perk ambush you and then tank you, root you, move back and heal himself. It was really interesting that classes and specs meant more than just "you fit into one of these three roles". Yes, protection paladin wasn't hardcore raiding viable - but protection paladin was not useless spec. It was used, it worked in dungeon just fines, it was annoying in PvP, it had it's niche and charm for many people.

So is homogenization, what people really want? Do we really want be classes less different, so more specs can fill into raid spots? How important is that most of the tanks in the game are Warriors and Druids, while prot Paladin was played by enthusiasts and never tanked raid? How important is that Enhance shaman was filler in raids, not the dps monster?
In the end, every spec in WoW was played and was viable at least somewhere. Not every spec has to be raid ready...because when they will go this road, classes will lost, once again, their identities.

Or they will remove hybrid tax and hybrids will rule the world.

If you're feral in a raid, then you're brought specifcally to be emergency tank either due to mechanics, or your tank to be 'replaced' was undergeared or still learning or something. I am fine with 'hybrid tax' in the sense that if a class can do multiple roles in the same class (not spec!), then their dps should be middle to low-ish of the pack, but still worth bringing. Otherwise it stops being hybrid tax and goes into being forced to be x or y to actually be brought to a raid. I.e. your dps is acceptable, not competitive.

[ManiaCCC]

I am fine with 'hybrid tax' in the sense that if a class can do multiple roles in the same class (not spec!),

This doesn't make any sense. Classes already can do multiple things without hybrid tax, however in Vanilla, me as enhance shaman was sometimes used as emergency healer.. sometimes I even tanked ads if needed. And this is why hybrid tax make a sense.

In the end, I think we should stop thinking about raiding as the main part of the Vanilla WoW. In Vanilla, raiding was just for top 5%. Hybrid tax and hybrid classes were never designed around idea, that everyone should be able to raid. And I think this should stay. Let warriors have their exclusive raiding spot but in PvP, Feral druid was much more dangerous than prot Warrior - thanks to his survivability, hard to control him, even the able heal self and others..and I loved it (never played Druid in Vanilla btw).

[Halyon]

This doesn't make any sense. Classes already can do multiple things without hybrid tax, however in Vanilla, me as enhance shaman was sometimes used as emergency healer.. sometimes I even tanked ads if needed. And this is why hybrid tax make a sense.

In the end, I think we should stop thinking about raiding as the main part of the Vanilla WoW. In Vanilla, raiding was just for top 5%. Hybrid tax and hybrid classes were never designed around idea, that everyone should be able to raid. And I think this should stay. Let warriors have their exclusive raiding spot but in PvP, Feral druid was much more dangerous than prot Warrior - thanks to his survivability, hard to control him, even the able heal self and others..and I loved it (never played Druid in Vanilla btw).

Why do you think it was only the a small minority that did it... Part of it is because you get gated off at your class choice if you want to do something other than what your class was pigeonholed into. Massive grind for gear and consumables was also a part of it.

Raiding is the endgame. If you play for the journey, sure thing, play whatever you want and enjoy it, otherwise you gotta research what you want to do in a raid, pick a class, and stick to it. Have fun if you ever consider re-rolling.

All classes should be able to raid, all classes should be able to pvp. Being able =/= totally equally. Nowadays it's not even that equal.... Play a low-ranked dps? Work harder to do better, you still have a raid spot. No such thing in vanilla. Hybrid tax was being a 'support' class. Which yeah, supporting is neat and all...in League of Legends. It's pretty thankless, and some of the time, you don't have much real impact. Depends what you play and how well. But there you have the liberty of switching between games. Same in Overwatch where you can even switch in-game!

In wow, if a class can only really do 1 thing, there's no point to them being there, because there's not just 1 thing to do. Today you could have more argument that some classes are much better at mythic dungeons, but less so in raiding because the conditions/flow is different. Mythic dungeons have been a breath of fresh air to provide a new avenue of 'end-game'. In wow it was raiding or pvping.

The only place where restrictions for classes happen now is for the hardcore World First progression guilds. So what.

[Tiberria]

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.

The reason current WoW has shifted away from that philosophy has a lot more to it than that. Here are some of the numerous issues with a "hybrid tax" design.

1. The concept of taxing a spec for bringing a specific buff falls apart as soon as you have more than one of that spec, because most of those buffs weren't stackable. So, while your first Ret Pally might bring enough in terms of raid buffs to compensate for the lack of DPS that the spec does, what happens when you have 2, 3, 4 people that want to play that spec in a 40 man raid? The duplicates of that spec become subpar/undesirable, and it puts you in a position where people aren't really able to play the class/spec they want to play, which is bad/problematic design.
2. There's more to the game than raiding. If you tax a spec around a buff to balance them for 40 man raids, that spec is in an inferior position when it comes to 5 mans, 20 mans, PvP and solo content compared to say a Mage. There's loads of content that people want/need to do outside of raids (and was even the case in Vanilla), and people playing heavily "hybrid taxed" specs were at a huge efficiency disadvantage for that, which didn't really seem fair. Not only that, but as the game moved towards competitive smaller group content (arenas, 5 man speed runs, then later CMs, etc.), small group content balance became more and more important.
3. The third issue is really that it's fundamentally not all that fun from a player or gameplay perspective to do 500 DPS as a hybrid class while providing 1000 raid DPS through your raid buff/utility. It's a lot more fun to just be doing 1500 DPS. And, not only that, but that buff DPS is something that you bring just by standing around/existing in the raid group. There's no gameplay/effort/skill involved in getting that power, which also doesn't feel all that great.

[Charge me Doctor]

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?

You don't need to switch specs to be able to heal as shaman, druid or paladin midfight... That's not the reason why hybrid tax exists. It's a tax on abilities, not talent specs

[Tiberria]

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?

The argument for why it was "fine" for hybrids to have a viable/finished healing spec is more the fact that there was and is no such thing as a "pure healing class". All 4 healing classes are hybrids that have at least 1 DPS spec if not 3+ roles. Therefore, there wasn't much reason to make those 4 (or 5 if you count Disc) healing specs viable/competitive with each other.

[Mage in Pajamas]

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?

In theory, I like the hybrid tax. It has to be balanced properly which is hard to do.

Consider this hypothetical:
A mage does 100 damage per second. An ele shaman does 90 dps.
If the ele shaman has a totem that boosts damage by 5%, then the dps of 2 mages is about the same as 1 mage + 1 ele shaman.

In Vanilla, buffs were only party wide. So, you would not have a scenario in which you brought one but only one ele sham.

If their healing were not terrible or mana dependent, then that person may also have some off healing during burst damage.


You can also apply this same utility vs. damage concept to mages (decurse, kiting) hunters (CC) locks (CC and stones) and dps warriors (OT adds.)
And rogues can have the #1 dps spot with the trade off that they will have issues on movement heavy fights.

Having more than one thing to worry about during the fight was more fun.

[Tiberria]

You don't need to switch specs to be able to heal as shaman, druid or paladin midfight... That's not the reason why hybrid tax exists. It's a tax on abilities, not talent specs

But, you need to be able to switch specs to be able to heal or tank with any level of competence outside of a few emergency heals or off tanking something for a few seconds. Plus, is the ability to be able to throw out some emergency healing really all that different in terms of value brought to the raid than say being able to trap or sheep an add, or summon people, etc.? Even in Vanilla, it's not as if pures brought 0 value outside of DPS.

[Deleted]

The reason current WoW has shifted away from that philosophy has a lot more to it than that. Here are some of the numerous issues with a "hybrid tax" design.

1. The concept of taxing a spec for bringing a specific buff falls apart as soon as you have more than one of that spec, because most of those buffs weren't stackable. [...]
2. There's more to the game than raiding. If you tax a spec around a buff to balance them for 40 man raids, that spec is in an inferior position when it comes to 5 mans, 20 mans, PvP and solo content compared to say a Mage. [...]
3. The third issue is really that it's fundamentally not all that fun from a player or gameplay perspective to do 500 DPS as a hybrid class while providing 1000 raid DPS through your raid buff/utility. It's a lot more fun to just be doing 1500 DPS.

1:
That is somewhat true and not. Several huge raid buffs were a "chose one" kind of buff. Like Totems and Blessings, where multiple classes were needed to provide all buffs. Also alot of those buffs were group limited, you needed one windfury totem per melee groupe one boomkin per caster group and so on.
So while some buffs like curse of shadows/elements were unstackable, some were.

2:
Actually the direct oposite happened. Non raiding content was never blanced around damage but around everything else. A group with a paladin made a 5man run a breeze, because of blessings and auras. In PvP Hybrids were among the most powerful foes. Ehancer, Shadowpriests for example were extremely powerful.

3:
And that is why the game provided so many different classes to pick from. If you don't like supporting, play a mage. The rotation of a Boomkin and a Mage is quite the same. The playstyle as a DPS is totally the same. If you want to see big numbers, roll a mage. The game was built that way. We didn't have complex class defining damage rotations back than. Basically every caster had one spell to cast, that's it.
So a Mage casted frostbolt all ofer, a boomkin casted wrath all oll over. Playstyle is the same for both but the Boomkin was expected to ply support, the mage wasn't. Chose the class you like back then.

[Super Kami Dende]

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.

But who cares what 1% of people think. The games fun should be created around the 99% that aren't elitist assclowns that ruin fun.

[Tiberria]

1:
That is somewhat true and not. Several huge raid buffs were a "chose one" kind of buff. Like Totems and Blessings, where multiple classes were needed to provide all buffs. Also alot of those buffs were group limited, you needed one windfury totem per melee groupe one boomkin per caster group and so on.
So while some buffs like curse of shadows/elements were unstackable, some were.

2:
Actually the direct oposite happened. Non raiding content was never blanced around damage but around everything else. A group with a paladin made a 5man run a breeze, because of blessings and auras. In PvP Hybrids were among the most powerful foes. Ehancer, Shadowpriests for example were extremely powerful.

3:
And that is why the game provided so many different classes to pick from. If you don't like supporting, play a mage. The rotation of a Boomkin and a Mage is quite the same. The playstyle as a DPS is totally the same. If you want to see big numbers, roll a mage. The game was built that way. We didn't have complex class defining damage rotations back than. Basically every caster had one spell to cast, that's it.
So a Mage casted frostbolt all ofer, a boomkin casted wrath all oll over. Playstyle is the same for both but the Boomkin was expected to ply support, the mage wasn't. Chose the class you like back then.

Stuff like Totems and Blessings weren't really legitimate in terms of bringing extra DPS to a raid, since the healing specs of those classes could bring that stuff anyway, so you would probably just bring 4-5 Holy Pallies or Resto Shaman depending on faction (obviously couldn't bring both) and assign the buffs appropriately by group. You'd just end up being told to heal as a Paladin/Shaman.

[Deleted]

So are rogues now our pets providing damage? Obviously I am joking, but its is an interesting point you made.

.

Yes. That is what I wrote in my first post.
For a support class, the DDs or Carries or whatever you want to call them based on genre, are basically your Pets. You provide them with the tools to do damage for you. That is basically what a Pet class did and does.

A BM Hunter does very poor damage on his own, a lot of their toolkit is centered around providing more damage to the pets.
The only difference is, that the pets of Hybrids ... sometimes have a brain and their damage is not counted towards your own personal damage.
However since the goal of a raid (a team fight!) is to kill the boss and your pet manages to do it, you played well. You healed your pet, you buffed your pet and it did your damage.

So yes. Rogues and Mages are the pets of Hybrids, hihi.

[Charge me Doctor]

But, you need to be able to switch specs to be able to heal or tank with any level of competence outside of a few emergency heals or off tanking something for a few seconds. Plus, is the ability to be able to throw out some emergency healing really all that different in terms of value brought to the raid than say being able to trap or sheep an add, or summon people, etc.? Even in Vanilla, it's not as if pures brought 0 value outside of DPS.

the game wasn't balanced around raiding. Hybrids are taxed for their ability to heal in general, regardless of their spec. To remove the hybrid tax they must either reduce healing output near to nothing or to the level of "well it works only as self healing at this point", or completely remove any sort of healing or huge party-wide buffs from the DPS specs of hybrids. Like they did in cata or something

[klaps_05]

Hybrid tax was created because while you could be an awesome rogue, you will never be more than a melee dps in any context. so to play a pure DPS class was a big commitment, as gearing or building a 2nd main character was extremely painful in every way possible.

So either you went pure DPS and knew you will always be on top, or you went hybrid and you knew you would bring a lot of utility. This was a bit of an empty promise as paladins never tanked and the only thing enhancement shaman was good at is randomly dying due to playing 2h windfury for overaggro. Majority of bosses were taunt immune and had threat wipe abilities, and frontal cleave. Shaman randomly overaggroing meant 3-5 more melee DPS in the ground or having to be healed.

Removing hybrid tax was a natural course of development for the game as if maining a CLASS made sense in vanilla, they wanted to enable players to main a SPEC onwards. Also dont forget its not all about the raids - its about getting to it. Why would you ever take a hybrid as dps to a 5man or UBRS when there are 20 rogues and mages on top of the bank, let alone to let them have rare shit like HoJ and alike. And THEN we have to whole point of RAID gearing - you would get barely 2, 3 if lucky drops per boss. You would really gamble that on a hybrid instead of a pure DPS class? Item sets predetermining your specs wasnt help either. Sure, you could make Sulfuras as ret or enhance - it will only cost you a fortune and a 2% eye of sulfuras drop (someone once told me its 100% if you had Sulfuron Hammer but never found out).

While the enhance and ret pvp videos are quite fun to watch in vanilla, in raids you just spike threat and make things harder. Or you can just plop totems for the melee and downrank healing wave.

[ManiaCCC]

Why do you think it was only the a small minority that did it... Part of it is because you get gated off at your class choice if you want to do something other than what your class was pigeonholed into.

There is no evidence to support this. Actually, raiding, like real raiding outside of simple LFR tool and pugging, when people are overgeared as hell, is still very rare. So even if you have homogenized classes, people still don't want play proper raiding. And it was/will be much harder with 40 man raids. So I just believe what you wrote is factually wrong.

Thing is, everytime, someone argue against hybrid tax, raids will be the main talking point. And I think game sacrificed too much just for sake of raiding balance and people obsessions with meters and numbers. This is where "go play retail" argument is actually correct, i think. Because hybrid tax and class huge differences was one of the part, what defined the vanilla.