Let's talk about "Hybrid tax"

[Ethris]

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.

You don't necessarily have to be the master of your class (or even particularly good) to buff another player so they can do their job better. Furthermore, if you bring a buff that doesn't scale with gear, why would I bother gearing you up in my raids? If you're going to complain about it, I'll just get another shaman who won't moan about how their ability to press a single button is carrying the raid. This is like saying the waterboy who kept the quarterback hydrated is what really won the game.

Oh the good old days. I began in BC but back then it was still just as bad. See, enhancement "shared" gear with hunters which were the most popular class (or one of) and its 3 specs shared close to no stats with enhancement. We needed to cap expertise (remember that) and hunters didnt need a drop of the thing thus there were almost no mail gear with that stat. Hunters needed about half our hit rating too so there was little gear with hit aswell. Finally there was that hole Str for enhancement debacle that lasted almost all of BC. And dont even get me started on the beloved "armor penetration" stat.

Enhancement used to feel like the red headed step child of WoW.

And yet I remember stacking nothing but warlocks and ENH Shamans for sunwell progression. No that was not fun either.

[Rampant Rabbit]

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?

If the spec that forms a hybrid spec is a mix of a DPS and Healing/Tanking talent tree, 'hybrid-tax' is completely logical. Especially considering the fact that most lower to mid tier talents are understandably weaker than the talents higher up in the tree.

I thought every hybrid accepted this, and chose to become a hybrid because of this. You sacrifice some DPS for utility.

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized what you're saying. I still somewhat agree with the hybdric tax though.

Ret paladins and Feral druids always had the advantage of having healing spells in their kit as well, simply because their class required these abilities to be there as they should be basic abilities to that class lorewise.

When the basic toolkit of a class includes multiple healing abilities, I think it's quite normal that these will be valued more than their DPS abilities in a PvE environment.

I think that a fully specced feral druid should at least do competitive damage with classes that have two DPS trees, and one healing or tanking tree.

Also, feral was pretty much a hybrid talent tree in itself, because I believe it had both tanking and DPS talents.

Vanilla had many 'flaws', because it wasn't as polished as it is now. And how could it be?

[Deleted]

This is like saying the waterboy who kept the quarterback hydrated is what really won the game.

This statement alone perfectly explains what I define as the problem with this system. Just to remind you: Raiding aswell as your analogy are both team games that are not won by one "star player" alone.

Also in terms of Difficulty: Where is teh difficulty in pressing 1 button all over? There is none. Even in todays raiding environment the damage is mostly defined by your ability to dodge mechaniques and not dying than executing a complex rotation.
So with that in mind: A shaman with his non scaling totems would be unable to provide those totems if he dies because of being unable to perform the heigan dance.

Here comes your skill involvement for that "water boy".

[Soluna]

Warlocks didn't have a combat res, they could put an ankh on people but couldn't res them.
Int buff is hardly a "DPS buff", it gave what, 30 int? With ratio of crit = int/150 or something it gave virtually nothing
druid combat res was 30 minutes cooldown and 1,5 sec cast time

Ok you are pretty much agreeing with me, in that druids and warlocks had some form of rezz, which was limited, druids had a small dps buff, locks had nothing, but this dps buff was given to all casters, and finally, the part which you decided to exclude, innervating healers. So yeah, druids had a lot more utility. A combat ress is also much more useful than an 'ank'. You don't know who will die in a fight, so druids were much more versatile with a CR.

[Jastall]

Baldur's gate and dragon age aren't mmos and aren't comparable with wow. They aren't even comparable to each other.
And if you play at decent difficulty settings you are interested in power of your characters at max level, it's very important.

I'd argue that they're not so different in their general intent, but that is besides the point. What I mostly compared is the structure of these games and why hybrid/support characters, which work in other styles of RPGs, mostly don't work in MMOs. And you could hardly call them hybrids in vanilla anyway, just classes that happen to be capable of healing or tanking and should get on that instead of pretending they can contribute meaningfully with their awful damage.

Blizzard did try something like an actual hybrid with Legion disc priests, which need to DPS in order to heal. I'd say the concept is pretty cool, but limiting it to just one spec is a much better idea than enforcing the tax across the entire roster of classes.

[Adalwolf]

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.

Exactly. This is the reason I tell people World of Warcraft will never have Bards: people don't fully understand being a support class, they will want Bards to do as much damage as a Fury Warrior and then, why would anyone bring a Fury Warrior? Even Healers nowadays are Log freaks and care more about being top HPS on Details! and All-stars on WarcraftLogs than actually healing the group...

[Thimagryn]

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.

Hybrid Tax was never a static thing in WoW, so we can't discuss this properly without addressing the fact that original Vanilla implemented a heavy tax to the point where it was useless for a Druid to do anything but provide Wild Buffs and Innervate. It got better in later patches, but unless Classic rolls out with those later patches in mind, there is almost no point in playing a Feral Druid other than to personally level up because they are simply not viable at all until the patches that balanced them out.

We don't need to go to the route of homogenization to satisfy all parties. That was the route Blizzard took because the balance between classes was far too grand in their design compared to what was needed to balance out the boss encounters. They couldn't keep track of all the unique abilities each class brought while scaling them up 'equally' because at that point they had begun to shift from the asymmetric balance model that existed in Vanilla and TBC.

The extremity of Hybrid Tax pre-1.12 Vanilla was clear - If you want to be a DPS Druid then you play only with groups that will accept you as one because otherwise you will be stigmatized as 'Reroll healz plox'. The meta has no room for non-optimal specs and you will only be seen as an inefficient player rather than someone who meaningfully brings something good to the table (as far as the general community is concerned).

Having played a Feral Tank in Vanilla, that is exactly what we were faced with. While I wouldn't suggest the hybrid tax be removed, it should be tailored more towards TBC levels of balance rather than early Vanilla otherwise you will be completely unviable in your spec due to the lack of supporting stats and abilities to allow you to function properly in that role.

[Eurytos]

This is entirely accurate. And i'd like to add... cutting edge? 14 year old content? lol. Let's be real here dudes.

You know what's going to happen...you'll see "cutting edge" groups attempting to kill bosses with the weakest specs out there. The challenge won't be doing it with the best classes, but with the crappiest ones. A raid full of bear tanks, ret paladins, sub rogues, and disc priests.

[Logwyn]

Of course you could but that would turn classic into a completely different game that vanilla was.
That can't be the point of the project.

I"m still not seeing how Blizzard sayings that they are making classic server means they are making vanilla servers. Classic isn't the same as Vanilla. Besides from Patch 1.1.0 7 November 2004 to 2.0.0 5 December 2006 is 2 years worth of Vanilla.

[Lolsteak]

Ok you are pretty much agreeing with me, in that druids and warlocks had some form of rezz, which was limited, druids had a small dps buff, locks had nothing, but this dps buff was given to all casters, and finally, the part which you decided to exclude, innervating healers. So yeah, druids had a lot more utility. A combat ress is also much more useful than an 'ank'. You don't know who will die in a fight, so druids were much more versatile with a CR.

Are you fucking kidding me? WARLOCKS DIDN'T HAVE A DPS BUFF IN VANILLA????

What the fuck is Curse of Elements, Weakness, Shadow???

[Maarius]

Reading in this thread made me realize how dumb I was when testing certain specs on the PTR in leveling.

It's a group game and balanced around that... and I wanted all classes and specs on one level at quest content. That's just impossible to do for the devs.

[Jastall]

Exactly. This is the reason I tell people World of Warcraft will never have Bards: people don't fully understand being a support class, they will want Bards to do as much damage as a Fury Warrior and then, why would anyone bring a Fury Warrior? Even Healers nowadays are Log freaks and care more about being top HPS on Details! and All-stars on WarcraftLogs than actually healing the group...

You must raid with bad healers then.

And yeah, people prefer to play an actual DPS spec. Because then you feel like you can contribute more and can measure your performance. How do you measure the performance of a support class? ''Did you buff us? yay you, that's your only job after all''. That would be boring as hell for the vast majority of players and rightfully so. Nobody should be there just to be the other player's buff bitch.

[Soluna]

Are you fucking kidding me? WARLOCKS DIDN'T HAVE A DPS BUFF IN VANILLA????

What the fuck is Curse of Elements, Weakness, Shadow???

Oops that's right. My bad.

[Thimagryn]

Exactly. This is the reason I tell people World of Warcraft will never have Bards: people don't fully understand being a support class, they will want Bards to do as much damage as a Fury Warrior and then, why would anyone bring a Fury Warrior? Even Healers nowadays are Log freaks and care more about being top HPS on Details! and All-stars on WarcraftLogs than actually healing the group...

My answer to that is to play a Hybrid DPS. The 'why bring a Fury Warrior if hybrids can DPS' argument is no excuse for a Hybrid underperforming when they optimize themselves fully to fulfill one role and in the process forsake their ability to provide support. If a Feral Druid optimizes to the point where they can main tank, then there should be no question of them having to shift out and toss out heals in combat or shifting to cat for DPS. Role-specific talents would ideally be balanced to either limit their support role and hybrid tax (ie Feral Tank talent that gives Crushing Blow avoidance while lowering heal spells by 50%) or promote the hybrid gameplay to support that intended hybrid DPS play (ie Natures Grace procs can cast Heals while in forms).

We have neither of this and thus hybrids trying to take on Pure roles are being taxed and are not reliable in performing those intended roles. Later patches help this, but I'm assuming we're addressing pre-1.12 patches in this discussion.

[Aggrophobic]

I"m still not seeing how Blizzard sayings that they are making classic server means they are making vanilla servers. Classic isn't the same as Vanilla. Besides from Patch 1.1.0 7 November 2004 to 2.0.0 5 December 2006 is 2 years worth of Vanilla.

Yeah, it is the same. Did you even watch the last Blizzcon?

[endersblade]

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 totems never have and never will stack? One totem gets dropped and everyone gets the 5% buff, there is absolutely no reason (in your scenario) to need another shaman, thus making your comment completely pointless.

[Aggrophobic]

Because totems never have and never will stack? One totem gets dropped and everyone gets the 5% buff, there is absolutely no reason (in your scenario) to need another shaman, thus making your comment completely pointless.

No, it was just an exampel. But in any case, if you could bring just as much damage but the utility as well then why bring something that only does damage?
Damage was balanced against utility back then. Your class brought something else than just pure damage.

Or games has this as well like Rifts bards and so on. The idea itself is not bad and it was at the core of the desigen behind vanilla. If you don't like this then classic is not for you.

[Melusine]

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.

What you are saying is that utility shouldn't matter on overall output, and I think that is unreasonable, and let me explain why I think that is unreasonable...

If a Feral can do everything a rogue can do just as well as a rogue, but can additionally heal himself in a different form, shift shapes and break roots, is immune to polymorph, has a bear form to which he can serve as a third tank with, and can use ranged spells, then why would anyone bother rolling a rogue?

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

You got my attention...

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.

In vanilla, switching between specs isn't an option unless you pay to have it done. No such thing as dual spec, remember? However, being a druid and switching forms IS an option. Not only that, a feral druid in Vanilla can go two ways in the same spec... as a bear, or as a kitty. AND they do have access to healing spells for themselves. So, I say again, if you make a kitty able to do all these things, and be a dps that is every bit as good as a rogue, why would you roll a rogue?

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?

I guess it goes without saying, that there is no such thing as a class that has 3 healing specs, and nothing else. That said, all healing specs should be n fairly equal footing. Same with tanks.... no such thing as a class with 3 tank specs. Seems you're complaining about dps, but again, until you make the specialization lose all utility from other specs, it is a bad argument.

[kenoathcarn]

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.

by 'MMO stone age' do you mean 'MMO age' because to be quite honest, wow today hardly fits the MMO genre.

[Logwyn]

Yeah, it is the same. Did you even watch the last Blizzcon?

If they serious start it off at 1.0... it will fail. WOW was horrible then. So much broken.