Hybrid Spec's, do you miss them?

[Gungnir]

Powerplayer exist in dnd but usually and generally people plays for fun over the course of n weeks, hence Powerplayer are usually mocked.

In WoW unlike DnD there is competition and people want to rush asap.


For example how many times you got rejected in wow for a m+ because you weren't a lock or boomkin?
Now compare to how many times irl during a DnD session you got rejected because " duurr man make a Barb not a Bard we need this combo!!!1"

No one in the history of the fucking planet would value a barb over a bard.
Caster supremacy is so much a thing in D&D, it's ridiculous.

Also, Gygax dungeons or equally tough campaigns, min-maxing in D&D exists for a reason.

[Noxina]

In the end you ended up doing the exact same thing as you do now - follow a cookie cutter spec, or be left out.


And people who claim "every level was so rewarding with the old talent syste" are full of shit, "yey I got another %parry and will do that for 4 more levels, so I can put a point in %crit 5 levels in a row, so much rewarding!"

Now when you get to a level where you can chose a new talent you actually get something meaningful. Sure, in most cases 2/3 of the choices are crap compared to the one you should pick for max gains, but that's how it was in Vanilla aswell. "Oh you picked that route, have fun doing zero dmg for 20 levels."

[huth]

Well not really Vanilla (post 2004) and TBC proved it, we had Retri giving crit or arms giving extra phys dmg.

You need to make hybrid class working like an half dps but that gives buffs or Debuff so strong that it fills that gap.

Only downside is that you will have a raid with 1 of each hybridq

Nobody took them along for their hybridness, though, only for the buffs. So that actually proves that Hybrids didn't work even back then.

[Deleted]

In the end you ended up doing the exact same thing as you do now - follow a cookie cutter spec, or be left out.


And people who claim "every level was so rewarding with the old talent syste" are full of shit, "yey I got another %parry and will do that for 4 more levels, so I can put a point in %crit 5 levels in a row, so much rewarding!"

Now when you get to a level where you can chose a new talent you actually get something meaningful. Sure, in most cases 2/3 of the choices are crap compared to the one you should pick for max gains, but that's how it was in Vanilla aswell. "Oh you picked that route, have fun doing zero dmg for 20 levels."

While i agree that a single talent point may not have been that great ( unless it was talent point unlocking talent 21/31 of a tree), i can for sure say that 15 talent points were way more rewarding compared to a new talent every 15 level. Comparing a single talent point with the talent you spend every 15 levels atm is just unfair.

On the plus side, you also Had new abilities to look forward to every few level ups from your trainer.

It was way way more rewarding if you ask me

[Deleted]

Nobody took them along for their hybridness, though, only for the buffs. So that actually proves that Hybrids didn't work even back then.

Those buffs were their Hybridness?


Retri TBC had talent to increase crit rate against judged mobs or sanctity aura improved

So...

[Gungnir]

In the end you ended up doing the exact same thing as you do now - follow a cookie cutter spec, or be left out.


And people who claim "every level was so rewarding with the old talent syste" are full of shit, "yey I got another %parry and will do that for 4 more levels, so I can put a point in %crit 5 levels in a row, so much rewarding!"

Now when you get to a level where you can chose a new talent you actually get something meaningful. Sure, in most cases 2/3 of the choices are crap compared to the one you should pick for max gains, but that's how it was in Vanilla aswell. "Oh you picked that route, have fun doing zero dmg for 20 levels."

Except you still have people to this day trying to figure out whether or not DS/Ruin or SM/Ruin is the best for warlocks in Vanilla, the ability to either go deep frost or arcane/frost for MC progression etc.
90% of the specs back then had key talents you had to pick, but had a good 15 points or so usually left over for you to do whatever you wanted with. That's not really a thing anymore.

The only actual personalization and choice you have regarding optimum performance in raids right now is if you want a stun or a knockback for CC. The rest are just set in stone.

[Linkedblade]

frostfire mage, panzerkin, and shockadin all have a special place in my heart

[huth]

Those buffs were their Hybridness?


Retri TBC had talent to increase crit rate against judged mobs or sanctity aura improved

So...

No, they weren't. Hybrid means you can (adequately) perform more than one role(e.g. Tank and Heal, Heal and DPS). They were still only good for one thing, so they weren't good as Hybrids.

[Deleted]

No, they weren't. Hybrid means you can (adequately) perform more than one role(e.g. Tank and Heal, Heal and DPS). They were still only good for one thing, so they weren't good as Hybrids.

What? Absolutely not.

You are confusing Hybrid Classes with Pure DPS or Pure Heal classes.

A rogue is still a pure dps no matter the spec.

A retri is just an hybrid/support class.


Hence the latter cannot do the same dps as a pure dps class, it can do an adeguate dps that is sub-par but fills this gap with utility.

So they were Hybrid Specs from Hybrid Classes

[Deleted]

Also the Hybrid Spec/Class scenario evolved from Vanilla to TBC

And TBC had better and refined Hybrid Classes and Specs.

[Noxina]

While i agree that a single talent point may not have been that great ( unless it was talent point unlocking talent 21/31 of a tree), i can for sure say that 15 talent points were way more rewarding compared to a new talent every 15 level. Comparing a single talent point with the talent you spend every 15 levels atm is just unfair.

On the plus side, you also Had new abilities to look forward to every few level ups from your trainer.

It was way way more rewarding if you ask me

You still get new abilities as you level up, you just don't have to go back to the trainer to unlock them. In the end it is a boring grind to get to max level, though that boring grind was even more tedious back in Vanilla. I remember not even caring to put in talent points every level, because it literally didn't have any impact on my playstyle before reaching the key talents.

[Mirishka]

I remember back in the day a very few that ran hybrid specs. Did anyone out there run one? Back in the old skill trees I used to toy with hybrid Affliction/Desto, and Affliction/Demo. It was a lot of fun and created some neat rotations and support concepts for being a team player. I know with the simplification of WoW that we've seen we will most likely never get that back, but it was a lot of fun to create a spec that really fit what you wanted to do. Sometimes it would fail by the numbers, sometimes it would win. But the experimentation was fun.

I reminisce about the old Deep Wounds/Impale prot warrior build from time to time, but in general, no.

[Noxina]

Except you still have people to this day trying to figure out whether or not DS/Ruin or SM/Ruin is the best for warlocks in Vanilla, the ability to either go deep frost or arcane/frost for MC progression etc.
90% of the specs back then had key talents you had to pick, but had a good 15 points or so usually left over for you to do whatever you wanted with. That's not really a thing anymore.

The only actual personalization and choice you have regarding optimum performance in raids right now is if you want a stun or a knockback for CC. The rest are just set in stone.

Well, not sure how simming on Vanilla servers work, but I bet if people actually wanted to figure out what talent setups works the best they could make a sim-profile for it and let the computer do the math for it.

If it wasn't for the tech we now have, people would spend a lot more time figuring out which talents to pick etc, but we literally put it into a program and let it figure it out for us. And those who don't bother doing that do as they did (or the people with the same mindset did) back with the old talent system - they inspected the pro players and copied.

[Swalload]

I remember back in the day a very few that ran hybrid specs. Did anyone out there run one? Back in the old skill trees I used to toy with hybrid Affliction/Desto, and Affliction/Demo. It was a lot of fun and created some neat rotations and support concepts for being a team player. I know with the simplification of WoW that we've seen we will most likely never get that back, but it was a lot of fun to create a spec that really fit what you wanted to do. Sometimes it would fail by the numbers, sometimes it would win. But the experimentation was fun.

It was fun to call them "specs that you really wanted to do" instead of just "shit specs" which is what they really were. There was just not enough knowledge going around to smack you in the face with the truth, but these spec were shit, but the game was so much easier than today that it didn't matter. Also the 1 button vanilla rotations we had didn't really help make us feel that our specs were fucking garbage compared to our much more evolved rotation we have now.

[therealbowser]

For a second I thought you meant like enhancement shaman buffing a party's damage rather than their own. Yeah, I miss those deeply but I know their time has passed.

But no, you mean ret/protection or whatnot. The only thing I miss about them is coincidental; I loved reckbombs. Otherwise, I couldn't care less about them. Occasionally they offered interesting setups, but by and large they existed because of cases where primary talents were just bad. And no, I don't miss all the cases where there were bad primary talents.

I do miss the old talent systems, though.

[RobertMugabe]

I miss the days of being able to come to mmo-c and not seeing thread after thread of poorly done thin veiled attempts of people trying to make vanilla WoW hype trains.

The worst Thing about These threads isn't that... but the fact that we see These Topics every day multiple times + the OP contradicts himself too often to be taken seriously.

[Sluimerstand]

Personally, yes. I was a Frostfire Mage during Wrath of the Lich King and that was both fun and surprisingly good. I remember having to pop Invisible when my Mirror Image ran out because I would just grab aggro from my burst phase.

I also recall using this optimised stealth build for my Rogue to farm lockboxes for the Insane achievement. I rather liked being able to spec in all utility, even if the trade-off was that you did basically no damage. For my alts that would still be fantastic.

I don't know about how good that would be for the game balance-wise, but I do miss them.

[Archon14]

I remember trying to make a 2h Shockadin work back in the day. There was also a build for 2h+shield warrior, that was fun.

Great, I reminded myself how much I miss Gladiator warrior....

[Aggrophobic]

I miss being able to cast most spells from other specs. It kinda made it more fun, and I had even more buttons to press if necessary

Thing is, if you did you most likely played the spec "wrong" or suboptimally at least.

[Claymore]

I definitely miss it. I remember playing Ret back in Vanilla -- something generally reserved for masochists -- and I remember how awesome it was for a tank or a healer to drop, and being able to switch gears and fill the void temporarily, often prevent wipes on bosses. I don't know how much of that was by design, versus just everyone under-performing their classes actual capabilities (being a "skilled player" was a pretty low bar, in hindsight), but it was definitely a lot of fun. Especially since there weren't a ton of resources for "getting the most from your class", everyone was just kind of winging-it.

Not sure if the game could ever really return to that mindset, though.