Hybrids in Vanilla

[Kujako]

Good old Smoking Heart of the Mountain and Mark of Tyranny.

Yup. I mastered enchanting just to make the Smoking Heart of the Mountain, and then dropped it right after. Anything and everything with armor on it was the moto.

[Absintheminded]

Honestly, bear tanking was pretty common. Less common but still not that rare was warrior dps. The thing about warriors was that in most raiding guilds you were expected to be able to tank, but in fights where you were not needed you dps-ed. Hence the spec most raiding warriors had with 15 in Prot for threat and the rest usually in Arms, though Fury had some good points (crit, improved shouts, etc.).

Also, I never considered Warriors in vanilla as hybrids, I think the general consensus in Vanilla concerning hybrids was if you had to manage all or most of the different stats. For instance druids used str/agi/stam for bear, agi for kitty, intellect/spirit for resto, and so on. Some had to balance more at any given time like Paladins/Shaman using strength and intellect. It's possible that both ideas were valid in vanilla and I wasn't aware of people looking at hybrids as simply more than one role. Anyways, I miss Warrior tanking in vanilla, very busy, high skill cap, but very rewarding.

[Drilnos]

Yup. I mastered enchanting just to make the Smoking Heart of the Mountain, and then dropped it right after. Anything and everything with armor on it was the moto.

I did the same. Was miner/engineer, dropped mining, picked up enchanting, made the trinket and took up mining again. It was worth it. Still have it in my bank. Never had the heart to get rid of it.

[Coldpro]

I was a dps warrior, but then...it wasn't uncommon, because we were beast!

And paladins role wasn't healing, it was oocressing and buffs, healing was for priests and druids

I knew many pallies that were outhealing Priests and Druids.... Granted, they probably didn't know how to play, but there were some really good Pallies out there nonetheless.

[Kujako]

Also, I never considered Warriors in vanilla as hybrids

I could swear that the official dogma was that hybrids where the classes without a ranged weapon slot. But I would have a hard time backing that up seven years after the fact.

[Absintheminded]

I could swear that the official dogma was that hybrids where the classes without a ranged weapon slot. But I would have a hard time backing that up seven years after the fact.

Warriors did have ranged slots, in fact, ranged pulling was a big part of tanking in vanilla so you could seperate and kill groups safer.

edit: Having said that though, your statement does make sense now that I think about it. Totems, Librams, Sigils, all marks of hybrids.

[YouAreAllWrong]

It is really interesting how the term "hybrid" ended up meaning through out the years.

In traditional MMOs a group consisted of Tank, Damage Dealer (Yes DD not Damage Per Seconder like we call them in WoW), Healer and Support.
Support was brining utility and buffs to the group and their gameplay style was actually a combination of healing, damage dealing (off tanking in some cases) and buffing. They were truly hybrids.

WoW did not exactly worked that way but in Vanilla you could actually hybrid spec your character.
Mages used to spec frost/fire for example. I used to spec my druid 9/21/21 for PvP, which had a total hybrid gameplay at that time (before patch 1.12). It was not optimal, but it worked and it was so much fun. TBC talents were the first to kill this gameplay though.
I went deeper into restoration tree for raiding and I remember performing very good at that time, even compare to the true healers (priests). I remember having a feral druid in the guild at that time that was also off tanking some content. So, yeah many of the so called "uncommon" specs where used my players.

Nowadays the word "Hybrid" ended up being a class that could either heal or DPS or Tank, which isn't really a hybrid in the traditional sense.

[Wilian]

So my question is, did any of you guys raid as an uncommon spec for your class at level 60 back in vanilla, and what was it like to play back then?

Paladin as a hybrid was rather fun and intensive to play if you actually filled the hybrid role instead of the pre-determined DPS/Tank/healer. It also was very viable playstyle pre-raids.

In raids I just played as Ret DPS and provided the best mana regeneration in the game in form of JoW for casters.

[Absintheminded]

Paladin as a hybrid was rather fun and intensive to play if you actually filled the hybrid role instead of the pre-determined DPS/Tank/healer. It also was very viable playstyle pre-raids.

In raids I just played as Ret DPS and provided the best mana regeneration in the game in form of JoW for casters.

I think I loved my Retadin during TBC more than any other class I've played throughout the expansions of WoW... My version was the stunadin build where you could HoJ like every 15-20 seconds or something from Prot talents + Arena gear bonus, plus Deep Thunder proc. Truly a hybrid in a more offensive sense, insane amount of control, decent damage, cleanse, spot heals. TBC Ret certainly had one of the most intriguing playstyles and high skill caps.