How many hybrids would you raid with if you wanted to clear Naxx in a month or two?

[Samuraijake]

all healers and tanks are hybrids.. so you wouldnt be able to clear naxx at all with that prejudice mindset

[willemh]

So you're talking about a guild that has two main tanks instead of just 1, 4 offtanks instead of just 2, etc etc. At what point are they going to play together to make use of that 'effectiveness'? It's running two parallel raids inefficiently because it's going to take both parties longer to complete the raid with only half the raid there, and you're going to be wasting loot all along the way by not having the right class compositions available to soak up excess gear.

You play together for progression, split for farm, obviously. And no, you won't be 20 manning 4 horsemen with 4 offtanks and there really arnt many other fights that a fury warrior slamming on a shield can't offtank.

It's obviously also not about the excess gear, it's about the shiny items everyone wants.

Being less efficient (slower) in clearing the raid is also completely irrelevant when you have lockouts and can only clear it once a week anyway.

[Lora]

i mean considering you literally can't clear naxx without hybrids bc shadow priests are needed for MC also the fact that all healers + tanks are hybrids so... GL doing 40 pure dps no hybrids.

[Caliph]

Hypothetical Scenario: You're thinking about joining a 15 hour / week raid group with the goal of clearing Naxxramas a month or two after P6 drops. You look at the roster and say, "Nope, that's too many hybrids." How many did you see?

(We'll just say everyone has perfect attendance, so raid size = 40. We'll also assume that everyone is friendly and equally skilled, however, optimal specs might get poached more but too many sub-optimal specs might hurt future recruitment.)

Edit: I noticed the counts were wrong right as I hit post, and polls can't be edited. It should be:
0-2
3-4
5-6
7-8
9-10
11-12
13-14
15-20
21-25
26+

Off-specs also count as hybrids, for example Arcane mages, Survival Hunters, Arms Warriors, anyone that isn't one of these 9 specs:

Prot Warrior
Fury Warrior
Holy Pally
Resto Shaman
Marksman (?) Hunter
Combat Swords (or daggers?) Rogue
Resto Druid
0/30/21 or whatever the optimal Warlock spec is
Fire Mage
Holy Priest

Based on what I've read I think I'd go with 5 or 6. I could handle a ret paladin, a feral druid, a boomkin, two shadow or disc priests, and maybe the RL's girlfriend that just has to play Arms warrior. But more than 6 I'd probably start looking at server transfers...

I would only take a shadow priest and maybe a pure destroy lock. I don't think ret and boomie did enough dps while having no utility. I think.

As for how easy or high end the raiding was I have to say the % of clears for even AQ let alone Naxx is really really low. Both raids came out after we had a long time to l2p so that isn't an excuse. The raids were imo average but far from easy. Remember you only had so much you could do with your talents, rotation etc.

[bloodykiller86]

either be optimal spec or youre trash

[Gsara]

If you are shooting for clearing naxx a month or two after it releases then it doesnt matter what you take class/spec wise so just play whatever you like.
Naxx will be cleared the first week its out by dozens of guilds pretty easily with class stacking. That being said, if you plan to be one of those guilds clearing the first week, youll stack dps warriors(most guilds run 16-20 warrior), a few rogues, mages and locks with one disc/shadow (31/0/20) to PI for mage with buff and keep weaving up for locks. Then fill out the rest with tanks healers and buffer specs.

[Sensa1]

I think people are putting difficulty completely down to mechanics. I completely agree that the mechanics of all most every boss fight over the past 4-5 expansions is "Mechanically" more difficult than the hardest bosses in Classic, however... One of the hardest things to overcome in Vanilla is simply damage values and class limitations. Healers ooming and tanks getting smashed extremely hard is the biggest problem all the way through Vanilla, especially early on. Bosses in Mythic might take a bigger percentage of your health away, but healers are more equipped to deal with that now. Every single healers has like 2-3 insta-heals and the amount of HOTS flying around means raid healing isn't a problem anymore. If you're on alliance side in Classic pretty much every single raid heal has to be manually done, you can't rely on chain heal to do the extra healer for you.


Another thing to consider: Most mechanics nowadays aren't random. What I'm implying here is that you can barely blame RNG for wipes anymore. Almost every wipe is down to player error. In vanilla you can get randomly killed by the very first boss (Onyxia) simply because of an unlucky fear/cleave and there's also the chance of being feared into whelps. There are a lot of situations where things like this can happen in classic and I think it has to be taken into account. It's not difficult by definition, but it's another annoying thing that will affect a guild progress.

You nailed it.

And as you allude to the differences in play styles of the classes (and game mechanics like threat etc) will take old timers some time to readjust to, and totally shock anyone who started playing in post Wrath, and contribute to making the "simper" mechanics of Vanilla almost as challenging as they were back in the day