Originally Posted by
Whitepaw
I honestly don’t get the argument that hybridity is just for flavour etc. That’s just incorrect. Obviously, in a world where you ONLY value stuff according to raw dps or hps, you end up concluding that the Affinities are “just for flavour”, because of the need to balance the classes.
But SL is moving beyond this paradigm - finally. The devs are imposing AoE caps, allowing a lot of classes to gain hybridity (with both baseline spells and talents) and the devs are talking very specifically about “classes”, not specs. It almost feels like TBC/WotLK all over again!
Why is this a good thing? It won’t be for all, but for those of us who enjoy challenging gameplay, it will be. Instead of a formulaic gameplay, where we all play Diablo in a WoW setting with massive pulls, massive AoE and all eyes on the dps meters, we can have unpredictable and surprising gameplay elements. Because now, the mobs can cc the healer in a 5-man - they can re-stealth and go for a dps - they can drop aggro on the tank etc. This can now be implemented in all PvE content, because ALL GROUPS WILL HAVE HYBRIDITY AND THUS THE TOOLS TO HANDLE THESE SITUATIONS!
We had some of this in TBC, but at the time, that meant that some dps classes were mandatory because of their cc abilities. In WotLK, all classes suddenly had cc, but then the dungeons were made much easier, so we didn’t have to use it. Then the LFG tool was added, and suddenly, most PvE content was reduced to an AoE slugfest.
SL seems to change this design paradigm quite violently. If the devs move forward in the new direction, pulls will be smaller, cc will be needed and players should be able and willing to use their class’ tools to handle difficult situations, like tanking mobs away from the designated tank, using cc to peel the healer, cleansing and debuffing regularly etc.
“But I only want to dps!”. Yeah, suck it up, ‘cause it looks like WoW is moving in another direction and it’ll be interesting to see who has the intelligence and mental agility to keep up. There is no doubt that Blizzard risks alienating certain groups of players (like at the start of Cataclysm, when the dungeons were suddenly much harder - and a lot more fun!) and they might chose to only implement these changes in higher difficulty levels because of this.
“But Blizzard will never do this - AoE is what WoW has always been about!”. Nope. Back in TBC, we had 2 glorious years where Heroic 5-man dungeons were really hard. The tanks were AoE capped, cc was used all the time, and I spent a lot of time as a Feral man-handling adds to save my healer from dying. Back then, entering a Heroic 5-man felt like a proper challenge: You were on the grounds of your enemy and the mobs in there tried their very best to kill you. I know that M+ tries to achieve the same, but the whole game design is, in my humble opinion, quite flawed.
And what about the Balance Affinity? I wish it had more punch (more dps) and no CD (I play as Feral, and so have a CD of 90 sec on my Moonkin form). Why more dps? Because I’d like to use it in situations where I can’t reach as a Feral and so need ranged attacks. In fact, I’d like Moonfire in cat form to be baseline for Feral, building combo points, but that’s another discussion. Playing as Moonkin with my Balance Affinity shouldn’t be better than in cat form, obviously - but it shouldn’t be as nerfed as it is right now. Would that give Feral an edge over other melee dps in certain situations? Yes - yes it would. So, how about that balance? Well, I figure that having DH now going unchanged into its 3rd expansion, massively OP in most content, is a pretty convincing argument as to why Feral should be able to realise some of the Druid’s awesome ranged capability.