Hybrid Theory: Is it too much?
by Alex Ziebart 
May 31st 2008 at 11:00PM
Here on Hybrid Theory, we've done a lot of glorifying the group utility that Hybrids provide. It's one of their strongest points, and the factor that could make or break their raid spot in a setting of pure recruitment. Recently, I discussed the direction this concept of utility is going with a few raidmates of mine, and some interesting points were made.
The synergy between classes in The Burning Crusade is powerful, but moving in a direction in which the classes and specs become too reliant on one another, or you have to decide which hybrid is more important to you than another hybrid in the same role. Some class/spec combinations simply can't perform in a raid setting without a specific hybrid class alongside them. Some hybrid classes can't perform without other hybrids in their group. This poses a problem for the pure classes, and even though we don't know the exact details of the Death Knight, adding another class may only make things harder.
Let's take a look at the melee group in a 25 man raid, for example. You have your mandatory Enhancement Shaman and probably an Arms (or Fury) Warrior, since Windfury and Battle Shout are pretty massive buffs. Then you have the option of a Feral Druid. Their damage is buffed by the group, but aren't reliant on Windfury Totem. Regardless, that 5% crit is a pretty big deal.
You're now left with two spots in your five man melee group. Your options are Rogues, Retribution Paladins, and Hunters. If your raid has a Ret Paladin, they must be in this group. Improved Seal of the Crusader is a large raid-wise DPS boost, but to really keep up in personal DPS, the Retribution Paladin must be in the group with that Windfury Totem.
Hunters have their various group buffs and benefit from Grace of Air if your Enhancement Shaman is twisting totems as he should, but their group buffs are either not strong enough to justify being in the 'melee' group, or can also be applied to casters, so they're good candidates for filling in just about anywhere.
If you have a Retribution Paladin, you have one place left in your melee group. This will, most likely, be a Rogue. All four of those other people in the group are there, essentially, to buff that Rogue. They all have synergy together, but that one Rogue is most affected by those four other people. Most raids have more than just one Rogue, but if you're trying to use the Hybrid synergy the best you can, you'll fall into this situation unless you start cutting people.
Let's throw Death Knights into the mix. We don't know how Death Knights will work, but let's make a few assumptions for the sake of discussion. They're a physical DPS class unless tanking, so they will probably benefit from Windfury Totem and the various other buffs the melee hybrids supply. You either get to remove someone from the physical DPS group, or not include a Death Knight as DPS in your raid.
There's also the issue of Shaman. They're very good in raids. Very, very good. Totems are incredible group buffs, each of the three Shaman specs are viable, and Bloodlust/Heroism rocks the house down. It's not uncommon for raids to take 3-5 Shaman to brand new content.
Should this utility and synergy be nerfed? No. No no no. This utility allows Hybrids to bring a lot to the raid game without overshadowing, and replacing, the 'pure' classes. It also gives raiding that feel of everyone working as a unit, which I find to be one of the most fulfilling feelings of 25 man raiding. In no way am I suggesting this sort of utility and synergy be nerfed.
What was mentioned to me, and what I agree with, is that this synergy needs to be expanded, or implemented differently as the game progresses. Rather than group buffs, increase them to raid buffs. Utilize the debuff system more. Step away from the group-wide aura system.
Take Trueshot Aura, for example. 125 Attack Power is not a substantial amount, not compared to Battle Shout. It doesn't scale like an Enhancement Shaman's Unleashed Rage, either. Let's say we expanded this buff to affect the whole raid. It would give that small amount of AP to the physical DPS group, good. It would also give that AP to the stragglers that don't fit the group. The other hunters, maybe a stray Feral Druid, the tanks. There are three, maybe four people it wouldn't have applied to before, where it makes any difference. The same can be applied to Battle Shout, maybe even Leader of the Pack or Totems. This solves the issue of "which of my teammates is most worthwhile," and their buffs wouldn't completely throw balance off. The casters have no need for that AP, and the melee have no need for an Elemental Shaman's Totem of Wrath.
I am sure these changes wouldn't be simple for the Devs, but it would make class balancing a more welcoming endeavor for the raid leaders. Min/maxing on the edge of the game isn't very fun at times, simply because bad raid balance can mean wipes on fights such as Brutallus. Min/maxing is fun for a lot of people (including me) but not when it means excluding people when you don't want to do so, or can't afford to do so.
Using debuffs more is also something that would be welcome, assuming the debuff limit was raised (again). Improved Seal of the Crusader is essentially Leader of the Pack in debuff form with a lesser effect per player, but a larger effect across the raid. One is a debuff that will work outside of your group, the other is limited to the group.
While the Retribution Paladin is unfortunately dependent on Windfury, his largest sources of utility will work for just about everyone. Improved Seal of the Crusader will help the people in Groups 2, 3 and 4 even if he's in Group 5.
Feral Druids often (but not always) find themselves in a 'floater' group with the Hunters. Leader of the Pack is often largely wasted. A Feral Druid in Group 3 is not going to buff the physical DPS in Group 4. Their utility is more targeted than the Retribution Paladin's own, but the nature of Leader of the Pack prevents it from keeping up.
Of course, this all applies to casters as well, though not necessarily to the same extent. How much it affects your Melee, Casters, et cetera, is largely dependent on your group composition, what stage the game is in when you see the new content, the pace your raid moves, all of those things.
By and large, the synergy is very good, but it's also restrictive and almost a little demanding and unforgiving at times. An eradication of group buffs is certainly not the answer, but the amount of them we have currently is quite overwhelming. Expanding the more 'underpowered' buffs to raid-wide buffs would help this quite a bit, I think, and I'd like to see things go this way in Wrath and beyond.
Do you have a burning desire for more sweet, sweet Hybrid Theory? Take a look at our discussions on the Sunwell Plateau's Brutallus and the looming arrival of the Death Knight. For other class columns and guides, take a look at the WoW Insider Directory!Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Shaman, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Hybrid Theory, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Kyle May 31st 2008 11:47PM
Good article. Your Totem of Wrath was linked wrong though. Its linked to Heroism at the moment.
Narissa Jun 1st 2008 1:15AM
To add to this before downplaying the hunter "off spec" [Survival]
- Misdirection + Readiness is good as well for when mobs / bosses wipe agro tables.
- Expose Weakness which is ALL attackers regardless of group.
Guess it's all how you see it.
Though I expect not too long following this response to see noob this and that, but frankly I have had some outstanding experiences with Hunters in the melee DPS position so long as you weed out the Huntards in favor of a real Hunter.
Then again the same can be said for just about every class I suppose.
*shrugs*
Narissa Jun 1st 2008 1:16AM
and to clarify before someone gets stupid, I am referring to the article term of melee group.
Alex Ziebart Jun 1st 2008 1:39AM
I certainly was not trying to imply Hunters are not worthwhile in a raid. They are very, very good to have. The only point I was trying to make is that their direct buffs to the Physical DPS group are not as strong as the direct buffs other classes supply. This makes them the best candidate to be a floater- not being directly in the Physical DPS group, but still an essential member of the raid.
If your raid composition allows your Hunters to be in this group, that's fantastic! A lot of compositions don't, however. It all depends on your raid.
Do Hunters have utility? Absolutely. A ton of it, even. It just isn't the sort of utility they need to be in the 5-man physical DPS group in your raid to make the most out of it.
WTafe Jun 1st 2008 1:26AM
Kinda nice being an spriest, all i have to do is have a warlock IN RAID, and my dps increases significantly. An Elem / resto shammy in my grp is just icing on the cake
lol@rogues / hunters / warriors /boomkins and their needs for enhance shammies.
But i will agree, it makes the less typical classes harder to find because they are needed more.
Heilig Jun 1st 2008 2:19AM
"lol@rogues / hunters / warriors /boomkins and their needs for enhance shammies."
Wait, what?
Boom chickens need Windfury?
hoviboy Jun 1st 2008 9:32AM
maybe he was refering to Stormstrike, which increases by 20% the next 2 sources of nature damage dealt to the target. (enhance ability)
Dukenukemx Jun 1st 2008 2:38AM
The problem isn't the hybrid Utility being group limited but the fact raids are limiting to melee in general. All too often are there bosses that suck for melee but are great for ranged.
You can afford to lose melee dps, but you can't afford to lose ranged. The typical raid setup is usually 1 melee group and 2 ranged groups. If you have 2 melee groups then the raid is sure to fail. Having 3 ranged groups is hardly ever a bad thing.
Gotta hope that WOTLK raids are melee friendly. Otherwise there's no point in making a Death Knight for doing melee dps.
superfrank Jun 1st 2008 12:23PM
"IF YOU HAVE 2 MELEE GROUPS THEN THE RAID IS SURE TO FAIL"
that sounds like a bit of a generalisation
Starie Jun 1st 2008 3:09AM
This topic reminds me of the whining that typically went/goes on in my guild about how a certain tier x set sucks compared to a mix bag of generic epics with the same ilevel. I think a lot of players assume Blizzard designs content (including items) with an eye towards being the "best". I think Blizzard designs with an eye towards being "good enough."
I think that min-maxing your raid composition to squeeze every last drop of advantage, while an entirely reasonable and sound practice, is an exercise entirely only of the players' making. Blizzard cannot afford to design that way, they need to account of suboptimal compositions.
No one needs buffs. That's what they're called buffs. They're extras. Unfortunately, "need" is an oft-abused term in this game.
If you consider the entire gamut of classes and specs, sure, there's too much there to fit in a raid. But that's just a problem imposed entirely by player expectations. Players want all the classes to fit neatly, jigsaw puzzle-like, into their play structures (I'm reminded of the hacks on my realm who want to run heroics with a pally tank, a healer, and three warlocks). Sorry, Blizzard needs to consider overlapping coverages of synergies. If it's too complicated to take all in at once, consider the distinct possibility that they weren't all meant to be taken all at once.
Memzer Jun 1st 2008 4:51AM
I think they're mainly talking about bleeding edge content.
For anything (and including to an extent) up to the Black Temple your raid composition doesn't matter anywhere near as much as it used to. As long as you balance your tanks and healers you can honestly take just about any DPS.
For new raid content however the concept of min-maxing becomes more important and generally if you're struggling it's the hybrids that are first on the chopping board.
As to the main topic it'll honestly be interesting to see where the death knight fits into an end game raid. If the information leaked about the alpha turns out to be accurate I personally think it's pretty clear that warriors and paladins will remain kings of single and multi-target tanking respectively.
The line between the druid and the death knight class however seems a little fuzzy. I think that there will be a lot of competition between these two classes for raid spots, --especially-- when min-maxing for encounters.
Mike Jun 1st 2008 4:56AM
I disagree that people don't need buffs. Raiding is designed around people being buffed. Blizzard assumes that every raid member is fully buffed when tuning their encounters.
It's definitely true that you can't take every spec of every class to a raid (that's currently 27 people, soon to be 30), but I do think the game would be improved if you were able to take whatever mix of melee and ranged you want, and not be penalised by having, say, 8 melee and 7 ranged.
As things stand so many buffs are only group-wide that taking anything other than exactly 5 melee dps hurts raid dps. Taking the example of the 8/7 melee/ranged split, having 3 melee outside the melee group hurts both the melee and the ranged dps, since you would have 3 melee outside the melee group and 2 ranged outside the ranged group(s), menaing that none of those 5 players are getting their full quota of buffs.
Making all buffs work raidwide would solve this problem, and encounters could be tuned accordingly.
hellshire Jun 1st 2008 7:00AM
This is bullocks to the hilt. As a rogue I pine every time our enhancement shaman misses a raid. Our resident ret pally either specs holy for the night or just sits out because his dps is going to be hilarity on wheels.
-Windfury totem is just that good-
As some one else pointed out, Blizz balances content under the assumption that your going to be buffed six ways from sunday. (Fun fact: this included world buffs back in the days of naxx) It's not as noticable now adays since you can cruise through t5 without much effort, but that's mostly due the avalability of tier t5/6ish quality gear from badge vendors. Go run SSC/TK in Kara epics, like it was designed for, and let me know how far you get with lazy group makeups.
Also just a note, feral druids don't go in the melee group as it's a waste of a possible windfury user spot. Replace the druid with a rogue and toss your druid with the hunters and a resto shaman.
Narissa Jun 1st 2008 4:35AM
Alex this is why I like you and your columns not only do you respond with polite and informative manner, but you are eloquent and direct in reply and article 8). Keep up the good work 8)
Hunterlin Jun 1st 2008 5:20AM
I will give a bit improved physical dps group setups:
Melee1: Warrior DPS/Retridin/Enchancement Shaman/Rogue/Rogue
Melee2: Feral DPS/Surv Hunter/Bm hunter/BM hunter/Resto Shaman
Explanation:
Rogues are good buff soakers, but does not give good buffs to other group members. This way they benefit most. Feral does not benefit from shaman, but hunters do benefit from crit bonus and also from healing from improved pack to keep pets up. Druid get buffed from BM hunters +3% x2 = +6% damage. And crit bonus from leader of pack does benefit whole raid through Survival Hunter. Resto Shaman? He do benefit group and raid(through survival hunter) with +agi totem.
This setup does not require lot of totem twisting, though group 1 would benefit from it.
Chrissie Jun 1st 2008 6:56AM
I would agree that making buffs work more like debuffs that benefit the entire raid (example: Improved Fairie Fire, though nobody uses that because nobody needs a boomkin and everyone should be hit capped anyway) would be a bit less headache for raid leaders.
I also agree that too many of the TBC encounters are heavily biased against melee (Kael's little friends, anyone?) and hope this won't be as much the case in WotLK.
As far as group composition goes- in my experience, the feral druid generally ends up in the tank group, because he or she is there primarily to (off-)tank. When he's not tanking, well, too bad. But who brings a feral druid for DPS?
Although, sometimes they just end up in a more or less random group because the tank group gets pretty crowded too if you want blood pact, devo aura and tree aura.
If the leaked WotLK info is accurate, tree aura will be removed and replaced with a buff applied by the druid's heals, something I highly approve of.
Group 2 ( the melee group) was usually something like resto shaman (we don't have an enhance one) + rogue + rogue + dps warr + dps warr.
The rest are ranged groups, with shadow priests being the most desired groupmates.
Damiya Jun 1st 2008 9:08AM
I'm feral, and I usually don't get into the melee group at all because generally it's an enh shammy, a dps warr and three non-dagger rogues. We have all agreed that my aura isn't as good as having an enh shammy for those rogues, and the warrior is a good buff for the rogues plus getting benefit from WF. so I get put into the hunter group with any dagger rogues and another shammy to throw the agi totem. This way many people still benefit from my aura, I don't take up a spot in the wf group, and the dagger rogues are happy because (they tell me) the agi totem is almost as good as wf for them.
Mirajj Jun 1st 2008 10:17AM
Hunters don't need to be in the main dps group. In fact, they probably shouldn't be. They don't get anything from WF (The most OP buff in the game) and are generally too far away to see anything from Unleashed Rage, too. Battle Shout STILL doesn't apply to them, either. So...why have them there?
If you want a really good hunter group, take 2-3 hunters (of any spec), put them with a feral druid, toss in a floater, and you've got yourself some pretty synergy right there, esp if you have 2 BM and 1 Surv hunter in there. Or 3 BM hunters. Pretty much everyone there benefits from each other.
Atros Jun 1st 2008 11:20AM
One thing that people often fail to consider as far as Feral Druids and Enhancement Shaman is the effect of Unleashed Rage. Right now, with early MH/BT gear, my feral druid is sitting at just under 3.6k AP unbuffed, a very large portion of that attributable to the 1110 feral attack power on Staff of the Forest Lord. All of this attack power gets multiplied by 10%, leading to druids gaining a MUCH more significant gain in damage due to unleashed rage alone. That, on top of a talented SoE totem, and if the shaman decided to twist it, GoA Totem (relatively unlikely, but can be done). For a druid in Cat Form, an Enhancement Shaman is their absolute best friend, much bigger of a buff then they'd get from a Resto Shaman dropping Totems for him and a couple hunters. Basically, trying to claim that a Feral Druid does not benefit from an Enhancement Shaman is plain wrong.
Now, as far as whether that is worth giving up the WF spot to a class that can't take advantage, sadly for optimal DPS, its just not going to cut it. Another rogue gaining WF negates the loss of all those bonuses Ferals get in that group, as well as providing Imp Leader of the Pack to that group. Which itself is sad, because Melee who often take splash damage are in the very best position to use that steady stream of not insignificant healing that talent provided. If only paws could gain Windfury, then that I'm sure would change the makeup of a melee group significantly. I know perfectly well that ferals are NOT generally to be brought into a raid primarily as DPS, but
Personally, I think all melee should share something that's unique to the group that would make them desirable to stack heavier in a raid, something that makes them worth the bit of extra baby sitting. Melee synergy is much more potent then ranged synergy, especially with the inclusion of Windury. However your guess is as good as mine as to how to address this outside of gimmick fights like Zul'jin.
dan Jun 1st 2008 2:09PM
"Expanding the more 'underpowered' buffs to raid-wide buffs would help this quite a bit, I think, and I'd like to see things go this way in Wrath and beyond."
Alex... you hit the nail on the head here.