Each week, Jason Lotito contributes Hybrid Theory, a new column on hybrid classes in World of Warcraft.
Healing has long been the widely accepted, much debated, raiding role of most hybrids. Most of the discussions regarding hybrid viability in end-game raiding are on helping hybrids in non-healing areas. This leads to a lot of discussion on the class boards that revolve around making other trees equally viable, or at least making them as desirable as the healing role. The outside audience generally views hybrids as healers first. Sure, the concept of a protection paladin, a feral druid, and a enhancement shaman enter the discussion on occasion, but at the end of the day, the popular opinion is if you have healing spells, you are healing.
This very attitude has long dictated many hybrids specs. For many hybrids, the desire to see end-game dominated their desire to play what is known as an off-spec build. These players bit the bullet and went the healing route. This isn't to suggest all players chose their healing spec because of outside pressure. Many healers really did want to heal and enjoy the art of healing.
Regardless, the attitude of many hybrids is to look down at those who spec for healing regardless of the reasons. Who's to blame them though? Often these players are playing an off-spec themselves. The retribution paladin or the "Boomkin" have been on the receiving end of these attacks for a long time, and all too often it's the healers making these very attacks.
When these healing hybrids attack their off-spec brethren it's usually to the call of "being useless on raids." These healers' views are a direct reflection of the popular opinion regarding hybrids. Unfortunately, this is all too often the truth. Consider the gear and the role the hybrids have generally played since the start of raiding. It's not mystery as to why the healing focused talent trees of hybrids are the most well-balanced and most complete. And because of Blizzard's long time support of these roles, it's hard to get past the simple fact that these healers have been tried and tested. This leaves us with human nature: people are afraid of change.
Of course attacking the spec of a player isn't just toward off-specs. Off-spec hybrids toss mean-spirited barbs at the healers as well. Names such as "healbot" and "sell-out" are all too common in these threads. The argument goes: no hybrid would choose to be a healer; instead, they are a healer because they were forced into the spec.
Finally, the last time of attack comes from self-professed "true hybrids." These players feel that any hybrid players who focuses on a single aspect of their character is turning away from their hybrid nature and instead should play one of the "pure classes." Never mind that the only true pure classes are DPS oriented. The debate of whether priests and warriors are hybrids due to their multi-role nature is still a hot one.
In each of these cases, the attacker merely discounts the other's argument because of his spec. After all, what does a holy paladin know about tanking or DPS? Or what does a feral druid know about healing?
These types of arguments have only recently taken off. Most blame Armory as the culprit. Granted, you can't blame Armory for providing simple information and it's not the only thing to blame. The expansion brought with it the hope of finding raiding roles outside of simply healing. What we tend to forget is because all of this is new to Blizzard it's going to take them time to get it right.
In the end, hybrids need to realize that attacking one another isn't the right answer. Sure, we don't want our chosen spec to suffer because another spec received a buff. But I really don't believe many people want to see the nerf bat hit any hybrid talent tree. Keep this in mind when you are debating back and forth on the forums. That guy asking for a buff to Retribution just wants to play that very real aspect of the paladin class.
I say "very real" because regardless of what people might think, there is a whole tree that contains useful talents that exists that is rarely used; in fact, retribution paladins are often laughed at and mocked on the forums (and yes, I readily admit I've done this as well). But in truth it's for no good reason at all.
Is it wrong that a hybrid actually want to play their class? Shamans have an elemental tree, druids have a balance tree, paladins have a retribution tree -- is it so wrong that they actually want to use it? Fundamentally, is it wrong that they want to play their class the way Blizzard intended them to be played?
To further illustrate this, next week I'd like to present some tips on how to actually gain acceptance from your raid and raid leader with a traditionally off-spec role. So, if you're a hybrid who is raiding with a non-healing spec, post your story below in the comments and tell me what you did to get that role. What steps would you recommend other people take if they want to raid as an off-spec? I have some ideas I'll be using, but I'd really like to hear from you.
During the day, Jason Lotito browses the WoW forums. But by night, he takes the form of Endure, a level 70 paladin, and faces off against the toughest bosses Blizzard has to offer with his guild at his side. He's previously played a shaman to 60 and raided Horde for a while, and is currently leveling a druid just to see what all the fuss is about.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
5-23-2007 @ 8:29PM
Meantime said...
My guild was a bit skittish about me joining the karazhan raid as a boomkin, but I believe the tide against me was turned when I managed to keep the raid from a total wipe during an accidental overpull on trash by dropping moonkin and healing our MT and the lone standing DPS, while throwing out Moonfires and Insect Swarms. After being thanked and congratulated I knew my raid utility was proven and the requests to respec resto ceased. I think what you need in order to prove yourself is a deep knowledge of your class and what gear choices will work for your spec maximizing your effectiveness.
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5-23-2007 @ 8:29PM
Dark said...
I personally just love healing on my paladin, it's beautiful in its simplicity :D. But whats up with the Defender man?! Get on that! :P
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5-23-2007 @ 8:42PM
Smeed said...
My stance:
If you dont want a heal build, do something different. If you dont want a tank build, go DPS.
Its a game, play it as you would like to. Dont let people tell you otherwise. WoW doesnt have to be like every other MMO on the market.
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5-23-2007 @ 8:46PM
Acceptable Risk said...
It seemed as if Blizzard once tried to encourage diversity of roles with Priests. They made the Shadow tree attractive at a raid level and all of a sudden Shadow Priests were getting raid slots.
Then Blizzard decided people were having too much fun and they took it all back.
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5-23-2007 @ 8:57PM
Avery said...
honestly, I think it has a lot to do with equipment and the rest of the party makeup. The hybird had to have the equipment in order to make it worth it to the raid. If a shadowmage (shadow priest) can pump out DPS like a warlock, why would you not go with them? The heal over time is amazing and the damage is a nice bonus.
If a guild is having problems downing a boss what is the solution? More heals. I hardly ever hear a raid group say "we need more DPS". If there are enough heals in the group then the group as a whole are more willing to branch out to the "other" specs for their hybirds.
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5-23-2007 @ 9:10PM
DontLetsStart said...
I think the real problem is you need a certain number of healers. On a lot of servers, the four classes with healing spells are the least played four classes in the game. So it's not that DPS specs are bad, it's that you need all the healing you can get which doesn't leave a lot of room for the DPS specs.
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5-23-2007 @ 9:10PM
Patrick Schriner said...
I play both a druid and a paladin.
Funny thing is, I was helping out as a healer for a friendly Karazhan raid (had specced Resto for this purpose) but was promptly asked whether I´d be available as a feral druid for 25s.
Similar thing happened today to my paladin, during our boring Karazhan raid I was even offered gold for respeccing Protection after the raid...
I don´t mind the 100g for switching regularly.
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5-23-2007 @ 9:31PM
Baluki said...
I sure hope that when Blizz adds a new class to the game (and you know they're going to eventually) they'll give it a Healing talent tree. Because as I see it, there just aren't enough healers in the game.
People are always asking me to heal for them, but I'm an Elemental shaman. I know a lot of you are thinking "you have heal spells, so throw on some healing gear and heal, idiot", but what many people don't realize is that when you've got 41+ points in Elemental, your healing is shit. I can MH for about a minute, and then everyone's going to die. It may be different for Druids and Paladins, but that's how it is for me. Yes, I've got 20 points in Resto, but they're all going into totem efficiency, extra crit, extra hit, and so on. I can help throw out a few heals when things go bad, but that's about it.
The problem with being Elemental is that nobody wants you. There are plenty of Warlocks, Mages, Rogues, and Hunters out there for DPS, and I can't bring anything to the table that a Resto shaman can't except for Totem of Wrath (and I don't have it because it's only good for raiding). We've been waiting 2.5 years for Blizz to realize this, but they haven't done anything about it so far. At least Enhance players bring some good melee buffs.
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5-23-2007 @ 9:57PM
Menawa said...
Conversation:
Ret- Hey I hear you guys are looking for a few more raiders
GL- Yes we are? do you want to join?
Ret-yes very much so, I can do very good dps.
GL- can you heal?
Ret- no I am ret specced
GL-are you going to spec holy
ret-NO! This is how paladins are suposed to be played! I want to be like a paladin of Lore!
GL- well good luck finding a guild then! Cya
My personal opinion is this: while it would be nice if we could all play the way we wanted it just doesn't work. There are way more rogues and hunters on my server than all the healing classes combined. We need more healers, not more dps, and the truth is that the hybrids need to take one for the team and heal. If you want to stay element/balance/ret, go PvP some, there are nice epics for you there. Raiding is a team sport, if my rogue could spec healing I would but its pure dps for me. I'm working on a Pally right now, and if I get to 70 its either prot or holy. Ret only for PvP.
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5-23-2007 @ 11:40PM
RogueJedi86 said...
I'm a Ret Paladin, and I had confusion once I hit Outland. Before Outland, I was mainly picking "of the Bear", Imperial Plate, mainly strength/stamina gear. But then came Outland, and I saw all that +healing/spell damage plate, and realized it was actual Paladin plate, so I greedily picked it up. The problem is, as I get more, I don't know what's going on with my Ret. I don't want to be a healbot Holydin, but it seems like getting Warrior plate is a waste. Currently I just feel like the gear is making me more off-spec, where I can off-heal, off-tank, and off-dps if need be. Maybe after 70 I'll go Prot and tank. I hear the Tier 4 and Tier 5 gear has 3 sets, specifically for each tree.
My thing is that I feel like Healing is a waste of Paladin. All that Plate and heavy hammers and axes, and we just sit in the back on the group, not hitting anything. Waste of the armor. If I wanted to sit in the back, not getting hit, I'd play a Priest. I remember the Paladins of Warcraft pre-WoW. Uther Lightbringer wasn't famous for being a healbot. Neither was Arthas, or Turalyon. Paladins were meant to dps machines, with impressive tanking capabilities, and healing on the side. I hope they buff up Ret some. Make it more like the Paladins of Warcraft that Blizzard created.
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5-23-2007 @ 11:53PM
Nodor said...
As a member of a guild with 50% druids.. we get to argue over the leather.. a lot. This weeks karazhan run has a token mage, shadow priest, resto shaman, and warrior to complement druids and rogues. While healers are rare.. the druid off-specs are all viable. Now if only we could get a bunch of blood Knights to use this plate with spell damage...
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5-24-2007 @ 12:16AM
Unundead said...
making other specs viable does 2 things
1. healing classes can now choose their role and presumably have more fun
2. the number of actual healers goes down resulting in groups breaking or not even getting started. blizz short term view of letting healers choose good dps with craps heals drags down the progress of everyone else
dont know if someone else said this already but is it fair that can do 90% of my damage and then do some heals or go tank as well?
tbh blizz broke this game on day one by not clearly defining the different classes, there's way too much overlap resulting in people crying all the time
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5-24-2007 @ 1:48AM
Threecubed said...
Birthmark, the main reason for this is that this is an MMO. It evolves and changes as you play it, so of course it'll seem "out of whack" it's getting different. Just like many things in life, you need to adapt, learn how to do things differently.
I, who has played mostly hybrid classes feel that I finally get to have a choice and don't have to reroll to do the job I wanna do. If you want the job, now (for the most part) you prove you can do it, and you can get it.
The main thing that's preventing DPS Warriors from getting invites is... the mindset of the playerbase, in particular the general forums. I guarantee if you stick away from that place, you'll enjoy the class more. Simple as that.
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5-24-2007 @ 2:24AM
woeye said...
I don't mind healing with my shaman. In fact I really like it for it is much more challenging than LB spam. But that's my opinion and it's perfectly ok and understandable for me if hybrids do not like to heal. I mean, hybridity means more than healing.
Before I rolled a shaman I was a paladin. Of course I was forced to heal. And I hated it so much because it was boring as hell for me. Personally I think that paladins should be more focused towards tanking with some back-up or emegency healing. And if you look at the complete skill/spell-set of the paladin class I think that this was old Blizzard's intension as well. Until those freaks from EQ stepped in and change the classes to their liking ...
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5-24-2007 @ 3:02AM
rawr said...
I'm a feral druid, and I have been since looooong before BC. In fact I've never been anything less than 30 points into feral while raiding. When I first started raiding I was new to the whole concept and my guild lacked healers, so I healed. Man.. looking back, I'm amazed they let me. I really had no clue.
Anyway, as I learnt more about raiding and about my class, and as we gained more healers, I had my first shot at tanking. Now, outside of raids I would tank 5-mans all the time, so it was very odd for me to switch between this tank role and raidhealer role. One day we were a warrior short for Kurinaxx, and next thing I know I'm offtanking and doing well at it. I stayed an OT that whole run. And suddenly.. it was like a whole new world opened before me.. and an awesome one at that.
No longer was I stuck at the back chaincasting HT4. From being an occasional OT I moved up to being a regular MT2 in the 20mans we run. Our MT1 was an awesome prot warrior who was always around, though once or twice I even got to fill his shoes, and I did it abysmally! But it was so much fun. I applied to a new guild about that time, bored with seeing the 20mans and wanting more. My first, trial raid I did nothing but heal, but the same pattern repeated itself. In fact I respecced to leader of the pack shortly after joining since it was clear there were loads of full healers and my 30 points in feral would be far more useful to the raid as 31.
Started off as a furry totem for rogues, and over a loong period (6 months or so) I eventually became an accepted offtank who could DPS when not tanking, the role I continue to enjoy to this day (when I'm not MTing of course!). It took time, and perseverance, and the determination to show them all that despite doing something unusual with my spec I was prepared to invest the time to get gear to suit it (getting exalted with two PvP factions to get tank gear).
When BC hit it was a bit overwhelming. I'd always been used to fighting to show I was a decent tank or DPSer. But suddenly those long arguments with disgruntled warriors (and so many people back then simply *refused* to believe anything other than a warrior could tank) vanished. Every prot warrior bust out his shiniest weapon and sold his shield, and suddenly I -- with a levelling spec that also made me a kickass tank -- was *asked* to tank stuff! Every day! For weeks! In fact I burned out from the constant demands on my time.
But now I enjoy the role I've always wanted. I'm up there on the MT list, up there on the damage meters, throwing innervates and rezzes and tranquillities where necessary, clawing face in PvP... and all without ever leaving my beloved feral spec behind.
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5-24-2007 @ 7:34AM
Jur Jur said...
I've been playing a paladin for 64 levels now and went every spec except protection. I leveled to 55 as a Ret build and as I was level 50 I realized something. "I can play better if I change my build". As was getting more into my char and the way I played I could look for gear that suited me. +healing plate with stam and intell and sometimes abit of stam str or intell str where i could find it. But my Ret build wasn't keeping my hp and mp up enough. And then I tried a few raids on and I just felt horrible about my raiding abilities I really wanted to "heal" but dps/tank I wanted it all. And thats what my gear looked like too. I didn't want to MH but i could off heal like a mad hatter. I didn't want to tank i didn't have any Prot points. and I leveled with a mage from lvl 40-49 so I know i couldn't do dps like that. I felt lost...Many asked me what build i was and felt that i sould try holy. So i did. it was more suited for keeping me alive AND my friends. and my MP was wonderfull, always getting the 100% refund on crt heals :)...But now with 60% refund i can seriously tell the diffrence i'm calling OOM and drinking water like a fish. Good thing that mage i leveled with let me play with them some more so now i'm lvl 64 and thinking of going back to Ret or Prot...Holy just hurts to much.
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5-24-2007 @ 7:36AM
cynthias said...
@16...
Isn't that what druids are about? Being able to do anything required to keep going? I can't say about the other hybrids because I don't have much experience with them, but that all-purpose utility is what I love about my druid.
All-purpose. I think that sounds better than "hybrid."
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5-24-2007 @ 7:43AM
SchmuseTiger said...
Wow, now I see, that this is written by Endure.
I did read lots of your very well written comments in the official WoW Forum, but as a EU Player I could't answer.
You know, yesterday after the patch I thought, I'll have to change my tank paladin build, let's see how my hero Endure skilled.. and your a healer now! So I'm still unsure if I skilled right (well, if armory would work you could have a look at "Sarkan" of "Zirkel des Cenarius - EU" ;)
What a dissapointment to see you are now longer a Tank. So it did not work with a tank paladin in 25 people instances? Or why did you change?
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5-24-2007 @ 7:47AM
Randomdruid said...
Hey, that picture isn't cool at all. I'm a balance druid and I get more raid and instance invites than I can run. Balance druids are awesome, we can keep up with mages on casting DPS and we have more armor too, and don't forget innervates and battle rezing. See very useful, it's not like we're ret pallys or anything like that.
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5-24-2007 @ 7:49AM
Tridus said...
@8:
Adding another healing class won't result in more healers. Healing in WoW means you sacrifice your fun (speccing for raid healing means you give up the ability to do EVERYTHING else) for the fun of others. More healing classes won't result in more people doing that.
If you want more healers, then tell Blizzard to make it so that healers can actually solo, farm, or PvP without having to respec constantly to do it. A popular idea right now is to let people have two specs with some way of switching between them, so healers could have their "healing" spec and their "I'm not in a raid but still want to play this character" spec.
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