Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.

A pretty substantial point of debate when it comes to Hybrids is their place in PvP. The thought that only one spec is viable per class is most problematic in the context of Hybrids for a couple of different reasons. Some argue against every spec being arena viable, some argue in favor of it.

The argument in favor of each spec being viable that I feel is the strongest is the fact that each Hybrid spec is vastly different from all of the others. In the arena, an Enhancement Shaman isn't doing the same thing as an Elemental Shaman. They are doing similar things like dropping totems and casting Shocks, but the role they play is different. Enhancement is in your face, Elemental throws lightning at your face, and Restoration is healing your face. This is not like Rogues in which all three specs are about hitting you until you fall down, just in different ways.

Why is it a problem that all three of them aren't viable? It essentially feels like a forced block on your chances at success. "Just spec Resto" isn't really a valid answer, because it means you are not able to play your preferred role. Someone who rolled a Shaman to Stormstrike people's faces off are told to go get some Elemental gear, and that isn't very fun. To be successful in the arena, they are more or less forced out of how they want to play the game.

Day 1 of the World Wide Invitational has been filled with exciting news for WoW players, and well as some fascinating displays of entertainment. Blizzard hosted panel discussions with information about changes for each of the classes in Wrath of the Lich King. In case you've missed it, here's the good news for each of the classes:

• Death Knight
• Druid
• Hunter
• Mage
• Paladin
• Priest
• Rogue
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

I'd like to know what everyone thinks about these changes. It looks to me like some classes are making out better than others. I, for one, am nearly giddy.

I'm actually a little excited. Phase 2 of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament has begun! Start your engines and speculations now, folks -- which comps will make it to the top this time? Are we going to see a winner that looks like Frag Dominant? Or will the new Phase 2 winners basically be the same as Phase 1's winners?

Vhairi's been tracking the performance of classes in the tournament so far. For the last week or two, this round's competitors have been honing strategies, experimenting with comps, and switching things around a lot. Now that the dust has settled, teams are what they are. As a result, the data should be fairly meaningful again pretty quickly, and hopefully Vhairi will put out another update.

I can't wait to see how the class performance distribution will look in Phase 2 -- it might teach us something more about what to expect in WotLK for class balance. I don't think Phase 2 will be much different from Phase 1 however -- a lack of holy Pallies, scarcity of Hunters and Mages, and so on.

So with WoTLK fast approaching, there's still plenty of discussion and debate about that whole Death Knights being all races thing. We've already covered the lore aspect, but another thing lot of people have been discussion is how Racial abilities will work with Death Knights. Some people are concerned that abilities like Gift of the Naaru aren't something a Death Knight steeped in shadow should be able to use. Now me, I think that if the Naaru can forgive the Blood Elves for M'uru, they can forgive Draenei Death Knights and give them back Gift of the Naaru.

Still, commenter Clayton sent an intriguing thought into WoW Insider's secret headquarters the other day: Who says Death Knights have to use racials? When you consider what a Death Knight is, there's at least some measure of sense to it. Death Knights have undergone a radical change. They're suffused with dark energies, they have forsaken what they knew of love and life and light, they have forsaken whatever skills they knew in the past, all to take up the Runeblade. It is true that not all Death Knights become actual undead, but the total control the Lich King exerts over them leeches away much of their former identity. Because of this, it seems possible that Death Knights could have lost their connection with their racial identities, and through that, their racial abilities.

This could also be a quick and easy way to ensure a bit of balance between the various races. There's a whole lot of considerations to made with racials and Death Knight abilities. Will Arcane Torrent combined with anti-magic tanking abilities just make Blood Elf Death Knights too powerful against casters in PvP? Giving Death Knights their own unique set of "racials" based around their class would be an easy way to sidestep this, and probably justifiable since Death Knights are their own seperate "hero" class category. Then again, it might put them under undue pressure to make special racials for all other hero classes as well, so they might want to stay more flexible.

Which side of the issue do you fall on? Should they keep it simple and just keep the racials like they always have? Or do the Death Knights need a whole new set of racial abilities, and if so, what?

A few friends and I have begun leveling alts in the interests of having a few more 70's around for Wrath, and I got a comment on my Warrior after she dinged 29. "We'll need to get you some good blues," said a buddy, a 70-Paladin-turned-10-Shaman (in hindsight, probably cringing over said toon's Armory profile). "Warrior 30-40 is kinda tough."

It didn't mean much to me at the time, but I started thinking about it while contemplating the possibility of starting a Hordeside Hunter. A 1-10 Hunter without a pet is a fairly unpleasant (if mercifully quick) experience, but that one is pretty obvious while others seem less so. There's a strange alchemy of level, quest drops, scaling, gear, dungeons, and skills that seem to combine to make life tougher in certain level ranges.

A 2005 guide to classes' relative leveling speed insisted that classes alternately sped and slowed as they aged and that the difference could be tracked statistically, and while I'm not sure I trust all of their math (and the information's outdated anyway), you can't fault the amount of work that went into it. Moreover, as the commenters point out, someone who picks a Rogue as a main is not necessarily playing the game with the same goals in mind as someone who picked, say, a Priest. A less scientific, but more detailed, look at leveling speed and class difficulties was written by Breanni of WarcraftPets.com, and her experiences seem to gel a bit more with conventional wisdom, particularly with respect to the speed of Hunter and Warlock leveling. That being said, Druid 1-20 was pretty ugly, Shaman late-30's is a parade of mana inefficiency, and I'm not looking forward to getting another Hunter to 10.

Spellpower of Malfurion posted on the Priest forums that spell pushback is an indication that Blizzard prefers melee classes over spell casters. In his thread, the original poster used the example of a sixteen-second actual cast time for a second and a half spell due to spell pushback. This greatly reduced the effect of casters against melee classes. Songbreeze of Dragonmaw echoed this sentiment with the response, "Welcome to World of Meleecraft."

Other posters disagreed. Some stated that many PvE encounters favor casters. Nemarra of Tichondrius pointed out that melee characters have an equal disadvantage at range. Casters also have access to instant spells and abilities such as Blink, Frost Nova and Curse of Exhaustion to help them get out of melee range. Others have access to Power Word Shield and Earth Shield that mitigate the effects of pushback. If you're concerned about spell pushback, you should pay particular attention to how your spec can mitigate it.

Every week Arcane Brilliance strives to deliver a tiny parcel full of Mage-craft to your doorsteps. Not your real doorsteps, that would be creepy. Your virtual interweb doorsteps. This week, in addition to its usual magey goodness, that tiny parcel is pulsating with warlockian evil. You've been warned.

In case I haven't been clear on this in the past, I hate Warlocks. I've hated them since I was a child, when a Warlock ate my family. Just kidding, that didn't actually happen. My family is alive and well. In fact, I would say my Warlock prejudices originated as recently as last year, when I hit level 70 and took my first wide-eyed look at the brutal world of end-game PvP.

When our own V'Ming Chew (the only decent Warlock I know) suggested that we engage in a little back-and-forth in yesterday's Blood Pact column I was at first reluctant. I worried that halfway though the series of emails we sent back and forth to each other I might realize that I had 8 different DoTs hovering above my head, and a felhound might at some point end up eating my face. That didn't happen. Well, a felhound did eat my face, but that was in a completely unrelated Arena match last night. In fact, I thought the dialog went quite well: we agreed on a few points, agreed to disagree on other points, and nobody got killed. Or had their souls drained from their bodies.

Still, and not just because as a Mage it is my job to QQ more, I felt there was more to say. Last week I promised you a look at the Mage/Warlock rivalry, and after the break, I will try to deliver on that promise.

In a thread started by quitting player whose final rants include issues such as class balance and the limited number of Battlegrounds, Drysc responds with a rare, long explanation. He mentions that Blizzard understands that not all classes and specs are as viable in PvP, particularly in the extremely competitive Arena environment, and concedes that they are trying to make at least all classes contributive in some way. Protection Warriors, for example, should be able to jump into Battlegrounds or Arenas and "be able to do something with some small amount of success." The 'small amount' comes from the fact that he also unequivocally states that it is Blizzard's philosophy that they have to be ok with all specs not being as viable as others.

He also explains that the dearth of new Battlegrounds or Battleground maps is not due to queue times (they have little to do with each other), but that each Battleground requires a fair amount of work on Blizzard's end and that most of their developmental focus lies in the expansion Wrath of the Lich King. He says that playtesting, balancing, and other efforts are extremely labor intensive. Oddly, Drysc mentions Warsong Gulch, the smallest of all the Battlegrounds, has "terrain issues here and there." Hopefully this isn't indicative of what Blizzard sees as the problems with WSG, as the game suffers from more than just some terrain issues. It's a good thing that Patch 2.4 promises changes to WSG, but it's even better that Drysc has been more vocal on the forums as of late.

More class changes afoot! Tipster Aikiwoce sends along a blue post in which Kalgan reassures mages that they haven't been forgotten in upcoming talent and ability changes in WotLK. The thread, which seems to have been started mostly because of the earlier warlock thread he'd responded on, elicited a short but highly revealing response from Kalgan: "Mages will get new abilities in the expansion too, believe it or not. In fact, we intend to tone down how strong of a counter Warlocks are to Mages through the WotLK spells/talents."

Hmmm. Little concrete information, but this is one of the few times that a Blizz dev has openly acknowledged just how powerful certain classes are in relation to others. While they've made no secret of the fact that they don't balance PvP around 1v1 battles, and admitted at BlizzCon that warlocks are essentially the best dueling class, it's still unusual to see official commentary on specific class rivalries.

And, let's face it, the Mage versus Warlock smackdown is practically the stuff of legend. With these tidbits appearing on the forums about class and talent changes in Wrath, keep checking back; we're likely to hear about more of these soon.

Kalgan chimed in on a thread in which the original poster insisted that Warlocks, despite dodging the bullet on life tap, still have a nerf bat incoming somewhere. He rebuffed the poster with a nice little tidbit that may intrigue Warlocks. He also ensures us that, no, he does not hate certain classes.

He says that they'd like to give Warlocks some type of escape or defense mechanism so that they don't have to balance warlocks around the idea that they'd be "tanking" melee classes in PvP. By melee classes, I assume he means Warriors, who can shake off a Warlock's main defense, Fear, with very little trouble in multiple ways.

He even brings up a spell that Warlocks may be getting in the expansion.

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

In last week's installment of Gamers on the Street -- and despite fresh blood in the water, with patch 2.4 news hitting left and right – city-bound players steadfastly remained focused on matters of the heart. Perfume and hearts obviously took priority over returning the /whispers of some hapless reporter from WoW Insider.

But we hapless reporters are stubborn – real stubborn. This week, we trucked off to Stormwind on Lightning's Blade, a high-pop PvP server, to meet up with a trio from <Glory of War>. These "casual" raiders (1/6 SSC and 1/4 TK) unleashed their perspectives on what they've seen on the PTR for 2.4, the war between PvE and PvP balancing and more.

Tipster Pzychotix has uncovered some new class changes in the latest round of patch notes, and some of them are doozies:

For Druids, the Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced. It'll be interesting to see how much. Rolling Lifeblooms have been the healing method of choice for most discerning trees, but if the nerf is severe enough, perhaps we'll see some return to Regrowth and Healing Touch. In other changes, Feral Druids are heading further and further to side of agility, with Nurturing Instinct now increasing your healing spells by up to 100% of your agility, and increasing your healing received by 20% of your attack power while in Cat Form. This seems like it may make Cat Druids at least a bit less squishy in PvP, if they're paired with a healer or can find a spare second to duck out of the fray and heal themselves.

Lots of additional changes after the break!

Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Kara or BT, everyone can get in on the action and down them some bosses. Srsly, that punk took my pink Huffy 10 speed.

It never fails. Every time I say something about raiding, I get comments about how people miss the old 40-mans, how the 10-man to 25-man transition doesn't even make mathematical sense, or even how everything should just be 5-mans. (Is that even technically a raid?) So today we're going to chat a bit about raid size and what it really means.

Blizzard announced today that they will be hosting a 3v3 Tourney beginning in April with international qualifiers and some pretty hefty cash prizes at the end. After paying an entrance fee, teams will compete in qualifying tournaments with other teams from their region for cash prizes totaling $27,000 before proceeding to the global championship, where the grand prize will be $75,000. The twist is that this tournament will take place on dedicated servers in which participants will play with pre-made level 70 characters. You can read the FAQ here.

It sounds like this Tournament will be something that PvP Enthusiasts will want to watch with interest. The entrance fee should ensure that most of the field is made of dedicated players, or at least players who are somewhat sure of their ability, and the establishment of pre-made characters to ensure a "level" playing field should definitely lead to some exciting matches in which we'll see how differences in skill can make or break an arena match. However, It may also bring to light class and talent discrepancies as we watch which team make-ups rise to the top and which fall. Since we already know that additional class changes will be coming to 2.4.0, we certainly have to wonder if Blizzard will try to make some last minute class adjustments to this patch in preparation for this tournament, or if they'll use data from this tournament in making further decisions on class balance.

But either way, if you fancy yourself to be pretty decent at 3v3 Arena play and think you're willing to part with a bit of money to try and win a lot MORE money, it sounds like you'll want to keep an eye out for the sign-ups for this.

Gamers on the Street logs into U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

What's the "right" class and spec to be playing right now? What's going to make the biggest splash on the scoreboards? Why do players choose the classes that they do? WoW Insider readers, who generally enjoy theorycrafting and playing their classes to the absolute hilt, are a savvy lot when it comes to class balance and what specs are hot, hot, hot. Log in, though, and you're much less likely to encounter players who are concerned with theorycrafting or running up whatever spec is considered the new hawtness. In game, players seem concerned about how to get a fair shake with their character of choice.

We logged in during prime time last night on The Forgotten Coast (PvP) realm to see what players had to say about the classes of 2008 -- who's hot, who's not and how it all affects their characters and play styles. Who got the raves, and who's chalking up the most bad press? Read on to find out ...