People usually use Health Stones as paperweights and often do not use them, or I have to produce them like a factory… erm well. My debuffs are not special anymore, many classes can provide now the very same buffs/debuffs under different names, to make it easier to create a raid group and so on.

My friend played a rogue before he switched server and became a shaman… he felt even less useful, he said in instances his stun/CC abilities were no longer needed, and that he cannot AoE as well as a Warlock or Mage. It was not really a solace for me that players of certain classes even felt more useless.

Mages can live very well with dual speccing due to their amount of unique extra abilities that they bring to the raid, portals and healthstones also have some use… Rogues also have some abilities, but not that much in comparison.

Still, can this beat switching between roles like TANK/HEAL/DPS easily? I bet many people would not have gone for a very specialized class if they had known that classes that were Jack of All Trades now can switch between different specs for Master of All Trades. This dual spec feature is favoring hybrids to the extreme. I.e., which rogue can spec heal or tank or dps as needed, they are rogues, they have no choice in this matter. They did not know that the future would bring something with such far reaching and game changing consequences like “DUAL SPECCING”.

I know that in former times hybrids were not brought along because they could not compete in the domain of pure classes, but this is no longer true. It probably never was in terms oh HEAL specs, and in DPS specs, a slight lead in DPS … is this really an incentive to NOT prefer a hybrid class that can offer 2-3 much more distinct styles of gameplay?

I like that summoning the lexicon to switch the class at least requires a group, but I think that Hybrids are favored by this system, and many new players will rather go for the Hybrids if they do not blindly just pick a class before checking if it is doing OK or has issues.

I believe there are two inherent problems present in this situation that will keep this type of balance issue from ever being completely solved…

Now here is what annoys me as a dps class (my lock was my first toon); looking at the tank nerfs coming up bears, it is looking very likely that I will go resto. I used to pvp on my lock and when that went to hell I switched to raid dps. Going into a raid with comprably geared ret pallies and dk’s, I would have to fight tooth and nail to top them on the dps charts. I do not feel the need to be at the top of the charts, but as a dps class I would prefer to be. Finally getting to the point, I got tired of dpsing on my lock. I have my druid so I could jump on him to tank (if I could find a willing healer), but what if I did not have a druid? Then I am SOL. Tired of doing “meh” dps using a dps class? Too bad. That is your only option. Contrarily, I do not like what I see coming out with feral tanks. With them, I can change over to dps. Or heals. There are options for what I can do and I love it. And you know what? I do not expect to be the best dps out there. If I had a huge armour advantage over other dps classes (such as leather and bear/moonkin forms or plate armor), could heal better than them, AND could dps as well as them it would be unbalanced. And not just in pvp, but in soloing and raids as well.

Do you people who think all dps should be on pretty much equal ground honestly find it fair that when leveling toons, a hybrid would the same damage output as well as greater damage mitigation and/or heals? Let me change the to just “and”, because I have yet to do anything with a dps warrior that complains about not having dps as good as mine. Pallies and DK’s (yeah, I am calling out specific classes here) seem to complain the most, but I guess right now they also have the most to lose. Druids seem to roll with the punches and acknowledge that we will never be Blizz’s favs (but would still like new skins, please). Making dps fairly uniform across the board IS unbalancing the game, not balancing. Increased dps makes up for lack of survivability.

Back to the dual specs widening this gap. Let us assume that all classes have the potential to put out equal dps (I have no idea why this should be expected as nobody expects every class to tank/heal equally well). Now, there are 9 non-dps positions (3 tanks 6 healers), then let us look at the numbers. Tanks only have a 3/25 chance of making the raid, and healers 6/25. On 5-mans they were each 1/5 of the make-up so there will be a slight problem with having enough healers, which seems to be what dual specs is all about, and a slight excess of tanks. That leaves 16/25 to dps. Look at how 5-mans are arranged. All the way up until the endgame, it is designed that 3/5 of players on dps, a difference of 2/25. Compound that with the straight dps now having to compete with the odd healer/tank (more likely tank) that was not needed this particular time. We are already theoretically in excess of dps, but now tanks and healers can jump in and say that they can do that too. Please do not tell me about gear either, the raiding content is such a joke these days that it is not that hard for anyone to have good enough gear for any given spec. My guild has a prot pally with enough healing plate to do 25-mans easily just because plate drops with nobody needing for main spec is a common enough thing.

My point is that there is already too much dps and this only adds to it. I am not asking for the main dps classes to be monsters with 1k dps higher than hybrids, but is it really too much to ask that they have some slight advantage to make up for the fact that those are the only slots for which they CAN compete? Oh, and that little thing I threw in about solo content as well. Making every class have near-equal dps IS unbalancing the game, Balance will occur when classes that can do nothing else but dps have the leg up in that category.

Main problem with this is that the guild has a tank shortage, so if I’m not prot, that’s often a heroic run that can’t happen. Dual specs, to me, mean I can go and heal battlegrounds, but still be available for guild runs. (I like instances, I like tanking. I’ll do something else if they need me to, but they like my tanking…)

I’ll spend the 50g/100g for a repec if raid progression requires it, but I won’t for an hour of battlegrounds. This isn’t opening up any new options – it’s just making them more convenient, and thus making my life more fun. I can’t complain.

(Our raid progression *has* in the past required that a couple of our players respec mid-raid, and they’ve done so without complaint, but it does take time and faff. Also, we’re a casual guild of friends, and we used to do a LOT of switching alts in and out as we farmed BC raids, in order to make sure as few drops as possible went to waste, since well over half the guild had at least one raid-capable alt).

As far as loot policy goes, when I’m doing loot assignment, my policy is ‘pick a main spec for the purposes of loot assignment, and you’ll get priority on that gear. If you’re in another spec for the sake of the raid, I’m not about to penalise you for cooperating in that manner’. Conversely, it’s only one spec they get to prioritise. Can’t see any reason to change that policy, really. I’d run the same for PuGs, but probably use pen and paper to keep track of what people claimed as their main spec – *before* they saw the drops. I tend to avoid any PuG raid that isn’t Vaults.

The Mage brings and Int raid buff and food/water and a portal.
The Warlock brings health stones and summoning.
The Hunter brings party buffs no matter what the spec.
The rogue brings nothing to the raid except dps with the liabilty of being in meleee range in leather.

Time to put my rogue on the shelf for the 3.3 nerfs/buffs I guess.

I’d assume most other pure classes will have similar options. The problem right now is that the benefits to hybrid classes are obvious, but the pures also need to get out of this mindset of “well, it’s only good for having a PvP spec for us”. Because, I think, when explored deeper, this will provide more utility and damage output capabilities for pures that creatively use it.

Just my 2 cents… I welcome the change as a pure.

I’ve been mastering my class as a tank for years. I still learn little things and come Ulduar I know I’ll be learning all kinds of new things about tanking all over again. It’s no different with dpsing. You don’t just fall into a role and suddenly be amazing at it.