I'd like to follow up on my comments in Pally Wars, Part 1. I'll probably also have a Part 3, where I (gasp!) actually get around to discussing the Wars part of that title.
In part 1, I came down harshly on the concept of being a hybrid right after expounding on that in my original posts on this blog. It's a touch unfair. My point really is that the game forces us into a specialization on some level. I'm not a great healer in Ret Spec, and gear swapping only does so much these days. Thus, I never offer to mainheal in Kara, say, when I would not have thought twice about doing it in the days of ZG. It's still important to do what you can - say, toss a heal to someone about to die, BoP someone who pulled aggro, keep your blessings up, etc. You do what you can, but hybridization is a hard thing to pull off in raids with the way the game is designed. You need a DPS class to DPS, or you fall behind on my bosses. You HAVE to heal at all times as a healer class or someone will die. There's just so little slack offered most of the time, especially on progression content for your guild, and so hybrid-specs aren't worth the effort, by and large.
For example, we're considered by most to be a tank/healer hybrid. Obviously I disagree, but let's say that's what you want to play, and you want to raid too. Raiding requires at a bare minimum Holy Shield to become uncrushable, which means you spend 31 points in Protection, and have 30 points to spend in Holy. With only 30 points in Holy, you can never come close to Light's Grace to knock that half second off of your Holy Lights, and without a 2 sec Holy Light you will watch a lot more people die. Sure, you're a hybrid and you can fulfill both roles on that level, but I wouldn't trust you to Main Heal without Light's Grace, and I would rather you not Main tank without the 6% (soon to be 16%) stamina buff you get further down the tree. And without the beauty of Ardent Defender, you're going to be pretty easy to wipe out fast for most bosses.
Thus, the most you can do comfortably is offheal, and offtank, and you could never fulfill both.
I would love to see a fundamental change to the combat system in this game, but honestly, I'm sure that it will never happen. The most we can really hope for is to get the opportunity to specialize in the role of our choice. Now, and even more so with 2.3, we have that option, so I'm happy, and I'd hope most Paladins are happy as well.
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2 comments:
I think most of the hybrids are like you. We wish the game was different, but we realize it's not.
I'm pure Holy, and 90% of the time I play as a healbot. But when I can, I add some melee, some Judgements.
We just don't want the trees to go too far, to the point where, even with a gear swap, Retribution was totally unable to act as a healer or a tank.
It's certainly the way it's headed isn't it?
I'm not sure why designers are so willing to pidgeonhole every class and every spec. With the exception of 41 fury/20 prot warriors, no one can really blend two roles comfortably and handle both in a raid setting. And even fury tanks have their limit - I'd still rather have a prot warrior/Paladin or feral druid tanking.
I think it has honestly passed that point of gear swaps being insufficient to make you anything more than an offhealer. Offtank is probably still doable, but my experience of healing is brutal. I'm wearing mostly healer gear that would have otherwise been sharded in Kara, so I'm largely epicced out, and I could barely heal a Headless Horseman kill. Granted it was a pug, a poorly geared one with low dps, but even so I figured I could at least get away with healing them. With only 9 points in Holy, it was quickly proven to me that I cannot. It was touch and go and we would have finished it had they not failed to DPS down the head quickly enough, but the fact that I ran out of mana at all was more than a little disconcerting.
I used to be a hardcore hybrid type. I said any Paladin who didn't carry around 3 sets of gear wasn't doing his job, but the way we specialize, even I've stopped doing that. I forget my healing gear, I long since sold my tanking gear (since I have a prot pally I can bring in, but still) and I frankly don't bother with anything other than beating in faces. It works and I'm happy with it, but there's something sad about it. I think our design in beta was much more appropriate for a hybrid. Might have to make a post on that actually.
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