Battlefield Intelligence: The Pure vs. Hybrid Debate

Hello everyone, and welcome to my World of Warcraft Soapbox.  You can join me here each week as I discuss important gameplay issues within the realms of Azeroth.  Today I’d like to kick this column off by taking a look at one of the most talked about issues effecting World of Warcraft today; the Pure vs. Hybrid debate.

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion changed a lot about the way classes in WoW are played.  Some of these changes didn’t work out so well—Retribution Paladins and Arcane Mages were overpowered and consequently had their mechanics changed in ways which have caused them to scale poorly in relation to other classes.  Others, such as the overhaul of the Warrior’s Protection talent tree, were much better received.  In addition, the introduction of the Death Knight class added an entirely new, and grossly overpowered, class to the original lineup.  As a result of all these changes, developers at Blizzard are still attempting to find a balance between all the classes in PvE and PvP content.

Perhaps the most important change to the PvE side of WoW came as a result of a change in design philosophy on the part of Blizzard.  In pre-Wrath content, “hybrid” classes (those which can choose to spec in more than one role) fell far short of their “pure” counterparts in terms of damage done.  The developers believed that because pure classes brought little “utility” to the raid in the form of raid buffs, they had to be compensated by being given far superior damage capabilities.  However, with the release of The Sunwell Plateau raid instance, encounters became so difficult that many guilds resorted to stacking their raids with hybrid classes that brought valuable raid buffs like Shadow Priests and Shamans, at the expense of pure classes like Mages.  To end the “raid stacking” phenomenon, Blizzard adopted a new motto of “Bring the player, not the class,” to be unveiled with Wrath of the Lich King.  Pure classes were given raid buffs similar to those already brought by hybrids, and hybrids were given a damage increase in return (two notable exceptions are the Shaman ability Bloodlust (Heroism for the Alliance), and the Paladin’s Blessing of Kings, which have no comparable buff).

Unfortunately, this rebalancing led to an entirely new set of problems.  Blizzard attempted to protect the raid viability of pure classes by giving them more utility, but the pures were not convinced this would keep them from being forced out of raids.  If a hybrid class brings the same damage and utility as a pure class and can respec from healing or tanking to dps during raids, they argued, why bring a pure class at all? (The recent addition of Dual Talent Specialization increased the wailing and gnashing of teeth by pures on this argument.)  In response, Blizzard has maintained that they expect pures to continue to do better damage than hybrids, though by a smaller margin than before, the commonly referred to “5% rule”.  The backlash from hybrids was predictable.  If pures have hybrid-level raid utility and better damage, they countered, why bring hybrids at all?  And this circular argument continues to be rehashed over and over again with no end in sight.

Now that you have some background on the evolution of the debate, I’d like to deconstruct some of the main points that are thrown around during this debate and give my own opinions on how the issue ought to be resolved.  To begin, I’d like to link to a really good post on the official WoW forums that was made by the poster Luph, from Magtheridon: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18983421333&sid=1.  In his post, Luph exlpains that, while he had previously been a big supporter of the 5% rule and Blizzard’s goal for pure and hybrid dps, he has recently changed his mind about the issue and he gives his reasons for doing so.  I’d like to preface the rest of this column by saying that I have not read any of the posts in the thread other than Luph’s original post and the replies by Ghostcrawler.  I agree with Luph on many of his points, but I also am not totally ready to say I am against the 5% rule.

Now, people who know me will probably be somewhat shocked by that last statement.  Since I first came back to WoW during the Burning Crusade expansion, my main character has been a warrior, a hybrid class.  For the first six months of Wrath, Warriors were without a doubt one of the most powerful dps classes available, thanks to the incredible talent Titan’s Grip.  That talent was of course necessary to prop up the abortion that is the Fury talent tree, but I will leave Warrior mechanical issues to another day for now.  As the Pure vs. Hybrid debate was heating up, Blizzard added a debilitating damage penalty to the Titan’s Grip talent, resulting in a massive dps loss for fury warriors.  I made it quite clear to everyone who would listen how terribly Blizzard had wronged the warrior class, and I even rerolled to a new rogue.  So for me to admit that Blizzard’s 5% rule might be a good idea would be a pretty big departure from my previous stance.  We will get to this later, but first let’s take a look at some of the talking points in the Pure vs. Hybrid debate.

1. One role vs. multiple roles
This concept is the foundation for the pure vs. hybrid debate and the 5% rule.  In essence, Blizzard has stated that since hybrid classes may change their roll without transferring to an entirely different character, they should be penalized.  On the surface, this makes a lot of sense.  Pure classes have three talent trees, but all are filled with talents that only allow them to deal damage more efficiently.  If a pure class has a reduced capacity for dealing damage, they have no other options for playing.  In an ideal world, all talent specs for all classes would perform really well.  Since that has never been the case in WoW’s history, and is unlikely to be the case in its future either, Blizzard has adopted the stance that, if one play style of a hybrid class is broken, i.e. tanking, healing, or dps, they have at minimum one other play style to try.

The problem with this philosophy is that it is narrowly defined.  Blizzard only differentiates between pures (one role) and hybrids (more than one role).  They do not account for any variation within the hybrid classes at all.  If a pure can do more damage because they have fewer roles than a hybrid, why shouldn’t a two-role hybrid do more damage than a three- or four-role hybrid?  By not having a consistent approach to the hybrid problem, Blizzard has a flawed design philosophy from the very beginning.

2. What makes a hybrid?
The definition of a hybrid class has been one of the main sticking points in this debate.  For their part, Blizzard has consistently stated that a hybrid is a class that can fill more than one roll.  Some players have been slow to accept this definition.  Some have argued that tanking should not be considered an additional role when deciding whether a class is a hybrid.  All classes have the capacity to deal and receive damage.  Tanks are merely better at receiving the damage than other classes.  Players with this opinion believe that only classes which can heal in addition to dealing damage should be considered hybrids.  Under this definition, Death Knights and Warriors would be moved to the pure classification.

From a logical standpoint, that viewpoint makes a certain kind of sense.  Both tanks and dps classes do the exact same thing: hit the enemy as much as you can and try to avoid being hit as much as you can.  Tanks, by design, will be hit a lot more and thus have to have abilities to mitigate those hits.  But from a mechanical standpoint, there is no difference in the play style.  As you can probably guess, Warriors have been leading the charge to adopt this definition, with Death Knights mostly ambivalent (though with the damage nerfs of 3.2, they may find themselves coming more into agreement on the issue).  The accepted definition of a hybrid among the player base will probably never see a consensus, but that remains largely irrelevant as long as Blizzard remains unchanging on their definition.

3. What is the value of a hybrid?
In order for the 5% rule to have any legitimate justification, it must be determined that there is an inherent value in playing a hybrid class.  This is a problem because value is subjective.  While Blizzard may consider there to be value in having the ability to choose a different roll, players may not feel the same way.  For many, they chose their character for reasons other than the fact that they were a pure or hybrid class.  From my own experience, I chose my very first character, a hunter, because I wanted to be a dwarf, I liked the idea of using guns, and I thought the four seconds of the very first WoW cinematic intro that featured the hunter looked cool.  I had never played a MMORPG before and I didn’t even know what tanking or dps even meant.  Later, I rolled a Warrior because I enjoyed the idea of being a massive, intimidating figure with a big weapon that got right up in someone’s face to fight to the death.  At the time, Warriors and hybrids in general could not compete with pures in damage, but that made no difference to me.  I wanted to deal damage using the warrior play style.  Tanking was never a consideration to me, and the fact that my class had a protection tree held no additional value.

World of Warcraft is the gold standard for MMOs.  Part of this is because its classes are so appealing to players.  Blizzard has spent a lot of time creating play styles that draw players in, so it should come as no surprise to them that someone may place a great value on being able to play a certain way.  If all a player wants to do is dps, they may chose a hybrid class because of the play style of that class, and not because they believe that having the option to heal or tank will make them more valuable.

Another issue to consider is the amount of value being a hybrid brings to a players party or raid members.  Because raid encounters vary widely, they have different raid makeup requirements.  From this standpoint, there is value on being able to have tanks or healers switch to dps specs for certain fights.  However, within any individual encounter, there is no value in being a hybrid class.  If a tank dies, a dps Warrior can put on a shield and survive just as long with his Shield Wall ability as a Rogue could survive with his Evasion cooldown.  This is because of the vast gear requirement differences between tank specs and damage specs.  When not wearing armor specifically for tanking, a dps spec hybrid has survivability limited by their defensive cooldowns, of which there are negligible differences across all dps specs.  The same holds true for a class that has healing abilities.  Without being specifically specced to heal, any dps class will not heal with any kind of efficiency necessary in a raid encounter.  The number of times a hybrid’s flexibility could make a difference in a raid encounter are extremely limited.

Now that we have examined the issue, what then can we conclude?  For my own part, I have arrived at a somewhat mixed conclusion.  I believe that propping up pure classes by limiting the dps capabilities of hybrid classes is not a legitimate design philosophy, for the reasons I’ve stated above.  I believe that the distinctions should be taken away and all dps specs for all classes should be balanced equally.  If Blizzard chooses to maintain this path of separation, they must tweak their goals so that they are consistent.  Two-role hybrids must maintain a damage increase over the two three-role hybrids, Paladins and Druids (technically four roles).  Furthermore, I fall into the camp that believes that Warriors and Death Knights should be further differentiated, either into the pure classification or between pures and two-role healers.  This is unlikely to happen as the balancing needed to create that many divisions would be a nightmare.

However, as I stated earlier, I am not willing to say that raiding in Wrath of the Lich King is broken.  Though I believe the 5% rule to be illegitimate, I think the classes overall are balanced decently.  Some classes have gripes—Retribution Paladins, Shadow Priests, and Hunters have legitimate complaints about low dps.  Warriors, who took the largest across-the-board dps nerf in 3.1, are finally returning up to the top of the damage charts (Warrior scaling is a topic for another day).  For the most part, players are not being left out of content because of the limitations of the spec they chose to play.  Looking at average damage scores for all classes on Ulduar raid encounters shows that the specific mechanics of an encounter are a far more limiting factor on a class’s dps.  I believe that to be further justification for getting rid of the 5% rule.  Blizzard can, and has shown that it will, use encounter mechanics to cater to specific classes on different fights.  What is the point of having an arbitrary dps buffer between pure an hybrid classes while at the same time creating raid encounters that leave pures more than one thousand dps behind hybrid classes?  The 5% rule seems to already serve no purpose other than to provide reassurance to pure classes that they are being paid attention to when they see their names plummeting downward on a damage meter.  Raid balance is fine as it is, Blizzard should remove the arbitrary 5% restriction and continue to model raid encounters to be unique and encourage raid diversity.

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