World of Gibcraft TBC Edition

My previous "Deep 6" article started a couple of interesting sub-topics within the relatively large number of comments. Most notable was Swarm's comment in which he portrayed his feelings as to how "hybrid" classes are actually overpowered - these of which include Feral Druids. Basically, he figured that Blizzard generally designs "hybrid" classes from a more direct damage standpoint at the cost of little to no CC compared to non-hybrids, and due to the overall trend that Blizzard has followed since release (uncontrolled scaling in damage outpoint with little increase in defense to match) that hybrid classes, the ones that are compensated by Blizzard with damage output, are now overpowered.

I whole heartedly agree. Now before you jump on some sort of soap box or bandwagon and call me crazy for agreeing that "hybrid" classes have become overpowered, you have to take a couple steps back and look at things from a broader and slightly different perspective.

As I have written about a handful of times already, Blizzard generally gets out of control with their own PVP gear progression. The evidence is buried within the Arena and it doesn't even take careful observation to see that certain classes have lost viability due to the fact that they are unable to defend themselves against the rate at which damage has scaled. Shadow Priests are a perfect example of this and even classes like Warlocks can be susceptible to pain-trains now while they were previously the most durable class out there. During season 1 and 2, Spriests were quite powerful, and you could easily find them in all three brackets. As damage began to scale in mid to late season 2, they slowly began to decline in overall representation and have become nothing but distractions now that season 3 is almost reaching an end. The TR has teams with Spriests simply because Armor penetration and damage hadn't quite scaled to the point where they were no longer viable during season 2.

The damage scaling issues, as previously mentioned, go quite a bit back in WoW time as well. Before TBC was released, PVP was nothing more than a glorified gib festival with gimmicky tactics dominating the playing-field. With TBC, Blizzard was able to have a clean slate, developed resilience, and it was seemingly all going to go well as seasons progressed. Now, which is to be expected, they have overextended themselves, and have reached the same point they were at between original WoW and TBC - WoTLK will become their new drawing board.

On the topic of hybrid specs again, the overwhelming evidence for their newly quired OP'edness I think was established by Swarm himself alongside Serennia. I remember playing against them as they were in their very first developmental stages of playing the 5v5 comp and I was literally almost instantly gibbed when they focused me. The overwhelming brute force in terms of the damage output they were capable of was just disgusting and terribly wrong for any sort of positive progression of the game. While our team tried to control their offense with CC's and careful organization, they just ass rammed us straight back through the entrance gate. Their was no need for them to use any CC. The damage that most hybrid classes can put out is easily able to rival or even surpass regular, one dimensional classes, and while I've noted that a lot of people disagree with this fact, I feel that you need to pay closer attention at the kind of output certain hybrid classes are capable of at the cost of little to no CC.

Now, the main reason I agree with Swarm in that they are overpowered, is because of Blizzards shortcomings in the design/balance team. They did take the approach of giving "hybrid" classes the ability to unload a huge front load of damage as a suitable way of portraying and designing under "hybrid" criteria and while this would normally work, because of their inability to scale gear without breaking things, "hybrid classes" got the ass-end of the stick in what they originally thought was Blizzard finally developing their classes into the versatile characters that "hybrid" would imply. Now of course, the exact opposite happened, and certain classes became right-click-pray-and-spray, or complete cooldown ****** that redefine the term gimmick. Normally this would not be preferred over quality CC and control - which is what every regular class has to offer - simply because it was not superior in effectiveness and the damage was not enough to make up for the fact that you were pretty much gimp in every other regard; much like a prot warrior trying to openly dps.

Now, as damage has scaled to the point at which it is, the ability to train the living **** out of someone is at the point where it's just more effective than the old CC and control game that was season 1 and 2. Swaps aren't necessary, comps like Serennias and Swarms were developed along side Euro comp, and hybrid classes are now in a position where the shortcomings of Blizzard development, which caused them to be extremely one dimensional and overpowered within said dimension, are exploited and abused for laughter or easier wins. It's only because of the overwhelming damage that these classes can put out that these methods and strategies can be successful, which is the underlying reason they are overpowered. When teams are generated and focused around centralizing the extreme amount of offense a "hybrid" class can put forth, they effectively further overpower them. This is the issue. Every team composed with a "hybrid" is teaming with a Warrior, or ETC which can take the already one-sided offensive specs like Ret Paladins and Enhancement shaman and push them far beyond where they're supposed to be in damage from skills like sunder armor and windfury. The worst part is that when you take them away from these other classes again, they become somewhat weak by themselves.

Blizzard has overcompensated in their skewed vision of what a "hybrid" is, and has only brought these classes further away from what those that play them would prefer. When they've become dependent on makeups that exploit their poor design, everything is wrong. Bringing them back to a more balanced hybrid setup between two aspects of the class, but doing it correctly is what needs to be done. However, I feel in order to do that, you'd have to practically re balance everything else within the arena at the same time. It's because of how ridiculously well damage has scaled that has caused all of these issues in the first place, therefor lowering damage could be one of the only solutions.

Hopefully once WoTLK comes around and Blizzard follows through with the revamps they said we'd have to wait for the expansion to see (said by Blizzard about 6-9 months ago), we can truely see what a "hybrid" should be.