Hybrid love, pure imagination

I love playing hybrid classes, but before going on about why, I suppose I should explain what I mean by hybrid. The dictionary defines a hybrid as something of mixed origin or composition. We are talking composition in this case, so what elements are we mixing in our composition, or class? The roles a class can fill in an instance would is its defining elements. There are 3 main roles, tanking, damage dealing, and healing. Crowd control, buffing and de-buffing tend to fall into one of the main roles already listed, and can be thought of as sub-roles. So we have the elements, or roles, that get combined to create our composition, or class. By the definition, we would assume that we need two or more of these roles to create a hybrid class.

This definition is close, and excludes classes like rogues and mages, which are clearly not hybrid. On the other hand, if you spend too long thinking about it you could claim that most classes in WoW are hybrid. All classes are a mix of damage dealing and some other role. A warrior can be damage dealer and a tank. A priest can be a damage dealer and a healer. This isn’t what I mean by a hybrid class, so how do I define it clearer so it excludes these classes? Well, I think we can safely assume that every class in wow has some flavor of damage dealing available to it through talent trees. So if we exclude this as one of the roles that can be combined to create a hybrid class, we can assume that any class without the ability to heal and tank is not a hybrid class.

This definition limits us to the druid and paladin classes, excluding even shamans which are traditionally thought of as hybrid. People think of shamans as hybrid because they heal and deal damage, but that is no different that a priest, which is most definitely not a hybrid class. I guess you could also argue that a shaman is a hybrid of melee and spell damage, but again, it doesn’t hold water, as a mage does different types of damage, but is clearly a pure class. So, paladin and druid classes are hybrids and I love playing them.

Now, I think an example is the best way to show you why I love playing hybrids. I was playing my fully feral speced druid tank in Botanica on the weekend. The party was a hunter, a druid healer, druid tank, rogue and a warlock. I generally just tanked and held all the mobs on me, while my trusty damage team took out the baddies, and the healer kept us all alive. This is all well and good, but a pure class warrior would have handled this equally well, though with a lot less style then me of course. Where the hybrid really shines is when the shit (yes, we are a pg13 blog and can say shit. No, the FCC can’t charge us a fine.) hits the fan. During our otherwise perfect run, there was one messy pull. You know the one with 5 mobs that polymorph people, spawn additional mobs, and cast that horrible killer AoE on the ground? Yeah, that one. I pulled them to me, and the kill team took out the little beast mobs, but while they were doing that the polymorph mob poly’d the healer, and the killer AoE was thrown. The party’s health was dropping quick and the healer was out of action. I moved my remaining mob back out of the AoE, and stunned him. I popped out of bear form, cast barkskin, popped a fel blossom, and cast tranquility, healing the whole group to full. The mobs were rather pissed about the healing and stayed on me. I popped back to bear as soon as the cast was over, taking very few hits between the fel bubble and barkskin. The healer’s polymorph broke, and he went back to healing and the kill team finished off the polymorpher and then the AoE caster. Now, some of us might have survived, but without that quick hybrid action several players would have gone down.

That is why I love hybrids, we contribute most when it counts. Now I could go on and on, and likely will in other posts, but that really covers the basics for me. Now a poorly skilled or narrow focused player would not be a good hybrid, they lack the imagination and reaction speed to successfully get their hybrid on. That’s right folks! Those who play pure classes have no imagination!