#9 - Oct. 31, 2008, 6:35 a.m.
Our logic worked out like this:
1) Buffs are breaking the game. There are many examples you could insert here, but here are a few:
-- Ret paladins can't get into the melee group because of all the buffers in there.
-- Stacking shamans for Bloodlust rotations.
-- Stacking Shadow Priests so mana conservation would be irrelevant.
-- Mages getting shut out of raids, in part because it was better to bring yet another lock to benefit from Curse of Shadows.
2) We decided to consolidate buffs such that similar ones would not stack, but we extended the effects to raid wide.
3) Thus, in a 25-player raid, you need far fewer than 25 players to get the buffs you need, allowing you to fill those remaining slots with who you want.
4) Without the benefits of those buffs, those remaining slots would most likely just go to pure dps classes. Shamans, for example, might go from 5 per raid to 1 (or 1 death knight instead).
5) So we buffed hybrid dps a lot.
6) But we knew at the other extreme that pure dps classes risked getting shut out of raids if hybrids could do their damage.
7) So we made sure the pure classes could still do superior dps given similar skill and gear. We wanted you to risk having lower dps if you brought all hybrids.
We don't go into a lot of detail about how much higher or lower certain classes should be, because we noticed that players respond to this by posting WWS parses that shows their class in the #10 spot and get all bent out of shape about it (and totally ignoring the bit about equal gear or skill).
The net result is that hybrid dps is much higher, but not as high as pure classes. If you are an awesome hybrid player, then you will sometimes top the damage meters depending on your gear, skill and the specific encounter. But you probably won't do it as much as a rogue, mage, warlock or hunter (again depending on their skill).
I know the edge here sometimes seems fuzzy. It is. WoW's combat system is pretty complicated and hard and fast rules can only get you so far. But that is the basic model in very simple terms.
