The downfall of the DPS class.

#0 - Jan. 5, 2009, 10:19 p.m.

With the upcoming patch, Blizzard will be introducing the dual-spec feature. Im sure this will help out in raids and such, but at a cost.

With this new feature, the classes who can solely DPS (Hunters, Mages, Rogues, and Warlocks) will be all but wiped out. With hybrid classes now dealing as much, and in most cases, more damage than the DPSers, there will be virtually no reason to even bring us.

A raid leaders decisions will most likely follow a train of thought close to this:
Should I bring a...
-Hunter or Ret Paladin...The Ret paladin does equal damage, has more group buffs, and can spec holy or prot at any time to help out the raid. Ret Paladin
-Mage or Elemental Shaman...Shaman buffs the group greatly with totems, does equal damage, has Blood Lust,and can spec Resto to help heal...Elemental Shaman
-Rogue or Death Knight....DK does more damage, can rez players who die to add DPS, and can tank...Death Knight
-Warlock or Swadow Priest...SP does equal damage, gives the group great buffs, and can heal if needed...Shadow Priest

Im sure other players who play a DPS only class and are worried about this upcoming problem. I like playing my warlock, and want to continue playing it. I ask you to please look into this upcoming problem.

My belief is that hybrid classes' damage dealing trees were given good utility originally because they did not bring as much damage to the raids. Now that they are doing as much damage, and they still have those same great utilities, we are going to be out of a job.

My Personal Ideas
1. Buff the DPS class damage, making the classes who can ONLY DPS do the BEST DPS.
2. Give us better raid utility, or improve upon the (little) utility we already have.

Closing Statement....
There are no classes who can tank and only tank.
There are no classes who can heal and only heal.
There are FOUR classes who can DPS and only DPS.

Ghostcrawler

#17 - Jan. 5, 2009, 11:29 p.m.

The best guilds in the world already send people to respec between fights or swap out classes between fights. We don't want this to be the standard way everyone raids, but we don't think it's worth implementing a lot of punitive measure to prevent either. So dual-spec won't affect those guilds much.

So then it comes down to what is most likely *your* guild (unless you are in one of those cutting-edge guilds, in which case I salute you). In your guild are all the players such amazing players that they can always hit the theortetical max dps predicted by spreadsheets and combat dummy tests? If so, then the pure classes should still be on top. If not, then you still don't have much to worry about. If you are an amazing mage and can out dps the shamans and druids, then you'll probably get a spot. If you aren't an amazing mage, but you have good friends in the guild and they like having you along then you'll probably get a spot.

The groups that might get caught are those that struggle with content and feel like stacking classes is the solution to get them through. But in nearly every case I see this, the group would do far better to just get better gear, talent builds, or learn how to handle the encounters or which buttons to push. The exception are the cutting-edge guilds that ARE struggling with cutting-edge content, but they are going to stack classes per encounter anyway (and 99% of us aren't in those guilds).