It’s been one of those weeks — my car got broken into on Sunday and sat in my parkade until I discovered the damage on Monday morning; I’ve been dealing with nightmare after nightmare; I’m totally overloaded with work; and haven’t had a second to myself all week. So now that I’m finally caught up on all my work, I can sit down with glass of wine in hand and relax a little by writing about something I noticed a couple of nights while running scenarios with my Warrior Priest.
I have a tendency, as do many jack-of-all-trades-type folks like myself, to have a distinct inclination towards hybrid classes in RPGs. There’s just something about being able to be versatile both in a group and on my own — although never much of a specialist — that appeals to me. I like being able to perform a certain task one day and swap over to something different the next. Even if it requires a Mastery path respec or changing around your armor, there’s just something tantalizing about having viability in a multitude of situations that’s hard to get away from. In prior games, I’ve always dipped a toe into the hybrid waters at some point, trying a Thane in DAOC, and a Druid, Paladin and Shaman in WoW, but never really settling into a hybrid role. Although, from what I hear, WoW’s Druid class has really filled the hybrid void well these days, it definitely wasn’t the case when I played, and at the time I just felt like a somewhat gimped rogue/tank/healer in each of the Druid’s forms.
I always ended up giving up on my idealism and playing a DPS-ey class to the end-game, as the hybrids never quite lived up to my expectations. Either it was overall weakness across the board, or too many abilities to keep track of, or just a total lack of design cohesion that got me at one point or another. Frustration would eventually kick in and I’d give up, most often moving back to my tried-and-true rogue archetype.
WAR is a slightly different situation. It doesn’t really have a lot of what I’d define as “pure” hybrids (err, you know what I mean), but the pairing of the Warrior Priest and Disciple of Khaine makes up the most hybridized of most of the available classes, although both fall under the healing umbrella. Both classes serve multiple purposes, being able to go full-on DPS by speccing one Mastery path and gearing up a certain way; the converse is also possible, with a full healing spec being quite viable. Even the middle-ground paths (Grace spec for the Warrior Priest, Sacrifice for the Disciple) are quite playable and group-friendly, which is satisfying in that you really don’t feel gimped no matter which playstyle you decide suits you most.
The problem I’ve run into of late with my Warrior Priest is that what I thought was a hybrid is starting to feel like a like a bit of a con-job. I’m feeling heavily corraled in a specific spec — Salvation — in order to be the most effective in nearly all situations.
Want to run an end-game 6-man instance? Even as a secondary healer (which I tend to be most often; I prefer to have a Rune Priest or Archmage as primary spike-healer), with a group that’s not geared to the gills, you’ll need to be full Salvation spec. Even with a well-geared group, you’re going to have a much easier time of it with a Salvation-specced WP. It’s not that it’s not possible to heal a group as Grace or Wrath spec, it’s just that you’re going to have a much easier time of it if you spec for it. You’ll also be a lot more useful to your instance group if you’re specced for healing than if you were Grace or Wrath specced. I end up respeccing more often than not when I’m running into a PvE instance because I feel I’ll be unnecessarily gimping the group if I don’t run as full Salvation.
How about scenarios? Oh wait. Salvation again. The other night, I ran the same Howling Gorge scenario with almost identical teams and opposition back-to-back. The difference is that for the first run, I was Grace/Wrath specced. I got so frustrated with getting pulled into a rift by the same Magus over and over, and getting ganked nigh instantaneously once I was in there, that I respecced Salvation in between runs. The second run, I managed to avoid dying to rifts altogether as I spammed my group absorb shield and group HoT the minute I got pulled in, then followed up with Martyr’s Blessing immediately.
Not only that, I managed to outheal a Witch Elf who jumped me from stealth (and she was dropping everything she had on me) well behind the Order back line by hammering all of my heals on myself in succession, and managing to get back to our melee line in time for them to kill her. And I didn’t even have to use Repent. What I lose in raw damage output, I more than make up for in healing ability and survivability — even losing the additional wounds from Sigmar’s Grace.
The first run (as Grace/Wrath), I netted 1,200 renown. The second, as Salvation, got me 6,100 renown. Not a tough choice, at the end of the day. My 2H hammer is officially retired for the time being — I’ll settle for getting my DPS kicks on my Swordmaster and Engineer.
I won’t complain because I don’t mind Salvation spec as much as I had expected — I just didn’t want to end up being a pure healbot. But at the same time, I feel a little ripped off. I was hoping for a versatile hybrid class, but instead I end up playing a moderately-armored, low-damage, solid group/AoE healer instead. Maybe my gear plays into it, as having a 5/6 set of Sentinel armor is definitely more conducive to healing than DPS, but it’s still good enough gear that I should be able to perform well in whatever spec I choose, assuming I have the proper gear load-out and Renown spec.
The only time I feel particularly happy with either Grace or Wrath spec is when I’m soloing. And to be honest, soloing is fine when you’re leveling up, but at 40 most interesting activities require at least a group, and more often a warband. Sure, I can solo equal-level champions and the odd hero as a Grace-spec’d Warrior Priest, but that happens so rarely that it seems more useful just to respec to a melee build when I need to farm or if I happen to kill a champion mob for a Tome unlock/fragment. That’s definitely not an everyday occurrence for me.
Having one spec being far better than the other two in terms of net effectiveness in instances and scenarios just means that we’re going to have a whole lot of cookie-cutter Salvation Warrior Priests out there. I’m not sure how this translates to Disciples of Khaine as I haven’t played one past Tier 2, but I would expect it’s not far off.
My question to you is: is the way hybrids work in WAR (at least, with respect to healers) a good thing? Is the illusion of being a hybrid enough, and is there really such a thing as a hybrid that’s able to be effective across all spec paths without being horribly overpowered? Something to ponder.
