Pure DPS vs Hybrid

Blue says:

If you really know your class, and I mean really know it, and if you have good gear, the right buffs, and a group that backs you up, then you are fully capable of topping the damage meters on certain fights. Overall we do want to make sure the pure dps classes are slightly higher when all things are equal, otherwise there is no point to those entire classes existing. Do warriors beat mages on some fights? Absolutely. What’s the issue?

So this reinforces some stuff that we’ve talked about in the past, and that I think comes more into focus with dual speccing. It was one thing to be gumpy that a pally could tank and heal and dps — but really, he could only do one of those and for the most part had to commit to doing just one of those. Well now your healer pally can push a button and also dps. And if he could out-dps you, that would be just a little f’d up.

Blizz isn’t shouting out any numbers (though they did say that back in BC they tried to keep hybrids about 40% below pure dps (except their beloved warriors, who they considered a pure dps class for the sake of balancing -wtf?) – and 40% is just waaay too low), but I think we can assume that the 5% rule of thumb previously mentioned is probably it.

Basically here’s the deal: if you and the hybrid are equally geared, and you both really know how to play your class well, then generally you’ll do a bit more dps than the hybrid. Maybe 5% or so. However, some fights might favor his class, or punish yours, and occasionally he’ll beat you on a boss fight or two. Doesn’t mean he does more dps than you, just that he does more in that particular circumstance. But overall you should be on top.

Of course the rough thing about having hybrids balanced so closely behind us is that it can get really hard to tell the difference between having lower dps, just being unlucky with RNG, or being less skilled. I mean if you complain that the warrior out-dpses you consistently, an easy answer for Blizz is that he may just be a better player than you.

Okay, a warrior is a bad example. History has proven that Blizz loves warriors more than any other class. So much so that most Blizz developers sleep with pics of warriors under their mattresses, next to the hand lotion. So out of deference to their preference, let’s just look at druids/shammys/pallys when we qq.