TheFishyOne wrote:After observing a rather...heated discussion on hybrid DPS, I've noticed that all the other hybrid DPS specs either bring valuable raid buffs/debuffs to a raid or in the case of Ele Shammies, scale obscenely with gear. Ret Pallies, however, bring no unique raid buffs that would be universally good, and I do not know how they scale with gear. Imp SotC WOULD be in the same boat as Imp WF for Ele Shammies, but it relies on the presence of a Tankadin to mean anything, whereas WF is universal. Buffwise, Imp BoM and Kings can be easily picked up by Holy Pallies.
Yes, Ret DPS is horribly gimped atm by the Sanc Aura and Vengeance bugs, but they won't always be. On that day, what reason would an RL have to bring a Ret Pally over a Holy or Prot one, or even another class? What do Ret Pallies provide a raid better than anyone else?
For my purposes, this is PvE only, and a "Ret Pally" is any Pally with 5/5 Vengeance.
I highlighted the issue I am going to address.
1) Ele shamans do scale well with gear
2) Being horde they do not have salv/kings therefore horde warriors/mages/locks all do less damage than Alliance versions.
3) If Alliance had Ele Shamans with Paladins or vice versa they would never be considered at all (and still usually aren't as mana tide is still better in all situations)
4) Ele shaman are viable, but no more than what Rets/Boomkins are even at the later AQ/Naxx levels.
5) Geared or not Ele shaman will be below Mages/Locks/Warriors/Rogues. You can always make the argument that will they have viable DPS why not bring another dps that does the job better or a resto shaman for mana tide.
As far as I can remember for Horde the top dps in naxx for Horde are Rogues>Mages>Warriors/Locks. This could be wrong so take it with a grain of salt since I didnt raid as Horde in retail vanilla and going by my memory.
For Alliance it is Locks>Mages>Warriors>Rogues with warriors gaining a slight upperhand above mages/locks on melee friendly fights.
There is a reason Blessing of Salv and Kings were highly debated on being broken back in retail for Alliance when compared to Horde.