That’s also why I like my warrior, it’s the most fun of the tanks to play (for me, and also for lots of others).

I think pure dps classes will do fine actually. They have plenty of tricks and buffs and are specialised in their roles. It’s the dual-role classes who tend to lose out because they don’t get the dps specialisation or utility of pure classes or the variety of the triple hybrids. Plus everyone hates them when they are in dps mode.

Hybrids will continue to rule, and not even the quite nice soul shard changes to Warlocks will bring a class that specializes in DPS and DPS only back. The same applies to Rogues.

And yeah, Shamans will probably the next cool thing to level as alt – because they are not Paladins but also “need” to buffed for some weird notion of balance because Paladins are too uber to be good for the game. Ugh.

From specialists to hybrid heaven, oh my.

I was arguing against Dual Specs for this reason.
Hybrids were in a far better state than specialized classes in the times where they were crying and suffering the most than it is now the case for the DPS only classes.

Now does anyone wonder why players rather pick classes that can be excellent in every role instead of only 1 or 2?

I’d like to clarify that the reason having 1/3 of everyone be a paladin or druid is bad for forming a raid is that it gets harder to put together the optimal array of buffs. As someone who focuses on 10-man progression raiding, I’m particularly attuned to that. If you just want to make a raid that has 2 tanks, 2.5 healers, and the rest dps, then it would definitely be viable with a big pile o’ hybrids.

I concede that being unable to distinguish between alts and mains in the armory data mining and warcraft census data is a weakness. It’s not too big a deal in my view, though, since anyone who isn’t very worried about their achievements will have no problems switching mains to anything they already have at 80, or to a Worgen/Goblin if they are in love with those. The current populations at level 80 was used primarily to see what classes people had available at 80 ready to start leveling in Cata. I don’t see any reason to think that hybrids are more likely to be alts. I know plenty of people who main hybrids and alt dps classes so they don’t get asked to heal or tank on their alts.

My main point is really that hybrids, especially the tri-brid paladin and druid classes, are far *too* attractive in the current metagame, and Cata is giving no indication that that will change. Leveling to 85 and putting out new race/class combos and a new race will have an effect of “shaking loose” a lot of people who stuck with their class because of inertia or commitment at 80, and they will switch to the tri-brid en masse. People will see it as an opportunity to switch to something with greener-looking grass when they wouldn’t have before. IMO, something about the metagame needs to change before there is a mass exodus from pure classes.

I would go further into why I think having 1/3 of the playerbase only maining 2 of the 10 classes, but that’s actually the subject of my next blog post.

I can’t cover everything you guys said in this comment, but I read it all and am thankful for it.

* Armory data mining makes no distinction between Mains and Alts. Paladin population numbers were high in Vanilla (16% of the Alliance faction) and high in TBC (14% IIRC) but at no stage were they as fun as the ‘Pure’ classes, and viability depended on the content. This deep into Wrath you’d rightly expect that all those Paladins, and a few others, will have been levelled to 80 but it doesn’t immediately follow that they’ve all supplanted Pures as a players’ main (quite the reverse given Achievements). Hybrids are also more likely to be alts, purely because they allow you to experience a role outside of your Mains role or give you flexibility in Heroic role Pugging and PvP. But still, you’ll be taking your Warrior/Mage/Priest into ICC for boss kills.

* As Stabs implied, no distinction or even acknowledgement is made of Dual-talent specs in the post when determining role representation. I know it’s hard to do, but it should at least be mentioned if predicting doom and gloom from low numbers of Tanks and Healers.

* 9.5 for the Paladin Spells? Seriously?

* Surely everyone who’s wanted to play a Paladin by now has rolled one and done just that? And 12 months into Cataclysm all those lvl80 Paladin alts will naturally have made their way to 85 because levelling is just that easy. Hence, absolute numbers of Paladins won’t change that much, relative numbers will depend on how interesting the lvl1-60 content is for the new Worgen and Goblins, and no numbers you can extract can really give you a good picture of class popularity.

We’ll see how things shake out over the next few months but I don’t think there’s any real need to worry right now. If, as promised, Blizzard make Paladin DPS and Tanking more complicated than they are right now we should see higher pure representation, by some margin.

I can also back up his observations that there are currently too few tanks for small group content but too many for 25-mans. I’m always waiting for the tank for my random instances and in ten-mans finding them can be tricky as well, but my 25-man guild constantly gets applications from wannabe raid tanks whom we have to reject simply because we have no room for more tanks.

I hate dpsing, and I hate being nagged why I don’t have dps offspec. On the other hand, I know quite many moonkins and shadow priests who feel offended when everyone assumes “naturally” their dual spec is healer (some have pvp specs etc.)

In the world optimized around people not swapping roles in the middle of raid there wouldn’t be such preference towards hybrids. Hands ups, how many times did you see “LFM ICC healer /w dps offspec” (or dps /w heal offspec, whatever).

It’s also a raid design problem, if one boss requires tons of healing while another is lenient on healing but strict dps check there’s more pointing towards benching some healers or having them “conveniently switch to dps”.

This issue rarely touches tanks, but still does, there are some fights where that 1 more tank isn’t needed.

And yes, I agree that popularity of prot and ret blood elf paladins was caused as well by making them the only race denied the warrior class. 2 expansions later it might be too late already to try to fix it, people who played their blood elf paladin for 4 years won’t be so eager to swap now, especially that race change exists, but class change doesn’t.

My personal feelings about class previews?

The Druid. My main is a resto Druid, and will stay a resto Druid because it’s the best Druid spec and the best of all healer classes (yes I tried all 4). The tree of life change is great, I was hating that ugly tree form all the time, but well, the playstyle was so fun no other class could overshadow it, so I had to suck it up. But no more! Now I can have fun and look pretty, what else could I ask for? New healing spells? Why? Just make the current ones work well. One of the weak points of WOTLK was making Druids concentrate only on very narrow toolbox. In Naxx I spammed Regrowths and Lifeblooms, in ICC I’m spamming Rejuvs and Wild Growths. I’d rather use full toolbox…

The Death Knight. Mine is a sworn blood spec DK tank. Of course I love the upcoming changes and I’m thinking of making the DK my main, I didn’t before because it was a class without history and with a noob stigma, I was a bit ashamed to have “a DK main” but it’s slowly becoming something of the past. Especially in comparison to my Druid I see her so unwanted while everyone ask for tanks, another argument to switch to DK.

The Paladin. I’m not really sure what to do with my Paladin, and I don’t really agree why people say Paladins got lucky. Holy gets some improvements, but I doubt it will be anywhere as interesting as other healer classes, as for now it’s most boring of all healers, 1 button spam spec, giving them “slight” improvements is still miles behind. Tanking? Whispers in the wind say they will be nerfed, because they’re “too easy” and “too popular”. Why should I keep tanking on my Paladin while currently my Death Knight is already better and more fun? Yes, there was a period when my Death Knight was weak and underpowered, while Paladin was on the top, in the TOC age. On the other hand the Death Knight was surpassing Paladin in Naxx and Ulduar age. But it seems the trend is going this way, the Paladin will be weaker and DK will get better. Poor Paladin.

The Shaman. People only wanted me for the Bloodlust. Now that Mages are getting it I agree “no amount of healing rain can save shamans”. Totems are awkward in the world of raiding where half the fight difficulty is not about your abilities but positioning and running around the room. And no “cast on the run on long cooldown” can patch the shaman weakness in comparison to druid or holy priest, and that is lack of instant cast spells. In the world-of-run-around-the-room-craft.

The Priest. Getting viable Gheal? Yes please. Getting bonus after spamming Prayer of Healing 3 times in a row? Yes please, it’s exactly what I wanted, Serendipity only accounts for the first cast and then I feel I could really use some extra burst. Holy Priest is already a very fun class to play, I fell in love with Guardian Spirit from day one. However the “life pull” move makes me a bit less excited, as I share the worry with doomsayers that every slacker who cannot get the hell outta fire will blame the poor Priest for not pulling him out.

Warrior. Actually I never managed to level a Warrior, but as I see the previews I think now I will finally do it. If not now, then maybe roll a Goblin in Cataclysm. With the levelling optimizations and dungeon finder I’m sure future for a new prot. Warrior looks brighter than ever. Abandoned mine somewhere in TBC because “you can’t level as prot” and so on, then never had time… now the time has come.

Now as much as I ought to feel sympathy for poor under-represented Rogues and other “pure dps” I don’t like dps so don’t plan to reinforce numbers of those classes. How cruel of me?
Wait, what, didn’t you just say there’s a healer and tank shortage..

To sum up, classes I want to play more in Cata: Druid, Death Knight, Priest, possibly Warrior.

Classes that I might leave aside in Cata: Shaman, possibly Paladin.

And I’m not really interested in Worgen, I’d rather roll a Goblin. I just dislike playing Humans and Worgens are just that, Humans with a twist. I will roll a Goblin to see the starter area, for sure. Will I stick to it? Depends how the final art design will look like and how the racials will be balanced around, otherwise I might be better sticking to some Troll or Blood Elf (2 horde races with racials useful for healing).