Guild Wars 2

At the heart of the hybrid problem is the fact that if a hybrid can perform a given role as well as a specialist while also having other abilities the specialist can never have, playing a specialist becomes pointless.

On the opposite side, if a hybrid is always inferior to a specialist in any given role, then it’s always better to have a specialist fill that role.

Hybrids are generally made less effective in each area than their parent classes, with the intent that they make up the deficiency with their abilities from other areas. MMOs have had always a great deal of difficulty designing hybrids that are powerful and valuable without completely destroying the rest.

Overly successful hybrid design can be defined as Tank-Mage, somebody able to take loads of dmg while dishing out as much; The discovery/creation of these tank-mages by players is the product of the incredible ingenuity of MMO players (@Daphoenix who popularized the d/d ele).

As these “Tank mages” get discovered they will be adjusted or “nerfed” as they become more and more apparent. However, nerfs generate turbulence in the player community, and it is always better to prevent these sorts of issues from arising in the first place.

The nerfs will always tend to destroy the integrity of the design, till only an empty husk is left where no convenience in playing it remains.

The hybrid issue is exacerbated by the fact that MMOs are both solo and group games, if MMO would be only group games then, there would be no problems in having professions that soak loads of dmg and other that dish loads of it.

Unfortunately as we know even in group-focused games, players spend a lot of their playing time doing things on their own. Even if a character is the best healer in the world, if they can’t take or dish out at least some damage they won’t be able to operate outside of a group. Soloing requires that the character be able to deal damage, plus the ability to absorb, avoid, or heal the damage taken.

With time all professions become Hybrids despite their initial design and when this happens specialist profession designs learn how to mitigate their initial weaknesses while maintaining the original strength and purpose

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the original hybrid design will maintain all their weaknesses and they didn’t gain anything in the meantime.

At this point I ask myself if it’s really fair to maintain ele in game when it should be obviously reworked as design.

The profession constantly fluctuate between OP and UP, it’s really not wise to keep playing the profession , any buff will just make the profession OP for a while given its hybrid design and then it’ll be nerfed back to UP state after a certain period of time.

As soon as an hybrid build can fulfill a role, unless the specialist build is way way way better than him (aka broken af), the hybrid build will prevail. And this is pretty much the statement that defines meta builds since last years, builds that can fulfill the maximum roles possible minimizing this way the weaknesses of the build and so making it safer and better. An hybrid build isnt a build that can make succesful use of two stats, but that can take different roles in different situations, or confront different roles in different situations.
Thats why meta builds are always considered “cheesy”, which in fact has nothing to do with the skill curve needed to play such builds at the very best, but the safety to be able to confront most given situations without being in a bad position (matchups, rotations, human factor, etc). While some professions have more affinity to be succesfully hybrids and others more affinity to be broken in some aspects (op specialists), every class has more or less hybrid aspects attached to it as a result of the complexity of the combat system.

As for eles, I guess you can ask for more build diversity, but suport ele is totally viable, so…

tl;dr: succesful hybrid builds are the ones that can fulfill more roles with less counters, and so optimizing the number of favoured matchups and making it a safer bet (therefore is not by any means tied to professions, but combat design and so applicable to everyone), which pretty much defines every single meta build without taking into account comp combos or broken stuff.