I think it would help if you clearly defined what you mean by "hybrid". If you just mean mixing different skill schools, then there are tons of different builds that are viable. Simply pick 1 stat/weapon for damage and then just get utility abilities from other skill schools. E.g A Strength and 2-handed warrior who has a point in Aerothurge to teleport and Netherswap targets.
I'm assuming by Hybrid you mean being able to do both "physical" and "magical" damage effectively. E.g Swing a sword and then cast a Fireball, without being bad at either.
This is the main thing that mostly can't be done by a single character in the current build, at least without sacrificing a lot of damage to both types.
There's no good way to be good at two opposing things. You're making a trade-off on stats. For our Sword/Fireball example that would be Strength vs Int (Stats), 2-Handed vs Pyrokinetics (Skills), and possibly on a few talents too (Opportunity vs Far-out man).
The only current way a "hybrid" is valuable is if they primarily are good at doing damage one way, and just pick up extra utility from other Skills.
Of note, this is only a problem for damage dealing classes. Healers and utility classes actually don't suffer from this problem at all. For heals specifically, they scale off of either caster level (Restoration) or % max health of the target (First Aid), and the caster's skill in Hydrosophist (for a % multiplier), whereas utility skills will only scale their damage portion, if one even exists.
A few builds manage to get around the weirdness. For example, a Character using a Fire Staff, who stacks Intellect and Pyrokinetics can do a lot of Melee damage and use both Warfare abilities and Fire Spells effectively. This is because the stats/skills all fully buff the damage from both of these actions.
The damage isn't hybrid, however. All of the damage would be Fire (aside from special skills like Battle Stomp, which converts all of the damage to physical.)
Anyone with a bow/crossbow can have their full bow damage be physical or use a special arrow for their choice of element. Most people wouldn't think of a pure archer as a hybrid, but this class is naturally able to hybridize their damage-type easily.
Even if the three stats (Int/Str/Finesse) were condensed into 1 stat called Power, which increased all damage done, we'd still have this issue due to skill passive bonuses, although it wouldn't be as pronounced. E.g. a pure-class who had all ten points into a weapon skill vs a character who dumped those 10 points in Pyrokinetics instead. Although, because of the 10-point limit on skill caps, this may not undercut the utility gained from being more flexible.
Last edited by error3; 27/05/17 04:56 PM.
