Dual Spec Issues
Posted on April 21st, 2009 by Lawbringer under General TipsHow To Deal With Raid Rolling In 3.1
Just when you thought you had it all figured out Blizz comes along and throws a huge wrench in loot rolling. I’m not sure anyone really saw it coming either. We were all so happy to get dual specs that we didn’t take into account the other things it might affect.
Now, Dual specs have certainly made a number of problems go away completely. Perhaps the nicest for me is the fact that BG’s and Dailies are no longer a big hassle as a healer. I just pop into my chicken suit and blast away. Another nice thing we have noticed is that it is much easier to build a raid group because now you really CAN bring the best available player instead of a particular must-have spec or class.
But dual specs have already begun to toy with one of the foundational concepts of loot rolling in pugs – the concept of main spec. For as long as I can remember, the only toons allowed to roll on a piece of gear were those people whose current raiding spec was directly suited to the gear that dropped.
But with dual specs, even in limited raiding after the patch, I have seen dual specs come into question in over 30% of loot roll situations. And we’re not talking about loot ninjas here either – that’s just in our guild only runs. In pugs dual spec comes into play in more like 50% of all roll situations, so it’ is something that is going to have to be addressed.
Now before you roll your silly little eyes at me, let’s look at this a little deeper shall we? You can scoff and just say – main spec is main spec is main spec and main spec rolls and main spec should main spec for main spec it’s all main spec dummy. But you’re going to have to face the fact that the game as far as loot rolls is concerned just got blowed up.
Dual specs made main spec an obsolete term
The only time that you can actually say that anyone has a main spec any more is in the case of the person who either cannot afford to dual spec or refuses to play more than one spec. Personally I get FORCED to play heals on every toon Ive got – even though my self-declared MAIN spec on my paladin is DPS. So if I came to the raid to heal because I was forced to, does that mean I can’t roll on Ret gear against the Ret pally that’s in the raid who has Ret gear worse than mine and is doing a crummy job DPS’ing and refuses to spec heals? You can see the inequity here. This is also bolstered by the fact that the expectation of players has changed, and the shift will only get more dramatic.
Fundamentally Loot roll systems are: methods of determining how to distribute loot in a way that seems fair to everyone in relationship to their expectations. It has nothing to do with what is actually best for everyone involved, but what is best based on a balance between round robin and need.
It’s crazy subjective, and there is no clean system until Blizz implements some kind of deal where every single bit of gear in the entire game is class gear such as the Tier sets. Until and unless Blizz forces loot restrictions on every item you won’t be able to cleanly distribute every thing that drops. and that’s probably never going to happen.
The point is that players now EXPECT to be able to roll on loot for both specs, and it’s only going to get worse.
So you might as well get used to the fact that the game is GOING to go that way. No one is going to spend 1,000g for that second spec and then just sit there happily content with crappy gear for the spec. Plus, when you consider that the main reason for implementing dual specs was to make raiding more fun and easier to group up for, you’ve got a whole other level of pressure to conform to the new mindset.
Two weeks ago it was a luxury to have four real tanks in a raid just for the 4 horsemen fight. It was a luxury to have 6 healers for Patch, it would be nice to not have 6 healers for Thaddius, how cool to have a few less melee DPS for KT? You can have all of that now and never replace a single raid team member.
Go ahead and bring four warriors if you like. Two of them can go DPS for 90% of the instance and switch to tank for the 2 or 3 fights where an extra tank is needed. Have a few guys that are decent healers and great DPS (shammies and druids perhaps)? Awesome, you can just choose how many healers or DPS you need before a fight. The variations on this theme are now virtually endless.
I can actually envision a time coming to a raid near you where you will begin to pick your raid members NOT based on their main spec but on their versatility. You might begin to exclude those guys who can ONLY tank in favor of those folks who can tank well and DPS well too.
You used to demand that DPS toons be capable of 2k before they would be allowed in your run. Now you can really get picky and ask for a tank that’s hit capped and also does 2k in DPS spec. That dude makes a MUCH better addition to the raid than the one trick pony – but we still want to limit people rolling on that one trick? It’s preposterous, a formula for uber failure.
Here’s what’s going to happen – people will put up with the old status quo of only rolling on main spec for about a month, then they will simply refuse to run with you any more unless they are allowed to roll for both specs. You can act all tough if you want and say fine your loss, but so many people will do it and so much sooner than you think that you will ultimately have no one willing to run under the old loot roll systems.
Guilds may have an easier time with this since Karma, DKP, Loot Council or whatever system you use will work just fine for this. Dominate was using a DKP variation that allowed for people to pick up loot for an off spec when off specs existed. My contention is that the only off specs left in the game are those that are not on your talent bar.
The off spec on my druid is feral. I have no kitty or bear gear and shouldn’t be rolling on any unless the stuff is just going to go to shard. Even then, as GM I have to consider that the shard is probably worth more to the guild than me getting some bit of gear that I will never ever use.
So my new definition for off spec is a build NOT in your current book. If it’s not in your current book there is NO WAY you are rolling on the item – period. If the off OFF spec was really important to you at all it would be one of your two builds.
New Term = Current Builds
So let’s coin a new term here – Current Builds. There is no such thing as main spec any more. There may be a priority system where you use one current build more than the other, but frankly even though I spend 90% of raids in tree form, I spend more overall time in Boomkin. I would like to get some chicken specific gear as well, and the only place I can get that sort of stuff that is better for a chicken over my tree gear is in big heroic raids. And I’m not alone.
I have an idea for a new rolling system that will take all of this into account, but unfortunately it needs to be well thought out and massaged before it will be of any real use to you. But I do want to grab all of you raid leaders by the lapels and give you a directive before we close this discussion.
IF you EVER ask a raid member to change current builds in the raid – you are flat out WRONG if that person is not allowed to roll on gear for both specs. If you ask a person to play a role they don’t necessarily want and they are doing you a favor by using another current build for your raid you are wrong if you don’t allow them to roll on gear for the preferred spec just because you made them play the other build.
Think about it in terms of the situation we talked about above. If you bring along a warrior specifically for his dual role capability – he does you no good if his DPS gear blows. He does you even less good if his tanking gear is sub par. You simply cannot ask people to play more than one role without allowing them to obtain gear for both sets.
So while I still think that the term off spec has even more power than ever for limiting rolling on gear, I do firmly believe that the term Main Spec is now completely useless. At least in the fact that someone’s Main Spec may now be Two Specs. In that case there is no single main spec, but rather Current Builds that they can use to help your raid win or help your guild progress.
People have been crying for a while now that you should take the player, not the class. Now that you really can, you have to reward the player and NOT the build. You have to allow players to build gear sets for their current builds. And it’s not like someone can just declare a build and go rolling on everything either. This is just as verifiable as anything else we’ve ever based selecting raid members on.
Armory the guy and see if both specs are worth a dang. Have them show you both sets of gear. Although you need to allow people to roll on both gear types, that doesn’t mean you have to let the guy who just built a new second build grow his second set in your 25 man Naxx either.
You can put the same kinds of quality restrictions on this concept as you have with all the other systems. This just allows you to finally choose team members based on what it should have been all along – skill. So allow those skilled players to get the gear they need to Dominate in either of their current builds. It will make your team just that much better, and every member of every raid you ever lead will appreciate the fact that you were ahead of your time in this matter. Dual specs are awesome, don’t let your archaic loot rolling ideals ruin them.
I agree with about 99.99% of this post. There is a 0.01% disagree in there, just because of the way that you are suggesting to lootroll. The guild I am in has been using suicide kings for a LONG time. I haven’t been in it for a while, but it doesn’t stop you from rolling on gear that you want.
I have a feeling that Suicide Kings, or some modified version of it, will become popular again. Just purely for the loot drama that no one wants. “I could use that more!” and you’re at the bottom of the list because you just got an item off the last boss, that other person is going to get it.
We also have a rule, gear for your class. This means, Plate for Plate, Mail for Mail etc. will come at the behest of the Raid Leader, on who gets the loot. A lot of the Pally’s are rolling on mail shammy gear and leather items during early 10-man naxx. They are upgrades yes, but I’m pretty sure that even if you are at the top of the list, and someone is just below you that can actually wear that item to the max (druid=leather vs. shammy=leather), then the druid will get it. They get put down to the bottom of the list, and the shammy is at the top still. Purely at the RL’s discretion but most of the time, for raid progression, it goes this way. We do not pug. Therefore, there should be no drama.
Actually, I avoid the whole issue. You see, in using my Dual-spec, I decided to think strategically. Instead of doing a standard PvE/PvP or Tank/DPS split with my Death Knight, I decided to have both specs be a tank.
The difference between the two specs is their focus. While my “main” spec is a deep Frost tank, centered around dealing with standard & trash mobs, my second spec is actually a specialized Unholy tank, whose primary target is the always-dangerous magic-using boss. In this case, I maxed out talents such as “Magic Suppression” and “Anti-Magic Zone”, while also keeping the Unholy Blight and Gargoyle talents for damage while I might be otherwise busy (say, during a Heigen dance).
I suspect that skills, such as AMZ, which were too specialized for general use, might see a resurgence under dual-speccing for these special cases.
I agree with you Veritable, in respect to gearing for your class.
I also agree with Law. With the new dual spec system, I’m thankful for being a hunter, mainly because no matter what spec you are, hunter gear is hunter gear. It pretty much works for any build of hunter, so there’s not as much need in me getting a completely different set of gear for my bm spec as opposed to my survival spec. I can mostly wear the exact same gear, which I love.
being a raid leader i like this idea. hope it works out for all and just realize that with the new content out pugs are going to get scarce… i have seen alot of people just get whipped by the new boss in VOA… so when it comes to the new content let people know your loot rules. it takes alot of hassel. alot of this game is learning how to adapt. Learn to adapt or troll trade.
i meant to say that it takes away alot of the hassel. not that it takes alot
What my guild has been doing is when the raid starts everyone /w the loot master with what spec they want to try to get gear for. That way if your playing heals but really want gear for dps you can roll on dps gear, and if healing gear drops and everyone pass, then off spec roll will start. The next raid the next week the heals might elect to roll on healing gear. It works for us.
Nice article, Gav. I’ve been biding my time on running raids lately, trying to build up some good alts for gold-making purposes. Hence, I haven’t run either WG or Ulduar yet, waiting for the major guilds to get their turns out of the way.
Looking at the info, though, I think Veritable is right, though. Suicide Kings was great, and it’d really solve a lot of problems if someone came up with a slightly tweaked version to compensate for the patch changes.
Makes me SO glad to be a Mage.
Sure – there are “Slight” differences on gear for FB, FFB, Ice, and Arcane, But Mage gear is almost Always Mage gear…. just Capping differences – haste over SP that kind of thing….
OTOH – my Ret can Finally Tank and Ret at will – so Gav-n-company, I will support this Totally on my server…
I also ment for PUGs (yuck).
My guild is pretty cool about loot – very little Drama.
However – I would like to point out that Many times, it Takes for Ever just to get One spec Geared BiS, now – to some that just Doubled – Great idea by Blizz to keep the players playing all the more, but Seriously, It will end up being a “Dominiate” spec and a “Passive” spec. The spec that is Geared the Heaviest will become the “Main” Spec, as getting 4 peices of T8 is a b1tch anyway – think of getting 8…
Hi guys. I agree and it will take time to figure out new loot rules for alot of you. But, that being said, We had alot of probs with pugs before, because of the loot one thing and your done rule. People would come in, win one piece and then split. When we changed the rules, our pugs became mostly members and we get alot of people wanting to join our guild. The way we did this is when we were in a pug the rules were as follows. Boe’s …. open to everyone in raid to sell or use if you win. 2nd roll on main spec as often as you like….if you win one and roll on a second fine….third fine…Now i know what you all are thinking….BUT listen up before you bash us……….Now we have people that stay for the full run, And we found that all of our guildies have gotten gear alot faster and the people that we ran with WANTED to come with us always. (most of these pug members, if they were good and played well were invited back and eventually joined our guild.), Now we do the same thing and even though it is for dual spec….IF you play the duel spec in our raids you can roll on both gear specs. It has worked great so far because everyone is willing to play both rolls if the are duel speced, so they can roll on both sets of gear…… This may not work for alot of guilds. but we have found that we have progressed faster and have A Lot of fun doing it. Thanks guys….and have fun….kill and loot…..Rayslin (mage) and Spinnor (dk tank) Gnomeregan
This is not a problem i had considered, we just ran the heroics and stuff agaibn for iour basic new specs. I have never had so much fun runnign heroics as now with a 25 naxx geared group. We basically alternate how we play. Some people had respecced a month or so before the patch so they are now up to naxx standard gear. We say that gear must be equally distributed anyway and wahtever spec u go to the raid as u may take gear for. We do not allow cross armour type wearing as that is a theft anyway so our only problem is how do we make sure evryone gets a run?, as long as the running spec law is abided by then its the same as it always was, people rolling second side get kicked from the next raid (this has happened). We have run Hc – Naxx 25 gearing peoples offspecs adn main specs alike but only what they are turning up as.
Another point is that alot of people struggle with their offspec to start with, tjhis measn that tjhey HAVE to go back to some earlier places to learn what they are doing and then are not total noobs at 25. the gear and skill solution is solved by making everyone repeat the steps they took originally.
sorry about the spelling errors, as they say, u can’t proofread your own work….
Great philosophy, I must say it is sound for all ethical purposes, which is great for pugs and whatnot. Only issue is practicality within a raiding guild. If you allowing better gear to only get crammed into the good players so they can have two great specs, the result will be a few really well geared characters and a lot of crappy geared characters. You did mention that DKP is an easy way to get around the issue, but regardless when rewarding good players becomes the standard, then a small elite becomes the standard, and that is not conducive to large raids.
I have an example of a situation where this becomes somewhat… sketchy. I recently main tanked a run of OS 25 looking for the tanking pants that drop. They did. 3 people in our group claimed to be tanks. Of them, I was the only one who rolled on the drop. 2 fury warriors and one ret pally both rolled against me for it as a primary upgrade roll, and one of the warriors won it. Of them, I’m sure that at least 2 did not advertise themselves as anything but dps, and I believe one of them didn’t even have dual spec. It was a pug group so no questioning was brought up, but it made me wonder about the fairness of rolls now.
Another comment: What about people who are dual-spec’d into the same job? Like Griezz? I’m considering being the same way. That means that people with Dual-spec, however, get to roll on twice as much gear as their ‘Main spec’ and makes it much harder for someone who really hones in their skills on a single spec to gear up the way they used to. Comments?
I disagree with the fact that main spec is an obsolete term, main spec describes the spec your most well geared for and have the most comfort playing well. I have bought dual spec prot and ret, but I will always be main spec prot since it is what I have the best gear/skill for.
As for loot, in my guild we usually do main spec bids (DKP System), and on the occasion that one of our people is in there off spec (due to too many of one class, we have a lot of healers atm) we have them roll on there main spec gear still.
One of my concerns is on the PUG’s for Naxx 10 and OS/EoE 10/25. Alot of that stuff I dont need anything for tank gear, but I’d like ret gear for my off-spec, so I try to inform the group that I’ll be rolling on my off spec gear as main spec (IE, most PUG’s on my server do 1k main 100 off). Tthe reasoning being its better off that I’m tanking because my ret gear is not as good as prot and its a lot easier to form groups with someone geared to main tank the raid. I’m just not sure how this goes over for the other people since most the time I end up doing the runs to gear up new guildies.
Actually muggy, you got some pretty bad errors in there. Letters that, by no means, should go into the word. Just funning ya. I can’t spell half the time either. Anyway, another good post, but since I don’t get into raids, way to casual for my guild, I guess, still something to think about down the line. Thanks again!
Yo,, Im a mage and since we (along with hunters, warlocks, rouges) are a pure DPS class, and I think that they should have some kind of weighted die so that they have higher chances of winning gear that is the ONLY thing they can use, as opposed to a duel spec shammy/druid/priest who can roll on both specs,, or something that can sort out what duel speccers can roll on. I know the weighted thing seems dumb,, I dunno. It’s also kinda messed up that Gave was talkin bout a 1 trick pony as not being valuable to a raid,, what if that pony kicks the 2 trick pony in the face,, 2 trick pony wont be around.
Blizz just need hirable henchmen and the problem would be solved. If you could hire some NPCs to run with you then you could run more often to get specific gear you want easier. I mean, we do pay to play this game right? But we can’t run raids when we were are ready at times covenient for us? Why not be able to spend some gold and run as we are ready to get the stuff we want?
I think I actually feel stupider having read that.
You have a Main Spec and an Off spec. Nothing has changed. Just the ease of switching. If your raiding as a healer 90% of the time, then that is your main spec. If you want DPS to be your Main Spec then do it. If this doesn’t suit your guild, then find a new one, or recruit a new healer, and kick the scrub DPS that cant hold his own.
I’m a DK. I raid as DPS, and have a tank offspec. I occasionally need to tank in raids. I used to have to port back and respec. Now its a click. Doesn’t mean I bid against our actual tanks for gear. Once they have the items they want, its defaulted to me anyway.
If your so selfish that you think you getting your DPS gear so you can do your dailies is more important that your guilds progression, then best of luck to you. If your having issues with others in your guild rolling on offspec items, then pull them up. Dont complain and think that blizzard has to implement a new loot system. Thats just plain wrong.
Milesy.
Maybe you were stupid already?
Just a jab dude. Relax, I agree with you to some degree. People should do what they do best in raids. The point of the article is that unless you have a completely iron-fisted guild you will not be able to enforce things in the same ways going forward.
So you are correct, for the “serious” raiding guild this is going to sound preposterous. And as a GM getting a Chicken set is the last thing on my mind in reality (mostly because a chicken in tree gear aint too shabby – selfish would be rolling agianst rogues on feral crap)
My problem with your overall logic is that it comflicts with itself. You mention it would be ’selfish’ to roll on some types of gear, yet you want to kick the scrub DPS that can’t own.
So which is it? If you are more like our guild, we are already pulling people up as you say, and AS we pull up a pally we make sure they have ALL the gear they need for what we need the toon for considering of course what they WANT to be doing.
I also mentioned in the article that this will not be a big problem in the majority of guilds. we are generous and mostly geared anyway, so handing a DK some tank gear is not an issue at all. Neither are 90% of our rolls. We already do distribute gear as fairly as we possibly can anyway.
I wasn’t complaining, I was stating a fact, and the real fact is that this IS going to be an issue with pug runs, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with building 2 sets of gear for ONE toon. I’m sure you have people in your guild that started an completely new toon to fill another role. What’s wrong with having someone play two roles on one toon?
So are you saying that if someone in your guild gets a little tired of tanking you just force them out? Or not let their mage join the guild? So why not let them go DPS and really build a set that can help your guild progress that way as well?
My real thought is that dual specs may do more to help any guild progress than anything else, but only if you let people build decent gear sets for their second build.
You can say main spec is main spec and main spec aint off spec and all that stuff just like I knew some of you would. But the reality is that unless you are going to actually boot people for this, it’s going to come up – and soon. Then you will either deal with it harshly, or conform.
Agreed that it may never com e up for you a lot. we ahve a very casual and friendly environment and it will stay that way. But we will also allow our members to explore other options than being pigeonholed into a single role for the rest of their wow existence. WEe also won’t make them leave and join another guild if they want to stop tanking. Much better to gear them to the teeth in TWO specs than saying – NO PUNK YOU ARE A TANK AND THAT”S YOUR MAIN SPEC AND MAIN SPEC IS MAIN SPEC AND MAIN SPEC NUB GET OVER IT NO ROLLING ON ANYTHING BUT MAIN SPEC OR GET OUT.
Pretty harsh – and that is sort of the point I was trying to make. IF you are really interested in gearing your entire guild to perform at maximum ability, you’re going to allow them to gear their second spec. I would certainly want your DK OT gear to be as good as possibly so you could actually do as terrific a job tanking as you did on DPS.
So in the end I’m not so sure we dissagree all that much except for the fact that you are all hot and bothered about me saying that the term Main Spec is odd now. Keep it if you like, you don’t have to agree with my terminology. But if you’ve already been gearing an off spec when we truly had off specs and not a second current spec then how can you possibly complain when I think we should see more of that – whether we like it or not?
I never said the loot system was broken either. I wasn’t complaining at all – I like it. I think that group and raid leaders are going to have to take a new dynamic into account during loot rolls. Players expectations are about to shift, and they very well could be dramatic.
Blizz already did something. I like it. Blizz doesn’t have to do anything about a new loot system, they never have. Blizz didn’t invent DKP, SK or any of that stuff. Players did. Players invented those systems to combat what they saw as inherent inequities in loot distribution. Now that paradigm is shifting aned those loot systems will have to shift again in some way.
What I actually see is more dynamic loot rolling systems that add weighted values for 1st spec, 2nd spec, participation points and a little bit of suicide roll in there to randomize it more and prevent point hording. We’re actually working on an algorithm around here to do that sort of thing. we’ll let you know when it’s ready for testing.
So you’ve really missed the point somehow. Your argument is not with me. The person you are chewing out above is not the guy who wrote the article. Best of luck to you sir, and as always – Dominate.
Damn Law – that was longer than the Article =)
Got to love Druids. The only class thats capable of 5 different Specs…
Currently I’m a supeber healer or a damn decent tank. Although this means extra pressure, it means I get selected for pretty much every raid and can do anything I like. My “Mainspec” is resto as the guilds only/primary resto druid, but as theres so few of us and rogues, I tend to nab any dps feral leather too, hence my fairly decent Feral tanking gear
An easy way to resolve this is actually something our guild does to a degree.
We have rank of raider based on the persons gear, and spec.
For instance, my DK has a rank of 1 for her dps and her tanking set, a few of the people in the guild have rank 2 on one of their sets.
We also have rank 0, which is sub-par.
So, anyone that hasn’t got rank 1 (i.e., they haven’t spent the time and effort crafting / enchanting / gemming or doing heroics for their gear) then they get a lower priority than anyone with rank 1. So if someone has lets say rank 2 healing gear, but rank 0 dps gear, they can only get dps gear if nobody of rank 1 or higher needs it. This allows us to reward the people that have put in the effort, rather then giving out loot to people just because they’re there.
And main specs don’t really come into this, it’s all about their raid rank, so if you have the gear for a spec that you don’t have, for instance a paladin can tank, heal and dps, a druid can tank, melee dps, ranged dps and heal. Then they may have a rank for that gear set that allows them to roll on the gear, however they’d have to change one of their talent specs to be able to use it – hopefully in the future Blizzard will extend dual-spec to multi-spec to compensate, but knowing them it’ll be 2,500g and 10,000g for the third and fourth talent trees.
Ive already come across this issue on my current toon im leveling (a couple times actually) and my guild had a discussion about it as well and call me a ninja if you want but if im able to use it , for either spec im gonna roll on it, granted i would give the clothies to roll on thier gear before i even think about going for it, its not like the instances are really going anywhere anyway so i can run it again, guild and friends agree as well
Why not let everyone roll on anything they can use? You won’t win as many rolls, but you will get to roll more often.
See, to me, this really doesn’t change anything. The class you go into the raid as, is your “Main” spec, at least for that Raid. So, you get to roll on loot for THAT spec. Off-spec is still Off-spec. Now, as Raid Leader and Master Looter, if *I* ask you to switch specs during the raid, then *I* will take that into consideration when loot comes up. Otherwise, Main Spec, is still Main Spec. This goes for PUGs as well as Guild runs.
Not to many people pugging much Uldar right now, which is where this will really be a pain in the but.
For most high end guilds this is totally pointless. you have a spec that you raid with and are geared for that spec by the guild. Also more than likely it is already set as to who is getting what when it drops from the boss if you are in one of these guilds. If nobody needs it then it goes up for “other than raid spec”. Some people are certainly dual roled (think healing classes) for certain bosses, but if thier nax gear is getting the guild by that boss then why would they need the dropped gear until all others raid spec healers have it.
Other than that it is business as usual healers/tanks then dps.
We looked at this from a different angle: everyone expects a fair shot at any/all gear drops on a run because everyone helped earn the drop. Naturally, we give preference to someone who can use the gear over someone who is going to DE/sell it (that should be easily agreed with) and we also go with Max Use (Plate to Plate wearers, etc). Then, when would you give someone special preference for a given piece of gear? If they are on their main toon (we have a lot of alts in our guild) for their main spec. So our rules have us go through 3 potential rolls with the following priority:
(1) for Main Spec/Main Toon
(2) For Second Spec or any Alt
(3) Vender/DE/RP
So when gear drops, anyone who wants it rolls – and the Loot Master knows what the main spec/main toon is for each player, so he can easily sort out between who is rolling #1 and who is rolling #2. In a 25 man group, we need to specify “Main roll only” for the first priority, to keep the roll spam down. In practice, we say “roll if you want it” and if no one rolls, we say “roll for vendor”. If an enchanter is there, we have them DE it and the winner gets the DE results. This has worked very well so far. People get the idea that preferential treatment really only goes to Main Toon/Spec and then everyone else is “equal”.
All these damn loot systems are utter rubbish. The ONLY reason to not use the in-game system is because of loot ninjas. So if it’s gear you can use and it’s an upgrade for you, you should get to /roll on it. PUGs included. I mean, really, who gives a flying f*ck if someone walks away with 5 pieces of gear. It’s just the luck of the dice. It has nothing to do with deserving more or less or whatever. Hell, if you looked at the last 10 raids of the person who just scooped the loot pool then you’ll probably find that he’s had terrible luck so far, and is just now making up for it.
For some reason people think it’s “unfair”. In actual fact, it’s unfair for people to put hard caps to the maximum loot you can win. For example, Naxx 25 should give roughly 2 loot drops per person on average. If you limit the most that someone can win for their “main spec” to 2, without giving them at least 2, then you’re making sure that the pure dps classes always get shafted, being able to only win 0, 1 or 2 items, whereas hybrid classes could win umpteen more for their “off spec”.
DKP is crap, as even a PUG or newb should have equal chance at getting loot. It’s their time too, and they’re getting saved just as much. If you didn’t need them then you’d have brought a guildie, so they don’t owe you any favours. SK is crap, since it spaces the loot acquisition ridiculously, not taking into account that the loot you NEED could be clumped. For example, the only 2 items you might need from the entire run could be on KT. So having passed on all previous loot opportunities (including minor upgrades) in the run while others get loot you should only end up with the one and not get a chance at the other?
When you buy a lottery ticket, what you’re buying is a CHANCE to win. In a raid, /roll is your ticket. If you lose all the loot then live with it. If you win it all then yay for you. If someone else walks away with what you wanted because their /roll was better, then so be it. The only stipulation should be, of course, that they will use it.
Scrap crappy guild loot systems.
I don’t disagree with you for the most part. There are significant issues with just going with the luck of the draw, though. One problem with just the bare-bones greed/need dice-rolling system is that, in the case of a player who gets shafted one or two or three nights in a row, they stop running.
The reasons for a player to raid an instance where they aren’t getting new gear are generally pretty slim, and they only decrease with each progressive raid. Count all the people you know who don’t run heroics once they have all the emblem gear/drops they need, and multiply that by the increase in time and potential for frustration and wipes in a raid. You don’t WANT people doing that, and rewarding them for participation is basically the only way to avoid it.
Secondly, by capping the amount of loot a player can get in an instance (whether it be the soft cap of SK or the hard cap of “1 piece and you’re done”) you increase everyone else’s chance to get something they want. The fact is that if you want an upgrade that happens to come clumped near another, somebody else probably needs it too, or else you would probably get the second one anyway. Why is it more fair to allow a random possibility of getting two upgrades in a row than to allow two people to gear up similarly? (BTW, relating to the first point above, if you can only get two upgrades in naxx and both drop from KT, then you shouldn’t exactly be expecting to get ANY upgrades going into the run; you should be thrilled that you got ANYTHING.)
In short, the problem with greed/need is not that it isn’t fair. It’s that it has a tendency to hurt a guild. The combination of randomness creating a wide split in the rate that different people gear up, and of it being the people who gear up fast being the same people who are hurting the less-geared players’ chances of gearing up more quickly, makes it hard to run a guild following that system. It creates bad feeling between members and frustration among everyone, both the lucky and the unlucky.
Anyway, offtopic from that, I would really like to see a system that grants players gear based on their likelihood to actually see upgrades in an instance. Hunters, for example, see far fewer relevant pieces of gear in Naxx than, say, paladins, and a semi-geared hunter may only have the chance to get one upgrade in the whole instance. Considering that hunters have to work a lot harder for a lot less gear should pretty much totally outweigh the fact that pallies have to gear up for twice as many specs, and I will not be happy if dual-spec means that all the druids and shamans out there get to increase their chances even further of stealing the little pure dps gear that actually drops compared to the stuff that’s available to them already.
I really don’t like this, I think this article introduces more problems that it solves. If you have someone who is always specced heals and always has been, and someone who has picked heals as their second dual-spec but rarely plays it I think its a gross injustice that the second person should be able to roll on the same piece of loot. My opinion is simply: if someone joined your guild to be main specced heals then that is their main spec, if they joined to play dps, that is their main spec. You don’t need to introduce all this “current spec” crap, cause ultimately I think it’ll end up in a lot more gear going to waste than if you just ask people to simply PICK a main spec to have priority rolls on.
Call me stupid…
Bur why not do the “Roll on what you came to raid as” rule.
eg. you came as a healer, you and other people healing for that raid will roll on healing gear, if none of the healers want it, then people with healing as their second spec (the one they aren’t using for this raid) can roll next… if still nobody wants it, then let anyone that might wanna start a heal ser but has something like 2 tank specs, 2 dps specs. etc. have a roll..
And if it manages to go through those stages, then DE and add shard to Gbank.