Top Level Answers to Tough Questions

We’re not sure if all of you read the responses in the threads after each of our articles.  If you’re like me, you may find reading threads hurts your feelings.  So if you skip them there are times you miss some fairly spirited discussions.

You also miss Gavin and Lawbringer spending the time to further clarify to readers some slightly different angles there just wasn’t time or space to cover in the post itself.   We’ve been trying to figure out a way to treat these rather longish posts we do and have decided to bring them to the top for you to read as a full post (you know how long-winded Law can be).

So our first post begins below.  And we’ll keep this up unless you think it’s dumb, but we’ll put up the best responses from Gavin and Law on subjects that just need more answers after an article.  Enjoy!

In response to the post Dual Spec Issues Milesy writes:

Lawbringer responds:

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 against rogues on feral crap).

My problem with your overall logic is that it conflicts 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 come up for you a lot.  we have 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.

We 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 disagree 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 and those loot systems will have to shift again in some way.

What I actually see is more dynamic loot rolling systems that adds 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.