"I really hope Blizzard realise they overlooked this effect of LFG, and add a spec checker that automatically disallows any roles you are not specced for."

How would that work, though? For feral druids, there are only two or three talents that are mandatory for tanks but a bunch more that are helpful, and any cat might have those mandatory talents on a "just in case" basis. For death knights, each talent tree has some tanking talents and, again, a dps might have those tanking talents for some random reason. (There is one talent in the top tier of each tree that I generally think of as mandatory, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see some competent tank skip one or two of them.)

So people would need to fit into a cookie cutter build in your world then?? What about DK tanks that can tank from each of the trees if they don't have 5/5/5 then they can't tank or how would you say this would work out?? If i am a bear tank and have one kitty talent point i shouldn't be able to tank even though some of them are bear and cat talents? Not trying to pick a fight just saying this is why they give the option. Also what if i am trying to build a tank set but know that it is not nearly good enough for it so i want to sign up as dps, but my tree is clearly prot for a DK or Druid should i not be able to que as dps?

I usually sign in as a tank with my Paladin in Retribution spec. With good gear (T8 and some T9), you can tank 5 mans just fine. Pulling is a bit rough without Avenger Shield but I can hold agro and still manage good DPS.

I also tried healing in ret spec but that did not work really well. But I've run with an Elemental Shaman and a Boomkin that could heal just fine.

Well, I hadn't thought it through *terribly* hard (I'm not very maths-y heh), but I was thinking of *very* broad lines (so not just cookiecutter, @Dere). It could be related to all sorts of things, not just spec. A tank spec does not a tank make, after all. To use the Pala example from TheMad...OK, you had ret spec, but I'm presuming you used tanking gear. There's got to be a way to figure out which gear/stat/spec combinations are totally unworkable for a particular role.

If it means ruling out a few of the more unusual builds, then I think it's worth it. If you tank yourself you may not be aware of just how truly awful the tanking in LFG is most of the time. Even a slight mitigation of this would be incredibly welcome for me. And in the end, we'd only be talking about the *random LFG* groups. People could still do whatever they like with guildies or non-randoms.

I think it would be easier to check on the saved armor sets and verify that tanks are def capped and have a minimum amount of health, and that healers have a minimum amount of sp/mana. That would bring the trouble, though, with people who use user-made addons to handle gear sets.

If a cat has those "just in case" tanking talents, then he is missing some essential cat talents as well. In which case, he is a bearcat spec and can neither tank exceptionally nor DPS exceptionally. It's far from ideal, but it's much more like the low-level arms or ret tanks. It works... unless your healer is undergeared.

Maybe one of the answers is not necessarily a spec checker but just a change to the LFD interface so you can only opt for one role. Yes, you may be a hybrid class that can opt for one of three roles (though you're only ever likely to be specced and geared for two) but when it come to running an instance you're there to fill only one role: tank, heal or dps. At the moment, a pally in a LFD queue can be queued as all three: given the current imbalance the system will almost certainly drop that pally in the role of tank. If you're geared and specced for dps that's what you should queue for. The interface should force you to choose one role: if you've chosen tank but you're not geared or specced for it then the group can see you have tried to jump the queue and boot you.