Offspec gear and Cataclysm raiding
by Allison Robert 
May 9th 2010 at 4:00PM
This is the situation I'm in, and I suspect it's one that a lot of other hybrid players would recognize; I play restoration in most guild 25-man and 10-man raids, but I tank just about everything else. On easier content, or on nights when we have too many healers show up, it's not unusual for a few people to haul out their DPS sets and go DPS for the evening.
As such, hybrid players (and particularly hybrids who have dual-specced into a role requiring a completely different set of gear) have an interest in keeping their offspec set up to date, and the best way to do this has typically been through 10-man raids where there's not much gear competition. I got 3 Sanctified feral pieces from heroic 10-man ICC, and I'm still using a few ToGC-10 pieces to tank as well. When you only have 10 players in a raid, the number of players angling for a given piece is necessarily small, and items go to offspec quickly.
25-man raids couldn't be more different. For a specific example, I'm in line behind our feral, three rogues, fury warrior, two hunters, and possibly even two retribution paladins (!!!) for the Frostbitten Fur Boots off heroic Marrowgar-25 (yes, the number of people salivating over melee leather in Icecrown is amazingly annoying). Realistically, I'm not going to see this piece until the end of the summer or possibly even the beginning of autumn if the boots drop at their usual rate.
The situation's made worse when your guild makes the leap from normal to heroic, because the line just restarts. Anybody who wanted Toskk's Maximized Wristguards, for example, is almost certainly going to want their heroic version. So, rather than being 2nd in line for the next normal drop, I go back to being 6th in line for the heroic one.
As a result, the prospect of losing 10-man raids as an option to gear offspecs is a little scary, and I wonder if the raiding split is going to have an impact on the offspec that hybrids choose to play. Without the ability to build a bear set through 10-man raids, I'm really tempted to axe the resto/bear dual-spec and go bear/cat or resto/moonkin so that both sets share as much gear as possible. I don't think I'm the only hybrid player thinking about this.
An additional point for consideration: Is competition for melee leather finally going to die due to mastery bonuses encouraging mail and plate classes to stick to their armor, or is this just wishful thinking?
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
M.Arnold84 May 9th 2010 4:07PM
I'm suprised that this is even in consideration. Most raids I have been in (in fact All) as a holy paladin I am not even allowed to roll on spell mail or spell non plate, even if it is a blatant upgrade. However, I do see your point and I don't agree on being forced to dual spec into similar roles ie. Resto boomkin as sometimes the change in playstyle is a welcome break to sometimes monotonous roles.
Mugutu May 11th 2010 1:51AM
If they're preventing you from getting that gear when no one of that armor class needs it for their main spec, then your raid leaders are shitty raid leaders.
Shade May 9th 2010 4:17PM
@Mutugu
I think it's more like Armor class MS > Other armor MS > Armor class OS > Other armor OS
Or at least I hope so. But otherwise I agree with your comment.
Mohsus May 9th 2010 4:19PM
if your raid wants their healer to wear sub-par gear simply because he/she CAN wear plate, wish them the best of luck and go on your way.
Moeru May 9th 2010 4:36PM
I think what it really is that someone who can use plate would benefit more from that than someone who wears leather.
Let's say we have this person above in their raid. Feral druid with 2 ret pallies, 2 hunters and some rogues. Well, the druid can only wear leather can cloth. So if the item drops and it's MS for all these classes, wouldn't it be better if the rogues and the feral druids had first pick? And then if they don't want it, it goes to the others for their MS.
So basically...
Armor Proffeciency top tier Main Spec
Armor Proffeciency all available Main Spec
Offspec
DE/Vendor
Of course every guild should have a fair loot system that rewards players equally. If you're having trouble with loot, bring it up with your officers, but make sure it's a healthy and well-based problem.
But that's just my opinion
Jordan Y. May 9th 2010 4:38PM
Well M.Arnold, I hope they at least let you have non-plate drops over shard- sounds like a bit of frustration and sore feelings over the whole spell plate situation to me. "You already get a set of gear entirely your own, what else do you need?"
I always felt like it was too much work trying to maintain two top-level gearsets, so I picked the one role I enjoyed more and stuck with it. I'm a Balance/Resto druid and as I got into raiding I quickly found healing way too stressful and dps a lot more fun to play- it didn't help that I started in two-shot-tank-TOC. So DPS became my mainspec and resto became the offspec for messing around in 5 mans and old content. I did make a conscious decision to go Balance for my dps spec- I leveled 1-80 as feral/resto but I wanted the overlap in gear that balance/resto brought. Right now my resto spec is made up of half DPS pieces and half offspec rolls.
I do see the problem with gearing offspecs out of 25 mans- I almost never see items go to offspec rolls in 25 pugs and the ones that do are typically poorly itemized junk. One solution to this problem is pugging older content- up until recently I was still doing TOC25 pugs every week for my shot at Reign, and I got several quality resto drops on offspec rolls because lots of people were wearing better from ICC10/25.
Another solution is GDKP runs. I participate in a weekly ICC25 GDKP run where there are no rules on loot other than "highest bidder takes it." Assuming you've got the gold you could buy every mainspec and offspec drop you want this way.
Another potential solution- make your offspec your PVP spec. This is what I've done recently. I never enjoyed raid healing, and with gear inflation I can heal 5 mans and legacy content in any spec, so I made a compromise pve/pvp resto spec and started running BGs, which is something I always wanted to try but never got around to. I'm up to 2 piece Furious/1 piece Relentless and a few offset pvp pieces and having a lot of fun. BGs and pvp in general look like they're going to play a larger role in Cataclysm.
loop_not_defined May 9th 2010 5:13PM
The point I would like to make is that in Cata, for example, Leather will no longer have a slight stat advantage over equal ilvl Mail/Plate. All armor types will have equivalent levels of stats (outside of Armor, obviously). The only reason for someone to roll on "incorrect armor types" in Cata is out of convenience (ilvl of current item is way below ilvl of what just dropped).
Given that convenience is the ONLY reason to roll on off-gear in Cata....Raid Leaders will need to start stepping up and telling people "NO." If DPS Cloth drops, and you've got some Warlocks, SPriests, and an Elemental Shaman competing for it, you need to tell the Elemental Shaman to cool it. If he wins that DPS Cloth, who the hell is going to make use of the Spell DPS Mail piece that drops later on? The Shaman, for the mastery bonus. The cloth wearers are still waiting.
I understand that sometimes there's itemization holes. Sometimes there just isn't a "good" Mail spell DPS belt. But it's no longer going to be a question of whether you should take a 226 cloth piece because the next best is a 213 mail piece. Now you have to overcome the inherent Mastery bonus that comes with that 213 mail piece. It has to be a much larger itemization hole.
Thundrcrackr May 9th 2010 5:32PM
The problem is not losing 10-man raids as a chance to get offspec gear.
The problem is letting plate and mail wearers roll on leather in the first place. This should never happen. Leather is not designed for plate or mail wearers, so even if it happens to eek a couple more damage points per second for them, its NOT theirs and they shouldn't be rolling on it. Rolling for gear that isn't designed for you is one of the biggest dick moves in the game. I would never raid with a guild that allowed this. They should have to wait till their plate or mail drops just like you have to wait till your leather drops. The only time it should be allowed is if there are no leather wearers that want it. As a paladin, i wouldn't be caught dead in someone else's gear. I would feel so...dirty. Like i stole it from somebody. Fight with honor. Raid with honor. Don't take other people's gear.
jordan May 9th 2010 7:29PM
I'm afraid at this point in the xpack the plate wearers will only see a few months of use for the leather. They WILL absolutely without question be replaced. Strength based classes not only have to worry about losing out on mastery bonuses, they will get 0 ap from leather items because the agility itself will give rogues, druids, shaman and hunters attack power. Plate wearers will not receive a nail in the coffin for wearing leather, they will be dug up, defiled and reburied.
Shade May 9th 2010 4:12PM
Realistically, unless raid performance hinges entirely on mastery, I don't think the new stat is going to do much to prevent people from rolling on incorrect armor classes. Consider the current trend of guilds bringing fresh 80s into ICC25 in order to gear them quickly. An elly shammy will definitely switch out their ilvl 200 mail boots for ilvl 264 cloth ones. The mastery bonus isn't going to outweigh the massive stat increase.
...much to my chagrin. Christian Belt himself couldn't save me from the frustration of rolling against 6 classes and the overpopulated mess that is the Vanquisher group.
Allison Robert May 9th 2010 4:18PM
One of our commenters, Rhabella, made an observation on a Shifting post a few months back (http://www.wow.com/2009/10/21/shifting-perspectives-the-disappearance-of-the-bear/) that loot issues could get really ugly for rogues and ferals in Cataclysm unless mastery: a). really makes a difference, and: b). is explicitly tied to wearing your own armor class. Otherwise, enhancement shamans and hunters will have every reason to roll on melee leather if it's a bigger "up" than the corresponding mail piece in that slot.
Grubba May 9th 2010 5:07PM
I believe that the blue posts on the subject have explicitly said that the answer to b) is yes. Or more specifically that you will lose mastery bonuses for not wearing your appropriate armor class. As to a), all we can do is wait and see.
Celeane May 9th 2010 5:48PM
The way I understand it, there will be gear with and without mastery rating on it. If an enhance shaman is better served by gear with stats instead of gear with mastery rating on it because he doesn't like the nature damage mastery, I don't think he's going to feel any pain at all from wearing leather.
Grubba May 9th 2010 7:41PM
You do not understand it correctly, although there will indeed be some gear with the mastery stat on it. There is going to be a "small" mastery bonus for wearing the intended armor for your class. Wearing leather as a hunter or shaman will cause you to lose the extra bonus you would get for wearing mail for any piece, regardless of whether or not it actually has a mastery stat on it. How much the bonus ends up being and whether or not it will be enough to offset the potential benefit of doing so remains to be see.
Reference: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1&pageNo=29#566
Wrath0311 May 9th 2010 4:19PM
What there trying to say here is in Cata you can't run both 10 and 25 in one week its one or the other . Thats kinda what the point of the article is.
Undra May 9th 2010 4:31PM
Yes, but what keeps getting glossed over is that raiding in cata will NOT be jsut one dungeon a patch, but several dungeons. We look at the one lockout and think, well, if we get get locked out of ICC, then there's just TGC or Ulduar.
But that's not how it's going to be, There will be several raid dungeons with a handful of bosses. Getting locked to one still leaves a couple more raid zones open. And the gear will be identical anyway. So there's not more (weakerer) gear to be found in 10s anyway.
For 25s that currently use every availible outlet to gather gear, the simple fact is the game will change. You're too set in your current ways, and we don't have enough information, to view these changes with the proper perspective. Wait and see and then look back and laugh at how nervous you were to make posts like this.
Docp May 9th 2010 4:38PM
There probably won't be more content per patch though. They specifically said instead of 1 11 man raid you might get a 5 boss raid and 6 boss raid. So there probably won't be more to do each patch.
Angus May 9th 2010 5:36PM
@undra: tier 7 had 3 raids. 2 were single boss affairs. Naxx had 15. But naxx was an old raid.
Tier 8 had 1 raid. 13 bosses.
Tier 9 had 1 raid. 5 bosses.
Tier 10 has 1 raid, 12 bosses.
If they have a trend it is unlikely to be more than a dozen or so bosses total per tier. So regardless of raid lockouts, we are likely to only see so much gear.
Lissanna May 9th 2010 5:44PM
splitting 10 bosses into 2 dungeons instead of 1 is not significantly different than having one raid with 10 bosses in it. There's not going to suddenly be a bunch more content in Cata compared to WotLK.
N-train May 9th 2010 6:48PM
The point is that Blizzard isn't clueless to all of this, and they (GC specifically) have said MULTIPLE times they aren't trying to doom 25 mans, and we simply don't have enough specifics on what and how much will drop. This doesn't mean the system is somehow infallible or going to be perfect at launch, but I'm pretty sure they simply aren't going to leave off-specs out in the cold.
Perhaps in-raid switches will usually never be necessary, or the gear from points or heroics will help fill the gap, or raids will be tiered for main and off-specs or something.
In summary, people keep trying to put the new Cata "engine" in our old Wrath "car", and then wonder why it isn't working like it should. These are legitimate concerns, no doubt, but we should treat them only as concerns until we have some actual specifics on how it all is going to actually (not hypothetically) work.
PS- this applies to class/zone/spec/talent/leveling changes as well. :-)