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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 2 of 5)
icepyro May 9th 2010 9:36PM
Now: 1 dungeon, 10 bosses, 10 + 25 lockouts = 2 lockouts and chances to get loot but not the same gear so people may roll in both because of that difference if you do 10 before 25 for whatever reason.
Cata: 2 dungeons, 5 bosses each, 10 or 25 lockouts = 2 lockouts and chances to get loot and it is the same gear so people won't roll in both.
So, it's not how much content per patch. 10 bosses is still 10 bosses. However, they are breaking it up to compensate for the fewer lockouts by having more lockout points. So you still get the same number of raids AND it's not the same raids in the same week.
I think I'll take this change.
Pheras May 9th 2010 4:20PM
Our guild uses an odd but functional loot reel. You start at the bottom if you just join our raid for the first time. If you want a piece of gear that drops, you whisper the master looter and place a bid. If you are the highest on the reel, you get the piece of gear and drop to the bottom of the reel. This works great since many people have got geared up with a minimum of loot complaints (which used to be quite common).
This means there's a sort of mini-game where if you bid on a main-spec item and you're near the top of the reel, you'll get the item, but since many people want to bid on main-spec items and don't want to lose their spot on the reel, they won't bid on off-spec items... unless they're at the bottom already and they bid like mad on anything they could use. This means that when it rains it pours, since (for example) I got 2 ilvl 264 items in one ICC25 run simply due to the fact that I was high on the reel, bid on a great tanking necklace and then a set of DPS shoulders dropped that no one wanted since it was off-spec for most or would break a set bonus for some.
This means it's not bad to gear up off-spec in only one type of raid per week. It does mean that more single-role characters save up their reel spot for Marks of Sanctification and most hybrids still have ilvl 251 tier gear, but it's been fair more or less.
Anyway, my two cents on how to solve your issues.
Demi May 9th 2010 4:29PM
That's a brilliant system!
It needs a name though.....how about 'Suicide Kings'?
egburr May 9th 2010 4:33PM
I like the SK system; it's pretty fair for people who run in the group regularly. Not quite so far for pugs in the group, as usually the very first run they are too far down the list to win anything unless nobody in the regular group needs it. But overall, pretty fair.
However, it doesn't address the off-spec needs of hybrids, which is what this article was about.
Pheras May 9th 2010 4:40PM
I'm not the person who picked the system, so I wasn't aware of the name . Regardless, my point relating to the article is that most of our hybrids ARE getting geared using this method since they just have to be smart enough to bid like mad on off-spec stuff when they're low on the reel. Just my observation that there are systems that are allowing off-specs to get some decent gear. Sure, I still have a few pieces of T9.5 on my DPS set, but not many.
shrk352 May 9th 2010 6:49PM
My guild uses the SK system and loves it. However we use the list for only mainspec pieces. If a piece gets no bids then all offspecs roll on it. To aviod issues, if you are seen wearing a piece you rolled on for offspec while raiding in your main spec you get thrown to the bottom of the list and possibly forced to stay there for a while (or worse). We really don't like loot whores in our guild, they aren't tolerated. We also use a separate list for tier tokens, to avoid people siting at the top of the list just to get tier. In this way the tier tokens are given in a very linear manner, after you get your token you have to wait until everyone else there gets one before you get your second one. Its a very fair system, we haven't had any major loot issues since we went to it at the beginning of wrath.
Back on topic of the original post. I see offspec's working how they always have in wrath. Your offspec will generally be one tier below your mainspec, until the current tier is on farm. Run the current tier to gear out your mainspec, on off days take your guild to the previous tier raids for your offpsec, no lockout issues to deal with. I really don't see any complications with there only being one lockout. You may get offspec gear slower, but so will everyone else.
egburr May 9th 2010 4:20PM
I've been running into this, too. I can only get into raids as a healer, though I went from 1 to 80 as a tank and still tank heroics regularly. Since I'm in as a healer I don't get to roll on anything to upgrade my tank gear until all the other tanks and DPS have passed on it, which still is pretty rare. My healing gear has far surpassed my tanking gear, and the occasional time I get into a raid as a tank, I feel barely adequately geared.
It's enough to drive a guy crazy. I've been thinking for a while about switching my bear spec for a boomkin spec and go in as DPS, but I really enjoy tanking more than any other aspect. I only picked up healing when Blizzard added dual-spec and because that seemed to be a more needed spec on a lot of raids.
StGeorge78 May 9th 2010 4:21PM
The main goal of Cataclysm is to make people wait 2 years for the next expansion. That's it. So they screwed up with Wrath and we're stuck in this situation of waiting 9 more months with nothing new other than a single-boss raid to tide us over. Also, they want to slow down the major patches to about 1 every 6 months instead of 1 every 3 months (when mind you, it used to be 1 every month with 12 major patches in the first year of WoW).
So if you are used to getting geared up quickly, well now it will takes 12 weeks to gear up instead of 2. This is what Blizzard wants.
thpthpthp May 9th 2010 5:23PM
"(when mind you, it used to be 1 every month with 12 major patches in the first year of WoW)"
Maradon, AQ, ZG, Diremaul, all 3 vanilla Battlegrounds, were all included in the game files on release only later were they opened to the public. So only 2 dungeons (Naxx & BWL) were created pre-BC unless I'm forgetting something.
http://nogg-aholic.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-wow-is-bad-game-reason-8.html
(AQ had some minor changes to the instance layout before release)
dodgeballer2005 May 9th 2010 4:21PM
I know how you feel. I hate losing out on gear just because it's my offspec. I tank damn good but my dps gear isn't even close and I perform pretty well anyway.
Docp May 9th 2010 4:32PM
Just a reminder in Cata 25mans will drop more gear per person than 10mans. This is likely to mean 6+ pieces of gear dropping in 25mans instead of the current 3 meaning that the MS will grab their gear quicker and you'll get your offspec gear a lot faster.
Shade May 9th 2010 4:43PM
I'm wondering -- To accommodate 6 drops in 25, will they allow multiple drops of the same item to occur (as happens in VoA), or will they just have each boss drop half its loot table per fight?
If the former, I can't wait for someone to send a screenshot to Around Azeroth of 6 of the same item dropping. Bet it won't take long, either.
Lissanna May 9th 2010 5:46PM
the 25-man gear drop rate still won't be enough to gear off-sets much faster.
Anye May 9th 2010 4:30PM
Those 10-mans were only low-competition because the other (non-hybrid) classes were also running both 10 and 25, so within a few weeks they had all the gear they could want out of 10-man and/or better 25-man equivalents.
Is it going to take longer for hybrids to gear off-sets? Yes, but I don't think we'll notice it... It'll take us longer to gear our main-sets too, and it'll be taking everyone else longer as well.
Personally I think this is a good thing. I don't believe this current "lull" is really pre-expansion burnout, but a "geared-out" burnout. Our rate of getting geared up in ICC has outpaced our progression, so it's gotten incredibly easy to become impatient when, say, our healers can't figure out where to stand on the air phase in Blood Queen.
I think if it takes a bit longer in Cataclysm to gear up within the current tier of content, we'll have a bit more incentive to actually spend time on that content.
Regarding Mastery, while I somewhat agree with Shade that it won't prevent individuals from rolling on incorrect armor classes, I do believe it will create added pressure at the group level. I expect some groups will forbid rolling outside of your armor class, whereas they might have allowed it in Wrath.
KoreanBBQ May 10th 2010 12:04PM
Well, the now 15% Buff doesn't hurt either...
So getting geared out also depends on what week it is and the buff you get in that week.
Next week it might grow to 20%, you never know...Well that's a lie. MMO-Champion will find someway or someone to hack Blizzard to get information. SHAME!!!
Anye May 10th 2010 12:44PM
That doesn't really matter though. I was more or less geared to where I needed to be even before the 5% buff. And that was even with a lot of guild-hopping and server transferring going on. I have spent most of the time in ICC not waiting for gear but for my groups to get their act together. And now I'm not raiding, not because of Cataclysm but because of impatience for people with gear and no skill.
Kara in BC was nice. I learned and grew as a noob raider and watched others do the same. Our gear was a limiting factor so it didn't feel like we were holding each other back. I hope we can return to that feeling in Cata.
stmart May 9th 2010 4:38PM
In MY opinion and that's how I handle loots in my raids the priority ALWAYS goes to the class whose primary ARMOR style drops meaning A rogue/druid will get ANY leather they needs even for OS before I give it to a plate wearer...That's just fair considering that plate dops are good...BiS is overrated and shouldn't be as much as a priority for anyone when it's not their primary armor type that drops...
But ...As a leader of a strict 10 man progression guild...it's always easier to manage
Isendre May 9th 2010 4:40PM
By the time you're considering your off spec, everyone's main spec should have enough gear to start passing on items during your runs. Meaning you can get your hands on it.
Furthermore, tier one Cataclysm raids are being designed to be balanced around heroic gear and quest rewards at 85. You should have enough gear to be able to perform your offspec duty by simply gearing up your main spec. And, when the next tier of content comes along, you can get offspec gear from the last tier of content, since the first tier are also being designed to be shorter. Pug it own or run it with the guild on an off day.
Poor you, having to wait for items for your offspec. Meanwhile, others are also waiting for offspec items that you use for your main set. Poor, put-upon you.
This "sky is falling" crap is starting to get on my nerves. It's hilarious how disdainful 25-man raiders are of 10-man content until it becomes inaccessible to them.
Allison Robert May 9th 2010 8:28PM
Ruh roh! Isendre, I don't resent players for pursuing their best-in-slot items; we're going for heroic Arthas-25, and it's dumb not to want the raid kitted in their best. They're also my *friends*.
I just think itemization (more particularly the overvaluation of armor penetration) has had an incredibly punitive effect on rogues and ferals, who now find themselves competing with most of the melee for their BiS pieces. It's unfortunate for players on both sides.
thefool May 10th 2010 1:27PM
Allison: I heard they were getting rid of ArmPen in Cata. But, let's assume there is some other stat that forces all Melee to prefer Leather. I'm not sure that's plausible from all the announced changes so far, but I guess it's what you're stuck on.
You say: "it's dumb not to want the raid kitted in their best." Note, that you say, "the raid" and not "myself". So, right there, it often makes sense to force people to prefer their own armor type or the raid as a whole will have trouble getting to "their best." Or, just farm forever and never actually attempt hLK25 in an effort to fill out everyone's BIS list.
But, you're talking about off-spec. A couple of options present themselves. Go Boomkin! It should be way more shared gearing between the two specs (no +hit, Spi desirable). No, you say? Go to the previous Tier (basically the same as going to 10 man now) which for Tier 11 will be lvl 85 Heroics, so in fact it will be EASIER to gear your off-spec. Beyond Tier 11, not much can be said because that is just way too much speculation.
Anyways, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to put hLK in the same argument as gearing your off-spec.