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.

@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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.