My only issue with all hit gear being defaulted to DPS, is what about about caster DPS who are at the hit cap? Do they still get to roll first?

In my guild, that's who things are run. DPS casters roll on all cloth, the priests can only roll on non hit gear or hit gear if none of the DPS want it/want it for an offset/ or just in case.

Blizzard should really fix this come the next expansion.

@slunk: They are. Kinda. Hit will be dps only. Spirit will be healer only (different how it is now where dps get a decent stat out of spirit). Haste, Crit, and Mastery will all be shared. There wont be any hit+spirit pieces.

Problem is, there is no high-level mp5 cloth, so that rule of thumb doesn't work. Nor is there an mp5 wand, offhand, or staff.

For one-handed weapons/rings/trinkets/neck, sure, it makes sense. But that's a sizeable pool of gear where it falls flat.

@ rewil: Exactly. This article really clears nothing up, especially for clothies. But really it's Blizzards fault for not having the foresight to see the issues inherent in giving DPS classes a reason to want spirit.

Thank God for Cataclysm. Hit for dps, spirit for healers. Obviously there will still be some loot obscurity when a piece has neither +hit nor +spirit. Something like

Belt of the Dragonest Dragon (cloth)
+200 stam
+100 int
+100 crit
+100 mastery

Pretty tasty for priests and cloth dps alike. I foresee a lot of mastery stacking especially from disc priests. I'm pretty good at detecting these things.

@Hih, spirit isnt actually healer only. Hybrid caster classes will have talents that convert spirit to hit

Totally disagree with Quich, stupid ideas like this leaves people like my resto druid in the dark without any loot they have a priority on. Any resto druid worth his spot in the raid will not be taking anything with mp5, and will be stressing SP and haste, with spirit as a nice addon that cool if it's there, but nothing exactly something to get excited at, putting him perfectly in conflict with almost every class, and reserving almost no loot at all for the resto druid.

Mages, Warlocks, and Spriests get about 0.3 spellpower out of each point of spirit. So if you are taking +spirit gear from a healer you are a jackass. Hell if you take if from an Spriest that dual specs to healing when needed you are a jackass.

Summary: +spirit gear is totally sub-optimal for DPS casters and we only currently have talents that convert it because Blizzard didn't want to see wasted gear. This will be gone in cata but I bet some jackasses will still roll on +spirit gear.

People should be using mods like class loot which prioritise gear by which specs can best use it.

Had this last night. We did Lady Deathwhisper and she finally (first time I've seen it) drops the bracers I really wanted of her (I got good crafted bracers right now but I need something better if I can get it).
They are spirit cloth items but got a decent SP boost - and for a Lock spirit does matter, Fel Armor makes it important. Not as important as Hit of course (though I'm close to capping anyway) but certainly not unimportant. As I rolled a low 17 I was actually still expecting to win as I honestly didn't expect anybody else in that group to roll at all, until a druid rolled 45...

I wept.

I did ask why a druid would roll on cloth at all - and he simply said "it's better than the leather I got" ... well can't argue with that.

Such items as this are really a bit fair game - locks and healers at least all get benefit. As a general rule in our game they are luck of the draw. Hit gets a bit of a DPS priority and Spirit gets a healer priority but it's not an absolute.
I won the staff of Saurfang a while back and actually GAVE it to a healer (during the trade-able hour) after she told me she'd been silly and forgot to roll. She didn't even realize that locks need spirit at all - but I gave it to her nonetheless on the basis that she needed it more than me.

It does mean my SP is lower than it would have been despite my current blade+offhand combo having the same SP bonusses as the staff - simply because staffs can take a higher SP enchant than blades can. So far it's dropped twice. The first time the mage beat me on the roll, the second time I won it and then gave it away... next time - I damn well got dibs :P

Well, spirit is actually great for demo locks. For anything else, spriests, mages, locks specced other way, it's sorta decent but still not great, so i generally pass (i play a mage as a main). It helps to have rawr open while raiding to know if you roll on something that indeed is an upgrade.

I totally disagree with AltairAntares disagreeing with Quich. There should be no issue with your Druid anyway. There's no mp5 on leather gear and half of leather gear is rogue/feral druid. The only class you should be competing against is other druids for the most part, and like Matt said, if it's got Spirit, it's healer priority. You shouldn't really have a problem when rolling on leather items; only if you're rolling on cloth, in which case you're just worsening the priest/lock/mage problem.

@theRaptor

I get 0.7 of my Spirit converted to spell crit rating with Molten Armor on my Mage. To me that is pretty significant. My crit chance % goes up a lot when I pop up the armor.

Yes, you get some benefit out of spirit as a mage with Molten Armor running, but that doesn't mean you should be actively seeking to increase your spirit. Crit/Haste gear is what you want, assuming you're hitcapped.

@Xaklo

The problem is that there is next to nothing leather that has desirable stats for a resto druid. I challenge you to find me a pair of bracers that are leather and drop from ICC with haste on them. They don't exist, which is why a lot of druids are still using the bracers from ToC25/ToGC25 until they can get the ones from RS25 (Which btw the cloth ones are better anyway for resto druids). Honestly my druid is half clothie and if not for passing on cloth to clothies if they roll it would probably be leaning more towards cloth than leather because how else am I going to get SP, Haste with a possibility of Spirit without wasting ilvl points on crit and mp5?

@ Carang

I challenge you to find a leather item with spell power, but without spirit in ICC. Matt Low was, imo, very harsh at (boomkin) druids in his explenation of "gear for druids". As a boomkin, I get to choose between spirit or cloth items. And if I start rolling on cloth, some people are really gonna start yelling at me, and I do see why.

I hate having to grab spirit, but it's nothing I can do about it. Really. If I was to pass on every piece of leather with haste on to restokins, I'd still be running around in ToC/Uld/WhoKnowsWhat gear, with the only exception of badge gear.

If you look down the BiS lists for shadow priests you will find that very much of it has spirit on it. 3 of our cloth slot's BiS have spirit on them. The top, non lich king, staves and one handers all have spirit on them. Even if it isn't BiS, spirit gear accounts for a huge portion of our top 4 spots on our BiS lists. This is because 1 spirit is equal to .59 spell power for shadow priests. In our guild we stick with the hit, or on proc does damage, goes to DPS, and Mp5, or on proc heals or regens, goes to healers. Everything else is fair game for casters and we don't have problems with this. We all know what is best for our classes and specs and are trusted to roll on what we need.

Keep in mind that even for healers spirit isn't a pure healing stat. Its a stat that talents convert to spell power, just like dps.

What about reforging in Cataclysm? It has the potential to make loot assignments even more of a problem. Does that hit piece go to the DPS caster as a minor upgrade, or does the healer with a blue get it and reforge the hit into haste?