Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Rolling On DPS Gear While Healing

Andrew asks:
Looking for your opinion, and if you choose to blog it, the wider community on whether it’s reasonable to run an instance (or potentially a Raid) as a healer (or tank) but request to roll on only dps items? I refer mostly to Pugs as guilds will have their own rules on this.

Background, been raiding as a Holy Pally for a while, geared with quite a few best in slot, probably only 8-10 potential small upgrades left from Naxx 25 and the Eye. Trying to slowly build an offspec rest set. I’m currently doing heroics/Naxx 10 pugs as holy and only rolling as offspec after main spec passes. I think I am going to start stating prior to each instance that I will only run if I can roll as if my main spec was dps.

I want to keep raiding with my guild as holy, which is 2-3 times a week at present, respect costs to go ret on the in between days would be 200-300g a week which is way outside of my budget. It’s always much harder to find healers/tanks to fill heroics/Naxx10 pugs, so I’m much more likely to be able to go when ever I want to. And this would seem to be providing a service to the community who need more healers (and tanks) to fill pugs for when they want to go.

In my ret set I already have 4 epics and the rest blue so I’m not going to be rolling on every item anyway. In giving up my roll on any healer items, the other classes which can spec healing would get a first roll on some offspec stuff. In a 10 man, the other 2 healers would get more rolls and it would be as if we had 1 more dps. But as I want plate with strength, while there would offset for pallies, warriors/DK’s would not get any level of exchange….

Am I just being greedy? Given that many doing heroics/Naxx 10 may ‘need’ the items more than I do? Still there must be others in my same position out there, and as before, providing service.

If you arrange things with your group beforehand, and everything is agreed to, then it's fine.

That being said, I'm not really sure how much time you will save. You can just pick up leftover DPS gear while healing. As you note, you already have four DPS epics, and as your DPS players gear up, there will be more leftovers for you.

Personally, I think trying to get groups to agree to unusual loot terms is a hassle, and has a lot of potential for drama. I mean, if it was flipped around, and you wanted [Torch of Holy Fire] from Kel'Thuzad, and a Feral druid demanded to be allowed to roll on it for his healing offset, you'd probably be unhappy. And if you were having a hard time finding a tank, you'd be resentful of the druid for forcing you to make that choice.

I know Gevlon the Greedy Goblin would probably be horrified by this attitude, as he would feel that a agent is free to demand whatever price he can get away with. But in my opinion, playing hardball like this just leads to unpleasant runs, and loot isn't really worth that.

12 comments:

  1. I've actually had to deal with this as a group leader and have taken steps to make sure I will never have to deal with it again.

    I'd rather take more time to find someone else who will fill the spot than deal with someone who wants to gear their offspec equal to someones main spec - but, then, I only ever run with my guild (we run our ten mans as FFA) so I'm not as restricted by a lack of healers as some pugs may be.


    /hug

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  2. I've actually found that as a Paladin DPS loot rarely gets passed to you. Plenty of moonkin and shadowpriest gear gets passed, and agility items come through sometimes, but there are just so many warriors dks and ret paladins that strength gear is rare to see. Weapons, trinkets, rings, and cloaks are even worse!

    I say go for it. It will be a headache for the group you are rolling with, but don't fool yourself into thinking you owe them your healing so they can pass you the leftovers.

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  3. I did exactly that on my priest in the 3 months or so leading up to WotLK's release.

    I was running as holy and was already geared past Kara, but I pugged it every week for the fun.

    I would tell the group up front that I would be happy to heal the run, and would pass on all healing gear.

    However I would be rolling as main spec for shadowpriest gear as I was building a set for leveling shadow once the expansion hit.

    A few groups said, no thank you and found another healer. I had no problem finding groups that were happy to have me along however.

    So long as it was out in the open before the start of the run it was never an issue. If most of the group agreed and one or two dps did not we just found more dps.

    LFG is full of 'em. (Including me when I am on my hunter)

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  4. I agree with the post, you can easily pick a lot of this gear up from farm raids, especially if plate DPS has had as much gear luck as you have.

    If you really want DPS offspec gear from 10-mans/heroics to speed up the process, it may be easier to talk your guild into doing a few runs with you as they're considerably less likely to need the gear if it drops and you can get it by default drama-free.

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  5. I'm Ret, building a Tank off set, mostly by pugging Heroics.

    Before the instance I mention to the tank that "I'm really only looking for item X. Is that ok?"

    Most of the time it's fine as they either already have the item or for some reason they don't want that item.

    Sometimes, the tank will say, "I need it, too, but we can both roll" or "yeah that's what I'm after, too." In these cases I'm not going to roll against the tank on a needed item for them so I thank and wish the the group luck and find another pug.

    No drama needed. Easy peasy.

    Holyjustice
    Zangarmarsh

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  6. Dual spec is doing to crush the idea of main spec / off-spec.

    I've already moved to a loot system that provides each person a limited number of "Need" wins and a limited number of "Greed" wins. As long as you are rolling on something that is reasonably usable for your class (no mages rolling on plate) I don't care what you burn your limited number of wins on.

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  7. Anon is right.

    The coming dual-spec issue will cause no end of loot drama, as the "pure" dps classes are going to be annoyed with pallys and druids sucking down the loots.

    For now, rolling on a different spec of gear usually is fine in-guild, but, if you are in say a nax25 run with 10 pugs included, it's going to be impossible to get the other pugs to agree to letting someone roll main on what is actually offspec gear.

    But what happens with 3.1? My pally will be prot for 4 or 5 bosses in Naxx, then ret for the rest. What is my main spec then? Are both main spec?

    Esp when you get to KZ and the fight over his weapons, rolling on the 2H axe when you are the tank or the healer is gonna make some waves... :-)

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  8. Dual Specs will complicate things, but this is how I would approach it.

    In a guild, you should roll or have your raid leader assign items that pertain only to your main spec and will help the guild. You got that peice of gear because of the guild. It's your job to use it to help them.

    Pug setting I would roll on it if it pertained to my current spec in the pug. As a pvper I'm normally speced for DPS. However if I went along as a tank I feel no problem roll on either Tank or DPS items. However I would let the party know that I'm after specifac items before agreeing to switch specs to tank.

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  9. Holy Pally 2.2K spellpower lf4m for daily heroic (feral tank and caster dps only)

    Problem solved

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  10. I've done this before, when transitioning from Tier 5 Tankadin in TBC to Ret by doing Kara runs. The difference is that I had a small core of friends in the 10-man pug, maybe 2-3 total, which made it easier to do. The key of course, is that it was stated up front once the raid was together, that I would be passing on all tank loot and only rolling on Ret gear. We also made sure to tell the effected classes before they signed up and got their OK.

    Before that I had also run plenty of times just to help out my buddies, as tanks were hard to find, and managed to snag some unwanted epics without any special arrangements, so really, either method can work for you, just depends if you mind risking losing that sweet drop.

    The reason I think this kind of arrangement is 'ok' is that the chances are you are running that pug with everyone's alt characters anyways, so what's the big deal?

    I should note that I did run into some hassles from greedy players and eventually just respecced Ret and ran it as that. The difficulty then was that ret dps wasn't very well respected at the time, much like how prot tanking wasn't well respected when I switched to it pre-TBC.

    Oh they of little faith.

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  11. I don't think dual spec is going to ruin main spec/off spec. If you think about it most players have a preferred spec...therefore it's their main spec. In my case it's holy. I am of the opinion that your dual spec choice IS your off spec. Now if you change spec specifically for a run because you were requested to, you have the responsibility to pick your main spec whichever that may be holy, ret, prot and ask your raid if it's ok to roll on --insert spec here-- for your main spec even if you are specced differently for the run.

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  12. This is something we have discussed over and over again.

    What came out of it was the poor poor classes that can really only do DPS, like Rogues, Mages, Hunters, Locks.... Get priority on DPS gear.

    Tanks get priority on tank gear
    Healers get priority on healing gear.

    Tanks and Healers that can also DPS and/or Heal get priority over Off-spec DPS.

    At first this might seem a bit confusing, but really it makes sense in that the DPS class will always be able to go out of a raid setting and kill stuff. Tanks and Healers dont always have it that easy.

    As to the "I will only be tanking 2 out of 5 bosses in XXX raid". All dps classes that can tank will be given tanking gear after all the Main tanks have it, so there are your pool of OT's.

    We have been running Naxx25 now for quite sometime and have not been sharding much if any gear. My Shaman almost has a full set of Enhancement Gear and I raid as Resto. My Pally is gathering Tanking and Healing gear, and I will be raiding as Prot once I am ready.

    As for PUGS, it is as simple as was stated earlier. Either form the group yourself and invite no one that would be able to use the gear, or spell out exactly what you wanted and get agreements up front so there are no hurt feelings.

    You will run into those odd individuals that would never even think of getting an off set of gear. Honestly, I know a few people that rolled Warriors and will never tank as they hate it, but love to DPS as a warrior.

    Each to his own I suppose.

    Utility is what makes Pallies, Shamans, and Druids rock.

    Dave

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