offspecs
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Officers' Quarters: My rant about raid roles
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. It's been a long time since my last rant, but I read something today that really irked me, and now I feel compelled to write this column. I don't want to quote the email because the person involved asked a question that had nothing to do with this topic, and he was really just an innocent bystander getting hit with the shrapnel of a raid team willfully blowing itself up. The part of his email that set me off was essentially this: "Our realm has very few healers, and we haven't been able to recruit one for months. As a result, our raid team is disbanding, and the raiders are going their separate ways. Our guild might lose every single officer except me." To this I respond: What a bunch of selfish jerks.
Offspec gear and Cataclysm raiding
One of the things I haven't seen discussed much concerning the 10-man/25-man split in Cataclysm is how hybrid players are going to gear offspecs. 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.
Officers' Quarters: The new loot drama
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Take a look at the stats on that trinket at the right. No, it's not the best trinket in the game (or even close) -- but what's remarkable about it is that any spec of any class could make a legitimate case for rolling on it. Add to that the fact that it's a world drop, so it could drop in any random pick-up group, and it's BOE, and you've got the perfect recipe for loot drama. The name says it all, doesn't it: Tears of Bitter Anguish. It's like Blizzard knew how much QQ this item could cause.In this new world of spell power and combined spell/melee hit/crit stats, raid leaders have to make some tough decisions -- and not everyone is happy about it. This week's e-mail is all about the loot QQ. Dear Scott, I am a regular member of a fairly hardcore raiding guild, and have been working as the master looter since BC. Our guild has always has the rule that everyone gets dibs on their armor class first. For example, as a Holy pally, I can't roll on cloth gear unless no clothies want it, the theory being that its not fair seeing as clothies can't roll on plate. While I have had no problem with this, we are running into a problem where there is very little spell mail armor, and so our shamans are feeling a little left out when leather Boomkin gear drops and the lone druid in the raid automatically gets it even though there is very little gear for themselves. As well, when mail does drop they get into arguments over whether it is Resto, Enhance, or Elemental gear, seeing as it looks almost identical. Any suggestions?
The Shadow Diaries: In which I take a shortcut
Back in November of last year, I wrote a post for the Spiritual Guidance column called "The shadow diaries." In it, I pledged that I would recount my experiences of leveling a brand-new shadow priest. However, as you may have noticed (or not), that never happened. There's always too many things to do in this crazy virtual world of ours (not to mention that other, brighter world outside), so poor Hieronymus ended up getting neglected.Why am I talking about a series of posts I didn't write? Well, I may not have had the fortitude to level another priest all the way to 70, on a strange server no less, but eventually two realizations came together. I already have a priest at level 70, and I'm doing a lot more soloing than grouping with her these days. I'd recently moved a few points in my long-held 23/38/0 spec over to the Holy damage talents, which sped up my dailies a bit. But then I thought, why not go all the way?
Yes, you do still have those healing spells
We've written a lot here about offspecs, and it seems that with the Burning Crusade, players who choose to offspec are finally getting their due-- druids can play as rogues, shadow priests can play as warlocks, and dual-wielding shaman can play as fury warriors if they want to.But there is one problem. Some players are, unfortunately, forgetting exactly not what they're supposed to do, but what they can do (excellent rant there, definitely worth a read). If you're a shadow priest, please remember that it is possible to get out of shadow form and heal if necessary. You may be a feral druid, but sometimes it's time to step back, drop out of cat form, and heal. And sure, as an enhancement shaman, you may have loaded up on strength, stamina, and agility rather than +healing, but when the healer is going down fast, every bit counts, and it's time to get out Lesser Healing Wave and start spamming.I don't mean to force you to only do things you aren't specced to do-- if you're shadow, and someone asks you to main heal an instance, you have a right to say no. As I said, we here are all for offspecs-- they break the cookie cutter molds built around characters and show us things in this game that have never been done before. But in this case, necessity is the mother of non-invention-- if necessity calls you to fill a traditional role, even for one fight, please, fill it.
Dealing with off-specs (or being one)
Righteous Fury has an interesting little piece up about off-specs-- you know them, they're the weirdos who play their class to do something other than its standard role in endgame raiding. Feral druids, DPS-adins, Fury warriors, Enhancement shammys, and (perhaps most of all) shadow priests. The convention says warriors spec prot, pallys heal and buff, and priests use +healing gear, but these guys (and girls) choose to buck the curve.What he says rings true to me because the guild I play with has finally reached the point where we're getting serious about raiding. My GM hasn't asked anyone to respec yet, but he's put it out there that we want to beat these bosses and get the gear-- if you can't do the job given to you because you're specced for PVP instead of raiding, you've got to move out of the way for someone who can, or do what's best for the raid. And I'm right there with him. Holy priests are the best healers in the game, so most priests should be holy and healing. Protection warriors have the tanking tools, so if you're MT, you better be prot.I'm not saying there's not room for off-specs-- there's a guy in my other guild who's such an awesome shadow priest (shout out to Gregorus on Thunderhorn-A!) that the whole guild has shadow priest alts just because they've seen what he can do. I main tanked for him in Strat, and when he told us early on that he "tanked by healing," he wasn't kidding-- the mobs all hit him way more then they hit me, and yet he kept us all healed and up with Vampiric Embrace and his +shadow gear. After seeing that, of course I had to have my own shadow priest, and when she hits 60, I already expect that I won't be able to raid with her under normal circumstances. No problem-- I'll melt faces in PVP with her, and raid with my prot warrior.On the other hand, if I need a DPS for a raid, and a shadow priest can roll out as much damage as a rogue or a warlock, then we're talking. But from what I've seen, off-specs can do those things, just not as well. Gear to gear (without extremely expensive potions), can a feral druid tank as well as a warrior? Can a shadow priest out-dps a rogue? Because if not, I'm giving those spots to PVE specced raiders.
