So there I was – back at work after a 5-day weekend and surfing my guild’s officer forums. Typical stuff mostly, monthly promotions, new applicants to mull over, conflicts with the raid schedule, pie or cake – blah, blah, blah. One thread caught my attention though and it had to do with the guild’s druid-folk and loot priorities. Feeling like I had bear in that race I dug in.
Seems the guild master decided to post some rules on druids and what they could roll on in Kara’. A good thing – since lootz = dramaz and druids are all about the drama.
Here’s what the decision looked like:
- Tank Feral Druids have priority on Leather Drops that are tanking specific
- DoomChicken Druids have priority on Leather Drops that are caster specific
- Resto Druids have priority on Leather Drops that are healzor specific
- DPS Druids CAN NOT roll on DPS Leather – Rogues only
[Cut to Guild’s Druid Class Officer]
<Go Cat Form!>
/target Guild Master
/mangle /mangle /mangle /mangle
After about 10k of damage and a lot of forums screaming – one of our tanking druids went bear form and sat on the class officer. She immediately calmed down enough for us to call in a medic. Moments later one of our resto brethren tossed off some heal-dotz and after a few minutes, both had calmed or coagulated enough to carry on a reasonable conversation….
Still spitting and snarling through bits of the GM’s robe, the class officer pointed out the following:
A feral druid brings utility to the raid that is more than just dps. Innervate for a caster, battle rez for anyone, group healing through improved leader of the pack, increased damage from bleeds with mangle, etc. Not to mention off-healing, cleansing, and buffz. Long story short – don’t neglect druid loot because druids bring diversity and flexibility to the raid – something rogues can’t do.
Then the rogue class-leader came along….He obviously felt that the GM’s decision was both wise and just.
As far as he was concerned, druids had three roles there were going to be relegated to in the guild:
- Healer
- Tank
- Caster DPS
And that was it. The bears could tank and tank well – the healers could tree it up and cast happy-dotz all they wanted – and the Boomkin were given free reign to nuke and nuke and nuke and nuke. But the catz? No – it’s nice they can dps and all, but the catz need to pick a different spec. Leave the damage dealing to the adults.
The difference in their arguments came from the stances each class officer had taken – both were as timeless as the classes themselves.
- Druid: We are versatile – Gear us with versatility in mind
- Rogue: We only have so many drops – don’t let other classes ninja them – there are other ways to gear druids or warriors to dps that don’t include giving them dibs on our leather Kara loot
A lot of this seems to come down to the fact that the work Blizzard has done to allow hybridization and to improve the itemization of gear to support it, are still hit and miss. For the druid class, the problem seems to be one of too many options. They can *do* almost anything – but the fact leads many to view the class as greedy and overreaching. For the rogues comes the problem of specialization – what can they really do other than put out damage, manage aggro well and provide some limited CC? With such seemingly limited versatility, allowing them members-only access to dps leather can be viewed as greedy and unfair.
Which would you prefer in your raid? Do you go for hybrids and versatility or do you prefer to maintain specialist characters for specialist slots?
In a number of guilds on the same progression level (through Gruul) I am starting to see a great deal of acceptance and preference for characters that bring options to the raid leader. DPS slots that have traditionally gone to rogues or hunters are now being parceled out to appropriately specced Shaman and Druids. Does this break down as you try to extend into deeper content or are single function classes like rogue and mage becoming obsolete while the hybrids take over?
Drop us a line and let us know how your guild handles things.
Feral druids should expect to dps in Kara, MH, and BT. SSC and TK they tank very well OT kara well, and are preferred for a few but rather small number of fights in MH and BT. That said, ferals spend a lot of time DPSing and as such deserve to have gear that makes that slot useful. It is not doing you any good to have a druid that 60% of the time has to kitty putting out 400 dps in a raid where 900-1200 is the norm. Now some people say yeah well all the extra prot warriors have to deal with it so too bad for the druid, but that is a waste of a raid slot.
Also, contrary to popular opinion, most of a druid’s hybridness requires complete gear changes. A druid in “hybrid” gear will do all of the roles they try and preform badly. So they need a full tanking, healing and dps set, with gear changes in between fights.
As far as dps, a well geared kitty feral druid can infact dish out more than 1.5k dps when placed in a decent melee group wearing gear entirely from badges and T5 instances. (I’ve seen it!) Due to changes in talent mechanics (changeing the +str% to a +atp%) a lot more “rogue” gear is now desired by dps and even OT ferals. This of course steps on the toes of rogues, and even some enhancement shamans, pallies, and fury warriors.
A solution is to have all druids declare an ON spec, in this case your Tanking feral declares tank as an onspec, all onspec things can be rolled on normally by this feral INCLUDING rings and necks that other tanking classes can use. They Declare dps as an offspec, and thus must wait for all onspec bidders and rollers to have the piece before they can obtain it, including weapons, rings, necks etc. Another, if you use a DKP system, is just make them pay for everything they purchuse with DKP. Because ferals are expected to have multiple sets, if they really want that dps upgrade they will have to cough up the points, this will generally cause them to have to wait and the rogue has an easier time picking things up.
Our guild has never had a problem with rogues not getting enough loot, I don’t think you should gimp your raid dps by forbidding ferals from rolling or bidding on dps leather. Besides, if you make your system too anti hybrid they might jus leave and go elsewhere.