Bolty,Mar 9 2006, 02:55 PM Wrote:I'm lucky in that I belong to a guild that doesn't force me to play a certain way. If I WANTED to turn into a shadow priest, I wouldn't get kicked out of the guild, and just KNOWING that makes a huge difference. I don't feel used. I hear stories of Priests getting kicked out of guilds for rolling on a +damage/healing item, and I just shake my head. Meanwhile, nobody thinks twice about warriors spending lots of points on Uber Epic Weapon of Doom. There's a reason why healing classes have such high turnover...
Well I certainly wouldn't get kicked out of guild should I decide not to spec the "proper" way, but I would fall way down on the priority list, when it comes to assigning raid slots, i.e. if a holy/disc priest, a restoration druid or shammy would be available to replace me, they would most probably get the raiding slot I would otherwise be almost guranteed to have as a holy/disc spec. When the druid patch came out most druids specced back to innervate, after playing around a bit, and the only druid that insisted on remaining feral (i.e no innervate) was almost never again seen in our raids. Even when we were short on druids, and someone recommended inviting him, you would hear comments from raid leadership like "Nah, he's feral. We don't need feral druids".
Generic spellpower items (+healing/damage) are another issue. We have theoretically a "pure" DKP system in place. That means, if you have the DKP and you are able to equip the item, you may bid on it. But in practice healers are expected to bid on generic spellpower items only if the established DPS casters are already equipped with said item or an equivalent one.
We had somewhat a row on the guild forums when certain DPS casters noticed that some healers had interest in the [Choker of the Fire Lord] and argued that healers should go for [Jin'do's Evil Eye] instead, because there was enough competion for the choker already.
I dared to argue that farming for the Evil Eye is bad joke considering the low drop chance and the lack of other interesting items for MC/BWL equipped healers in ZG. The arguement of the other side was that of course we healers have the right to bid on it, but it would be better for the raid if the DPS casters would get the first shot at the choker.
Another example was a shammy who dared to outbid a rogue on [Core Hound Tooth]. Said rogue went nuklear about this.