WoW Stratics IRC Chat

[Tal]

I think you missed the point here. A lot of raids aren't going to be real interested in giving out secondary role gear to people until everyone has their primary set... at which point most people are done with the instance and want to move on. Certainly, loot distribution is a social construction but it is exacerbated by things like the grouping of Druid/Priest/Warrior for tier loots where every class can use multiple sets, so they have a lot more competition to deal with for those sets. I have certainly read plenty of stories about protection paladins (or want-to-be prot pallies) who cannot get their hands on the generic (non-class-specific) tanking plate gear until after the warriors have it, so they are perpetually behind the curve and unable to get a shot at tanking things. Of course there are exceptions, but these things happen and I think that was the point.

I don't agree with you here - the mechanics of the primary roles of a spec dictate what tank gear they would be interested in. Obviously druid tanks cannot wear plate but for the same reason paladin tanks aren't going to be as interested in non-warrior tank loot as they would be looking at optimizing different stats for the most part than warriors.

Now I will grant you that Blizzard messed up with itemization in Karazhan that emphasizes what they expect each of the classes will be doing primarily, very little dps plate, no defensive plate with intellect and defense, leather with healing on it, etc.