Simply put, how do most guilds handle this? So much emphasis on DPS and fights like gruul/etc is poured into consumables and their net effect on raid DPS. Yet when reading people's comments, and looking at certain shots of damage meters, it's pretty clear many guilds take raiders that are *not* specced optimally for PvE. Which would (at least on the damage side), account for a gigantic amount of lost damage, even with full consumables burned. Do most guilds simply roll with this, or do they encourage/enforce respecs?

I realize too that depending on the guild this can be somewhat of a touchy issue, and if a guild had a base of extremely active pvp'ers, it'd be difficult to ask for respecs. However, that difficulty in asking for respecs would also be absolutely crippling to the guild when attempting content later on. Thus, the question is, does your guild currently require pve specs? And if not, how much do you think it hurts your guild overall if you have members that aren't speccing optimally?

I prefer systematically guilt tripping my raiders into respec'ing for PvE, or developing an eating disorder.

In all seriousness though, if people are performing well, the tanks are living, the healers are not running out of mana, and the boss is dying, I don't inspect people's talents.

However, when people start slacking, I go over their gear, and talents to see what areas they could improve upon. Most likely the people will notice that they are underperforming and respec out of their own initiative.

I will say that I have spent many a raid commenting on how nice it would be to have survived the previous pull, and that the extra 1000 health from blessing of kings, or a quick NS heal would have saved the raid. I also ask our dps to freely critique the threat generation of our warriors, myself included.

Basically if people aren't willing to put forth the effort to focus on raiding, I just might not be willing to schedule them for raids. That should give them enough time for the PvP they so much enjoy. Then again, I get a terrible arena rating as payback when I'm trying to work towards the Gladiator's Shield Wall. I rely on pity to get me into arena groups, so turnabout is fair play.

"Who wants to take protection spec'd Grandpa this week?"

We're not top end, any fight that we can't handle without (minor) consumables we don't do, and everyone is welcome to spec how they like (three people have been asked to lean their specs a certain way, but it wasn't required). It should be well known that I will invite and recruit around any paladin speccing retribution (at the risk of going off topic, but it's the one spec that's wildly off purpose in my raids).

Everyone wants to succeed, so it's not a question of, "WTF ARE YOU SUBTLETY?!" but rather, "You know, I think you'd do more raid damage if only you..."

My guild is pretty laidback with PvE speccs atm but I guess it will change in a near future.
The way we do it is that we invite people with the best PvE speccs, so for warriors its allways the 2 prot warriors getting into the raids, then the fury warriors get into the raid and if there is still a spot for another warriors the arms/prot hybrid gets in.

For other classes I dont think we have that much focus on it but it might change soon I guess, we have been working on Hydross for a few nights now with a best attempt on 25% 45~ seconds before enrage when I died and we wiped. We have also wiped to enrage at 30%. So for us to actually down it I guess we need everyone pulling the weight with PvE speccs, but one of our rogues wich has an odd combat varation specc with imp. sap for heroics got 2. on damage on one of the wipes.

My point with this ramble is that its very different from class to class and from player to player. Some people need a full PvE specc to do decent dps others do plenty dps with some off specc.

I spec for PvE because we are a PvE guild. A number of our members PvP competitively and that's both wise (for gear) and fun (which is wise). They either respec a lot or they deal with PvPing in a raiding spec, like I do when I head out that way.

In the end though of course, we look at the dps or healers that are not performing and talk to them about why. If "why" turns out to be because they are specced for PvP and are unwilling to respec for the content we are doing, they will need to find a guild that shares that philosophy.

Yeah. This is the same philosophy our guild has right now pretty much. Of our active pvpers, they're usually going through 4-6 respecs in any given week because of raids. But anything less and they wouldn't have a raid spot. But judging from the first few posts in this thread and other posts along the forums, it seems to be the minority point of view.

It would probably greatly benefit our raid if the rogue in question did specc for pure PvE dps. And if everyone else that wasnt specced optimal for the fight did aswell it would probably become noticable easier.

But if the rogue dont get his Trial quest completed because people dont bother to bring him to heroics because he is lacking imp sap we would be a good rogue short in the eye when we get there. What I am trying to say is if some raiders need a bit of an offspecc to be happy playing WoW its better to have him happy and focused during raids then unhappy and unwilling to raid if you force him to specc PvE. Tough I doubt this is the issue in my guild it might be for others.

All in all its pretty much down to how hardcore you are I guess and there shouldnt be a doubt for anyone that a pure raid dps specc for your DPS classes greatly benefits your entire raid. Healing gets easier and the raids go more smooth.

Spec is a small part of DPS. I'm a deep frost mage and top our DPS chart every single time, with a fire mage following closely. We have 2 warlocks, one of them fights me for the top spot, the other literally does less than half of my DPS. I think they're both destro, I know the one with high DPS is.

get one of them to spec affliction, see how they perform compared to a frost mage

All other things being equal, Fire does more damage than Frost--or at least it did when I played Mage.

I've heard Arcane can actually be competitive nowadays, and might even be the best raid spec. I don't think I've ever tried PoM'ing an AM, though...

Weird specs can cause more wipes then most people give it credit for in my opinion.

If everyone on a given raid in a mid-casual-raiding guild had the right spec for their gear and abilities (eg. not the arena spec they love to use) shit would go down faster. There's no question about it.

And ahh "most people" doesn't really apply that much on this board :p.