Yes, I hate lazy people.

"Oooh there is no healing plate, let me take that priest set trousers over the priest!" Happened to me in a 5man too. Really annoyed me =/. Especially as the paladin wa sRet and the Priest holy =/.

I think it is definately justifiable to use cloth healing gear If it is better for healing and healing is what you are doing. However I HATE laziness. To take something on a raid that is amazing for one class, and only great for yourself when you do have an equivalent also available is just being lazy/impatient.

It really depends on the fight. In a situation where there's lots of little melee hits, for instance say nightbane, the optimal is to have everyone in their highest armor class (assuming they don't gimp their stats doing so). In a situation like Aran, I don't care if people are wearing plate or taffeta.

I have no issues with mail- and plate-wearing classes using items that aren't completely optimal for their armor potential, but I certainly take offense to taking "softer" items over other players whose armor class an item is directly intended for. Cloth-wearers, for example, simply don't have the option to wear any of those other decent leather/mail/plate items, and as such you're basically penalizing them if you choose to let other classes bid at the same level of priority. Blizzard shouldn't have to nail a "Classes: Priest" restriction to every cloth healing item to get the point across that priests get priority on cloth items. The same issue with things like DPS-oriented plate gear with Int or mp5 attached to it; just give it to the paladins and don't cause a big ruckus about it.

Beyond that, there's no particular need for distinction. I basically see paladins having equal rights to a cloth item relative to a shaman or druid, for example.

Ignoring people that carry a lot of gear (which I do) and switch a lot for the situation, I think the core question is: Is it worth picking up a piece of cloth with the intention to wear it all the time.

Its definitely fine to grab a piece here or there that is below what you wear, and you'll never notice the difference. However, it can be dangerous to get in the mind-set that "type doesn't matter" and just grab every cloth healing piece you. Taking the attitude can easily leave a shaman or paladin with thousands of armor less than full mail / plate, and eventually this difference will catch up to you.

Yes, it's generally a bad idea to do it if there are good alternatives. There were some cases in pre-TBC where there weren't good alternatives for an extremely long time, like paladins looking for Salamander Scale Pants or Wild Growth Spaulders. Given that TBC sets have a healing variant, it seems silly to do this except in very rare cases.

I think there are two issues at heart here which are relevant but distinct.

First, and something that hasnt been addressed yet. A paladin or shaman should never roll over a priest for cloth simply because its not fair. Take a paladin as the biggest possible offender in this situation. A paladin CAN wear up to 4 diff types of healing gear for each armor slot, in simple terms that's 4 times the access to healing gear. So to take gear from a clothie is absurd since you have so much access to other gear. Granted this wasn't always 100% the case. I think WG shoulders and salamander pants were already mentioned. Obviously, if a cloth healing piece would be an upgrade for a paladin and it is going to be DE'd then by all means take it, its prob better for that paladin then a shard.

Second, and what the OP is probably really after, is it a good idea to sac armor for stats. As everyone has commented, it's really a situation dependent thing, but let me clarify. Unfortunately the situations in which it doesnt matter are generally when you have content on farm status. When you are breaking ground on a heroic or new boss in a raid is when crazy shit tends to happen the most, that's when you want the armor, that's when you want the stamina. I say always optimize for the worst case scenario. Unless you are EJ and you are trying to do shit like kill the curator in the first evocate, you should always assume the worst and protect from the worst, because wiping is the worst. That being said, higher stats have their place, as some have mentioned, as a shaman I will get one shot by maulgar regardless of my gear (unless I have toughness!) But this isnt the norm.

p.s. I would probably heal with Buru's skull fragment before I would use lei of the life giver. The mitigation I lose going from EF to salamander pants is non-trivial to be sure, but the mitigation I lose going from shield to no shield is immense.

Back in the days I was heal-specced, I personally never minded if a shaman or pally or druid wanted a cloth piece I wanted. As far as I was concerned, it was an upgrade for the *raid* and it was helping us no matter who it was on. Now if some shaman who was a lousy healer wanted it, I felt differently, but I had no compunctions whatsoever about our top shamans taking cloth. The evidence every night was clear that they were superb healers.

Pre-BC, I had absolutely no problems with pallies (we had no shaman at the time) taking cloth healing gear. Now, I do. Why the change?

Because pre-BC, pally healing gear was incomplete at best, in fact it was pretty abysmal before tier 3. Pallies took cloth/leather because they had nothing else. Now however, pally's have wonderfully tailored healing gear (healing gear with crit!) and so allowing pallies to indiscriminately roll on cloth/leather/mail merely makes it harder for the other healers to get gear.

Obviously, if nobody wants it, I'm all for a pally taking it. In fact, our guild has a lot of pally in mail simply because we have very few shaman. But that doesn't mean a Pally should take non-plate over other classes.

For raiding, the only times I consider leather gear vs mail for myself, I'm looking at the loss of mana/regen, the armour drop is fairly irrelevant. It's unlikely that in the general case where I want DPS, the extra armour would save me from being one-shotted by any mob that hits me.

This is a "utility to me" question though, not a "who should get this gear" question - even though I think the leather chest off Doomwalker blows any mail chests in the game out of the water, if a rogue who's judgment I trust wants it I'm certainly not going to try to take it at equal priority (although I'm probably still roll to point out I do long for it eventually )

Having only played a priest, and thus only having access to cloth armor, I haven't run into any situations where the "best" certain armor slot for a paladin is cloth. Could someone provide an example at this situation please?

It seems foolish that a player would take armor belonging to a lower armor class, as AC itself is an important stat. I'd rather take a little time to gear myself in the correct AC AND stats, than just gearing myself based on stats.

Pure healing plate was pretty rare in vanilla WoW. 1 pair of boots in MC, none that I can think of in BWL, 3 pieces in ZG, the Naxx Tier 3 set.

Paladins can heal pretty well in hybrid sets, but for those who wanted to focus completely on their healing, cloth/leather non-set items were what they had to look at.


For paladins who just started to build their healing sets, "downgrading" to cloth/leather allowed them to build a functional set much quicker. (Slots with warrior gear might as well be empty if you're healing; better to get *something* with int/mp5/+heal in there)



All that said, I'd only consider cloth/leather pieces as placeholder healing gear, especially since there are plate options in TBC now.
(Tier 4, Kara non-set drops, Normal/Heroic 5-man blues)

I find that the sheer difference between what a paladin wants (mp5, crit) versus what's available on most cloth (spirit) keeps me from rolling on it. Like was said above, I consider cloth as a sort of "place holder".

I look first and foremost at the stats of an item, so if a cloth or leather item has better stats I'll wear it. The difference in armor isn't that big, and in raids if you get hit you're often instagibbed regardless if you're a priest or a mail shaman with shield. Stamina helps more to survive than a couple hundred armor.

Sure, most cloth/leather items are very focused on spirit, which doesn't help me much, so I wouldn't need those, and with other items I usually let priests/druids have them first, unless it is a significant upgrade (and I don't see myself getting a better mail item in that slot anytime soon). And there are some really nice healing/mp5 cloth items out there that are quite useful for a shaman.

All of the Primal Mooncloth set.

Hallowed Handwraps versus Cryo-Mitts.

Hallowed Trousers versus Earthsoul Britches.

Armour is really not a useful healing stat. It's about as useful as Strength. When Netherspite hits me for 19,000 damage, does it matter that two of my pieces are cloth? And if we're doing Netherspite properly, he won't ever hit me at all.

The key word in the sentence was Paladin. Any Paladin that chooses to use the Hallowed Handwraps over, say, Life Bearer's Gauntlets deserves a smack along the head.

Druids and Priests both like spirit for their healing, but for Shamans and Paladins mana/5 is generally preferable.

I don't know about Paladins, because I don't play one. I gave an example of low-AC items being better than higher-AC ones. I'm sorry they weren't plate.

edit: and I like mana/5 too, since 80% of my healing is done with Healing Touch and I spend most of my time inside the FSR.

I carry a few non-mail pieces in my Healing set, that are replaced by mail items (that are inferior for healing, but effective) when the encounter calls for it.

I dont see any issue in downranking to min/max in certain situations, whatever will make you more effective at doing your job is what should be used.

Im down to my last piece of cloth now, previously I had 4/5 cloth peices which probably would have got me killed last night when lurker hit me when I judged him just as the tank got knocked out!

As for stats they have done quite well with palaplate making it more desireable than cloth which usually has spirit, less mp5 or no spell crit when compared.