Thats not at all how I read the first post at all. Its more like - who should get priority and based on what reasons. For eg: Is being leather enough to make it rogue priority regardless of who else wants it that it might be best for too (aka hybrids)? Thats going to vary hugely between guild and loot allocation methods, for your guild it might be so obvious there 'is no question' to consider but for others its a hot topic up for discussion.

One could argue that since the Feral is last in line for the leather DPS gear they will be behind when asked to DPS, kind of being setup to fail. Anyway seems to me your original post and subsequent follow-ups appear to be asking for a justification of the way **you** feel about another class and how you should have 2nd and 3rd priorities. So pretty much a loot council. I bring this up because I see an undercurrent of class bias and a myopic view of loot distribution.

It seems best to set the obvious 1st priorities as suggested by many here, then let DKP decide since you have a DKP based system.

Actually not even including set bonuses T6 is just straight up better then Midnight for a rogue, because Agi is so much better then Crit. 45 Agi, 28 Crit, 15 Hit and 92 AP (134 Stat Points)on T6 vs 46 Crit, 29 Hit and 106 AP on Midnight (128 Stat Points), and the stats on T6 are spread out more, so you get more stats in total means that Midnight is actually about a 6 DPS downgrade from T6, so yeah, I think it is an Enhancement Shaman Priority.

This goes back to what Snowy said, rogue have T6 and Cursed Visions, Shaman can pick up the helm off of Council. The fact that rogues have significantly higher DPS, and that they don't have any other options is what makes this a rogue first item in most guilds. It is best in slot and part of the ideal set with 4/5 T6. For me it is about a 12 DPS upgrade over T6, however by the same token the cloak off Teron is only a 10 DPS increase, and Dragonspine is about 16-17 DPS more then WSC or Madness.

If your are focused on guild progression then no loot that is an upgrade for a main spec should ever be given for offspec purposes.

If you have a feral in the raid solely for dps purposes (an unrelated progression issue) then they should have access to the gear they need to play.

How you handle things like leather non-set items depends on whether you need to focus on short-term gearing or long term gearing.

If you're in a situation where your raid's gear is significantly lacking for the content you're doing (either because of rapid progress or lots of turnover), you'd almost never want to give a leather item to a shaman over a rogue. You need to improve your raid's gear now, so you want to focus on minimizing wasted drops and maximizing the immediate benefit of each item, rather than giving it to who the item is "best" for.

However, once your gear is sufficient for the content you are doing, you want to focus on giving gear to people who will use the items for the longest amount of time. Having five mail items rot because your shaman is wearing leather is fine as you didn't need those items, and in the long run the leather is better used by the shaman than the rogue.

The hard part is deciding whether you need to be focusing on long term or short term gearing, and from what I've seen it's something that a lot of guilds are bad at.

Just wanted to interject and ask if anyone does have rankings for all/their class. I know there are spreadsheets that can show what item is better for what, and there are resources like shadowpanther.net that display "generic" gear guidelines for Rogues. Does anyone know a resource or have a resource that lists the gear relatively. I'm going to try and make a list for myself (I play 3 primary classes so I can do those classes fairly easy specially with the amount of resources out there, just a little bit of time and formatting) but does anyone else have such a list for other respective classes? (Could use lootrank.com for such things given generic/accurate enough attribute ratings)

I mean, when a piece of loot drops I'd like to be able to go check this resource, click Shaman to see where the item lies as far as best in game all ranked up and then click rogue and compare, thought process as such:

Okay enhancement shaman with 95% raid attendance who we bring in for the melee group, it's the best in game for item him. Noted. Versus two rogues for whom it's only an upgrade until t6, they come in 60% of the time because we have lots of rogues and sub them in/out a lot. Ok, loot to enhancement shaman because we're trying to gear for long term.

What you're asking for here is a simple answer to a complex question. If you ever find such an answer, it probably won't be a trustworthy one. You'll have to just confer with your players as to what they're looking for, if you don't already know that information.

Ferals DPSing on a Boss will tend to have Salvation+Cat reduction, and not make -that- much threat compared to other DPSers.
Assuming that your MT will die (bad thinking!), will the boss quickly jump to your Feral (who is ment to be in tank gear = less threat than DPS gear..)? Even MD (around 2-4k threat) is not going to be that amazing in getting him onto your Feral quickly.

If you give your Feral Druids the beneficial setup you would say give your Rogues then you would be impressed on what they can pull off in terms of DPS.

We went from Rogue -> Feral -> others on leather gear (We've had 3 C'Visions which have gone to Feral, Enhance, Rogue due to he first two being passed by Rogues).

I'ld say go by DKP and allow the cross armor boundry to be broken based on performance.
If your hybrids rival or out-perform (or the attendance gap is highly in their favor) the primary classes then allow them equal access to the items in question (keep in mind group setup will affect this) and the choice of who wins is down to how much DKP they wish to spend on the item.
Naturally as a 'best in slot' item you will not hold back your DKP in getting it, where-as others will most likely try and get it without going overboard on splashing their DKP, as its not 'that good' for them.


If your going for a long-term progression route then some choices are obvious; for example I passed T6 hat untill pretty much everyone had it (except 1 or 2 new recruits on trial) because I could (and did) get my non-set hat from Naj'entus (the difference was not huge).
Not to mention as we used a Loot Council at the time I went through all the non-set pieces and gave decisions based on the availability of same slot items that were 'close enough' compared to those without. (Resto Shaman, Resto Druid, Holy Pala hats for example).

I did however take our first (and only) pair of Leggings of Eternity because they were best in slot.
A) I was most likely to get the first Leggings of Eternity.
B) I did not consider the upgrade of Kilt of Immortal Nature big enough to warrant breaking 2t5(legs) ontop of using Spinel's on it to do so considering my raid role.
C) They dropped before we got to Council, of which I would of passed T6 to Rogues/Ferals anyway.


Its not a nice grey area, but I believe its easier than the choices on trinkets, necks, rings etc

Maifax, I am not doubting a Feral's ability to dps, we have a Feral druid (and seeing you're on the same realm I'll name him, Twinblade) who puts out very respectable dps. However, we will never fill a raid slot with a feral druid purely for dps. Itemization comes to mind, but also raid setup and balance. We run with a fair amount of hybrid specs (used to be 3, an enhancement shaman, retri paladin and moonkin druid) and itemization for these 3 is a pain as it is. Adding a feral druid, for - and let's be honest here - mediocre dps, would only cause more headaches. There is nothing extra that a feral druid who is dps'ing instead of tanking brings to a raid group (you get leader of the pack from both a tanking druid and a dps'ing druid). An enhancement shaman gives improved melee totems and Unleashed Rage. A moonkin brings 5% crit for the people in his group, and the retri paladin brings 3% crit for the whole raid and something with seals (kind of forgot the details). Would it really be worth it taking a (let's assume, equally skilled) feral druid over, say, a rogue? The only other hybrid I'd consider at this stage is an elemental shaman, but we haven't had a decent one apply yet.

Our feral's sign up as tanks, and whenever there's a fight that doesn't require as many tanks as we brought, fair enough, we let them dps, as the dps of a prot warrior is shocking (we generally bring 2 prot warriors and 2-3 ferals depending on the fight). Do we expect this druid to top the meter? No. We simply let him stay cause he (most likely) helped us clear out the instance and tanked on other boss fights, plus, as mentioned before, the combat ress (and possibly innervate) can be vital. If we'd swap the raid around to a "perfect raid" on every encounter, we'd be switching forever.

So considering this, is it fair to let them bid amongst dps classes on dps items? In my opinion, no. It's tank spec vs dps spec and it really is as simple as that. You can say he earned his dkp, which in all honesty is true, he did earn it, but following this logic it would be fair for a holy priest to bid on cloth dps as well. Which is silly, we all know that. I am not aiming for personal gain here, but in my opinion, a feral druid dps'ing is as much offspec as shadow damage kit for a holy priest. But, and this is the point where I can understand when opinions vary, is it fair to say "no, you can't bid on this"? It is after all a dkp system, and some say when you earn your dkp, you can spend it the way you want. But is this really reasonable?

I just wanted to add, our dkp system has a bit of common sense added to it as well. I mean in our current system, it would be possible for a warrior to bid on a caster staff. But we would simply disregard that bid, because it is stupid. So perhaps it's not 100% a "you spend dkp on whatever the hell you want" system. A fury warrior wanted a dagger the other night, but so did our rogues. The fury warrior's bid was disregarded, since our rogues would obviously put better use to it (and please don't start a discussion of fury warriors and daggers now, that wasn't the point of this).

Best action (In my opinion of course) is that midnight chest guard will be free for all and also the the leather headpiece from Illidan but with a certin modification. If one of the rogues has tier 6 chest or he can loot it without any doubt on that Illidan kill then he gets it capped for him.

It's an effective way in which hardcore min-maxers will have a shot at the required item and means once the rogue gets his 4/5 tier 6 he will get the final piece which is the headpiece.

From a progression point of view, giving a good leather item that your rogues want to an enhancement shaman is almost always wrong in my opinion, because 1) you should put items where they are used best, and 2) leather dps armor is designed for rogues no matter how you twist it. Yes, it might be great for an enhancement shaman the same way that [Tempest of Chaos] is great for protection paladins, but it almost never makes any sense to give obvious class drops to another class/spec if you care about your own progression.

example: You kill a boss and it drops 2x level 141 helmets, 1 being leather and 1 mail, while leather one being better itemized. Let's say you got 3 rogues and an enchancement shaman in raid. Would you give the leather to enchancement shaman and DE the mail item as long as he has more dkp?


PS: talking leather and rogue just because it was brought up. With the same ruleset we don't let paladins grab cloth heal gear untill all priests have it. (yet another example)