My guild doesn't use any sort of DKP system, so we have a decent council in place to handle phat lewts. I'm wondering how do healing classes in other guilds handle cross-class items like Rejuvenating Gem, Pure Elementium Band, Band of Unanswered Prayers, w/e that Princess ring is, Angelista's Charm, etc? It seems like for a while we gave Priests proirity on these. Our first four or so Rejuv Gems went to Priests, the 5th went to a Druid I think, then a Priest, then Shaman. All of our Shroud of Pure Thoughts have gone to Priests except for one which went to a Shaman. Only Priests have gotten Pure Elementium Band and I have our only Band of Unanswered Prayers.

I had a chat with some of our Druid leaders and our GM (Shaman) about this. The GM basically said that Shamans were behind Druids/Priests, at least that's what I gathered. Our Druids are still sporting pretty crappy trinkets, blue or otherwise, while some of our Priests are done/nearly done with both their Ring and Trinket slots. After discussing this for a bit what I think we're going to be doing is going 1 for 1 on the cross class stuff. For example PEB drops, goes to a Druid. Rejuv Gem drops, goes to a Priest. Another PEB drops, Druid, etc.

So far there are 3 end game healing rings I can think of (the 3 I mentioned earlier) and I think we're prioritizing the Princess one for Druids because they feel they benefit a bit more from MP5 than we Priests do. For us PEB and Band of Unanswered Prayers are super awesome because the Spirit gives not only mana regen but, for the Holy gimps, a smidge of +healing as well. This all seems awfully unfair to the Shamans, all of whom don't top +500 healing, maybe even 400, and the Druids aren't much above 500. I thought that Angelista's Charm might cause some problems, but Ossirian's neck is sorta comperable minus stats, but afaik Shaman and Druid gear is pretty good stats-wise, so that oughta balance out.

Something I just thought about are how do you dish out weapons? Lately we've become caught up in the 1h/oh craze and the biggest thing I'm thinking of is Faerlina's hammer since we just got her down recently, and Noth's Frigid Heart will be big too (I think most people have overlooked Sartura's Might because it's not as cool as a glowy blue lantern).

I imagine things like this wouldn't be a huge problem for DKP systems, though I do know of at least one guild that has item prioritization.

Do you have a Shaman on your loot council?

To clarify: Your Shaman Officer (class leader, urinal, whatever you call it) should have an idea of what the class needs to fulfill its roles most effectively. The council should then decide on a case-by-case basis who would best use and deserves the item in question.

Just because it's not "as effective a healing class", you're still going to have them in your raids. If they can't heal (and itemization up till T3 has been pretty poor for them for the most part, as a healing class), then you have no reason to bring them other than endlessly pigeonholing them to a "u buf maylay" role, when I'm sure they'd like to contribute more.

Do your druids and shamans heal as their primary task?

Then why aren't you letting them get the tools they need to do their job?

Shamans and druids should be gettting equal priority on healing loots. Look at your healing meters sometime.

At the risk of stating the obvious, situations like this are pretty much the reason that DKP was invented.

Your shamans are getting shafted.

Since they don't get any substantial benefit from spirit, consider giving them at least equal preference on healer loot with mp/5 but no spirit.

Priests generally have preference on anything with large amounts of spirit, obviously.

I believe our guild has a roughly equal distribution of Rejeuvenating Gems between Druids, Priests, Shaman. Our Pure Elementium Bands have gone to Druids/Shamans rather than Priests, but we haven't seen that many of them. Our first Huhu ring went to a Druid and our second went to a Shaman.

I'm surprised you still have druids in your guild.

You're hurting yourselves by giving priests priority on so much gear. You're probably also frustrating your shaman and druids. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me you had a hard time keeping those two classes in the guild.

Forgot to mention, but my guild runs on loot council and we do not have a shaman on it.

From your examples, it seems that your loot council has decided that Druids and Shamans are second class citizens that don't deserve to be compensated for the time they put into raiding. A biased conclusion to be sure, but from the limited information given, I don't know what other one I could draw. Besides set gear, do your Druids and Shamans get *anything* to help them do their primary job in raids?

I'm pretty sure we have at least a Shaman on our loot council (I'm not on it, I only chat with them on vent sometimes), and yes, all of our healing classes primary role is healing. Yes, I know DKP is good for stuff like this, but there are still guilds that give bidding priority. I guess I'm just gonna have to chat em up some more. My fellow Priests probably won't be too happy with me, but I'd rather have progression.

As for healing meters, IIRC it's usually the same two Priests at the top followed by either one or two more Priests, then a Druid or two, then the rest is a mix of Shamans, Druids, and the other Priests.

I don't think the Shamans and Druids are getting what they deserve. For a very long time (Before the really phat lewt was availble) Priests I believe had the highest attendance percentage, but lately we have some very dedicated Druids and more dedicated Shamans which is why I am concerned. Something that was brought up to me is that for a very long time most of our Druids were Feral and Shamans were Enhancement (I think we had one Elemental one), but lately the Shamans in particular have been speccing up the Resto tree which was something else that made me think more about this.

If you're taking all healing classes on raids, and putting all of them in the primary role of healing, then there will rarely be a time where one class has priority over another when it comes to generic healing loot. Shame on your raid leader for allowing such a priest bias.

And I'm not even getting into the stupidity of not having a point system in place this late in the game.

Do you think this could be because all your priests are blinged up while your druids and shammies are scrounging crappy blue trinkets and rings from UBRS and ZG?

Probably.

Eh, points systems have their problems too. The loot council guilds in which I've been involved had less "OMG, MT taking Ashkandi before any MS warriors" than the DKP guild that I was in.

And from what I've heard, most loot councils have an invisible points system.

The real way to make it work is to have class leaders as representatives, who are interested in what their constituents need, and how effectively they will use said upgrades. With that in place, the rest comes natural.

Fair and equal representation = win.