I suggested this to my guild, but I wanted to see what the EJ forum community thought about it. I also apologize in advance if this has been covered; I did a few searches but didn't find anything.

Basically my point was that, if the following assumptions are true, there should be no issues with people switching mains for the Burning Crusade. First, my assumptions:

1) There are currently issues with people switching mains. Those issues generally include a) a loss of one geared player who is replaced with an un-geared player; b) a loss of dkp OR keeping the previous dkp value which is now competing with a different class; etc.
1) Our current raiding gear will be obselete even for the first raid instance in BC (i.e. there will be better or equivalent gear we can easily get through 5 mans or questing or whatnot).
2) DKP will being reset for everyone

If those assumptions are true, I see no reason why people shouldn't be allowed to switch mains. So I'm curious what people think about this issue. Are my assumptions generally correct? Is it a good idea to reset DKP for the expansion (maybe this deserves another thread entirely)? Are there any other negative consequences of switching mains that I'm missing?

The guild losing a character that is has invested a lot of loot into is always painful to some extent. That said, there is clearly no better time than at expansion to do the change, raid composition is unknown and the gear is all getting replaced anyways.

Letting them keep DKP is a mistake in my opinion. In one of my last guilds it was annoying to see someone stockpile a few K DKP from MC farm sessions, quit their main, then equip their alt hunter with full T2 and throw shitfits when he wasn't allowed to bid on our first AQR and HoD (he had more DKP than the rogues). Then again, if you're not raiding with assholes, you're not going to have the same problem :)

There's some learned skill that goes into each class.

I certainly don't play my mage as well as our mages do, nor do our mages play their druids as well as I do. That said, this should be quick to overcome if you're serious about the change and willing to work at learning it. That seems fairly obvious. So how likely is it that someone changing their "main" will be serious about the change and willing to work on improving themselves with their new classmates?

That's a much harder question.

I agree that now is probably the time to make the change if you're going to.

This is somewhat tangential from what you're asking, but I'd be interested in hearing what some people have to say about switching mains in the expansion because your current guild has no room for you.

To paint the picture, and I'm sure I'm not alone: I got into my server's top raiding guild about 3 or 4 months ago. Guilds like these have little turnover, so even though I might pull my weight, there's also ~4 of my class that have seniority and play just as well. When the expansion comes, our officers have mentioned they'd consider "trimming the fat" and hand-picking the best of each class to continue with high-end content. I'm hopeful, but not certain where this leaves me.

Aside from doing my best now, what's a person to do? Go back to a previous guild? Transfer? What if you're happiest working the new instances and bosses and you don't want to be spending all your time at 70 farming Naxx for easy epics? Does the game end there?

I know I'm probably worrying needlessly, but I'm seriously going to give myself an ulcer with all this uncertainty. :(

All guilds not slaying KtZ by the release of TBC should be doing some sort of a DKP reset anyway. Carrying over old points from utterly obselete content that gave out gear that will be replaced by non-raid content is asking for disaster.

What's most puzzling to me is why anyone would want to stop playing a druid in the first place.

Blasphemy!

I fairly recently changed from raiding with a shadow priest to a rogue. At first, I was very stalwart about playing my capped rogue purely as an alt.. but I found myself playing him more and more simply because I really enjoyed the class, and what it really allowed me to do -- I can open up like I never could before, and seriously see the impact I can have on a raid encounter. My priest is still an awesome character, and I love playing him.. but as much as I liked it, and knew that class, I feel I have a more intuitive nature when it comes to my rogue -- the rhythm of a fight matches the way I play my rogue moreso than it did as my priest.

If they're serious about it, and they think they're willing to do the bare work (sticking it out in farm instances until they're no longer a liability, getting the best possible gear they can, not just waiting for the highest possible loot, but really trying to put together good gear that makes them worthwhile to bring along), there's only a few reasons I could see against someone switching their mains. 1, raid balance. Depending on how tight you are for spots, this could be the biggest hurdle -- swapping from one of the three main paladins, for instance, to one of the nine main mages hurts the overall group composition. 2, actual ability vs perceived ability. If you really aren't as good as you think you are, your lack of awareness of the class can really cause troubles.

Out of all of these, I think the expansion offers a unique opportunity for many people. The new, less populated instances means people will be having to redo a lot of thinking -- look how many of the new talents have previously one-role classes doing so much more. Priests have talents that obviously lends them to not only healing, but adding a little DPS of their own now and then while in their main healing builds, still. There seems to be a much bigger push in making hybrids more hybrid.

If you have a person in your guild who is reliable, skilful and- preferably - a nice person to have around, then surely TBC is the *perfect* time to have people switch roles.

The majority of guilds are going to either have to split or regroup to deal with the new 25-man cap in any case and a few people switching class is insignificant compared to that upheaval.

All the leaks from alpha have indicated strongly that your gear is going to be looking weaksauce by level 70.

Anyone who is *seriously* committed to changing main in the expansion has thought about it long and hard. No-one throws away a developed main without doing so.

So it takes a few days more to get the alt up to 70 and back into the raid game. So what? You have a happy, loyal guildie.

Some of your raiders are going to have to consider re-rolling to shammy/pally in any case and starting at level 1. As a Nelf priest, I am already committed to re-rolling Draenei. Those options will take a few weeks beyond the basic `level to 70` time. But so what?

Just get a hint on who else is rerolling as well. Pretty much all but 2 of our shaman wanted to reroll as paladins so we had to whack a few on the head and force them to keep playing shaman. This of course was before the shaman talents were announced. Duel-wield has rekindled quite a few of their passions, <3.

As for feelings about people rerolling, honestly at this point, there should be none so long as you stick to primarily the roll you joined up as. We have all healers rerolling as healers and I think one or two dps people rerolling as dps.

The only sore spot might be if somebody managed to get in as a priest or something and is now going to reroll as a rogue when you already had an overabundance of rogues but are still going to be light on healers even with the smaller TBC raids.

unless you're having people reroll from nearly ful tier 3ilevel gear to a class other than paladin or shaman, as long as the player in question stays with the guild and is 58+ by the time TBC goes live, you'll be fine for gear for the level 70 instances.

In our current static level of 60, I am greatly opposed to mains switching to alts. Progression of a character is strictly based on gear so by changing to an undergeared character would be significantly counterproductive to the raid group. But in a situation of the level cap increasing, everything is changed.

Once the expansion arrives, every class will recieve new talents, new abilities. There will be plenty of time in the leveling process for someone who has switched mains to learn to play their new class with its new abilities. There will also be many gearing oppurtunities for the new main to get caught up with his fellow guildmates so by the time everyone gets to level 70, there will not be near as much discrepancy in quality of gear.

This might also be an oppurtunity for many to finally change over to the character that caters more to their playstyle and enjoyment. Many people currently feel like they are locked into their main, with their alts treated like redheaded stepchildren. It might actually be more beneficial for someone to switch from their current main which they hate playing, to a class they will preform much better with and increase their morale making them more productive in the long term.

Get to 70 first.

I've already started passing on loot in all raid instances (except that which would get disenchanted) because I'll be switching to shammy come BC time. I haven't heard who else is doing this in my guild, but I wanted to secure my spot early by being relatively vocal that it was my intention, and passing on loot to show that I'm serious about it.

A week or two ago, I made the decision to drop playing my hunter and shift to my mage-alt as my main. I'd been playing the hunter more or less day in, day out since December and was fairly well geared (8/8 tier 2, Nef ring, etc.), but over the past few months, it got to the point where I spent all of my time on my mage, except when I'd drag the hunter into BWL/AQ40/Naxx. I just wasn't having fun on the hunter when I did raid, either.

It hurts having to spend the points all over again to gear up a new character, but if it keeps you happy, it's worth it in a heartbeat. I'm in the process of leveling up a druid (had the opportunity to play a friend's resto druid for a week and loved it) and I'm considering swapping to the druid once the expansion comes out, especially since good druids are so hard to find on Greymane.

Its also the perfect time to kick the habit, or at least, go casual ;)

You take that back right now! 8(

Oh yeah, I'd like to addendum my earlier post and say that I'm okay with it also so long as you announce it way ahead of time and start passing on loot for other people. Nothing irritated me more in EQ then people who would keep asking for loot right up until the day they switch mains.

Well, it's not like you're going to suddenly ding 70 and have better gear in every slot. It's still going to take time and effort to get an upgrade for everything and having your Eye of Nerub or Wraith Blade go to someone who's goign to be rerolling anyway is kind of a letdown.

At this point we're basically gearing up not to progress in the next raid instance but to make leveling to 70 easier.

This is an awfully big assumption to make. I think that until the beta starts, we won't be sure what our Tier 3 gear is going to get us. Early on Eyonix said that Tier 3 would be "laughable" (Paraphrasing here) then later Tigole stated you would get some upgrade / sidegrade leveling but Tier 3 would definitely be an asset in the expansion. Also, Drysc stated that he expected Naxxramas to still be ran while guild were leveling to 70. The short story is that we don't know. Until we see the actual quests / dungeons in the beta, we aren't going to know how good / bad Tier 3 is going to be in the Burning Crusade.l

i would think ier 3 will only be surpassed in the latter stages of the first dungeon and/or Kharazan

It is a big assumption, but I think it's fair to say that at least Naxx gear won't be so far beyond available gear at level 70; at least nothing like comparing current Naxx-geared players to new 60s in all greens+blues. In other words, players without Naxx gear will still be competitve in the early raids in the expansion (even if Naxx gear is still better), I believe.

While there may be gear availible at level 70 that is as good or better than Naxxramas gear, that doesn't mean you are going to be aquiring it when you hit 70.

I'm sure blizzard will expect a certain time investment (random drops, reputation gain, etc.) so while there may be gear out there... it may a significant amount of time to aquire. Your guild with Tier 3 may not want to wait to run instances while you run various 5 mans to get up to speed.