Now that we've had a few weeks of raiding with dual specs under our belts, we're still wrestling with some of what this brings to our raids.
Official Policy
Our official stance on dual specs is that they aren't required, and the player's off spec is theirs to do with as they wish. We decided that we recruited someone to fill a specific role, and just because they can switch on the fly, doesn't mean we should require it.
We also wanted to avoid situations where say, a healer, could switch to DPS for a fight, preventing a dedicated DPS from getting in and having a shot at the loot. Of course, this also brings up situations like General Vezak where only one tank is needed in normal mode. Should we swap out one of the tanks we needed for Freya? What about dropping healers so we have DPS for hard modes?
Recent incident
Last night we had an incident where a shadow preist decided that we needed more healing and changed specs while we were working on Mimiron. Now he didn't ask anyone, he just swapped specs and started healing instead. So now we've got some faulty info, and there are some who think we seven healed it instead of eight.
Should we have swapped him out for the tree or shaman that were sitting outside? Is it fair to sit a guy who's busted his hump for the past two days for a main spec'd healer? Is it fair to the other healer?
I think this is where the line between friend/family guilds and 'raid' guilds gets drawn a little finer. Our goal is to get the content done, and are currently neck and neck in the race for our server first kills. While we can't go pissing off our members (because they can leave and then where are we), we've also been raiding with some of the same folks for four years.
It's a tough challenge, and one that I'm sure will cause more drama in my guild than the distribution of the legendary mace shards has in other guilds.
my thoughts: you want to bring your best tanks, best healers, and best dps possible while maintaining a good raid comp. if the shadow priest is a better healer than the other healers sitting outside then he should be the one to heal. period.
ReplyDeletehowever, if his dps so good that it is going to be missed, it may be a better idea (if you still need another healer) to drop your lowest dps and bring one of the other healers in. it all depends on the quality of your players.
either way, though, for him to respec to heal because he believes the raid needs more heals is a bad idea. let the raid leader make that call. for him to respec and not tell anyone is unacceptable. i know exactly what my gm would be yelling in vent if that happened in one of our raids! =P
I agree he should have said something, at least asking where he should be throwing those heals...and while I understand it's not the same exact thing, how is it so much different than say a boomkin throwing out heals when half our healers are facedown?
ReplyDeleteWe pride ourselves on not having complete idiots in our raids. Our guys are great at making small decsions on the fly without having to be told. Most of the time, those decisions are right, or not bad...sometimes we wipe anyway and have to tell them to do something else in that situation.
The point is - we did need the extra heals. I can't find fault with someone seeing a need and filling that need for the betterment of the attempt. End result was we downed the boss, with those extra heals.
Now, as to whether he should have stayed shadow and the officers made a switch somewhere else - no comment =)
healing mid-fight as a boomkin b/c you've lost healers =/= changing specs to heal before the pull. in most guilds, the raid leaders make those decisions, not raiders.
ReplyDeleteThe real difference is that if we needed an 8th healer, there were two standing outside waiting for a shot. We also (probably) would have chosen to replace melee DPS over ranged, simply because of the myriad of challenges in phase four for melee (rockets, flames, big cannons, mines, overloads). Bringing in say, a shaman, would have given us the 8th healer, let us keep ranged DPS, and also given us heroism and totems to help make up for the loss of DPS.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about one thing for sure though - we do have some great raiders, and have managed to keep most of the dummies away.
Need heals!