No Warlocks Need Apply.
Seen yesterday, in Trade channel (yes, yes, I know, I turned it back off, but for a while there, I just couldn’t look away):
“LF6DPS VoA-25. No hunters, death knights, or warlocks, all others welcome. PST.”
Wait.
What?
Okay, let’s start with the fact that you’re looking for 6 DPS. That suggests you’re not all that close to having built the group yet (yes, I know, DPS are dime a dozen, but this guy was still a nickel short, and there was more than one group in /Trade recruiting DPS for a VoA run). I know warlocks are a rather underrepresented class at level 80 (9th out of 10, only rogues have lower representation), but hunters and (especially) death knights are not. Per the Warcraft census (not enough data on Duskwood to give a reliable result, so I used all US PvE realms as a proxy) those three classes together make up 33% of the Alliance level 80 player population. So, immediately, you’re knocking out a rather huge chunk of your potential DPSers, regardless of skill or gear.
The question is: why? If the raid leader is stupid enough to simply decide “no death knights/hunters/warlocks know how to play their class”, well, there’s nothing to do for that, and I hope he/she enjoyed endlessly wiping on Emalon because he/she is a drooling idiot. It’s not like the raid needs any diversity to speak of – DPS is DPS is DPS. It’s clearly not a utility thing, as said raid leader didn’t feel the need to say “no rogues”, and rogues have no utility whatsoever. Plus, you’ve eliminated two of the three classes that can do the 13% spell damage debuff on the target, so they’d better have had a boomkin, or they are seriously gimping themselves (and their non-Warlock caster DPSers).
I suppose it could be the design of the Emalon fight (specifically the need for high burst damage to take out the overcharged add before it wipes the raid), but even there, his choice of classes is bizarre. Is a shadow priest really a better choice for burst than a Destruction warlock? A Marksmanship hunter? Are DKs (all DKs) really hurting for burst? Affliction warlock, fine, that’s a rough fight for affliction, and I wouldn’t go into it specced affliction. But this guy’s exclusion was a bit overbroad.
After that, I run out of ideas. They’re all pet classes? I can’t think of how that makes a difference. The only thing I can think of (and it just occurred to me as I was writing this) is that maybe it was a semi-guild run pugging additional people, and they didn’t want anybody to compete with guildies if tier gear dropped (any other gear is going to have at least one other class potentially rolling on it anyway). If that’s the case, okay, but a better solution would be to find out if said warlock (or whoever) actually needed the loot in question (if it’s PvP loot, for example, no way would I be interested in it, and if it’s the T8 pants, I already have them), or whether it’s just being done for badges. Not like you can’t enforce that by means of master looter (and if it’s a semi-guild-run and they don’t have it on master looter, then they’re idiots). Just say ahead of time “All loot of XYZ sort is reserved for guildies”, and as long as that’s made clear in advance, so that people have time to back out before being saved to the instance, it’s all good.
Anyone have any ideas on this that I’m not thinking of?
Fel Deeds Awake! 
Sven said,
July 31, 2009 at 11:20 am
I think your “we don’t want gear competition” explanation is probably the right one. They just didn’t think it through and come up with the “all XYZ” gear reserved solution.
Kahleena said,
July 31, 2009 at 11:58 am
Yeah, I realized almost as soon as it occurred to me that that was probably the answer, but I’d already written this whole post based on my befuddlement, so it was too late to back out. 🙂 It’s still ridiculous, though.
D said,
July 31, 2009 at 1:55 pm
That was my thought, as well – since VoA bosses drop loot for specific classes, they probably didn’t want too many of each class. Regardless of the number of 80 warlocks on your server, maybe they already had 3 warlocks in the group and they didn’t want to have an overrepresentation of them. It makes sense to me, actually – the raid leader was probably just trying to make it balanced so each class wouldn’t have too many folks to roll on things against.
Kahleena said,
July 31, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Yeah, I guess it’s just odd to me – my previous guild, a consideration like that wouldn’t have really entered into our heads when we were pugging people (one of the “Guild Policies” I particularly loved was “There is no loot drama. Period.”) It’s a mindset I’m trying to carry into my guild now, so it’s good to keep in mind that VoA runs may be susceptible to that sort of thing. And you’re right – class-specific loot is way more common in VoA, I just hadn’t thought of it that way.
Keilia said,
July 31, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I’m guessing that either they were full on warlocks or didn’t want competition. Warlocks may be underrepresented, but I swear half of the server’s warlocks are in my guild. Maybe the same thing happened??
Odd, though, as I’m often seeing people looking especially for warlocks.
Kahleena said,
July 31, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Yeah, for dark, emo, solitary sorts, we do tend to come in groups, don’t we? LV (my prior guild) had warlocks as something like 1/2 of our DPSers during TBC (usually the top five or six on the DPS charts too) 🙂 and we were definitely overrepresented in LV in WotLK raiding as well.
Figworth said,
August 1, 2009 at 4:08 pm
On my server, custom is that VoA pugs try to be balanced – which means that if, say, there are already four death knights, they won’t accept any more, to make sure that loot isn’t wasted or competed over too much. Playing a Warlock, though, I don’t have to deal with that much.
The Guild That Drains Souls Together Stays Together « Confessions of an Imp Handler said,
August 4, 2009 at 3:47 pm
[…] does surprise me is something that Kahleena of Fel Deeds Awake! mentioned in https://feldeeds.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/no-warlocks-need-apply/#comments>the comments on a post–why do we end up in such large clusters in guilds? I can pretty much count on at least 4 […]