The Order to Contact Gearing Approach

A topic that'll get your tanks and healers and dps throwing empty mugs at each other in a dwarven tavern or that causes so much guild drama over the past several years is loot distribution. I've participated in all of the mainstream and named approaches to gearing. My experience is that each "approach" is not necessarily well-suited to all situations and that over time, one approach ceases to be applicable to a given raid group or guild because the situation or environmental conditions change. However, I am a firm believer that the basic premise behind the systems continues to be valid - to wit: fairness, reward support and progression.

When it comes to gearing approaches, I am a proponent of something I call the 'order of contact' approach. It cycles through the present members according to the cycling contact order of an engagement. It prevents the syndrome of hoarding or gearing "x" first and then "y". I was the beneficiary in BC of "gear the tank first" and I was outspoken against it. Many of my peer tanks on the server who I believe enjoyed the benefits of being geared first didn't care for "some idiot" busting their cushy lifestyle and while we were all friends - they reminded me from time to time that "life was good getting these benefits". Privately, with the other raid leaders, I would have long discussions on how we needed to rotate gear around the raid group rather than immediately gear the tank as soon as something new dropped. I felt the same way about healers and dps. Granted- the gear was far more delineated than it was in Wrath and than it is Cata. All the more reason now, I feel, for the order of contact approach.

(tldl version)

The cycling order of contact is (or should be pretty close to):

1. the pull/threat gen - tank gets added to the threat table
2. the heal - healer gets added to the threat table
3. the dps - dps are added to the threat table
4. re-cycle

Common sense and general experience wisdom will avail you that if:

• the tank dies between the pull and the heal, the tank (unless they failsauced it) needs gear
• the tank dies between the heal and the dps, the healer needs gear
• the healer dies between the heal and the dps, the tank needs gear to gen threat/land taunts
• the dps die between the dps and the tank's next cycle, the tank needs gear to gen threat/land taunts and dps needs to open slower

that covers the first few seconds of a contact, and now we cycle through again.

Throughout the rest of the fight, if:

• the fight lasts too long , the dps needs more gear
• the fight does not last reasonably long enough for dps to have time to drain the mob's health, and the healer had plenty of mana left until the tank died, the tank needs gear for survival and mitigation
• the fight does not last reasonably long enough for dps to have time to drain the mob's health, and the tank had plenty of health until the healer ran out of mana, the healer needs gear to increase mana pool and replenishment of mana
• the tank loses the threat generation race against dps or healer, the tank needs gear to improve threat generation

So the next time a piece of gear drops, don't just immediately reach for the logic that gearing the tank will improve the chances of downing the encounter. Analyze what the "state" of the group is when the boss does not go down (who died first, how is the mana pool doing on the healer, how much dps did we have, what conditions lead to the wipe and which were preventable - e.g. crowd control). Then as you continue to work on that boss or gather gear elsewhere, respond to those conditional states by gearing the group accordingly.

I am positively convinced that there were several weeks of no progress in raiding in the prior expansions because we looted gear to a tank when really what we needed to do was shorten the fight by gearing the dps. Yes, I know that tank survivability and healing longevity are intertwined with damage delivery to create the result: fight duration. However, enrage timers were created to remind us that in every fight, simply having well-geared tanks and healers is a bad idea.

That is my order of contact gearing approach. If you have better suggestions, I would very much like to hear and learn from them.