Adaptation to diversification

Now that I am playing a hybrid class, I've quickly come to resent the notion of main and off-spec preference in loot distribution - at least in the light of dual spec.

Historically, hybrid classes could change roles periodically, but did so infrequently and at a non-trivial expense. You could count on the bear tank more or less staying a bear tank, and when a player changed their role, it was a major decision and a fully-involved change.

In that era of relative stability and single-role reality, hybrids who desired items for the other roles they might one day take up could not have been, and should not have been given full and unchallenged access to the first-choice loot which the raiding team would be better-off having on other main-spec toons than rotting in the hybrid's bank for some far-off just-in-case possibility. In the past, therefore, off-spec marginalization in looting made sense.

But does it make as much sense today? Dual specs mean that players can fill two roles as whim and encounter needs dictate. Swapping specs on the fly, without expense, without a long trip to a trainer, and without consequence means that hybrids now can be flatly expected to do more than one thing in a guild, and to do so with regularity. What, in this era, is an off-spec really?

Is an off-spec the useful raiding role which you don't fill often, but can do so at a moment's notice if the attendance is off that night?

Is an off-spec the setup you use for non-raiding play, such as solo farming or pvp?

Is an off-spec the third (or fourth, or fifth for you druids) role that you are not specced for in either of your swappable specs?

I would put foreward that while guilds continue to class all three of these cases as off-spec, and prejudice looting accordingly, that only the second and third remain truly off-spec. It should now be the case that only the specs which provide no benefit to the raid group, or the specs which you still have to go through effort and expense to take up which should be marginalized. Hybrids with two available, beneficial specs for two different available, beneficial roles should be given equal, and if not equal then at least superior priority in gear than true, and antiquated off-spec classification.

While an equal access would be both most fair and easiest, even the introduction of a new priority stage between main and off-spec would at least address the problem to some degree - a second-spec roll call should the main and primary specs all pass on the gear before it cascades to those who, though unlikely to use an item, could still benefit from it in some future eventuality.

Hybrids have tremendous benefits - to a player and to a group - but they also have amazing hurdles to overcome in gearing. Continuing to punish them using priority systems which are entirely behind the current state of the game is not helping to ease these burdens at all.