Gear is partially to blame for tank shortage

So tanks and DPS don't have to fight one another for gear. Ever see a DPS Merc fight a tank PT for gear? Not unless one or both were total tools. Why does this have to be explained?

You would astound me if I hadn't given up on humanity years ago.

If we have dual roles, we grind two gear sets.
If we have ONE role, we grind one set of gear.
Your example was a Sniper. Which has one role. So they only need one set of gear. Derpderp

Your seriously claiming that you didn't understand that I was on about tank classes?

Your just arguing semantics. You then even went on to suggest that I claimed warriors had a heal tree, when i said nothing of the sort lol. If your going to go the route of pointing out mistakes. You better make sure what you say is flawless.

It should exist because Tanking and DPSing are two very different roles requiring two very different stat priorities. Further, I don't really feel that there is a gear restriction here. I don't think I quite understand what you mean by that. It doesn't matter what your role is -- you're going to need gear to be able to take on different Flashpoints and Operations.

I also wanted to say...

Be HAPPY, and I mean DAMN HAPPY that there isn't a HEALING spec set of gear.

The infield respec option is really only useful for DPS/Heals.

This game is gear based (really, what game isn't), so I don't really have a problem with it. If they'd done it differently from the beginning, I'd say OK. But there's no urgent need to completely "change" it now.

Game has way to large of a list of things to make it better than this.

Again, .02

Actually what you are saying couldn't be further from the truth. If there was no tanking gear and no alacrity gear, there would just be 4 sets, so your Dps would have a 1 in 4 chance of getting gear. As it is now you have less than 1 in 4 due to there being 11 sets currently. Also as it stands now if I want to Dps on my pt I'm gonna have to need the Dps gear as well as the tank gear, so your gonna get the shaft more from the current model.

1. I never claimed you said Warriors could heal.
2. 'You better make sure' comes off as a threat, which coming from you makes me snicker a bit
3. I'm eating waffles right now, you are not
4. I understood exactly what you meant. But you're here whining about a base mechanic of a game that is using the same mechanic as most MMOs in the past decade-plus.
5. I'm a tank and have no issues with how the gear system is set up. In fact, I prefer it this way.

6. The root cause is more that people want to pewpew and steamroll dungeons instead of worrying about mechanics, responsibility for their teammates and being one of the anchors of a group/raid. If the tank dies, the group will wipe more often than not. If a single DPS dies, most fights won't miss a beat. In addition to this, until you hit HM/NM raids, you can DPS in subpar gear and no skill change. As a tank, you need to either have decent gear or the skill to make up for it.
7. Calling yourself 'Godlymuppet' does not make me want to take you seriously. At all.

I think we are actually starting to find some common ground. Multiple specs does work quite well for healers but currently not for tanks.

I know that's how the game is now. But I'm saying there could have been or could be alternative which gives that flexibility to tanks. I'm quite sure that model would have more people willing to try tanking.

Because with so many people, different playstyles abound.

With my old guild, we'd have a number of raids where we didn't need 2 tanks except during the first fight, say on EV, and after the first fight, one of the tanks would switch to DPSing. Why go through the rest of the entire raid with substandard gear when you don't need the tanking gear anymore?

Any raid where an off-tank is used would be in the same situation. Either you switch to the DPS gear and get your DPS up and help clear the phases faster, or you stay in tank gear even though your group doesn't need you to be tanking anymore, doing less DPS as a result.

I kind of like the OP's idea. I think there should definitely be some penalty to switching, either in a time shift or something, so that you can't just fluidly roll into a tanking stance and then a dps stance without skipping a beat, but I see no reason to make it any more difficult than that.

Just my two cents.

There was an alternative. It has always existed. Rift, if I'm not mistaken, took this approach. Bioware chose not to. Deal with it. If you want to DPS, take the gear that the existing DPS do not need (if you're tanking) or ask at the beginning of the run if you can roll. Crap, I see a lot of new DPSers using the free set of Recruit PvP gear. FREE SET. Use the GTN. Credits are ridiculously easy to come by if you want them.