No, You May Not Roll on Items for Another Class and Strip Out the Mods

ok..

And here is what you posted prior to me asking the question;

EQ1 did not, does not, have mercenaries that are gearable.

EQ2 did not, does not, have mercenaries that are gearable.

You 'believe' GW has mercenaries that are gearable? Wrong again, I'm afraid.

On eq1/2 you can hire mercenaries that are already fully geared.

If you are going state for fact, I am ill-informed you better get your facts correct. Right now, your credibility is on the floor.

Did you ask the group if they share your gearing goals?

If I only wanted gear for looks or my companion, how would you be furthering MY goals when you roll on loot that I need for looks or my companion?

The problem lies in your assumption that rolling on an item to upgrade yourself (you or a companion) is unnecessarily detrimental to other players.

Any time one person gets a piece of loot someone else wanted, the one who loses has experienced detriment. As a result, we have acceptable and unacceptable degrees of detriment. It's acceptable to need on something that upgrades you or otherwise meets one of your goals (specious as it might be, even if you just want to sell it; your goals are as valid as any other player's), so if you win, the detriment experienced by another player is on an acceptable level. They accept that by suborning their personal desires to the impartial distribution of the NBG system. If they're unwilling to accept that system, the alternative is to assemble their own group and set looting on Master Looter, so they have 100% control over how loot is actually distributed.

I didn't say they were as robust as this game but that wasn't the question. No, they aren't fully on AI companions like SWTOR but the concept of them isn't new to the MMO space.

You can currently put gear on your toons in EQ2 for sure but the impact is admittedly neglible. It would be purely cosmetic in most cases - but following the concept laid out here taking good gear from other players to make your companion pretty is a perfectly legitimate choice so there is a direct one-to-one correlation.

You can put gear on mercs in EQ2 - you are wrong. It doesn't impact their stats but it can happen to make them look different. But given the school of thought that making things look pretty counts in this game it would count there as well.

It only benefits the player that got given the item via the other players passing on their roll. I may want that item for any reason too. If I play with your rules, I have to continually pass it to some other player playing the 'my lewtz' card.

My way, I get what I *need* when I need it, taking into account the roll of the dice.

The problem isl You are unwilling to to accept, that you got 1 shot at the dice. You want even more.

It's common knowledge that you don't roll "need" for alts. Since you don't really even NEED your companions at 50, rolling "need" for them seems a little selfish. It should be an unwritten law that you don't roll need for companions and alts.

I never would roll need for stuff I can't put onto my person as an upgrade, and therefore, I'll sleep better at night knowing I did the right thing.

It still looks exactly the system you're advocating to me...

False. It benefits players that have a particular loot priority, not ALL PLAYERS.

Even in that set of players, it favors certain classes/roles based on the loot tables of the flashpoint and characters that are significantly under geared over ones that are appropriately geared for the content.

Correct, but benefit is the wrong word.

False, it serves all players equally instead of giving some of them benefits for arbitrary reasons. It makes things fair.

Disagreeing != trolling. Disagreeing != being thick.

I'm in favor of fairness, plain and simple.

Your companions don't get a loot roll at all, so they aren't surpassing another player, who was present, in rolling priority.

You, however, were there, and your claim is equal to another player's who was present. That you choose to take what you won and place it on a companion is an after-the-fact issue. You were present, you rolled, you won, what you do with it at that point is your choice.

This belief that we somehow have to justify our motivations for a given loot roll to other players is a fabrication I believe arose because someone got upset that they lost a loot roll. They attempt to skew future rolls in their favor by demanding someone's choice of Need meet their own criteria of acceptability. This just isn't the case.

Here's an article referencing the EQ2 mercenary gearing:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/2/feature/5858

...and one regarding Guildwars:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mercenary_Hero

In both cases, the changes are apparently cosmetic only. In GuildWars, they wear what the player was wearing when they registered the mercenary, at least according to the article.