I’ve been discussing this with Blizzard the past two days. They’ve not acknowledged that this is a Loot Specialization “feature”. They suggested it was an Add-on bug, instead, which is incredibly unlikely.
I had this happen twice on my Resto Shaman yesterday with Epic cloth items. Eye of Flame and Circle of Flame. Both have somewhat ambiguous stats but are useful for any Resto or Ele Shaman. Both were won by Warlocks because other Need rolls came up blank.
I actually suggested this might be some kind of hidden loot priority function, but they did not respond to that. If this were the case, I do find it concerning that just because you’re a cloth caster, you can roll Need on any Epic BoE and win by default. It’s equally troubling that I can’t win cloth items that are good for my Shaman just because they’re not Leather or Mail items. There is very little in the way of good Leather/Mail healing/caster gear until 60+.
There is another thread on the topic here:
[MOP Classic] Need Rolls are not registering - #5 by Ikia-kelthuzad..