In previous expansions I do remember classes wearing armor that was outside what they usually use because it provided better stats. Like a pally putting on leather for better stats for healing. That was when you did not loose that due to it being the wrong armor class like in retail now.
Either way it is not a violation of the rules for rolling need on something. Social rules could be but since everything is cross realm it does not matter so much.
The pop culture example of that is Leeroy Jenkins wanting Devout Shoulders (cloth Priest Dungeon Set 1).
It happened because it could make sense and because it wasn’t penalized by the game like it came to be.
Depends on the level in Cata Classic which I’m assuming this is it makes no difference until lvl 50, and if its classic era or SOM it makes zero difference as mastery doesn’t exist and alot of cloth was better because leather, mail, and plate int pieces were terribly itemized, and the proper response if this is Cata classic and the group is genuinely upset is vote to kick, which I’ve used once when at 85 a pally rolled on a mail agility belt from H VP, to get the ilvl of a 346 instead of his 333 plate belt, but that is just being a bad player and everyone else agreed and we kicked him, but your’s isn’t that
IF that were an actionable offense Id have to wonder about the sanity of EVERYONE involved in the process at Blizzard, lol
Yeah that’s the only part of that video that made sense (since after all it was a staged/parody video where they intentionally wiped by doing everything wrong). But cloth shoulders for a holy paladin back in vanilla would’ve been an absolutely viable option.