You’re probably right, in fact I think you are right, and I don’t like it. It’s a crap design decision and we have no idea “how” having a class with an off spec with more equippable weapon choices affects another spec with less and thus what the bias in the system is, among many other things.
However, given that I have a Monk with a 370 weapon, Hunter…370 Weapon, Ally DH I just made…385 weapon and 370 off hand, all of which I ALSO get off spec items, but much less frequently despite a fraction of the play time, and yet I get NOTHING BUT off spec items on my Guardian Druid, how do I know the loot tables/rolling process isn’t broken because some sort of basic number transcription error, as in a bug DESPITE it being CLASS based. Everyone just assumes “well it’s random and class based so no bug here”, how do we know that?
Ok let me put this another way, just to see if it puts the seed in a developer’s head.
Assuming this is NOT a bug, and personally I think it is, and we have equal chances at any given weapon item, because neither feral nor guardian can duel wield (unlike other classes) AND we can’t use 2H Swords OR 2H Axes here’s how the loot table would be populated for a CLASS:
2H AGI Mace
2H AGI Polearm
2H INT Mace
2H INT Polearm
1H INT Mace
1H INT Dagger
1H INT Off Hand (could be many types potentially)
1H INT Fist Weapon
So that’s a maximum 2 to 8 ratio of weapons I CAN use as Guardian or Feral, or a 25 percent chance to get what I actually need for my class and SPEC and a 75% chance to get something I can’t use, assuming equal weighting.
Despite this potentially garbage loot method and how biased it is towards classes that have a more equal distribution of equippable items and similar stat priorities across specs, even with the 75% (potential) chance of getting an INT item, the combined probability of getting the ACTUAL items I’ve gotten from caches, assuming each item INT represents a 3/4 chance of getting “something”, for ALL INT items, and not a single AGI item, is 3/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 which is 81/256…not impossible, but certainly biased compared to my 1/4 chance of getting just ONE AGI item.
This is of course assuming that AGI Maces exist, because I’ve never seen one, only polearms, so if they didn’t add an AGI Mace to the loot table… even more ugh.
Meanwhile, the two specs I play on my main (Guardian and Feral) are still considered mediocre at best in the meta, and I can’t get an upgrade to my weapon since early October, despite about many TIMES more gameplay time vs. my alts, some of which I barely play (Ally DH) yet are equally or better geared despite never raiding and barely doing M+, my DH hasn’t even done a Mythic dungeon.
So at the very least it’s a randomly generated craptastic gameplay experience because “well reasons and randomness”.