1. lordofthefries
   September 24th, 2009 - 13:23

   Wow.

   We’re in the process of trying to gear up folks that have come up in the ranks since the summer slump, and I happen to be one of those folks. Our loot rules are pretty simple… you /roll if you can use it for your mainspec. If you win something, you can’t roll again unless… well, no one needs it or the other people that COULD use it want it. There’s a pretty informal loot council, too. Officers will ask what are you using now, etc., and then help if there’s a dispute. Really straightforward… but if the raid has some bent class combinations, it means some people get a lot of upgrades. For instance, I got 4. Last night. 2 pieces for each spec.

   Let that sink in.

   Now, yes, I can use them, and yes I equipped the ones for the role I was fulfilling at the time… but lord. 4? Even I felt bad for that. It just seems to highlight the weird intricacies that are inherent to loot. Nothing as screwed up as the one you describe, but anyone that says loot is easy to handle is a liar.

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   • Elleiras
     September 24th, 2009 - 13:33

     We handle loot in 10’s that way, actually. It works really for a small group of players who are capable of making intelligent loot decisions — and our 10-man definitely qualifies. (There’s actually a lot of “Oh, hey, I won this item but I think you could benefit from it more. Open trade please. ” going on in those.)

     I didn’t mean to ignore your DM on Twitter, btw. I’m sorry if it seemed that way. I only log in intermittently (usually on breaks at work) via my cell phone, so I didn’t see the message right away … and then I assumed you were the other guy who e-mailed me at my altadin.com address. I realize now that wasn’t the case.

     … but it seems like you found a good group to raid with, so good for you!

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     • Forreststump
       September 25th, 2009 - 05:43

       Yeah… I’m probably “that guy”. /snicker

       And WTF is “CommentLuv”? Some kind of e-porn? XD

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       • Elleiras
         September 25th, 2009 - 05:51

         It’s the plug-in that goes out and fetches information about a commenter’s blog and creates a link to a recent post. I’m not sure what that Threadless Tshirt Giveaway thing is about, though … /pokes it with a stick

         Or what a threadles t-shirt is, come to think of it.

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         • Forreststump
           September 25th, 2009 - 06:14

           Threadless t-shirt inspired only one thought: “Don’t ask, don’t tell”

           I don’t think I WANT to know.

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     • lordofthefries
       September 25th, 2009 - 08:52

       Now, however… I have to decide what to do with my weapon. I’m retiring my Titansteel Bonecrusher… but I have 3 choices. I got the tankard ‘o terror, aledar’s hammer, and the kinetic ripper. I simmed out out my options, and it looks like the combination of Hammer MH and ToT OH is winning out… even though I got the Kinetic ripper the other day (though I got it because the only other person that could use it had it).

       No worries. Everyone’s on twitter at different times. I’m usually on during the day, but rarely at night.

       Yeah, we’ve got a good group… when we raid. We one shotted 10 man Koralon without having ever done him before. Then we hit Emalon like a ton of bricks. I got my tier 8 pants.

       Ony’s transition from phase 2 to 3 is a rough spot. We easily get through one and two, but sticking the transition has been tough.

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2. Linedan
   September 24th, 2009 - 13:34

   What he was trying isn’t being strategic about upgrades, which is what almost any loot system forces you to do (even straight /random, up to a point). He was flat gaming the system because he had tunnel vision on one particular thing (the mace) even though all the other stuff he turned down in the two weeks would probably give him more net benefit.

   I have to put in another plug for the system my raid uses, Suicide Kings. It’s very simple. You randomly seed a list of your raiders when you start using the system. When something drops, people who want it whisper the list maintainer. Highest position on the list gets the drop (called a “suicide”) and falls to the bottom of the list. That’s it. The list carries over week to week, and people not in attendance that night are frozen–so if you’re in 24th and not there and I’m in 25th, when somebody ahead of me suicides, I move up to 23rd. We keep two separate lists, one for T8/T9 tokens, and one for everything else. Mainspecs do generally get priority over offspec, but either way, it’s still a suicide that drops you to the bottom of the list. There’s no “can I have it for free” rule…even if you take something just to keep it from getting sharded, you’re at the bottom of the list.

   It’s a very simple system, no points or ratios to remember, and it’s been drama-free so far. You can bid guilt-free on anything you want…if you’re on the bottom of the list, you can bid on something, and if you get it, it means nobody else wanted it, so no worries! Of course, the overriding rule is “don’t be a doosh.”
   Linedan´s last blog ..Faction Champions: a “worthless scrub” of a fight

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   • Elleiras
     September 24th, 2009 - 13:44

     It seems to me that loot rot would be an issue with Suicide Kings, too, although the separate list for tier tokens might help alleviate some of that. Still, I can see players passing on those marginal or situational upgrades, so as not to “waste” their suicide, under SK. I suppose that’s the player’s prerogative and could happen to some extent in any loot system, but EPGP discourages hoarding with its built-in decay feature, which is the main reason I chose it.

     (That, and I’m a financial analyst. Ratios speak to me, man.)

     I’m actually really interested in Shroud Loot, since it seems like the best of both worlds.

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     • Linedan
       September 24th, 2009 - 13:56

       I’ll have to read up more on the system. We used zero-sum DKP back in the 40-man days and then went to a semi-moderated /random setup in Burning Crusade (nope, no potential for drama there, nosiree) but EPGP is one I hadn’t heard about before. The raid officers decided to try SK because frankly, nobody wanted to deal with the math of DKP again, and despite some of us having some reservations about it to start with, it’s turned out to work really well for us. I see your point about loot rot, but since I’ve never run with another raid for any extended period of time, I don’t know whether we shard any more or less than a comparable 25-man.

       Your point about working with rather than against the group is the key takeaway, btw. Some people get locked into loot being some sort of competition among the raid–”I have to be the best-geared warrior” and all that. A little bit of that can be good, but too much of it causes drama llamas to magically appear. And those fuzzy so-and-sos cause problems.
       Linedan´s last blog ..Faction Champions: a “worthless scrub” of a fight

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     • Naithin
       September 24th, 2009 - 14:23

       I’ve been in a 10m guild that used Suicide Kings back in the day, and in that situation I actually really liked it. We had a slightly different system with it to Linedan though, in that we maintained more lists. I didn’t really find it any more difficult to maintain with the aid of the SK plugin. Our lists were:

       - Tokens (Main spec had priority, we allowed higher ranked people to pass on tokens they already had for mainspec)
       - Mainspec (non class specific drops, mainspec only)
       - Offspec (Used if and only if no-one could take the item as a straight up upgrade to mainspec.)
       - Farm Content (This was a planned list, would’ve been used for instance, on Naxx runs when Ulduar came out.)

       With a few rules (main one being, No Douchebaggery! ) it’s a pretty fantastic system. I could see a lot of loot rot occuring with a single list setup by requiring offspec gear to cause a suicide on the mainspec list, but seperating the two, and also taking farm content (perhaps better called previous tier content or some such, since already I would consider ToC regular mode to be farmable at least) off the list of things that will screw you over for significant upgrades, and it ceases to be a major problem.

       All this said, this is speaking from a 10m group setup. We liked it, but I don’t know how well it’d translate into 25m, we never tried that out. But as you describe things, aside from trouble with initiates as mentioned, where people are quite willing to adopt an ethos of no-doucheyness, it could work. Of course, if things are working for the most part currently, is there really even a need to change?

       I haven’t looked into or even heard about Shroud loot though, will have to do that now. I thought I was familiar with the loot systems out there!

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       • Elleiras
         September 24th, 2009 - 14:52

         Runycat has an excellent guide to Shroud Loot on her blog, if you’re curious (Link).

         It’s basically a DKP/SK hybrid. Raiders earn points, a la DKP or EPGP. When it comes time to assign loot, they have the option of bidding either “minimum” (a fixed amount determined by the guild, such as 10 points) or “shroud.” If everyone bids “minimum,” then the item is /random’d and the winner pays 10 pts. If there are shroud bids, then the bidder with the most points wins the item and pays half of their total points.

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3. Asara
   September 25th, 2009 - 05:01

   I am tempted to roll a holy pally and see if it creates any personal mental instability. I’m not a hoarder of anything except useless crap that I’ll never use again, just because I had it at-level and loved it. (i.e. Mandokir’s Sting) When I’m raiding and something drops that’s an upgrade, I’ll put my hand in for it, regardless of the reward/point system. If I get it, cool, if not, cool. My old guild ran a modified DKP system that sounds a bit like your shroud. It was designed to keep people from accumulating vast hoards of DKP. It seemed to work pretty well, too. But my hubby would always hem and haw over things that dropped, because “what if something better drops later and I won’t have enough DKP”?

   The way I see it, an upgrade is an upgrade. I won’t tunnel-vision on one particular piece, I’ll take what I can get when I can get it. If you hoard, you don’t get anything except more points that you can maybe use someday, and maybe not use at all. We ended up quitting raiding before hubby used his DKP on much of anything. So, what was the point of keeping it again?
   Asara´s last blog ..Weekend Recap

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   • Elleiras
     September 25th, 2009 - 05:55

     That’s exactly how we tell people to bid for loot. If it’s an upgrade now, it’s an upgrade; there’s no point in saving your priority for something that may or may not drop in the future.

     I’m the same way you are. I still have my entire T6 set in my alt’s guild bank because it looks so damn cool (and represents what I still seak as the peak of WoW raiding).

     And the axe that my shaman looted off of a dinosaur in Un’Goro because it was her first (useful) world epic.

     And every single red rose that Keaton has ever given me (they fill an entire alt’s inventory and bank).

     Yeah, I’m definitely a packrat. ^.^

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     • Asara
       September 25th, 2009 - 10:14

       That’s so cute! Back in the day hubby was a tailor, and he made me a white wedding dress and stuff and bought me a ring. He made himself the tux set, and we took a screenshot in IF of his poor balding human ‘lock kneeling in front of my hunter in her dress and everything. It was cute I wish I still had it, we’ve switched computers quite a few times since then, and I think it got lost in the shuffle. I still have the outfit though!
       Asara´s last blog ..Quiet on the home front

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4. Whitebeard
   September 25th, 2009 - 06:31

   I havent actually raided since I dinged 80, since school has that unfortunate habbit of breaking into my gaming schedule (seriously, I dinged like 2 days before school started) So this will be about our loot rules during TBC.

   Our guild, being quite small actually (at most, 30+ online on good days), couldnt really fit DKP in effectively, so we figured, since we raided only when we had the numbers. So we went with an informal loot distribution of “Tanks > Healers > DPS”. Everyone dies if the tank dies, everyone dies if the healer cant heal the tank, and well, dps is just there to fight the enrage timer most of the time. Upon loot drop, master looter would announce the dropped item, and ask who needs it, or greeds it (offspecs, DEs, etc). Then if there was more than one, ML would ask to see what it would replace. Then comparison of those and which one would get the most improvement would fall on the officers, and loot would be given.

   To prevent that greenie mage that just dinged to get tier tokens right away, we also took into calculation other facters, such as being a nub/jerk/muffin or not, taking effort to get gear from normals/heroics, crafted gear, not sitting in shat/og/whatever with /afk 24/7 until a raid was called, priority of raiders on trials, etc. This system, atleast for farm content, provided a more equal distribution of loot upon those who needed it. As an added rule, getting loot on one boss would decrease your odds of getting a second loot piece afterwards in that raid, unless no one else needed it.

   I remember once, we moved on to BT progression. We worked hard, looked up boss strats, planned our moves. Cursed at Supremus’ LOLcanos… Being a rogue, I looked up which piece of floor was the most comfortable to hug… And so we moved up to Mother Sharazz. Clad in resist sets, we spanked her after a few tests (and your’s truly making dust-angels on the floor tiles), and so came down to the loot. The first few times were fairly simple, first token went to the beartank, then the wartank, then our holy priest. The next time after that, oh glorious loot gods, rogue loot! the rogue/mage/something token dropped, and as an odd twist of faith, I was the only rogue present, and there was only one other mage at the moment. Rogue boots dropped (T6 look-alike) as well, And being a solid upgrade to my kara boots, I needed on them. I got them, and gleed increasingly. The token was next, and it was between me and the mage. The ML leaned towards me, as I was present on every raid, crafted enough of those damn nethercobra patches to open a luxury purse shop, and didnt get a single drop of loot for over 2 months. The mage, on the other hand, was a new addition to the guild, a week old perhaps, and though sported epix, was on and off about running other guildies in normals/heroics. I felt bad about taking both loots however, and passed on the shoulder token. ML asked if I was sure, and I confirmed.

   The next raid, that mage still had S2 shoulders on her, much to our confusion. “Why arent you wearing your tier shoulders?” we asked. “My what?” came the reply.

   For reasons that to this day elude me, this mage completely forgot about the tier token, “lost” it. I assume she didnt even know what a tier token was, and sold it for the 5g -_- I still regret passing on that.
   (wow long post)

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   • Elleiras
     September 25th, 2009 - 09:22

     Wow.

     … just wow.
     Elleiras´s last blog ..A truly [Epic] night

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5. Ambrosyne
   September 25th, 2009 - 07:33

   I was an emotionally stable healadin!

   …of course I’m not a healadin anymore, either…

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   • Elleiras
     September 25th, 2009 - 09:19

     Sure you were, Amber. /pat

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6. Zahrah
   September 27th, 2009 - 17:42

   The loss of a trophey was well worth knowing exactly what sort of person you were letting into the guild.

   He was a silly pally.

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7. Eidlhe
   September 28th, 2009 - 12:29

   I swear there are emotionally stable healadins out there. I’m one. Sorry this one didn’t work out for you, but keep trying.

   As for loot systems, we’re a small guild and do a mainspec over offspec rule. We also have a lot of the “link your gear so I can see how much of an upgrade that is for you” conversations…generally on our undergeared players. We see a lot of passes so that our undergeared players get the bigger upgrade, which leads to the team being better geared which in the long run helps everybody.

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8. Dorgol
   October 1st, 2009 - 11:46

   Sad thing is – the off tier pieces are fantastic. I’m already wearing the chest (Frozen Lakes?) and legs from ToC25, plus bracers, belt, and shield. Sidenote – it is always fun being the only Holy Paladin when new raid content is released. Of course, the side effect is that when tier pieces drop I’m usually already sitting on gear of the same ilvl and so don’t get a piece. I only ever got 2 pieces of Tier 8, and both of those in PUGs (one in a Vault run).

   Our guild uses a loot council. I don’t always agree with their decisions (2 weeks ago they gave the caster shield to a shaman (replacing his i226 shield) instead of me (to replace my i200 shield)). I was initially upset, but remember that said Shaman uses the shield in his main AND off-spec and has slightly better attendance than I do.

   Overall, it seems most of the guilds I’ve seen are switching to the council system. I guess now that gear is all over the place people are jonesing for that next epic quite as much as they were in vanilla.

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   • Elleiras
     October 1st, 2009 - 14:33

     Ironically, the guild Landron just joined uses a loot council (and is notorious for looting to friends and favorites over their run-of-the-mill members — a distinction my guild strives not to make >.<).

     I initially thought it was odd that someone who accused our officers of abusing a point-based system to make loot council-like decisions would join an actual loot council guild … but maybe some people just need to be absolved of the responsibility of “smart bidding.”

     If we had decided “Here, take these!” and not assessed a penalty in the form of Gear Points, would he have walked away a happy paladin?

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9. Gnomedolf
   October 1st, 2009 - 19:52

   The only other thing I can suggest is that if no one can use the gear except one person than just give that gear to the raider. He/She has no one to compete with any way and should the gear go to the disenchant isle of things why not just give it to him. On the other hand I do see where you are coming from. He was a fairly new member to the guild and even though 2 weeks of raiding does take some time, It is still not enough time to be able to roll on tier gear at all. Tier pieces are for consistency not sporatic periods of raiding. Thats why a DKP system (in my opinion) is one of the best system there is. Certain number of points awarded for each raid/boss, however your guild does it. Then you roll if you have the amount required to buy the gear if you win you win, if not oh well go cry some where else.

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