My guilds proposing a new loot distribution system that's causing alot of controversy

[godded]

If you switch to anything switch to a honest unbiased loot council who keeps track of its raiders and where they stand gearwise. Make decisions based on performance in raids possibly attendance level and be aware how well classes benefit from their 2ndary stats and set bonuses.

Win.

It's very hard to achieve this and usually takes some time, but anything based on numbers can be cheesed.

My guild has been using loot council for this whole expansion and honestly the main goal we wanted to achieve was for people not to pass obvious upgrades just to be able to have prio on 1 item they really want or get the heroic version earlier or whatever and we have achieved this. Upgrades drop and people roll on it and most of the time when there is like 4-5 people rolling on it, 2 will eventually pass (due to not a major upgrade) which leaves to pick between 2-3.

Note: We are a 25man guild with a roster of 34-37 people usually, so /roll just wouldn't cut it.

[Puri]

If you are in a 10 player guild and you have need for such a complicated loot system (or any loot system except reasonable rolling need/greed) I surely would consider changing the guild.

For 25 players this is a DKP system that is not based on attendence, but on loot. This is always a bad idea, especially when you usually can seperate raids into farm and progress raids.

On wednesday you have healer A and healer B online, both have 0 priority points and are equally skilled players and have the same equipment. You only need one of them, so player B gets benched. You kill 9 bosses on wednesday, healer A gets three items and 18 priority points. On thursday you need both healer A and healer B. You spend the complete evening, and finally manage to kill the next boss. A healer weapon drops, and both healer A and healer B still have the same weapon. So healer A uses one of his priority points and also gets the weapon.

So healer A earned four items and has 17 priority points left, healer B had an evening full of wipes and no item although both show the same commitment.

Or another example:
You have healer A and healer B , both have 0 priority points and are equally skilled players and have the same equipment. Healer B never has time on wednesday, healer A never has time on thursdays. So you start progressing a new encounter on wednesday with player A. You spend 4 hours wiping, and have several almost-kills. On thursday the boss dies in the second attempt. Healer C gets the weapon, healer B gets 6 priority points.

So player A worked hard for the kill and earned nothing, healer B gets rewarded for free.

Loot based distribution systems only work if all players have the same attendence, or it will create an inequality. Even time based standard dkp would be a fairer system.

[Deleted]

My GM feels that prioritising better players to get gear means that the drops are making smaller differences thus slowing down progression. BiS is being ignored because we plan on doing Heroic content eventually which means BiS normal gear will just be upgraded anyway.

I'd like to know everyone's opinion here. We're at the point where we're considering telling those players to just leave if they dislike it. I feel players should put progression above their own gear, but I dont want to tell people this if the consensus is that its wrong.

In an ideal situation (this is assuming you have a guild full of responsible raiders) all raiders would discuss amongst themselves for whom the item was a bigger upgrade and pass it. If the item was a very similar upgrade it goes to rolls. If you have received a bunch of items during the past few weeks and the other person has not you would also pass on principle.

This is how it works in my guild and I'm sure most other top end guilds. (Since loot is just a means to an end and not the goal of raiding.)

If your guild is so irresponsible that they need a fixed set of rules on how to distribute loot I already have to question their dedication to killing bosses instead of just getting loot. (Which means you will never get far.)

Assuming you are in such a guild I would advise you this: following raid mechanics and knowing how to play your class kills bosses NOT gear.


As to your system:
The main problem is that newer players have a higher chance to get items. This IS beneficial to overall raid progress. However you could run into a significant problem of gearing out trials quickly and then losing them afterwards.

Furthermore (as others have pointed out) your system lacks a compensation for benching people which is a terrible idea as you always want to maintain a larger roster than raid size.

Other than that the loot system seems fine but not superior to DKP, a good loot council or even just rolls. (So pretty much a ton of work for nothing.)

[.Nensec]

This system is not intuitive, not simple and basically requires a spreadsheet to make it work properly.

May I suggest /roll ?

[Mortal Strike]

Your system offers no incentive to people to seek other avenues of upgrading their gear, like LFR or Flex or Item Upgrades with Valor points. You are rewarding the lazy people and punishing the ones who are going out of their way to prepare for progression.

[Odina]

Ilevel is just not a good way to do things IMO. Unless it's the exact same calss / spec then you also have to consider stat priority, things like haste, hit etc caps and on and on!

Say A has a neck from LFR and B has a neck from Flex. Your system would give A the neck but for arguemnts sakle we will say that A is already over the hit cap and the neck has hit on it and now they can't shed anymore hit and that Ilevel boost is wasted in hit they can't get rid of over the cap while B has some issues hitting the hit cap due to thre other gear and getting the neck would alow them to cancel forges to hit from stats that are much more beneficial.

That was just one example to show how bad simply looking at Ilevel is! The better way is either loot council to go over things liek that or just having the raiders talk it out and figure out what the best upgrade for the raid is. Sure you wear the loot from a boss kill but it's the raids loot in principle so the raid should be able to maturely decide what would benefit them raid the most and help kill more bosses..and get more loot...and have more people happy :P

[Deleted]

I love the fact you could completely game this system by needing on evety item that drops assuming you have the better ilvl. I.E. you could amass a huge amount of "prioity" points or whatever they're called and then always win the items you actually wanted.

[Deleted]

You have a askmrrobot feature (Robocouncil, it's perhap's a premium feature) that evaluate the upgrade of a piece of loot for a whole raid, which should be better than a ilvl compare. (the build the raider is using needs to be available by default in amr though).

As said above, unless you do everything as a group (LFR, Flex, nm raids), it might drive people to avoid doing LFR and FLex on their own, to get a higher chance at normal loot

[captaincoffeecup]

Personally, I think you are asking for trouble with this system. Far too complicated imho.

We use a simple /roll first, and discuss the item if it is going to be particularly beneficial for someone in particular to have. There are times when it would be a big upgrade for one person, but a more beneficial upgrade for another so we behave like adults (which depressingly we are...) and share the loot for benefit of the team.

* Better players are being rewarded the least

This is a horrid claim. Having good or bad gear is no reflection on the standard of a player. I raided a PUG TOES a during progress and the raid leader was barely in 463 (non-upgraded) gear. No epics, nothing awseome gear wise, yet he was a phenomenal tank.

I feel players should put progression above their own gear

If you have a roster with people that are loot whores, sort out your roster before you implement a clunky and complex system that will cause more problems than it will solve.

[Kickbuttmario]

back then, my guild just did random rolls and sometimes we would be kind to one another if the other needed it. that was 10 man though, and we just cared about progression. 25 man however...

[iggie]

Everything is still DKP here in China. I would love for us to go loot council, but there is a lot of greed here still.

[adynn]

As other people have mentioned, a couple of problems with your solution;

• The negative consequences for those who run flex/lfr.
• If I were a selfish person I'd pass on minor shit like bracers all the time to game the system so I get most of the weapon/trinkets I want.
• It seems overly complicated, especially if you're a 10 man group.
• If people are against it they aren't likely to change their mind tbh.

[Alsierus]

On paper, that system seems like it would lead to faster gains in raid effectiveness. But in reality, that system is going to wreck your ability to do anything.

Unless you have a very close knit guild with a consistent roster, the system you've described is the PERFECT way to gear up new recruits and watch them bounce out to another guild. Your progression will suffer for it. I've seen it happen in three guilds so far.

Use EP/GP (effort points/gear points) with mandatory gear plans from all of your raiders. It encourages them to ensure that they know AHEAD of time what they will need, and the ability to do a regular decay of point values ensures that people who stock up on EP don't just swoop all of the gear when you start downing heroics.

[Flayrot]

Again, you haven't raided on Heroic level then, cause gearing tanks>healers>dps would never work out. I'm willing to bet that loot drama happens way more often in casual guilds, where loot is more important than actual progression. Because people want their personal advancement over the guilds progress and if that's what you want, then sure.

But in terms of progressions, it just makes zero sense to gear your dps dead last.

Agreed - the heroic content we did wasn't cutting edge. Usually at the end of a tier.

For serious progression, you can obviously gear healers and tanks after dpsers, because presumably, your dpsers are going to be somewhat more strategy oriented and won't do things like stand in the fire. For a more casual 10 or 25 man guilds, like the kind I prefer, you've got people who either don't know or care enough to follow kill orders, or who roll around in fire, so it benefits you to gear your tanks and healers better to compensate, plus the enrages aren't generally tuned as tightly as they are in heroic.

Like I said, this is just what worked for us. If we focused gear on dpsers in my guild, nothing would get done because we'd have a bunch of high ilvl dpsers laying around dead because the tanks and healers couldn't pick up their slack. We can't kick them, nor do we particularly want to - we're social after all. So it's not a question of "personal advancement", it's more of "we need to do this because even though the dpsers tend to play mediocrely, if they die/wipe too much they'll just give up and not show up."

I still think that an unbiased loot council is -probably- the best in either circumstance, casual or hardcore. You can fudge the distribution around enough to where you can use the gear to best push the guild in the direction you want, without dkp/epgp hoarders screwing things up (which I've seen, and is exasperating).

Basically, I agree 100% with you.

[tanktank]

Really overcomplicated way to loot. Some dps are better than others. They need to share. Let's say you have 2 warlocks: Wa 540 ilvl 15k higher than Wb 547 Ilvl. Warlock a will always have dibs on cloth dps loot first. The raid group knows that. When you split the loot in a retarded manner, you hinder your raid group.

[cyqu]

this is just a horrendous loot system i feel, the people in your raid group should be able to understand who gains the most from what. this is just overcomplicated and doesn't even give give the biggest upgrades to the right people if its just based of ilvl.

[Tharkkun]

Unless you have a lot of turnover you should all talk about the upgrades when they drop and give them to who benefits the most. Especially if this is a 10man raid.

This system you describe made me cross eyed reading it. Don't over complicate something and waste resources which could otherwise be used towards progressing.

[Yaargh]

Our 10-man uses Suicide Kings and it works perfectly for us, no points or book-keeping to keep track of as the KonferSuicideKings add-on tracks the list for you. Nice and simple, and since no one in our group is a loot whore people will often pass an item to someone below them who needs it more.

[ocis]

The problem for OP is that all the point or order based loot systems distribute loot based on time in raid or just distribute it evenly as possible, but what he and his GM are looking for is a loot system that distributes loot based on overall potential DPS gain. The problem with OP's proposed system is that he's making the assumption that all his raiders have the same skill level and that trinkets and set bonuses mean the same for all classes/specs. By all means, use your system to help you decide who gets what gear - but do it via loot council where only those on the council know the system. This allows for two things to happen - your raiders don't know how to rig the system in their favor and you have the power to interject if you know that the tier piece would give someone set bonus or a trinket is particularly powerful for x spec.

You're always going to need that human element when deciding what loot goes where if you want max efficiency for drops - there's no math formula out there that figures it all out for you, although the Mr. Robot feature will try its best to do so. Whether or not things go south depends on how selfish the people in the raid are - including the people handing out the loot. If you can't get past that then you won't get very far progression wise either.

[clevin]

. By all means, use your system to help you decide who gets what gear - but do it via loot council where only those on the council know the system. This allows for two things to happen - your raiders don't know how to rig the system in their favor...

Yeah, because hiding how you allocate loot builds so much trust.

and you have the power to interject if you know that the tier piece would give someone set bonus or a trinket is particularly powerful for x spec.

Most people don't know every spec in the game well enough to really know this. They might have read something somewhere, but it's generally semi-informed BS.

You're always going to need that human element when deciding what loot goes where if you want max efficiency for drops - there's no math formula out there that figures it all out for you, although the Mr. Robot feature will try its best to do so. Whether or not things go south depends on how selfish the people in the raid are - including the people handing out the loot. If you can't get past that then you won't get very far progression wise either.

And allowing person A to win the loot based on a system but still trade it allows this.

I've still not read any reason why /roll or EPGP aren't perfectly good systems. Loot council requires trust in whoever is on council and requires the loot council to genuinely know WTF they're talking about. In top end heroic guilds this is probably the case but in most guilds it's probably not the case that the council will really be that up on the various specs and classes.