How do you handle loot - progression raiding

[Chewtoy]

This was mentioned later in the post, but this is for a 10/10M guild, progression oriented. Not heroic. I thought the 915 gear would give it away D:


Hello friends!

So, this tier was the first time we really saw conundrums on our council as to what is the best way to really handle the Diablo loot, I mean loot going forward. I, honestly, haven't really come up with a system I like that rewards people who put in the most effort since WF/TF became a thing on steroids.

Yes, I know that someone somewhere will always feel slighted by loot. It's the nature of the game, you want to feel your effort rewarded, but I'm crowd sourcing best practices for people that have done this a while.


How we currently handle it
Don't get me wrong, I think the Diablo loot system fucking sucks. I get it, it's supposed to breathe life into farming because you don't know when that one item might drop at a really high ilvl. But, It destroys the logistical value of trying to gear your best performers who put in the work because it used to just be ok, we need x numbers of this trinket to drop so everyone gets one and we're awesome. Hierarchy of who uses it the best, it drops give it to them. Easy.

Now you have to factor in ilvl, sockets, etc. You also get to a threshold where ok everyone has that base drop of x item, no one has gotten anything for weeks as it constantly drops at that level, it final drops big dick 925 with socket...now what >.> Or a spread of, everyone has at least 905, a 915 drops, do you give it to the better performer with a 910, or the guy with a 905 but raid logs and does one M+ a week? Yuck.

Our approach has historically been that 3 officers have a vote on loot, I have veto power if I really feel like we got it wrong. We also add another 4 raiders to loot council and they have a vote as well. They're tasked with trying to spread loot out fairly to everyone, putting in as to what roles need more love (like if we're behind on dps checks), performance of others, etc. We do it this way to curve some of the, officers are just gearing their friends mentality, but we may be adding more officers next tier we'll see.

We have the following RCLootCouncil buttons of - BIS, Main spec for it's an upgrade but not absolute BIS, Off Spec (raid useable), transmog or fun off spec, DE

Loot is usually looked at in the following order: Best in Slot, size of upgrade, performance, attendance, attitude/community impact, etc. Everyone then votes or explains why and talks through it then awards it. It slows it down, but we usually do a pretty good job of making sure everyone gets stuff regularly and it's helping us progress.

Front end of a tier we do stack top performers with 2 set/4 set for biggest DPS upgrades. We don't split, so we do have to be careful with what we dole out.


Issues we saw this tier
We used to do normal first to learn things in a relaxed fashion, but now have swapped to heroic as we want the highest base ilvl stuff on the people performing at the top.

Items that just don't drop no matter what you do - we've had one metronome drop from Anomaly and we killed it first week. People still want it, some under performers when it finally drops it's hard to justify giving it to the first guy again even if it's 925/socket

Ranged switched to alt for Gul'dan, convergence finally dropped over base ilvl. Alt only had a 870, do you award it to the alt to help kill Gul'dan or to the melee who have been waiting for a while D:

Size of upgrade - this loot council seems defaulted to that as a big determinant. For example, say a 915 drops. One raider has comparable 910 (same stats) from mythic plus, other raider has 905 with socket from raid drop. Do you give it to the 910, because next week if a 910 drops again then it'd still be an upgrade for the other, whereas if you give it to the 905 and a 910 drops then it's just a DE? What if the person with the 910 puts in a ton more effort? What if the better performer is the 905? If 910 has better performance? 905 has better attitude? There's too many variables here and you're almost forced to predict loot which is just stupid.


It almost feels like in ways you punish the people who get lucky with M+ drops or grind their ass off to get it and put in a lot of effort. For an overall raid upgrade if they both will use it just as well it's hard to give say a 915 to a 910 if someone still has a 895. Which don't get me started on M+, I've given more upgrades to people than I've gotten, and I have done nowhere near as many as some people in our group and they have it much worse. But, the person who has the 910 put in all the extra effort to have more traits, more gear and won't see another upgrade like that until it stupid TF rolls again. Whereas, you should want to encourage those people who do have the time and put in all the effort. But on paper the 895 to 915 upgrade will produce more than a 910 to a 915.

It's tough, I don't really have a solution so I'm interested in hearing all kinds of thoughts and approaches!

[Tech614]

Unless you're at the bleeding edge it's not worth putting that much thought or effort into loot at all.

Best thing I ever did as a RL was stop giving a crap about loot and put it on personal at the start of legion. If you're not world top 100 it really doesn't matter who you're giving loot to, save yourself the drama. It instantly made raiding 10x more enjoyable, and we have progressed at the same rate as in WoD.

[Teroch]

The only times we didn't have people complaining about loot were when it was on personal. Even then, people still bitch because Jimmy already has a 905 and personal awarded him a 925 of the same item and he can't trade it even if he wants to but he doesn't want to anyway but Johnny really needs it and has been trying for it every week. Still, personal was the least amount of drama because at least it can be blamed on the game and anything equal or lower ilvl is still gonna be traded around anyway.

The titanforge system is trash in the context of raiding, at least in the current iteration. Our entire raid group agrees that normal should not TF up to heroic, heroic shouldn't TF to mythic, and mythic should be capped at +10 as well. This is even coming from people that have greatly benefited from the system. I don't want to feel penalized on a tier boss (one of the few instances where we would master loot in case just a couple people still needed a tier token) because I got lucky on heroic. Sure my heroic piece is 5 ilvls lower than mythic, but that was a lucky roll. The mythic piece is guaranteed to be 5 ilvls higher with a higher base to TF from. Well, sorry, Jimmy has the base ilvl heroic version, he gets the mythic token by default. Oh, what's that, you have the base mythic ilvl but someone brought an alt on your token this week? Well, there goes your chance at rolling for chance at TF. I'm sure you'll feel great when that alt takes the token you couldn't even roll on and gets a 920+socket. Fair and balanced.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Personal loot is the best way to go. Completely based on luck, drama free, and bosses actually drop more items that way. People can just trade whatever they don't need.

[Deleted]

just give all loot to the best DPSs and it's done. Healers and tanks don't need too much gear to work.

[Queen of Hamsters]

We use an addon which gives everyone the same chance.

Save for being a world rank guild, I fail to see why it'd have to be so dramatic.

[Jotaux]

We use loot council. Arguments can be made about its effectiveness and potential biases but it works well enough for us.

[chronia]

I don't see any value in Loot council or DKP anymore unless your raiding at the bleeding edge of progression. If i see sometimes what a hassle the loot is on streams of Rank +-50 to Rank +-200 and it causing drama sometimes even at those points i'm happy we just use personal and pass loot around when not needed.

Now ofc if your in a bleeding edge guild that does split runs and stuff, then yeah Loot council is the way to go probably, but then probably it also wouldn't have to be asked here on how to use it.

[Deleted]

Yes, I know that someone somewhere will always feel slighted by loot. It's the nature of the game, you want to feel your effort rewarded, but I'm crowd sourcing best practices for people that have done this a while.

EPGP is the most drama-free loot system I've experience, except for Personal Loot. The system is pretty clear cut, no Buts or Maybes, it is what it is. Others may have issues with it, I haven't.

[Kuruption]

It really depends on the people you have in the guild. I've seen people get mad at any looting method just because they're selfish assholes.

My guild raided with another guild to be able to do mythic (it didn't last long), and first, their side was mad because we were doing personal, then we tried group loot, then EPGP. It really didn't matter what we did, they had people who'd bitch about everything. Someone even got mad about offspec gear, which was the final straw that ended the merge because I was told to "Man up" by the guy who was bitching about offspec loot after I told him the fact he's worried about offspec loot is just embarrassing (he was one of the worst players I've had the chance to play with).

If you have everyone on the same page, then it's a piece of cake. But man, when you have a couple of people who just care about loot, it makes it a shitty experience.

If you're doing heroic, I'd just do personal and call it good.

[jayheals]

They need to make personal loot drop tier tokens instead of specific class tier pieces, then the system would be pretty solid.

[potis]

Loot depends on how childish are the people in the guild or how "OP" the loot is for certain specs.

As example, if you gave a Draught of Souls to anyone else than a Warrior at the start you failed as a loot council/raid leader.

Same with CoF.

Especially since you already compared your "Top DPS" that should get the upgrade but you know the other ones will cry about it means you have stability issues in the sense of people are either not trying enough, or dont know they are not trying enough

Since you are barely doing HC as it seems, i would set it personal and let people trade when they dont need something.

No drama, loot eventually comes.

[Dilemma90]

LOL to people saying "Loot doesn't matter"

good luck progressing prior to patch buffs and nerfs.

OP has the idea.

How does this piece help the guild, is the player worthy, attendance, attitude, how much have they gotton. (RC shows this)

those are the main aspects.

[Emerald Archer]

If you're a mythic raiding team, give it to whoever it's the biggest upgrade for, whatever will make your team as a whole, stronger.

If you're a casual mythic raiding team (currently 7/10M or lower) Give it to whoever it's the biggest upgrade for, leaning against the few trash players you likely have (If it's like metronome up from a shitty stat stick for a ranged dps that's trash, and a metronome to metronome 10ilvl upgrade on your best player, obviously give it to the shitty ranged)

If you're a heroic raiding guild, or trash mythic raiding team (currently 3/10M or lower) Just run EPGP. And do tier in a new raid by loot council.

[Aoyi]

Personal loot is just the best way to go if you aren't a bleeding edge group. Honestly, its not worth the headache anymore. People can get compareable loot running mythic+ now anyway, so other than tier, its not really as big of a deal. I've done loot council. I've done DKP. I've done EPGP. Personal loot has just been so much better now escpecially since they've let you start trading anything that isn't an item level upgrade.

[hulkgor]

I also have to chime in against the 'loot doesn't matter if you're not bleeding edge' crowd.

It actually does, a bunch. Take Nighthold for instance, if you just randomly spread loot, or left it to chance, chances are you got stuck at 3/10M hitting the enrage timer on Krosus over and over again. Or tichondrius... or Augurs....

Now.. if you just take your time, don't care about progress at all and are just in it for the ride, waiting for nerfs to roll in and finally being able to kill the boss? Sure, fuck loot, and have it at personal. Thousands of guilds got stuck at 3/10 before the nerfs, now i understand why

I think Loot Council is the best loot distribution format in theory... but sadly i think most WoW players are childing and greedy, prone to whine and cry on the first 'wrong decision' in their eyes... so i'll just avoid it as the plague. I've seen the most chill and dedicated player, with years on a guild, just have a meltdown because item X didn't go for them for some arbitrary reason. No thanks.

[Onikaroshi]

Personal loot is just the best way to go if you aren't a bleeding edge group. Honestly, its not worth the headache anymore. People can get compareable loot running mythic+ now anyway, so other than tier, its not really as big of a deal. I've done loot council. I've done DKP. I've done EPGP. Personal loot has just been so much better now escpecially since they've let you start trading anything that isn't an item level upgrade.

Personal loot is god awful for tier bosses though, it drops by CLASS not token so it already limits it especially if your only Warlock gets the same tier piece 12 times. On top of that tier is handled weird, you have to have a tier piece at the ilvl of or higher to trade, not just any piece.

[Stacyrect]

I take what I want. Fuck those other assholes

[Fafnar]

Didn't Blizz set it up so Personal drops MORE LOOT on average than any other system?

Why wouldn't you do that? More loot = raid team gets better faster, on average.

Giving to "top performers" just funnels everything that way for the whole expansion -- I get more gear cause I've got more gear so I perform better than everybody else so I get more gear cause I've got more gear so I perform better...

[Arrent]

We use a loot council. I like it.