Starting a loot council

[Felade]

I'm looking for advice on starting a loot council for our raid. We've been doing DKP for quite a long time, but we want to switch to loot council for MoP.

[Mokal]

Don't switch it will end badly, stick with the DKP system.

[Kaleid]

Loot councils are bad for anyone not in the council.

[Captnpicard]

Wow stilll using DKP? that's crazy, personally i prefer EpGp seeing as it factors in both how geared the player is and how much effort they've put into the raid group

EDIT: but i agree with the others, a "Loot Council" sounds like a horribly idea imo

[Shamgar]

Loot councils will make a hell of a lot of drama in your guild.

[Dkitty]

I'm looking for advice on starting a loot council for our raid. We've been doing DKP for quite a long time, but we want to switch to loot council for MoP.

Have people smarter than the average WoW player on the council that are able to consider everybody's point of view and the overall best benefit to the raid. It's a tough balance to strike: keeping everybody happy and benefiting the raid to the best of your ability.

[Felade]

Wow stilll using DKP? that's crazy, personally i prefer EpGp seeing as it factors in both how geared the player is and how much effort they've put into the raid group

Its a modified DKP. We have a lot of rules to prevent hoarding and to reward attendance, basically.

[jyggen]

We used to do loot council in our guild, but since we overtime transformed into a group of friends we nowadays just go with love and common sense. If you need the item, feel free to roll, but most of the time we hear stuff like "You can take it since I out-rolled you on the gloves", "My trinket is better than yours, if you pass the next one you can take this" etc. We're a 10-man guild though, so guess it would be harder in a 25.. also you need to have a guild with the right type of people/attitude

[Xeraxis]

The only advice you need is don't start one.

[vian]

Loot councils are bad for anyone not in the council.

Lies... A council that's fair is the best thing ever....

As a transition, you can start out by having ML and the loot is FFA. Let people roll for what ever they like, but, if let's say a druid got 1 vanq token from the first boss by a roll, and he wins a second item, you and this new council decide to give it to the second highest roller.

That's how we started.

For the moment. We ask our raiders to "Pledge" by whisper when ever they are intressed in an item.

[Splatter]

We used loot council from Ulduar onwards. So long as you have fair and mature officers/leaders then it will work well. If you have greedly loot whores or people that favour their friends it will fail miserably and create huge problems within the guild. Think carefully about the quality of your guild members before opting to take this loot method.

[Xeraxis]

We used loot council from Ulduar onwards. So long as you have fair and mature officers/leaders then it will work well. If you have greedly loot whores or people that favour their friends it will fail miserably and create huge problems within the guild. Think carefully about the quality of your guild members before opting to take this loot method.

The leaders are rarely the issue. It's usually the members who feel they've been slighted, a council member has something against them, it's not fair because so and so is on the council and they are the same class, and a myriad other reasons as to why they believe they haven't been treated fairly. In all honesty if you aren't in a bleeding edge guild with members who are used to placing the team ahead of themselves your guild more than likely lacks the maturity needed to have a loot council work properly.

[Deleted]

There's nothing wrong with loot council, only the people who abuse it - see the difference?

My own guild has been using loot council since Cata and there's just the GM and myself as officer and we decide who gets what. That said, we always let those who wants an item to get a say. As in "it's a major upgrade for me" or "it's a major upgrade but I don't mind passing, if I can get X in stead".

I can see how it could be an issue for a 25 man guild, yet I know that the world rank 17 guild on my server use loot council and they are a 25 man guild. So of course it can work out, in fact we haven't had any issues with loot council. Our raiders raid to progress and kill bosses and if it benefits the raid to give X item to person A over person B, then so be it. If people would ever start making a scene about it, they will find them self removed from the raid instantly.

@ OP: I'd suggest that you keep the council members limited to a few trusted people. That you make some decisions before MoP, about how to prioritize your raid. By that I mean, gearing the tanks first for instance. Since Warlocks and Boomkins are topping the raid encounters in MoP on the Beta, you could consider prioritizing them as well.

Then I suggest that you make make it clear to your raiders, how you intend to use it. An upside to loot council, is that people actually have to explain out loud, why they want/need a certain item. Lets say that someone thinks that item X is an upgrade for class Y and then another person who plays class Y says, that's in actually not.

Again, loot council in the hands of mature people who only have the raids interest at mind is a good thing.

[Affectionate]

Corrupt Loot councils are bad for anyone not in the council.

Fixed that for you. A good loot council is ALWAYS better for a guild.


@OP:
There are several steps you can make that help maintain a fair council, my old guild used the officers (GM + 4 people [tho sometimes less if one of them wasnt in a raid]) and then 2 random raider rank members from the group (i.e. all the 'raider rank' people would do a roll at the beginning of the night, the two highest would sit on the council for that night)

As long as the GM and officers respect the opinions of the added 2 it goes over well, also helps 'expose' the workings of the loot council itself. With my old guild on more than one occasion I saw one of the added 2 mention "well I think ____ should win it because ____" and the GM and one of the officers said "oh you're right, yeah I change my vote to ____ as well"

additional: If one of the people (gm officer or raider rank) wanted an item, they wouldnt have a vote in the council for that item.

[Fmp]

Loot council works very well if you are in a serious raiding guild, but if you have used DKP for a long time it seems like it works for your guild and should stick with it imo.

[Adam Jensen]

DKP or EPGP is the way to go. Loot Council just sounds like its too easily corrupted and ends with drama.

EPGP is a great system, I think.

Yes, a loot council can be fair, or it can be corrupt.

EPGP however is systematically fair. Fairness is built into EPGP.

[Llyth]

The leaders are rarely the issue. It's usually the members who feel they've been slighted, a council member has something against them, it's not fair because so and so is on the council and they are the same class, and a myriad other reasons as to why they believe they haven't been treated fairly. In all honesty if you aren't in a bleeding edge guild with members who are used to placing the team ahead of themselves your guild more than likely lacks the maturity needed to have a loot council work properly.

A thousand times this.

However, if you make sure to have clear parameters and reasons for giving out loot, you will run in to much fewer incidents. In our guild everyone has been involved in how we decide about loot, and we haven't had a single issue as of yet.

That said, we've ran this since the start. I haven't experienced a switch myself.

[Deleted]

As 10man guild.
We just roll everything MS > OS and if someone seems to get all the loot we just trade them to others. Sometimes ofc we discuss if someone is actually in need of that piece alot more than someone else.
But when everything is on farm its free reign cause it won't matter anymore and everyone usually gets everything they want anyway before next raid hits (and if not well the next tier will drop better loot so).

As 25man guild?
Well we used to just use dkp @ ICC. Think that for a avarage guild it just does more harm to your guild than good. If you compete in top then ofc giving loot to people that make the best use of it is the best way to go.

[Deleted]

loot council is good if the players your running with are all seasoned raiders, and the people running the council truly are being fair, but what i would recommend is running a shadow DKP system that only the council sees, you dont have to stick to it, but just so you can see who hasnt had loot in a while

But to run it effectively you need to know about all the classes and what is BIS for each of your players, there is nothing else that can split up a guild faster than giving a boomkin a 5th best trinket when it is BIS for your mage etc - so do research and it should work out

[Ijanaak]

To run an effective loot council you have to have a lot of people in your guild who give a shit about progression.

You also need to be fair. Effective loot councils distribute loot in a fan shape. With the core people who show up the most and perform the best usually getting the first and most loot, then to the mid effective, then to the bench and part time guys.

People who aren't in EVERY attempt are going to understand why the top DPS guy gets more loot and first - it's for the sake of progression. They will understand that the faster the best people get the loot, the faster the guild downs the boss - and the faster the guild downs the boss, the faster everyone else gets loot.

If you are afraid your guild isn't strong or mature enough to handle this concept you can use DKP - but DKP will ALWAYS be substantially ineffective by comparison. Filled with lesser members sniping key trinkets and weapons from core people as well as what is even worse, people deliberately passing on loot that is a small upgrade for the purposes of getting weapons and trinkets over others.

To the people that say it ends badly... their guilds just are terrible, that's really the bottom line.