Alright, I'm going to take one last poke at "this s**t again", simply to order my thoughts, and because, throughout the gzillion threads that already exist on the subject, there's been an underlying theme of conversion. It's almost invisible, but it's there, and I'm going to encourage it one last time, because it's worth it, to try and take this source of drama out behind the woodshed to gun it down once and for all.

I'm speaking, of course, about the cross server "need before greed".

If you can't handle one more discussion about this, fine, move on, but I really think this is worth re-itterating.

WoW is based, in one vein anyway, on a simple principal that time spent will earn you rewards. I call it "spend time, and win". For a company selling time, I'd call that a pretty sound business model. Whether that time is spent in PVE or PVP, there is a hardcoded degree of certainty that your time will net you *something* for the investment, and the further blizzard can assure this, the more they can hard-code it, they have proven time and time again, that they will, and they should.

Hard coding means something objective, out of the realm of community centric social stigma and "unwritten rules". The more they can work to hardcode these rules, they will, and can you really fault them?

As I understand it (and this is coming from a guy for whom "raid is a four letter word") raid guilds often default to a point based system of loot allocation. You attend, you rack up points, item drops, you spend. As I understand it, involving randomness in raid looting is for "amateurs and PUGs". Ok, that's raiding, and with week long lockouts, I can sympathize with this ethic. You want that ethic of "spend time, and win" to bridge into raiding, and that's totally understandable. But raids have a week long lockout, they also drop the apex of PVE loot. These elements make them hard to hardcode the fairness in their loot allocation. They require you to organize yourselves and trust the guild DKP (or whatever they are calling it now) database. That database is objective, it's inhuman, it's unbiased.

Looking one step down to heroics, Blizzard has implemented something objective and unbiased. The new NBG is the closest thing we will see to a perfect PVE "spend time, and win" engine. The problem is, the community is still, in a large part, rebelling against having their power over each other taken from them. By power, I mean the status quo that has ruled the game in this vein for five years. The little socially "accepted" rules that govern who gets to roll on what. Guess what, for content "one step down" from raiding, it is not in Blizzard's (or your) best interest for the subjectively motivated community to have that power, so they took it away, and good on'em for it, honestly.

With dual spec in play, and with Blizzard purposely dodging the pitchfork bearing lynchmobs screaming for the "class, not role" based NBG to to include filters to loot rights for the role being filled at the time of the drop (honestly people, do you really think Blizzard is incapable of flipping that switch if they wanted it flipped?) it is time for us all to move on to a new understanding.

If you are after a drop in a five man instance, follow these steps:

1) Look up the drop rate, if you are thus inclined
2) divide that number by five

That spectrum between those two numbers is your true drop rate. The chance of the item dropping, modified by the number of people that could potentially roll on it. There are very few scenarios, thanks to the purposeful group disparity coded into the system, where five people will roll need on the same item. Blizzard lines up four degrees of RNG in getting you your loot. First, they randomize your group, then they randomize your instance, then they randomize what drops, and finally, they randomize your loot roll. Heck, sometimes they randomize the boss you face! You can circumvent most of these factors by recruiting specifically and running certain instances, but if you go full random, you are disclaiming acceptance of all of these variables. In short: you have (and, in this context, should have) no power over your or anyone else's ability to roll on loot. Yes, you can, will and should "throw down" next to those that want the same things as you, but that's where it ends. Yes, you can bring a friend and stack the deck, but cheeky moves like that are EXACTLY why this hardcoded random fairness is in place. No one, and I mean no one has the power to deny you that 20% guarantee once the boss goes down. That's your "spend time and win" carrot on a stick, unbiased and fair.

So don't waste your time discussing who's rolling on what, don't ask a PUG for "dibs, or I walk", that's not the game we're playing anymore. The game we are playing has hardcoded you a 20% guarantee. If you don't like that, bring friends or guildies. My main characters are a tank and a healer, I only do 5-man content, they were a "dibs run" for me for years, and I am ecstatic about this new status quo, because now, through dual spec, I can help gear other potential tanks and healers, (the DPS'ers next to me) and not have to always tank or heal just to group! That's awesome!

The certainty of DKP will never exist in the tier before raiding. Yes, thats a lot of randomness, but I'll take that any day over the clearly divided, indecisive and often humanly corrupt subjectivity that rears its head here and everywhere when it comes to loot discussions. The biased social empowerment is gone, in random heroics it is dead and buried, long live hardcoded fairness, so throw down, spend time, and win.

Good luck, have fun, and if you're still here, thank you for reading.