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

[clevin]

Meh. good points raised above, but I look at it this way. The purpose of gear in a raid is twofold - to reward players and to make the raid as a group more powerful. Thus, what you want to do is to be fair to the players who are contributing by showing up regularly but you also want to make sure that the gear is distributed in such a way as to help the raid overall. For this reason it's usually a bad idea to let people gear out a toon then sit it and bring in another toon. You've just sat a bunch of gear power.

I've always used one of two loot systems and they've worked fine both to make sure you're gearing the raid and being fair.

System 1: For static groups with high attendance (so 10-12 people for a 10 man, 25-27 people in a 25 man), roll, MS before OS. If someone's won something that night they get last priority on items for the rest of that run if another item for them drops AND if someone else in the raid can use it. The latter rule makes sure that one person can't get super lucky and win all of the items if there are others in the raid who can use them. Obviously this isn't an issue if only one person in the raid can use an item.

System 2: For groups with more people rotating in and out, EPGP with decay. This rewards people who attend most of the time over those who attend sporadically which I feel is only right. However, it gives the latter people fair chances at loot. The decay prevents someone from running a lot, not taking loot, then coming back after 2 months off and grabbing lots of loot from the people who've been there more often (which will feel unfair to the latter). It also acts as an incentive to spend GP on gear vs banking it for something off an endboss (which would mean that the raider is passing on upgrades and thus not helping the raid become more powerful).

Ultimately, if your raiders don't feel your system is fair, you're about to fuck things up. It doesn't matter that your officers love it if the people who raid hate it (and it very much doesn't matter what non-raiding officers think).

[Manataurus]

For clarification, I'm an officer, and I personally agree very much so with this system, but I'm weary of the fact that some other raiders think they're being cheated.


This system was chosen for two reasons:

* Making sure progression remains the largest priority for the guild by ensuring upgrades make the largest possible difference
* The Priority Rating system helps counteract under geared/newer players getting ALL the loot, this rewards better players by still giving them a chance to attain loot

The biggest complaints here are:

* Better players are being rewarded the least
* BiS gear is being ignored entirely

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.

So because I may have a lower IL than this other guy means that he's a better player than me? Maybe I just have shitty luck for drops? Or my loot pool on the bosses we've downed already is smaller than his and he's benefitted from it? Or RNG is a bitch? Also, how is BIS being ignored? It's not being prioritized, sure, but I don't see it being ignored at all.

[Drairon]

I have already seen a lot of debate about "which is the most efficient way to gear a raid" and I'm not convinced at all that giving loot to the people who are the less geared is the right way to do, not convinced at all.

I sort of agree with this. Random Blizz decisions can affect it like back during DS, it was best to give Tanks first priority on Tier pieces because of how their 4pc worked.

[clevin]

If you're in a 10 man, there should be no reason for a complicated loot system. DKP,EPGP, even loot council isn't really needed in 10mans.


For us; we kill the boss and move on to trash. Everyone can see the loot since its left on need/greed. People who 'need' a piece of gear talk it out, and agree on who should get it. Sometimes is based on "I got something, so yes you can have this", or "this is BiS for me, what about you?"

The only issue with this is that it can slow the raid. Depends on who's evaluating loot, but if it's the two tanks you can't necessarily move on. That's why I like rolls (if using EPGP rolls indicate interest, not winning). People roll, high roll wins. If the winner says "hey, Clev, what X do you have - this is a smallish upgrade for me?" we can trade loot.

[Annarion]

I understand the thinking, but honestly I think EP/GP is the best system. Zero sum just makes the most sense.

[ocis]

If you're really valuing progression then you need to stop relying on some complicated math formula to automate the loot for you and simply do loot council. By all means, use those rules as a guideline to help make your decision, but be aware that ilvl doesn't always trump things like BiS or set bonuses. If you truly want your loot distribution to be effective you need to be able to use your brains and make the decisions yourselves, which can require a little more research into things like how effective trinkets and tier bonuses are for all specs. Also, if all your raiders are truly looking out for progression, they'll be smart enough to talk it out for themselves or trust the council to decide in the end. If you can't trust your raiders or your loot council, then you are going to have drama problems and uhappy people no loot rules can fix.

[endersblade]

My guild used that back in Vanilla, and everybody loved it. It upgrades the raid more as a whole, rather than completely gearing up a handful of people. We didn't use DKP, or loot council, or anything like that. If a piece dropped, everybody who wanted it would link what they had in that respective slot, and whoever was the 'weakest link' got the gear. We had a few times where it was down to just minor upgrades between people, and it did step on a few toes sometimes because someone thought their minor upgrade was more important, but overall the system worked out really well. We didn't have a single person drop from our guild because of how loot was distributed; as a matter of fact, we had people from other guilds wanting to join our raids because they had a better chance at loot lol.

[Deadraline]

We usually just rolled. If a particular item was someones BiS piece then we always did our best to give them the piece of gear since it meant they wouldn't be replacing it anytime soon and it helped with progression. If you are raiding in a 10 man setting most people only roll against one maybe 2 people (outside of tier tokens) so loot really shouldn't be a problem. Most times when I get a piece of loot and I have say the LFR version perhaps or even the flex version and I notice someone else that can use the piece is still wearing something from the previous raid tier then I will give them the piece since it will obviously be a huge boost for the group vs. a slight boost for the group. Same goes for them, if someone gets a piece that I could use due to bad luck with RNG they typically give me the loot.

People worry too much about loot in this game and worry they won't get "all their pieces" when reality is most raiding guilds kill the bosses so many times they end up disenchanting all loot half-way through the raid tier because no one even needs the upgrades anymore from any of the bosses aside from the last 2 bosses.

I feel most loot systems are not needed in 10 man situations. In 25 man I can see perhaps putting a limit and ensuring only people who use that gear as BiS should roll and then perhaps distributing it to whoever needs it the most on occasion. But I also feel trying to distribute loot evenly all the time can cause more problems and playing good should result in more gear for those players (since you should gear the people who actually stay alive in the fight first vs. people who ALWAYS die during that "one tough" mechanic). Gearing your good players in 25 man encourages others to stay alive and in that case a loot council is a fairly good solution.

I have been in charge of plenty 10 and 25 man teams and never had a problem with loot distribution. Most of the players on my teams also understood the importance of passing on gear that was a better upgrade for another member of the team and things were smooth. I would suggest talking to your guild about their attitudes towards loot and reminding them that they are all on a team and sometimes the best way to strengthen the team is to ensure you don't constantly give the gear to the same person and on occasion that person may need to pass it on to another member so you can progress. Especially when it comes to BiS pieces.

[Spphy]

Our 10 man guild use a loot system called KSK which is basicly a priority list of who last got loot for tokens and non tokens lists. You have to bid for items you want, and if you are highest on the list of the bidders, you get the item and goes to the bottom of the list, it works really well as people give other people items that is a minor upgrade and not BiS/BiS before heroic content and it overall gives a nicer experience. It really depends on the raid itself ofc, we talk a lot individually about who would get the biggest benefits as we know eachother and have raided together for quite some time, so we're happy to trade items to eachother because it is more beneficial that say, our tank gets the tier token instead of our healer as our tank will get his 4 set instead of our healers gets a minor upgrade from 540 to 553 that isn't a bis loot.
Overall it is quite similar to the system you have set up but not quite.

[Dole4011]

I'm in a 10m guild. When gear drops that more than 1 person needs, whoever needs it rolls. Sometimes, they'll see what everyone else has and yield if it's a major upgrade for someone else.

If you're trying to prioritize raid > individual, this plan isn't that neat because upgrades aren't that neat. You're oversimplifying by making it a matter merely of ilvl. A stronger player with a stronger spec may net more dps from a smaller ilvl improvement than someone else, for instance.

Furthermore, if you're talking tokens, you have to consider the value of set bonuses.

And also, you should generally be prioritizing gearing the dps above the tanks and the tanks above the healers.

That being said, I don't think it's worth it. The people in your group with the best gear have likely put in the most effort and time. I don't think they should be penalized because someone else isn't geared that much.

9 times out of 10, you downing a new boss will be more about getting the fight straight than optimizing gear distribution. I prefer looting that keeps individuals happy (based on perceived fairness) over looting that theoretically might optimize your raid a wee bit more.

[clevin]

There's one other issue with doing a weakest link system... doing things outside of the raid to improve your gear HURTS YOU.

If you're running normals... why would someone run SoO LFR or Flex to get gear? If they have a 522 ToT piece and replace it with a 528 LFR or 540 Flex piece they're hurting their odds of getting the 553 normal piece. To add insult to injury, the person who doesn't bother to gear up at all outside of the main raid has a better chance at getting gear.

Read that again. You're actually punishing people who take the initiative to get better outside of your raid and rewarding the people who slack. Gee, why might raiders be upset with this...

[NeverStop]

To all progression guilds, gear is a tool not a reward. You get gear so the raid can kill more bosses.

[Hottie4Hire]

Use EPGP. You can modify it with common sense.

[Belloc]

Sounds like... loot council.

[Deleted]

Not going to lie, I couldn't be bothered to read the system OP presented. When that happens the obvious thing to me is that it's convoluted as hell.

Are you a 25man guild? Use EPGP.

Are you a 10man guild? Use council/common sense. We just use group loot in our guild and everyone helps each other out. It should be obvious that if your Mage has a T14 trinket and your Priest has a T16 trinket, he should pass the Heroic T16 trinket to your Mage...

[Valech]

Wow, actually reminds me of the days when we used to track attendance and still had dkp.

Mate, I´m sure someone else in this thread has already mentioned this, but try to find yourself a guild where the system of lootdistribution is not actually harder then the mechanics you had to know to kill the boss who actually dropped that loot. I´m in a very laid back 3-days-a-week guild and we never have issues with loot. You roll on what you need, you pass on everything you don´t. And if you feel like that other dude who shares a token with you had a bit too much bad luck recently, you trade him that token. Might work because we have a quite small group (14 people) but never caused trouble at all.

[Adhemar]

You're basically saying to your guildmates: "If you want more loot in NM, don't run LFR/Flex at all."
We thought of using this kind of system during ToT, but that appeared like a huge flaw.

I have already seen a lot of debate about "which is the most efficient way to gear a raid" and I'm not convinced at all that giving loot to the people who are the less geared is the right way to do, not convinced at all.

Basically, if there was a function from ilvl to actual dps, it would probably look like an exponent or at least a power function, meaning that even if it's a bigger upgrade in ilvl for the less geared, it may be a bigger dps upgrade for the other player.

The first criticism above is very valid, and there are several ways raiders could abuse this system (like collecting "priority points" for higher item level pieces they don't actually want when they know they will be given to someone else). For those reasons, I would strongly advise you not to use a system like this.

However, the second criticism is less valid. Yes, the relationship between damage output and gear is logarithmic. If you have two people with 522 weapons and one has an average item level of 530 while the other is at 510 and a better weapon drops, it will most likely be a higher output increase for the raid if you give it to the better geared individual, because stats scale from each other, more haste means more frequent crits and more hits that scale from your primary stats and more primary stats mean each crit hits harder, etc. The basic idea here is that the value of each stat tends to increase on a curve as you increase other stats (DPS deltas from 522 gear to 553 gear are bigger than the deltas from 463 gear to 496 gear, even though the second upgrade was a bigger increase in item level). However, if you have someone with a 522 weapon and someone with a 496 weapon and a 553 weapon drops, it is likely going to be better (for the raid) to give it to the individual with the 496 because the delta between them is greater. This will vary with every single case and would be very difficult to encapsulate into a static rule set.

I advocate assigning loot by a common sense application of RNG and team cooperation (RNG decides who wins, in my raid, but the winner may opt to pass the item to the next highest roll and thus my entire raid has become a "loot council"). However, this relies on having a consistent roster and will likely make your raid team dislike anyone who leaves.

[Spoonman]

I didnt read it all way but it sounds complicated to me

"For us; we kill the boss and move on to trash. Everyone can see the loot since its left on need/greed. People who 'need' a piece of gear talk it out, and agree on who should get it. Sometimes is based on "I got something, so yes you can have this", or "this is BiS for me, what about you?" "

Basicly what were doing in my guild aswell, but our core has played together for quite some time now

[Kalibel]

This seems rather complicated and abit time consuming if there's no in built addon to speed up the loot process.

Also, based on your explanation of the system, would a new raider that is less geared than the rest of the raiders join the raid and essentially win most of the loot? What is preventing that raider from moving to another guild after gearing up significantly from a few raids with you.

Your example only shows two people vying for that loot. In a 25 man raid, it could be up to 5-10 people vying for that one loot. Does that mean you would have to manually calculate and add priority rating to each and every raider who did not win that item? This seems to slow down the whole raid quite abit especially when there isn't much trash in between some of the bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar.

As one of the other posters has said before, this system kinda shafts players who are currently using items of higher ilvl but bad/non-ideal secondary stats because it is a huge upgrade from their other item.

This also promotes the idea of people holding out on upgrades to have a much higher chance at gaining priority rating and chance at their ideal items, though this seems to be quite common with most other loot systems.


TLDR: Interesting loot system that could do with a few tweaks to it. Might be too much of a hassle without an inbuilt addon to help with it.

[Deleted]

Your raid team needs to learn to share.

Pretty much this. We've always had a loot council consisting of our GM and myself. But rarely do we actually need to make a decision, cause people will know, who benefits more from it. If your raiders can't be fair and pass a minor upgrade that will be a big upgrade for someone else, I'd consider teaching them how progression is done best tbh.