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!