How do BOP crafting material (like nether vortex) usually get distributed?

1. crafters with recipes that use them /roll, then use them at they see fit. After all, they took the time and energy to level up the profession.

2. Only give nether to ones with recipes that might help progression, so offspec take a back seat? This might rub a lot of crafters the wrong way.

3. have people use their DKP just like other drops? So if a DPS warrior wants Red Belt of Battle, which has equal ilevel with boss drop; he could spend equivalent to DKP a boss drop on the next 2 vortex, a crafter then gets those 2 vortex and craft the belt for him?

For Nether Vortexes, just give them out based on usage. For us, we did weapons first and now that all the weapons are complete we're using them on crafted armor. We didn't charge DKP because of the amount that you get.

We charge DKP, but it's a paltry amount (amounts to 1/5 of a set piece for each vortex), so if you need 2 vortices for your piece, you're paying 40% of what it would cost to fill that slot with a dropped item (fixed DKP price system).

BTW, I believe this topic was covered a few months ago in another thread.

Each time a vortex drops and there aren't any ongoing projects (or the people with projects are out of the raid), we just bid on it like a regular item. We use a points per hour auction system (no negatives, few exceptions) and whoever wins declares what item they're making and which crafter should pick it up.

The crafters are usually regular raid members as well, so I don't think we've yet had a moment where a vortex dropped and the person doing the actual crafting wasn't present.

We give it to highest DKP (or, if the item is BoE, to the person who can craft an item for the person with highest DKP) for no cost. We haven't gotten many patterns, so most of ours have gone to Belts of Natural Fury being sold for bank money.

At first it was easy, only had 4 blacksmithing people that needed em to upgrade their weapons gear. So I just had someone roll, once they won the roll, they got vortices until the item was made (since spreading them around achieves nothing).

Then we started getting the BOE belt patterns, those were easy too. First thing we got was the rogue dealy, made a couple of them and the priest pattern dropped. Made one of those and the Druid belt dropped. Etc etc.

Two things though :
1>I had everyone have a firm understanding that this was how it was going to work. No DKP, no half and half vortexes, weapons got upgraded first. No whining, no crying. That worked very well. We run a Zero Sum dkp system, with these, and the random trash purple drops being the exception. (That is, they are 0 dkp).

2>I was prepared for the bullshit of the Belt of Blasting drop. We run with about 12? on average ranged dps casters that would all want it. It dropped for us the other day (finally) and the first vortex that came up, I said "People with mats, roll. Not "I have some of the mats", or "I will get the mats". 3 people out of the 10ish present had mats, rolled, and that determined the order for the next 2 belts. Pretty simple. Also had the side benefit of getting someone and upgrade to use in that very raid.

To be honest I was surprised everyone was so easy going about it, everyone in guild loves the DKP system, but having trash drops be free really showed that we don't really NEED a dkp system (except of course, for tiered items, people are still stupid about them) Your mileage of course will vary, but set things out ahead of time, try to plan for every stupid whine, and you will come out the better for it.

We charge a fixed amount of dkp per vortex.

We give preference for pve items vs. pvp.

Once someone starts getting vortexes they continue getting them until they have enough for their item.

We also charge DKP per vortex. 4 per. For comparison, teir 5 is 25 DKP, and the mace off vashj is 60.

My guild runs officer loot so they decide. However, they do keep tabs on who attends how often and who gets what loot and they use that to help them decide. On these, they just decided that it won't count in terms of loot gotten. For belts, we just sent a tell and asked that the vortex go to the person with the pattern. When belt of blasting dropped, the guy who won the pattern did it on a first with mats gets it distribution. We gave our guild leatherworker vortices in anticipation of belt patterns dropping and he already had 6 before our deep shadow dropped.

We charge 5 DKP per vortex, while T5 items cost anywhere from 25-35 DKP depending on slot. We charge 10 DKP for the Boot recipes.

Similar to others, we charge dkp for the plans and vortices, but fairly small amounts, and once a player gets a vortex they receive the next several until they get their item. One twist over what I'm seeing here is that, if a person wins a belt plan, they have rights to the first crafting of that belt. Once they have their belt crafted, other players than want a copy of that belt can bid on future votices.

The way we see it is that peple who level up blacksmithing, farm mats to make their T1 weapon, and run heroics to make their T2 weapon are doing the guild a service by investing their own time and energy to get their own gear. That should be rewarded, not penalized, so we give nethers for weapons for free.

Once weapons are done, we funnel nethers to belt-crafters and let guildies get their belts made for free if they provide the non-nether mats. Priority goes roughly by raid frequency, so the guy that's at every single raid gets first crack over someone who comes to 50% of raids. Yes, we could charge DKP for these, but that would be a much bigger pain in the ass than its worth.

We charge a small-ish fixed amount per vortex (5 vortices for a weapon upgrade will be rather cheaper than buying a weapon for DKP), and have a list of what order people are in to get them - so one person will get all the drops until he's done, then the next person will start getting them.

Since we've never yet had anyone wanting one for anything other than a Skillherald to PvP with, we haven't stressed too much about the order - just added people to the list as they made their Deep Thunder and asked to be added. If someone did have a PvE need for one I guess we'd prioritize him.

We have a Vortex order; as the group gets access to new belt patterns, people can get on the list. No DKP charge.

Although are main loot system is DKP based, we do a short informal council to determine who gets the vortices. Criteria is based around their raid availability and who has the mats for the item they want collected. I think our first vortices went straight to two of our tanks who crafted their breastplates. After that it was just based on pattern availability and whether or not the person had their materials or not ready (gems on hand to throw in is also considered).

The BOE boot patterns are bid on as if they were a normal item drop, otherwise they are sent to the bank for AHing if noone shows interest/no crafter for that class.

Our system is a bit complicated - but you should be balanced against other members in the system relative to the gear you've earned in a raid.

If you have a tier 5 BP that you paid 30 DKP for, that should count as a 0 cost sidegrade to other T5 BP's and equivalent, so that everyone ends up paying the same for their set of gear (and warriors/druids don't get hosed for getting off-spec loot).

If there was a crafted T5 BP it would cost 25 in our system, regardless of the number of vortexes, etc... but its meant to match the epic to the system - which is what dkp is intended for. You get that small 5 dkp reduction in cost because of the gold value of the craftable mats. We have a dkp/donation equivalence of gold that works out to roughly the gap. We try to keep things extremely systematic.

As an aside ... how many of you are still missing patterns that use vortexes?

We're clearing SSC and working on Kael, and we have seen:
- 10 Boots of the Long Road
- 3 Black Eagle Belts
- 2 Shadow belts (forget the name)
- 5 Red Havoc
- 4 billion Crimson Hawk (what a useless pattern)
- 4 billion Hurricane (ditto)
- 3 Boots of Blasting
(etc)
...

- 0 Belt of Blasting
- 0 Belt of Red Battle

The two highest-demand items ... and no patterns. We made our 4th T3 weapon the other day, and have made 7 belts from Vortexes, as well as having 6 banked with our crafters for when the patterns eventually drop. But we haven't seen the patterns.

Our casters are a little pissed. They really want the belt ... but it's entirely dependent on the pattern dropping, instead of the stupid BoE ones that I sell for 250g on an AH saturated with them.

So ... curious ... how many guilds are still missing patterns after 3 months in SSC/TK?

Loot counciled for 0 DKP. Most of the vortexes we get now go towards making gear we sell =P

How much gear do most of you end up making before you start selling? As I indicated above, we've made 4 weapons, 1 chest (armorsmith pattern), about 8 belts, and have another 3-4 belts in mats banked that we're just waiting on patterns to drop (Belt of Blasting, mostly).

And there's still demand. We have multiple casters willing to buy Vortexes on faith that one day Sometime Soon (TM) the pattern will drop. We have dps who each week wake up and realize they actually *like* the Belt of Deep Shadows, and would like one made. We have people who level up blacksmithing so they can make a funky weapon.

As much as I'd love to sell some items to make some money for the bank ... I just don't see it happening any time soon. There's only one guild on our server that is selling their vortexes, and they did so because the only pattern they made was Belt of Blasting; no weapons, no chests, etc -- just Belt of Blasting for their casters, and then they started selling the vortexes right, left, and center.

We give Vortices out for free. The priority is determined by the raid officers.
We crafted like this:
2h weapon, mail chest for our enhancement shaman, 2h weapon, 1h weapon, 2 belts of havoc, 2 oder 3 cloth healing belts, after that we split the production between Belts of Blasting and several leatherworking patterns for shamans and ferals, after that came our hunters, finally we made another two 1h weapons as well as third belt of havoc. Our last vortices went again to our leatherworker who is crafting the Belt of deep Shadows.

Oh and I forgot the protection paladin belt I crafted for one of our members.

This sequence is mostly a product on how patterns dropped. Our first crafter for the plate DPS belt left the raid, fortunately we had it dropping 2 weeks ago for the second time. It worked out pretty well (especially for me, to be honest, having upgrades two weapons ) and I guess once we leave the T5 content we will have satisfied almost all needs except for some farming specs (belts of havoc for our tanks and paladins for example :P) I don't think we will sell any crafted belts though.

As I see it, 5x[Nether Vortex] == [Dragonstrike], and dkp should reflect that you bought an ilvl 136 weapon or else you're just screwing up the loot order.

Say you have the following:

• Blacksmithing/mining rogue with [Dragonmaw]. He raids SSC and gets his 5x[Nether Vortex] to upgrade to [Dragonstrike].
• Alchemist/herbalist rogue with [Spiteblade]. He raids SSC and upgrades to [Talon of Azshara].

Why should the blacksmith get his 97.6 dps weapon upgrade for little or no dkp? In essence he's raiding with a [Dragonmaw] and a boss drops [Dragonstrike]. The fact that it's is craftable is irrelevant to me. The alchemist had to run Karazhan repeatedly just like the blacksmith had to run heroics. Everyone has to put forth some type of effort to get their current weapons, and the fact that one type of effort now includes crafting has no bearing on dkp in my mind.

You're basically penalizing the alchemist. He's now permanently behind by 1 weapon's worth of dkp in the loot order.

Since most weapons in T5 content go away for min bid (we use a secret bidding system) or just above minbid this is not really an issue due to all serious dpser playing arena anyway (well our casters don't but they don't compete for melee weapons anyway). I remember our first talon dropping from tidewalker and everybody just entered a bid because there are several weapon collectors in our raid. Same for our Rod of the Sun King that dropped on sunday. Went away for pretty meagre 50 points and the winner afterwards complained that he payed to much

Additionally I assume that both the herbalist as well as the blacksmith did run heroics as well as Kara. I understand why some raids do require some DKP for vortices but it isn't a given imho. At the end it doesn't screw up loot distribution because the greater influence of loot distribution are tailoring and arena stuff (more slots and/or easier to get).

In the end loot distribution in BC is much less hassle than pre BC anyways because of the smaller raid sizes. We had only one minor issue when a druid got the cowl from Voidreaver for his moonkin gear while several casters were still waiting for it (but were putting in to short bids). Besides of that we hadn't had any objections. Most classes will gain an item from crafting anyway which smoothes the problem of having freeloot for some folks exclusively. I guess it also depends on your DKP system (in a fixed price system asking for dkp in exchange for a vortex makes more sense than in our system where minbid loots are not uncommon [and pretty nice because we let very few loot rot unless it is really not needed at all]).