As a GM of a Hyjal/BT guild I'd like to hear from the leaders of other guilds on how they appropriate funds/materials to help cover the extreme costs of 4-5 day raiding. With the new feature coming in 2.3 to allow members to repair straight out of guild funds I'd like to hear how, if at all, this will change the way guilds work their raider assistance system. I'd also like to hear how (if you do at all) help your raiders and what methods you use to streamline and maximize gold inflow.
Estimating about 40g worth of repairs on a progression night a typical raid would be spending upwards of around 1000g a night for repairs. I'm not sure that most guild could take that kind of hit on a nightly basis without a solid system in place to achieve adequate funding. Do guilds plan on allowing raiders to repair straight out of guild funds? Besides selling BT/Hjal patterns and HoD how do guilds raiding that content keep themselves financially secure (especially when many members still need gems)? Do you supply your guild with flasks/mana pots and if so how often and to which members?
I know that some guilds bring people willing to pay for vortex in to raids to help supplement funds, but how do you work those systems? We no longer run SSC/TK on a consistent basis so planning runs of that nature would be difficult, doing so on an off night would be our only possible way of accomplishing this. I'm looking for ways basically to maximize the usage of our funds while increasing the return to our membership. I know a lot of guilds out there use many different systems and I'd like to get a good picture of how other guilds in our situation work things.
Speaking from an Illidan farming standpoint I believe when 2.3 comes out only our MT's will be given access to repairing from the guild bank. The majority of us make money from BT and Hyjal now and with the new Heroic Daily quests giving 25 and 19g plus the old dailies most if not all people other then the tanks should be more than able to cover costs.
As for inflow to the guild bank it depends on your server. Onyxia for instance has a terrible economy and even though we are the only guild past Vashj, we can hardly sell anything.
We're planning on providing guild funds for repairs once in a while; as a reward for a long night of hard work, or a reward for a quick clear of an instance or something.
What will be interesting is being able to move things into areas where guildies can grab them. So if we have a long week of wipes ahead of us, I'll throw a bunch of fel lotus into a raider-accessible tab, and everyone can get 2 and make a couple of (cheaper) flasks.
Or if you have a communist-style environment, make one tab accessible to all herbalists and alchemists, and just stockpile all the guild's herbs, and have people have potions made as they need them. Everyone will be able to see current supply, and attempt to keep the bank filled up.
I'm quite looking forward to it, actually. I don't think I'll get rid of my (present) 3 banks just yet, but some of the stuff can be moved over to the guild system and shared out easily.
We guild loot everything worth anything. Coilfang Arms, Marks of the Illidari, greens, blues, world drop patterns etc. via a designated looter during runs. Everything is either used for raiding or sold (eg. [Pattern: Blackstrike Bracers] dropped recently, none of the tailors in the raid had it but as it didn't have a PVE use for our raid it was guild looted and sold).
We have a policy of not letting banks fill up with cruft. Unless we anticipate an immediate future requirement for a limited supply item (Hearts of Darkness for example) everything is sold immediately. I think most items tend to devalue over time and it's best to convert them to gold as soon as possible. In the event we get caught short on something we can always buy whatever it is on the AH or off another raiding guild.
Things like the craftable belts and boot patterns from T5 content + the craftable wrists and shoulder patterns from T6 content are only available to raiders if the item is a slot upgrade for the character's PVE role + recipient is not planning to replace the item with another drop from the same level of content. Even then, the raider's performance and attendance are considered. This attitude coupled with a DKP looting system that allows players to receive all off spec BOP loot and most on spec BOP sidegrades free of charge has so far successfully avoided any on spec / off spec loot drama (though the success of this system owes much to TBC's broader itemisation).
I maintain a list of people from outside the guild waiting to buy crafted items + patterns. They are usually snapped up quickly.
The majority of the mana pots consumed by the raid, regardless of class (except Warlocks ). We encourage everyone to chain Super Mana Pot at the drop of a hat (we learnt most of SSC/TK without SPs, it's only very recently that we've had more than one in a raid consistently).
All tanking resist gear + enchants/gems/etc for said gear (Hydross, Leo, pre-Geddon Solar etc.). We paid all costs to gear + enchant 15-20 players for Huhuran since only certain players were affected, we wont be paying for SR gear for BT as it's a burden shared (roughly) equally by all.
We used to supply mats obtainable via disenchanting for all PVE raiding related enchanting but the number of enchanting mats we were storing / using became too unwieldy with officers having full banks + being difficult to separate personal mats from guild mats + mules being a pain to use so it was stopped. I imagine we will resume doing this when guild banks are introduced.
We also used to give a respeccing allowance of 100g / week to our permanent prot tanks, but it was discontinued at their request as they were playing their alts outside of raids and didn't feel the money was required or justified.
Come 2.3 we wont be paying for anyone's repairs via the guild bank feature.
Our philosophy with the guild bank is to:
Try to even out the burdens on different players/classes. then
Assist everyone where possible, providing the assistance doesn't require much administration to provide / ensure fairness.
Store a tidy sum away for a rainy day (god forbid another Huhuran or the like).
Players who take advantage of the generous spirit of the guild find themselves ostracised very quickly.
The guild has been around since 2004 and the members understand we have to make hay while the sun shines to tide us over the lean times. We went in to AQ40/Naxx with around 60 000g in the bank, mostly thanks to the AQ20 skill book bonanza. Everyone appreciated the resources the guild was able to call on to ease our progression and we started TBC substantially poorer (in the end we were supplying most of the above + all encounter specific consumables for the entire raid (Fae/Maex/Noth/etc) + repairs for anyone who needed it). We prevented a lot of raider burn out thanks to the farming people didn't have to do and were the last horde guild on the server to stop AQ40/Naxx pre-TBC.
For my guild, we loot all of the Marks/Gems/Hearts/Patterns and they go to the guild bank.
~ The Marks are distributed every other week to raiders who have the requisite Reputations and have 70% raid attendance. I make a big fanfare out of it to encourage people to farm their reps and keep their attendance up.
~ Gems are held by the guild bank and given free of charge to people for T6-equivalent loot, with tanks getting priority on Empyrian Sapphires and SPriests/Affliction Warlocks getting priority on Crimson Spinels.
~Hearts are held by the guild bank as we are working on RoS at the moment and we need it for resist gear. We've got most of the haste patterns, but have only made a few key items for DPSers that gain the most benefit from haste (rogues, hunters, DPS wars).
~ BoE patterns (for BoP items) are asked about in the raid and given out for minimal DKP if desired, and sold immediately if they are not. I will give a steep (50-60%) discount to non-raiding guildies if they want it.
~ We hand out BoP patterns for BoE items by lifetime DKP for free of charge. Those people then can hawk those items for the guild and get on a list for Nether Vortexes (and Hearts eventually), and when they sell their item, they keep 100g and send the rest to the guild bank.
~ I've also sold trash Vortexes to 3x Warriors for their T3 weapons for a generous sum.
All greens/blues that drop from trash are handed out at random, starting with the first person of the first class and going down from there. During Hyjal trash we have it on group loot and just have people roll Need for the greens/blues.
The bank pays for various things:
~ All mandated respecs. We have a few wars who switch hit at our request, and I just have them send me a bill when they do it. Same with the Warlock tank for Leotheras and the holy Priest I get to respec CoH for Bloodboil.
~ Resist gear. We do a 'farming group' for people on the wait list to earn dkp. They generally farm up the primals and I buy the rest. I will hand out a full SR set (minus pants) to every raider as we gear up for Sharrahz because I don't want to slow down our progression by waiting for people to do it on their own. Same with Hydross tanks, the Leotheras lock, Solarian soaks, and Anetheron Infernal tanks.
~ I pay for specific consumables for encounters. I handed out Haste and Destruction potions like water for our Kael'thas attempts, because the increase in DPS during the weapons phases set the tone for the rest of the fight. I drop a Fire Protection Cauldron for each Azgalor attempt while learning for the extra cushion it provides. I hand out 3x Purification Potions to each raider for Archimonde, as well as Elixir of Demonslaying for my melee. I used to send the MT Invisibility pots for the Hydross pulls.
~ I supply Repair Bots for SSC.
~ I tried to send out flasks to my MT but he is stubborn and wealthy, and he turns them down.
Lastly, I send gold. When I became GM, I made building the guild bank a priority and grew it to 5k, then 10k, then 20k. When it hit 10k, I began telling people that I will send out 20g to each raider whenever we kill a new boss, to offset repair costs for that night. I also send out a *weeks* worth of repair costs for an end boss (150 for Vashj, 200 for Kael, 250 for Archimonde, and hopefully 300 for Ilidan, depending on how long it takes). It adds a little incentive for people to be there for the kill, as well as a nice surprise in their mailbox when we get that kill. And it's nice that we have been progressing at a very nice rate, and nobody complains about repair costs anymore.
I'm not a guild leader right now, and yet, still agree whole-heartedly with all the comments said here. You all seem like pretty wise/fair GM's.
I'd think that, unless your guild is making 500-750g a day off of drops, they'd never be able to pay for repairs on progression night, I just don't see how that would be possible. Also, how do most of your guilds make large amounts of money? I'm on Korgath and would like to start making our guild bank as much money as possible, hopefully to be able to offset repairs, respecs and even buying needed consumables to ensure that fights go easier? We're currently 6/6 SSC - 3/4 TK with KT in phase 4. We send all greens/blues to the guild bank to be de'd and/or sold as needed and have even started selling the belts as needed for a hefty profit, but still not really reaching the 10k+ level or just a consistant influx of gold to make the outflux that most of you have talked about, possible.
Any information would be nice, or even just possible ideas?
Sell all the drops. Boot patterns, nether vortexes, hearts of darkness, shoulder patterns, etc. That's all we do and we have a very large amount of gold in the guild bank.
Sell all the drops. Boot patterns, nether vortexes, hearts of darkness, shoulder patterns, etc. That's all we do and we have a very large amount of gold in the guild bank.
We arent in BT yet, if you read, still working on KT. Thus, only thing we have to sell its boots (which sell only moderately on this server) and vortexes, sparingly.
One day of dailies and you should be able to repair during a night of progression raiding. Most guilds who will be heading into Sunwell should be ok on gold by the time it is released (most nights you make gold just raiding).
Giving gold/mats to those who make drums etc is something that most guild banks should be able to fund. Also stuff like cauldrons can be funded easily by the guild bank. Marks for everyone with rep are also given out (even for farm content now) since we pretty much have been hovering around 200~ since the start of tier 6.
I've never been a guild or raid leader but I've never understood the need to have a massive surplus of gold in a guild bank. Currently I'm sitting at 5,500+ gold just by way of doing daily quests (and actually as of about 2-3 weeks ago I've stopped doing them). I'm also sitting on an absurdly large amount of personal consumables for Sunwell (40+ flasks, stacks of oil, food, etc). It has never occured to me to ever ask the guild bank for money for anything.
Of course there are a few things I can see using funds on like cauldrons and such but, imo, when it comes down to personal consumables/repairs there are just too many ways to make gold in this game even without the ability to kill mobs for drops.
Well, I think the reason to have a alot of gold in a guild bank is just to be prepared for whatever comes. Be it ridiculous resistance gear or something else that requires much effort in a short time.
We pay the common things from the bank: ironshield potions, repair bots, cauldrons... everything that affects everybody or exceeds what everyone has to pay and we send flask marks to all with the required reputation frequently.
We do not pay things like flasks or mana potions and we do not pay repair costs either. Actually there is no reason imho why the maintank should get flasks or repair costs for free - everyone else does not get that either and everyone should flask, so everyone should be treated similarily. This is not vanilla anymore, where the tank had to consume more than the rest of the guild.
The problem is that whatever solution you chose, it's never fair.
You pay mana potions? What about haste and destruction potions then?
You give free void crystals to your rogues and warriors? What about primal water and life for your healers?
If you want to create a fair solution, you have to provide everything and if you provide everything, you can better provide nothing at all, which has exactly the same result but saves you alot of organizational work.
Things like pots from the bank require a huge administrative effort but I fail to see any benefit. Is it just a psychological advantage like "I do not have to pay for my consumables"? In the end, you still pay for it, because the bank has to fill as well ("taxes", item selling, ...)
We charge about 60% of the auction house price for void crystals and everyone who takes offspec loot in a raid, has to send an void crystal (or its price in gold) to the bank for that item but is not charged any "dkp" (that's more to prevent someone from just taking everything for free, but it's still fair and fills the bank).
We have accumulated around 60-70k g now in about 5 months (when we started with 0) with 33 active members from selling recipes, nether vortexes, void crystals and disenchanted greens. That is 2k gold for everyone.
If we were paying repair costs or potions, this gold would vanish in a few weeks and just be distributed over all raiders without us gaining anything from it.
You want to raid and get "fat purples" -> pay for it.
There will probably come a point where we reach the maximum that will ever be required and we can think about doing something nice with the gold we collected for the raid, like some supplies for _everyone_, but I would always set an amount of gold as reserve for whatever happens.
The question is just: what can happen that requires your guild to pay for it and how much gold should be kept to ensure that you do not run into problems?
I could image we would have bought Hearts of Darkness if there was a more progressed guild, before we killed Shahraz yesterday, because it was a lot of logistical effort to get a full raid of shadow resistance with only 125 hod (crafting before raid begin for the 25 raiders). Since there is/was no other BT guild on our realm, we sadly did not have that option.
I could also imagine the same thing with frozen runes and I have seen other guilds trading elementium bars or sulfuron ingots a while ago, but our guild did not exist at that time.
How much gold do you plan to hold back for safety and why?
One thing that we pay for from our gbank that I haven't seen mentioned here is stuff that goes above and beyond. For example, we're very short on Resto Druids on our roster right now and we don't have a huge Mage surplus. This gives us limited decursers on Archimonde, and so we often have our Ferals heal. Since we're having them heal, it's better for the raid if they're specced for it, so the bank is willing to give them each 100 gold to respec to what we want them to be and back.
I think we've had a dps warrior spec to tanking now and again as well... It's sort of a move to encourage people to make themselves versatile. If people are giving up bank space for holding a full set of offspec gear, we shouldn't make them pay an extra 100 gold for the privilege of helping the raid if people are absent.
Of course there are a few things I can see using funds on like cauldrons and such but, imo, when it comes down to personal consumables/repairs there are just too many ways to make gold in this game even without the ability to kill mobs for drops.
It's just a different approach to leading a guild. The question isn't how prepared each of your members can be when they show up, it's about how prepared do you want them to be. By providing more and more things from the guild bank, you remove each chance that a guild member can show up unprepared. Don't want them to show up with broken armor? Pay for repairs. Don't want them showing up unflasked? Pay for flasks. Don't want them using the wrong gems in the wrong slots? Pay for the gems. Don't want them showing up unenchanted with gear from 3 nights ago? Pay for the enchants. Etc, etc, etc.
What you have to decide is how far you want to take it, and the best way to get there. You don't have to pay for everything every night, nor will everyone make use of the guild bank. People who have 5k+ gold chilling in the bank, for instance, might not care about 80g dropped on gems and some spare change for repairs. You might not care about who flasks/pots outside of certain bosses, so simply leave it up to the members to provide their own if they want to outside of them.
The hard part is the organizational aspect of it all, and the removal of ways to make a guildbank self sustaining. You might not be in a position where selling nether vortices is a viable route, you might not be in a position where you can sell epic gem cuts for 300+g a pop. Guilds still in the early raiding scene, for instance, will have a hard time justifying selling a nether vortex to an outsider when they're still struggling to even kill a boss in SSC, even if the gold gained from it could possibly push them that much farther ahead in terms of raid preparedness. You have to make choices and prioritize the systems most important to you as a raid/guild leader.
Most of all, it's about instilling the mentality that the guild bank is there for the members, and not just simply there. I created a guild a few months back on a backwater PvE server where the basic mentality is "fuck you, I do my job." To me, this is about as ass backwards as you can get from the mentality of a raiding guild. So the first few people I invited I pretty much bankrupted myself on. I gave out over 1.5k gold worth of raw materials for engineering goggles, blacksmithing plans, gem cuts, etc, etc, all from my own personal bank. Sure, sometimes it was for things that would make raids go smoother, but mostly it was just to make my members happy. And it worked. I let them know very clearly, very plainly what exactly it was that I was doing, and by the time I had invited enough people for 25 mans, the concept of a guild bank was in full swing. People donated to it, some more than others of course, but the bottom line was that it provided everything I wanted it to provide, sustained solely from the donations of the guild members. They knew that what the guild bank was about, and that anything donated to it would be spit right back out to the appropriate people.
Creating that mentality was not easy, nor was keeping up with the organization and tracking of the back. But in the end it let me go to sleep at night being able to worry more about seperating the kiddies fighting with each other rather than why X dipshit wasn't socketted, or if he was, why the fuck he was rocking +6int gems as a warrior. It let me raid with otherwise uncaring, unprepared, selfish raiders in an environment where we didn't have a lot to pick and choose from.
Originally Posted by Kallisiti
How much gold do you plan to hold back for safety and why?
I would go with 0. 'Emergency' gold is a misnomer and a fallacy, in my experience. You use the guildbank to pay for things you want your raiders to have each and every day, or for each and every boss. I simply cannot imagine a situation where you would need to instantly have 1k per member on hand or whatever, I just don't think Blizzard would do it. Naxx, I think, was the closest this game ever came to that, but even then the surplus gold that guilds had generated back then was done *on top* of meeting all the guild requirements first, not in lieu of them.
Approaching situations where a guild needs to meet a static, one time requirement I find can easily be supplemented by donations from the guild. Need a couple of resists sets for Hydross? I doubt anyone would have a problem throwing a few bars of khorium or felsteel to the tanks. Shadow resist gear in black temple? There's only so many hearts of darkness available, and if you have been saving up all your gold to buy them when you get to the point you need them, chances are you didn't get there as fast as you might have in the first place. Would you even buy them, with the feeling you needed to keep around 'emergency' gold? It's a tough mindset to break, and the concept of 'emergency' gold only gets higher and higher as you see the ever increasing costs of high end/end game raiding.
I sell as much of what drops as I can. I hand out marks of the illidari on a somewhat frequent basis. We have made a ton of money off of BT Heart patterns and should be able to do so for at least the next few months.
On big nights of learning I send out repair gold to the people that were there for the effort (the last 2 nights of Illidan learning for example). Once full farming mode starts I will only pay for MT repairs.
I also pay for respecs of certain raiders as we tend to run with a lean roster and somenights I want a warrior specced DPS other nights prot so I defray that cost. Same with one of my shadow priests who is an amazing healer, I sometimes spec him holy.
I have for special occasions used guild funds for other consumeables. I helped out with the mana pots when we were pushing to get mother down prior to the nerf. Things of that nature.
I can craft all of the cauldrons so I tend to make sure I have a good supply of Shadow/Nature/Fire cauldrons for the various fights since I am a firm believer in the rule that only 30% of people come truly 100% prepared and I'd rather spend the 15 gold to make sure people have an NR pot for RoS phase 3, things like that.
The only other thing I am tempted to do is get our MT an epic flying mount b/c it's pretty ghetto when I am doing BE Dailies with him and he is cruising around on that slow mount. lol.
I will say I agree with Kallisti from the standpoint that, if you are here to raid, you should be putting some effort into it. Most dps classes can EASILY farm and with the inclusion of dailies (around 120g if you have an epic flying and still over 60g if you dont) and the later implementation of heroic daillies (even more gold to be easily made), I dont see how anyone is broke and can't a) afford repairs and b) afford pots/consumables for a raid. If it's solely a morality issue, where giving them gold for repairs and consumables helps keep their spirits up on a hard night of raiding, then so be it, but don't get to the point where you literally supply everything for the guild, people tend to become complacent and feel "deserving" of stuff at that point.
Also, why keep 60-70k gold in your bank? For what? Having to buy 150+ hearts of darkness so you can jump into Mother Sharaz on your first night of BT? I mean, if you run it a few weeks you'll end up getting 20-50 hearts, that if saved and used properly, will get you past sharaz in 3-5 weeks, possibly less, depending on your drop rates.
I guess I see 60-70k in the guild bank as a means of corruption rather than really "helping the guild". Give each guildie 1-2k gold and let them spend it. If they still dont come to raids prepared, you know who's the fat that should be cut, and if anything, it might help get people their epic flying mounts, get them more dailies (120g worth) and mean they won't be poor anymore!
Since day 1 of raiding in molten core I've had our guild go into things with the mindset that if they take care of the guild bank, the guild bank will take care of them. Anything looted in a raid 10-man and up is sent to the bank for selling.
In return we have *always* provided full repairs and consumables to anyone who raids during both progression periods and farm periods. Naturally costs go way down during farm periods and that allows us to bolster the guild-bank funds.
My philosophy is that raiders have enough problems to worry about and money should never be one of them.
This isn't to say our guild bank is poor either. Afer a 6 month progression push Kara Through Illidan we still have around 130k gold.
Certainly people are encouraged to do daily quests and etc to keep on top of their own costs, but the option is always there for people who need it.
Currently my guild only sells patterns we get from SSC/TK. We let people greed greens to help defray repair costs. We pay for repairs probally once or twice a month on a new boss (Currently on vashj).
Like someone mentioned eariler we often pay for people to respec if needed and use guild money to help craft resist gear when needed.
I dont know if we will use the repair option or not with the guild bank. Right now we will have one bag set up for gear donations for leveling alts, one bag for flask marks. Not sure beyond that at this time.
We didn't supply repair money or flask mats. Our raiders new if they wanted to raid it was their responsibility, officers included. I think you can expect that kind of attitude from any guild in the top 100 world wide like us. Remains to be seen what our GM decides, along with input from the rest of the officers, but basically we didn't need anything before to progress and clear in a timely fashion.
And 40g for a progression night is a low number. Some prog nights can be upward of 100g for someone like myself wearing plate and use of 2 Flasks and maybe some elixers. For me i could earn like 60g in daily quests in like 45 min so it wasn't hard to keep up and I didn't need the guild to help me.
Every now and then perhaps toss raiders like 50g, but it becomes too expensive to do it often. My general opinion right now is guilds won't do anything differently. I would say on Progression nights with no new kill or the entire night to get a new kill, people will fully repair at least 2 times. To me that means around like 80g I figure. Multiply that across a raid of 25 and that's 2000g for the night. Repair costs are huge and guilds will eat through their money repairing gear.
Being the person that owns the account the guild bank is on, all I'm really looking for is more storage space on 1 character rather than being forced to have multiple banking toons.
Well, I sure hope my guild doesn't waste any gold on the new engineering repair bot .... check out how retarded the mats are;
1 primal fire, 3 khorium bars, 24 fel iron bars, 8 adam bars, 6 primal earth.
Whoever is in charge of engineering clearly doesn't play WoW anymore.
Hehehe
We only have one engineer capable of making repair bots and we rarely use them.
The time saving is not nearly what is was considering the repair vendors right out side of SSC/TK.
(Note: My guild is not in BT/CoT yet so I could be wrong about those instances)
As for guild supplied mats... we are a semi-casual (3 hardcore nights) so people have plenty of time to farm their own mats. Tanks get flasks. Raid Leader requested respecs are funded. On progression nights the GL sometimes breaks out the DPS flasks.
10/13/07, 2:32 PM
). We encourage everyone to chain Super Mana Pot at the drop of a hat (we learnt most of SSC/TK without SPs, it's only very recently that we've had more than one in a raid consistently).
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