Hybrid specs and loot distrubution in MH/BT
 

Hello.

I am an officer in a guild that recently cleared TK/SSC and started progressing through MH and BT. In our first week in MH we downed 4 bosses, and we have yet to start BT, Sunday will be our first raid.

With us progressing so fast through a T6 dungeon, we ran into a problem, loot distrubtion for hybrids. I myself am an enhancement shaman, we also have an exceptional moonkin druid (who actually got our first piece of T6) and another enhancement shaman, altough he gets benched most of the times since his gear is seriously lacking and he can't keep up with the rest of us. We also used to have a retri paladin, but he hasn't played much at all lately.

Our guild and officers are very open minded when it comes to specs, we do not force people to play a spec they do not enjoy.

Anyway, I have been looking through the list of potentional upgrades for my character, and found that about 80% them are leather items (my T6 set is absolutely shocking). I'm fairly certain, without having to look, that the same goes for our moonkin druid, cloth dps items will most probably be the biggest upgrade for him.

Now my question to you guys is, how do you handle the distrubution of this gear? Obviously, rogues would get priority on leather dps, but then what? We have several feral druids interested in leather dps items, do we tell them no, our raid benefits more of a dps class obtaining these items? Or do we perhaps let feral tanks (we will never fill up a dps spot with a feral druid unless we are desperate) bid against shamans/hunters? What about mage/warlock/spriest gear vs moonkin?

Obviously, whatever we will decide, one group of people will be pissed off. We really want to keep this is as fair as possible, and raid progression is all we are interested in at the moment.

Any advice or methods that other guilds used who were in this same situation would be greatly appreciated.

You say people bid for items, that implies some sort of DKP is involved.

But at the same time you are wanting to restrict loot for the fastest possible raid progression, that would not be a DKP system, but "Loot Council/Officer Award".

If your guild is comfortable with abandoning your dkp system and trusting enough of your officers to always make the right decisions regarding loot, well then you should do that.

Otherwise just go off of who has/bids the highest amount of dkp, the entire point of dkp is supposed to be so that officers can't "play favorites" even for "the sake of guild progression" but instead rewards the people that actually put in the time and effort equally.

Sorry yeah, I perhaps should have mentioned we use a DKP system where we do closed bids.

To preface: We have a ret pally, elemental shaman, shadow priests etc - only reason we don't have a moonkin is we never had one apply who sounded good enough.

The general way I try to see it is this: If the player in question is a committed player who is one of the reasons your raids are a success, theres no reason to deny them a chance at getting it, without careful consideration first.

If things begin to get iffy on a certain item - we would first consider people who would use that item in an actual raid. Thats the first question id ask, "Would you use this in a raids? When would you use it, how often?" For example, the feral druid you mention who is only ever in the raid as a tank - you could kindly pull him aside privately and explain that the only reason rogues will be considered above him is because it will be used in raids. If you explain the reason is not just 'because your a hybrid' you might get a more accepting reaction.

However, its a two way street. If that rogue in question is a poor performing player who is semi-active at best and the druid is a 100% attendance, extremely skilled player who often fills raidspots as dps when there are other tanks available- it might be better to consider the option of the druid getting it/rolloff/allowed to bid (whatever loot system you use)

Nobody on these forums is qualified to make these decisions for you because we're comparing players - your class leads/officers are who know your players best to make these difficult decisions. But in summary - we give priority to people who use items in raids for main spec over people who want them for offspec/fun/pvp. If theres a hybrid+pure up for the same item (eg ret pally + rogue on Supremus neck) and they both would use it in raids - they would be considered equally, assuming they both are dedicated, good players etc.

Or it rewards people who just haven't spent their DKP up to that point, but that's always going to happen.

As for this being a case of abandoning a DKP system and making a 'loot council' I just don't agree. Feral tanking druids do not DPS unless there is nothing to tank. It is not as much an 'offspec', or rather 'offkit' as everyone else, but it is still an offkit, something they don't often do, and shouldn't get the kit for before people who do that 100% of the time.

This depends heavily on your loot distribution system. Do you have a free auction, where players can name their price? If so, let people bid on whatever they want. Rogues need to spend points on DPS leather alone while Feral druids need leather tanking gear as well. Enhancement shaman have both mail and leather pieces to spend points on. In theory, the rogues should bid higher than the druids and shaman because they have no alternatives, and the shaman will take mostly the low demand mail pieces and buy a few pieces of exceptionally good leather at very high prices. If a shaman wins a ton of leather with this system, that probably means the rogues are giving leather away too cheap or the rogues are low on attendance.

Of course, this model only works in auto-regulating loot systems. If you try it with a fixed price priority system, you could get one shaman who is high on the totem pole taking all the leather, and then the mail that's marginally worse gets sharded and the rogues get nothing.

I guess to answer this question better, we need to know your loot system.

We are currently in a transition from using Zero Sum DKP to Loot Council. With that said we still wanted to distribute the loot in a more 'controlled' way. Even while using DKP. As such we enforced certain Main Specs and Official offspecs. Its quite simple to implement and ill explain how it works in a moment.

Basicaly you ask all your members to post in a private forum thread choosing there Main spec and Offspec. Of course in a more strict and 'Hard-corish' type of guild most main specs are pre determent. But with the previous in mind you can start controlling your loot distribution. Spellcastingdamage Cloth will go to Mages/Warlocks/Shadowpriests. Leather Melee Damage will go to Rogues and Feral Druids. Leather healing to Restoration Druids, leather spell damage should go Prio to Moonkins however Elemental Shamans can also benefit from these items. Mail items being generally shared between (Enhancement) Shamans/Hunters. And the plate is quite obviously shared between the Paladins and Warriors. Most good Retribution Paladins wont carelessly take Warrior DPS plate. Since Retri gear might be rare but still excists for most slots.

In the end the players of your guild should discuss amongst those affected who should get prio on which gear. Good communication helps a lot in reducing certain types of nasty situations. In the end when you have said your priorities straight, you can revert to using a DKP system. The person with most DKP can take the item he is Eligble to take. Or you can Loot Council the items away to someone else who needs/deserves the item and is Also eligble for the item in question.

Regarding offspecs. Naturally if you run with a Moonkin druid, balance will be his Mainspec. But when a good Healing Leather item drops and all Assigned Main Spec druids have this item. The Moonkin can 'buy' this item for his offspec. For that we use a Primal system. If the Moonkin has the most DKP of all the people who want the item for there offspec he can 'buy' the offspec item for 3 Primals ('of the Week'). Or you can give it for free via Loot council, or even give the player the option to 'buy' the item for 3 Primals via Loot Council.

Basicaly we use the following order in our guild.

Player Eligble for loot via pre determent ruleset? --> Yes --> Proceed to DKP / Loot Coucil System.
Player Eligble for loot via pre determent ruleset? --> No --> Player doesnt receive item.

Player has most DKP* --> Yes --> Item is set to Player's mainspec --> Loot Item
Player has most DKP* --> No --> Proceed to Player B.

Player has most DKP* --> Yes --> No Main spec players in raid needs the item --> Yes --> Player pays primals and loots offspec Item.
Player has most DKP* --> Yes --> Not pre determent Offspec --> Player doesnt loot the item.
Player has most DKP* --> Yes --> Another player needs the item for his Mainspec --> Player doesnt loot the item.

* DKP could be replaced by loot Council.

Pre Communication is the Key for any good Loot distribution System.

Rogues get priority on leather. Then it boils down to Druids wanting it, because it's leather and what they wear, and Winfurae wanting it (and me in the case of that belt off the second Hyjal boss, because let's face it, it's hot) because he does DPS all the time, not some of it, and does a lot more DPS than the druids do.

Call me a loot whore, but I never understood the need to have priority on loot depending on the armor class, unless you do take hits, which is rarely ever the case in pve. If you use dkp system, and unless the item favors slightly a class over another, for example healing stuff with or without spirit, I don't see why there would be priorities or restrictions.

My druid is half geared in cloth, and I wouldn't pass on cloth just because priests can only wear cloth if the item is better for me. However, since I'm not a fucking idiot either, I'd pass depending on who needs it and how much of an upgrade it is for them compared to me. That's especially true for our CoH priest who outheals me on almost every single fight, it's a better upgrade for the guild to let her have the loot than fight for it. And she has about 4times my dkp anyway ^^.

But there shouldn't be priority if there's no better item for that slot. If you're a enh shaman and want leather because blizzard didn't bother putting some enh shaman random gear out of the T6(saying that but haven't looked at enh shaman drops so I don't know), and you have a decent attendance, why not get it. It might prove to give slightly better results on a rogue because of their naturally higher dps, but I doubt it'd make such a big difference it'd break the raid.

The only priority I consider "needed" is tank gear priority for at least one, if possible two tanks, people who have 90+% attendance and such, because all the mobs dps are focused onto one player in wow, and some weapons because weapons upgrades are usually the biggest dps boost a dps class can get. Everything else should be sorted by dkp or by officers depending on the loot distribution system you use, and if possible, by your own common sense. You should be able to tell by yourself if you benefit more from an item than someone else, considering your performance and attendance.

In our loot system we do give first selection of armor to the classes for which it is the highest armor type they can wear.

One reason is that where a paladin can select from cloth, leather, mail, and plate, a priest only has a shot at cloth and can't wear the rest. It seems a bit unfair to us for the priest to have badly needed cloth upgrades snatched up by a paladin healer (just an example) that has so many other armor types available as potential upgrades.

Perhaps, if T6 level content is a lot more imbalanced in terms of drops than T5, we'll change our minds later.

For us, using EPGP, we do allow anyone to simply /roll on armor that is not needed by the primary classes for that armor type, just as we allow alts and off-spec /rolls for such items. People are also generally very cool about passing when they know it'd be a huge upgrade for someone and used readily in raids.

Today an Enh shaman wins a bid on a leather item that the rogues also need. For the next 2 months you shard an equivalent mail item in the same slot and leather in that slot doesn't drop.

Thing is, there is no equivalent mail item for the slots we'd bid on.

Well it depends a lot on what view the individual and the guild is taking.

One simple fact is for an enhancement shaman vs. a rogue is that the rogue does more dps.
The shaman is mainly support in addition to their own individual dps. So I would lean towards recommending letting the rogues get the key pieces they need, taking into consideration longevity of the upgrade (will a rogue replace it next week?) and also perhaps seniority. Rogue recruit vs an enhancement with 2 years of tenure?

But what i really suggest is that, the shaman and the rogues talk it out and work out an understanding. Ideally there should be no us vs them argument. Compromises can also be worked out. And eventually everyone will have everything they want anyway.

Is the question whether or not you should give rogues priority on non-set leather dps items? My general answer would be yes, you should, but it just depends on the item. For the most part, cross-class competition for items is largely overblown because almost everyone is going to want to use at least four pieces of T6. In fact I'm pretty sure enhancement shaman are the only class/spec that is just totally uninterested in T6.

If it is a 'best in the slot' item - go for it. If there is a really awesome equivalent that is nearly as good, just pass until the rogues have it, then take it. For example, council helm and the cursed vision. Let rogues get the first few, then go for it.