I was reading the thread below about hybrid gear and I realized that there was an untapped resource here. We've been struggling with this concept for while now. We run a highly customized DKP system (essentially, we take your loot awarded divided by hours raided to get a ratio, best ratio has highest priority on a piece of loot.)

With the price of Void Crystals ridiculously low, disenchanting gear has little to no value, we have more than we could possibly use for shadow resists in BT saved up, and selling them is almost impossible now.

So, bearing all that in mind, there is a plethora of gear that is getting DEed, and under a DKP system, it would be rather foolish for people to spend on their offspecs, as they would have a hard time competing with "focused" classes, like say a mage, who has no offspec, for gear. This also is a bit of an issue, as there are fights where someone like our prot pally might actually be asked to heal, as he isn't tanking and isn't doing much else, but has an inferior set.

We've tossed around the idea of allowing gear to go to rot, and then allow offspecs to take it for free, but we found that that opens up some rather messy avenues in regards to determining what is/isn't an offspec item (higher stamina for mages, something that might be better for BM than Survival, but the hunter is Survival at that point, two-handers for fury warriors) as well as breeding resentment with the myopic classes.

Have any other DKP, or DKP-like guilds found a solution for this.

We use a dkp system but have people pay gold for offspec items that goes into the guild bank. We use a set price dkp system so just charge double the dkp price in gold. Has worked fine for us so far with no drama at all.

That is an intriguing idea... We don't use DKP valued items, but I'm sure we could come up with some sort of monetary value for it. That could possibly work.

However, how do you decide what is okay to buy? Do you have any issues with some classes thinking they have items that should be "bought" with gold rather than DKP?

We give offspec gear away for free, but we're fairly strict on what is offspec - rogues, mages, warlocks, and hunters have no offspec, for example (stamina gear doesn't count; destro gear for an affliction warlock doesn't count - lines just get too slippery if we go there). But DPS cloth for our priests, healing gear for our ferals, protadin, shadow priests, and enhance and elemental shammies, tank gear for our DPS warriors, and DPS gear for our prot warriors is all given away.

We have a main raiding spec that is declared and the person can't change from that spec, and anything that anyone doesn't want for main spec goes to offspec and is able to be bought, there is no restrictions on offspec so anyone can buy anything they want but the officers will step in if they think someone is taking something they won't ever use. Then the gold from guild bank can be used by the guild for repairs and will be there if we have to buy anything such as Kael lock outs to attune people et.c

Firstly, we're 5/5, 4/9 (killed a non-bugged Shade) so that gives you a bit of an idea where we're at. From memory there wasn't that much "offspec loot" in SSC and TK, but come HS and BT there has been a lot.

We have officer assigned - but offspec loot just "doesn't count". Rogues can (and do) have offspec. Daggers/swords as well as stamina gear count as "off spec" for us. As well as maces and resilience items for PvP. All the offspec uses are only allocated after any possible main raiding use, and PvP use has lowest priority (we're a PvE guild on a PvE server).

A great example of the usefulness of having stamina as an offspec for rogue is the Black Featherlight boots (Kazrogal) are a very slight downgrade from Edgewalker (Moroes) but have an additional 12 stamina. The same goes with the Razorfury Mantle (Kazrogal) versus Shoulderpads of the Stranger (Hydross).

Our guild values loot being taken over sharding loot - so even if the loot is only situationally useful (like +stam) then we want our raiders to take it.

I agree with Gurgthok on this, which is that any loot distribution system in which people don't take even minor upgrades and have them sharded instead is evil, broken and wrong.

Destroying off-spec items is a great travesty, in my opinion. The way I see it, off-spec items benefit the raid as a whole anyways.

As said above, Protection paladin healing for bosses.... what else is the prot paladin going to do in Mount Hyjal for the bosses? (Well, I guess Infernal tank, but we usually run with two prot warriors anyways).

And as for healers... I hope you aren't expecting all your guild's healers to heal their way from 7o to 8o. Or lets not forget the most annoying thing, being force to rep farm some rep as a healer.... Sure, we can dps stuff, but dramatically slower than a dpser in dps gear.

One thing however, that you need to watch out for is collusion. Not sure how you do your DKP bids or what not, but if you are going give away loot, make sure people are not colluding. I'd say, loot council for "rot gear" would be the way to go. If you think a dpser is passing on the loot to try and get a "freebie" then give it to someone else.

We use DKP for offspec gear at a reduced price of 25% of the regular cost. The vast majority of our raiders take advantage of this system to buy offspec stuff, so I can recommend it. I believe that a token amount of dkp helps prevent those stupid rolls which you'd otherwise tend to see.

Collusion is exactly what I am trying to prevent, along with as little intervention as necessary. Our loot system has worked quite well because it is transparent and perceived to be fair, but this has become quite a touchy issue as of late due to the number of "off main specs" we run, Ret, Ele, Enh, Prot pally, etc. This is why there is so much "offspec" loot in SSC/TK for us, to everyone else its main spec.

There are a lot of nice thoughts in the thread here, I hope its helpful to someone other than myself. It sounds like we just need to lay down the rules pretty tough, my biggest worry is people trying to get "main set" loot and calling it off set.

I appreciate the amount of feedback here, I was worried the thread would be dismissed as useless, but I feel this is something many must deal with.

We do similarly as Kentrio said. Each person has a declared spec. Anything not beneficial to that spec is offspec. This means daggers for sword rogues, healing gear for shadow priests and so on. PvP items (some trinkets and rings in SSC) are offspec for everyone. Offspec items go by (dkp) priority as well but the person who takes it is charged for 10% of the normal price. This way people don't offspec everything since there is a small but trivial cost to it but it is low enough to be insignificant. We actually promote people to take offspec gear. As a rather small guild (4x accounts) we might, for example, ask a resto shaman to spec enhancement for a raid and know that he won't be like bringing a pet to the raid in terms of dps. We also give out enchant materials for free for both main specs and offspecs that have we have use in our raids. Basically we make the best we can from the loot that drops instead of stacking void crystals in the guild bank.

We have offspec gear for 50% of regular DKP cost, which usually leads to somebody scooping it. It's leading to some impressive disparities, but mostly for loot whores like me that feel the need to have three raid-quality sets of gear. (Prot set, which includes some threat-oriented and mitigation-oriented piece swaps, offspec healing gear, offspec ret.)

For people that try to offspec upgrades for their main spec, we either shard it or give it to them for full price. High stam kits, alternate spec kits, etc, are all considered valid as offspec reasons. (Threat sets for tanks, as well.)

It's only recently started to develop problems, with people refusing to take loot at any price since we came to Hyjal/BT. That seems to be the critical point - people see the end of their character progression and don't want to settle for anything less.

We use a bid based DKP system, with 1 DKP awarded per farm boss killed, and more for first kills and time spent learning. The minimum bid for an item is 2 points, which is small enough that most people would gladly spend it on offspec loot. Basically, the only stuff that rots on our raids is something that has dropped so many times that anyone who would use it already has it.

We do the free offspec like many people listed as well. We may not have it perfect, and some dps specs aren't at the point where they're getting everything exactly as it could be and don't pick up some stuff that maybe should be offspec, but it's increasing as we go, and it's really helped to give people a better set of offspec gear. I definitely recommend it, and while you might not catch everything at first, you can always add more later.

We just let all of the offspecs roll after an item has been opened for bidding and nobody wants it. It might seem like this would cause some problems, but we've never really had any - we just kind of use our brains about it (IE our GM feral tank druid gets healing upgrades over other offspecs because he respecs and heals when we need him to for healing-heavy fights when we're short a healer). Pretty much if you are going to use it in your main spec, you have to bid - situational upgrades/sidegrades/PvP things don't qualify as being offspec.

The guild I am in runs a very strict policy that every piece of loot is dealt with strictly in the loot system - and it does lead to a lot of stuff being DE'd. However, people will generally take anything they find worthwhile to themselves potentially.

In a perfect world, everyone would immediately clamor for anything that's an upgrade. When there is some cost for taking the item down the line, however high, there is a chance they won't. This is what makes bid DKP systems with no min bid effective in handing out gear - you're not forced to pay more than you want to spend on an item. But it does mean that when you're the only person who can feasibly use a piece of gear, you'll get it extremely cheap because you know there's no one to outbid you. Every system has to balance out those two possibilities while maintaining tractability. In order to not have someone pay at least the same amount for an off-spec item that you forced the only person able to use a certain item payed for their drop, you have to have two tiers of bidding. And to prevent people from gaming the system when they're the only bidder, you have officers decide when people aren't allowed to bid in that second round. And there are going to be different ideas on where to draw the line.

The nature of bidding systems is that people are likely going to have something to complain about in terms of officer decisions. That's why I have always preferred an officer loot system where people will privately notify the loot master what they're upgrading and what their intended role for the item is if not the primary one. If you can't trust the officers in the guild to have the best for the guild in their decision processes you probably shouldn't be in that guild, and you'll probably disagree with a decision they'll make about loot one way or another regardless of the system.

Really, the only solution to the "offspec items are too expensive in our dkp system" problem is that you don't have fixed prices for items, but instead just let people actually bid whatever they think it's worth.

In a system like that, just like on the Price is Right, someone is always going to bid 1 dollar, just incase no one else is in the ballpark. And if the item was going to rot without that 1 dkp bid, well then that's what the item was worth.

Yes, collusion happens for class specific items (You won't bid against another of your class so that they can complete their 4 piece Tier 6 bonus) but offset pieces (rings/trinkets/cloaks) that are actually high in demand among lots of classes will sell for a high price for a long time, because they are genuinely valuable to lots of people.

Anything being sharded that could be put to any use by anyone in the raid is wrong. All it does is hurt the flexibility of your guild. If your players are well-versed in the use of their alternative sets and you maintain a guild bank with some cash in it, you're much better equipped to handle, well, anything. Let me put it this way: If Sunwell has a fight requiring 6 tanks, and your loot system has been sharding tank gear your DPS Warrior could use, aren't you going to feel silly? The same philosophy applies to stamina sidegrades: make sure they go into somebody's bags, and tweak your system until the majority of them do.

The solution to the shard problem is never going to be "fair" -- WoW simply isn't designed that way. Players of classes with multiple roles will loot more epics. If your pure-class players are sensible, they'll see the benefits of a system that minimizes sharded loot.

Our system is an auction with minimum bid, only limit is that you can actually use the item. People bid on "offspec" (different spec than they are raiding with) items on regular basis. However, our people are smart enough to prioritize in a way that benefits raid and guild as whole. 95% of times, at least :-)

I would say don't make any spec limitations and trust your people to know whats good for them. If you can't trust them, and you had to somehow limit bidding on items, I would put a "role priorization" system. You know, "people who bid for their raidins spec has higher priority than out-of-raid-specs". Forbidding fixed specs is kinda artificial when we are clearing Black Temple with enhancement shamans and retribution paladin on regular basis.

We run a zero sum DKP system. Offspec gear is rolled on for zero DKP by anybody who wouldn't use it as a mainspec item - for example, restoration shamans can roll offspec on the Archimonde chest, but an enh shaman cannot pass on it then try to roll on it for offspec.

Works well, ensures everyone gets everything they want after the main classes get it. Void crystals are plenty anyway, there is no real point in letting anything get sharded.

At 5/5, 4/9, we run a zero-sum dkp with an upgrade system, where when you buy an item you pay the difference in price between your current item and the loot you're getting. Now, it has some rather horrible scaling due to some really dubious pricing on items (so for example, buying your first T4 shoulders would cost ~20 dkp, upgrading them to T5 would cost 2dkp), but it does have a very nice solution for offspec items - generally they second item you buy for a slot at any gear level will be free. If I buy some DPS boots, and then later buy some tank boots, they'll count as an upgrade, and most likely be free. At worst, they'll cost a couple of dkp, which will be a couple less dkp for me to spend when I next upgrade.

Moogul, isn't there a horrendous issue that the people at the top of DKP end up on top by a huge margin and never ever move? We had an upgrade system pre-tbc and it was horrendous, new guys never ever could compete with the people who were around since the start.

Yes, there is, and I'll be bringing it up with the guild officers before WotLK (at the moment, it's not going to be a massive issue and we only just got our dkp site up and fully working, and with 25-man raids, the vast majority of loot is uncontested anyway). We used to run the same system back in TT at level 60 and encountered similar problems, which is why we eventually stopped it.

That said, I personally believe the problem is not with the upgrade system itself, but with the pricing of the items. The fact that T4 shoulders -> T5 shoulders is 2 dkp, but that Karazhan shoulders -> T4 shoulders is 20 dkp (KZ isn't a dkp raid, of course). If the prices were changed so that T4 were 20 dkp, T5 were 40dkp, and T6 were 60dkp, then when you were upgrading you'd still be paying similar levels of dkp for the same size upgrade, but the system would still encourage people to not pass on incremental upgrades, and would still cover off-spec loot as I mentioned earlier.

As it is now, everyone's dkp values are largely static, since 90% of all loot is an upgrade somehow, and so worth sod all dkp. Looking at our dkp site, the guild's very first Gruul kill (before I joined) was worth 7 dkp each. Our first Archimonde kill was worth 0.65dkp.