We are having a debt about having no alts come to MC for a couple of weeks to allow us to compile some nexus. Some of the other officers think that people will be pissed off and not show. That pisses me off, we are doing this for the guild to be able to progress to Nax, and having some crystals for enchants is a win to.

How do you guys handle this, or is it a non issue due to having done MC since Feb/Mar last year? Do you think my way of thinking they should just do it for the guild is wrong?

I just keep thinking we as the officers need to be the ones making the decisions, not the minority of people that are just asshats.

Alts buy their gear with Nexus Crystals instead of DKP.

are you in serious need of nexus crystals?

we had so many epics banked in anticipation of the nexus change that we've never come even close to running out, especially given how much we shard in BWL and AQ nowadays. if you have a serious need for crystals, though, it makes sense to either take no alts for a while so you get more gear to de, or charge people crystals for taking items for their alts/2nd copies of items for their main.

Unless you're going in there with 20 alts, you will still get a large number of nexus crystals per MC run.

However, it sounds like you have already made up your mind on this issue, and are expecting a flood of yes replies - I have to say I disagree that the officers of a guild need to make all the decisions and force them on the guild. The relationship between officers and normal members is one of trust. Officers only have as much power as the guildmembers give them, and if a large amount of your guild wants to be gearing up their alts, maybe you should be asking why they are more interested in farming MC for their alts than they are other stuff? Alts can be a fun and interesting way to keep people playing the game, and they also provide a handy reserve core if your a small guild like my own, and a couple of priests are on holiday, for example. Bang, a warlock and a rogue switch to their priest alts and we're good to go.

Finally, the amount of Nexus Cystals required to give every raid member entry into Naxxramus is probably 120 in total. We've got a lot more than that in our bank, and we only killed Ragnaros last October, only killed Nefarian in April, and we only raid 3 times a week.

EDIT : we charge a minimal DKP price for alt gear, but charge nexus crystals for when people want 2 of an item. (2 hats / legs for enchants basically). Charging alts Nexus crystals for gear is probably a good way to go if you are really short on them.

I dont mean to make it sound like I think "fuck the normal raider". I value all of the members in our guild, but at the same time I get pissed off cause it feels like they are holding us back on somethings. Perhaps I am just looking at it the wrong way.

We had a big guild drama in which we lost, I am guessing, around 100-150 crystals to some officers/trusted members that bailed on us. We have around 70-80 atm, and you would be surprised at the amount of gear that some of our new members need from MC.

What's your guild's policy on alts? Only in MC, or can they bring them in "if-needed" in BWL/AQ?

Does improving alt gear improve the strength of the raid as a whole is what my question is.

Anyway, I loathe seeing gear sharded, so I'm inclined to say that you either go for the policy of twinks buying gear with Nexus Crystals, as Gurgthock recommends, or just keep going at your current pace.

Another idea is to "limit" the twinks per MC raid to 5 or fewer, or to keep track of who insists on bringing their twinks to MC despite the guild's wishes, and make them pay their own way into Naxxramas (2 nexus crystals, 1 arcane crystal and 30 gold is actually pretty damned cheap, all things considered, and anyone who isn't Revered with AD is lazy).

No offence, but it sounds like you need new players to be running MC to gear up, that they'd be coming anyways, and that your older members are the ones bringing alts and soaking up gear that could otherwise be shards. If your veteran members don't understand the request for them to bring mains either you are overestimating the need for crystals or underexplaining things to those players. Maybe you could explain the situation and make it clearer that bringing mains to MC is a request and not a requirement, thus annoying fewer people.

We tried a couple systems and this is really the only one that worked well.

If an alt wants loot they have nexus with them and hands it over to an officer after picking up the loot. Everybody wins. In the end, it is not your responsibility as a guild to gear up alts. So making them pay 50g for a nice purple is still a steal for them.

Things I would advise...
-Do not 'sell' the loot. No nexus bidding etc... Same price for every item.
-If there is a conflict between alts, then /random 100. Dont bring your dkp into it. If people get pissy over alt loot then they are probably not the people you care about anyways.

Did this a long time ago when we did MC with alts works perfect.
You can even charge more nexus then you would get from disenchanting.

We're running into somewhat of the same problem, although it's less nexus crystal based, and more T2 Legs driven. We're down to giving alts just about everything, but still have a good number of people that need T2 legs.

The dilema I have with alts going on raids is that it often means a pretty significant amount of gear on the main is sitting offline. It's nice having that core of backups "just incase", and they help with some of the less critical, but important tasks at times (Keying new members, ZG, AQ20) too. But I'm fairly certain our clear time could be much faster if we were running with more mains.

There's also the invulnerability notion. As people get geared up in AQ & BWL stuff, they're going to feel more and more like MC stuff can't hurt them, even when they're playing an alt - that often leads to people being much more lax in fights, and making a lot of sloppy mistakes that slow you down even more.

The idea of 2 nexus crystals for an alt-loot is probably the best bet, especially if your main concern is banking them up for Naxx & Enchants.

To be honest, I think every guild reaches a point where they realise that they won't get all the Tier 2 leggings they want off Ragnaros.

You can do a huge variety of things to try and get people motivated and keen to go, but at the end of the day, due to the incredibly poor concept of having tiered loot spread across 3 different dungeons, it's practically impossible for everyone to get their tier 2 trousers. People just have to realise that the Tier 2 set isn't the end of the world, and that there is better gear out there now. Harsh, but unfortunately true.

We're almost certainly going to make MC a non dkp instance to be raided on off days, like ZG and AQ20, once the patch is released. Items from there will go to mains before alts, and won't count towards the cost of your next raid item in that slot. (we use an upgrade system on all loot).

It surprises me that guilds that are clearing AQ still go to MC every week. We stopped doing MC when our AQ gates opened.

We very rarely let alts come on raids and when they do it's out of class necessity (low on healers, etc). If an alt wants to loot an item that's going to be disenchanted they pay for it with nexus crystals.

We're still doing it because we have 2 Geddon bindings and 1 Garr binding waiting for a partner and some people want their T2 leggings. There are other reasons to go there, Ragnaros drops some nice weapons too and other assorted loot from the instance that people would still like. Of course by now we take turns bringing alts, we have limited the amount of alts and as such we just sell items to alts for DKP since we're not in great need of nexus crystals.

gearing up alts is one controversial issue that brings up a few important points. first and foremost, in order to keep everyone in your guild happy, you can't always be concerned entirely with efficiency and progression. forcing people to raid on their mains just so you can have faster clear times is just begging for them to burn out. while some people might enjoy their character/class so much that they're just dying to do molten core a hundredth time to get that last person a shot at trans pants, others really need at least some degree of variety or they'll get bored and may be driven to quit. on the other hand, for those people who DO just play their mains, it can seem unfair that other people are coming along on alts and getting 'free' loot while they come on the same character every week.

it's a tricky balance to strike. our current policy is that we'll bring alts to BWL (we haven't done MC since AQ came out) if A) they're geared up to some degree already, B) we don't need the main's class in the raid, and C) there's some loot they need that others of their alt's class don't. we charge 1/3rd DKP cost for alt gear in bwl, because while we want to gear alts up, we don't want to appear unfair to those who don't have alts to pick up 'free' gear, and we don't want everyone clamoring to come on their alts every time.

Yeah or is it those that wants to go with alts and get easy epics while some people are forced to go their with their mains that really hump their guildmates? Bringing bluegeared alts slows down clears.

I dont like alts and I never will from my point of view its the people that just comes and gear their alts without really doing anything for it thats "humping" people.

Here's what we use for Alts.

First a quick note about how we handle Nexus Crystals: We add DKP to a raid for any Nexus crystals we get (and allow players to spend DKP for crystals for enchants to balance it). We price them at 10 DKP per. Our system is actually a bit more complicated than that, but thats not the point.

Anyways, for alts. Alts have no DKP, only mains. If a player wants to bring his alt, its at the discretion of the Raid Leader, and if so, the Main gets DKP credit for attendance. If an alt gets an item, the Man get charged a 30 point flat rate, which is more than the Nexus value. Most items are normally priced >100 so its about 1/3 price. Alts must always pass to mains, and never have the option to pay full price. So its Mains > Alts > d/e. If we have BOP buyers along, its Mains > Buyers > Alts > d/e. Any conflicts between Alt that want the same drop is handled with a /random 100 or with common courtesy.