Ok, everyone was very, very helpful a few weeks ago with my questions regarding progression. So I'm back with another issue that is currently on my plate: what to do about materials and consumables. Here's the issue in a nutshell:

1. The raid force needs consumables to progress (duh!).

2. Consumables require materials to create or gold to purchase (duh!).

What does guild leadership do when people aren't coming to raids prepared?

Our guild is arguing over two proposals (and perhaps there are many others out there we haven't thought of):

Proposal One: have each class develop a consumables list that they consider to be "required" and expect members of that class to show up to raids with those consumables. Problem? What do you do if folks don't show up prepared? Call them naughty? Affect their ability to get into raids? Eventually gremove?

Proposal Two: pay guildies a nominal (think 33% of what someone could earn for going on an MC clear) amount of DKP each week if they contribute X amount of needed mats.

There are pros and cons to each one. I'd appreciate your thoughts. What have you done?

Let people bring their own shit, berate them if they don't. Offer DKP for turnins for shit like flask of the titans, wizard oils, chimaerok tenderloins, etc., but for the most part, let them take care of themselves.

Oh man, no.

My guild recently started doing this, and it's working out great so far. Not only can we consistently provide people with consumables, but the money for it doesn't come out of the guild bank, either.

What, don't let them buy lewts with gold, thats... downright... smart.

Gold = Phat lewts is a bad road to start down, imo.

Do not, do not, do NOT offer DKP for mats. Bad idea on so many levels. If you're not running zerosum (which, personally? you should be), you can get away with a "Don't bring consumables, we dock you X DKP" policy. There is a difference, although arguably you can get the same effect by saying "If you farm at least X mats, you will earn Y DKP. You cannot earn more than Y DKP via this method."

Still, generally? Tying DKP to farmed mats is a bad idea.

There are required personal consumables (things like major mana pots, major health pots, bandaids, mongoose, etc.) and there are required guild consumables (generally flasks, we lump protection potions in here too). It's on the raider to have their personal consumables. Lump in repair costs there. Guild consumables should simply be listed: "We need X of this item to make our flasks for the week." Any shortfall in donations should be made up for from the guild bank, but it's pretty simple to explain "You don't donate, we don't raid because we won't be prepared."

If someone doesn't come to a raid prepared one week, whatever. If it's consistent, talk to them (privately, outside of a raid) and explain to them that it is important that they do so, and that if they continue to fail, action will be taken.

If they keep screwing up, yeah, a /gkick is the way to go. If someone repeatedly wiped the raid, you'd kick them, right? This isn't really any different.

If they really need more reward than the knowledge they're helping drop bosses, pay them a nominal amount (say, 50%) of the AH price out of the guild bank. You'll be surprised how many guildmembers will refuse it. Besides, what else is the guild bank for?

What our guild has done is to offer people nexxus shards for consumables. If you run an instance often enough, you tend to build up a large supply of nexxus shards. Without a better way to determine who gets the extra nexxus shards, we have decided to use them as a reward for those people farm materials. For example if someone provides 20 stonescale oil, they get a shard. You can vary this based on your servers economy to keep it somewhat reasonable. I am sure a lot of guilds have excess nexxus shards, and this is a way for people to get something for farming, without having to mess with the dkp system. Most of our members use these shards for glove enchants and cloak enchants.

It seems to work pretty well for us.

In our system the guild get nearly all stuff for the raiders, flasks for the tanks, mongoose, g.arcane, mana, mageblood, protection pots and so on (really all you can think about).
Only stuff you have to get on your own are the bops such as runes nights and whippers.

The bill for all of that is paid by the raid ofc, as the boss money is looted by a single person and transfered into the guildbank. Additional money comes from all kind of boe's recipes, and dissed greens 'n blues.

With that money we buy herbs from the AH and from the members. In a raid its like 'xxx trades mana, yyy damage pots and zzz greater nature protection' then u get ur pots and down the god/dragon/firelord whatever.

Depending how big your guild is, if you end up with say, 2 more mages then you need, for a fight were potions do matter (say nr prot pots). If you create that "class based raid consumable list" (which isnt too bad an idea, if you dont want to make it required, at least make it as a guide for the members of that class). Then pick the 2 people who dont fullfill the consumables list to sit out (or if many more dont fill it, those who are furthest away from doing so). If all have what the list says they should, well, then you'll have to find another way, but your original problem will be at least partially solved. (Or people could get upset, throw a hissy fit, and leave, hehe)

How do you do that? Is it a big a bitch to do as I imagine?

Our guild just adopted the Aq contests... again. We just run contests regularly for materials, usually flask materials. The winners get to come loot phat epicz on a few of our runs. Doesnt inflate our dkp system, doesnt cause drama, and seems to be the best alternative around.

Since I became responsible for our consumables supply I have instituted a system where people can send herbs and eels to the raidbank per cod. The cod price will be in general lower than the AH prices (about 66 % I guess). Additionally we do make some profits from selling crafted items (nowadays mainly obsidian stuff), boes and so on.
We tend only to hand out heal and manapotions for encounters demanding an extraodinary ammount of stuff (Twin Emps come in mind), additionally protection potions will be handed out for resistance fights, when we learn them (did that for Huhu, would've done it for CThun except that we diverted to Naxx). Of cause our tanks don't have to pay their Titans either.
Mongoose, Oils and Elixirs are neither mandatory nor provided by the raid. We tend to have a rather low consumable consumption due to the fact that folks are either lazy or lacking time for farming,

There was also the proposal to award DKP instead but I'm strictly against it. Loot should be awarded to those who contribute during raids, not outside of the. We have several people who would instantly start farming with their alts in order to get dkp.

If I were to constitute a new raid, I would probably ask for a medium level of personal consumables (say 5 major healing pots/melees , 5 major mana pots/manauser, 5 Prot Potions (if needed) and some oils for caster perhaps). Often you will see that there are quite a few responsible folks who are better prepared than required and if you support these guys they will set the standard for everybody.

I see something interesting happening here. The folks who are against DKP-for-mats programs are pretty adamant about it. The ones who do it are somewhat ho-hum about it (they aren't describing it as the best thing ever) but what I am NOT seeing is strong, personal examples of what goes wrong when you implement a system like that.

If it's bad, why is it bad? What's really gone wrong? Theory is fine...I'd love some examples.

Buying gold from goldfarmers to get more DKP seems like a very real possibility?

Potentially, yes, but if we're maxing the amount you can earn per week to roughly 33% of that earned on an MC clear...seems like a pretty nominal reward. Trying to balance between an incentive to farm and a grossly overweight reward system.

If we went that route, that is.

Our guild bank gets all nexuses from DE'd epics that no one wants, if an alt wants it, they pay 2 nexuses for it, if it is boe (i.e. MC t1 items) that no main wants (which is the norm for the last year or so) they go on AH, blues from ORB's and Eye of Shadows (once all main priests had it) did also, etc. This gives a very nice reserve of gold, and nexuses that can be used to supply guildies for enchants, and buy raid consumables for an extra push (C'thun after the fix, but before they fixed double mindflayer spawns, i.e. for a day or so, was a titans flask fight). Also, encouraging all guild herbalists, to send in 1-2 herbs per stack they pick (or more if they want) has yielded good results too. If you have to give people a personal reward for them to help the overall guild progress, they are a bit shortsighted, and the guild "spirit" seems to not be all that it could be. Of course, theres a bit of a difference between the cohesivness of purpose and sense of belonging/friendship for a guild made last month, to one made in Beta.

Basically there are many schemes to make it in peoples imediate best interest to contribute to such things, but in the long run, making the members think of the raid/guild first, and themself second, if at all possible, will tend to be the best long term solution.

I mean, how much of the average players expense do you want to subsidize?

Like, I don't think anyone would expect a tank to supply his weekly Flask of the Titans. But what about his stonescale pots? Are you going to supply Major Manas for all your healers? If you're going to do that, why not provide them runecloth bandages? Shit, cover their repairs while you're at it.

IMO, most of a players personal mat cost should remain just that- personal. Part of raiding is supplying yourself enough e-income to cover consumables+repairs.

Some craftables/consumables are required for progress. Your MT needs a flask of the titans. Your melee needs crafted resist gear. These items should be guild subsidized. You, personally, as a member of the raid, may require certain consumables to perform at 100%. Potions, bandages, fully repaired gear. Maintaining a supply of those items is your responsibility. Someone who expects those items to be furnished for them is probably not someone you want on your raids.

It's not really that hard to figure this out. No, you don't "Call them naughty" or anything silly like that. Tell them what the problem is, tell them to shape the fuck up. If they don't do that, kick them on their ass and get them out of the guild.

In our system you can only get DKP for submitting mats if you are already in negative DKP.

We do what Inner Sanctum does, pretty much. We spent 1.09 and 1.10 building a healthy (IMO) guild bank of 45k gold or so by selling MC BoEs, boss BoE blues, Ingots, cores, elementium, and more. Now we're starting to spend that down as needed, with the occasional splurge (blew 1.5k or so on consumables for the hell of it to make our first C'Thun kill a special occasion -- it's like springing for a bottle of the good stuff).

What we've done to manage consumables internally is use the guild bank to subsidize our herbalists/alchemists to maintain a stash of the important stuff for when it's needed. Generally people can CoD herbs to the guild bank for ~15% below market value, which we then have combined into pots/flasks, so as not to get gouged on the AH.

As for day-to-day consumables use, it's pretty much expected. People are supposed to carry mongoose, mana pots, weapon oils, etc. These should be used intelligently -- it makes me cry when I see rogues pop mongoose and juju for a learning attempt where we're still trying to get tanking and healing stabilized and DPS is pretty much irrelevant. But for the attempts when it matters, you need the buffs. And, in my view, people who perenially come unprepared should be replaced by those who are willing to put in the time to keep consumables onhand. If a rogue didn't like wearing the epics he got on raids and instead preferred the look of Shadowcraft and wore that instead, how long would he be tolerated? A tier 1 healer with mageblood, brilliant mana oil, and a healthy supply of major mana pots >>>> a tier 2 healer with none of that. You're gimping yourself if you don't use them, and shortchanging the raid as a result.

Obviously I look at individual buff habits from a long-term perspective. If work is kicking your ass this week and you only have time to log on and raid but not replenish your stock of consumables, of course that's fine. But some people never seem to have them, ever, and are always the same people asking "hey anyone got a spare nature pot?" week after week.

Anyway, short answer: Routine consumables (mongoose, mana pots, etc.) are expected to be provided by the individuals. Unusual or particularly expensive consumables (flasks, telling the MT you want him to chain-chug stoneshields, etc.) are subsidized.

We don't offer any kind of reward for materials provided, outside of the fact that it proves that you really care about the guild and the progression. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of our class officers just so happen to routinely farm mats for flasks, etc. A couple of alchs farm gromsblood in their spare time... I take an hour or two out to fish stonescale eels... it's not really much of a time investment at all if everyone is pitching in a little bit.

So our bank provides flasks of the titans to our MT, but that's about it ATM. At one point we considered sending some money out to the regular raiders, but that was when we were still being screwd by lag on our server causing BWL to be a wipefest. That's passed and I think most of us make money in MC/BWL combined.

As for other consumables... everyone is on their own to provide what they think they need to do a good job. Pretty much the only thing I'm checking for as a priest is to see how many major mana potions the priests brought -- when I see someone consistently bringing none or only a few, and always whining for innervates, it makes a good conversation point with them. It's not like we need consumables for trash or bosses on farm, and for new bosses consumables shouldn't be used until we can reliably manage the encounter. (i.e. didn't use them on Nef until we could reliably get past stage 1)

Philosophically I guess I'm against the DKP for mats because I prefer having people who believe in a guild, who are willing to take time out to help the guild, not expecting any kind of immediate reward for it. The reward is more invisible (the officers recognizing who is a great guildie, and someone we want part of our core group), but it's still very real.

We give nexxus crystals for flask materials. In our old guild we used the guild bank's gold to purchase flask mats from guildmembers (buy it off guildies or the AH, the result is the same). Usually by the time you really need "raid" consumables, you'll have items you're disenchanting and boe blues from raid bosses that you can sell.

It seems somewhat foolish to give dkp for consumables as you will start needing flasks EVERY WEEK (from the moment you start attempting Broodlord till you get into Nax there will be bosses that you need HP to soak damage spikes) - that will eventually add up to people getting a full item just buy buying stuff off the AH. So you're telling me I can effectively buy my AQR off the AH for 300g? Excellent Smithers!:) It also screws up an even loot distribution which is the idea behind a zero-sum system. Even if there are only limited windows where people can get DKP, eventually they'll stop turning stuff in until the window is open and you need those items.

It really shouldn't be rocket science for people to understand that healing and mana potions increase their survivability and reduce repair costs. For anything pre-Ragnaros that's all you should need. If they fail to bring those items, they die, and the 30 guys who brought what they should have proceed to kill the boss. For early Ragnaros kills you should require every raider bring 5-10 Greater FR pots (enough for 3-4 attempts) before they get invited, which is easy enough to enforce with a /raitem check. 5-10g per week on dreamfoil is really not asking a lot (elemental fire and heart of fire drops all over MC in mass quantities, really all you have to farm/buy is the dreamfoil).