Hi,

I know that there are a ton of posts here about DKP and whatnot, so I'm sorry to make another, but I'm not asking for a system to use or asking about EJ's system. I'm asking other end game raiders what they think of ours and hope that this won't be rickshawed, because right now I feel like i'm surrounded by crazy people. No names mentioned, so please don't think of this as drama, I'm just genuinely concerned about the future progression of my guild.

We use a zero sum system with a 1000 base, where with the exception of the very few special bonuses we've gotten, the points are only moved around by item purchases, and new people joining the guild (joins guild with 1000 points, starts above person who's been in the guild for a year and is down to 900.)

Which means that wipe nights/week (as nax went heh) are worth nothing except attendance (and then every week the total sum of points are divided by everyone who attended's attendance checks, and the dkp averaged out. To like under 1 dkp each the first week of nax when the only loot we got was rez and anub.)

The problem is, with the exception of resist gear (automatically 5 dkp), everything costs the same. Not a single priest has, or will ever loot a piece of the aq40 armor. We've got two pieces of genesis. I think two pieces of the shaman set. We've got one druid who has looted almost everything he's been able to since molten core, and with the exception of him, and a few items here and there, all of the feral gear rots (i learned my lesson when i paid 20 dkp for a bracer of stability, when my cenarion bp was 25.) That druid has stopped doing that, though, for some reason. I think he should keep going, not like there's any reason not to.

Our DPS warriors never looted wrath, or looted a few pieces and realized that they couldn't compete on dps items, so they stopped. Most of our tanks looted tanking gear first, then looted rotting dps gear, so two of our three main tanks basically double as some really decently geared dps warriors. The last is full prot and french.

I complained that it was utterly stupid that we've got to use instance blues and pvp rewards to tank with when we need druid offtanks, and that we should let priests loot nuking gear for cheap/free after the mages and warlocks are done with it because "it's fun" and "being healing spec makes you want to slit your wrists, give them something." "why don't we not allow shamans to take melee weapons over melee classes, then give them to them for free when they're going to rot" and so on. SHot down every time.

Since the rogues typically skip a tier of armor, and never loot anything but the usual rogue stuff, going into aq the top of the chart was almost entirely rogues. A few went for 2.5, but most want tier 3.

Here's where a big problem comes in. Those who didn't want 2.5 want tier 3. I can't currently access our DKP system, but I believe that one of our tanks quoted me as "the rogues could complete 12 full sets of tier 3 before I get one piece." The average rogue is at 1150+, some over 1250, while most of the warriors are around 900.

We don't have enough well geared warriors for patchwerk, who we tried before killing noth or trying grand widow/m-bitch , and the rogues will be taking all of the 3.0 for several months (and since I don't have 10k hp/17k ac because i let all the aq stuff rot), so we'll be equipping another offtank in BWL and aq40 at some point. We haven't actually done BWL in a month, so no idea when we'll go back. We did get him to 68% though.

Our tanks were told that it's their fault that their dkp is so low, that they shouldn't have looted the dps plate, and things like fankriss shoulders (25 dkp to loot on a tank who's already got wrath) and rezuvius ring because it's only a minor upgrade.

My reason for posting is: Are there any other end game guilds out there who think their healers should be using zul gurub loot to level to 70? Or pvp in instance blues? Or that when their tanks aren't tanking, they should be doing 0 dps? That druid offtanks are a complete waste of time because you won't equip them? That people let obvious upgrades rot, every single raid, because they want to save dkp for the best loot, and because looting small upgrades means that you'll never get the really good upgrades? Our druid who looted everything so it wouldn't rot is like, literally 15 months of DKP in the hole.

Basically: There's no such thing as a situational item unless it's resist gear, even a +50 holy damage ring would probably cost a priest as much as a ring of the martyr. "It's the best holy damage ring in the game, that's why it's expensive." ("malfurion's is the best feral druid bp in the game, that's why it cost you almost as much as a stormrage bp.")

Here's a funny story. Because we've had every guise of the devourer rot except for one, maybe two (we got like 5), on one bug family kill the leadership (comprised of 3 rogues + others) suggested making the aq40 high stamina/ac leather 'resist gear' for rogues for fights like sartura and emps. So that guise of the devourer would be 5 dkp for rogues, but 20 dkp for druids.

The guild said 'No' and disenchanted it. Someone tried the same thing with taut dragonhide in bwl because of the high stamina.

Please tell me i'm not the crazy one here.

edit: We've killed c'thun, patchwerk to 68%, probably will kill noth today. killed rez and anub. we're not still stuck on huhuran or something retarded.

It sounds like this is a combination of odd guild leadership and people being dumb. MAKE them loot the upgrades: Upgrades should never, ever rot. Ever.

I'm quite astonished that a guild with that kind of incredibly stupid loot system has made it that far pve-wise

I guess its a testament to the actual player skill involved when you are actually able to progress with such a completely retarded lootsystem.

Whenever an upgrade gets disenchanted a bunny dies, think of the bunnies!

My guild uses a zero sum system with fixed prices. Wrath shoulders and the drake talon ones cost about the same, to give an example. All our warriors have a full DD set and a full tanking set. Exept for one poor fellow who still hasnt gotten his pants, all our DD warriors have full wrath. One of them even speced prot for a couple of weeks to step in for a tank that was away, and tanked an emperor without us healers noticing much difference. Naturaly our warriors are in endless negative dkp, but when the first piece of warr/rogue tier three droped our MT still got it. Dont think we have a rule about it, the rogues just didnt want it as longs as our MT didnt have it.

I think that in general, loot problems are because of the people and not because of the system.

Your dkp system is flawed if you are disenchanting upgrades that will help progression.... further more those rogues should know that passing t3 to a warrior = more loot for them in the long run , as you will be able to kill more bosses. Thus they are retards. I'm the top dkp warrior in my guild by alot but I've passed all the t3 to our current main tank for progression.

Make a new guild and / or kill your leaders irl

Onox -" I think that in general, loot problems are because of the people and not because of the system."

No joke. My guild uses a truly psychotic loot system. Everyone who wants an item rolls on it, the winner DOESN'T get the item, but gets the priveledge of deciding who amongst the people that rolled deserves it. Makes things interesting to say the least.

As a dps warrior myself, I've experienced some of these problems myself. Often times, I'm referring my guild leaders to threads here, but it hasn't done anything. I would love a system that gave me reduced price on tanking gear so that when it was forced on me, I wouldn't get that pissed off(I really don't tank that much, once a blue moon, we have WAY too many warriors). Or, what happened a few nights ago. We're discussing switching to a dkp per dungeon system(dkp earned in MC can only be spent in MC). I love the idea, it gives me a way to pick up the dps gear first, and then gives me even more incentive to raid later when MC is on farm mode and pick up tank gear, because it won't affect how I pick up dps gear in BWL. Only downside is it gives disincentive to people who already have their gear from MC, to raid MC.

But, we'll only switch to this system when we're sharding half the loot in MC. Kinda pissed me off to see tank gear I would have used turn into nexus crystals. Oh well, they said we needed crystals.

Anyway, if you haven't tried already, try to make your raid leaders understand the importance of progression through gearing the right people first. We haven't had too many pieces of loot like this, but the usual things like ranged weapons to hunters first, daggers to rogues first if they are mainhanding it, etc. Up until a few weeks ago, we weren't letting hunters bid on QSR because they were being a bunch of lazy slackers on the damage charts. Nice post, btw.

...

Was your guild started by psych students as an experiment in cliques, infighting, and general psychological warfare via text and voice?

Seriously. Interesting can't even be the half of it.

For the most part it seems to be going Ok, most of the retardness gets weeded out through raid invites. The only major advantage being that no-one has to spend time sorting DKP lists.

Insist that the people who design your loot system understand what random distribution means. Please.

What does your guild do if nothing but second best items always drop? Amass enough nexus shards to build a boat?

Jesus.

I've deleted the rest of my post, because I cannot fathom the rampant stupidity associated with "Lets break this, because it's the second best piece in the game, and I want the best piece to randomly drop next week". I cannot concieve of putting up with that. Wow. Send us your moronic leaders, please. They clearly need more mocking.

I think most people have hit the major points already.

You need forced looting to maximize progression, and if it's enforced evenhandedly it ends being the same in the end anyway. If every DPS warrior is expected to loot Wrath too, then none of them falls behind on points relative to the others.

We shard absolutely nothing that might even have a slight value. The key is to design a system that doesn't punish people for being system-efficient. Upgrades, free downgrades/sidegrades, special pricing, and the like. If an item is of marginal use and is being looted "just in case," then it shouldn't also cost the person who has to loot it an arm and a leg, or he's going to be bitter about it. But people need to understand (which they already should have if you're in Naxx!) that there are fights where you really want a caster to have max spell hit, or where every warrior needs to tank something that hits pretty hard, or where regen is more important than +dam, or whatever. And 2 Nexus Crystals sitting in the guild bank aren't a whole lot of use at that point.

You have an obviously screwed up loot system with three rogue officers who dominate your dkp charts. Blame them. When something is obviously fucking busted, but the 'officers' fail to see the light, either chalk it up to they lack the intelligence to administer a dkp system, simply don't care until it hurts them, or are extremely intelligent and playing you all.

sp

Does your guild just auction off the nexus crystals? You don't seem to be looting enough items that actually need to be enchanted

I guess a few other examples are all of the hunters hunters letting a barb of the sand reaver rot (50 dkp, two handed melee weapon... i think kalimdor's revenge would cost the same, maybe 55) saying 'it'd be an upgrade / it'd use it in pvp, but that's like a month of dkp.' the main tanks spending 5 minutes deciding if ring of vek'lor or the one rezuvius drops are worth actually looting. our first ever caster bindings off huhuran rotting. I think two rings of blackrock have been looted, ever. The guild's second Lok'amir went to a trial member because no full members wanted to spend dkp (this is shortly after aq came out.) Anub offhand being sharded. I'm pretty sure if we ever get that 62 dps parry sword that it'll rot, because the tanks have to save dkp for tier 3 now. I may be wrong though, but as they were told, 'wasting dkp on small upgrades'!

I'm glad that people don't think I'm the crazy one. I think it was one of Praetorian's posts that said "the entire purpose of raiding is to get loot for your guild" - and i agree with that. My attitude is that we're the #1 horde guild on the server, there's no reason that our priests shouldn't be able to out nuke a lower tier guild's mages and warlocks, shamans should be able to cut people in half with big axes while yelling 'lightning bolt, lightning bolt', and our druids should be able to link full inventories of leather to rogues in nightslayer, no, bloodfang, and make them cry. Part of it is a simple logic thing (Healers with damage gear = can have fun = will farm more/play more/be happier/not kill themselves), part of it is an e-peen thing (We have this loot available, someone should be taking it.)

Of course it falls to the individual to decide, but like i said... anyone who chooses to loot that stuff is choosing to take a back seat to everyone else on actual progression items.

Half of what you listed ARE progression items. Your entire guild is psycho.

Well, the examples i listed were meant to show progression gear. I know they are. But I meant to say that if you choose to loot non progression stuff you generally bone yourself over on actual progression stuff...with the exceptions of when people let progression stuff rot. :V

You raid to get gear, see content and feel a sense of achievement. If you have a loot system that results in upgrades being sharded, or warriors only taking DPS gear because buying tank gear hurts them, then you have a shitty system.

One key point to realize is that some classes NEED more epics to perform their role. A warrior needs a full set of good DPS gear AND a set of tanking gear in order to perform properly in a raid, whereas a rogue/mage/warlock will probably use a DPS set with minor variations for everything. And Blizzard didn't go to the trouble of designing the 'secondary-role' epic sets in AQ40 just for guilds to be complete retards and shard it because their loot system sucks.

This is my little brother btw.

He selected this guild over EJ.

There's really quite nothing like hearing stories such as these to make you appreciate your own loot system. It can't be said enough in this thread: force a change or get the hell out before it implodes on you.

A properly prepared druid requires about 4x the epics of a properly prepared mage.
A properly prepared warrior requires about 4x the epics of a properly prepared mage.
A properly prepared priest requires about 3x the epics of a properly prepared mage.

Should the druids, warriors, and priests get some sort of bizzaro "buy one, get one free" loot system? No. But you should at least recognize that by design, those classes have to pick up different sets of gear to be effective in their varied roles, and if you care at all about having a prepared raid, you should really try to encourage them to pick up the pieces they need. It is entirely too easy for blizzard to decide that an encounter should rely upon a different facet of a character's class, that you have chosen not to gear. We use a very similiar FULL-UP/DOWN system to EJ. It keeps the situational gear from rotting, and keeps "marginal upgrade" from being an excuse to hoarde dkp.

Here's the problem, as best I can describe it. Warning, your system frankly pisses me off.

With your current system, if blizzard comes right out and puts a "this encounter requires 2 druid tanks" event into the game, you are going to feel really, atrociously, stupid for sharding the aq40 feral leather. If blizzard comes right out and puts a "this encounter requires zero tanks, everyone must DPS" you will feel really, atrociously, stupid for sharding the aq40 dps plate. You'll have a pile of shards, but shards don't kill anything. The list of potential "you're wrecked" moments goes on and on. Heaven forbid blizzard puts another reputation grind into the game, where we all start at neutral and have to kill stuff to gain rep 1 point per kill to exalted. Those little gems go faster when your healers aren't using the same gear they used to get to 60. Heaven forbid they put a mob in who only takes shadow damage. Our raid has 10 people who can do very respectable damage to said mob, it sounds like your raid has 5. If blizzard decides that 8 people should be able to damage the mob on avg? Have fun farming the gear to get past it after the fact. There's so many ways to just brutally abuse you for sharding gear that you feel is marginal, but blizzard decides to explore. There's a reason I have 100+ arcane resist clogging up a bank slot. It's because I absolutely don't want to find an arcane resist fight, then have to go farm that garbage again. Aside from that, some of the stuff you are sharding is flat out better than what is being worn. It's not a situational use item, it's a "You should be wearing that every single fight" item. That's a clear sign of a horrible loot culture.

We don't raid to get loot. We raid to kill dragons/rocks/bugs/undead. It's standing on top of the corpse at 3 am that matters. The loot that drops gets picked up because you never know when you're going to need a Dartol's Rod of Transformation. The entire game to 60 involves questgivers telling you to take this bizzare piece of murloc ass and strap it to that bear thigh, then do something improbable with it. That doesn't change at 60, what changes at 60 is that there's no longer a stooge with an exclamation mark above his head explaining that to kill huhuran you'll need to take those acid etched pauldrons. It's assumed that 59 levels and 3 raid zones should teach you not to rot items with a _potential_ use.

You can absolutely shard every single item that drops off every boss ever. You'll wonder why you don't make progress in a new instance, and eventually you'll figure out what you need to loot, and then you can farm it, and then you'll make progress again, and go back to sharding everything that drops because it's marginal. Or, you can loot every single item, join the bitching masses regarding wow's exciting inventory system, and never have to go back to an old piece of content because you sharded the shadow resist warlock gear, or the "marginal tanking gear that only gave you an extra 500 hp, but now I'm getting one rounded instead of living at 280 hp"

Your choice, but I really hate farming for gear I've sharded. It's probably the most frustrating bullshit in the world. Nexus crystals are nice, but, to my knowledge, they haven't killed a boss yet. Recomposed Boots and Cloak of Untold Secrets on the other hand...

In short, your loot system is designed with the idea that the reason people raid is to pick up pvp loot, and thus you should charge them for every piece they get, so that everyone gets an equal amount of gear and it's "fair". That's a terrible way to run a railroad. Swap your culture over to 'we raid to see the boss splattered all over the walls', and adjust your loot system so it lets the marginal stuff get picked up so that you don't have to go farm old content after the fact to splatter a new encounter.

The social problem with your loot system can be summed up as follows, and it's why people are saying to get out before it implodes:

Your raiders aren't stupid, we hope, and blizzard is going to throw you an encounter where you have sharded the correct gear for it. At that point you're going to get to tell them to go back to Irrelevant-Instance-A and farm out that gear, while sharding all the stuff that truly is irrelevant. That's a lot of work, and potential frustration at the hands of a random generator. Eventually, people will become angry, and because they're not stupid, just lead by incompetents, they're going to realize who made them go farm maraudon, or ragefire chasm, for the stuff they need for the next big thing. While it's blizzard in the overall sense, it's also the people who encouraged sharding all that stuff in the first place.

Why were people angry about going to maraudon to make progress in AQ? Because they didn't know, when they went to maraudon, that the NR gear was valuable, so they broke it all. Then AQ40 rolls around and they have to go back to an instance they've abandoned for months to get gear that is suddenly extremely relevant. All of the mobs are trivial, there's no excitement, it's just boring repetitive farming. Similiarly, when the quest to open the gates required 4bajillion linen? Noone knew that there would be a use for linen at 60, so we'd long since sold all of our linen, and then we were lucky enough that we went back to ragefire chasm to haul that garbage out. That type of frustration is going to happen, but you should do your best to prevent it where you can. I don't plan on breaking my FR set so I can go farm it again in MC when next I need it just because I'm not dealing with ragnaros atm. At this point, you should know that blizzard isn't itemizing entirely by accident. The new encounters are designed with the assumption you completed the previous instance. As a blatantly obvious example: C'Thun likes 21 points in shadow from your priests. It's not required, but the extra silences are useful as a buffer for giant eye spawns in wierd places. Similiarly, Oracle is a pretty good shadow set. So coming out of aq40, I'm sure the designers assumed you have a priest or two with shadow talents. Entering naxx, we find instructor razuvious. He requires mind control. Luckily, those shadow priests could have the shadow -resist talent and conveniently enough, oracle has some spell hit. Mind control just works better with those talents and some spell hit, so wow, an easier encounter. Notice how there aren't a bunch of whining threads on the forums titled "SHIMMERING GETA IS USEFUL ON RAZUVIOUS FFS"? It's because they're getting better at tying the itemization and progression together in clear ways.

You can buck the trend and make it hard on yourself. You can even overcome the encounters in unintended ways. The point is that at some level, it pays to play along so that you don't have to go back in time to an earlier instance and be at the mercy of the random generator. Take your situational and marginal upgrades when they drop. Don't just hope they'll drop again when you need them.

There's no harm in having random epics in your raider's bags that might be useful, instead of an extra 500 nexus crystals in the bank waiting on the one true enchant. Even with our system, we had hundreds of nexus crystals available when the attunement requirements for naxx arrived, and if we wanted more? Well molten core had guaranteed nexus crystal drops. Much better than hoping for random resist piece drops.

C/P that to whoever it will do the most good. There's a reason I run my own guild, it's so I don't have to put up with that type of blatant tomfuckery stupidity. You have my sympathy.

Now then, on an unrelated note:

Why did you choose these clowns over EJ? I hope the sex was good or the conversation is enriching.

Your post summed up everything about loot in this game and pretty much how every single EJ member approaches the game - Bravo!