Hey all,
I’ve been reading these forums for a while and I appreciate the quality of the discussions, so here I am seeking advice and opinions.

My guild started as a casual guild, mainly doing PvP. We kept doing only pre-MC instances until we started getting rolled by MC geared guilds. So we decided to start doing MC to “negate†the gear advantage.

We went with Suicide Kings list system. For those not familiar with it, it’s basically a spot in line, if you are there and loot drops, the 1st in-line is eligible to get it. If he does, he gets suicided to the bottom of the list and all players present go up the list.
The ones not present stay frozen in place.

It’s obviously not an effective system, but as I said we were casual about raiding.
Later we switched servers, lost some members in the process and recruited new ones.

The combination of the new members wanting to raid and old members wanting to see what end game has to offer made us become more serious about raiding.
We clear MC under 4 hours and we are currently working on Nefarian.

The biggest flaw about the SK system in our minds is not rewarding people for raid attendance and learning encounters, which pretty much slowed our BWL progression.

The officers are sick of it, and so are the members who are serious about raiding.
We (officers) took the decision to switch to a points system.

Which brings me to the point.
I’ve been reading about the different flavors of DKP, mainly zero-sum and effective DKP.
None of us officers have experienced such a system before, mainly because we’ve been playing together for a long time and the core group rarely changed.
We know the theory and we did our homework, but we are unsure of how the implementation of either DKP flavor will be in practice.

Some mods to track and help DKP management would be a plus.

In other words, we’d like to know what aspects we should be looking for before deciding on zero-rum or effective DKP for example?
And are there mods / web site infrastructure that would help in the transition?

We want the move to be as smooth as possible for us and our members, and rewarding attendance and encounter learning (wiping) are the main reasons we are making the move.

Thanks for any comments.

My guild has been using a secret bid system for its entire time. It worked ok in MC and semi-ok in BWL for awhile, but its falling apart in AQ40 and Naxx in my opinion. The more I read about zero-sum the more I'm envious of guilds that have that system. You guys really need to sit down and plot out what your intentions are. If you intend to just raid to get pvp gear, than pretty much any system will be 'acceptable' as you'd be letting anyone take anything they want (I'd assume) for the most part, all in the name of bettering pvp. That was kind of the original intention of my guild's DKP system and why we have such problems lately when we try to change things up, because not a lot of planning was done way back in the day. If you're serious about seeing the end game content and driving on to C'thun and Naxx, then I'd say go with zero-sum and make sure that all your members are on board and understand what the vision for the guild is. The more you plan out NOW the less drama you have later.

As far as mods go, Smart_ML and "Rise and Shine DKP Manager" work very well for automated DKP tracking under both roll, bid, and zero-sum DKP systems and integrates fully with EQ_DKP. You can get both off curse-gaming and ui.worldofwar.net

Edit - I don't advise hourly DKP or some of the little bonuses for "wiping" on new bosses and such. To me it always seemed to not achieve the intended effect. Why go faster in MC if it means you get fewer points because you miss a few hourly DKP checks? Where's the encouragement to actually KILL the boss if you're getting huge amounts of bonus DKP to "reward" people for failing? In those systems it seems that people just start slacking off because they're earning DKP that they can spend elsewhere, regardless of whether they're doing anything productive in the raid.

Implementation is pretty straight forward but it all depends on if you go with DKP or RPP(get a point for an hour of raiding or something like that). All the systems are just there to measure how often you have been there so the particular system tends to not be that big of a deal and there are a thousand different systems out there that work great depending on the group of people. Most are straight forward but you will have to decide on what kind of skeleton you want to go with. Basically most raids either measure off the values of items(see DKP) or how often you attend raids(see RPP) from there figure out what the members of your raid would feel most comfortable with

The one recommendation is that if you decide to go with a zero sum system be sure to hold strictly to it. You shouldnt need bonuses or penalties in the system. Also since you are just now deciding on a system be sure to plan far ahead(naxx and beyond). Trying to convert a system that only was figuring in MC or something sucks trust me.

I'd reccomend nurfed dkp simply because 95% of the work has already been done for you. It has flaws, but it's probably one of the most consistant systems in existsance.

Goon Squad just switched to a split weapons/armor zero-sum system using the eqDKP platform. So far it seems pretty awesome except for the fact that oom still has a metric fuckton of points.

Here's the fun bit - you guys already do run a type of zero sum.

You can conceptualize your system as one that makes every item worth as many points as you have raiders (wether or not the raider is present), when an item drops - the person spends that many points, then all of your members (there or not) go up by 1. You seem to be looking to make the division by the people showing up, instead of by the entire guild.

I think that should give you a reasonable approximation of what goes on in your looting.

Wasn't it Stonelegs who said that people who use point systems lack moral fiber or something?

Any orc who kills Thrall is not to be trusted.

He has his class sets and a lot of good non-set lhealing oot from what I've seen. He's just in every single raid ever. He can consistently outheal all but 3-4 of GS:Z for example (admittedly the least geared subgroup)

Well that's nice to hear actually. I've only done one instance with Oom, ever, and he was a pretty sweet tank.

We run a silent bid system and havent had any major problems with it yet.
To help with attendance on wiperuns we have an hourly reward for attending learning encounters (encounters we dont have on farm) but with the incentive of a first kill bonus on any unkilled bosses.

If the druid won't use the item for raiding, and the warrior will, then it should go to the DPS warrior.

Wow, you think warriors should get preference on leather gear over druids? What happens when you need a druid to offtank something. Have them say "sorry, all our dps warriors have my gear I could use for that?" What if in the future Blizzard makes some boss akin to Jindo that you need a druid to tank instead of a warrior? You'll be sort of screwed. Yes much of that is dps gear for druids in cat, but its also tanking gear for them in bear. Seriously I'm surprised your guild's druids haven't left if that is the case.

Edit: I suppose if your guild is one that pigeon holes druids into being nothing but healbots and has restrictions on them ever doing anything but being resto healers, than I guess might as well give the leather to warriors. I'm not a fan of guilds that take such measures though. Druids are a versatile class, and having played one I believe a good druid is one that has been allowed to use the gear that allows them to fill in in different situations. They should have good healer gear and good dps/tanking gear whatever their spec is to give them the flexibility their class presents.

If you're talking to me, it's not really an issue since we have no feral druids, and we have no warriors who've wanted leather items yet. However, if a healing druid wanted leather gear for PvP, and a fury warrior wanted it for PvE, I am of the opinion it should go to the warrior. If the druid is a feral druid who often DPS's or tanks in raids then it's a bit different.

In response to your edit: We don't force specs on our druids, we just don't have any feral druids afaik with the exception of one who has two 60 druids; one feral for PvP, and one resto for raiding. On the other hand, many of our resto druids have a bit of feral gear, but it seems to me your making the assumption that all druids WANT to be feral and those who aren't are forced by their guild to go resto.

Well was responding to the initial post. I don't see that with the combination of ZG drops, item sets plus the dps gear from MC and BWL that there is a need to give warrior druid/rogue gear. Belt and gloves in MC, shoulders, boots, helm from BWL, crafted helm and legs, bracers from Ossirian or WSG, Chestplate from ZG or 0.5 should give dps warriors plenty of gear without taking druid/rogue gear.

Still from what you say, there might be a time when you need a druid to offtank something. They'll need that gear then. I don't see how a warrior needs leather gear, given the plethora of options available to them.

Edit: Oh no, that wasn't my intention at all. I think plenty of druids want to be pure resto. If healing is their thing then yes they'll be resto. Still what you called pvp gear I believe is important for resto druids to get. Grinding with pure resto gear/spec is painful. Levelling to 70 with that gear might be so too. It's useful for farming, levelling and for those times where you have too many healers for an encounter (or too little warriors) and you need a druid to dps or offtank. Ps I think any serious raiding druid should have 21 in resto for NS. The only reason I'd not do that is if you were MT'ing or were in a pure dps role, not offtanking. 30/21 is fine for offtanking, heck 11 in feral is enough for offtanking. Mt'ing/dpsing you'd need the more threat generation/dmg that a 11/3x/x spec would require.

See, this is the response everyone gives. Just because it's leather, it's automatically "rogue/druid" and giving it to a dps warrior is a special exception. No, pure and simple, it's dps gear, work from there. Secondly, about alternatives, you're mostly right. I've got most of my slots covered, which you can see from my sig. ZG exalted is a poor alternative when you're still at friendly and your guild only runs ZG on offdays, if they're lucky(I don't play on offdays). So is heroism. Getting a pug to do 45 minute strath or kill Lord Val'thalak is pure torture. About has hard as scaring up a guild group to do it.

But why does the warrior get the "you've got other plate gear you can get" response? Why can't the druid go get leather gear from ZG, or their blue pvp set?

As for giving druids priority because they might need it once in a while for tanking(9 warriors in the guild) or dps, is a legitimate response, but it never happens. Our druids never tank, they never dps, it's kinda sad. They aren't even that great at healing. They occupy the top spots in overhealing, while barely cracking top 10 in healing done. Being an "odd" spec myself(sort of), I fully support things like feral tanks, feral dps, shadow priests, and if they weren't such a joke, dps pallies. And then this wouldn't be an issue at all, because I know the item was getting use, helping the raid advance in content. Now, it's doing zilch for us, better to have sharded it.

Well warriors can use plate, mail and leather. Druids and rogues can only use leather. Hence they should have priority on leather because its the only thing they can use. Warriors can use all 3 though. Now sure if you're alliance you need to compete with pallies occasionally, but then again that would leave all the enhancement shaman gear for you (crown of destruction and so on). I'm surprised it is so hard to get a 45 minute run done. With the gear you have (and that your guildmates must have) you could get 4 friends together from guild and just zerg the place while massively overgearing it. If you can't get 4 together for that than I think you might have bigger problems.

For other gear they can get, there is far more dps plate in this game than dps leather. There just is. There was a reason I deliberately left "go rank up and get the pvp sets" out of my post. Because for a hardcore raider or pve'r that is something that is just not something that fun to do. The warrior dps gear is better for you than the druid dps gear is for them from pvp, at least from a feral point of view because of wasted stats on spell damage and int/spi. So my response would be go get your blue pvp set yourself. Now the WSG rep one is a bit different since you don't actually have to get into the honor grind for it. Just do a couple WSG a day for a month or two. Bringing the ZG set into it is pretty silly, since that gear is pure resto. There is no reason to get it if you have Stormrage, or really even Cenarion. The only thing it offers is high armor which might help if you drop into bear to mitigate dmg. The gear is crap for dpsing or tanking though from a str/agi/sta standpoint.

As for the rest, it seeems you have pretty sad druids. Why I don't know since I don't know your guild. I would give leather druid/rogue priority according to dkp and items (like Malfurion should be druid prio) and then if they don't want it give the warriors a shot at it.

The ZG gear I was more referring was the Primal Batskin or Bloodtiger Harness, which are much easier to get.

I guess the point I'm hung up on is usefullness to the raid. Let's take another example. If I took a lifegiving gem, since I do tank once in a while like you said druids might, over tanks that needed it...wouldn't you think they would get pissed off?

Beef, why does armor type make such a difference? A dps warrior with a leather BP is going to get squashed just as fast as one with a plate BP. And why only make the exception for Crown of Destruction?

Blood Tiger Harness is not very good unless you are also a 300 LW, since you only get the bonuses if you can make them. It is also only two pieces. As for Primal Batskin, I am aghast you bring this up. You seem to have a shocking ignorance of druid gear and how ferals work. There is 0 strength or AP on the entire set. It is completely useless for druids.

Really you shouldn't have so much dkp hanging around that you are taking leather gear. Between your weapons, rings, shields, class set and the good amount of plate dps gear you should have plenty to spend on. I think CoD gets an exception because it is very suited for the warrior class. As for why a druid should get an item like Malfurions which will last him over 3 instances compared to it being a stopgap in a warrior's gear because he has been too lazy to get the other breastplates available to him, I think the answer should be obvious.

That's simply not true. An extra 400-700ish armor can make a very big difference in survivability.

I don't ever take any cloth gear as I value the survivability that leather provides, and warriors generally should do the same

I think you take this alternative things too far. I brought up the tailoring sets from ZG purposefully hoping you would slam them. The alternatives for a dps warrior are just as bleak. Perhaps not statwise, but they suffer their own shortcomings that make equally distasteful. This is not a question about being lazy. I work full time, I have a gf, I raid 4-5 times a week. As someone said above(don't remember if it was you), from a raider's perspective, pvping for armor is not something anyone should have to do.

This isn't about dkp, it's about priority. A hunter isn't going to get a CHT just because he has more DKP when there's melees left that need it.

I'm still curious as to what you think of my lifegiving gem example. I think it's pretty much the same thing.

Lastly, beef, as I've said before, my guild is only through BWL, so that's the limit of my experience. I'm having trouble thinking of encounters where unavoidle physical damage(i.e. you weren't an idiot and pulled agro) is going to get you killed. Just about all AE damage is magic based, making armor moot.

Not really. Lionheart Helm and Titanic leggings, both craftable items are great dps warrior items, especially for Fury. Nothing that is leather can be as good as these two for dps warriors. Heck I see you have them both. :) Right now with my new warrior I am in the process of saving up for them. Have most of the wicked claws, working on the Arcanite, got the herbs for flasks, etc. You have 2 epics that can be created without much difficulty. Sure they cost some money, but you can make them. There are no craftable epic leather items that are not resist centric. Devilsaur is the best really for dps that lw'ing can make.

As for the lifegiving gem, it is definately easy. You get them after the tanks, just like you get shots at the leather after the rogues and druids. Honestly I view you wanting to give warriors priority to druids for leather the same as giving hunters priority to CHT, which is a great offhand weapon for them, second only to FotF I would think. I'm not saying that the items are bad for the hunters or warriors, but they are clearly intended for rogues or druids first.