Wow, "disgusting" is a pretty harsh word to use there.

I'm a dagger rogue, with Perd/DFB. When I was in a guild that was pushing C'Thun, there was a long standing sword rogue who made it very clear that once we got C'Thun down, he'd be replacing his CTS with the first Death's Sting. I certainly hated to hear that, but could I blame him? Not a bit.

It's not the same as a priest sudenly choosing to go dps and taking +damage gear. Rogues can dps with either a dagger or sword - and frequently we have to spec for either sword or dagger not based on our preferance, but based on itemization and simply what weapon we have available.

There's no logic in claiming that once a rogue has chosen swords, or daggers, that's what he has to stick with, for life.

A 2h on a pally might not increase your raid dps, but it sure is not useless. Paladins just like everyone else do more than just raid, and a epic 2hander sure makes farming repair gold easier.

Unfortunately for paladins, it's not so cut and dry. I won't repeat what's said already, but virtually every non-single class item has loot priority in most guilds, and if no one wants an item that's an upgrade, however slight, it WILL be looted and that person WILL lose DKP.

Jsut a reminder- all any loot system ever does is prioritize who gets the drops on an item in what order. Because person A gets loot X before person B, when it would benifit more in person B, does not mean (always) that the system itself is flawed. It's a balance between fair, keeping people happy, and equipping hte guild in a good manner to help progress.

One bad loot decision does not a flawed system make.

I find it peculiar that you argue against people saving DKP for larger upgrades rather than smaller yet point out that you give items to someone with lower attendance, intentionally passing over someone with higher attendance. What DKP systems (good ones at least) do is ensure that there is a fair system of loot distribution that minimizes the possibility of human error or human nature (we all have people we like more than others in our guilds, let's not act like the very human leaders of your guild are any different). It also is a pretty handy tool to make sure the people with the best attendance get loot. This is fundamental to a guild's progression. You give the best stuff to the people who are going to be there all the time, or at least you should.

Edit: Open bid DKP Systems were crafted by Satan himself IMO. They tend to tempt the darker sides of people, especially within a class. We scrapped our DKP system a long time ago after we realized that Druids were COINCEDENTALLY always getting things for min. bid despite multiple druids needing the same piece, while Hunters were bidding themselves into oblivion.

It can be exactly the same though, if he is taking the first one. It all depends on what your dagger rogues have.

The argument against priests taking +damage gear is that if a mage has +20 damage shoulders and a priest gets +30 damage shoulders over him, the raid has foregone a roughly 3dps increase. Lots of people are against this. It is understandable because it slows the rate at which you will progress. Eventually the shoulders will drop again and the raid will get its 3dps increase but it will take longer, slowing progression.

Let's take a rogue with CTS who wants to take the first Death's Sting. Assume that rogue puts out 400dps on average. If by moving to that dagger he can up his damage output to 405dps, and he has the dkp for it, it's a good thing. Or is it? Hmmm. What if we have an undergeared dagger rogue in the group. Maybe this undergeared dagger rogue is still using Core Hound Tooth or Gutgore Ripper. Death's Sting is a huge upgrade for him, far more than the +5 dps that the sword rogue would get. If your CTS rogue takes the first Death's Sting the raid has foregone a roughly 10dps increase.

Some loot systems (pure dkp bidding) will allow both situations to happen. Some, like EJ's, take the size of the upgrade into question and will prevent either situation from happening. Open bid dkp systems with class restrictions though have always annoyed the hell out of me. Because they prevent the priest situation from occurring but encourage the rogue one. They are usually advocated by dkp classes who find the 3dps loss in the priest situation to be abhorent but who will defend the right of the rogue in the second situation to use his dkp in spite of a 10dps loss. The philosophy with these "add-ons" seems to be:

"Progression is important to me.

It is important enough that I think certain classes should forego loot if it will hurt progression.

But...

It isn't important enough to me that I'm willing to forego loot even if it hurts progression."

Does this mean sword rogues can never switch to be dagger rogues? Sure they can. But if they are saying "I'm taking the first one and I don't care what anybody else is using..." they aren't any better than a priest saying "I'm getting those dps shoulders, I don't care what the mages are using..."

I don't see how replacing CTS with Death's Sting is any worse for the raid that replacing a Perdition's Blade with a Death's Sting. It's not the fact that it's a sword rogue taking the DS that's resulting in a smaller upgrade, it's the fact that it isn't going to the worst-geared person.

Having used an open bid system for over a year (still using one actually), I have to agree. Possibly the biggest conflicts you'll find in such a system are the differing opinions about who should be bidding against certain people (ie, greed/DKP talks vs good of raid thinking) and the vast differences in item prices that make your "early adopters" feel cheated later on when the same item goes for a tiny fraction of what they paid.

Some of our discussions have revolved around changing the system, but the transition is probably the most "work" involved in this task. Picking a new system should be a matter of guild values and how progression minded you are. If you can agree on guild values/goals, picking a system in that context shouldn't be too challenging, and thus the hard part: the conversion.

There are a couple options for conversion:
1) Reset everyone back to zero.
2) Conversion from old system to the new system.

(1) I find a bad idea. It basically changes the rules in the middle of the game and sets everyone back to square 1. Think of any betting game, if the rules suddenly changed in the middle, and everyone was set to the same amount of money, doesn't that reward the people who were doing badly and punish the people doing well before the switch?

(2) is what needs to be done, but is difficult and alot of work to do well. If you have some kind of upgrade system, I'd suggest the following:
- Take the total earned DKP and subtract the value of your raider's current gear from that total. Use flat values for everyone, not the bid DKP price. This gives you an ordering of attendance/kills to gear ratio. If someone has been showing up a little, but collecting alot of good loot, they'll be down in the ordering, as they would in a zero-sum system.
- After doing that for all raiders, normalize the DKP values around zero-sum. Basically, sum up the DKP, divide by number of raiders (avg DKP) and subtract that number from everyone. That should now set you in a zero-sum system going forward.

Just remember that changing the DKP rules without addressing the imbalances at the time of conversion will likely upset some of your members, maybe even alot of them depending on how (un)evenly your gear has been distributed prior to the conversion.

Oaken, you bring up good points. My only counterarguements would be:

1) IN my experince the drama is actually kept down because our dkp system is so ruthlessly fair and evenhanded. Class locks are present, but are usually very general and removed moderately early, and pretty forgiving. Since we don't use set prices and the bids are completely silent, items 'tend' to go based upon personal value rather than an absolute. Of course, this is soley my experince, so we could be the exception- or there could be a lot more drama of which I am unaware.

2) There's a further concern not addressed, which 'tends' to support my pet theory (why else would I bring it up? *grin*) but could go either way, and that's of who will be bringing these raid dps increasing items to the raid more often? First and foremost, I want the people who show up to get loot, especially those who show up for wipe attempts. This is why zero-sum frustrates me to no end- a person who shows up for the farm kilsl and never the first kills or wipe attempts will have similar dkp to one who's there every single day. If it's a minor upgrade for someone who's there 90% of the time vs a large upgrade for someone who's there 30% of the time, I'd much rather reward the 90% behavior. I'm exaggerating to make a point, but I think it's a valid one. Increased healing/dps/whatever is great, but only what's on the raid matters.

Oh if only looting items was so cut-and-dry. What you're referring to is short term progression - the raid actually nets a loss if one rogue takes this item over another. However, there are so many more factors going into it, it's a bit ridiculous to look at upgrades like that. What if one rogue just joined and the other had been playing for a year and a half with the same group? Doesn't one trust the latter to stay in the guild, play the game longer, and be an active raider even though it's a smaller upgrade? Reasons like that are exactly why DKP exists, it rewards long-term players for short-term losses.

As far as the mage vs. priest argument - the main argument is simply that +damage priest shoulders are PvP or "outside raid" loot, so there is no gain at all from the Priest looting said shoulders over the mage.

I understand how people try to argue that priests wanting dps shoulders is a different case ("Its for PvP, we don't support that."), but dps is blind to whys and wherefores. Your dps doesn't take less of a hit if it is for a rogue beating a lesser geared rogue. If you care about progression, both situations are bad for your raid. Period.

Your point about loyalty is a valid one. It applies to priests as well. "What if the mage just joined and the priest had been playing for a year and a half with the same group? Doesn't one trust the priest to stay in the guild, play the game longer, and be an active raider even though it isn't an upgrade?" In your example, if the new rogue gears up and quits shortly thereafter, you've wasted the drop anyway. In mine, if the mage gears up and quits, you've wasted the drop anyway.

Open bid based dkp systems have their problems with respect to progression.

Open bid based dkp system with class priorities only fix some of those problems, not all of them. And they introduce a caste system which can be very problematic because you are asking some people (usually healers and hunters) to be altruistic while they watch other classes let greed drive their behaviour.

We use open bidding in our guild. This is a sensitive topic because we've had a bunch of new players join and just recently had a warlock post expressing frustration that some priests were taking dps gear that a new warlock could have used. I would love to trade it in our open bidding for a system like EJ's so I pointed her to this site and explained the highlights. Her response amounted to "So with a system like that we wouldn't have priests getting dps items but <insert name of new warlock> might get T3 before me? Well that's not fair, I've been in the guild a lot longer than he has. I don't want that, I just want priests not to be able to bid on dps loot." :blink: