Druid priority just creates a differant problem. That an item pool is so small that it becomes more efficient to price fix the cost of certain items down and not compete against eachother there and use points saved to compete on less shallow items.

Anyone winning an item for more than 1 point is ostracised and so on.

Who is the asshole in such a case? The class who screws other classes or the class member who screws their class?

The question is not whether or not an item should go completely offspec but how much should the onspec person be required to pay to prevent someone who really really really wants it but its not in the interists of progression to give it to from getting it.

The less you allow the system to set the value on items the closer you wind up to a loot council system. Which isnt bad, its just not a pure dkp system and means you need to deal with all the issues loot council creates.

Depends on the item.
Your example was a paladin bidding on leather to force a druid to spend more points. Not letting paladins compete on leather/ cloth, and not letting ruids bid on cloth healing gear is really just common sense. A priest picking up empowered leggings or a druid getting guise of the devourer for 1 DKP isnt going to suddenly destroy the DKP system.

If you dont like priority, just used closed bids. I would never use an open bid system, because of bidding up, but in a closed bid system people cant do that.

Really zerosum systems only work in a guild with zero turnover (Like EJ) or a system where you reset the DKP for each instance (Like DnT (AFAIK)). Medium guilds need a system when people can "buy in" quickly, and you encourage people to work hard to get high in DKP, rather than slack and just go further and further negative on farm runs.

I dont know about common sense. Right now im only wearing 2 plate items in my normal healing set. One is peacekeeper gloves from ZG and the other is Redemption wristiguards. Peacekeeper is the best item for its slot so thats fine but i would have been happier with the bracers off twin emps than redemption. Unfortunately they are cloth not leather so i cant make the argument that by taking one not the other i merely swap items with a druid but it amounts to a similar thing.

As i see it it makes sense to have pallies wearing cloth and leather to help the raid rather than t1 t2 and t2.5. Sure the aq items and judgement arnt horrible for healing but depending on who needs what i dont always think priests should have cloth before druids and paladins.

Maybe the system isnt destroyed but it changes what type of sytem it is. Basically regulating advantages to certain groups on certain items or classes of items then exaggerating competition on other items.

Zero sum isnt perfect but i dont believe bidding is either. One needs to be strong so the system doesnt break down disenfranchining new recruits, and one needs to be strong so people dont develop animosity on a personal level. I prefer to worry about fixing a system than fixing people personally.

And yes i am very interisted in the whole buyin thing and making it as equitable as possible.

Hmm in my guild Symbiosis we have a naievely simple sytem its basic DKP and the general rule is DKP>All. I can see this being a problem but it really seems to work in ours as its a pretty stable base of people and the new people are carefully vetted to weed out the malcontents. A lot of common sense is involved in the bidding and generally ppl are very nice to each other about it. Best example of this is a Rogue passing DFT to a Warrior as the warrior usually cant make our BWL night so this (his holiday) was concievably the only chance hed get to get the item.

People understand that if they want an item they have to save for it and 9/10 people want the first drop etc so DKP doesnt last very long. On occasion you do see the odd bit of malicious/greedy bidding but id like to think that after the initial irritation people shrug it off and think 'ah well its a game lets enjoy it'. Im aware that loot is often an issue but realistically you have to ask yourself do you actively enjoy playing with someone whos obsessed enough about an item that theyd get upset about it.

The whole issue of medium guilds is one ive partially experienced but im in now what id consider a medium guild but its a medium guild which has stabilised itself and people dont leave it as we are progressing at a decent speed and its actually fun to play with the people your in guild with. Simplistic i know but i genuinely believe that liking the people you play with is 80% of what a guild needs to suceed.

If your paldiins are going to wear nothing but cloth.. you might as well bring a priest.
There are two real points (about the example)
1) Paladins can wear plate, mail, cloth and leather; Priests can wear cloth.
Simply in terms of what is available, your priests should be given pririty on cloth. they have far less options when it comes to non-set healing gear and they shouldnt be competing with paladins who can pick up healing plate.
2) In So many fights in Naxx/AQ there is enviromental damage than can be mitigated by armor.
eg. Sartura, Fankriss, Twins, C'thun, Ouro, Bug trio.
eg. Charging spider trash, Anub'rekhan, Maexxna spawns, Noth Adds.

It is a relatively well know fact that Gurthock doest have aggro reducing talents on the basis that if any healer is going to pull aggro it is better a mail class than a cloth class. Paladin durability plays into ALOT of fights, hell we dont use priests at all to heal the guy tanking those charging spiders in spider wing because they 1 shot our priests.

Paladins not wearing plate are downplaying one of their major advantages over other healers. Wear cloth for Patchy sure, but in many fights (particularly trash) having plate instead of cloth is a real bonus.

Well i will try to discuss this in a way thats relevant to the original topic rather than a complete hijack.

Currently the choice alliance side is druid, paladin or priest for healing. Each brings slightly differant things to the table. Buffs can be handled by a single player for priest and druid while for paladin returns on additional paladins decrease after four. With the decrease from five to six much larger than four to five.

Druids bring hotsm swiftmend, ns and innervate with longer casting heals. Priests bring shield, inspiration, aoeheals and hots with efficient slow heals and less efficient fast heals. Paladins only bring heals with efficient fast heals with low hps and less efficient slow heals with higher hps. Paladins also gain a slight increase in effectiveness of judgements with more present but usually there is one important judgement which would be easy for a single paladin to keep up.

Priests and druids have higher mana regen through meditation style talents, 3 piece t2 and inspiration. While paladins have a much higher mana efficiency.

A paladin provides the highest output but has the lowest utility in a purely healing sence. Lay on hands particularly improved can be useful as can holy shock but both only marginally so.

A druid brings the most instant healing but at an efficiency penalty with swiftmend and NS.

A priest brings a balance of the too with power word shield being particularly effective on 75% healing debuff curses and 50% healing mortal strike debuffs.

The three classes all have their their own survivability help. Priests with fade. Druids with bear/moonkin for armour and cat for slowfall. Paladins with bubbles, bop and higher mitigation.

From a CC perspective druids bring sleep and root. Priests bring shackle and mind control. Paladins have stuns and turn undead.

Sure one could make a table listing the type of fight, which cc and buffs are needed. Whether the damage is bursty or sustained and work out which classes would be ideal for a given fight but i would much rather go in with a roughly equal number of each.

I wear 3 piece judgement for aura when i need to. Never ended up with 3 piece lawbringer but if i had i would wear that sometimes too.

In my normal healing gear i go from 34.5% armour to 52% armour equipping a shield. In my plate gear i go to 62.7%. That costs me 90 HPS. In fights where i dont feel i need to heal much like razoregore sure i can wear more. But on a fight like anubrekhan its just not worth losing a lot of healing to reduce impale or bug damage on myself. Better just to take a bit more and heal myself somemore, the added damage isnt killing me its just taking some time to react to.

As to which class deserves which gear thats something each guild seems to come up with a differant answer to. Its nice and simple to say x class gets all armour of y type because thats their normal armour type. But i prefer to look at who is wearing what, how much of an upgrade it will be to them and what other options are available. Empowered leggings is better than legplates of blazing light in my opinion. But if both are available it makes sense for the paladins to take the slightly worse one which they can wear while priests wind up with the only one they can use. Although back before AQ they were the best option for both classes and so i have a pair of empowered leggings from back then. Its also important to work on how much of an upgrade it is to someone at the time, what that will help you kill, and who will show up how much. Many of these arguments dissapear with t3 pally set which is pretty well done, although higher on stam and int and lower on healing than i would prefer but acceptable. The complicated bit becomes if you decide its efficient to give 2.5 to mages and locks before healers you can then easily decide its efficient to give t3 to priests before mages and locks. At that point the question becomes should some items better than t2 and t2.5 go to priests and paladins since a) they are competing against eachother and b) you may not want to lockout hunters from t3 completely either. Anyway this may be quickly becoming a wall of text, i think the point has been made.

As to aggro the point some people make is aggro reduction only matters if the person has it is producing a lot more aggro than other people which can either be because of gear disparity or lack of pulling ones own weight. Both should be discouraged but sometimes it may still make sense in such a case.

Otherwise aggro reduction merely changes who gets aggro not whether aggro switched. The reason this is differant horde side and alliance side is threat output is vastly differant.

Priest has aggro reduction talent and increased aggro from shielding. Druids have aggro reduction talents. Paladin have no aggro reduction talents, an innate threat reduction designed to make tanking less effective and threat increase from illumination.

I could be wrong but the innate threat reduction is currently 33%. This means that for a paladin to outaggro a druid or a priest they need to out heal them by 50%. Which is entirely possible, just not so practical in gear which it would be super beneficial for the paladin to have the aggro. We come back to the heal in healing gear and put on a shield when needed concept, or use the Naxx shield if your so lucky to have it.

Im not adverse to plate i just like to min/max and pull my weight in the raid, something i dont feel im doing if i wear only plate and definately would not have felt if i had shown up in t0 lightforge to mc. I showed up to mc in largely green +heal items btw.

I recruited a paladin from a guild who refused to let paladins get any non plate items which isnt the best idea but also would not let those who did know what they were doing wear plate in raids. One item mentioned was zulian headdress from ZG, a much better item than judgement crown which the bloke had.

I dont think your guild is extreme to that extent and hope mine isnt similarly crazy. We probably just like to emphazise differant aspects and may well end up making similar gear choices on many encounters. Ive even done differant encounters with differant gear sets and its not the end of the world but i do prefer to err on healing output than survivability unless i keep dying. Sartura for instance if done in my 34.5% armour set.

Hopefully blizzard itemises such that it becomes a moot point in the future anyway.