Alas had a great post this week about setting up an addon for Suicide Kings loot. It got me thinking about our raid, and our loot system – or lack of one. See, I run as master looter but we don’t do dkp or any of that. We don’t even do Loot Council (I think Loot Council for 10 mans is silly anyway)
Officially our loot rules are “Need before greed, upgrades before side grades, main before offspec, don’t hog the loot”. That leaves a lot of wiggle room but so far it’s worked really well. I can’t tell you how many times two people have rolled on loot, only to have the winner say, “Hey, wait, your bracers are way worse than mine, give it to her instead.”
Or when the other husband and wife team were playing clothies and I’d get a drop, I’d just give it to Falahla anyway and let her take care of it. I wonder if that’s why Ado levelled another hunter for us?
Have we had some drama? Sure, but the drama has come from two sources:
1. BOEs – when no one in the raid needs them, what to do? Someone always has an alt who wants them. Someone else has an auction spec that could use the cash. Lately I’ve taken to just having everyone roll and whoever wins can do as they like.
2. Alts. We have a fairly stable group of raiders but there are always roster changes. Log can’t make it? Ok bring Kalyon instead of Kerick and bring a different healer in. Now we’ve got a different plate wearer taking those drops, and maybe another int mail person who wants loot that would otherwise go to a raider’s offspec.
Here too the rule is simple: if you came in for us, you get to roll on loot. Again, this can cause drama, but all of our raiders are decent people, grown adults who understand that when it comes down to it we’re here to have fun.
But since I am loot master, I can if necessary be the petty dictator. Let’s say there’s that last point on my list – don’t hog the loot. People are going to have different thresholds of what that means. I keep a running track every night of who has gotten what. If, say, a healer has gotten two drops and a trinket drops I’ll remind them of that and ask the other healers to roll first. This only applies to main spec! I’ll never punish someone for getting lucky with offspec rolls.
I could see needing a more formal system if we had less reasonable folks around, or there was any tendency to loot drama. In a ten man, though, the raid leader is able to know what her raiders need for drops and head off the drama before it comes. And my problem with most systems is it rewards the “regular” raiders at the expense of people you bring in to help one week. Those are people who are going out of their way to help you, and getting nothing but Valor points for it.
Honestly? If people demanded a formal loot system, I’d suggest GDKP. Then at least if you don’t get loot you get gold.
I’d love to hear from other ten man raiders – do you use DKP varients, open rolls, loot council, or does it all vanish into the raid leader’s wife’s bags never to be seen again? <whistling>
We have a “be adults and don’t make the raid leaders get involved” system.
We do keep master looter, only to assign drops no one wants to our disenchanter who has a chance [yay bountiful bags] to proc a second maelstrom crystal [that he uses to provide enchants to raiders].
Typically it’s main set > offset. They know what their main sets and offsets are – they know what everyone else’s is… be generous. And I can proudly say – they ARE! We’ve even brought in subs who have happily won loot. Our raiders insist that they roll.
BoEs go to main set > offset > other guild mains > our alts > other alts. We’ve happily supplied the other two teams with some boes to help them get on their way. When no mains are in need of it, we’ll give to an alt of someone in raid [especially one who has a good chance of helping out the other teams, or ours].
We did auction a couple of pieces no one in guild could use [we used to have no warriors or rogues] but all that money went to purchase gear or mats for gear for the guild. A chunk of it was also donated to the guild bank.
I actually power leveled enchanting so that I could guarantee that we didn’t waste maelstrom crystals. Problem is right now everyone who wants a weapon enchant has one – and I have maelstrom crystals sitting in my bags! I’ve got two of the bracer enchants but so far we haven’t had much call for haste or strength – well I actually Hasted my own after getting the chimaeron bracers, the other week when I was reoptimizing my gear. Since I went up about 1.5k hps after that nobody seemed to mind…
Heh…I just commented about this over at Matticus.
We use a basic /roll with a ML to pass loot to the winners. It works in our guild because it’s generally full of level-headed people who can be happy for any upgrade to the team as a whole rather than just their own personal sets. More often than not, we end up with nice-offs:
“You take it.”
“No, you.”
2 minutes of this pass…
ML: “I’m giving it to BillyBob because he rolled higher. You two work it out amongst yourselves. Let’s keep moving.”
Yeah I’ve seen that happen more than once. It’s really nice to have that kind of loot drama and not the other kind!
Fortunately we do have a great guild for this, thanks in part to raid leaders being clear about the loot rules up front. I have seen issues with BoE but really I think that you are handling it the right way, everyone gets to roll, highest wins, do with it as you like. That’s the best solution, then no one gets upset.
We had a slight issue in the other raid a few weeks ago with a BOE. That was only because some of us were not clear on what the policy was once that got re-explained things settled down just fine. The BOE policy between the two guild raids is a bit different so that can cause some confusion.
The difference in BOE policy between the raids is that ‘our’ run lets everyone roll for ANY use once it is clear that no one present can use it. The other raid lets everyone roll for main then off then for any actively raiding alts (alts that are MAIN raiders in an active raid) and after that they AH it and spilt the money.
Consistency in policy can head off a lot of aggravation. People that know the policy will be happy with the outcome. But if someone thinks they know it but it turns out some loophole snatches a drop away from them (in their mind) then they get grumpy. Even grumpier than if they had just better understood the policy in advance. Consistency is key. Clear communication is also key.
SR uses a similar ruleset that you guys have: Main spec, then off spec then DE.
With BoEs if they are not an upgrade for a current raider’s main spec then they are auctioned off and the money is put into the guild bank.
Our guild bank provides enchants, gems, flasks and food to our raiders. Repairs are provided to those that donate gold to the gbank (500g a week). We have several officers who are big AH PvPers so they keep the bank supplied with the mats we need.
Back in Wrath when we were pushing 25s (or multiple 10s) we used EPGP. It worked for what we were doing but was a PITA when we had puggers. As you said it also favors people who are always there.
I prefer what we use now to any point system.
We have pretty much the same system. There’s one person in the raid who’s quite loot-greedy and has caused a little bit of friction, but generally we remind her that she’s better geared than anyone else right now and shame is enough to make her back off. Usually.
I think the main factor for 10-man raids is how regular your group is. I’m currently running with nearly the same group every week and we use the same system as you do. It would feel silly to set up and maintain a DKP system for this.
My previous guild was a different matter. We had very irregular attendance; a few people would show up every raid, most showed up one or two raids per week and some only occasionally raided. In these situations, I think it makes perfect sense to have a loot system that keeps track of people’s attendance and rewards the regulars.
We use DKP and to me it’s the fairest and least drama-prone system. Everyone’s responsible for him/herself and they can spend ‘their’ DKP as they see fit, not rely on the RNG of rolls. And, since we’re a raiding guild first and foremost, my/our focus is to reward the regular raiders, those whom we can count on, and not the people who show up once in a blue moon when they decide a raid would be nice. With DKP, those people only get loot once everyone else has it.
As for BoEs, we bid on them as usual for main spec (i.e. DKP) and if no one needs them for MS then we bank them. Anyone can buy them from the bank for half AH price for their offspec or their alt, otherwise we sell them off.
We’ve been using this system for a year and we’ve never had problems… and I don’t need to remember everyone’s BiS list or slap wrists if someone gets greedy.
Hey! I might be able to use str for bracers 🙂
If you have your BiS bracers and buy the other mats I’ll give it to you before rAid time.