Originally people complained because you had explicit class drops from the old world bosses, with very little cross-class usefulness. Then there were the tokens which vastly reduced the chance of an item rotting, while still constraining it to a handful of classes. Now Blizzard has put the decision even more in the hands of the players, which sometimes causes more problems than it solves. A lot of this revolves around people not knowing what's really an upgrade for them, versus an upgrade for someone else. You don't need to know the loot for every class in every raid, but it wouldn't hurt to at least be familiar enough with the loot tables for the bosses your guild is currently working on to know what's out there for you and your fellow raiders. Something that's a 10% upgrade for you might be a great deal more useful to another class.

The decision as what armor types to bid on is fairly easy when it comes to plate or cloth, but leather and mail are a lot more iffy. If you're going to limit anyone, it seems only fair to limit everyone. However, you have to consider how useful it is to (as the example shows), to direct all leather caster gear to the druid(s) if you've got shamans than could really use it, and how you might be impacting the overall gear level of the raid as a whole.

If you did just have one druid, as was previously stated, it wouldn't be an enormous problem - after he got his best pieces, the rest would trickle down to the others. But if you had several, it would need to be an issue addressed among the players who had leather and mail wearing toons.


And since it was mentioned, I have to throw in my more-than-two cents on Suicide Kings. SK is, hands down, one of the least fair methods of handing out loot. It benefits people who show up one time and get a lucky high roll, and can screw someone who has shown up a lot but started out with a low roll, since they'll get passed over by people who show up once with a higher roll. At least with straight up /random, there's no crazy list to further skew the results.

Spaz himself even lists these reasons - it _doesn't_ benefit people who raid all the time, and people can languish at the bottom of the list. Why you'd ever want to handle gear that way, I have no idea.

I understand where you are coming from here, and yes I understand that SK is not always the most fair system for guild raids, I did mention that this was being used for a standing PUG, where the members in the raid consistently change week-to-week.

In these kind of situations, I believe that SK can be one of the more fair systems. For instance, let's say that you have been raiding for a long time already, but your core group leaves the server, so, you join a standing PUG. Your gear is at a much higher level than the others, so you don't bid on any items for months at a time, and possibly go in spurts without raiding with them because you are getting no benefit. When the time comes that the PUG catches up with you, gear-wise, you begin raiding with them again, and come across an item that you want. Here you would likely be at the top of the list, and actually get an upgrade, when everyone else has been upgrading consistently while you got nothing.

This has been the case with myself, so I do see it as a fair system, for a PUG that is.

Now, if my guild ever gets around to actually raiding on a week-to-week basis, would I use this system? Probably not, because you have the same players over, and over again, but it does work well in PUG situations.

As a side note, my personal favorite loot distribution system is the one that is built into the game, combined with my guild's agreement on rolling. Need for Main spec, Greed for Off Spec, pass if it is neither. If something is not looted, it is fair game for disenchanting, and the shards are rolled on at the end of the instance.

"Here you would likely be at the top of the list"

Can you explain this to me? Are you keeping the loot list outside the pug, for use next time?

The only good thing I can see with SK is that if i join a PUG and I know my roll is lousy, I don't need to stay with the pug. I can go do something that has a good chance of benefiting my character.

We run SK with a fairly static group. The way we handle it was to have everyone /roll when we ran Naxx for the first time and that set the initial list. From that point on new people running with us are added to the bottom of the list. We don't purge the list so if someone runs with us they will be in the same spot they were when the raid ended if/when they join us again.

We also only 'suicide' people if it's a main spec item. If no one wants it for main spec it goes to off spec and is open for a /roll, if no one wants it as off spec it goes to DE. This is done so as not to penalize hybrids.

SK is bad for a basic reason: Punishes Players for Bad Random Loot.

If your "top" and nothing drops for you, somebody else could get 3 or 4 items before you get 1 item. Yet, you get "reset" to the bottom ... where as you should maybe get the next item or two.

It's apply named: "Sucide" cause you really are KILLING YOURSELF if you use that system :-p

@DavidC, the likeliness of the same person getting 3 or 4 items before you even get 1 item is very low, unless you out gear the raid as a whole, because of how the list rotates when people bid on items.

Secondly, this system does not "punish" you for bad random loot any more than DKP or other loot systems, because regardless of the loot system; if it is not a good item for you, you don't roll/bid.

Also, what tends to happen w/ SK is that the gear level of the entire raid raises more quickly, while individual gear levels change slowly.

@loopinvariant, yes, the list is being kept outside of the group, similar to how DKP systems save the list. Like I said, this is a standing PUG, where many members are the same from week-to-week, but there are often new players in the group every week (in our case, we have around 10-15 static players, and an additional 10 non-static players).

@Saryel, as far as the main/off spec gear is concerned, we usually don't bid for off-spec, unless it is a sought after off-spec item. This is really determined by the raid leader.

In reality, I guess it depends on what you consider a "fair" system of looting.

Better for you VS. Better for the raid

Yeah I could see that one being a little iffy with pugs but ok if its a steady group. Cause if I roll a one and there are several people that would want my armor I might be less likely to stick around.

Really with a Pug I think the old way we used to do old school strat is best and that was 1 blue per person(purples in some cases)unless there is an extra no one needs. And at the end spit up any BOE's/shards to those that didn't get anything.

Though anymore most people just do a need or greed approach and for the standard dungeons it does just fine. Only time it doesn't work is with a loot whore and really they get singled out pretty quick and aren't likely to get to complete much.

Our guild used Suicide Kings in BC from Gruuls all the way to BT, overall it was a very fair system.
When we had the odd PuG or two, we put them onto the bottom part of the list. To my recollection, there was very little loot drama as a result of using SK.

The biggest problem with Suicide Kings is that it treats all loot equivalently. A weapon, or chest, should have significantly more value in a loot system, then say, a ring. SK also encourages 'DKP hording' - people are aware that they can only suicide once before they 'lose their DKP', and will camp the top of the list waiting for a specific item - this does not help you gear up your raid.

Fixed price zero sum DKP is a much better alternative to SK.

EPGP trumps both of them.

That is by far NOT the only downside to that loot system. For starters, a necklace that drops constantly is equal in value to the most rare sword (or any other item), and looting the former sends you into the same dark abyss from which you will not climb out of until everyone has had their "fair" shot at a next item /yack

Yeah, we tried it. It's great for small 10-man or "family style" guilds but it was a horror for our progression guild.