Today I’d like to toss my hat into the ring with the rest of the blogs which have written posts about loot systems over the past month. It seems loot has been a hot topic since Wrath came out, and my guild wasn’t immune to the bug.

In BC, we were such a new guild that we didn’t really have a real loot system set up. We pretty much were made up of a ragtag group of veterans, rerollers and newbies(notice I didn’t write noobies. there’s a difference), and only really got to Kara and ZA as a guild, so it was pretty much /roll on gear. With the advent of 25′s and “top tier” raiding in Naxx, we had to do something, so I suggested my former guild’s loot system.

Now, I feel some background is in order. My old guild was a high end raiding guild in Burning Crusade, and we went through about four different loot systems before settling on one. We tried this weird modified /roll system wherein people could pad their roll on the top or bottom end based upon class role or past experience. It didn’t last long and was really only used in ZG.

We tried DKP and that seemed to cause more loot drama with the people on the low end of the spectrum not understanding how it would even itself out as the people with high DKP bought gear. It caused a guild split and even an end to our raiding for an entire month while we rebuilt. Eventually we merged with an awesome guild and started taking 25′s down left and right.

Shortly after the merger we decided on a loot system which I still think is one of the most balanced and fair I have ever used. It’s a mixture of loot council and a sort of EPGP style loot ratio system which one of our officers dreamed up after researching EPGP. What we did was come up with a simplified system, the meat of which is a ratio of hours raided to loot taken.

Our system tracks how many hours each person has spent in a specific raid instance. How many raids has each person attended and how many main spec items has each person received.This information is broken down by raid instance and stored on a custom built website which was designed by one of our raiders, who was an officer in the old guild when he designed it initially(Thanks Drew!). We input each raid simply by listing the names of who was present, attaching a number of hours raided to each, and attaching whichever items each won. This data is then stored in the database and can be used instantly to compute a “Loot ratio” which is also shown on the website for all to see. We do this so that each and every member of the raid can see where they stand amongst their competition and to keep things honest. When 25 people are all looking at the data, it’s hard for a Master looter or Loot Council to fudge the numbers. We try to keep things as transparent as possible for fairness’ sake.

I mentioned a Loot council, and now I guess I have to explain that part also. The Loot council is added to it to allow us to break a tie, or hand out a highly desired item correctly. When a Loot ratio is very close, we can look at the hours raided to see if one person has a ratio of 7 because he’s only raided 7 hours and won one item, compared to someone who’s raided 35 hours and won 5 items. In that case, it’s up to the LC to decide whether to award it based upon Hours raided, 35 is more of an effort than 7. But, is that 7 hours over the course of 5 weeks, or 1 week? If it’s the former, the LC will probably vote in favor of the 35 hours. If the latter, we may sway towards a new member who’s stepped it up and been to every raid possible. In a case such as this, the LC will also look at size of upgrade. If Mr.35 is replacing a ilvl200 purple and Mr.7 is replacing an ilvl187 blue, we may sway it towards Mr.7. After all, that’s most likely going to turn out to be a larger upgrade to raid DPS in the long run.

The Larger the upgrade the larger the increase in DPS is a notion that the LC uses quite frequently, but it has to be used with caution. Could that ilvl 187 item have been easily replaced with a craft-able item, or a heroic drop, or even a Naxx10 item? Is this person not putting in the effort to get the best gear outside of raids? Or are they? LC has to take this into account also. After all is said and done, the Loot council wants to remain impartial and hand the gear out in such a way that it will help the guild as a whole. Helping someone who is not helping themselves, probably won’t help the raid, so we have to be very careful not to get lazy when these issues come up. Luckily, they are few and far between so far. As we gain members and hours grow things will crop up from time to time, but for now, we’ve been handing out over 90% of our loot based upon ratio alone.

So, now that I’ve gone over some of the finer points of how we want to hand out loot, Let’s go over our process. It’s pretty simple actually, and I’ll show it to you now. I am sure it’s done similarly all over the place, but Here’s how I do it.

Loot drops, I clear vent, announce the item to be bid upon and post the item in Raid Warning. After this happens, anyone who is interested in the item then will link in raid chat what they are looking to replace with it. After a few seconds, I will also announce, “10 more seconds” and click a chat macro which posts to /RW, “10 Seconds” and then counts internally and after 10 seconds posts “Done.” Only items linked between my initial Item link and the word “Done” will be accepted for competition. The names are read off to an officer who is alt tabbed to the Loot Website, who simply places a check in the check-box next to each name that is read off, clicks a “compare” button, and then clicks a “macro” button. The Macro button opens a new page with a simple Cut and paste macro on it which he can paste into a new macro and then post in officer chat. That macro looks just like this.

/o 25 Man, Tier 7 Raids
/o 35___8.75____Naieth
/o 30___7.5_____Moograine
/o 28___4_______Maerrakech

It lists the people who were interested, this happens to be a Mage, DK, and Druid who would be vying for a T7 piece I guess. The Macro shows simply, the number of hours, the Loot Ratio and the player’s name. The macro automatically sorts itself by Ratio. This macro allows the LC to simply state over vent, “This item is being awarded to Naieth who won with a Ratio of 8.75, over 7.5 and 4. Grats Naieth” We can then move on to the next item. Generally, all of this takes less than a minute per item.

As each item is handed out, I record it on the website, or someone else records it on the website, so that the next item which drops will have an accurate ratio attached to each raider. Hours are added to the site in whole numbers, and We round up. So at 30 minutes, we will consider all raid members to have earned 1 hour for use on the raid site. This way, I can fairly say that the next time an item drops, the loot ratio macro for these three will look like this:

/o 25 Man, Tier 7 Raids
/o 31___7.75_____Moograine
/o 36___7.2____Naieth
/o 29___4.14______Maerrakech

Fair, Simple, Fast. Those are the three things I most want out of a loot system, and so far I feel that with our Ratio/LC system, we’ve got just that. If anyone is interested in learning more about our system, feel free to email me using the contact link in the sidebar.

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