Raiding as we go forward

[Kevin]

Though really it isn't drama. It is a real issue. There are several people that are feeling alienated by loot and by the fluid nature of our raids.

We aren't a raiding guild/alliance supposedly but we are raiding 3 nights a week now. That seems pretty much to make us look and sound like a duck. I'm a personal fan of at least having some guidelines out there so that everyone is on the same page. There are some stickied posts on the CA forums that explain some of it but not all alliance members read those boards. I'm willing to help make sure that at least the info that CA and Lurkers are running under is in synch.

Loot
Even though everyone doesn't know it we are operating under a one item per lockout. If you win something you don't get to try on anything else. However this still allows some people to get a lot more stuff than others early on because of the random distribution and can marginalize some people.

Part of the reason Anadrol is MT is because of the loots he has won. I don't think there is really any skill difference between the tanks we bring to the table and the other tanks have voiced that opinion as well. We do let others tank things but for the raid as a whole it makes sense to have Anadrol out there tanking when he is around. Darian is off tank partly because of loots partly because of availability. I know that neither Darian or Anadrol would have an issue with Gnolack or Telsak or Shalandrax or anyone else we have played with taking the MT or 2nd Tank roles. But right now gear means they are better at it, though Gnolack and Darian look to be pretty evenly geared for tanking in there now (but that wasn't the case until I got some stuff for Gnolack recently). But I don't always take Gnolack, I don't always want to take Gnolack.

So what does this mean with loots? Well personally I would like to see people volunteer themselves out of the running if they won something on a previous run. Taranna has a set item. If another druid set item drops I won't be rolling for it until the other druids that I see there a lot have won something. I will still roll on trinket/weapon slot/jewelry that is appropriate for a druid until I win one though. As soon as all the other druids that I see there a lot have won a set I will start rolling on the set items I don't have again. Gnolack hasn't gotten anything. I will continue to roll for set items until I get one. At that time I will stop rolling on them but will continue to roll for a weapon/trinket/jewelry. When I win one of those I'm not rolling on one until all the other warriors and paladins have one.

Good of the raid to me only applies to items like the tranq shot which I agree should still be assigned on the next two runs to hunters that we know are going to always be there, and potentially crafting stuff. Gnolack got a boon of stuff for crafting after last night that I'm tracking so that it gets used to help the raid in the best way that we can. The amulet that dropped last night I think should have been allowed for anyone who wanted to roll on it. I don't think it should have been warriors only. That amulet would have helped a warrior, or rogue, or paladin greatly. I'm not sure a warrior with it helps the raid as a whole more than a rogue or paladin with it. But that was a decide while we are here type item and most of the raid seemed to agree warriors only.

Personally since I'm still raid leader on Saturdays if we still have disgruntled people on a Saturday run I will make these thoughts loot rules for Saturday runs though I really don't want to and I don't think we need to. But we have a loot list out there already. But I want people to be happy with and voluntary about their roles and rolls in a raid.

Classes to take and what do I play?
There are other issues. We are a fluid group. We have 5 or 6 guilds involved in this and even among those guilds we have different members there on different days. We (mostly Darian with others endorsements) have worked to make it so that even if you only make one day, if you make that day consistently for 4 to 5 weeks you should get a chance to see all that we are doing in both MC and Onyxia. This is good. We also have people with multiple L60's. Most of those people will bring what it looks like the raid needs the most. But I don't want any of them to feel locked into that. I don't want tal to feel like he has to play his paladin if he wants to play is warrior. I don't want Lissa to feel like he has to play his warlock if he wants to play his hunter. There are certian needs for succes in the run and if we have a need role to fill then yeah people who can probably should. But what are those need roles, what do you really want to make sure you have to be successful? My thoughts are as follows:

Onyxia
* 2 Tanks. Warriors prefered but a druid or paladin can fill in that role for at least the 2nd tank spot
* 6 healers. 2 priests for shielding of the whelps rest I don't think matters as long as you dedicated to healing. I personally think a paladin that is geared for it can fill one of these spots.
* 4 dedicate AoE people (for whelps I see no reason why this can't be a lock or mage)
* 4 people that can out of combat rez of some sort if they come back up via soulstone or druid rez. This can be covered by priests or paladins it is best but not required that they are not a dedicate healer. I think you pretty much need 3 healers to focus on healing at all times or you won't make it but that does leave 3 healers from the needed healers that can go into rez mode and not jump back into combat right away if things go wrong.
* 4 DoT casters. Hunters, priests and locks can do this, so can a druid in a pinch but moonfire is week. We have more issues in phase 2 if we don't have DoT's on her but 4 people should able to do it, especially if one of them is a lock.
* 6 ranged DPS. This can be mages, hunters or locks (if the lock isn't heavily focused on DoT's)
* 4 melee DPS. Rogues are ideal here. Since they can lower aggro well they can start in early and make the encounter go faster and smoother.

In addition it would be nice to have the following classes regardless of role they play
* 2 paladins for buffs and extra healing
* 1 druid for buffs
* 1 warlock for a soulstone and imp totem on the tank
* 1 priest for buffs, preferably a dwarf for fear ward.

I've mentioned 34 people there but several of those roles can be filled by the same person. The AoE and the ranged DPS are often the same. The 2nd tank can do some of the melee DPS that I like to have, DoT casters are covered by healers and ranged DPS. The point is that I feel you have a lot of wiggle room on who goes as long as the basic needs are met, the rest is gravy. I'm very much open for discussion on basic needs. This is my off the top of the head list. Same point will be made when I put up the Molten Core.

Molten Core (to Magmadar I don't know about the rest)
* 5 tanks. 2 warriors I think are needed but 3 tank slots can be filled by druids or paladins in my mind.
* 6 healers. 2 preists again for shields on the imps and such. Paladins and druids can handle it just fine if they are planning on it.
* 2 hunters. The hunters have to have tranq shot though. I think it can be done with just 2 of them, but more is better.
* 4 AoE. 2 mages with blizzard at least. Lissa showed that a lock can AoE on the 5 hound packs though. If you have 2 firelord pulls you might need more than 2 blizzards as well.
* 10 DPS. I don't think it matters as much if it is ranged or melee up to Magmadar.
* 6 debuffers. Paladins and mages specifically though you need some priests to be able to clear mind control. Druids can help clear curses faster but that is more for the mages.

In addition I would like to see the following classes
*2 paladins for buffs. Salvation is the only big need buff, everything else is gravy. 2 paladins can do that without going completely insane I think.
* 1 druid for buffs
* 2 warlocks for imps and banish if you get an odd add
* 1 priest for buffs.

Again lots of overlap and there are things that I haven't seen in Molten Core yet but those are what I think you need to be successful to get to and kill magmadar. The rest is gravy.

I don't think this should lock anyone into playing just one toon and I think we can meet all the needs with the fluid groups.

Filling the spots in the raid
We have lots of guilds we are pulling with. Raid starts are most likely moving to 7:30 for Monday and Thursday at least. We fill from the guilds that are part of the Avarice alliance first. If the start time is at 7:30 that means we open invitations to non avarice guilds at 7:30 instead of 8. This means we should actually start killing in the instance at 8 not 8:30. If you tell the raid leader for that night ahead of time that you will be late then a spot will be held for you. If you don't and we fill the raid out before you get on you are out unless someone volunteers to leave (which in this alliance can be a very likely thing).

Running the raid
The raid leaders have the final say they make assistants as they choose. I'm still claiming the Saturday raids even though I'm currently reliant on several of the CA folks for doing things since they have the macros and tools that I like to use. I will be working to remedy this mainly so that if someon can't be there we aren't scrambling. I would like at least 5 regular members to have access to our strat macros and Dave so that we don't have problems going forward. Again I'm not trying to lay down the law. I just want it clear to everyone what the basic ideas and guidelines we are operating under.

I don't think I have anything else right now. But I just want some more guidelines on organization going forward. I don't want to get more drama we don't need or that isn't really there.

Edit: Some readability and typos.

[TheDragoon]

Part of the reason Anadrol is MT is because of the loots he has won.

Having played a healer in the raids, so far, I can say, with certainty, that it is easier to keep Anadrol alive than the other warriors. It's not a skill thing (sorry Anadrol!) so much as the fact that he has enough defense that he doesn't take many critical hits and he has a LOT of life. The extra life gives a good buffer to work with so that even when the lag like last night starts to hit, we can still keep him alive whereas a bad couple of seconds might doom another warrior and wipe the raid.

So what does this mean with loots? Well personally I would like to see people volunteer themselves out of the running if they won something on a previous run.

This is the sort of thing that I, personally, would like to try and avoid. I know where this comes from as I know I have passed a number of times with my characters on items that I could use, because I wanted to see someone else get something that would be an upgrade for them when the upgrades are few and far between.

However, when you're talking about a 40-man raid where item drops are few and far between, asking people to *volunteer* out of something doesn't fly in my mind, for a number of reasons. First, people get a bit touchy about loot when it drops so infrequently for them. Just ask the rogues, like Quark, who have been in the Molten Core for many hours without seeing anything they could roll on. For them, I don't think it would be unexpected for this voluntary notion to turn into an *expectation*. In this, we're just asking for more drama if someone wins something and then rolls on the next thing that drops when others *expected* him to *voluntarily* opt out for the next roll. This sort of thing would easily set up someone to be judged by everyone else in the raid, despite not breaking any *requirements or rules* for looting. If something like this happened, I would expect many who lost the item to get frustrated toward the person who won while the person who won would be frustrated since he didn't break any rules but people were angry with him.

Now, I've focused on this one case because that's the one you presented, but I think the issue is actually more general. I'm not trying to shoot down the idea of trying to divide the loot up evenly. Rather, I think that things will work better if we try and keep *voluntary* or *expected* actions out of loot distribution. It is much better to lay out rules for distributing loot ahead of time and then follow them so that people who work within the bounds of the rules don't have grey areas to deal with which are catered toward stirring up trouble, hurting people's feelings or making people feel guilty or angry about something that should make people happy: seeing the success of the raid and getting friends cool gear. :)

[Olon97]

*pulls up armchair and a cool drink*

Good luck sorting out these thorny issues!

On an unrelated note, your tanks and those arranging healing might get some use out of a boss by boss damage (delt to the MT) breakdown I posted over on Basin side. I find it very useful to make very minor encounter by encounter gear tweaks (mostly rings and the resist belts from DM tribute).

[Icebird]

For the Garr fight, your total of warlocks + warriors should be equal to or greater than 9. He has 8 rock elementals which need to be either off-tanked or banished.

In the second half of MC you start running into lava packs, which form in groups of either 3 or 4. Every group will have 1 or 2 banishable elementals. Doubling up the locks on each elemental reduces the chance of one breaking free (they can either roam out of banish range or stun the lock).

Chris

[Skandranon]

Placing replies to the posts in the other thread here.

The way I see it, if you were on the run that dropped the loot, you should have a chance at it.  I only find that to be the fairest way.

I used to believe this, if you can recall conversations I had in guild chat a couple times. Actually, I still believe this. If you want fair, everyone who wants it gets to /random 1000 on it; that's as fair as it gets.

The only problem with this is that being fair may not be the highest priority. It never occurred to me, when I spoke of supporting a roll system, that being fair might actually be antithetical to the smooth progress of a guild (or alliance of guilds) through raid instances. Point systems are not fair; they're a compromise between fairness and guild progression.

What you, and everyone else in the Avarice guild alliance needs to decide, is how much of a priority you place on fairness. If you want to be fair above all else, then continue to let everyone /random 1000. If being fair is not your highest priority, or if there are priorities that are close to it in significance, you will have to consider some degree of unfairness.

One example: you currently random all core leathers, fiery and lava cores. I applaud the even-handedness and fairness of the system. I also point out that those components are doing absolutely nothing sitting in banks. A random system will result in fiery and lava cores spread out over all the members, resulting in a case where your guilds might have 40+ cores and yet not one single piece of fire resist gear.

If Anadrol's your MT, an armorsmith high in TB rep should be making fire resist plate for him; all dark iron should be given to that armorsmith in order to either get revered with TB or make dark iron items, preferably both. For some of the future fights, having just two tanks high in FR is very, very handy. Do you wish to wait until the random hand of fate (averaged out, even) gets everyone up to that level of FR (which is likely to take months if not a year)? Or do you introduce an element of unfairness and hand all the cores to two warriors who bulk up on FR in order to not hit a wall on some bosses and trash mobs?

I understand why some people complain about being on all the raids and not getting a single drop, but that's not why I'm in to play the game.  I like the challenge of the big fight, and being around friends.  Loot is just an added bonus.

It's the same for me. But not for everyone, and you need 35+ to raid.

We're using essentially the same system that we used for the lower level, 10-15 man raids.  And after so many raids, loot more or less evened out (cept for Quark, kid has bad luck)

The point you're overlooking is that MC locks for a week. Over time, yes, loot will even out, but "over time" for MC is much longer than for the "blue" instances. And loot only evened out for Strat/Scholo/BRS after four or so months of raiding them, which you could do multiple times a week. Are you willing to wait a year for things to even out in MC?

[Kevin]

For the Garr fight, your total of warlocks + warriors should be equal to or greater than 9. He has 8 rock elementals which need to be either off-tanked or banished.

In the second half of MC you start running into lava packs, which form in groups of either 3 or 4. Every group will have 1 or 2 banishable elementals. Doubling up the locks on each elemental reduces the chance of one breaking free (they can either roam out of banish range or stun the lock).

Chris
[right][snapback]86231[/snapback][/right]

Good to know. As I said my experience is up to Magmadar only.

[Kevin]

Having played a healer in the raids, so far, I can say, with certainty, that it is easier to keep Anadrol alive than the other warriors.  It's not a skill thing (sorry Anadrol!) so much as the fact that he has enough defense that he doesn't take many critical hits and he has a LOT of life.  The extra life gives a good buffer to work with so that even when the lag like last night starts to hit, we can still keep him alive whereas a bad couple of seconds might doom another warrior and wipe the raid.
This is the sort of thing that I, personally, would like to try and avoid.  I know where this comes from as I know I have passed a number of times with my characters on items that I could use, because I wanted to see someone else get something that would be an upgrade for them when the upgrades are few and far between. 

However, when you're talking about a 40-man raid where item drops are few and far between, asking people to  *volunteer* out of something doesn't fly in my mind, for a number of reasons.  First, people get a bit touchy about loot when it drops so infrequently for them.  Just ask the rogues, like Quark, who have been in the Molten Core for many hours without seeing anything they could roll on.  For them, I don't think it would be unexpected for this voluntary notion to turn into an *expectation*.  In this, we're just asking for more drama if someone wins something and then rolls on the next thing that drops when others *expected* him to *voluntarily* opt out for the next roll.  This sort of thing would easily set up someone to be judged by everyone else in the raid, despite not breaking any *requirements or rules* for looting.  If something like this happened, I would expect many who lost the item to get frustrated toward the person who won while the person who won would be frustrated since he didn't break any rules but people were angry with him. 

Now, I've focused on this one case because that's the one you presented, but I think the issue is actually more general.  I'm not trying to shoot down the idea of trying to divide the loot up evenly.  Rather, I think that things will work better if we try and keep *voluntary* or *expected* actions out of loot distribution.  It is much better to lay out rules for distributing loot ahead of time and then follow them so that people who work within the bounds of the rules don't have grey areas to deal with which are catered toward stirring up trouble, hurting people's feelings or making people feel guilty or angry about something that should make people happy: seeing the success of the raid and getting friends cool gear.  :)
[right][snapback]86223[/snapback][/right]

You know you bring up a point. I said I don't want it as a rule yet I started my post as we need more rules to avoid issues. But you are correct. Thanks for pointing out my own back tracking on things in trying to be nice to everyone I open more doors to piss people off.

I don't want to declare loot rules without discussion though. Which means all the avarice guilds need to be in on it.

[Kevin]

One example: you currently random all core leathers, fiery and lava cores.  I applaud the even-handedness and fairness of the system.  I also point out that those components are doing absolutely nothing sitting in banks.  A random system will result in fiery and lava cores spread out over all the members, resulting in a case where your guilds might have 40+ cores and yet not one single piece of fire resist gear. 

If Anadrol's your MT, an armorsmith high in TB rep should be making fire resist plate for him; all dark iron should be given to that armorsmith in order to either get revered with TB or make dark iron items, preferably both.  For some of the future fights, having just two tanks high in FR is very, very handy.  Do you wish to wait until the random hand of fate (averaged out, even) gets everyone up to that level of FR (which is likely to take months if not a year)?  Or do you introduce an element of unfairness and hand all the cores to two warriors who bulk up on FR in order to not hit a wall on some bosses and trash mobs?
[right][snapback]86233[/snapback][/right]

Heh, this discussion is being had on the CA boards right now. You can read where we are at with it here: http://www.carpeaurum.com/modules.php?name...viewtopic&t=179

I was going to bring that discussion to peoples attentions here in this thread anyway and you gave me a great opening to do so.

I show my "let people do what they want" side again in that discussion. I mainly don't want to see the stuff up on auction for cash and I would like to see it go to crafters but we need to decided which crafters first as well. And yep, when does the "good of the group" outweigh the "good of the person".

Input from those who have seen more of the end game is valuable to me. How much more valuable is it for the warriors to have the fire resist gear over a rogue or priest or whoever getting FR or more life or what not?

Dragoon mentioned, and I have seen myself when healing with Taranna, that the higher the fire resist and defense and life (Anadrol and I actually run very close to that in MC both of us at 375 def me at 100 FR buffed him at 120FR buffed, but he has 1K more life than Gnolack, neither of us has a Draconian Deflector yet) the easier it is to heal. The less healing on a tank is more healing for someone else. This is especially true for me a druid who is usually not a healer that has a main responsibility. So I can throw my heals around more freely to help out those trying to bandage or ease the burden on a priest. Darian and I seem to be pretty close with def, FR and life and we both are ahead of the other tanks that are usually there so Darian is the 2nd and I'm the 3rd tank usually. Though that isn't set in stone.



General comment. Please keep up this discussion. I want to know where everyone stands on this stuff and I want to make all of us have more fun playing the game.

[Pesmerga]

Valid Points, all of them. I guess I should clarify earlier statements, and revise as well.

I really don't think that randoming all the cores, leathers, and other such stuff at the end of the raid is the best option. I guess my concerns we're really based on class items/sets. I really think we should be committed to having a person become honored/revered with TB. It makes sense in the progression of the raids, to be able to have at least one person able to outfit us, instead of a bunch of people not close to being able to do that.

I know there are many people are out there for the loot. I was just stating that I'm not ::shrugs:: I'll take it if I get it, but that's not why I'm here.

I, personally, am willing to wait as long as it takes for things to even out, but once again, I'm not most people. I know others want stuff as quickly as possible, and somewhat based on their frequency of raiding. And I understand that. Regardless of how we do distribute loot, it's still going to take a while for everyone to have their tons of gears.

I dunno, I guess I just like random chance better, even if Sayuri did get my BS shoulders ::shrugs::

[Olon97]

Over time, loot does not even out with /random 1000 (note: unless people remember who got what and voluntarily pass to counter the natural distribution patterns). Without a good memory, loot with /random 1000 results in a bell curve with many people with similar amounts, but some very rich and some very poor.

On Tich Basin's last MC weekend, anyone there for both days earned about 65 points. If you look at the standings based on points earned [edit: click on the "earned" column label to sort], you can see that everybody who has earned at least 120 points (two weekends worth) has gotten something at this point (14 total raids), and 16 people with fewer than 90 earned points have gotten something from the raids (debunking the casuals don't get anything myth).

If you don't have some form of human intervention (point system, tracking drops and requesting unusually lucky people to pass for a while, whatever), I can pretty much guarantee after 14 weeks of using /random 1000 you will have people who have attended more than two weekends of raids who still don't have anything. It's basic statistics.

Just something to keep in mind. ;)

*plops back in armchair*

[Kevin]

*pulls up armchair and a cool drink*

Good luck sorting out these thorny issues!

On an unrelated note, your tanks and those arranging healing might get some use out of a boss by boss damage (delt to the MT) breakdown I posted over on Basin side. I find it very useful to make very minor encounter by encounter gear tweaks (mostly rings and the resist belts from DM tribute).
[right][snapback]86226[/snapback][/right]

So +def and life is still a very big deal for most of the encounters. I'm still reading through the whole thread as well as the Basin point system just to have more info at hand for a discussion that I think we need to keep having even if we still have 99.99999% of all the people who have raided with us as very happy campers. I don't want us to lose very happy campers and I'm aware that bogging things down with rules can do that too.

I also need to make sure that the other avarice guilds besides Lurkers and CA are getting their input in on the discussions.

[Olon97]

Input from those who have seen more of the end game is valuable to me.  How much more valuable is it for the warriors to have the fire resist gear over a rogue or priest or whoever getting FR or more life or what not? 

In my opinion (as a sometimes MT warrior working on FR gear) there is no need to rush FR gear for your regular MTs until you're at Baron and beyond, and even then they can likely make do pretty well with blues and such they can get outside of MC. Depending on how fast you reach ragnaros, and how many cores you've gotten to that point, you may need to nudge the tanks' core priority a tad to get them the resists you need to make legitimate attempts (two warriors with 315 buffed FR is pretty much mandatory to beat the encounter in its current form). The other classes need some FR for ragnaros too (rule of thumb is ~150 unbuffed), so having two warriors with 315 buffed and everybody else at 50 won't do you much good. :P

P.S. For the love of gosh, don't use cores to pump up Thorium Brotherhood reputation. That's what dark iron farming (doable solo with a rogue) is for. It will be a long long time before you have more cores than people know what to do with crafting wise.

[Darian]

I don't want to declare loot rules without discussion though.  Which means all the avarice guilds need to be in on it.
[right][snapback]86236[/snapback][/right]

And we need one place to have these discussions... things are getting massively fragmented, with discussions here and discussions at carpeaurum.com.

I just registered avaricious.net, just in case. (avarice.[com|net|org] are already taken.)

EDIT: Okay, that was a dumb idea, thinking it through. Ah, well, it's just cash.

[Kevin]

In my opinion (as a sometimes MT warrior working on FR gear) there is no need to rush FR gear for your regular MTs until you're at Baron and beyond, and even then they can likely make do pretty well with blues and such they can get outside of MC. Depending on how fast you reach ragnaros, and how many cores you've gotten to that point, you may need to nudge the tanks' core priority a tad to get them the resists you need to make legitimate attempts (two warriors with 315 buffed FR is pretty much mandatory to beat the encounter in its current form). The other classes need some FR for ragnaros too (rule of thumb is ~150 unbuffed), so having two warriors with 315 buffed and everybody else at 50 won't do you much good. :P

P.S. For the love of gosh, don't use cores to pump up Thorium Brotherhood reputation. That's what dark iron farming (doable solo with a rogue) is for. It will be a long long time before you have more cores than people know what to do with crafting wise.
[right][snapback]86245[/snapback][/right]

Ore and leather seem to be the best choices for rep. Leather is farmable though you need about 20 people to do it. I have solo farmed some ore in BRD with my warrior but it takes a lot of instance resetting and then getting the nodes to be in the early areas. I don't have a character that can stealth and mine though.

[Kevin]

And we need one place to have these discussions... things are getting massively fragmented, with discussions here and discussions at carpeaurum.com.

I just registered avaricious.net, just in case.  (avarice.[com|net|org] are already taken.)
[right][snapback]86247[/snapback][/right]

Personally I'd like to move all the discussion to the Lounge. The reason is because the lounge is still supposed to focused on discussion of the game and while this is a guild specific kind of thing it is a discussion that I want to hear from people who aren't directly involved in it as well as those who are. It is also a discussion that other lurkers that aren't on Stormrage could benefit from seeing and being involved in.

The CA boards are designed to be mostly guild specific, the guild is the focus of the boards. I don't know if House Harpell or the other guilds have boards at all. But simply because of the nature of the discussion boards we already have available I would like to see the lounge boards used for it.

That is also why my last post at CA ended with a link to this thread and I'm not planning on posting there on these issues anymore unless that is where we want to hold the discussion.

[TheLuminaire]

In my opinion (as a sometimes MT warrior working on FR gear) there is no need to rush FR gear for your regular MTs until you're at Baron and beyond, and even then they can likely make do pretty well with blues and such they can get outside of MC. Depending on how fast you reach ragnaros, and how many cores you've gotten to that point, you may need to nudge the tanks' core priority a tad to get them the resists you need to make legitimate attempts (two warriors with 315 buffed FR is pretty much mandatory to beat the encounter in its current form). The other classes need some FR for ragnaros too (rule of thumb is ~150 unbuffed), so having two warriors with 315 buffed and everybody else at 50 won't do you much good. :P

Agreed. It's not incredibly crucial until Geddon, but as soon as you hit Geddon and beyond, it's much more important.

The guilds I was raiding with on Proudmoore stressed FR gear very early on, so we had an easy time of downing the first few bosses, but it really became obvious when we hit Geddon, and later, with Golemagg and Majordomo. Much like TD said, it made a serious difference in how often, and how quickly I had to heal the MT, and the others.

[Skandranon]

Input from those who have seen more of the end game is valuable to me.  How much more valuable is it for the warriors to have the fire resist gear over a rogue or priest or whoever getting FR or more life or what not? 
[right][snapback]86239[/snapback][/right]

Warriors and rogues: critical.

Other classes: not until Ragnaros, though Geddon and some trash pulls after him can be a little hairy. If you're not a warrior or rogue, be prepared to sacrifice for the sake of the guild(s). You don't need FR as badly as they do, and insisting on an equal share is out of proportion to the need.

[Tuftears]

I think you actually want several tanks decked out in good gear, because you can't count on one person being available all the time - backups are good.

You may find it interesting to consider this strategy: with the Basin Raid Points ('BRP') system, Tichondrius Basin also adopted a procedure where all MC-gathered crafting materials were banked, and people were awarded a small amount of BRPs. People could then cash in BRPs for specific crafting materials from the bank. Thus, everything would stay relatively balanced and you wouldn't have people accumulating random stuff.

If you don't want to deal with points, then just say something like, 'All crafting materials will go to a guild bank. If you're interested in material for some reason, please apply to your raid leader. If there are more people interested than materials available, we'll ask them to roll for initial disbursements.'

[TheDragoon]

Not to mention that I've been unable to register on the CA boards (it doesn't like my email address). :)

EDIT: I guess I've been manually registered there now. :)

[Bolty]

Some of you have expressed interest in getting opinions from those not in these raids. Well, here's mine:

A point system is completely inevitable and if one is not implemented *eventually*, your raids will fall apart due to in-fighting and bickering over loot. It's based on history, and not to sound like an ivory-tower professor, but I know the natural progression of these kinds of raid formations is:

1) casual guilds assemble to do raiding
2) guilds consolidate or become more regimented in their raid setup
3) loot distribution method becomes necessary or raid breaks up
4) group becomes more of a hardcore raid group, with regular raids and point system

Some discussions in guild chat in the past have revealed that I'm in favor of point systems. I think they make sense and, as has been said, are the only way to balance fairness vs. guild progression.

Point systems guarantee that those people who have the biggest influence and importance in running regular raids get the equipment needed to progress the raid group toward stronger encounters. But here's the mythbuster: that does NOT screw over casual players. It in fact helps them.

The example I keep giving is how your group with CA, Lurkers, and others has been working steadily toward getting farther and farther along in MC. You have taken down Onyxia and are working toward being able to do so regularly. All this has come from the hard efforts of many involved for months now.

So I finally get my next char to 60 (I know, taking a while because I spread out my play so much). On my very first run with you all, Uber Item of Total Awesomeness drops from Ragnaros or whatever. I /random 1000 with the rest of the group, and win it.

Gee, wouldn't that be fun?

No, it wouldn't. It would kinda suck.

Sooooo...............

Why do casual gamers hate point systems? Because there's a perception that it prevents casuals from ever getting good loot. This is far from the truth. Casuals can actually rake in loot like madmen with point systems, since they can keep winning loot with small point values that the regulars, who have been running the raids for a long time, will pass over in order to win the "big" stuff. Both hardcores and casuals win with this system.

Hardcore A has 500 points.
Hardcore B has 600 points.
Casual Joe has 40 points.

Pretty Sweet Item drops. Hardcore A decides he wants that and bids all 500 points to get it, so he wins it. The raid continues. Even Cooler Item drops. Hardcore B already has it and wants to save his points for the SuperCalaFragilistic Item that could drop later. Casual Joe bids like 10 points and wins it, while Hardcore A can do nothing.

Just an example. Casual Joe winds up with a really nice item simply because all the hardcores already have it or are uninterested.

Add to that the fact that the casuals get to come along and grab some loot ONLY because the hardcores are so well outfitted that it leads to mistakes costing the group much less than a ragtag blues-and-greens group. Otherwise they'd never even get a shot at the bosses at all. I don't see myself ever being a hardcore raider, but I'll be happy to come along on some in the future if you'll have me. And I'll know that the only reason we're getting anywhere with a newbie like me is because of the work and effort put in to equip the hardcore raiders better.

My 2 cents. I believe you can only go on so long without a point system before a loot dispute threatens to break up the whole raid group. Then it becomes a matter of working out a GOOD point system, and that's a heck of a challenge.

-Bolty