Alternatives to DKP

[Calantus]

Raiding is the measurestick for guilds who raid? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? I mean, if you are going to base your game around beating up NPCs, would you rank people based on how red their hair is? Seriously Hoax, hand off cock when posting please.

Perhaps we should go all PC about describing guilds, we could have all kinds of guilds like:

- "Able to clear raid instances much faster than most guilds guilds"
- "Guilds with far far more players than you would imagine are needed in any one guild guilds".
- "Would raid MC but have better things to do with their time and otherwise could not be bothered guilds".
- "Just made the guild so they could have a chat channel all to themselves, a tag, and spiffy little tabard guilds".

Do we need to do that Hoax? Or can you take your hand off long enough to think with your brain and realise that raiding is the only way to guage a pve guild's overall standing amongst other guilds and if you don't like it you shouldn't care anyway? Or are you one of those weekend warrior "wish I had time to catass but I don't" types who hate their lot in MMOG life and explode in a fit of righteous rage when someone seemingly implies that someone else is better than them at something they wish they were good at? Get back to me when you've figured it out.

[Typhon]

That's alot of emotion for something so intangilbe, from the both of you.  I'm prescribing more nippletime, stat.

[Rasix]

OHHH, SNAP!

[Shockeye]

Or are you one of those weekend warrior "wish I had time to catass but I don't" types who hate their lot in MMOG life and explode in a fit of righteous rage when someone seemingly implies that someone else is better than them at something they wish they were good at?

Stop talking about me!

[chinslim]

I inherited the "family" atmosphere, but I tried to maintain it. It meant we could discuss and argue things, but out and out fucking each other in the ass over numbers in a database wasn't part of the equation. It was supposed to be more important that we all stayed friends and had FUN in the game than whether or not we could take out the "top tier" targets or get all the shineys. It was supposed to be about roleplaying and carousing and genuine friendship, where how much fun wasn't measured by our success or failure, but by the enjoyment of the activity.

But all that went out the window once we were able to do raids, because no one wanted to do anything that didn't involve raiding or improving our chances at raiding anymore, unless of course, you weren't of the level to actually raid yet. And despite all my attempts, the ship never righted itself. I believe that I was entirely too nice in that time period, trying to appease as many as possible, when I would have been better off just bitchslapping a lot of those people to the curb.

Dude, you're looking for a hippy commune.with.LSD, not a video game.  Much anger I sense in you over the EQ past.

[Calantus]

That's alot of emotion for something so intangilbe, from the both of you.  I'm prescribing more nippletime, stat.

I was reading the WoW boards for like 2 hours before coming here (plans got cancelled, nothing else on and didnt feel like playing WoW) so I was just angry at people in general.

EDIT: The basic points still stand, I would have just been less violently angry in making them. I wont edit my post though, it should stand as warning to all those who would read the WoW boards.

[Jayce]

stuff

Much anger I sense in you over the EQ past.

You just realized this about Haemish?

Your skill in Noticing the Obvious has improved! (10)

[chinslim]

You just realized this about Haemish?

Your skill in Noticing the Obvious has improved! (10)

It's like somebody's scab you can pick on, I can't help myself!

[SurfD]

Sorry for the lack of green type, I figured it was not needed.  My point was that its a fucking joke to rank anybody on their ability to beat up npc's.  Its disgusting because THERE IS NO SKILL INVOLVED.  There was more skill involved in beating a megaman X game then in learning the "strat" for MoltenCore.  I spit on your fucking raid encounters.......

Just one question. Have you actually DONE a molten core raid, from start to finish?  If yes, then I will take your comment with a grain of salt, if no, I respectfully request you go sodomize yourself with a spool of razor wire.

There is a large deal of skill involved in many of the Molten core encounters.  If your Main tank sucks, there are at LEAST 4 bosses in there who will rip you a new ass and wipe your entire party in VERY short order.  If your entire 40 man team does not understand how to properly give and take aggro, you will die.  If you dont understand the strategy for some of the encounters, you WILL die.  Saying that there is no skill involved in doing MC is highly ignorant.

There is a REASON that there are guilds on my (or any) server who can clear MC through to Ragnaros in 2 days, and guilds on the same server, who wipe to the 4th boss in repeatedly over a course of WEEKS and never progress farther.  And I guarantee it has more to do with skill then it does anything else.

[schild]

There's a big difference between skill and strategy.

For each encounter in any MMOG, there is basically one efficient strategy you can use to win. If your main tank sucks, he didn't use the right strategy. If he doesn't know the strategy he's just a bad player.

Skill? Not particularly. Memorizing which of 4-5 hotkeys to press and when isn't skill. And if you can't do it, you need to go back to the 3rd grade. It's all far too easy to be considered skill.

The closest thing I can think of to skill in an MMOG is picking 8 skills out of 75 in Guild Wars and then properly countering the countless combination of skills that will get thrown at you in PvP. As far as PvE goes? No. Not at all. Firestorm, Fireball, and then spam burst or something. Not skill. Strategy. Just like Molten Core or any other raid in any other MMOG. PvE takes the skill out of the equation completely.

Now interacting with other human beings is a skill. But that's got nothing to do with the game. That has to do with being a functioning adult.

[ajax34i]

I disagree.  The strategy is the plan that's on paper, and I'm sure it can be found on fan/spoiler sites.  It's one thing to know what you need to do, and another to actually be able do it, as they say.  The fact that not every guild in WoW becomes instantly proficient at Molten Core raids the moment they read the spoiler "how to's" bespeaks of skill for the guilds that ARE proficient.

That you rate this skill as "worthless" is another thing. 

I don't think you learn "interacting with human beings" much in MMO's; you mostly apply what life has taught you thus far, maybe learn one or two rules of communication now and then.  From my point of view, you learn much less about "interacting with human beings" in a MMOG than you learn about the intricacies of its PvE game.

[Zetor]

DKP = loot is priority #1 in the guild, everything else is secondary.

Fuck that. If you have guildies getting pissy about imaginary purple pixels, your guild missed the fun train, imo.



-- Z.

[Rasix]

DKP = loot is priority #1 in the guild, everything else is secondary.

Fuck that. If you have guildies getting pissy about imaginary purple pixels, your guild missed the fun train, imo.



-- Z.

Where are we, in the land of fairies and gumdrops?  Can we just magically whisk 60 people of different ethnicities, temperments, ages, etc etc and expect them to have the same outlook on what's fair, fun, and important? Stop being  elf-humping, MMORPG hippies.

And one last thing (not directed at you, Zetor): execution of strategy takes skill.  Stop thinking what you did to PWN murlocs at level 20 applies to anthing you do in a raid environment.

[Zetor]

Where are we, in the land of fairies and gumdrops?  Can we just magically whisk 60 people of different ethnicities, temperments, ages, etc etc and expect them to have the same outlook on what's fair, fun, and important? Stop being  elf-humping, MMORPG hippies.

Fair 'nuff... I guess I got spoiled with a guild that's been together since '97. Then again, we're probably too small to ever attempt molten core or whatever, so yah.


-- Z.

[SurfD]

DKP = loot is priority #1 in the guild, everything else is secondary.

Fuck that. If you have guildies getting pissy about imaginary purple pixels, your guild missed the fun train, imo.



-- Z.

I would say that DKP = An at least moderately efficent way to distribute 10 hotly contested loot drops among 40 people without having someone get really pissed for any number of reasons.  If loot was "Priority #1" then you wouldnt be using DKP, you would have the Guild Officers distributing it.

[Zane0]

A lot of MC bosses are fairly well designed, in that many of their abilities are unpredictable and require a certain amount of awareness to counter. 

Gehennas for instance, is a tricky boss.  He has two minions, an AoE curse that reduces healing by 75%, random aoe fire rains, and random shadow bolts.  You need to separate the minions and tank them and have mages and druids active with removing the heal curse, which is traditional MMO fare, but the random effects make things very crazy.  Almost everyone is always moving when close to Gehennas, because staying put will mean a death by the fire storms, and everyone is watching their health and the health of others, because the random shadow bolts are about 2 or 3 k.  If you don't pay attention, or if you're really unlucky, you can run into two fire rains in a row and/or take a shadow bolt at a bad time, and bite the dust really fast.

Anyways, yeah, there's a good amount of skill involved in MC; you need to be aware of many things at once, and make proper snap judgements from that information.  Success also depends on proper communication, planning, and coordination of course, but you need willing and able raiders to take all that in.  It's never boring to raid one of the bosses, really.

[Sogrinaugh]

Question to the rest of the people out thier running MC:

Do you enjoy it?  I mean at all?

I guess part of my problem is my system (1.7ghz celeron, geforce 2, no i cant upgrade the geforce 6600GT i got was incompatible) which makes the fps pretty alow at points, but even without that, you have this giant CTRaid thing taking up your viewscreen, only use 2 spells (renew and flash heal), with dispel magic use in certain parts...

I remember reading, before i got either of my char's to 60, how "boring" scholo n strath are, and how people were so SICK of running them over and over to get thier gear (course back then they'd do them in groups of 20 so had a much lower chance at any given drop), but personally i find 5-manning places like that pretty fun.  Yes wipes can be frustrating, most particularly when you cant seem to find a solution or pinpoint what you are doing wrong (happend to us while 5-manning alexi), but you are doing so many things, alot of different strategies are viable.  I dont have 7 other priests cock-blocking my greater heals, thierby wasting whatever effort i have put into learning to time one properly, mind control is both viable and useful at times, shadow spells can be useful in places, etc.

Whereas in MC, because the number of people is so much greater, the individual roles of those people becomes  so much more specialized, and this squashes variety in the gameplay, and for me at least, kills the fun.  WoW is a game in which i can honestly say i enjoyed the journey, yes even post-honor system when my mage was still 49.  But MC seems all about the destination.  Thier is a sense of "damn, well we did it" the first time you down kazzak, or azuregos, or majordomo, but the actual process by which you do it is pretty mind-numbing.

[Paelos]

MC is fun in the sense that's chaotic. It's not really mind numbing because something always goes wrong. It's also very evident that you can't throw 40 people together and expect to get past the first few mobs. As dumb as it sounds, 40 people is a bare minimum for MC, and you will often wipe if you get just one add.

Compare that to Strat Baron runs. I can throw ten people together and basically run the place in an hour and a half, and that's if they suck.

[Tairnyn]

Our guild is currently using the 'Bidding DKP' system outlined in the 2nd or 3rd post. We originally started out using DKP/iDKP where DKP was awarded only when loot dropped and iDKP was awarded for attendance and used as a tie-breaker. This original system led to problems when one set of class-specific loot drops a lot. We had some classes who are all negative and others with huge amounts of points never giving back to the system due to no loot.

The bidding system allows for people to bid based on their perceived value of the item, which accurately reflects highly contested loots and allows those looking for specific pieces to bid high for them. All in all, it's more fun and easier to keep track of. Rather than officers determining item value as they drop, values are determine dby the players allowing for much simplere bookkeeping. This also allows for easy distribution of extra items such as Onyxia Hide Backpack and such.

Personally, I'm not sick of MC yet, but when we can take Ragnaros I may get a little jaded. ><

[SurfD]

I  cant say that I find MC boring, and it is a fairly decent challenge even with a group that knows what it is doing.  (Oh, and we set a new guild record last night.  MC, from Start to Finish, in just under 7 Hours, Including Ragnaros)

[Rasix]

Heh, my guild isn't quite there yet.  We've downed Luci, Mag, Geh, and Gar, but that's what you get when you're a on a backwater server on wrong end of a 4-1 alliance-horde ratio and have a high foreign population (yet again, somehow I get on a server with a ton of asians).  I think we could have done Lucu-Mag in an hour 30 if a MC virgin didn't wander off to the right and train us during trash mob time (thus fucking up the timers).

The boss fights are great fun.   They're very tense and take some very precise execution.  Being a shaman during the Mag fight is pretty fun stuff. I had to juggle being in the secondary healing rotation while keeping the hunters protected with totems. 

The trash mobs are just ungodly boring, though.  Clearing to the bosses makes me feel like I'm back in EQ.  I get the whole psychosomatic flu like symptoms that only a 6+ hour planes raid can induce.  Makes me hate playing.  Then I get to the boss and it's fun again!  /sigh

[Calantus]

MC is fun in the sense that's chaotic. It's not really mind numbing because something always goes wrong. It's also very evident that you can't throw 40 people together and expect to get past the first few mobs. As dumb as it sounds, 40 people is a bare minimum for MC, and you will often wipe if you get just one add.

Compare that to Strat Baron runs. I can throw ten people together and basically run the place in an hour and a half, and that's if they suck.

My guild has never had a full 40 in MC and we regularly take it on with less than 35. We took out Gehennas for the first time the other day with 33 people and the entire run took 30 mins to get to him, 30 mins of setup, and about 15 mins of battle. I'm having alot of fun, but I also have alot to say on strategy and I call out the healer rotations so I have a more active role than most.

We use officer assigned loot.

[SurfD]

MC in a less then 40 man group is easily doable up to Ghennas (Did you do Magmadar before or after they nerfed him?  I think I was on one run pre nerf, and there is a signifigant amount of difference between his damage output now).  You could probably do Baron in 30-35 man also, however Gar, Sulfuron, Shazzra and Golemag will probably fuck you up big time with less then the full 40, simply because you need the extra damage/tanking/healing/special stuff that those extra 5 to 10 people bring.

[chinslim]

I think you can tell the difference between a newb MC group and an experienced one by how many warlocks they try to bring.

[Rasix]

I think you can tell the difference between a newb MC group and an experienced one by how many warlocks they try to bring.

Guess I'm too nooby then to know.  What's the magic number for warlocks, o wise one?

We've had at least 3-4 active ones come lately; hasn't been a problem.   Although two would probably rather play their hunter or priest alts.  Honestly, we were getting to a point where we were running short on warlocks with most of them playing their alts (it was too the point where often have none on, sorry late comers, no ports!).  One's consistantly in the top 5 for DPS; I think only a rogue was higher than him this last run,. For some odd reason, all but one of our rogues seem to do rather crappily in MC for DPS (might be all of the running in and out of battle).  Sadly, I'm never allowed to rogue it up in MC, for some reason they'd rather have my shaman and his back-up spot healing and occasional useful totem dropping.

Although really, we're still at the point where we take anyone that's on until we fill up.  There's no you can or can't go.  I suppose if we were at the point where we had 60 people online, then we'd probably have to limit some class participation.

[Calantus]

We take 3 warlocks generally, 2 sometimes. We want 4-5.

Also Garr seems very doable to me with less than 40. The only reason we lost to him the last time was when a warlock messed up, died, and their add raped the healers. We still managed to kill most of the adds we could not banish and the healer rotation was doing fine until some got killed. Honestly, once we get Garr on his own but for the banishes all that is required is a good rotation on the main tank and the DPS will slowly grind him to nothing no-matter how long it takes.

So far only Rag sounds to be a boss where less than 40 will fuck you hard only because killing him before the 2nd round of sons seems to be key.

No we did not take on Mag before the patch, I was only stating what we had done to show it can be done now I could care less about before.

Rasix >> Your rogues suck, you don't have enough healers, or your guild is stuck on the "don't heal rogues" philosophy. Even with less healers than we'd like it's perfectly possible for spot healers to be free to heal whatever isn't full be it rogue, warrior, or w/e. Keeping your DPS in the fight longer is better than healers standing around with their thumb up their ass. Especially on trash, there's no excuse for a rogue to ever die or bandage on trash.

[NiX]

What's so magical about a Warlock going on these raids?

[SurfD]

Warlocks get banish, a crowd controll ability that lets you remove a Demon or Elemental from the fight for around 30-40 seconds.  There are a LOT of Elementals in Molten Core, where an on the ball warlock can basicly act as a tank for that Mob, effectively pinning it down for the entire fight and freeing a healer to heal main tanks/mele damage characters.  Not to mention that a Warlock can often prevent an accidental wipe if you gain aggro on one of the Lava Surgers / Annhilators when fighting something else.

Warlocks are almost required for the Garr fight (1 super boss mob, 8 little elemental adds that hit fairly hard) because Garr can force the things to detonate for a LOT of damage over a fairly big area, and unless you have a Warlock keep at least one banished, he just keeps summoning more (I have also been told that the more of them you kill, the tougher he gets, so it is generally most groups strategy to keep 2 of them permabanished for the duration of the fight.). 

Nothing like having one of them slip out of your warlock's controll, run strait at one of your Heal/Caster teams, and detonate, instantly killing 1/3 of your raid group.

[penfold]

I don't think anyone's saying that being in an upper-tier raid guild or being a raid-guild player denotes any sort of advanced skill or inherent superiority.  Mostly it's a greater time invested, involvement in said guild, and a willingness to contribute and learn.   

But yes, I suppose it carries a measure of rank.  Yes, it really means nothing and most people in said guilds know this. It's going to mean even less and battlegrounds and less in PVP since it uses a built-in visible rank.  The rank calculated STILL isn't a good measure of player skill, but it's a start.  But really, who fucking cares?  Play the game and have fun in the manner you want to.  Why care what others think of you and your place in the insignificant social hierarchy of a goddamn videogame?

In my guild i had people who actually came out and stated that they measured success in their overall life in terms of success in EQ. Its _really hard to deal with people who look upon MMOGS not as game, but as an alternative lifestyle.

[Rasix]

Its _really hard to deal with people who look upon MMOGS not as game, but as an alternative lifestyle.

Yah, that's definitely an issue.  Big issue really with my guild at the moment.   Our guild pretty much raids 3-4 times a week.  We like to give at least a day off inbetween raid.  There's spur of the moment things like UBRS, dragons for Onyxia key, etc, but those aren't compulsory and you can really just skip out if you want to.

There's been a very vocal component in the guild that wants to be in MC 7 days a week.  The same vocal component wants our raids to start an hour earlier.  The same people don't bat an eye on blowing 80+ hours of DKP on a single item in Molten Core.  These are people that when I said, "why the hell do you schedule Onyxia at 7pm on a Friday?" came back with "most of us play at 7pm."  They don't get that there are people that go out to eat on a Friday, spend time with their family or generally have leisure activities that do not involve foozle wacking.   It's really hard to tell these people, "look, Sunday raids are always going to have poor attendance" and get them to actually UNDERSTAND.  They want loot restricted to members that just don't show up on raid days.   They want people to not be allowed to play alts or have all alts within the guild system.   I'm just waiting for someone to suggest mandatory raid attendence...

Bad part is most of them are considered core or founding members.  They're heard very loud and clear, but so far have been ignored in favor of not burning people out and pissing people off.

[Paelos]

Uber raiding guilds don't want you to have a life. It's due to the arms race effect of MMOs. It starts off small, but eventually you are gaming in a police state.

[chinslim]

What's so magical about a Warlock going on these raids?

Thanks to a certain MC guide that recommends only having 2-3 warlocks, and along with the 8 debuff limit, starting MC raid groups usually start off with only so many warlocks.  Then they finally get some experience and run into Garr and the lava packs beyond.

[SurfD]

What's so magical about a Warlock going on these raids?

Thanks to a certain MC guide that recommends only having 2-3 warlocks, and along with the 8 debuff limit, starting MC raid groups usually start off with only so many warlocks.  Then they finally get some experience and run into Garr and the lava packs beyond.

Actually, MC is easily doable with only 2 warlocks.  We very frequently do it with just two (fucking warlocks have nearly complete sets of Felheart gear simply because they get defaulted the pieces when it drops, they never have to compete on rolls, and the shit drops way too often.)

[chinslim]

I wouldn't call MC easily doable with 2 warlocks.  You'd have to compensate with 7+ warriors on Garr's minions or have hunters/mages who can constantly trap/FN.  Loose minions tear healers apart.  Then on the lava packs, a few resisted banishes(which happens alot) are going to put the hurt on.

Oh wait, you're Alliance, right?

[SurfD]

Nope, not alliance.  Undead Mage,, with The Offenders (one of the larger horde guilds on Tichondrious, and one which also seems to draw a lot of the Drama from time to time).
 
And nah, Garr is usually fairly easy, we usually have about 4 or 5 warriors in the raid, at least 2 warlocks and if need be a Bear Druid and a nice assortment of hunters to keep the Firesworn occupied long enough to kill them down to manageable numbers.   Focused fire eats them, and we can usually kill 2 or 3 within the first minute of the encounter. Actually, I think the last time we wiped on Garr was due to the fact that we brought a new guild warlock along, who was 59 at the time, and a bad resist snowballed into death when Garr forced the loose minion to erupt and killed 1/3 of our DPS

As for the flame packs, if 2 Warlocks cant keep the Rock Elementals occupied long enough to take out the Fire ones (which are unbanishable) then the warlocks suck.