Suicide Kings loot system / SKG

We've started using SK recently in our 25 man raids and one issue that came up quite quickly was the fact that...

1) ...people werent taking small upgrades because they didnt want to lose their position on the list to minor upgrades. This resulted in 5-6 items getting disenchanted during one Naxx raid (these items were all upgrades for people). How do I solve this?

2) How do we deal with offspec gear in an SK guild? I fear that if we start rolling for gear that noone wants initially we'll get into a situation were people don't bid for certain items and instead wait for it to go to offspec

And then my last question that has more to do with the actual addon, SKG.

3) Right now in Naxx25 we only run with 1 list. However, in Ulduar 25 we will use one tier list and one "general" list. How do you actually switch between the Tier and the General list? Do you simply change the list to the correct one and then open the item for bidding?

I appreciate and help I can get with these 3 issues.

We started using SK during naxx, and ran into similar problems with offspecs and minor upgrades/sidegrades. Everyone was holding onto their spot in the list for KT loot.

After a few weeks of filling up the Gbank with crystals, once most of our regular raiders were geared up, we went back to our old free roll/pass if you won and the other guy hasn't. We kept SK list for all the 226 ILVL stuff (Maly/KT/Sarth2D) and started a new SK list for ulduar25. Worked pretty well and people were able to gear up and still not fear losing their needed piece off KT/Maly by taking some tiny upgrade.

As for offspec, we never Suicided people for it, but had to use some common sense. The mage and warlock who kept whispering me "offspec" got politely told where they could shove it.

Also, we never split between tier/non-tier loot, not sure about that part. But good luck, hope our experiences help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Plothole

We've started using SK recently in our 25 man raids and one issue that came up quite quickly was the fact that...

1) ...people werent taking small upgrades because they didnt want to lose their position on the list to minor upgrades. This resulted in 5-6 items getting disenchanted during one Naxx raid (these items were all upgrades for people). How do I solve this?

2) How do we deal with offspec gear in an SK guild? I fear that if we start rolling for gear that noone wants initially we'll get into a situation were people don't bid for certain items and instead wait for it to go to offspec

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If these are big enough problems, then you may want to try a different loot system. SK isn't designed for those particular issues, but rather for easy distribution.

We run two different lists:

One primary list for those big upgrades
One secondary list for smaller upgrades and off-spec

People can choose freely which list to use, but all bids are hidden. This is to prevent people getting "free" upgrades by choosing secondary.

I don't know if this is doable with the addon, we're using a web based system at the moment.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Plothole

1) ...people werent taking small upgrades because they didnt want to lose their position on the list to minor upgrades. This resulted in 5-6 items getting disenchanted during one Naxx raid (these items were all upgrades for people). How do I solve this?

2) How do we deal with offspec gear in an SK guild? I fear that if we start rolling for gear that noone wants initially we'll get into a situation were people don't bid for certain items and instead wait for it to go to offspec

And then my last question that has more to do with the actual addon, SKG.

3) Right now in Naxx25 we only run with 1 list. However, in Ulduar 25 we will use one tier list and one "general" list. How do you actually switch between the Tier and the General list? Do you simply change the list to the correct one and then open the item for bidding?

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1. This is a cultural issue. It's worth explaining how the pally who suicided on two or three minor upgrades now has X more crit, X more int, X more whatever than the pally who waited on one best in slot item. Also, make sure you're setting the example.

2. We roll offspecs. We avoid the situation you mention by getting the raid involved. We will and have asked questions of people rolling offspec - "that looks like it's pretty good for your main spec - can you help me understand why it's better for your offspec?" This ensures they've thought about the choice. The biggest glitch in this, at least for me personally, is boomkins. I just don't get what gear is better for boom or resto, and I may never understand it.

3. At least the addon I use, Suicide Kings Geo, has a dropdown menu where I select the list I'm using. It's pretty straight-foward. FWIW, we use a Tier and a General list as well.

Our guild runs 6 lists

Tank/Melee/Hunter
Caster/Healer
Prot
Vanq
Conc
Offspec

That way when people take loot they don't feel they fall as far and it encourages people to take offspec loot now that duel specs is implemented. Since going to SK, our loot goes much quicker and people haven't been hording for that one particular drop as bad

Usually the best way to deal with off specs is to make a rule:

If a person takes items as an off spec, he cannot show himself with current spec and this item. If he does - he gets 200% penalty.

That scares off all cheaters.

For small upgrade price for items can belowered if item player have 213 and want to acquire 219, you cal lower the price 1/2 )

My guild used to use this system and ran into the same problems you were having. Myself and the other officers quickly adjusted our loot rules to adjust. We decided that it would be in the guild's best interest if people were forced to take upgrades. No matter how big or how small the piece of loot, if it was an upgrade for you and you were on the top of the list, you took the item.

At first, people were very upset about this. The whole point of the Suicide Kings Look System, is to gear up EVERYONE equally over time. If people understand this, and are team-players, they will accept this. We quickly found that the ones who did not accept this were finnicky players and eventually left after getting geared.

We currently use SK in my guild (primarily 10 mans). However, we only use it in Ulduar where just about every item is an upgrade for somebody or on Malygos/KT items (ilvl 213-219).

Naxx has become a newbie/alt run that is done on a /roll basis with the raid leader/officers making sure loot is distributed evenly. A modified loot council if you will.

We only use SK on main spec rolls, off spec rolls are done as a /roll. With that being said, the officers are very aware of what people are for main/off specs. That's just a matter of keeping up on how people are specced and which spec they play the most.

If somebody is there as an offspec filling a hole in the raid they use SK bids on their main spec and /roll for their offspec (which they currently are running).

If people want to hold their spot on the SK list that's their prerogative. If it's not working out for distributing loot among guildies evenly you may want to consider an alternate method.

If people don't bid or roll, shard it. They had the chance for an upgrade but passed on it. It's their loss. If you get too many shards in the bank start AHing them and putting the gold in the bank.

Again, you can't force people to use their bid to move the list along. It's not a perfect system and only works if people are willing to take any and all upgrades and are fine with losing their spot on the list.

My guild has been using SK system since MC. We now run two lists, one for tokens and one for everything else epic. Typically people will bid on what they need for their main spec and once they got all they need they start using their SK for off spec items if they are near the bottom of the list. We have a group that has been together a while so if someone is going to grab something for an off spec, they will usually ask to make sure no one else wants to bid on it for a main spec. Some will hold their SK spot for BIS items. However we post WWS reports after each raid, people who are passing on items will show up eventualy on the list near the bottom. So I just tell everyone, when you see an item drop, treat it like you will never see it again, because in some cases, you never will.

The truth is, now with gear upgrades being so small and encounters being more about skill than gear, its not as big an issue.

Shards in the bank is not a bad thing either. I sold off a ton of them before LK came out and I was able to give what I called a "BC Raiding Dividend" to all my core raiding team of 300 gold each.

- Fek

Hey folks,
we're considering switching over from loot council to Suicide Kings,
so I'm guessing this is the appropriate thread to post in :)

For those that are more familiar with SK, I'd like feedback, I think the
way we've laid out the ground rules make sense, but others probably have
a lot more experience than I with this.

We're a more casual raiding guild 2 nights per week, with probably 15-18
consistent attendees and the rest a little less frequent depending on
work schedules etc. Our thoughts are that SK will help us reward the
more consistent attendees, while not excessively penalizing our folks which
are a bit more infrequent.

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The basic premise of the system is that to begin with, everyone is
placed in a "list". Whenever you "bid" and win a piece of loot, you
drop (suicide) to the bottom of the list, and everyone below you moves up.

The state of the list continues from raid to raid, and is not randomly
reset each raid.

Here are our proposed rules. Again we'll see how it works, and how
people react to it, and make modifications as appropriate. So WE NEED FEEDBACK!

1) Officers reserve the right to loot council items. It is expected that this will happen rarely,
if ever.

2) We have a two-pass looting process. One can either bid your position
on the list, or roll. Bids have priority over rolls, and if one wins a bid, that suicides
(drops to the bottom) their position on the list. If one wins a roll, their position on the list
is unchanged.

The intent of this rule is that a person bids on major upgrades and rolls on
minor upgrades/alt spec/offspec. One still has the opportunity to bid on
offspec items that they truly want, but the cost of doing so is sacrificing
their position in the list. Any major upgrade should be a bid, rather than a
roll, to preserve the intent of the system. For example, simply because
we only have one resto shaman, that uses mail healing gear, doesn't mean
they should get a large upgrade item without sacrificing their position.

Officers reserve the right to convert a roll to a bid, or a bid to a roll.
The intent here is to minimize "hogging" of minor upgrades. With this
system, this can tend to happen when one is towards the bottom of the list.

3) We maintain two lists, one for progression content, one for farm content.
Current progression content is ulduar 25. Current farm content is all
previous, level 80, 25 man raids. All 10-man raids stay under our existing
/roll with mainspec vs offspec system.
Tier tokens are on the same list as the raid they come from.

4) If we are oversubscribed for a 25 man, people who sit out are placed
on "reserve". People on reserve may move up on the list, as if they were
in the raid (i.e. when someone above them suicides).

Officers may chose to deny reserve status (ie someone abusing the system
and only participating in raids when they have a good position on the list).

5) We track by player, rather than by toon. Because you can either bid or
roll on loot, you choose how to distribute your share of loot across your
characters. We expect that people do this with the best interest of the
raid in mind. But we also hope that you know the needs of your toons
much better than we do :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chun

2) We have a two-pass looting process. One can either bid your position
on the list, or roll. Bids have priority over rolls, and if one wins a bid, that suicides
(drops to the bottom) their position on the list. If one wins a roll, their position on the list is unchanged.

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I wonder if this rule will break SK. I'm not sure.

I presume if only one person can use it, and needs it, they HAVE to suicide and lose their position rather than.. rolling against themselves?

Secondly, how do you handle marginal upgrades? What if they say 'oh its not that big an upgrade, I will not suicide' but the alternative is sharding it... not such a good outcome when they should have taken it.

Disclaimer: I have never used SK, but I do understand it.

If only one person is interested, and it is a major upgrade, we intend to
make them "suicide" for it.

If only one person is interested and it is a minor upgrade, then they win
a roll against themself :)

Sharding loot is always the worst possible outcome.

It's probably against part of the system, but the officers are reserving
the right to make a judgement call in those situations as to whether a
bid or roll is warranted.

We've never used it before, but are attempting to tweak it to to suit our
needs a bit better. There could be a lot of problems with what I posted :)

We use SKG Geo with 3 tables - Upgrades, Sidegrades, and Tier.

We do not define Sidegrades as offspec, we let the players define it. Minor stat point upgrades can be classified as whichever the player chooses. We decided that instead of fighting the "holding out for a BiS item" mentality, we should encourage it. Players reserve their position on the upgrades table for "THAT" item, while sidegrades are used for items that are minor upgrades, offspec upgrades, or things that look really cool in trade chat.

We have a third table for tier loot tokens.

To expedite rolling, we open up a short bidding window for each item. 5 seconds on 10 man, 10 seconds on 25. This discouraging people from waiting to see if others plan to bid upgrade on an item they are hoping to snake away with on sidegrade.

If someone wants the item as a sidegrade, we have them /random 1. This indicates that there is interest in the item, just not as an upgrade. If multiple people /random 1, we do a second bid, this time using the sidegrade table. If 1 person /randoms 1, he gets the item, and is suicided on the sidegrade table.
If noone bids OR randoms 1 within the 10 seconds, we shard the item and move on. If you need more than 10 seconds to know if you want the item, you have either not done your homework, or it's not enough of an upgrade to matter, and the guild bank can always use shards.

The /random 1 is a massive timesaver. It practically eliminates all of the "No... he needs it worse than me" debates during looting. If it's not worth an upgrade suicide, it's not worth wasting our time debating about who needs it more. If it IS worth upgrade suiciding, then there is a clear winner already decided.

if your interested in this thread you may be interested in the Loot Ladder system (aka Suicide Kings) that we built and recently made publicly available. See my signature below.
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Bountee (Warrior Tank: Riddle of Steel - Aman'Thul)
Guild: Riddle of Steel
Loot Ladder System: The Drunken Dwarf
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Plothole

1) ...people werent taking small upgrades because they didnt want to lose their position on the list to minor upgrades. This resulted in 5-6 items getting disenchanted during one Naxx raid (these items were all upgrades for people). How do I solve this?

2) How do we deal with offspec gear in an SK guild? I fear that if we start rolling for gear that noone wants initially we'll get into a situation were people don't bid for certain items and instead wait for it to go to offspec

And then my last question that has more to do with the actual addon, SKG.

3) Right now in Naxx25 we only run with 1 list. However, in Ulduar 25 we will use one tier list and one "general" list. How do you actually switch between the Tier and the General list? Do you simply change the list to the correct one and then open the item for bidding?

I appreciate and help I can get with these 3 issues.

---

We're only 10 man raids right now, we chose SK for simplicity and didn't start using it till ULD 10 man. We consider previous content farm and use /roll system (though some recent BS has me considering switching to SK for Naxx10)

1. I don't nitpick the loot anyone takes. The loot rule is absolute. If you take the loot, you suicide. (We have 1 circumstance where you don't lose position for taking loot). For most of us anything that comes from there is an upgrade, so most people accept whatever comes their way. If they want to hold out, its up to them to make the choice. They are all under the complete understanding that if they don't pull their weight in progression raids they will be replaced with someone who can.
2. For Off-spec...If nobody needs it for main, and we move on to off spec. Same list, same rule. The idea with this was to combat people taking loot for off-spec if there's a chance something for their main spec will drop later.
3. As for this one. I just use the guildlaunch website we have to track it. It's adequate, but not the greatest. People have to register to see it and we don't force anyone to register on the site at this time. I just /raid the standings at the start of the raid for both lists, and allow anyone to ask where they are on the list during loot distribution if they want to know. I am shopping for something in game however that might speed the distribution process along.

Hope this helps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Plothole

We've started using SK recently in our 25 man raids and one issue that came up quite quickly was the fact that...

1) ...people werent taking small upgrades because they didnt want to lose their position on the list to minor upgrades. This resulted in 5-6 items getting disenchanted during one Naxx raid (these items were all upgrades for people). How do I solve this?

2) How do we deal with offspec gear in an SK guild? I fear that if we start rolling for gear that noone wants initially we'll get into a situation were people don't bid for certain items and instead wait for it to go to offspec

And then my last question that has more to do with the actual addon, SKG.

3) Right now in Naxx25 we only run with 1 list. However, in Ulduar 25 we will use one tier list and one "general" list. How do you actually switch between the Tier and the General list? Do you simply change the list to the correct one and then open the item for bidding?

I appreciate and help I can get with these 3 issues.

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1) It depends on how much influence you want to have on SK. Our guild is completely hands free, other than keeping people from bidding for off spec if someone wants it for main spec. Only thing I can recommend is to have the officers push people to take upgrades when they can, and follow their own suggestions. It has worked well for us, but some people still save that 1 spot for a weapon. If you have extra raiders that show up and say 15 people get rotated in for 10m raids, those who don't take upgrades will soon be undergeared, and can be benched. A little incentive to make sure they are taking everything they can.

2) For us, if no one wants it main spec, it goes to off spec rolls, but with a few stipulations. Rogues can't roll offspec on leather to use for sub instead of combat. It's too easy for them to just turn around and use it. If someone wants t8.5 offspec when their main spec is t8, thats a no-no. Just gotta monitor it. Mages and locks dont have the luxury of off spec, and we watch priests very closely to make sure they aren't tryin to trick the system.

3) I can't answer that question for you specifically, but I know whenever our loot officer switches lists he has to relog. That might be a bit of a pain for you. We just use one list for t7 equiv, t8 equiv, and now t9 equiv.

There are multiple ways to run SK and I hope you find somethin that works. I think it is the most fair system, especially to loot council and dkp (which have all proven to be guild busters on my realm).

Bit old, but still on the front page. What we always did with SK was one list for main spec tier drops, one list for main spec everything else. We offer gear to main spec first, if you are running your offspec that evening because you were asked to run that instead of your normal main, you can bid in this phase. If no interest we go to offspecs. Offspecs do not impact the SK list at all as we want people to build up their offspecs so they are more flexible. We also do not put things like the larger bags or sartharion's bonus token drop on the lists, those are open rolls.

You also have other options in SKG, like you can set aliases for everyone and make it so all of a person's characters share a single space on the loot ladder. So if you have a #1 spot from raiding with your warrior and you are asked to bring your priest, when you take a drop you will use that #1 spot. The benefit of this is that everyone cycles thru the lists even faster than normal, so you will be back to that spot before long. The negative could be that someone brings one character to get a good spot, then brings another character the following run to use that good spot. In vanilla, we used to have a single shared list for Ony/MC/BWL and people would run Ony/MC and use it for BWL drops.

We ran into similar problems and as you have heard there are a number of viable ways to address this. We decided to go to a loot council where we looted the item where it would do the most good (offspec) and ask the player to contribute a shard to the G-Bank. This seems to work well and we have recieved numerous comments from the raiders that they like this approach.

My guild uses SKG with no real issues (i.e. no QQ from players). It depends a lot on the mentality of the players though as so how you set it up so it works for you (or even if it is a good option to use at all). Going by the mod author's comments, it's really designed for more (semi-)casual raiding; I think the more serious raiding guilds tend to use zero-sum DKP or loot council.

The sidegrade/minor upgrade loot list is a good idea, if you dont mind the additional overhead of another list. We usually just stick with non-tier/tier token lists and leave it at that. /roll for offsets. We have separate lists for each tier of content (t7/t8/t9).

As for (3), yes, it's just a matter of selecting the correct list and then opening the item for bidding.