Guild gearing order...

[Karnage]

So basically I'm a bit pissed off atm...

Tonight I won the roll on my first token, however due to guild policy it was given to second highest an ele sham instead.

Basically the GM read somewhere that Ensidia gears up all its dps first, then the healers and then the tanks and that this is the optimal way to gear up for progression raiding.

I've allready bought the 251 shoulders and chest and am aiming for 4pce. So basically I'll have to wait until every hunter, shammy, arms/fury war in the raid has gotten their tokens before I'll have a shot at them.

The ele sham happens to be a good friend of mine and gave me the token, but obviously there was some bickering from others who lost the roll when the gm starts asking her if shes got enough badges to buy tier for it and could she go and get it now. So in light of the potential incoming drama should everyone see that I've used the token I passed it back to her.

What are peoples thoughts on this? Should there be a set order on who to gear up in the raid for best progression? I've allways thought it was the tanks and healers, and several other guilds I've noticed do the same. I'm not saying I should automatically get everything handed to me, but merely to have a chance at it.

[Destruyen]

actually most top progression guilds use loot council to gear their raids up. whoever can use an item and be the biggest upgrade for gets the item, be it a dps, tank or healer. this system spreads out the loot to where you gear your entire raid evenly and most effectively.

the notion of gearing tanks up first no longer applies in wotlk like it did in bc. sure, if your tanks cant take the hits then you're going to wipe. but if your dps isn't up to par on some fights you'll bang your head against enrage timers, or healers won't be able to last or outheal incoming raid damage. it's a balance these days when it comes to how to gear up your raid.

getting a loot system other than /roll is your best option and will avoid loot drama. suicide kings and epgp are possibly the fairest and easiest systems to use. they also balance the loot distribution to a point (if a dps is higher than a tank then they will get the tier token and vice versa) to where your raid will evenly gear up.

[Fayre]

At the end of the day, it's your guild's decision where the loot goes. Circumventing the rules by trading things around isn't solving the underlying issue.

I would suggest that keeping all three tanks, healers, and DPS at similar gear levels would allow you to beat the majority of fights more easily.

And to be honest, for most guilds, the min-maxing idea isn't totally appropriate - if you're not pushing at least server firsts then this is taking it a step too far.

[Proletaria]

Most guilds just adhere to their loot policy and won't fiddle with loot based on where they think it ought to go. With that being said, tradition (per my experience) has always been to gear up tanks first. Not that it had any merit over gearing other players first(a few notable tank-check exceptions), but arbitrary loot systems are arbitrary.

I've never been comfortable with loot-council, or merit-loot systems, myself. Even when i ran one for half of BC, it just felt like bias was unavoidable. Unless the whole guild is absolutely comfortable with leadership making these dicisions it leads to no good.

[Warwench]

Quit then. See how quickly they can fill a tanking slot with that sort of retarded policy.

[orcstar]

If you're going for progression raiding these days, I have the strong belief that if you really want to min/max you do indeed gear your dps first. This gives the best return on investment. Up until now I haven't seen any fight where it would have made a difference to have tanks with loot-priority. I have seen a lot of fights though which do get exponentially easier with higher dps.

The tradition of gearing tanks first was valid during Vanilla WoW. Where the most important and hardest thing was often keeping the MT alive and the raid. So you had 1 tank geared to the max, then geared your healers and could basically last so long the you healed an encounter to death. The joke that you could beat any encounter with 1 dps 1 very good geared tank and the rest have a raid full of healers was a very real one.
I can also imagine that some guilds still gear their tanks first. But this is some stupid remnant from the past. And a selfish one. Ofcourse your maintank wants you to believe that a geared MT is the most important in the raid: it means he gets all loot first. It's a very selfish thing.

Having said that:
Are you in a top 100 guild?

If not, then handing out loot this way is just stupid. Most people for instance dps could increase their numbers often as much as 20-30% by just playing better.

[Darksend]

While the warrior and paladin 4pc bonuses are rather sub-par. The druid and dk ones I feel ARE GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for those classes to tank hard modes.

[Küren]

Was the guild policy posted ahead of time? If so, did you mention something then? If that policy was suddenly brought up and applied, that's definitely an issue.

I don't really get why they would take that approach. If you really wanted to optimize your raid, I would think you'd actually be much more specific on who gets tokens for tier gear. That value of that set bonus varies per class and how they play.

I would talk it over with the guild leadership perhaps. Tanks are still the ones responsible for mitigating damage so it's important that you have decent gear too.

Did they explain exactly why they think they should follow that policy? Just because they think Ensidia does it doesn't mean they should nor does it mean that they understand why they should do it. For one thing, it's possible the tanks are gearing up through other means. Not every tank is as interested in their set bonuses. The frost emblem gear is very good.

[Tongues]

Are you raiding for loot? Or raiding for guild progression?

Sounds like the former.

Most guilds prioritize DPS in gear distribution for good reason.

If your guild is capable and efficient you'll be swimming in gear in no time and to get upset about something like a tier token is only going to make you appear immature and greedy.

An upgrade for the other guy is an upgrade for you, too.

[Darksend]

take 10 dps of each dps class and give them identical specs and gear. they difference in dps will amaze you.

take 10 tanks of a single class, lets say paladins since they can do demo shout and TC themselves in their normal rotation. so you take 10 paladins and give them the same healers, one after the other. with the same gear and spec and telling them not to use any cooldowns, they will all die around the same time.

that is the biggest reason to gear tanks over DPS, and healers for the same reason over dps.

[orcstar]

take 10 dps of each dps class and give them identical specs and gear. they difference in dps will amaze you.

take 10 tanks of a single class, lets say paladins since they can do demo shout and TC themselves in their normal rotation. so you take 10 paladins and give them the same healers, one after the other. with the same gear and spec and telling them not to use any cooldowns, they will all die around the same time.

that is the biggest reason to gear tanks over DPS, and healers for the same reason over dps.

That's not a reason just a story.

[Karnage]

Are you raiding for loot? Or raiding for guild progression?

Sounds like the former.

Most guilds prioritize DPS in gear distribution for good reason.

If your guild is capable and efficient you'll be swimming in gear in no time and to get upset about something like a tier token is only going to make you appear immature and greedy.

An upgrade for the other guy is an upgrade for you, too.

I don't really see it as being immature or greedy, I won the roll, could have kept it after my friend gave it to me and had it in my backpack, but then gave it back to her without any outside prompting other than a conscience and an impending sense of incoming drama from the other guildies who were allready complaining to gm about losing the roll.

An upgrade for me is an upgrade for the other guy to.

But I'm sure you'd happily main tank for your guild without any hope of upgrading your tier gear for several months and carrying 3kdps and 1khps through ICC while banging your head against a brick wall. The dps isn't low because they're missing tier tokens, the dps is low because they have rotation issues and can't be bothered putting in the effort to improve and I'm supposed to suffer for this.

Remember progression for this guild is just beating 25 Saurfang this week, so employing Ensidias strategies is somewhat laughable. Especially when you consider our progression raids include pugs.

[orcstar]

I don't really see it as being immature or greedy, I won the roll, could have kept it after my friend gave it to me and had it in my backpack, but then gave it back to her without any outside prompting other than a conscience and an impending sense of incoming drama from the other guildies who were allready complaining to gm about losing the roll.

An upgrade for me is an upgrade for the other guy to.

But I'm sure you'd happily main tank for your guild without any hope of upgrading your tier gear for several months and carrying 3kdps and 1khps through ICC while banging your head against a brick wall.

Like I said: if you're not a top 100 guild, this kind of min-maxing is idiotic and done for the wrong reasons.

But....working around a loot system is also some thing you don't want to do. You're going to majorly piss off people by that.

So, if you are not happy in your guild........there are a few things you can do:
-Change the things you don't like, talk to the GM and tell him it upsets you and that you really don't like the "dps-gearing first" rule. And if you're doing 25 mens regularly get him to use a dkp system instead of rolls, with rolls some people are really really gona lose out with some getting like 1 item where others get 5. (no with /roll it doesn't even out, with /roll you get a random distribution where most people get around average but also some will be big winners and some big losers.)
-Change guild.
-Suck it up and only complain on forums.

[Muffin Man]

Are you raiding for loot? Or raiding for guild progression?

Sounds like the former.

Most guilds prioritize DPS in gear distribution for good reason.

If your guild is capable and efficient you'll be swimming in gear in no time and to get upset about something like a tier token is only going to make you appear immature and greedy.

An upgrade for the other guy is an upgrade for you, too.

Pretty inflammatory thing to say when the problem is this guy had his roll taken away due to guild policy. Which implies the guild policy wasn't stated ahead of time.

That said, unfortunately tanking just requires a threshold which the majority of tanks already have cleared, beating the hardmode encounters relies more on good dps and raid coordination that tanks surviving.

So if they really did screw you out of a token by pulling a bait and switch then you have a valid complaint. But the philosophy of gearing up dps first isn't a bad one. Most healers also have already cleared the required thresholds, so the really you want to shorten the fight times to minimize rng and someone messing something up (like merging Rotface oozes in the raid...). Not to mention tight enrage timers like Festergut.

[orcstar]

.......someone messing something up (like merging Rotface oozes in the raid...)

Funny thing to say that. We went with our 10 men and head out to do the rotface achievement and did just that. We got him to 6% while merging oozes in the raid. Too bad after that we had a few bad tries and decided to just leave the achievement till next week and go Putricide. Today I heard rotface had his hp reduced 15% X-D

[Proletaria]

While the warrior and paladin 4pc bonuses are rather sub-par. The druid and dk ones I feel ARE GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED for those classes to tank hard modes.

No dk tank worth his salt is going to drop all the added armor and stam from offset gear for that extra short cooldown. I can certainly see a bear using t10, but unless that cooldown just so happens to synch perfectly with encounter mechanics you won't see it on many dk tanks.

[kolben]

Prioritizing DPS makes sense for numerous reasons, if you are pushing for/battling for a top progression spot.

Everyone likes to be geared and get good loot early, tanks are no exception to this and often guilty of wanting to be first on the priority list. Unless you are really pushing the absolute limits of your gear though - gearing up healers and DPS early makes a lot of sense.

As to what top guilds use, that's not a good reason to use a particular loot system. Loot systems have to address the needs of your guild, the needs of your raid and be fair. Also, if you aren't pushing content and burning the midnight oil on being a top progression guild - loot priorities don't really even make sense. In my personal opinion - it only makes real sense when you raid with the same 25 people every night through multiple tiers of content - and have very specific goals like server firsts etc.

[Karnage]

Cool, that's what I kind of thought. Makes sense for heavy progression guilds pushing their abilities.

Just wanted to see different opinions.

[Papapaint]

This is a lot of talk over very little. The only cross-items are the tokens, and most of the 264 pieces have far more viable/powerful off-set options.

[Kazeyonoma]

Blindly following any guild's methods whether it be their looting methods, gearing methods, gemming methods, or even strategies, are all doomed for failure if you don't understand the underlying reasons AND making sure they fit to your own raid roster.

I don't hate Ensidia, but I hate when people blindly follow them and their members just because "they're Ensidia". I'm with Destruyen on this one, give it to who makes the best use of it, if tank survivability is a problem, bingo you, dps lacking? go to dps? healers having trouble? go go healers. Adapt, adjust, and achieve!