pug loot rules

Many of you will probably have come across this issue: you pug somebody into a guild run, it's all going swimmingly and then, just when you're getting a nice sense of comfort, something epic drops.

And the pug wants it.

Now hopefully you've told them before the run started what your guild's approach to looting with pugs is. If you didn't, you're probably in a world of hurt right now - and to be honest, you probably deserve to be. Pugs have a right to a share in the loot, and the RL has a responsibility to ensure they're happy with the loot rules before they get saved to the instance. So, rule 1: define and communicate the rules upfront.

But what is a fair rule? Guildies quite rightly feel that they should not be disadvantaged by pugs, especially if they've been saving DKP/EPGP for specific items. That said, if you've got to the point of pugging a slot, you probably wouldn't be running right now without that pug so wouldn't have had any shot at the loot anyway. Then again, the pug presumably hasn't had a chance to build DKP/EPGP priority. But wait, without the 24 guildies in the raid kindly pugging them in, they wouldn't have had a shot at the loot either! Oh, the confabulation and bother!

The watchwords should always be transparency and consistency. Whatever your rules are, from RAR GUILD PRIORITY to a pure /roll, if the pug knew about it before they saved, they have no complaint.

SO that brings me to my suggestion. My guild uses EPGP, and we tend not to have issues with pug loot (at least not in Nax and OS, I'm not in Ulduar yet but I believe we don't pug slots there anyway) due to most of our folks being geared past there. An undergeared pug can look forward to a loot pinata. That said, an EPGP+pug strategy is always useful to have in one's back pocket. I'm thinking from an EPGP perspective, but I suppose this will work with DKP too.

What are the guidelines? My thoughts are:

• a system that neither unfairly advantages nor unfairly disadvantages pugs on loot rolls
• a system that can be clearly and unambiguously explained in advance
  
• a system that can be transparently applied

OK. So with EPGP, all guildies get a need/mainspec roll first. If nobody elects to go for that, there is a greed/offspec roll. If items are still not taken, it is DE'd and the mats go in the GB.

To integrate a pug or pugs into this, the three phases should be regarded distinctly. So first, here is a rule:

1. The pug will be judged as need/mainspec based on the spec they bring to the raid.
   

Now dual specs present a problem, but in general the raid will need specific roles and the pug will be brought in to fill that role primarily. So that, for the purposes of loot, is the pug's mainspec.

On the need roll: pugs who want to need/mainspec an item simply /roll when the item is announced during looting. Guildies use EPGP votes. One of three things will happen:

1. One or more guildies has needed, and no pug has rolled. The item is distributed by EPGP.
2. One or more pugs have rolled, and no guildies have needed. The item goes to the highest pug roll.
3. One or more pugs have rolled, and one or more guildies have needed. Take the number of folks that either needed or rolled, n, and apply the following formula, rounding up: x = 100 - (100/n). So with 2 guildies needing against two pugs, the highest pug roll must be greater than x (in this example, 75) in order to win the item. If the highest pug roll is <= x, the item goes to EPGP.

the first two make perfect sense. I believe the latter is reasonably statistically consistent. I ran a monte carlo simulation on the odds with 5000 samples, and from the perspective of a pug, it scales well with multiple guildies. There is a minor issue with multiple pugs, especially when they are rolling against few (but not 0) guildies. This is simply due to the fact that they must beat all the other pug rolls as well as getting statistically high roll; however the difference is not going to be more than a 5% chance overall and of all the formulas I tried, this is the best balance of simplicity and fairness.

The outstanding issue is on multiple rolls. There is no disincentive for a pug to roll need on anything that might be the slightest upgrade, and there is no penalty for continued wins (as there is with EPGP priority). A pug has the same chance to win every time, whereas from the point of view of a guildy, their chance to win reduces with every loot win (assuming they're rolling against other guildies).

We could weight rolls with item history, but that would make the calculation too complex. Instead, I would propose that a simple limit is imposed; maybe say maximum 1 need upgrade for every 3 bosses (unless no guildies need/mainspec, in which case go for it). You don't want to put a hard cap on pug upgrades, because they may just decide they have to go, and leave your raid in the lurch.

Greed/offspec simply uses the same rules, but on the second loot round.

The simplest way for shards to be handled is for everyone to /roll on each shard. If a guildy wins, into the GB. If a pug wins, they get it.

Many raids will roll for shards at the end; so if there are 10 shards to distribute, get everyone to roll and the top 10 rolls get a shard (or in the case of guildies, into the GB).

Well that was an epic post. I'd like to hear what you have to say about pug loot distribution, and whether you think this is fair and workable in a real situation.

Stay epic!