2 things TLP Guilds don't need to succeed

1. an officer run guild plat bank

The last several TLPs I played had officers looting all the gems on raids, so it seems to be a common assumption that this is fairly normal and somehow justified. I don't think it is needed at all. No matter what minor service the guild is providing (e.g. spell reagents, potions) taking all the gems on every raid is seriously overkill. The person holding the bank will probably quit and steal it all anyway, so the running balance should be zero. Even if they don't quit, whats all that money for? guild alchemists can sell potions at raids at cost, and officers can grab the first few gems from a planes raid to pay for whatever ports were needed for that raid.

2. modifying your DKP system to prioritize tank loot

I agree that if you're rolling up to AoW the first time with bards in full velious armor and your tanks in older stuff, then you're going to have higher healing requirements, but I do not think the practice of funneling armor to tanks in a DKP system and skipping over others is justified. the solution in these cases is to get MORE armor for the guild by playing more. In other words, if you can only progress by meriting your tanks loot (in a DKP guild) and progressing is so important to you, then your play style doesn't align with your goals. play more / better (as a guild) or reset your expectations on progress. (p.s. i never play a plate class so I'm not just bitter about some loot i missed out on)

discuss

I do not believe your last sentence and I shall make a wild assumption that you're a bard main and bitter about plate loot

just play your harp in the corner like a good servant and be happy

You're more than welcome to create your own guild and organize/run raids and dkp system if you would like to implement these changes.

I personally have no issue at all with these two things.

1. Our guild leader keeps a public spreadsheet in our discord of the guild bank. How much goes in, how much goes out, what it's spent on, etc. They also keep the guild bank in the guild hall full of potions, poisons, and other quality of life items. The last week of every expansion he takes any excess and distributes it amongst the guild via various mini-games on the last raid. (We often have a punchboard game like the punch game in Price is right). The thing with a successful guild bank is transparency. If you can't trust your officers, then you're not in the right guild.

2. There are some later raids that will require highly geared tanks, especially in underfoot, etc. No amount of overhealing can sustain a tank that gets one rounded. If your tanks can't survive, your raid wipes. If your raid can't kill the target, no loot for anyone.

If this is in Velious, with AOW like you mentioned, then your guild should be in TOV farming armor in groups anyways, not waiting for raids to get armor.

I'm not sure I agree with this.

The 'try-hard' guilds I have been a part of were always very generous to raiders when it came to speciliazed pots, crafted spells, and the like. Sure, I bought my own mana pots as a caster. However during Kunark rush, and certain raids (i.e. Bees in Sky), the guild was very generous with HoT pots, and cure pots. The mats for those are not cheap.

As for funneling gear to the main tanks -- that is a no brainer. I'm not suggesting the main tank gets first pick of everything that drops every time. However, getting the tank geared means that you can quickly and more easily take down more raid targets, which means more loot for everyone. The more loot everyone gets, the more you can split instances, which means even more loot for everyone.

Do you want to spend the majority of your raid night trying to take down AOW with an under-geared tank, while a BIS geared bard plays haste and mana song in the corner? Or do you want to take down AOW quickly and then move on to the next several targets of the evening?

As for plat drops and gems -- do you really care about that? I've been playing this game for years, have never run a guild, have never had access to a guild bank to run off with, and have never "made a point of making plat/krono"....and I have more Krono than I'll ever spend on the game for monthly subs, or burning the occasional Krono to generate some PP to buy my own pots/potions. Maybe a handful of times I've taken a gem during a raid, but it was a unique situation (I needed the gem for some resist gear or a quest or something, and the guild tossed it to me).

I agree with the guild bank one. I never went to a raid without all the things I needed so I never needed guild shamans to hand me potions. Maybe raid 1 you funnel a few gems to the shaman so they have start up cash, but after that make people pay the shaman at cost (and by at cost I mean cost plus a few plat to cover failures) Or better yet, tell people to go get that stuff on their own. Clerics don't use reagents anymore. Most guilds only kill in DZs and those don't require port stones. Maybe a handful of raids require chanters to rune, I have zero issues with funneling a few diamonds to the chanters for those instances. What else does a guild bank need plat for?

freeport militia super pac slush fund

D'lere for president

1. Rogues
2. Rouges

3. Gear for bards (sans instruments). Bards can run around naked early game.

edit: I obviously don't play a cleric.
However, whats the alternative? free loot? Distribute themoney equally? Now you are expecting officers to be maintain accountant logs and post reports and all sorts of stuff. This is a game...

I don't even know how far back in the patch notes I'd have to go to see when they removed peridots from symbol/aego. 20 years? someone help me

If your going to run a guild on the new tlp, please tell us which one. I can scratch it off my list now (I only play tank)

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2004-2.html
September 14, 2004
Spells
___________________
- Clerics Symbol and Aegolism spell lines no longer require reagents.

honestly I don't have the patience required to ̶h̶e̶r̶d̶ 7̶0̶ s̶t̶r̶a̶y̶ c̶a̶t̶s̶ lead a raid or handle DKP/loot, so if some guild I'm in wants to embezzle some gems for their efforts, I'm ok with it

Every TLP guild I've ever been in that had a cash bank, the officer chat took less than a month to transition from "Necros need coffins and we should make resist gear for folks" in to "We deserve some krono for taking care of these people."

Without exception.

Depends for guild bank:

does your guild buy Sleepers keys? High end spells like malo/torpor where maybe you are having horrible luck on drops? Group DMF because its a pita to farm? BoCs if you have bad luck on AoW? Seru bane weapon mats aren't cheap - most top guilds use money to gobble up all the meteor dust they can find for sale. Guilds do fund the gems needed for certain spells. Like emeralds for Shaman Avatar pre-velious adds up if you cast it on CD every boss fight. Does your guild do random krono giveaways? Are black sapphires/blue diamonds/diamonds funneled to ench/jewelcrafter for free guild resist gear?

If you are in a small/family guild that doesn't do any of that then no, they should not ML the bank.


Tank loot:
Again, not sure what kind of guild you are in but most top end guilds will prioritize things like BoC as warrior only, maybe the first 2/3 Tunare belts and first 2/3 Rings of Destruction to warriors for a set DKP price. BoC's should never be bid to non warriors and once warriors have them you guild bank them so you have spares for new warriors in Luclin. They can always be bid out via discord at a later time for other classes. They do not benefit other classes in a raid environment.

Just my experience but the guilds that have done that stuff have always set a fair DKP minimum for it to be WAR only bidding. Merit based is bogus - agreed warriors should not get free loot and get to then hoard DKP for other items. It works in games like wow/eq2 but not in EQ.

don't care about wtov/hot armor farms. 2 group content - in fact please funnel all plate legs to clerics and cleric boxes first - clicky heal is god tier.

Clerics don't use peridot's anymore, haven't for literally decades.

If caster wants to rune themselves they can pay for it. I never do on raids as it doesn't really increase your life expectancy should you take aggro. Never had a problem staying alive

Resist and tradeskill items are a personal problem, not a guild problem. And oh, if you spread out the gems I will be far more likely to be able to obtain those resist items myself, without needing to rely on the guild.

I expect everyone on the raid to be an adult and be prepared when they show up to raids. People who aren't can suffer the consequences of their own actions. If that means getting booted from the raid and replaced by a box who is prepared, so be it.

There is no good reason, in this day and age, to have a guild bank. Just let people know the expectations and consequences of not being prepared.

While I agree, the mentality you put off is :
Hardcore > Casual

Most players are not that smart and anyone who has been an officer/leader knows this and they do exactly the opposite of what you just said lol

Which is why I tend to go with competent guilds.

Yeah it's true. The 5 best guilds I have ever been in did neither of those 2 things. The absolute best guild I was in, just destroyed unpurchased items and did not sell them or collect the loot for a guild bank. Loot was bid and awarded without breaking pace and raids were cleared faster than I've ever seen before in any other guild. There was no pausing for loot, before, during or after raids and everyone was expected to play at a high level, applicants were not allowed to talk in guild chat and most of the time ended up getting kicked from the guild for not knowing where to go for the raid. The only people allowed in the guild knew everything they had to do, it wasn't a learning guild.

My previous experience with a guild awarding warriors "tank" loot was there were several warriors, but only 2 of them were "given" free loot. One of the warriors was an officer with 53% raid attendance who never pushed their taunt button in the time I was in the guild. The other warrior was an officer and at every single raid and as soon as his character was fully geared up he sold it, bought a mage, continued to raid as a mage, sold that character, bought a beastlord, all the while talking about selling and buying characters in voice chat during raids and IDK what happened next because I left the guild. Some guilds are just bad and people stay around because it's better than not having a guild but they are 100% better off in a better guild. In any decent guild. There will be extra tanks competing to have higher raid attendance and they don't need to be given loot, because nobody has the muscle/dkp/plat to take it from them. If the guild you're in doesnt have extra tanks competing to be the best tank, you're probably in a bad guild.

In my experience if the guild doesn't supply the potions/reagents, then half the raid won't be prepared with potions/reagents. If the guild doesn't supply these things the burden gets shifted unfairly to a small group of guild members, often at a loss. It costs more than you would think it does to outfit a raid with these things. Each disease cure potion, for example, costs around 6 plat to make. With a raid of 72, that's a little over 2k to give everyone 5 disease cure casts. Is 5 enough when it can take multiple clicks to cure some diseases? Each cast of Divine Intervention costs 2 Emeralds (26 plat) and it adds up over the course of the night given the short duration and depending on the quality of the guild's tanks/healers. Often if the guild doesn't supply these the clerics won't have them ready, and each stack that gets passed to a cleric is >2k plat.

Some guilds will focus more on this and take on the responsibility of outfitting raiders. Others won't. There is no right or wrong here. Find a guild that aligns with your values on loot distribution. Understand that in some cases there is a tradeoff between FFA loot and raid efficiency. If you find yourself in a guild that has a guild bank and you don't trust the people running it, why are you a member of that guild in the first place?

Guild banks have their benefits. The best guilds I’ve been in maintain a certain inventory of plat to finance things that help the guild members be successful, and then at the end of each expansion send a split to all members with RA > X for the surplus heading into the next expansion.

It’s a nice way to help guild members finance purchases they may need from the next expansion unlock be it spells, loot rights or other things like TS combines. And, it lowers the incentive for the guild officers / banker from profiteering off the bank.

As for the tank preference situation, I do not think there is room for a purely capitalistic approach to DKP. A great example would be BoC / SoD in Velious or the 35 AC aug from LDoN. As things play out later, it’s less relevant on loot preference because either you’re able to over heal or you’re not and more often than not no amount of BIS gear is going to change the outcome in it’s absence.

Simply put, tanks are going to get rounded without the correct tactics, raid comp and execution no matter how well geared they are in later expansions. But, at that stage people have typically invested enough time in a raid toon that they aren’t taking things for toys, giggles or to troll a guild member until the folks that want those items already have them.