Itemization Complaint

Possibly, but the complaint is that the items exist rather than how easy they are to obtain. You're correct in that they were introduced last expansion. I basically /ragequit when I saw Deathtoll loot tables! A lot of other players quit too, even Equilibrium disbanded, but I suspect their reasons were only related (rather than identical) to mine.

While there is debate to whether the items are 'game breaking', all of us agree that a single item drastically changes a player's performance from what it was before. If they're everywhere (show up get item, fully geared in a week or so), it is curious as to why they exist at all (other to distinguish raid #s vs.elsewhere #s). Alternatively, if they are not everywhere (which I suspect), it severely inhibits gearing new characters and "gates" encounters until an item threshold is reached.

tl;dr: Items such as these will be effective at "gating" characters until their ease of access is trivial.
Once that point is reached, why bother in the first place? Unless people like seeing big numbers. I know a lot of players get excited when they see a familiar number replaced by a new bigger number, but I am not one of them.

yes. the basic reality is that ever since the advent of the "+1 Sword", people have enjoyed getting the "+2 Sword". it's part of the RPG gaming experience. it's far from the only part, but the idea of making your character more powerful is a huge reason to continue playing and part of the fun.

And no one shows up and immediately gets 10 top items. You get 1 good item. Someone else gets a different good item. So now both people have a good item. Eventually you build a set of good items. Someone else builds a different set of good items. The person who built the smarter/better set has an advantage, but really, both people have sets of good items. That advantage is also part of the game, since the act of choosign the right gear is part of the gameplay skill, so is the act of obtaining that gear, so is the act of adjusting your combat actions to take advantage of that gear.

Deathtoll with it's crafted loot and one day reset timer was the final straw and why Arabel called it quits. I was in Equilibrium at the time and he got in vent the day after Deathtoll went live and told everyone how dumb it was and he was calling it quits. I'd only been there six months but it was a fun guild. Playing with people at that level you can really see how much skill and game knowledge increases a parse. It only took a few tips from Ripptx to help me boost my parse. Gear is important but in my opinion skill is still more important.

One thing to remember is the uplifting and practiced items while great in raids are pretty crap for most heroic stuff. Mobs die to fast and then your increments have to start over. Things like Ethereal Strike are better in heroics because you get the full amount off the first proc. The amplifying gear would be the new exception since it's not proc dependent. Those items will be best in solo, heroic or raid.

@Arieste
The scenario you described (regarding two players) confuses me greatly that it remains standard procedure within "competitive" guilds.

It isn't a difficult mathematical proof to show that
(x + 2)^2 + (x + 0)^2 > (x + 1)^2 + (x + 1)^2; for all positive values of x
so it doesn't make sense to "evenly distribute" items between players. Especially, "in the real world," it is likely that they are of unequal skill (e.g. x1 > x2 vs. x1 = x2) which would further increase the benefits of "stacking" a single player.

That said, no guild (that I am aware of) in EQII does this. However, as Errror put it, not many players in EQII are mathematically invested. Fewer still are sufficiently competitively invested to put faith into such a reward scheme. I belong to what appears to be an incredibly small minority of EQII players who do, and who do not derive joy from simply "larger numbers" rather than progressing in the most efficient and respectful fashion.

@Crychtonn
Thank you for the insider's opinion w.r.t. Equilibrium. I knew little of Arabel, and while I have met and discussed mechanics with him, it wasn't pertaining to EQII! I wish him, and the rest of Equilibrium the best in their future endeavors.

I stand by my comments with respect to player ability. If two players are not mathematically invested, sure "skill" matters. Once they are, when mechanical simulations and evolutionary solvers are brought to the table, then no. These items completely remove any contest of skill between the players.

i dum, my math is bads. but if player 2 quits guild, equation not gud, mirite?

because if you have two players and the first gets 10 (or even 2) items while the second gets zero, the second - in pretty much every scenario i know of - will leave the guild. So now you have 1 less players in guild.

Have you ever led a raid guild or been an officer in one that has any accountability for loot decisions? Having done both, my experience is that a whole lot more goes into every single decision than "mathematically this is better". Not to mention that many guilds use some kind of DKP or point system where items aren't distributed to "who is best", but (somewhat) randomly to people that earned points to buy them.

Yes!

Most recently, I was the leader of Sakura on iRO Valkyrie. I played under the character "Elladja" although most forum based discussions still reference me as Koko. Sakura was incredibly successful: held multiple server firsts, provided high profit margins, had low member turnover, was chosen as a server representative in the United States Ragnarok Championships (USRC), and was widely recognized for its playerbase in both PvE and PvP.

Before that, I lead Mirage on UnityRO where it was more of the same. Before that, I was the 7th leader of SOTA on EQI Fennin Ro which was mostly casual. Before that, I was an officer. Before that, I was nobody.

And before you were nobody? I must know, koko!

I think I played Gunbound or Neopets, lets not talk about that though. <3
-edit-
*cough* damn you aimbot!... ruining all of my highschool level math that did angles, power, and wind conditions based on screen resolution... I hate you cheaters Q_Q! *grumbles*...I was such a nerd, let me go back to being a nobody.

Ok great! So, in that experience - in all that great success you've had - are you telling me that you distributed loot based on nothing other than mathematical calculations of which person would get the highest benefit?

You got it! Math wins competitions.

Building a guild from the ground up focused on killing players/monsters is really good at killing players/monsters!

Well congratz. No guild i have ever been in has done this. Things like attendance, morale and a myriad of other things were always taken into consideration with assigned loot or a dkp-type system was used. Highest benefit was also always considered of course, but it was like one of ten factors.

Thanks! RO was weird, 95% attendance was considered low/unacceptable. If any one of our players didn't show, it was effectively our entire guild not showing. Positions were implemented for a reason, and if the role wasn't fulfilled everyone else couldn't do their job. Raid started when it started, if you were formed up or not, and if you weren't ready another guild would take your stuff!...which was unacceptable.

Ehm.. i only now realize that nothing you mentioned is actually from EQ2. I guess i misunderstood.

I'd really like to see how it would go if i told my Coercer that the 5 T1 dps people would get fully geared before they got a single item, because those items do more for DPS classes. I mean, the system is great in theory, if you have one player controlling all the characters and only caring about the total output... but most people would like at least some "near term" reward for showing up other than just defeating content and knowing that maybe someday, at the end of the expac, after all the "important" people are geared, they might get a decent piece of loot.

This type of set up also helps explain your distaste for powerful items. Since having a powerful item would make it extremely unpleasant for everyone that would never see it because the math doesn't favour their class.

Which is why I think Errror's criticism is perfect, most EQII players are not like that. I am, my playgroup is, but "most" are not.

My distaste for powerful items is for the exact reasons discussed in the OP. For counter example, I'm 100% okay with mounts (traditionally BIS for every class) going to DPS every time and support (tank/healer/utility) never obtaining one. I realize this is the exact opposite of how it occurs in most (all?) guilds.

I dislike this jewelry because it create "gates". Gates are bad. Gates are very very very bad.

I've seen mounts given a few different ways. I've seen first one go to Tank (the math argument, since they're the most important person in the raid), I've seen first go to leader or notable officer/key player (as recognition), I've seen them rotated among dif archetypes and i've seen them just be randomed for. With AoM it doesn't really matter, since the drop is so common and comes from a super easy mob.

That is a poor math argument!
For damage, DPS is better. For survivability*, shaman is better. Tank is neither of these, and has always been terrible (for the traditional CB/P/flat hp bonuses).

Not really. Top DPS dying or doing less dps doesn't result in any failures except on very rare encounters. Tank dying, means eveyrone is dead, starting with the top dps. Shaman - and i've played one for 10 years - can do their job 90% effectively with virtually no upgrades, especially with the way that the game is set up now, where the healers hardly heal the tank anymore. Quite a few guilds continue to prioritize gearing out their tanks and have great success.

Not to even mention that if you prioritize DPS ahead of your tank, the DPS will eventually gank and die.

You misread me. Time is valuable, DPS aren't geared to "make parse bigger" rather to "get more loot faster". Failure/dying is never a concern, because it is never a problem.

If, for some reason, it is a problem 1k more hp (or 2k more wards) likely won't fix it. If the tank dies, as you said, it is predominantly their fault. The "ganking" from tank is a horrendously bad argument from a mathematical standpoint, and this was in the CoE era... let alone the ToV/AoM era.

I agree that the tank is an important role, and I understand why many guilds invest so much in them. However, from a mathematical standpoint, it is a very poor choice.

given the assumption that no one ever dies and aggro issues don't exist (or that survivability and hate aren't affected by better gear), i can agree that gearing top DPS makes sense.

If someone dies, usually they (or the tank) messed up. Hate is affected by gear, but transfers and blanket modifiers are very dumb (powerful) mechanics.

So dumb that coercers (and illusionists for that matter) likely wouldn't be in a mathematically optimized raid at all*!
*save select charm requiring encounters... talk about forced compositions!