It's obviously not the first time something similar to this happen... and in fact, not the first time this particular priest pulls it off. This caused grumbling and disent among many of our raiders, who felt they were getting hosed because they weren't trying to manipulate the system and were essentially being 'good citizens'.
We do not want an item to drop and 'everybody' passing on it, to then try and nab it for free - this goes against the spirit of the system. We've made that clear before and warned people we might ask for 'full' price on a min if it was felt the system was being abused.
This is basically the first time it's being noticed by so many people, so we (the officers) have to do something about it, or lose face essentially.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the idea that the item is better off on the H Priest's set then as a piece of a shadow priest's offset... but the player should realise that as well, and should willingly spend the points for the upgrade - and so should the other healer that decided to not even roll min because they were afraid they'd get a dkp reduction
.
Trying to wiggle out of an upgrade is greedy, and it opens at least three sizable can of worm;
1- Where do you draw the line? What's a 'minor' upgrade? A side grade? A 'real' upgrade?
The Cloak of the Shadowmoon Destroyer was only a 20dps upgrade out of 1800+ on my rogue... does that count as 'real' upgrade? What about a necklace which give +10? Or a Sword that gives +50? I mean, even +50 out of 1800 in't much. I could use this mentality to never Need on anything in all of BT/Hyjal until the Warglaives drop, and end up a T4/T5 geared liability to my entire raid... because ultimately, there's vert few 'big upgrade' in the game - it's all about a 1% upgrade here, a .7% upgrade there, etc.
2- It gives a value to dkp when really, it doesn't have value.
Hell, if the guildies are going to be greedy and try to weasel advantage out the system, we'll simply switch to loot council, at which point that priest would have been forced to take the Bracer and been put in the back anyway.
3 - It promote dishonesty, trickery, and guile.
If when a Blade of Infamy drops, none of the rogue 'need' and they all 'min', they're essentially in a cahoot to try and milk the system so to be in a better shape for T6 or other cross class drop. End result, the wealth doesn't get seperated based on effort and attendance, but rather on who is clever enough to manipulate the system - at the expense of those who are not clever enough, or who are honest and understand that the guild, and not the individual come first or those who raid for fun rather then for loot and don't even look at the dkp table.
In other words, it encourage all the flaws we don't want in our raiders, while discouraging the qualities we want.
It may sound draconic, and maybe it is, and maybe it's not the kind of guild you'd want to be in... but my guild's been around for well over 2 years and is now in BT, so we must be doing something right ;p.
This might end up in a total reshaping of our system - It's worked fine for years, but apparently some people are being a bit too greedy, and considerin that the system always needed a good measure of D.B.A.D. in order to work, it's a shame to say it seems to be coming to the end of a long run.
And honestly, that is not what the OP is about - merely about trying to see if his claim that it wasn't an upgrade was true.
Edited, Aug 5th 2008 8:32pm by Tyrandor Edited, Aug 5th 2008 8:35pm by Tyrandor