I got thrown into quite a troublesome situation the other day, when a guild officer pulled me aside the day after a raid to speak with me privately.
The officer in question was the DKP Master, and was entrusted with the responsibility of handling all DKP aspects of the guild. While I often assisted (and coded the addon that he used), he was the head DKP guy and had the last word. He was also one of the three people at the top of the totem pole for the guild, and while we’ve had a friendly relationship in the past, this one even threatened the trust we had.
Considering that this takes place mere weeks after a guild merger, the outcome of this conversation could determine my future with the guild. Let me fill you in with the full story.
Back Story: The Guild Merger (Skippable)
Recently my guild <Succession> merged with <Like Warm Mana Pie> to form a new guild called <Metamorphosis>. Both of our guilds were having troubles filling 25-man raids, and we felt that we often ended up filling the raid with “scrubs” — players who didn’t read up on the fights, didn’t know how to play their class well, and ultimately end up hurting the raid more than helping it. The goal of the merge was to combine the best players from both guilds to form a 25-man raid group that had the greatest chance of progression. The merge was very successful, and although there’s still a fairly obvious separation of “them” versus “us,” members are getting along both in and out of raids.
Being one of the highest DPS from either guild and by designing the DKP addon we would be using, I secured my raid spot fairly early on. Instead of the usual group of “good” players, our “good” group was twice as big now, and raid spots became extremely competitive. Instead of the DPS meters showing a few members easily outperforming the rest, almost all the DPS were excelling at their roles and the DPS on the meters varied by only a few percent each time. If you didn’t perform well, or if you didn’t play well with others, finding a replacement was no difficult task.
I pay a lot of attention to how I gear and how I play, as I constantly strive to push my class to perform as best as it can. One of my greatest tools in this endeavor is Rawr, a theorycrafting tool I love and mention frequently on this blog.
Because of how meticulous I am, I know my items inside and out. I can tell you which wand or offhand I’m using off the top of my head. On the other hand, unless I’ve worked personally with another player, their gear is a mystery to me. I might see a shiny sword being wielded and allow my curiousity to win, but I hardly remember which item it was the next day. Ask me what main hand the shaman in the above screenshot is using, and I won’t be able to tell you.
Hey reader, how about you? Do you know your gear well enough to be able to name an item you have equipped (what’s the name of your belt? your boots?)? How well do you know the gear of your fellow raiders and guild members? Let me know in the comments!
Back Story: The Tuesday Incident
One of the biggest upgrades I got recently, that was clearly visible in my performance (and what allowed me to top the charts as you see in the screenshot above) was picking up my T8.5 helm with Emblems of Conquest a few weeks ago. By switching this item in, my set 4-piece bonus was activated, and my potential DPS shot up by ~150-200. The bonus allows me to cast multiple insta-cast Pyroblasts in a row, without using up the Hot Streak buff. This effect was so awesome (at times allowing me to cast up to five Pyroblasts back to back!), that I would often talk about it on vent with friends. Even our guild’s main tank (who’s an officer himself) noticed my sudden threat boost.
Tuesday night, my guild was raiding the first half of Ulduar25, as we do every Tuesday. I was only a few emblems away from being able to purchase the fifth piece of my T8 set which, while not as huge as the fourth piece, was still a significant upgrade. I had been looking forward to this for quite a while now, and had avoiding bidding DKP on any chest pieces that dropped to avoid wasting my DKP on an item that would soon be replaced.
The second-to-last boss of the night, Hodir, fell to his knees in front of my guild at around 10:30pm, and all us raiders eagerly awaited the linking of the loot. One of the items that dropped was a Breastplate of the Wayward Vanquisher. Knowing that I would pick up my chest with emblems shortly after the raid ended, I chose to save my DKP and not bid on the token that dropped.
Surprisingly, the token rotted (nobody bid on it), and the DKP Master looted it to me, with instructions to disenchant it and put the shard in the guild bank (I was the only class on the token that had Enchanting).
Later that night after the raid was called, I happily setup a portal to Dalaran for my fellow raiders, and enthusiastically jumped through it myself. I ran straight to the Emblem of Conquest vendor and picked up my token. I then blinked my way to the cloth armor vendor and purchased two T8.5 chests, and disenchanted one. The other one I gemmed and enchanted, and immediately equipped.
Pleased with my new armor, I logged off for the night. Little did I know that this simple action would leave me in such a conundrum.
The Talk
The following day, the DKP Master (and guild officer) pulled me aside on vent. He explained to me that as a precaution he had discretely inspected my character upon my receiving the token, and had inspected me again right now in Dalaran, and had a few problems.
He stated that he had seen me with some other helm (after some discussion he claimed it was Gothik’s Cowl, which was been sitting in my bank for weeks) and my T7.5 chest on Tuesday night. He said that he had just inspected me, and seen me with both the T8.5 chest, and the T8.5 helm, and had suspicion that I had used the guild’s token to get the chest for free, while using my emblems to purchase the helm for myself.
Now, those of you who have been following along know (as I do) that I’ve had the helm for weeks, but he claimed that he was 99% certain that I was using some other helm. So the question is…
How Do You Prove You’ve Owned An Item?
How do I prove to the officer that I have had the helm for quite a while now, and that I did not steal from the guild by taking the token for myself for free? Well, I found a way to prove it to him, and he let me off the hook. Rather than tell you what I did, however, I’m curious to see what you would have done. So, my dear reader, here’s a puzzle for you. Let me know your thoughts and opinions in a comment, and see if you can guess which approach I used. Here are a few things you should know…
- The solution I came up with will require you to think outside of the box, and may not be obvious.
- All the information you should need has been mentioned somewhere in this post, but please feel free to ask for any more information.
- I’ve placed several hints and clues throughout this blog post as to how I came to my solution, so see if you can pick up on them!
- If nobody finds the “correct” solution, I’ll post a few less-subtle hints in a follow-up blog post.
- In addition to coming up with how I could have solved this specific problem, I’m curious to hear what thoughts you have on the matter. What would you do in my situation? How would you prove ownership of an item? Let me know below!
So, I ask you,
If I read correctly, you said that the helm was your 4th piece of T8 gear… therefore you could maybe look in some older WMO reports and look for number of Hot Streak procs and pyro’s casted, or somehow see in another way in the reports that the 4-piece bonus activated itself?
First step would be what Triz suggested – your 4 piece T8.5 offers you a set bonus, and someone as on top of things is sure to have WWS/WoL/WMO logs around. Go back prior to the T8.5 set and show HotStreak vs. Pyro procs, and show HotStreak dropping.
And then show post 4 piece that HotStreak no longer drops after your pyroblasts. You said that gaining the piece improved your performance significantly, so it should at least be visible through that route as well.
If that failed, due to logs dropping or whatever, and your raid runs a DKP addon, you can pretty easily total up the number of Emblems of Conquest that you have earned. Screenshot your currency tab, total up your number of Conquest Emblems that you ought to have, Obviously the total that you NOW have should be rather small, as you’ve recently purchased two items. While this won’t prove to them WHICH two items, it’s at least proof that you have bought something, and in combination with the performance increase that you say was noticable, should at least be “circumstancial” evidence in your favor :)
Frankly, I’d say that if they don’t trust you by now, then they don’t deserve you and your ‘leet DPS. You were honest with them and do everything you can for the guild. You turned in that crystal to the Gbank, and they can see that in the log. If they think you cheated, then tell that officer to go to hell. I’m guessing others in the guild will back you up.
Unbelievable, you guys already guessed my solution within a few hours! Either I have very smart readers, or this puzzle isn’t nearly as tricky as I thought. Knowing you guys, and this post, it must be the former (or both)!
Most of the people I’d ask suggested checking websites that cached your gear (Wow-Heroes, WowProgress, etc.), but that didn’t apply in this case since they either didn’t have me with either item, or already cached me with both.
I’ll have a full write-up of how I handled the situation soon, but you guys pretty much nailed it on the head. I linked him to a WMO log that took place before Tuesday, and had him compare the number of times I gained Hot Streak to the number of times I cast Pyroblast. Since no good Mage would cast the spell without the buff, you can conclude that when my Pyroblast count is higher, I must have had free procs. In one example (the Thursday before), I had 90 more Pyroblasts than I did Hot Streaks. Pretty definitive proof if you ask me!
For the record, my position in the guild was never in serious peril. The DKP Master trusts me enough that he took my word that I didn’t steal from the guild, and my word was enough for him. Although he did mention that looking at the WMO logs eased his mind a bit.
I don’t think trust is the dumbfounding issue here, though to some it may be. I am AMAZED that you use a dkp system so OPRESSIVE that loot which is a clear upgrade gets sharded. Do those 2 shards benefit the guild more than a tier 8 helm and chest? Even if they go towards offspec for druids or Death Knights, I think the guild is better off than if they had more abyss crystals in the bank.
Your dkp system sorely needs to come up with a distribution system for giving out offspec items without penalizing hybrid classes, or your leadership needs to have veterans with no need for loot sit out specific fights so that the “scrubs” can get gear, which you WILL need when a veteran player quits.
I agree entirely rw. In, you would bid either “max” (large upgrade, 25% of your total dkp), “min” (small/side upgrade, 10% of your total dkp), or “off” (offspec/iLvl bid, static 5 dkp). It worked very well and encouraged building an off set and bidding on small upgrades. As the DKP Master of my previous guild, the system worked out well, and although a few players attempted gaming it (the two hunters had an agreement where they just min bid everything), we handled it on a case by case basis and all was well.
In the merger I forfeited my DKP Master position, and had little to no say in the new system. The system, which is that you bid a predetermined percent of your dkp for the item, regardless of how big of an upgrade it is. The formula for the cost of the item is (ilvl – 226) * 0.03 + 0.18 of your total dkp. So an iLvl 226 item is 18%, and an ilvl 232 item is 36%. T8 pieces are treated as iLvl 229 and cost 27%.
This highly discourages people from bididng on small upgrades or offspec loot, and I personally disagree with it. However, the powers that be think it all works great, even though about 50% of our items in any given run get sharded (on average). Although a moot point, the excess of crystals does allow everyone to get free enchants, and we sell off the excess so everyone gets free repairs (and flasks). However, gearing takes a hit.