Introduction
I’m loot master for a casual raiding guild, in World of Warcraft’s Season of Discovery.
We’ve been trying out the “KSK” loot system for about 9 months, and I thought I’d share our experience with it.
TLDR: the guild pretty much unanimously enjoys it, with not many complaints. It mainly has problems if you need to invite PUGs sometimes.
How it Works: Summary
The KSK system basically lets people take turns having dibs on loot.
There is an ordered list of players, that is initially shuffled, but never shuffled again. It carries over from week to week. New players are always added at the bottom.
When an item drops, if you’re higher on the list than all other players who want the item, then you have “dibs”–so if you want it, it’s yours. But, if you take the loot by using your dibs, you move to the bottom of the list. So you’re not likely to win loot again this way, for a while. If nobody wants the item badly enough, simple MS>OS rolling is used.
“KSK” refers to a specific addon called “KSK – Classic (Wrath and SoD)“, that implements the “Suicide Kings” loot system, which was invented by a guild called “Suicide Kings”. The addon stores, maintains, and updates the player list, and responds to player inputs, and awards the loot.
KSK is complex enough that you cannot feasibly do it, without an addon like this. Luckily, only the Loot Master needs the addon.
How it Works: The Two Phases
When an item drops, 2 phases occur:
Phase 1 is the BIDDING PHASE. The loot master announces everyone can “bid”. Anyone who wants the item a lot, for their Main Spec, whispers the loot master the word “bid”. After some time, the loot master ends the phase.
If anybody bid, then the item will be awarded to whatever bidder was highest on the list. That winner will then move to the bottom of the list. Then, everyone else present in the raid moves up, to fill in the gap! When people are moving upwards, they “hop over” anyone in the list who is absent. Therefore when the absent player returns, they’ll be in the same numeric position in the list as when they left, but with different neighbors.
If nobody bid, then the loot master announces phase 2:
Phase 2 is the ROLLING PHASE. The loot master announces everyone can “roll”. Anyone who wants the item for their Main Spec, can /roll. Anyone who wants the item for their Off Spec, can /roll 101-200. Main spec rolls always beat off spec. (There is no +1 system whatsoever.)
KSK list positions do not change, when loot is awarded via the “rolling phase”.
If nobody rolls, the item is disenchanted for a guild bank, or the loot master can give the item to a random raid member.
How KSK Generally “Feels”
It’s fun to be high on the list. Because that means, next time an item drops that you really want, you’re guaranteed to win it, if you bid on it! It feels powerful and exciting.
To become high on the list, you have to keep showing up to raids! You do not move upward if you’re not present. So KSK encourages players to show up, even when they have most/all items they want. (Note: In fact, showing up isn’t enough, you have to beat bosses to move up!)
It’s also fun to be low on the list. You can bid as much as you want and not worry about sacrificing your position much. You probably won’t win the best items, but you can win MANY mediocre items in one night, if everyone else is saving their higher list positions!
Also, if you’re low on the list, you’re happy when others win loot, because it means you’re probably going to move upward on the list.
Loot is never “wasted”, which can happen in some +1 systems, when nobody wants to waste their +0 state. Thanks to the KSK rolling phase, even if the loot item is mediocre or bad, you might as well roll if you’re interested, since it costs nothing.
KSK is also simply fun to think about, as a guild! It’s something to talk about, there are strategies to it, intricacies to it. It builds a community, it makes you want to stay. There are dramatic moments, like when someone at the top of the list finally bids after weeks of saving up.
There are also fun risks you can take: you THINK you’re the only one who wants the item for their Main Spec, so you don’t bother to bid, you’d rather save your position. But it’s a risk… and sure enough, when phase 2 starts, and you /roll, a couple other paladins were thinking the same thing, and /roll as well, and beat you! Doh, you should have bid.
It feels generally fair. We’re all on the same system, playing by the same rules. If there’s 1 item in the raid you know you really want above all other items, there IS a path to guarantee yourself the item. But it will cost you a fair price: watching everyone else win items for a while. If someone bids higher than you, that means they’ve been waiting even LONGER than you, to use their bid! Very fair.
Decisions to Make Before Using KSK
KSK does not decide everything about your loot rules. You’ll have to figure this stuff out, and announce it:
- “Bidding Phase” role restrictions? Suppose an item is amazing for DPS specs, but pretty good for healers. Are both specs allowed to use a KSK “bid” on it? Or will the Loot Master be allowed to veto? (Our recommendation: veto is allowed, but rare)
- “Rolling Phase” role restrictions? Same as above, but for the “rolling” phase.
- New guild players in the future? Should they be added to the bottom of the list, or shuffled in? (Our recommendation: bottom of the list)
- Pug players? What should happen when you don’t have enough guild players and need to add a pug player. KSK will not work very well for them if they’re added to the bottom of the list. (Our recommendation: play Season of Discovery and have a slightly too big roster)
- Which loot categories will use KSK bidding? For example, cosmetics, legendaries, one-class-specific items, bags, patterns, materials, sellable-only items, rep tokens, etc. Figure this out beforehand. (Note: it’s easy for the loot master to just “skip” the bidding phase, where needed, for these.)
- Alt characters? The addon CAN combine a player’s main with their alts, so that they always move together in the KSK list. But is that a good idea? Not sure. (We decided not to allow alts to come at all, to our main raid night, where KSK is used.)
- Benched players? If you often have too many signups and need to bench some players, you CAN make those forcibly benched players move upwards in the list as if they were present, if you want to. (But surely don’t do this for players who chose to skip the raid night.) (Our recommendation: play Season of Discovery)
- If your raid often needs a 2nd “clean-up” night, often with different players, will KSK make sense to use at all?
- How many KSK player lists do you want to use? See section below about our two lists!
Downsides of KSK
Some of the above decisions are really tough to make. Especially the ones about “Alts” and “Pugs“, and “Benched Players“. Not really easy solutions to those. (In Season of Discovery lately, we’ve been lucky to have flex raiding, which solves some of these problems!)
I suspect if you shuffle Pug players into the list, it will “feel” to them like they’re in a fresh raid with fresh +1 values, and the rolls have been predetermined. Problem solved… But, good luck explaining that to them! Especially if they’re shuffled to the bottom slot.
(To be fair, MS>OS +1 systems where the +1 carries over from week to week, doesn’t handle new players or PUGs very well either! KSK probably handles it slightly better.)
And let’s face it, whispering “bid” is less intuitive in general, for new players, than other loot systems where they simply /roll. At the start of raid you can probably explain the system in 2-3 sentences, and they might get it, or might just be annoyed and confused.
So, if your roster’s gonna significantly change often, then KSK might be annoying.
Also, obviously, KSK doesn’t solve the problem of worse players winning loot over better players. So if that’s something you care about, this might not be the system for you.
Our Preferred KSK Variant: Two Player Lists
We actually use a variant of KSK where we have TWO different lists of players. Each player appears in both lists. Which list is used, depends on which item dropped:
- List 1 is used to distribute Tier Tokens that drop.
- List 2 is used to distribute any other equipment that drops.
(When you move downward on one list, it doesn’t affect the other list.)
We like these 2 lists better than 1, but it’s hard to explain why. Basically, Tier Tokens are very common, and we generally just want to award them as evenly as possible, to everyone that wants them. Having a KSK list just for that alone, is perfect.
Meanwhile, other loot is much more rare and highly coveted. If we only had one list, people would rarely “bid” on tier tokens at all, because they’d always be saving up for these rarer items. Then, tier tokens would always be “rolled” off, which doesn’t work as evenly. Plus it would slow things down, always having to sit through an empty bidding phase, for every tier token.
The “Tank Loot” Dilemma
Tanks will probably figure out they don’t need to be wasting “bids” on tank-focused gear (e.g. +Defense), since nobody else is allowed to bid on it, and because, even in the rolling phase, other players are required to /roll 101-200 (offspec roll) for such gear (so they’ll lose to the tanks who are doing a main spec /roll).
As a result, since tanks aren’t wasting bids on tanking gear, tanks will still have equal footing against DPS players on DPS-focused gear, when it comes to bidding. As a result, tanks will generally win more total gear than DPS players.
Is this a bad thing? You decide. (We decided this is a good thing, since tanks SHOULD generally get funneled more loot than other players. In fact, maybe this still isn’t enough loot for them!)
Other Nice Aspects of the KSK Addon
Only the loot master needs the KSK addon, so that’s nice.
It’s generally easy and smooth to use, once the loot master has some practice.
It’s a dependable addon. We’ve had no data loss issues at all. The lists are there how I left them after each raid and I never worry about them whatsoever.
It has a lot of nice optional features depending on your guild’s taste (we’re using the multiple-player-list variant of KSK, see a section below!)
The addon does support syncing data between multiple loot masters if the main loot master needs to miss a week. We haven’t tried this, though.
The bidding phase doesn’t have a timer, so the loot master can use their own judgment to speed it up or slow it down. For example, when the #1 list position bids, the loot master may as well close the bidding and award the item immediately. Or another example, if the raid got distracted, the loot master can extend the current bidding phase, or whisper people they think might have missed the bid announcement.
Problems With the KSK Addon
We’ve had some small bugs with the KSK addon, usually stuff fixed by /reload. Or fixed by just choosing not to use edgy features that we don’t really need. (Again, only the loot master needs the addon, so most of the raid is not bothered by these.)
Surprisingly, it’s not easy to export the entire list. I just take screenshots and post them in discord. You’re supposed to be able to whisper the loot master and see your position, but it doesn’t work. (Apparently if a player also installs the addon, the data is synced, and they can see the lists more effectively.)
IMPORTANT: The KSK addon does NOT do the cool thing where people can just open trade with the loot master, and it’ll automatically give them anything they won. UGH i wish it did that.
But if the loot master is still kneeling at the boss corpse, then it DOES automatically send them the item. AS A RESULT, the loot master almost certainly misses most of the trash fighting, as they’ll want to remain at the previous boss, working through the loot.
Undoing mistakes in the addon is not as simple as other loot systems. If the most recent item was a mistake, there’s an Undo button…but it doesn’t actually reset the player’s position, so you’ll have to manually click some other buttons to move them back up to where they were.
The addon does take some practice for a new loot master. I don’t recommend taking turns. For example, if you have multiple player lists, the loot master needs to be vigilant about which player list they’re selecting, for each item that drops!
Appendix: Technical Guide For the Loot Master
Here’s a preview of generally what the Loot Master will need to do:
- Install “KSK – Classic (Wrath and SoD)“.
- Type: /ksk createconfig “MyGuildNameHere”
- To open the UI, type: /ksk
- Go to the bottom “CONFIG” tab, and there’s 3 subtabs at the top to set various options.
- In the “ADMIN” subtab I would switch it to Guild mode.
- In the “LOOT” subtab there’s some interesting stuff. Uncommon/Rare threshold.
- In the “ROLLS” subtab, this stuff is only used when nobody bids, when you move on to the “free roll” step.
- Go to the bottom “Users” tab.
- Add all the raiders you can think of. “Guild Import” option can help.
- This is not the KSK list, this is everyone in your guild who COULD be on a list.
- You can mark some people as Disenchanter, which is useful.
- Go to the bottom “Lists” tab.
- Go to the “Config” subtab.
- Here you can create a KSK list.
- Or you can create multiple lists, for different situations.
- You can change settings for each list, but the settings aren’t too useful.
- You can add people to each list, in advance. Try the “Add Missing” or “Import” buttons, they’re useful.
- Go to the “Members” subtab.
- You can click on a list to see who’s in it, and the actual order.
- This is a useful menu in the future for checking the list, or manually moving people around to fix problems.
- Hit “Announce” or “Announce All” to spam the lists in various chats. The spam does not quite work, it skips people randomly.
- Go to the “Config” subtab.
- Familiarize yourself with the bottom “Loot” tab.
- Go to the “Assign Loot” subtab.
- This is the menu to look at while doing bidding or rolling or handing out loot.
- It will always pop up when you’re master looter and open a corpse.
- You can macro this to: /ksk loot
- It will automatically put the items to hand out, at the top.
- Go to the “Assign Loot” subtab.
- Handing out loot:
- Right click the corpse.
- If the UI isn’t showing up automatically, type: /ksk loot
- Then, always make sure you have the correct “KSK” list selected (left).
- Then pick an item and hit “Open Bids“.
- It will put instructions in chat for everyone else (you can’t see).
- They will whisper you the word “bid”.
- They will show up in the bottom right corner of the UI, highest bids at the top (highest list position).
- You can manually retract people’s Bids if you don’t think they should get it.
- Don’t stop kneeling next to the corpse, or whispered bids will get skipped.
- You can bid yourself, with the Bid button.
- When you’re satisfied, and at least one person bid, then hit “Close Bids“.
- It’ll tell you who won, you can hit “OK“, and it’ll give them the loot, and move them to the bottom of that list.
- If nobody bid, instead of hitting “Close Bids”, hit “Open Roll“.
- This swaps the UI to a rolling screen with a timer.
- It puts instructions in chat again.
- People will /roll to bid as MS.
- People will /roll 101-200 to bid as OS.
- When it’s over, you can just hit “OK” to give the item to the correct roller.
- If nobody rolled it’ll go to a random Disenchanter.
- At the start of every raid:
- When you zone in, the addon will warn you about anyone in the raid who isn’t on one of your KSK lists.
- Go to that KSK list and add them. “Add Missing” probably will work.
- That probably also adds them to the overall “Users” list.
- Try to remember to do this again after the first boss is killed, before handing out the loot, just to be sure any latecomer newbies get added to the lists.
That’s the general idea. There’s more optional stuff to learn than that.
For example, you’ll want specific blue materials to be automatically looted to your bags (e.g. Lava Core). You’ll want to type /ksk additem [Lava Core] then find it in the UI in the list of items with custom settings, then change the custom settings.
(Don’t type [The Item], must do a shift+click.)
If loot is ever in your bags and you want to use KSK on it, type /ksk addloot [The Item]
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