About Forte

• Who are we?

  Forte is a relaxed layed back group of adults whose goal is raid progression.
  
  We raid on Tuesday and Wednesday nights for 10 man Ulduar at 830pm server, and Saturday and Sunday nights for 25 man Ulduar at 800pm server. We are looking for geared people that are wanting to explore what the game has to offer.

  We are strong believers in doing things in an organized fashion and overcoming challenges with teamwork.  We are only interested in coolheaded, mature, and motivated people who share our same goals for the game.
  

EPGP

• Effort Points
  EffortPoints  

  Effort Points

  Introduction

  Effort points (EP) are given out of members of the guild for multiple activities/actions all depending on the guild's policies. Examples could be:

  • Being on time for raids
  • Just because you are raiding or are on standby
  • Killing bosses
  • Wiping on new boss tries
  • Being present until the end of raid
  • Being extraordinarily helpful to the guild (making pots for a specific fight)
  • Doing some grunt work noone wants to tackle, like updating the guild's website

  Implementation

  Obviously EP awards vary from guild to guild. What is important for EP is that the relative effort between awards is something that makes sense to you and makes it fair for the whole guild. Since fairness in this case is something subjective, the addon cannot possibly give recommendations for it.

  Example

  With the above in mind, for my guild we have chosen the following, extremely simple, award scheme:

  • Raid and standby get the same EP including bonuses. There is no difference between being in or out of the raid as long as you are prepared.
  • 1000 EP per 15m while in raid or standby for a raid.
  • Bonus EP points to the raid and standby when execution of boss fights is perfect, but only until the boss is still reasonably hard. This is entirely to the discretion of the guild master or commanders (only 1 GM and 1 commander are currently in place).

  Disclaimer: the above will NOT work for all guilds. We have found that this is enough motivation for our members to raid and raid well, which might not apply to your guild. Each guild has its own goals, social interactions and intricacies that make EP awards something you will have to tailor to your guild.

• Gear Points
  GearPoints  

  Gear Points

  Introduction

  Each item in WoW has a certain power. Its power is determined by its slot, its rarity and its ilvl. The slot and rarity of each item are visible in the game. The ilvl is something that is not shown but it represents how powerful that item is in the specific slot and rarity. For example not all epics are equal. An epic form heroic raid dungeons is 13 item levels higher than epics from normal raid dungeons and as such it is quite a bit more powerful.

  Definitions

  Item budget	The sum of the stats of an item. See Item Level for more information
  Item level or short ilvl	The item level of an item is what determines its item budget in the same rarity and slot
  Slot or item slot	The slot in which the item can be equipped
  Rarity	The rarity of an item. Examples are uncommon, rare, epic, legendary
  Tier	A loot tier. Molten Core was Tier 1, Blackwing Lair Tier 2, and so on
  Class	The class of a toon: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, and so on
  Spec	The spec a class plays: Protection, Arms, Fury, Restoration, and so on
  White stats	The inherent stats of an item which do not depend on choices of Blizzard's itemization. These are: armor of an item, white dps on a weapon
  Green stats	All the stats that are not white stats on an item

  Design of the GP formula

  When designing the GP formula the following requirements were set:

  • Total GP for each class/spec should be ideally the same.
  • Items of a whole new and better tier should be increasingly more expensive. A factor of two was chosen for each tier.
  • Each item should cost as much GP as it's power according to the class/spec that uses it.

  While the relative item budget between slots is widely known (Item Level) there are class/spec combinations for which an item is more beneficial than others. These depend on how the class/spec is designed and what kind of stats it prefers or primarily uses. The cases we are more interested in are:

  • Shields: A tanking shield is used by shield capable tanking classes. In that case a tank is interested in both the white stats and the green stats of an item. A healing shield, which is used by shield capable healers, is used primarily, if not exlusively, for its green stats. This should be taken into account by the GP formula.
  • Weapons: Melee classes use both the green and white stats of a weapon. Both the dps of the weapon and the stats on it are useful. The white stats of a weapon are not at all useful for a hunter. This also needs to be taken into consideration. Note: Casters get the white dps of a weapon and make it into spell power through some fixed formulas, so spell power on weapons is considered a white stat.
  • Ranged weapons: Hunters use ranged weapons for both their white stats and the green stats. This is not true for melee classes which use these items only for their green stats.
  • Off-hand weapons: These weapons are used by dual wielding classes/specs and because of the off hand weapons 50% damage modifier, the white stats on these items are severely less important. Obviously GP needs to account for this as well.

  With the above in mind the following formula was devised:

  GP = 0.483 x 2 ^{ilvl/26 + (rarity - 4)} x slot mod

  Rarity is given by this table:

  Rarity	Value
  Uncommon (Green)	2
  Rare (Blue)	3
  Epic (Purple)	4
  Legendary (Orange)	5

  Slot modifiers depend on the slot each item can be equipped. In addition to that, the forementioned differences between the use of certain weapons/offhands is taken into consideration. This means some items have two possible GP values which depending on who uses them and how they are used.

  The basic values slot modifiers for each slot are:

  Slot	mod
  2H Weapon	2
  1H Weapon	1.5
  Head, Chest, Legs, 2H weapon	1
  Shoulder, Hands, Waist, Feet, Trinket	0.75
  Wrist, Neck, Back, Finger, Off-hand, Shield, Wand, Ranged Weapon	0.5

  Under certain circumstances a different modifier is used. These are:

  • 2H Weapon:
    • If it is going to be used as an offhand (TG warriors for example) the modifier becomes 1 (down from 2)
    • If it is going to be used by a hunter the modifier becomes 1 (down from 2)
  • 1H Weapon:
    • If it is going to be used by a hunter the modifier becomes 0.5 (down from 1.5)
    • If it is going to be used by a tank for tanking purposes the modifier becomes 0.5 (down from 1.5)
    • If it is going to be used as an off-hand the modifier becomes 0.5 (down from 1.5)
  • Shield:
    • If it is going to be used by a tank for tanking purposes the modifier becomes 1.5 (up from 0.5)
  • Ranged:
    • If it is going to be used by a hunter the modifier becomes 1.5 (up from 0.5)

  This gives more or less equal GP value for MH + OH + Ranged slots for all classes:

  Class/Spec	MH	OH/Shield	Ranged	Total
  Tank with shield	0.5	1.5	0.5	2.5
  2H melee	2	-	0.5	2.5
  Hunter 2H	1	-	1.5	2.5
  Hunter MH+OH	0.5	0.5	1.5	2.5
  Dual-wield 2H	2	1	0.5	3.5
  Caster with shield	1.5	0.5	0.5	2.5

  As shown by the table most classes end up with the same totals, with the exception of TG warriors that are charged a little bit extra.

  Examples

  With the theory out of the way lets see some examples of items and how different components of the equation affect GP.

  A tier of gear difference. Both items are epic 2H weapons, but they have a whole tier of loot difference:

  • Betrayer of Humanity 399 GP
  • Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver 199 GP

  As expected the higher tier item is 2x as much GP as the lower tier one. Now lets see two items of the same ilvl, same slot but different rarity:

  • Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver 199 GP
  • Mojo Masked Crusher 99 GP

  Again as expected the two items have a 2x GP difference between the two weapons because the one is epic and the other one is rare. With the rarity and tiers out of the equation lets look at the whole tier 7.10 set for the warrior class:

  • Heroes' Dreadnaught Helmet 99 GP
  • Heroes' Dreadnaught Battleplate 99 GP
  • Heroes' Dreadnaught Legplates 99 GP
  • Heroes' Dreadnaught Shoulderplates 74 GP
  • Heroes' Dreadnaught Gauntlets 74 GP

  As you can see both shoulders and hands are 0.75x of the cost of the head, chest and leg items since their relative power is 0.75x as much.

• The System
  TheSystem  

  The EPGP loot system

  Introduction

  EPGP stands for Effort Points/Gear Points. Effort Points (EP) quantify the effort each member put towards the, hopefully common, guild goals. Gear Points (GP) quantify what loot each member got back in return. Loot priority is computed as the quotient of the two; priority (PR) is equal to EP/GP. The person with the higher PR gets the first say on loot.

  From the above, the more effort you put the more gear you receive. As a matter of fact, the gear you receive is proportional to the effort you put. EPGP is based on this simple principle, but there are some complexities that need to be dealt with which will be covered below.

  Decay

  In order to award recent effort more than past effort, which in effect avoids PR hoarding for veterans and enables new coming and dedicated members of a guild to be awarded properly, EPGP supports a decay mechanism. Decay simply removes a chunk of EP and GP from the totals, effectively leaving PR unchanged. For example with a decay of 10% applied each week, for each 7 days that pass your effort's rewards get diminished by 10%. The effort you put 10 weeks ago will only be worth 34.8% of what it did when you received it ( (1-0.1) ¹⁰ ).

  Priming the system

  A loot system should behave reasonably not only in its steady state but also when new members join a guild and the guild's efforts. For this reason some extra parameters need to be setup.

  Base GP

  Base GP adds a certain GP to each member of a guild. This means the final GP of each member is: GP = BaseGP + RealGP. All PR computations happen on GP not BaseGP or RealGP. Decay also applies to GP as a whole but it only diminishes RealGP. As such GP can never be lower than BaseGP. For example, say we have BaseGP = 100 and RealGP = 10. Applying a 10% decay will result in RealGP = 0 for a total of 100 GP.

  Base GP prevents new recruits or long time inactive members from trumping your dedicated members just because their GP is 0 and thus their PR infinite.

  Min EP

  Min EP puts a limit, which members should exceed in order to have any loot priority. This is more or less an attendance check and a road block for new members to reach a point after which they can need on loot. Anyone below MinEP has in effect lower PR then everyone above MinEP even if their effective PR is higher. For example MinEP = 10000 and member A has 20000 EP and 4000 GP for 5 PR and member B has 1000 EP and 100 GP for 10 PR. In this case member A has higher priority for loot since he/she is above the MinEP threshold even though his/her PR is lower than member B.

Loot

• How is loot distributed?
  Loot is distrubted based on the EPGP system, modified for when we PUG people into raids.
  During PUGs, guild members recieve a 5 point bonus vs pugs in a /roll.  If a guild member wins the roll, loot is distributed to the guild based on PR.  If the pug wins the roll, the pug takes the item.
  This currently equates to a 45%/55% weighted system favoring the guild.  The reasoning is that our experienced guild members put on a high quality raid, and anyone we pug pays the small price in loot weighting to be in a better-than-pug quality raid.
  

Probation

• How long does it take to become a member?
  Recruits will enter into a 14-day probation period.  At the end of 14 days, they will be assessed and either offerred full membership, an extension, or removed from the guild if we find you do not fit in for any reason.

Ventrilo

• Normalization (Auto volume)
  Vent Normalization makes everybody's voice volume the same level.  No more tweaking individuals volume up manually, or asking people to turn their mics up or down!
  ____________________
  
  
  Here's how:
  
  - Go to Setup
  
  - Enable Direct Sound
  
  - Select the SFX Button
  
  - Select Compressor and click Add.
  
  - Under Compressor Properties use the following settings
  
  - Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use 15)
  
  - Attack = 0.01
  
  - Release = Around 500
  
  - Threshold = Around -30
  
  - Ratio = 100
  
  - Pre delay = 4.0
  
  (Taken from WoW Forums)
• What is the Forte's Ventrilo address?
  Set it up automatically:
  Click here!
  
  Or choose to set it up manually:
  
  69.147.229.234
  3877