The raid leader usually delegates the handling of loot to the loot captain. Loot captain is in charge of everything regarding loot that drops on the raid, most importantly, the loot distribution. Loot captain's decisions about loot are final.
If you are not familiar with the loot system of the Defenders of Fae, here is a short recapitulation. We use a need-before-greed system, meaning that everyone who can and will use a particular item can roll for it (with the limit of one item won per raid). If noone wants a no-drop item, the item goes to a so-called rot roll; again everyone who can and will use the item can roll, now including people who already won something on a raid. Wins in a rot scenario will not count towards the one item per raid limit - so if someone wins in a rot scenario, then can roll on other items later on that raid. Applicants, probationary members, and guests are usually not allowed to roll unless no full members want the item. You will find more details about the loot system on our website.
When a monster that drops an item is killed, the loot captain will link the whole loot of that monster in /rs. The loot captain will then choose one item (usually the best one) and ask everyone who is interested in rolling to send the loot captain a tell. Be sure to send direct tells; attempts to notify the loot captain in any other way (chat channel, /rs, say or anything else) will mostly be missed. Attempts to notify someone else than the loot captain, like the raid leader, will definitely be missed. After a short while, the loot captain will announce the list of the people interested in that item. The loot captain will also assign a number to each person and then roll. The loot captain will then announce the winner in /rs; after that happens, that person can loot the item in question. The loot captain will then proceed with the next item on the list, and so on.
This is the usual way of handling loot, but sometimes the situation requires a different way of handling it - especially when a monster drops an item that a lot of people want to roll for. In such a case the loot captain will create a channel that everyone who is interested in that item joins and the loot captain will then base the roll numbers on the order of the people in the channel. Some encounters (most notably Blood of Ssraeshza) require even a more complex way of handling loot. In any case, everything regarding loot will be announced in /rs, so that's yet another reason to pay attention to it and to keep it clear from non-important chat.
Noone should loot any items before the loot captain asks them to do so, even if they think the item is worthless or even if the loot captain just rolled that person's number. Waiting until the loot captain announces the winner in /rs is a good way to minimize the mistakes that can happen during loot handling.
Sometimes the raid will need to move fast or clear corpses fast. In such a case, certain droppable or multi-questable items (most notably PoP parchments and runes) will be looted by the loot captain during the raid and then rolled for at the end of the raid.
Minor items (e.g. tradeskill ones as Strands of Ether in PoP) will not be announced; if you need any of those and if you see loot captain looting it, send the loot captain a tell about it even without being asked to do so.
Cash loot from raid will be sold and the money put into the guild bank, which is used to finance corpse runs, spell-casting components, and so on.