WoD: The Loot is dropping differently.

One raid-dungeon should not drop different I-llv stuff all over the place.
-Mardah

That's what I said late august in my post about loot-forged stuff. And now this tweet-stuff came up:
Ghostcrawler on some loot-stuff

Basically what he says is that a piece of loot can drop, lets call it the Sword of Uberness. Now what normally happened before all the forged stuff, that you had 3 versions of it. Every raid-difficulty dropped a slightly different one. But now, Throne of Thunder comes along, and suddenly forged stuff, so the Sword of Uberness now has 5 different forms.

But wait, it gets better, we besiege a flex, and one more form is added, so now we have 6, hurray. Wait, you want more then 6? No problem, just wait till Warlords of Draenor, and, to quote Amelia Pond, now it gets interesting.

About to send a shadow that blots out the sun.

In WoD every piece of gear has chance to get either a special, or a gem-slot, or be forged. Now, I suppose this will not be for LFR, but it will probably be for Normal Raids? So, our Sword of Uberness now has 4 different forms in one difficulty? No wait, it can actually double-proc?  Or Triple??  WHAAAAT.... that means, per difficulty-level, mmm, our nice Sword of Uberness has EIGHT different configurations?

Didn't I wrote that two different Ilvl was already a blast to handle in normal raids? Now you have 2 different Ilvl's in a total of 8 different forms....  and everybody wants the Sword of Headaches  (Sword of Uberness with Gem and a special, and forged).

So, if Normal raids will drop all this, we have an amazing 25 different forms of one and the same weapon? And if Normals will not, it's still 18 different forms...  yeesh...  I am pretty sure no one is going to bid on loot without something extra anymore....

But, good news for Mr Robot, with all these new options, people want to know what is better, more Ilvls, or a gemslot...  or is that Lifestealing actually better?  Can I please have defense back...that seemed simpler.

So..we heared your alts had it though?

The timeless Isle, where Timeless refers to lag I guess...

There are so many people running around, that everything dies within seconds, see a rare, quick tag it, it will die in 10 seconds, after which it takes 40 seconds to loot the Epoch Stone....

I do like the minimap-sumbol for a rare, and I heard from a Big Butt source that it also works for all the rares in the world now.

I did get my legendary cloak fairly easy. Stand in the arena and wait till your faction tagged all four once (and get a Tier-pants in the progress), run around killing rares and opening chest and do some quests to get 5000 coins was fast enough. Get some backstory, and tadaa... Legendary with wings.

After the small story from Cho (He is out to kill us), back to the Isle, to kill the only-if-you-have-the-legendary-on-any-character-boss Ordos...Ordos... weren't they the green faction in Dune 2? I think I may have been in the first group of people that killed him on Argent Dawn. I know the group was forming for a while, like more then an hour, before I got my cloak.  The boss itself is a pushover. About the same health as the Sha of Loot, and with less strannge abilities. Some firey stuff, some exploding stuff.

Ooh..and opening chests on the Isle, I'll tell you, before the end of the wekend, when all my alts have travelled to the isle, all my alts will be near Ilvl 396. There is so much BoA-loot that drops, that I already have some gear for low-level alts, if they ever reach 90....

And then there is a thing to upgrade a token tot 535..  which I ried on a ring...  that wasn't a succes. The ring was worse then the upgraded shadopan-ring...  ala, maybe try it on a BoA-trinket later on. Having enough alts, means enough tokens to do that.

So, yeah, we heard you didn't like how all your alts didn't get enough time to get loot... well..here it is. The Lag-Island of loot.

Oh, and Innovation started to raid. So, wednesday we tested flex...with a full-blown raidgroup of 25... yeah..  well, it helped us last night..but that's another story.

Thunderforging Thoughts

So did it work? Yes and No I suppose.

The idea behind Thunderforged was that you could still get some better gear from long-defeated bosses in the raid.

In that case it worked. Before patch 5.4, the first boss was killed so many times, that no one wanted anything of that boss anymore, so it was a sort of 'waste of time' to kill that boss, but you had to. With TF-gear, there is still a chance to get some better gear.

So yes, the TF-stuff is working as intended, good job Blizzard.


....well, yes, the idea was good, but it did mess up some stuff did it not?

All guilds I raided in, and I suppose a large percentage of the raiding guilds, uses DKP (or some form of that) to distribute gear. The more you raid, the more DKP you get, the more gear you can 'buy'. But, up until 5.4, the Ilvl of gear in a raid-dungeon was always the same, with maybe the end-boss having a little higher Ilvl-gear. That is no longer the case.

An other thing is, that it seems a lot more loot drops these days from bosses. In ToT every boss drops 6 pieces of gear. I don't seem to remember how much TBC-bosses dropped, or Dragon Soul for that matter. But 6 seems a bit much. The effect of this much gear is that a lot of people expect to get best in slot items all over, and are actually not going for 'lesser' pieces.

I, for that matter, would not go for a mastery-item. It's my weakest stat, and I know other and better gear will be coming.

Now combine the increased drops with the possibility for TF-gear, and what do you get?

Raiders bidding a lot less on non-TF gear.

Now add some non-BiS gear to the mix, and now we have a genuine problem. Raiders not bidding on items because it is not BiS, although it may be an upgrade to their current stuff.

And that is a problem methinks.

It is a whole cascade going on. If less people bid on stuff, it goes away for less, so more dkp gets hoarded, which is only used on BiS-TF gear.

Oh, and then we have this free-loot system handed to us, by rolling a die. The reason why I didn't had to bid on any weapon since Ji-Kun, because I got a free TF-staff....

Now this all comes from some frustration.  Innovation uses a blind-bidding dkp-system with a bleed bid. The amount of times I had to 'pay' the bleed (20% of your bid) is amazing. A piece of gear would drop, and I knew it would be an upgrade for several people, and then it seems no one actually bid, or just bid low. Raiders are 'afraid' to use their dkp, for fear of not having enough when a TF-item drops.

And worst part of this is, that it actually seems to work. Yes, seems, I have no time or actually the will, to actually delve into every raider and see how they have geared, and what they have bid. But it seems that if you only bid the minimum bid on non-TF gear, and in that way only use your DKP really for TF stuff, you will be better geared.

It used to be that you used minbid or lower bids on non-BiS-stuff, but now all non-TF gear is non-BiS.

So, in that case, Thunderforged did not really worked. It made all non-TF gear (except for Tier stuff) weak, and not wanted. So how do you solve that?

Maybe the easiest way would be to put Thunderforged on a different dkp-system, but that means you have twice the administration, which officers really like  :p

Maybe the free loot from coin-rolls should no longer get you a free item, but an item to upgrade you weapon to TF, instead of bosses actually dropping TF-stuff.

But, in my humble opinion, One raid-dungeon should not drop different I-llv stuff all over the place.

To epic gem, or not to epic gem...

So, with the 5.3 PTR starting...tri-specs..really? I demand quatro-specs for druids. And Innovation downing empress at last, and now progressing through Terrace (Tsulong 2%....) and Throne,I was ;forced' to look at weapons, and mostly what the epic gem does to sha-touched stuff.

You see, at our empress-kill, two sha-touched spellpowerdaggers dropped. And I didn't even bid, because I thought it would be a small upgrade over my twice-upgraded Tsulong-staff, and with LFR-wings opening up I thought the 502-weapons probably would be better, and there are a lot around.

So, let's look at the gem...500 Intellect, which means 584 spellpower and 0,23% crit (raidbuffed ofc). I am not sure why we still have Intellect, it seems nothing more then spellpower with some crit attached to it.. why not just call it spellpower and be done with it?

Ok, 0,23% crit, at first I didn't take this with me while making spreadsheets..but I calculated the extra crit from intellect on my current weapon..which was more than 400... (1667 intellect-->461 critrating)

Also..while making this spreadsheet, I found out what I already secretly knew...  Staves are not good. As good as every one-hand/off-hand combination I looked at, was about 165 intellect better than a staff...what a surprise....

I looked at the sha-dagger and all the LFR's one-handers, taking into consideration the different offhands. And not to my surprise... the best current option is from Lei Shi, both the 1H and the OH, the mace actually has more intellect then standard 502-stuff.

But, because Lei Shi will note be available for  more weeks, and I also wanted to look at normal (522) weapons, I choose a more logical combi.

From Durumu (opening tomorrow) a dagger drops with crit and spirit. This one seems to be the best before last bosses, and my suggestion is always use a bonusroll on Durumu. Besides the weapon, he also drop a haste/crit back, spirit/crit shoes, and a spirit/crit ring... all with gem-slots!!

Ok, numbers:

496-Kritak has a massive 8204 spellpower, and 360 spirit and 615 crit, for a total of 975 statpoints.
502-Durumu has 8219 spellpower, and 356 spirit and 476 crit, for a total of 832 statpoints.
and for fun:
522-Durumu has 9871 spellpower, and 438 spirit and 574 crit, for a total of 1013 statpoints.

So, normal Kritak beats LFR-Durumu for around 140 statpoints. Now the question is, do I want to pay 10k for a new epic gem, is that 10k worth 140 orso statpoints?

MOP: rolling the slot-machine?

So, they want to introduce a new roll system to the LFR, and maybe to other boss-drops. My first thoughts after slimming the different explanations, and there where a few, is...really? This is your solution to the current need-all-LFR's?

But, first, let's look at the info I gathered, and still remember (and most is of a blue post on the us-forums).

Bosses will not drop loot. OK! Let's get that clear. Currently bosses drop loot. In 25 there are 5 items that drop of their so-called lootlist. Why Morchok has two necklaces, I don't know, but that's how it works. Boss dead, system rolls 5 times on the loot-table, and you can loot 5 thingies from him.

With the new system, bosses don't actually drop loot. What happens is that every player makes a 'hidden' roll. For simplicity, let's make it a 1-100 roll. On a high enough roll (say 90+), the system is gonna check if there is an item on the lootlist you can use.

If yes, and there is only one, you get it. If there are two (or more) the system gives you one randomly. If there is nothing on the lootlist that you can use, you get some gold.

So, everyone will be rolling for himself, like using a slot-machine. And that determines if you get a reward for killing the boss. Now.... that seems nice and all, no more people ninja-ing something from you, but....  there are some things I am questioning... both positive and negative I think.

First of, the phrase 'you can use'. They, as in Blizzard, stated that it means something your current spec can use. Current spec is the catchphrase here. Also, no more trading LFR-stuff in Raid. So say goodbye to getting offspec stuff in LFR. Which is exactly what was said. If you want off-spec dps-gear as a tank, que as dps.

what?..What?.. WHAT!

I don't know, but, euhm, Mardah hasn't seen LFR in weeks. Her boomkin-set doesn't need anything from there anymore, and I think I have only one 384-item left. Now, my guild is blooming with trees, so after winning two extra tier-pieces, I think I have enough tree-gear, to heal on the one occasion I maybe asked in 3 months..... Most of my guildies are running LFR for off-spec gear, which is what I do on my multitude of alts. That's the reason my shammy is Elemental atm, instead of Enhancement.

With this system, I'll see Raiders quitting LFR after two weeks, and trust me, LFR is full of people who hit random buttons, so there will be much more wipes if the slightly better geared, much better players don't show up anymore.

And no, I am not going into an M&S discussion, but if I, as a good player with barely-372 gear, ends up 4th on the damage-meter....  well....

Where was I, oh yeah, Second, there was some news about farming up a thingie to make your roll be an always win. ????  Why don't they just give us the loot then? Farm up thingie, use thingie, get loot. especially usefull if you know there's only one thing on the loot-table for you. I see some abuse here.

Third, and this is a fun fact. It is now possible that everyone in the raids get an item....  or no one at all  :p

And last (I think). They say they might implement this in other raids/dungeons. Dungeons is the same discussion above I think. But... in raids?

I don't know.... but that's for the far future I hope.