Finkum

I realise that the (main) problem gear homogenisation is aimed at solving is wasted gear. I agree that this is a good aim. I do not agree that gear homogenisation is the best way to do this. I think the sunmote turn-in system, or a variant on it, is superior: you preserve the lessening of loot rot, and you get the benefit of an item designed purely for your class/spec mechanics (itemisation blunders notwithstanding).

So rather than having item X being 100% useful for class A, 85% useful for class B and 70% useful for class C (or more probably, 90/80/70%), we can have item X being 100% useful for class A, item X + a drop being 100% useful for class B etc.

If people dislike sunmote turn-ins there are alternate ways to achieve the same end: one suggestion I made in the Badge loot thread was to allow e.g. tailors to "deconstruct" and "reconstruct" cloth items into their same ilvl counterparts (ideal for bosses like Winterchill).

 

SirM

I think a far easier way would be to increase the token-system for drops. There should be not only tokens for the various sets, but for all "mainslots" (head, shoulder, breast, bracers, hands, waist, legs and boots).
So there would be only 4 categories: cloth, leather, mail and plate. This would give blizzard a lot of freedom in designing items, because when you trade in the item, let's a plate head, you could get a defwarrior-, or an offwarrior-, or one of the 3 helmtypes paladins use. No need for extreme homogenization.

 

Fiola

How would a token system work for all levels of gear? The # of people with epics is less than the # of people with greens, blues, etc. Are you going to make a blue gear token vendor for every instance? Create a dozen "alternative greens" for every quest?


That sounds like a nightmare to setup. Giving every spec its own unique stat distribution doesn't scale well. Even if you could boil that down to "1 stat dist. per class", that's still 10 different types of loot you need - and we still haven't addressed the diverging stat requirements within a class.

 

Lamaros

Or maybe you are explaining it just fine but people disagree with you, and you are failing to understand the contentions people have with your point.

And in my example you are entirely incorrrect, there is no excellent choice per class per slot, unless you've already filled two slots. Re-read the example. (Wants != 'values in this order').

And again, this is just one of many things that we can discuss about the benifits or possible benefits of such homogeny. Others have been mentioned by me and others many times.

No point repeating myself over and over so I'm going to leave this tangent of WotLK discussion here.

 

Dra

This is already perfectly solved with the way sunwell loot has been done though. I remember thinking "damn, I'm interested to see how blizzard is going to fit a whole set of gear for each class/spec on only 6 bosses", but they've managed (almost) perfectly.

So we're left with one important question when discussing this. Why bother? Why would you want to homogenize classes and gear even further? Suggesting that holy paladins, prot warriors, deathknights, fury warriors, MS warriors and prot paladins using the same gear is a good thing is akin to saying that it would be a good thing to only have one stat on every item called "iLvl" which automatically assigns stats by some weighting. You will only end up with less options, less ways to customize your character, less ways to differentiate from other characters, and thus less gameplay. A huge exaggeration? Maybe. But my point is that that's the other end of the sharding/homogenizing spectrum, and you have to find a middle ground somewhere, and in my opinion with sunwell that middle ground has been found.

 

Prinsesa

At that, I would think it's then going to be Blizzard's responsibility to create abilities and talents to make sure that spell crit isn't wasted; that the gear homogenization works both ways (I suppose this would/should also apply to Resto Druids).

Of course, another way to go about this would be to create items that don't have the "useless stats", but that's against the whole concept of homogenization in the first place. I have no doubt that there will certainly be an occasional 2nd cloth bracer (or mail chest, or leather boot, what-have-you) within the same tier of content to flesh out loot tables, but I don't think it would be enough to have whole 2nd sets of the same armor type to appeal to distinct specs.

I like this idea.

Elemental-ish spell damage Mail may be light on MP5, but would otherwise be perfect given spell crit and spell damage.
Resto-ish healing Mail would lack crit (or would have crit but is then useless for Resto Shaman), but would otherwise be perfect given MP5 and spell damage.

It goes against the paradigm of staying within your own armor class, but the itemization is as close as it can get and eliminates the need for the healing/spell damage Plate, which is really the overarching issue here.

That being said, Blizzard would pretty much have to issue an all-points bulletin to the effect of: ATTENTION SHAMAN, PALADINS WILL BE ROLLING ON YOUR LOOT. THIS IS WORKING AS INTENDED.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Ellyh

Well I don't really see that as a problem as if the damage/healing change goes through they will need to issue a similar statement to all the mages/warlocks/shadow priests/boomkin/elemental shammies that healers are now going to be rolling on what was previously exclusively "their" gear. This is actually one of the single biggest issues with the proposal. Fortunately my gear should be good enough to last basically to 80 without needing dungeon gear but those who aren't so lucky will have to put up with one hell of a lot of whining from players who didn't get the newsflash.

 

Benita

That is in fact on the current alpha, together with haste being merged. What is not known yet it seems is how the hit behave exactly, meaning 16% spellhit needed for raidbosses but not as much melee hit for retadins for example.

Or if melee finally gets a 2 roll system with the removal of crushing blows.

 

rhea

Currently cloth casters could possibly have
+healing, spi,sta,int (mp5)
+damage, spi,sta,int
+healing, crit,sta,int (spi)
+damage, crit,sta,int (spi)
+healing, haste,sta,int (spi)
+damage, haste,sta,int (spi)
+damage, hit,sta,int (spi)

Let's homogenise the way it supposed to be
+dmg/heal, spi,sta,int (mp5)
+dmg/heal, crit,sta,int (spi)
+dmg/heal, haste,sta,int (spi)
+dmg/heal, hit,sta,int (spi)

Mages and locks would prefer the crit gear. Few pieces of hit to cap.
Spriests and affliction would prefer the haste/spi gear.
Hpriests would prefer the spi/mp5 gear.

ALL gear is usable by EVERY caster if they feel like it. This is the most important part. Hpriests can still make some use of the same crit or haste gear even if it isn't the best scaling stat.

But we cut down HALF the items needed to satisfy every spec.

Yes, you could make as specified gear with the current system but what makes it different is that you can't make alternative gear with 1 piece for both healers and dps.
And a piece with wonderful amounts of "not as good" stat could be usable to most specs in some cases. That way you won't have to pollute every instance and boss with a variety of every piece in every slot.

Yeah, I only see it as a good change and it's not making everyone look/use the same gear.

 

orcsgotbooty

With 10 man gear, arena gear, and badge gear, I can't believe you honestly believe that unless you are counting alts/not level capped characters.

Quests and 5 mans don't need tokens, quests are a 1 time shot and usually De'd or sold to vendor anyways. Also for 5 mans there is no lockout.

 

Lamaros

Never used a quest item? Or do they all give 30 rewards? Plus I'm glad 5-mans don't have lockouts. Now all I need is infinite time and the patience to farm them.

 

Feanor73

Actually, an AP > MP/5 conversion would be much more useful for ret, notably for solo/5 man where judgements are far less efficient than they are in 25 man content.

That and scaling of SOC/SOB/JOC/JOB with AP only would go a long way in streamlining mechanisms.

 

orcsgotbooty

Thats my point, quest items don't need to appeal to everyone, very rarely will you wear one for even a long enough time to even enchant it. And for non heroic 5 mans they could just make (Badges of not so heroic justice) for blue rewards. Gear doesn't need to be dumbed down and homogenized even further.

 

Anaram

I'm not really sure how different classes using same stats would lead to this unless you mean dps paladins and dps warriros using much the same gear and looking the same. It seems more likely that class set-token system leads to everyone (of same class) using the same things while people being able to pick from a large potential pool of loot shared between multiple classes would lead to much more varied attires.

With about 15-20 different "loot needs" in game presently (some specs already share needs), it's virtually impossible at any given gear level to actually give each of these options. 14* item slots * 15 needs = 200+ items. If you want to give 1 option for each slot, that boils down to 400+ items already. Some of these can be addressed by making sufficiently generic items in ring/trinket/neck slot, but these items must currently only use some of the very few stats valued by a large majority.

How much variation is there (beyond gems) with people wearing S3 gear? Almost none.
Will there be any significant variation in the gear of prot warriors who have completed the Sunwell?

* Or 16 if you count rings&trinkets twice.

 

Balancemoon

The way I view it the biggest problem with the loot is not so much as how it is itemised, but how much loot we get. Really, what annoys people is not having a large array of choices or specialisations, that is a good thing, what annoys is spending ages in a raid, and coming out empty handed week after week after week, especially when you see 5 times in a row that Healing plate drop or boomkin leather drop and there are no holy paladins, elemental shaman or balance druids to capitalise.

Two things could easily address this.

1. Make sure the loot tables are such that only loot useable by the class specs available drop.

or

2. Increase the amount of loot that drops, and divide into categories, so that on every boss fight, something for each category you have created drops.

So example in a raid of 6 bosses, every boss drops:

Category 1: 1 of two types of tanking plate (Pala tanking or Warrior/DK tankiing
Category 2: 1 of two types of melee dps plate
Category 3: Healing plate instead of being guaranteed to drop every boss, will drop at least once every 2 or 3 bosses from any of them.
Category 4: Mail melee dps
Category 5: Mail spell dps once every 2 0r 3
Category 6: Mail healing dps
Category 7: Leather melee dps
Category 8: Leather feral druid instead of being guaranteed to drop every boss, will drop at least once every 2 or 3 bossess.
Category 9: Leather spell dps drops once every 2.
Category 10: Cloth spell dps drop
Category 11: Cloth healing drops once every 2 or 3

So every boss will drop at least 8 pieces of gear and up to 11.

So option 2 has a lot of gear drops, but everyone is happy alot of the time. Even for each slot there is a wide assortment you can give.

Personally i like the idea of:
1. Combining spell hit & melee hit into just hit
2. COmbining spell crit and melee crit into just crit
3. Combining attack power and spell power (dmg/healing) into just power
4.Combining mana regen and def into one

Then you can have some specialised gear that would have and extra +healing or +damage or + attack power only stat. Healing pieces will typically have power and crit , but exchange hit for mana/5. Some gear pieces will have the extra stat for block and parry.

I like the current armor classes as they are: and do not want Paladin healers to have to wear cloth at all, they should wear plate.

also now you can focus on hugely varying stats like int/spi/agi/stamina

 

Siddown

And we don't think we might be taking this conversation where it doesn't need to go? Just a week ago Boomkin and Shadow Priests had a talent to convert the +SD up by 20%, but now they make this change and we have half the people in this thread arguing against it and half for it when we haven't even remotely seen how it'll be implemented.

We have yet to see any end game loot in the Alpha, which let's face it, is the only thing that matters as you can level with whatever you feel like. Really, does it matter if your gear might be lacking Haste (or MP5 or Crit) that is optimal for your class at lvl 75 while you are grinding quests in Northrend?

People haven't even considered that they might implement a Sunwell-like system and the new "let's not waste any loot" system for WolLK end game. The cart has long been put before the horse in this conversation.

 

Douglas

This compels me to bring up the topic of giving plate to shaman. Would it really be a problem?

If elemental shaman, resto shaman, and holy paladins all share the same stats... is an elemental shaman in plate really that unbalanced?

And enhancement shaman... right now they have some gear overlap with hunters. But shaman have the better str conversion rate, just as warriors and paladins do. Would having shaman share gear with fury warriors and DKs and retadins instead of with hunters really be a bad thing?

I guess the main problem is, all mail would be for hunters... except, a lot of the hunters I see end up wearing leather anyway, at least in some slots. Would it be awful to drop hunters back down to leather (shared with rogues), and do away with mail entirely?

(Just brainstorming here. Haven't thought these ideas out very deeply.)

 

Douglas

The more I think about this, the more I warm up to the idea.

But yes, I think there'd be a very very strong need for that "all-points bulletin". And I don't think communication would be sufficient. I think there'd have to be something game-mechanical about it.

Thinking here... what about "each piece of plate armor that you wear reduces your passive mana regeneration (spi or mp5) by 10%", or "each piece of plate armor that you wear increases the casting time of heals by 20%"? That would make it crystal clear that holy paladins are intended to stick to mail instead of plate.

 

Mikari

Not sure if it's okay to link this or not, if not please delete my post. I found it on shadowpriest.com

Blizzard seems to have fixed the current LW issue of entire guilds having it.

 

bellator

As a follow on thought from Douglas's comment about making Shamans be able to wear plate, since the effect of armor type lies solely in the Armor value it gives, and with the current efforts to combine stats to be useful for more specs, couldnt they introduce hybrid armor in a way, classified for example as mail/plate, which can be worn by all mail and plate wearers, and gives the the armor value dependant on class. Ie paladins get plate armor value, shamans get mail.

 

Douglas

While what you're saying makes sense in terms of pure abstract game-mechanics, don't forget that this is an RPG.

Having some magical, intangible enhancement like "hit bonus" vary depending on who's using the gear, that's not something that interferes with immersion. It's not a difference one expects to be able to see or notice when looking at someone who's wearing the gear.

Whether something is mail or plate is a fundamental aspect of what something is. Different models, different materials, et cetera. So, the idea of an item that magically transforms into reinforced froststeel when one person wears it, but cured blue dragonhide when another person wears it, that doesn't sit well with me.

However, having all the caster drops be mail with a Sunmote system or, maybe even better, a blacksmithing system that can convert mail into plate, that might work out.

 

zoombini

Is it unbalanced? Probably not. Even though I'd love to trick my enh set out with plate (although my fury warrior girlfriend would probably disagree) it doesn't really feel right from a lore perspective. Yeah yeah, lolore but if that's not a concern why don't we put rogues in plate as well?

 

bellator

I understand what you are saying, but i didn't mean to imply that the armor itself would change type/texture/colour etc depending on who's wearing it, but instead have this one type of armor for both but gives different armor values depending on who's wearing it.

If having one item give different value to different classes still was too much in terms on immersion, one could give give it one armor value (that of plate) and give classes an armor proficiency % which dictates what % of the armor they benefit from. This could be different for the different classes, much in the way Str->AP is different for different classes. (but this later example is really just a rewording of remove mail, have all mail classes wear plate but get less effect from the armor)

 

mclem

Unfortunately, something like that would be a real problem for a prot paladin who has to swap out and heal; as things currently stand we're already very weak healers, and this would just weaken our abilities further, either having to put together a complete alternative set or (if you're in-combat at the point you have to swap to healing) being heavily nerfed compared to that. Given their apparent focus on opening up hybrid classes a bit more, it would seem counterintuitive to discourage that already weak form of hybridisation.

A potential solution, possibly, could be a deep-prot talent to negate that effect (bolted on to one of the essential tanking talents?).

 

saiyajinmaster

All of these things reduce the accessibility of the game I think. I'm definitely against the loot homogenization as it stands. There are definitely certain specs/roles that need specific loot, and guilds hate to get it because you need it once or never depending on your makeup, however that doesn't mean we need to marginalize ALL loot does it? There comes a point where you might as well just get 'bracers' and then the stats tailor themselves to whoever happens to equip them...wouldn't we be better off having just left it as tokens at that point? It's like wasting a bunch of resources to come full circle. I don't think it's a stretch to say that even though there's only one cloth healer for instance, that most cloth healing gear isn't 'wasted' just the same since probably most priests are in fact healing specced, and cloth or not there are other ehalers that would like it as well in many cases (Leggings of Eternity anyone?) The only class type drops that REALLY need to be looked at are things like Moonkin gear, Ret pallies (Who by being more physical focused can easily take warrior gear np), elemental shaman, things like that.