Did you have any evidence that PvE raiding and raiding guilds are "in decline" or were you just going to make a baseless generalization with no supporting evidence whatsoever?
I've only got my own experience to go on unfortuantely as theres no figures that can be trusted that measure this.
My server is number 1 according to wowjutsu but I don't trust that so I'll say its probably number 2 or 3 in europe. 4 or 5 guilds killed Illidan a fair bit ago now. But the gap between them and everyone else is massive with all but 1 horde side stuck at the Vashj/Illidan cockblock. After the S3 items were announced a guild working on Kael suddenly had 4 players (2 paladins, 1 priest who switched to shadow and 1 mage) go full time PvP instead. As they tried to replace these more left for pvp or to quit the game. First they couldn't kill Vashj one week, and that started a tidal wave of players quitting the game, going to higher raidign guilds or switching to PvP.
At the same time another guild was undergoing the same process, in the end these two guilds merged to try to stay alive but had to step down from Kael to Leo/Vashj attempts again.
Last week my raiding guild fell apart. This I can speak on with more authority as I know everyone here. We did get a fair few people stopping pve for pvp for the last few months, especially healers, even more especially paladins. But we were doing okay because I'd anticipated this and recruited quite a few more than was needed for each slot. Rarely had anyone stepping up as it were because the Vashj/Kael vials serve well to trap people in lower guilds, and as said before the gap was so massive to the BT guilds they themselves had it tough recruiting. But as our best players started leaving for PvP or quitting the game, our raids became more sloppy. From 3 cores everyone alive at best attempt on Vashj, to 3 dead in phase 1 and 1 core in p2 attempts people started getting down about regressing in raid progression. After 3-5 weeks of this and some terrible Vashj attempts people started getting very fed up of it. 6 left to form a 5v5 team and a warlock left for a danish speaking guild and this seemed to open the floodgates. We had a quick officer meeting and the overall consensus was to try to find a raiding guld that would take our core. We couldn't and the very next day the guild splintered. Our 15 or so "core" pve raiders except for me filtered out to the other Vashj/Kael guilds who were overjoyed at getting them and the non-hardcore went casual or pvp. So far 8 people in the guild including me have cancelled their account, or said they have.
Now not saying PvP is the only problem but losing our healers to arena a few months back put us on a slippery slope and it went down from there. Now I just don't have the motivation to raid again despite several offers. Even had an offer to join one of the illidan farming guilds if I can buy a vashj vial from someone else but I just don't have the energy anymore to go up against the RNG system each week for the potential of some good guild drops. Especially as a Feral when I know I'm pretty much resigned to getting tier tokens and no other loot.
So no I don't have any firm evidence of this except for my own meandering experiences. (extra points if you name the song!).
Every spec that isn't considered "off-spec" by Blizzard has multiple non-set options(except for Feral druids, so perhaps they still consider that an off-spec). Too many in my opinion. I'm working on a list to show just how many unnecessary items there are right now. I think Blizzard thinks we enjoy having all these options, but what they fail to realize is that having 3 options for every slot of armor(not necks/cloaks/rings/trinkets/weapons though!) just reduces the rate at which the highly contested items drop.
Completely agreed. Narrow loot is one of those things that combines with the random number system to produce highly undesirable outcomes. It's obvious that there would be far fewer complaints if bosses dropped randomly from a table of wide-appeal well-itemized loot. But when a streak of narrow loot drops, it doesn't even matter how good it is - anyone who can equip it will exhaust it and then it'll be worthless. Half my guild's Shahraz kills have yielded [Tome of the Lightbringer] - and we don't have a prot paladin.
Narrow loot needs to be tokenized or badged - something that doesn't occupy loot table space. It can function sort of like the way PvP gear does now - major slots are Arena points, minor (off-set) slots are honor.
That many loot tables and a lot of itemization decisions are horrible is an entirely different topic and is from my point of view the main issue that apparently conceals the improvements brought from the variety of item acquisition methods. RNG in itself is not the problem, even for a perfectionist like me.
I think Blizzard is generally getting it right by offering variety in the means of item acquisition. There are two major types of loot:
Unplannable loot distributed through RNG and planneable loot, which you can pick yourself in the Arena, through reputation rewards, quests, crafting, honor and the badge systems. As I see it the unplannable items should be a little better to give the carrot on a stick effect and the plannable loot should be able to fill every whole left by the RNG.
Increasing the acquisition rate through the RNG is always an option, but for obvious reasons the players generally want all items to drop at once while on the other hand Blizzard will want us to take some time to farm our gear (don't forget the plannable loot typically takes some time to farm as well and ultimately you want to balance the acquisition from both systems to a degree).
Edit: it might be the best to make a seperate thread for itemization and loot table issues as this could actually increase the chance of Blizzard fixing it for the next expansion.
If they want to keep the same level of loot, then they need to simply add more bosses to drop it.
6 bosses with 10 items each (2 item drop = 20% each roughly), or 10 bosses with 6 items each (2 items drop = 33% roughly).
The RNG remains for loot, the chances for getting all the items is higher and if your really unlucky with one horrible item (hello Libram) its only going to screw you out of 2 other items, not 4.
I honestly think the current loot system is good, it's much better than the sheer randomness of MC/BWL loot and more interesting than the certain drops from AQ40. The problem here is the distribution of loot/number of drops per boss that causes such horrible loot streaks over very important items.
Taking Shahraz as an example, she drops two tier tokens and one random item. I think it's very stupid that the libram is included as one of these items. Many guilds run with zero protection paladins, some run with one, very rarely you see more than one protection paladin in there. Compare that to Nadina's Pendant of Purity or Blade of Savegary, items that at least 4-5 people in the raid are able to use. An item like the libram is much better suited as a drop from the earlier non tier bosses.
They did a good job on upgrading the number of drops in T5 instances. All bosses had 3 drops, it lessened the chances of going on a long streak waiting for one item (we had never seen Phoenix-Wing cloak until they patched the increase in drop rate).
A simple fix for the Mother Shahraz (and BT) drop table would be something like:
- Non tier dropping boses now drop 3 items each (Najentus/Supremus/Shade/Gorefiend/RoS/BB).
- Libram moved to become a Supremus drop, Heartshatter Breastplate is now a Gorefiend drop.
- Maelstrom's Fury and Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape are now Shahraz drops.
Now you have the earlier bosses with the chance of dropping the "limited use items", these bosses drop three items anyway so a second libram isn't going to be as frustrating because you still got the paladin heal boots and the caster dps ring on that same kill anyway. You also have Shahraz dropping items that more than one class can use, so no kill is going to feel "wasted" because you just got a useless libram for the 4th time.
Basically, "limited use items" should never have a chance to appear as the only random drop a boss has to offer (Azgalor/Shahraz/Council/Leotheras/Karathress/Void Reaver). Instead, these bosses should have the items that you need 7 or 8 of (heal necks/melee dps ring/caster weapons/healer trinket.....etc).
I have absolutely no problem with there being 100% predictable loot (at least some of it) in the raid game. Was anyone ever upset with the AQ40 tokens? I mean, if you had the most DKP, you could basically say to yourself "If we kill Huhuran today, I am 100% sure I am getting that token."
What is the point of having [Deadly Cuffs] when the bracers off Teron are superior in every aspect for every class? If you are going to have duplicate items for slots, they better be equal in terms of DPS.
I see your point and I agree with it but technically Deadly Cuffs are better for a Fury Warrior than the ones off of Teron.
plannable loot should be able to fill every hole left by the RNG.
This would work great if the heroic badge stuff wasn't stuck at i115 through i128. BT raiders have no use for the badge rewards save for rare cases (relics, wands with sockets).
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Everyone can go on about personal anecdotes about their server. The server I was previously on, Runetotem had very little progression pre TBC. Maybe 1-2 guilds in Naxx, none heavily so. Now they have one thats completed the game, 2-3 more in T6 and a bunch in T5. Really if you look at T6 as Naxx, T5 as Aq40 and Gruul/Mag as BWL each of the servers I've been on has far more progression than they did pre TBC. Scarlet Crusade, the first server I was on that was horrible for PVE progression, has a few in T6 now.
But numbers wise, its true, more guilds/people have killed Illidan than ever killed Kel'Thuzad. Now sure people can say this is because TBC raiding is easy mode (and I don't know because I never did Naxx), but then again Quigon, you have a certain view on that opinion that is well known on this board and many have disagreed with it who did complete Naxx.
On our second Kaz'rogal kill ever tonight, we sharded BOTH items. I can't think of another time ever in raiding that that has happened to me. There is no reason a guild should be sharding loot off a boss they have only killed once before. The fact that the loot tables are clogged up with all this haste gear is annoying. We get it, you made a new stat, great, now will you please stop putting it on every possible combination of gear?
edit: I don't want to come off as just whining here so i'll add that while this example was an itemization issue, there are always going to be pieces of gear people need more / less, and even with great itemization, there are always chances of crappy drops happening, hence the need for a change somewhere along the line.
On our second Kaz'rogal kill ever tonight, we sharded BOTH items. I can't think of another time ever in raiding that that has happened to me. There is no reason a guild should be sharding loot off a boss they have only killed once before. The fact that the loot tables are clogged up with all this haste gear is annoying. We get it, you made a new stat, great, now will you please stop putting it on every possible combination of gear?
edit: I don't want to come off as just whining here so i'll add that while this example was an itemization issue, there are always going to be pieces of gear people need more / less, and even with great itemization, there are always chances of crappy drops happening, hence the need for a change somewhere along the line.
And that's a huge issue in the current itemization, haste is on absolutely everything. Haste healing leather, plate, mail, cloth, haste on melee dps, haste on caster dps gear, I feel like I'm having haste for lunch right now. At best the haste healing gear is situational, and the rest is pretty much complete trash (unless you're upgrading from T4). I think it would be hard for anyone to complain if blizzard decided to fix spirit in dps gear, mp5 on mail, haste on everything, etc.
I think haste *would* be a great stat, if healing were completely revamped to be much more about short term efficiency and much less about long term efficiency. i.e. If mana pool sizes were smaller (or alternatively, healing costs increased) and regeneration increased by a very large amount, to be much more like an energy bar on a slower regeneration rate. The whole "conserve your mana for 10 minutes or risk running dry and being useless until you're out of combat" is a pretty flawed model.
A good start would be to simply clean up loot tables and get them much more organized; high-demand items should be more reliable to aquire while items that nobody except a certain spec from a certain class desires should be tokenized (or badge system) with others of that characteristic. Zul Aman and 2.3 seem to do something like this, except for the little detail that it looks fairly random which kinds of items are from badges and which drop normally.
Random is perfectly fine... until you reduce the number of samples too much. In half a year of farming there can be no more than 26 chances at loot per boss. Most items will be sharded sooner than that. Four months makes for 16 chances, and if you're looking at a two-month timespan it's 8 - in the single digits. Is that statistically sound?
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Moving away from having Bracer/Belts/Boots on tokens has created a lot of inflation on the loot tables. If they re-implemeneted them, just making them match the tier sets in appearance (but not an actual part of the set), it would probably help the loot tables tremendously, allowing more space for the neck/back/ring/trinket/weapon slots that are in high demand.
I actually don't understand why blizzard doesn't go on and make 8 piece sets again, while keeping the bonuses for only 4 pieces or even 6. The reason they mentioned to go for 5 pieces doesn't really make much sense considering that they can do the same thing with 8 piece sets.
I personally think that there is also no reason why good items shouldn't drop of multiple bosses. For example there are 2 melee leather bracer drops on t6 level (not to mention a crafted one). They can remove one and have the better bracer drop from both bosses.
Another thing that they did in pre-TBC wow but not now is the use of bonus slot of loot. All the off-set items, librams and the stuff like that whould have their own bonus loot slot and only drop once in a while, without interfering with the rest of the loot.
Just compare the itemization between Naxx and BT and you can see the problem. A full farm run of naxx and you disenchant about 2 items total, a full run of bt and you disenchant 40%'ish of all drops excluding the tokens, something went seriously wrong, the addition of haste items doesn't help at all. Farming naxx was fun, you knew almost all of the drops would be an upgrade for someone, farming bt is painful, you know you are going to disenchant most loot, with the first 6 or so bosses being the most mind numbing. Offspec loot really needs to go on trash, and loot tables need to be much smaller, the token system in aq40 worked perfectly for weapons and tier sets.
Just compare the itemization between Naxx and BT and you can see the problem. A full farm run of naxx and you disenchant about 2 items total, a full run of bt and you disenchant 40%'ish of all drops excluding the tokens, something went seriously wrong, the addition of haste items doesn't help at all. Farming naxx was fun, you knew almost all of the drops would be an upgrade for someone, farming bt is painful, you know you are going to disenchant most loot, with the first 6 or so bosses being the most mind numbing. Offspec loot really needs to go on trash, and loot tables need to be much smaller, the token system in aq40 worked perfectly for weapons and tier sets.
Yes but you took 40 people to Naxxramas and only 2-3 people got an item each boss kill, 5% to 7.5% of your raid. Even killing Kel'thuzad only gave what, 5 items including the mostly worthless quest item? That's still items for only 12.5% of your raid.
Now because there are 25 man raids, even a boss that drops 2 items gives loot to 8% of your raid, and bosses with 3 drops give items to 12%. An Illidan kill gives items to 16% of your raid, or 20% if you get a warglaive. The first reason loot in Naxxramas rarely got sharded was that it took so long to gear out your raid. But no one is arguing the bosses now should only drop one item.
The other reason is that there are many more offspecs that Blizzard wants to promote. We all know Moonkin mostly suck, and even if they don't, you only want one per raid. But some boss somewhere has to drop leather boots with spell damage to make the moonkin happy. Blizzard has chosen to make all people happy some of the time rather than some people happy all the time (the choice of Naxxramas itemization). Imagine how unhappy an elemental shaman or shadow priest would be with Naxxramas drops, overall.
I think that Blizzard made the right choice with this expansion, making all people happy sometimes. At any rate, we can't complain that they aren't making everyone happy all the time, because that's just not possible.
I was accounting for the more people in pre tbc raids, the point is, Naxx itemization was great, every item had atleast one or two people who wanted it, in bt and hyjal guilds first kills are resulting in disenchants because the items are so bad, too much haste items and items like the mail chest from Anetheron or the leather shoulders from Kaz'rogal ect that are worse than tier 5. Offspec loot does need to be in the game, but they shouldn't be making the loot tables even bigger, so there's less chance for an actual useful pve item to not drop, put them on trash or tokenize them some way or just plain make them a much lower drop chance, you want to get the item once, maybe twice if your crazy, then you never want to see that item again. Currently clearing the first 5-6 bosses in BT and 90% of it is for offspecs for when people respec on the weekends, instead of those bosses dropping stuff we can actually use in pve, like the Naj'entus dagger or the Bloodboil trinket, instead we have healer staffs that go to shadow priests and spell haste belts, for an example, the healing staff Thaddius dropped was always wanted, by priests and shamans because it was an actual upgrade.
At any rate, I love my spell haste belt, but it seems clear that a cloth spell damage belt will have 6 times the demand as a leather one, so the drop rates should be proportionate
Wasn't the iLvl bump for Naxx loot relatively huge compared to the BT loot as well? Many Naxx boss kills were accomplished by guilds had barely set foot in AQ40, many more by those that never went pass the Twin Emps. And even still, a lot of the Naxx items just seemed to be in "another league". With BT, even the good items feel like relatively small upgrades.
I do agree that having bosses drop an off-spec item with the same likelihood as something like a caster weapon seems ridiculous. And perhaps trash is the way to go there. But you understand that no matter how much they streamline the tables, unless they go to the AQ40 "it's for sure" model, you will have streaks. And they will be annoying.
I was accounting for the more people in pre tbc raids, the point is, Naxx itemization was great, every item had atleast one or two people who wanted it, in bt and hyjal guilds first kills are resulting in disenchants because the items are so bad, too much haste items and items like the mail chest from Anetheron or the leather shoulders from Kaz'rogal ect that are worse than tier 5. Offspec loot does need to be in the game, but they shouldn't be making the loot tables even bigger, so there's less chance for an actual useful pve item to not drop, put them on trash or tokenize them some way or just plain make them a much lower drop chance, you want to get the item once, maybe twice if your crazy, then you never want to see that item again. Currently clearing the first 5-6 bosses in BT and 90% of it is for offspecs for when people respec on the weekends, instead of those bosses dropping stuff we can actually use in pve, like the Naj'entus dagger or the Bloodboil trinket, instead we have healer staffs that go to shadow priests and spell haste belts, for an example, the healing staff Thaddius dropped was always wanted, by priests and shamans because it was an actual upgrade.
Notice how this poster didn't mention the crap shield from Naxx trash, the crap cloth chest with armor, and whatever the horde equivalent for the paladin +damage drops from trash in naxx? Nobody cared about them because they didn't feel these items prevented them from getting the good drops from bosses.
Drops that only one or two people need are good, but they need to not be on a boss like Shahraz/council ..etc. Give the good drops that 5-6 people can use to these bosses, and put the crap drops either as a drop off the early bosses if the boss drops 3 items (SSC PvP items) or put them on trash (elemental shaman chest in BT).
Notice how this poster didn't mention the crap shield from Naxx trash, the crap cloth chest with armor, and whatever the horde equivalent for the paladin +damage drops from trash in naxx? Nobody cared about them because they didn't feel these items prevented them from getting the good drops from bosses.
Those items were always hotly contested in my guild since we had a large PvP contingent. I don't think they were bad at all, rather a good example of effective trash itemization.
Our Alliance's first kill of Nefarian was on April 17, 2006. We proceeded to kill him every lock from then until our last recorded kill on Jan 5th, 2007. We've since gone back a couple times just for laughs, and beaten on him.
Not ONCE have we ever seen an Ashkandi drop.
Me, I'd be happy to see the weaponry tokenized (our Alliance had terrible, terrible luck getting ANY weaponry drops of any sort) and seeing the armor left as is, or tokenized as well. While it'd take some of the 'rush' out of it, wondering if you are going to see that drop you finally want, it'd be nice to know that you'd eventually see it, period.
10/29/07, 4:06 AM
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