You'd love our guild then. Well other than no warglaives. So far 2 tank helms, 2 rogue helms, 1 shield, 1 staff and of course the funny thing, 4 healing maces. Our first 4 kills all dropped a healing mace.

All of this chatter about Illidan drops really drives home the need for more token-style loot. At loot-time, the raid leader assigning loot should be able to choose between [(item X) OR (item Y) OR (item Z)], and then also [(item A) OR (item B) OR (item C)]. It would really cut down on most of these issues.

I agree with this, but for our guild's personal experiences this is amusing. We've killed Archi a good 10+ times and Illidan 5 times. We have never seen a bow. It's very odd. We only run with 3 hunters, but they all want the Archi one desperately.

One thing I'm surprised didn't drop off either end boss was a 2.6 speed 1h mace or axe. Basically every spec but enh shamans can get their best weapon from the endbosses. There should really be a 2.6 speed or slower mace/axe there. Mace imo would work best because then all classes interested could roll. Replace one of the bows with this mace and it would have been ideal.

There sure should be, but we apparently needed two bows instead so I get to use S3 axes. I've made some pretty huge posts about how terrible I think TBC itemization is overall in the past. Hopefully remember the way they itemized Naxxramas before they finish itemizing Sunwell.

We have 4 main hand warglaives, no offhands, no momentos, no tank helms.

I'm really hoping blizzard puts a good kil'jaeden mace/ axe/ fist in the game. I'd even settle for really well itemized 108 dpsers. Something like either of these would make me happy: kil'jaeden axe or this 108 dps fist

Apparently people changed their minds, because I recall nearly forcing the staff on someone, and barely anyone asking for the last Skull that dropped.

3 Warglaives in 11 kills (2 MH, 1 OH), 5 Skulls (yea, a 50% droprate), 1 Memento 3 Shards 0 Maces among other loot.

But it doesn't matter. The set items token system is cool and should stay. However, despite the frustrations of disenchanting or handing out Illidan items for 10 dkp while many others desperately need something else, i think the RNG loot system for off-set items should stay.

It's part of the game, adds a great feeling of expectation for boss drops, a rush of adrenaline when you're about to see the loot, and either makes you very happy or very sad. It also adds some replayability value since you're always running the dungeon for the 50th time to get that last drop you need.

Despite its frustrations, some randomness is fun, IMO =) (I've been waiting for Kazrogal pants or Illidan head for months)

I agree.

But that's why I'd be interested in some sort of trade-in system so you still can have all the randomness but you don't have quite as much frustration with sharding gear. And it'd make it easier, in the long-term, to pick up those incredibly rare (or unlucky) drops, without Blizzard making bosses drop 10 items per kill. The token system leaves a lot to be desired -- but so does huge amounts of sharding.

Tonight one of our raidleaders figured out that last week in T6 we 'sharded' everything but 5 pieces of gear. (i.e. went to 'good lord, I GUESS I can take that for my moonkin set but is there really no other use?' or everyone who could equip already had) Two of those five were for one of our holy paladins who is ret more often than not on raids now.

Who can forget their first SSC/TK raids, where you sharded some of the drops the very first time you got them?


Still knocking on wood for double Conq from Arch this week though, we now are back up to three people needing helms due to a new spriest.

In the past 6 weeks of hyjal, we have had 1 conqueror head token and 0 glove tokens. At the same time, we recruited 1 pala, 2 locks and 2 priests.

Even the token system combined with some horrible RNG has its flaws for some guilds it seems.

Eh, not really. To a degree Randomness adds interesting variables to an encounter, too much of this and people scream to death about it. Randomness with loot hasn't been fun since EQ first introduced it. Just because thats how it's always been doesn't mean thats how it has to stay, look at the arena system. Theres no randomness there, you put in your work and pick your epics. Give me tokens and I'll be happy.

There is a certain amount of value in the randomness of drops, hence the way people always get as soon as the boss is killed & everyone is all "link the loots!". That being said, there's also a great amount of frustration when you've dwindled a loot pool to the point that you're only looking for a few specific items. The trick is finding a happy middle ground.

It'd be nice, after completing The Fall of the Betrayer quest, all the BT bosses would drop some type of BT-Specific token which you could use to eventually get those specific items should they never drop. You'd still have the random surprise factor because those drops could drop earlier while you're collecting those tokens, but it'd at least provide some light at the end of the tunnel. And while I like this idea, I do still wonder if it's over the line; as I do have some fiction issues just going to some vendor somewhere & turning in my 100 marks of BT for a Skull of Gul'dan. And even once you're done with the instance & are going to move on to the next tier, those tokens could be used for the next tiers flasks, like marks of the illidari, just so that they don't completely go to waste.

I get as much "random suprise factor" out of seeing which two t6 tokens dropped as I do from seeing our new void crystals(depending on what drops). I wonder if Blizzard has numbers on what percentage of their loot is instantly sharded by raiding guilds. Shouldn't it be Blizzard's secondary PvE goal, after giving us fun encounters all the way to the end of an instance, to make sure as little loot as possible becomes void crystals. Tokens tradable for 4-5 different weapons basically makes everyone happy.

The same reason most collectable card games have random card distribution: scarcity creates value. Wow is very much about time = resources, more and moreso as they cater to their larger audience. You know exactly how much time (give or take bad pug/wipe) it will take you to get 75 badges for your Battlemaster's trinket. You know exactly how many weeks of your arena team at your average rating to get your next piece. You know how much honor it will take to get your next upgrade, give or take particularly good/bad groups.

There are minor variations in the above, but there are very few things that have an indefinite "open-endedness" like random loot tables. They solve this with arenas by new seasons, and new, escalating rewards, so there is a timeframe. The rest just have significant enough investments to "finish" that unless you are trying hard and dumping a LOT of time into "finishing" badges or honor items you will have enough to do to invest that time until additional changes occur. End-game loot has an issue that if you knew exactly how many runs it would take to kit out your raid (minus warglaves, in the above suggestion/example), as soon as you reach that point you lose all reason to play. As well, your raiders that have been there the longest will get fully geared out, and lose a lot of incentive to continue.

As the RNG system will require longer time and more iterations for the same loot profile except on the most perfect of rolls compared to a "complete" token system, it keeps people doing the same content for the same rewards longer. It also keeps those that have done the stuff for a very long time waiting on that last piece, giving them a little more incentive to continue, carry the same content longer till they can release the new stuff.

So it boils down to money. They want subscribers, they want people to keep playing the highest end content along with everything else, and RNG is the best way to squeeze the most time out of the endgame content. This makes sense, considering the comparatively few numbers of people doing this content and huge time investment to make quality endgame balanced 25 man encounters compared to the time people can and will put into it, compared to the practically "printing played-time" of arenas and badge rewards: make up some badass items every couple months, attach them to mechanics already included in the game and balanced or being balanced separately anayways, and get tens of millions of man hours per month of your playerbase taken care of.

As a reminder, there's been a lot of discussion on the current loot system and the pros and con of adding more tokens (as well as a number of other ideas): RNG Raiding System: Time for a change?

This is exactly the type of thing I am talking about. Have an Ashtongue Deathsworn Vendor spawn after you kill Akama, require Exalted Ashtongue and Scales of Sand Rep to talk to him, and feel free to add in some flavor text about "as we were scouring the temple, to finish off Illidan's minions, we found these items that you might be interested in". 5 months and no Tempests, 3 staffs, and no Skulls makes for some very unhappy casters.

The fact that the Warglaives weren't handled like Atiesh still bugs me (just have him drop a couple pieces per kill - they would need to shatter when he dies, require killing Archimonde and dipping it in the Well of Eternity to reforge them, you could even do Quel Part 2 and require forging it in Doomfire).

Yeah that whole discussion is nothing new, and seeing how blizzard itemized in the past, you wonder why they gave up some of the ideas. Remember armaments from AQ40? You could turn them into good weapons, one for "melee"s and another for "casters". The drop rate on these was pretty low, but it was tokens that dropped on top of the usual loot table. Adding these kind of tokens would go a long way to fix shitty drop rates of certain specific items off a specific boss.

Hopefully sunwell will see some improvements, as it will be the last test before wotlk instances loot tables. They might also change 5man drop system to accomodate more people, by also offering tokens in them, at least from the last boss.

I hope they dont implment token loot for too much, because part of the fun of raiding is seeing loot drop and being excited when it does.

But part of me does wonder if they could have used a Head type turn-in quest reward for Illidan to complement his loot table. I wonder why it wasnt done - or is it true those BT trash ilvl 151 rings were intended originally for this purpose?

I wouldn't use that cloak for Restoration even if they paid me to do it.

[Shroud of the Highborne] vs [Shroud of the Final Stand] - sorry, but the haste is not worth that much regen >.<.

Note, am I the only one that thinks its ridiculous mages would opt to use that? I know why and realise why it's good, but honestly that is pretty silly.

One of our shaman is working on a spell haste set which he wears whenever he has a shadow priest, swapping out mana regen gear. When he has one, it's basically impossible for him to run out of mana and he'll crush the healing meters. So yes, there are times that resto shaman really want [Shroud of the Highborne]. But I agree that [Shroud of the Final Stand] is far superior if you actually need mana.

I resent that! We've had like 8 or so cloaks... It's been forced on healers more or less, no one really uses it and I really wanted it because it's better than council cloak. Haste is just incredibly good for fire mages.

That's one of my biggest problems with the RNG.

You have a 10% chance per week to get an item 5-10 people in your guild need. That means it could take a year to get a Tempest of Chaos, on average, whereas you can get any welfare epic with slightly less item value in a matter of weeks.

I know this would be very controversial, but I wish the raid leader could "Reset" a certain raid instance and be able to run it again to reward those guilds that can farm two or more BT's and MH's per week, to say a maximum of 3 or 5 times before Tuesday morning.

That way PvE rewards are more in line with the rate you earn PvP items.

Then, its still random, but you aren't restricted to one chance per week. And if Blizzard wants to limit progression, they can simply put in more bosses in future dungeons, like Naxx.