Skulli

BT/MH farming more than once a week? No thanks

 

Docjowles

I can't see how, from a financial perspective, this makes any sense for Blizzard. The only reason a large number of guilds on this board even log in at this point is to farm BT/Hyjal for that one last drop. If they could have run BT 3 times a week, every week, even the unluckiest guild would probably have every conceivable drop they could want (maybe your melee hunter would be missing a warglaive). At this point, you are out of even boring content, and close your account.

 

Castia

Well, not saying it would be for everyone

I'd do it just because the rest of the game is boring to me.

Midyit drop ur gild

 

Renew

Haste is amazing for Shaman.

Our shaman has a full haste set and destroys healing on AE fights.

Regen = pots.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

Nausicca

Unless he is *always* given a group with mad regen synergy like a second shaman and a shadow priest i really doubt that he would perform over a long period, 3000 mana every 2 minutes? Yeah, like thats enough.

Have love, will travel.

 

Lgs

I can understand that RNG has an 'excitement' factor, and also can really stretch out an instance's life. But there is one negative to the RNG that really can't be countered:

There are guilds with 5+ azzinoth drops already, while other guilds might have 0 even if they've been killing illidan longer. This will have an effect in Sunwell, agreed? So the RNG isn't just creating a positive player experience or forcing people to log on, it's also hindering guilds while boosting other. Terrible, terrible luck does happen, and that's definitely not fun. Frustrating is the word.


The rep-based gear has the drawback of being somewhat boring (as in expected), but at least it directly rewards the player instead of being a gamble. Token-based gear is great and it shouldn't be changed imo. But blizz could really work in some quest-based "essentials" like certain weapons or trinkets. Another good change could be some drops being changeable on the spot to fit the desired item.

As for legendaries, the naxx staff was by far the best system I've seen. It's fair but also keeps the item extremely rare.

 

Buiden

Seems like a pretty simple problem to fix. There are two option, create multiple, nearly equal, alternatives so that while not everyone will have the absolute best of slot item, they can get something close. For instance if there were several healer trinkets in BT/Hyjal our healers wouldn't care quite as much that we have 0 momentos in over 20 kills. The fact that they are stuck using blue and low level epic (rejuv gem anyone?) is just sad.

The side problem that prevents them from doing this is ultimately bosses dropping too few items. If every boss had 6 extra items on its loot table and bosses dropped 3-5 items instead of 2-4 it would open up room for a lot more items.

The second option is already done to some extent, make the most sought after items a higher droprate. This is essentially done with head reward quests and tokens. What they should have done with the BT trinkets since there aren't alternatives is move Madness to Illidan (ilvl bump of course) and move all 3 of his trinkets into a 5th loot spot that always drops -- or turn it into a head reward of course.

It just sucks that these really easy to fix problems cause us so much grief and I really hope that Sunwell will address it.


It sucks, sure, but no it isn't going to have a profound negative effect on sunwell. Guilds will progress in sunwell the same way the people without Thunderfury progressed in BWL, AQ40, and Naxx -- just fine. If you think that 5% extra raid dps from having a ton of glaives will make or break a fight, well then you probably shouldn't have won the fight in the first place

 

Whiteknight

If it were up to me, guldan, memento, shadowmoon and madness would all be on the exaulted rep vendor instead of the (mostly) horrible trinkets that they currently sell.
The system used for the Hyjal rings applied to the best trinkets in the game - rep upgradeable is pretty nice.

 

Renew

Most fights are sooo short now with a full tier 6 raid though.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

Buiden

Yeah, forgot about the bloodboil trinket too. I guess part of the trinket shortage does occur from the BT rep ones mostly being garbage.

 

Renew

As far as RNG, the reason I feel most loot tables suck is the lack of time put into the zone. BT was rushed out the door and it shows as far as the itemization side of the zone. The fights were done well though.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

◊ Hanos

Unless they manage to tune it to the bleeding edge for the first couple weeks months. Imagine a Patchwerk type fight that assumes best in slot (non-legendaries), that pushes the edge of what you are capable of, but is still possible, now for fun assume it is a Demon having 3 or 4 sets Wargliaves might very well mean the difference between a kill and a wipe.

I fully believe that most of the loot of the last boss of an expansion or hard stop in progression for 8 months, should be tokenized. Does every caster need their boots off High Warlord, no, most people won't notice the difference and won't care. However, everyone cares about a couple slots Weapons (Shield for tanks), Trinkets, and for vanity purposes Shoulders. Now considering the shoulders are already a token, anyone in a long term farming rotation has theirs or will by the time Sunwell comes out. However at the rate we are going more then half the guild will not have the weapon(s) or trinket they want from Illidan/Archimonde by the time Sunwell hits.

I think there should be random loot, I just don't think the most important items should be so random. I like the idea of putting all the trinkets on Council as a Token (2 per kill, so if you have a 45 man raid force it would still take 4-5 months to get everyone), and put 1-2 weapons/shield tokens on Archimonde/Illidan. Put the token vendor in as an NPC that spawns when you kill Illidan, and make the trinkets Illidan/Archimonde level gear (just like the AQ Stuff was the same level as Twin Emps loot), this way you know that you aren't going to run into the stuff that EVERY guild is reporting. I don't think any guild is sitting here saying "Don't know about you guys, but we got everything we wanted off Illidan and never had rot", for every guild that hasn't seen a tank helm or shield there is a guild like mine that has Shaman running around with Bulwark of Azzinoth, while we can't seem to buy a caster drop (what is more amusing is that same shaman doesn't have a memento or mace).

Make the less important stuff random, but reward long term farming by giving people the items they really want.

I think the Ashtongue Rep moves too quickly to make the trinkets exalted rewards, unless it was tied in with the nexk quest. You shouldn't get Illidan level loot until you actually kill Illidan.

 

Nezralix

I really think you underestimate the complexities associated with tuning an encounter to that kind of precision, as well as possibly the difference that some of those upgrades actually make. There are a huge number of factors to consider with regard to group and raid composition and synergies, and you're virtually guaranteeing a scenario that's going to require uncomfortable levels of raid stacking. Not to mention requiring maximum consumable usage.

Patchwerk was certainly a gear check, but it wasn't demanding to the extent that you describe.

 

ObservingLife

Your theorycrafting is excellent, have you considered adding this to the Resto Shaman thread?

Snarkyness aside, if you read any of the healing classes theorycrafting threads or play with haste some, it is excellent when you don't need any more regen. Shamans are definately by far the best to pick up haste as their primary spell takes longer than GCD to cast. Haste, besides the smoothing of incomming heals, scales fully with downranked spells and gives a % based healing throughput boost that increases with the amount of healing you have.

He doesn't need to perform forever, just till the fight is over. Haste is a great way to reclaim all that "extra" mana you end with at the end of a fight while significantly improving your healing abilities. The mana effeciency on Rank 4 Chain Heal at ~2.1 speed is enough, and the healing/mana and healing/second throughput is absolutely rediculous, on par with lifebloom and 5+ target circles.

My guess is (to get back to Sunwell), just like Naxx finally had mana regen synergy (I believe there was a total of one item pre-Naxx that had both spirit & MP5 on it), and very well itemized items, Sunwell will have well itemized haste with regen. I just wish it was slightly more universally useful, as opposed to its semi-niche area very similar to spell crit. Just cause you put spell haste on a leather piece doesn't make it any better for druids (although I imagine if anyone actually raided with that balance regen Healing Touch spec, haste would be absolutely rediculous for it...from what I've seen though those people in guilds that can do T6 content are very few and far between).

 

◊ Acustar

I think something along these lines, but agree with Hanos as well, it couldn't be just replacing those, perhaps requiring exalted with sands/ashtongue and a quest drop off Illidan to get to pick between one of X trinkets? And concerning the Highborne cloak, it's really good, but also we haven't see any of Councils cloaks yet, I replaced [Brute Cloak of the Ogre-Magi] from High King Maulgar.

 

Buiden

Double post please delete

 

Buiden

I don't care what you do to a boss, the ease of the fight is going to be far more prone to variation from raid stacking classes, specs, synergies, and good players, than a couple of legendary items. It is completely impossible for them to tune a fight right now where a guild with 4 pairs of warglaives can beat whereas a guild without them cannot. You might as well claim that everyone needs the Kel'Thuzad trinkets [Mark of the Champion] (caster one is +85 damage) for you to be able to progress in sunwell while you're at it! Sarcasm aside, everyone having them would add up on demon fights!

 

Starfire

I am disappointed Blizzard plans to add "new" reputations rather than old ones.

Would be nice to see the Argent Dawn doing something in Northrend. (And while we're at it, wtb finished-up stories for Ravenholdt/Syndicate).

On a side note, by your numbers you stated a pair of Azzinoths was 5% more raid dps. Are we to assume then 4 pairs would be a solid 15-18% or so total raid dps? Wouldn't you call that significant?

Not that I personally think Blizzard would ever balance a fight around a legendary, and for the most part, I agree with your point(s) in general. I don't think Blizzard would ever balance a fight that "tightly". (For example, my guild is extremely lucky with end bosses dropping healing items, but not so lucky for caster dps items... would be cruel for Blizzard to so highly tune a boss to even require every caster in an Illidan/Archimonde weapon).

 

songster

Um, where on Earth do you get that number? For a rogue with T6 quality gear, the boost given by the Glaives is something like:

MH ~60 DPS
OH ~15 DPS
Set bonus: ~150 DPS v. Demons, 70 DPS v. non-demons

So the maximum benefit possible is ~220 DPS. If that's 5% of your raid DPS, then your total raid DPS is 4.5k, and you're not killing Gruul yet.

 

Nezralix

I would never expect them to let players significantly piggyback on previous accomplishments, beyond the obvious gear advantages (and various crafting holes that don't get patched up). However, note that they retained the Cenarion forces in Outland without actually using the same reputation, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something like the "Argent Dawn Offensive" faction make an appearance in Outland. After all, they were lore-wise one of the most compelling groups in WoW 1.0.

 

Buiden

No I'm saying 4-5 pairs would be 5%. 1% a pair was my rough estimate.

 

Shadout

Its a bit silly they are so afraid to use previous accomplishments. Are we going to have 100s of different suf-factions after a couple of more expansions?

They could just make the first rep quests give a ton of rep if you werent exalted already (and add new rep levels after that), make everyone exalted at lvl 70 the moment you get expansion (after all we are the heroes of Outlands and other stuff, should be recognized elsewhere), make everyone friendly or something again (Past deeds dont count forever...). Plenty of ways to reuse the factions.
And in the end, why is it such a bad thing acknowledging people for their previous accomplishments, no one says it has to be a shop with epics when you enter Northrend, just because you are exalted with Argent Dawn, plenty of old factions only gave minor rewards.

 

frber

Anyone else think the content for 2.4 is finished already and has been for months; and this is just stalling from Bizzards side?

Would be supprised if they hadn't planned to time the release of Wrath of the Lich King a little before the release of Warhammer; just so players have new content in World of Warcraft to explore when Warhammer is released; and hence might be less intressted in switching right away. But when Warhammer was delayed they decided to delay WotlK as well? And thus the big need to drag out the planned content as well.....

Not saying that Warhammer might be that great; but would be kind of silly to not look at the competition when planning your own release dates.

 

Vaccine

Dunno I more think (hope?) that the time is being spent adding final tweaks to various specs in Arena that have been underperforming. Yes its a wild hope but I'd like to be able to arena as feral again.

I'm more worried about the lack of expansion news.

As far as Warhammer is concerned, I just don't think its going to dent wow. WoW bridged the gap between your average games players and your MMORPGers and thats one of the big reasons for its success. I'd always laughed at the idea of paying monthly for a game and been a big RTS/FPS player before wow beta. My love of WC3 made me overlook my predjudice long enough to get hooked and the rest is history.

Whilst Warhammer does have a large in built audience from its other franchises, in my experience (played Fantasy table top game for 2 years and worked in a warhammer indy shop for 2 years) a large amount of those players already play mmorpgs.

 

Moogul

This is mostly true I think, but just because Warhammer is unlikely to make more than a small dent, doesn't mean that Blizzard aren't thinking about how to minimize that dent as much as possible (or even maybe exploit it? Hope that a lot of warhammer players buy the MMO, kinda like it but get bored, then get lured over by WotLK to finally trying out WoW?)