RNG isn't the worst thing ever. In fact, the vast majority of complaints come down to a few exceedingly useful items that are desirable for an entire section of dps/tanking/healing. More Raid quests, and better decisions for quest rewards would curtail most problems. For example:
Instantly Gruul becomes an every week goal/kill for guilds everywhere, and for a long, long time.
And you don't only have to head in the "Dragonhead" token direction everytime, you can combine token drop with rep needed to start a quest like:
You reach Exalted Ashtongue Deathsworn, Akama offers you a quest to kill Illidan and retrieve [Akama's Gaydar], which allows your choice of: [Memento of Tyrande]; [The Skull of Gul'dan]; [Madness of the Betrayer]; [Shadowmoon Insignia]. This seems more uniformly rewarding, and more on level with how PvP rewards are dolled out. I don't believe this would kill the urge for raiders to still farm Illidan for months(feel free to correct me on that).
The other loot ideal Blizzard went to, then abandoned was Kel'thuzad, a table full of weapons(and a few top notch jewelry), which nearly guaranteed you wanted the drops each and every week.
This needn't apply to progressive loot alone, there is certainly room to add vanity quests/drops to Raid tables that will make raiders appearance more distinct. [Ashes of Al'ar] could easily have been an expensive quest that started from a drop token from Kael, cost between 2,000-10,000 in mats and taken however many steps to complete. Hell, adding a flashy glow to PvE Tiered sets that made them more distinct then PvP sets that aped their appearance would probably go a long ways to keeping people happy.
I think that everyones complaints about the RNG come down to 2 points:
1.) Gear pools in general are too small.
2.) People hate farming content for such a long period for 1 or 2 rare items
Point 1:
I have long believed that Blizzard has really missed the boat on gear. Why they have decided to have so few gear choices I will never know. People will always desire to have the ABSOLUTE best piece at each slot, but having multiple options would only add richness and more customization. There are plenty of useful stats and bonuses that could be used to provide differences. Why is it that such few piece have ANY resist except for pieces specifically designed for them?? Again, I know people want perfectly itemized gear, but that doesn't mean they should only have one piece per slot. Blizzard has already backed themselves into a corner this way, and I fear what the next expansion will bring. The worst thing for the game is for Blizzard to force everyone into Min/Max'ing.
Point 2:
Everyone's complaints about getting Dragonspine Trophies or other "rare" drops just further backs up why the RNG can be useful. From a development standpoint, the worst thing Blizzard can do is find faster ways to have players run out things to do. With a fully pick and choose system there are dozens of guilds that would have long since abandoned virtually every instance.
On a related note, having killed Gruul a good 40 times and not having gotten a Dragonspine Trophy there has to be a way that you can get an item from "obsolete content" after a certain amount of time has passed.
So how's this for openers. Blizzard, put the DST on the Sunwell badge vendor for 200 badges and be done with it.
... or put a better trinket in the new 5-man? Oh wait, that's what they did. :-)
In all seriousness, a more loreful way of doing this (and cutting down on the oversupply of void crystals) would be as follows:
1) Put an NPC in the main city hub (perhaps attached to the alchemy labs?), who is the "Soul Scryer". This NPC can analyse the residual traces/essence left on any item by the boss that dropped it. This destroys the item, but gives you a new item called "Lore fragment: $BOSSNAME"
2) Add a second NPC (or possibly a second function of the same NPC), who will take 10 Lore Fragments and use them to produce a "Bane Weapon: $BOSSNAME".
3) Using a Bane Weapon on the appropriate boss assists in the kill (perhaps it just does 5% damage, maybe something more flavourful).
4) In addition to the normal drops, if a Bane Weapon was used during the fight, you can choose any one item from the boss's loot table. Easiest way to do this is have the boss drop a "Captured Soul of $BOSSNAME" on any fight where a Bane Weapon was used. A Captured Soul can be turned in at the Bane Weapon questgiver, with the reward being any one item from the boss's loot table.
This does two things - it helps with the pain of re-killing farm content bosses by letting you kill them fractionally quicker, while also giving you a guaranteed "wanted" item from that boss. It's not overpowered IMO, because it takes 10 unwanted/sharded items from the boss to turn in for a single "wanted" item. You'll only be doing this for stuff that is seriously farm content.
Edit: Thinking about it, it would possibly feed into the hc/casual debate too. Say Lore Fragments are BoE, but that Bane Weapons are BoP. At first, there's none of either being generated. As the front runners start to farm content, firstly they fill in their own loot holes, but then they may start selling the lore fragments. The hindmost can pick them up for a price and make the boss encounters a little easier for themselves. Not something that could be relied upon though, and not something that would be used as a matter of course until so many guilds are farming boss X that the lore fragments have become very cheap. At which point, why *shouldn't* Johnny Have-a-Go and his pug team pick up some lore fragments and have a go?
Yeah, that's actually a fantastic idea, one of the better ones I've heard. Here's hoping someone from Bliz is reading this thread, cause there have been some great loot-based ideas put forth in here, and I'm gettin really tired of the same old system of RNG screwing you for months at a time. Three tier items per boss is just about the most unnecessary thing they could have done for 2.4
Something similar to Bioshock's system may work too. Boss drops 3 items, you can either loot them or press 'search deeper' button. If you loot any of those 3, 'search deeper' option disappears. If you click on 'search deeper' button, game re-rolls and shows you 2 or 3 items from same loot table. Now only options you have is to loot them or disenchant them. At least you tried your chance. Of course this is again RNG, but it may increase chance to get desired items.
The RNG is, in my view, merely a relic from 40-man raid times when the sheer quantity of players in an instance virtually guaranteed that someone would need every piece of gear that dropped. I can't think of one time in six months of farming MC casually (I am using the lowest pre-TBC raid as an example, barring UBRS) where fourty people shrugged and would rather see it become a nexus crystal.
I can. When shammy loot dropped in alliance raids.
If you have more +fire than +shadow, LT takes your +fire into account. At least that was the implementation when the 2.0 change was made.
That is how it works for pet scaling, but I haven't hear of it being true for lifetap before. Most people are under the impression it's shadow only, so I'd like a screenshot for proof.
Originally Posted by Elzam
The RNG is, in my view, merely a relic from 40-man raid times when the sheer quantity of players in an instance virtually guaranteed that someone would need every piece of gear that dropped. I can't think of one time in six months of farming MC casually (I am using the lowest pre-TBC raid as an example, barring UBRS) where fourty people shrugged and would rather see it become a nexus crystal.
That really does ignore the awfulness of the original MC itemisation. I think we all remember a particular polearm otherwise known as vendorstrike.
I found this fun comparison from 2.5 years ago on thottbot.
Felheart Bracers http://www.thottbot.com/?i=25816
44 Armor, 18 stamina, 11 intellect, 8 spirit, restores 2 hp every 5 sec, increase shadow dmg by up to 7.
Drops from various trash mobs in MC.
Zandalar Demoniac's Wraps http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51574
42 Armor, 15 stamina, Increase dmg by up to 16.
Reward for quest from Yojamba Isle.
That was how bad MC was itemised. I ran MC many many times and I'm pretty sure I never took felheart just because they sucked that badly. Even now they only have 13 damage.
The wait for azuresong mageblade between 10+ mages and warlocks was however a long time, even when some people would settle for the staff of dominance.
Although spirit plate and health regen gear was horrible, there should always be some degree of 'bad' gear, in the sense that not all gear should be completely optimized. It'd probably make gear progression feel very linear and dull if every single cloth dps bracer in the game had one socket, the same relative amounts of int/stam, and some spell damage on it, and scaled from one drop to another. Sort of like the way AQ/MH rings do. Even if the item itself would be more optimal than a 'bad' drop, I don't want to see all pve gear 'level up' the way pvp gear does, variety is better than slightly superior homogeneity.
I understand removing the hand in requirements is a good thing for competition. I agree that linking it to that kind of thing would have made it difficult.
However I am disappointed to see the loss of the Essence of Immortal hand in. It was a nice bonus for killing specific bosses.
If you have more +fire than +shadow, LT takes your +fire into account. At least that was the implementation when the 2.0 change was made.
I just tested right now with a flamecap. My lifetap was the same with and without the +80 fire. Lifetap is just +shadow.
There's a lot against warlocks as a fire class though, not just lifetap. (shadow-damage only for the damage curses; our only good AE is +shadow; everything *except* immo/incinerate being shadow. I guess you can switch sac'd pets for the AE, but that doesn't do much mid-encounter.) I wish they'd just solidified us as shadow casters and fixed the destruction tree rather than continuing its schizophrenia between the two elements. Destruction leans so heavily on the demo 21-point talent because the tree cannot stand on its own otherwise (although that 21-point talent is probably *why* destruction is such a weak tree.)
Patch notes updated once again, mmo-champion has the changes. Other changes are minor or already stated previously, but...
Druid
Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.
Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.
This replaces the previous lifebloom tick nerf... so resto druids will actually see no change since they have empowered rejuv and it previously was not working, and balance and feral will see a decrease in effectiveness. What's the point of this again?
Based on the mention of how very many Void Crystals are floating around, along with the "Essence of Bossname" idea above:
Another interesting idea for filling out loot tables would be to make DE products another kind of token. For a bit more flavor and fluidity, allow multiple crafting skills work in similar ways. What if instead of things like Nether Vortices dropping, boss items could be disenchanted, tinkered apart, melted down, etc. into various components? Those components could then be used for powerful recipes available from quests, reputation vendors, or for quest turn-ins to provide items. This mechanism potentially provides a way for a guild to focus on a type of item they rarely see, if the different professions' products are used for different things. It also provides a bit of an automatic feedback system in that it doesn't really kick in unless you're getting lots of loot you'd DE anyway. (Presumably you'd always take the loot you can get right now if somebody can use it, as opposed to the loot where you'll need to melt down a lot of stuff before you'll see a product.)
Patch notes updated once again, mmo-champion has the changes. Other changes are minor or already stated previously, but...
This replaces the previous lifebloom tick nerf... so resto druids will actually see no change since they have empowered rejuv and it previously was not working, and balance and feral will see a decrease in effectiveness. What's the point of this again?
It *replaces* the previous lifebloom nerf? Meaning, a three-stack rolls at the exact same hps as on live? If so--I agree with your "what's the point of this?" question.
Perhaps they just wanted to nerf the 34/0/27 Dreamstate build?
Although spirit plate and health regen gear was horrible, there should always be some degree of 'bad' gear, in the sense that not all gear should be completely optimized. It'd probably make gear progression feel very linear and dull if every single cloth dps bracer in the game had one socket, the same relative amounts of int/stam, and some spell damage on it, and scaled from one drop to another. Sort of like the way AQ/MH rings do. Even if the item itself would be more optimal than a 'bad' drop, I don't want to see all pve gear 'level up' the way pvp gear does, variety is better than slightly superior homogeneity.
I'd have to agree with this, and although I'm certainly in the minority, I think even really crap items like Vendorstrike have a place. Every poorly itemised item makes the good ones look better and more interesting in comparison. The problem in doing this is doing it in a way that there's still enough good items, and people don't get too ticked off about bad ones.
But then I am about the only person I know that tends to agree with Mark Rosewater, so maybe I'm just batshit insane.
"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."
It *replaces* the previous lifebloom nerf? Meaning, a three-stack rolls at the exact same hps as on live? If so--I agree with your "what's the point of this?" question.
Perhaps they just wanted to nerf the 34/0/27 Dreamstate build?
The tick nerf didn't really seem to match up with the Druid PvE utility and the strength of Lifebloom in PvP. This nerf on the final bloom though makes much more sense. For example, I could run around WSG with a Mage flag carrier and keep him alive solely off of purges of my Lifeblooms by Shaman or Priests. Reducing the amount of that part of the heal seems more expected and rational than reducing Resto Druid utility in PvE raids by nerfing the ticks.
The tick nerf didn't really seem to match up with the Druid PvE utility and the strength of Lifebloom in PvP. This nerf on the final bloom though makes much more sense. For example, I could run around WSG with a Mage flag carrier and keep him alive solely off of purges of my Lifeblooms by Shaman or Priests. Reducing the amount of that part of the heal seems more expected and rational than reducing Resto Druid utility in PvE raids by nerfing the ticks.
I completely agree (and I've argued that on several posts here), but I'm just seeking confirmation that they actually undid the HoT nerf. WoW Test Realm forum seems to indicate that this is true.
What's odd though is that, with Empowered Rejuvenation increasing the Coefficient...this doesn't change anything for Resto Druids at all. Only Balance and Feral.
Perhaps they think that the only Specs that need Lifebloom nerfs are Balance and Feral? Perhaps they think that the removal of the Movement Speed 4-set is enough of a nerf for arena?
The nerf to triple stacking was a 5v5 nerf, not something Blizzard wanted. In addition, it was a PVP nerf which hurt PVE (like the lifetap nerf which was reversed as well). It is very common to allow a lifebloom to expire in 2/3's so nerfing that would be expected. The empowered rejuvenation is a bugfix.
The Washington Post helps perpetuate a common and pernicious misreading of the decision, referring to "the Supreme Court’s judgment that corporations have the same rights as people when it comes to political speech." What the Supreme Court actually said is that people do not lose their free speech rights when they organize as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups as well as businesses.
Everyone's complaints about getting Dragonspine Trophies or other "rare" drops just further backs up why the RNG can be useful. From a development standpoint, the worst thing Blizzard can do is find faster ways to have players run out things to do. With a fully pick and choose system there are dozens of guilds that would have long since abandoned virtually every instance.
Can we please stop using this as an argument? If Blizzard would have kept to anything remotely close to a sane content release schedule, this wouldn't happen. Condemning a loot system because it would "only" take 6 months to get everything you need once you have it entirely on farm is absurd. Anything much beyond that, and it's not an issue with the loot system, it's an issue with the content release schedule. Condemning a loot system because it would break when Blizzard makes one of the largest mistakes they have ever made with regards to endgame raiding is rediculous. That's like saying all meat is bad for you because it'll poison you after you leave it outside to rot for a month. The meat isn't the problem, it's the fact you left it outside to rot that's the problem.
Can we please stop using this as an argument? If Blizzard would have kept to anything remotely close to a sane content release schedule, this wouldn't happen. Condemning a loot system because it would "only" take 6 months to get everything you need once you have it entirely on farm is absurd. Anything much beyond that, and it's not an issue with the loot system, it's an issue with the content release schedule. Condemning a loot system because it would break when Blizzard makes one of the largest mistakes they have ever made with regards to endgame raiding is rediculous. That's like saying all meat is bad for you because it'll poison you after you leave it outside to rot for a month. The meat isn't the problem, it's the fact you left it outside to rot that's the problem.
I highly doubt Blizzard is capable at releasing quality raid content much faster than they currently are. They are a relatively small company that is owned by Vivendi Universal. Vivendi takes all of WoW's profits, and then they allocate a budget to Blizzard that their execs deem acceptable. This budget likely does not include millions of dollars to hire lots of people to design and test more raid content that appeals to less than 5% of WoW's player base. Also, please remember that Vivendi is a French company that posted the largest corporate loss of all time in French history, so expecting good decisions from them is pushing it.
With the Hydross idol and ToL. I guess that's pretty cheap now compared to before. 845 is base cost on Live which is what it costs your standard PvPer, 643 with ToL and idol.
As for the -20% +20% on lifebloom end-bloom, it's actually 20% of the new co-efficient so 96% of what it was before. It wouldn't be surprising to see another pvp-focused nerf in the next week or so.
They could just raise the mana cost of lifebloom. It's a direct pvp nerf since the issue with LB is mostly it's very high efficiency(and well the fact it's instant but nerfing that part would REALLY hurt pve I guess). At the same time, with treeform and spirit changes, it wouldn't impact pve that much, and would go well with the regrowth change.
03/07/08, 4:22 PM
Similar Threads
