I've noticed a lot of complaints about the amount of feral druid items dropping in Ahn'Qiraj lately. I was bored so I decided to take a look and find out if the complaints were justified or not. According to Allakhazam's the following amount of unique armor drops per armor type have been looted by someone so far:
10 Cloth
14 Plate
13 Leather
4 Mail
It does appear that the feral loot complaints are probably not valid. However, what surprised me was the amount of mail items. I checked the datamined stuff and it does appear that there is a real lack of mail armor in this zone. For some reason I doubt Viscidus, Ouro, and C'thun are going to have 3 more pieces of mail armor on their loot tables than every other armor type each.
Anyone else notice this? I'm really confused about what they're doing with the itemization here.
People complaining about too much feral loot dropping are morons.
Originally Posted by Lyta
I've been trying to concentrate on studying for my Proof Methods test tomorrow, and all I can think of is your hotness, radiating out from the pixels on my monitor, seared straight into my neurons.
well it's not tier3 we're talking about but a wider selection of loot so I'm guessing they've tried adding things they felt was lacking before and feral loot is probably one of those things. it's not like they added loot to bwl after the druid got their make over but they took the oportunity to introduce this loot from the dragons and in aq.
I don't mind giving players more choice on their gear, but they could've done it without cutting down on direct primary purpose pve upgrades. We killed emps after 3 long days of wiping, and while the kill felt sweet, after finally getting to open the corpses and check the loot we were a bit underwhelmed. Leather gloves that our resident hybrid druid took out of pity and hunter gloves which are barely better than DS, which one shaman ended up picking up after all the hunters refused to take them.
I would've rather seen them do armor pieces like the Regalia/Armaments, so that bosses drop tokens which you can turn in for different choices on armor designed for different specs. This might of course be slightly problematic to implement on classes which only have 1 aspect to upgrade.
That aside, I don't have much to complain on the loot, there's something for everyone.
I'm a bit confused. Mantle of Wicked Revenge is an upgrade from Bloodfang, but still nowhere near the quality of Deathdealer's Spaulders.Hive Tunneler's Boots are a sidegrade from Bloodfang, exchanging slight attack for passive survivability in the form of health and armor. Guise of the Devourer? I don't understand why any rogue would take this over Bloodfang.
Looking at all the leather items in the zone, it seems like the itemizers are trying to curb dps and improve survivability, presumably to curb PVP imbalance. Unless raid encounters become more about attrition, I'm not sure I like this.
Of course, Deathdealer's is still godly, which leads me to believe the first half of AQ40 loot was intended to be an alternative to BWL (Didn't Tigole state this?), rather than a linear advancement. Most of the early loot will rot for people like us, but for the new raiding guild which has a choice about where to raid on a given night, everything's an upgrade. Is this right or am I missing something?
Don't tell anyone, but Deathdealer's Spaulders have an item budget that exceeds what you'd expect from a C'Thun drop. :ssh:
Guise of the Devourer is feral druid loot. It has like 70 additional Armor on top of the other stats. It's amazing bear gear.
But otherwise, yeah. I roll my eyes at everyone who kills the first 2-3 bosses in AQ40 and whines about loot. In terms of intended difficulty and iLvl, Skeram is roughly parallel to Onyxia. Sartura is like Firemaw. A lot of AQ40 guilds have been farming Nef for 4+ months. Of course we're not going to be blown away by everything we see. But it's nice for filling some holes in our gear, gearing up hybrids, and giving epic gear to classes that wouldn't ordinarily get first dibs on it, like the mail Fankriss pants going to a shaman. And there are some great items tucked in there regardless, like the DPS cloak from Skeram, the healer necklace from Vem, Sartura's offhand, the Ripper from Fankriss, and so forth.
well for me the loot is not so great but I am happy to see that more enhancement and elemental shaman get some love. Deathdealer is great but you gotta admit unless you are interested in non-resto gear this really isnt for you. Ofcourse most shaman out there are not like me. I think people need to stop complaining just cause the gear does not fit into their specific roles. The itemization is amazing for those that do not just go with the assumed raid spec. I do wish they had more mail items on the table. I am also hoping that a direct upgrade to the helm of the lifegiver is out there(huge +healing and huge int) cause there really isnt one right now.
Only about a third of that plate is actual tanking upgrades for all purpose. Another third is likely resist gear, while the other third is likely spell damage plate which won't drop for horde.
Also keep in mind that more mail items drop for horde than alliance, so it's likely that there's some shaman mail that drops from the bosses that have been killed already, but hasn't been discovered since only a handful of the guilds that have killed them have been horde.
Well I am hoping for that cause honestly the resto shaman drops have been dreadful for quite a bit actually. Even BWL isnt something that I go crazy over and none set resto shaman stuff doesnt exist outside of MC(not including red dragonscale deflector).
To be honest, I'm not really dissatisfied with the "lack" of mail drops. As a hunter, my job in PvE is DPS, and my job in PvP is DPS. I'm not a warrior where I have situational jobs, or a druid where I have a set for raiding and a set for pvp.
My point is that there are not many hunters who would be willing to break 8/8 Dragonstalker for a very marginal up/sidegrade piece from AQ40, and the developers knew this. I do DPS all the time, and Dragonstalker is the most optimal hunter set to do this with.
AQ40 is not designed as a zone for guilds to do after having farmed Nef and BWL for nearly half a year.
AQ40 is designed to be someplace you go in parallel to BWL, after completing MC and Onyxia.
For a Rag-farming guild starting both instances in parallel and making headway in both, I can guarantee that almost every drop pre-Emps would be put to good use.
No, if you have 8-piece Trans you aren't going to break it up to wear a Ternary Mantle from the bug family. But if you have 6 pieces of Prophecy and Trans helm/legs, you'll jump on it.
I agree. The people who seem really jazzed about the AQ sets are those whose classes can pick up some gear that will help them perform in a role that's materially different from their typical raiding niche, e.g. feral druids, shadow priests, Arms/Fury warriors, PvP-loving rogues, etc. The ranged DPS/caster classes seem a little less enthusiastic, which is understandable. There are only so many ways you can hurt things, and the AQ sets for "pure" DPS classes reflect that.
That said, I think the weapons and jewelry are going to be attractive regardless of what you're sporting at the moment. If only most of the graphics weren't so...bug ugly.
Originally Posted by Ultramax,February 22nd, 2006 @ 5:02PM
Originally Posted by Praetorian,February 22nd, 2006 @ 2:55PM
AQ40 is not designed as a zone for guilds to do after having farmed Nef and BWL for nearly half a year.
The problem of course is introducing a parallel raid zone 6 months after the last one.
and then it will be another 4-6 months before noxxramus opens up so this really allows guilds to get really clumped up gear wise for the strath instance. It will be interesting to see how that affects things.
Yeah, I'm not really confused about the power level of the items, and I'm not complaining about too much feral loot(we use feral druids a lot). I'm more confused about the amount of mail drops in the zone. If the point of the zone is to give everyone more options, where are our options?
Even the mail that has been recorded is basically similar to Stormcaller's(which is fine). Strength, Intellect, Stamina, and some +damage/healing. But where is the restoration focused armor? Where is the resist gear?
Raiders are not the tiny minority that "casual players" like to claim we are.
Raiders that have been farming BWL since October and have full tier 2 on most of their active crew? Yeah, we're a really small minority. Comes with the territory.
Expansions are probably the only time we (and when I say "we" I mean progression raiding guilds) will ever see content that is out of our reach initially.
Give druids a set of this garbage just stop littering up the loot tables with crap that no one ever wants or takes, just because a few people feel the need to be special.
In any event, it's pretty retarded that paladins get showered with healbot gear while shamans get still more elemental stuff, even after our t2 sets was changed to be more elemental-oriented.
Also remember that paladins can wear all of that plate nature resist armor(although they probably won't get it before any warrior), and as far as I know there isn't a single piece of mail nature resist armor in the whole zone.
Originally Posted by Sebudai,February 22nd, 2006 @ 5:49PM
Exactly.
Also remember that paladins can wear all of that plate nature resist armor(although they probably won't get it before any warrior), and as far as I know there isn't a single piece of mail nature resist armor in the whole zone.
Seems lame.
How much craftable NR plate is there? Mail?
I'd rather craft things then rely on random stupid luck.
I still say for helms if it didnt break sets you still dont have a better one than life giver helm. There is not an equivelant for any other slot. People complained cause all the gear in MC was healing gear. Well looks like blizzard took a big 180 and now there is nothing. It would have been really nice to see even a couple pieces in BWL or AQ(granted not everything has come up yet but I am not too hopeful) that I could get that wouldnt have to compete with elemental shamans for or ring/trinket slots where you are competing with everyone for. Just like I am tired of all the nice enchants/class items(zg enchant, class trinket from DM) where shaman always are +healing and damage. Give us resto shaman some love.
Not really a rant cause I am still happy but I would like a bone thrown my way every once in a while.
Originally Posted by Sebudai,February 22nd, 2006 @ 5:32PM
as far as I know there isn't a single piece of mail nature resist armor in the whole zone.
There's loads of crafted mail NR gear outside the zone, though. Plus all the stuff that drops off the 4 dragons. Overall, I'd say shamans should have a much easier time finding NR gear than, say, rogues.
02/22/06, 8:57 AM
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