So I'm not quite in Karazhan yet but I've been checking out the items and noticing that the power curve once you go from quest rewards and instance drops to the various raid items seems very slim. Then I found a thread on the official board with some item links, and well either Blizzard really doesn't want raiders to have an advantage over single-group people or this seems like broken itemization:
Maybe the items look epic unlike a good portion of the loot from 5 mans. I think it's as it should be. The epics should be better but not totally blowing stuff from 5 mans out of the water like pre-BC.
I've also noticed some pretty big differences in itemisation approach for quest rewards as opposed to instance drops. One of the biggest seems to be the use of stamina which, with the reduced cost you'd expect to be present in far higher quantities on most things. For a lot of quest rewards this is definitely the case however with a lot of instance drops item designers seem to have taken the lower cost of stamina as an opportunity to swap further points into other attributes rather than having stamina be 50% higher much of the time. From a personal point of view the other strong example I've seen is leather items with added Armour - there are about half a dozen quest rewards with substantial armour on them, half of them green and yet nothing of note I'm aware of so far in any of the five man instances making those quest rewards often the best available options for bear tanks until vastly higher budget epic gear becomes available (and even then it's a near thing at times).
My personal belief is that we're seeing the effects of multiple item designers adopting somewhat different approachs/focuses leading to some rather irregular itemisation.
Also it's worth pointing out that the epics available / data mined at this point are similar to what MC gear was at lvl 60. It's just the first wave of gear. How many mages refused to get Tier 1 because it was worse than stacking +damage blues?
I do agree that it doesn't make sense for the epics to be worse than blues or almost identical. However, I'm ok with there being a very very small increase from blue to Tier4 at this point, because that gap will grow as new raids open.
That stuff is just broken right now. Clearly a green intro quest reward should not be better than an epic requiring many heroic instance runs. Think of it as your reward for leveling too fast.
You can bet your bottom dollar that one of those totems will be changed soon, now that the disparity has been brought to light. Only depends on which one ;)
I agree with Estiarti. This appears to be the lowest tier of items we'll ever have at level 70. The epic items being nothing more than the blue items with rearranged stats (often being just plain worse than the blue ones - but don't forget to count the sockets, like in the case of the epic boots). I remember starting MC and a few weeks into it thinking 'what in the HELL am I collecting Felheart for?'. After the boots and the shoulders I just stopped taking it and went for individual non-set items which would benefit me far more overall.
The question is, what does the future have in store for itemisation? Future raid instances (or even the Black Temple at this point) may be chock full of items with improved stats in every category. Will we see new PvP rewards to strive for to match them? New craftables? Or will the future instances just be the same item level and rearranged stats again?
For the time being though, I'm happy to leave raiding off to one side and enjoy the 5-man content, just like I did when I first hit 60.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
I remember a statement by someone at Blizzard, maybe it was one of Rob Pardo's speeches? Anyway, one of the things stated was they originally didn't realize how important the color IE rarity (green, blue, purple) affected peoples' perception of an item. At the time I didn't know exactly what it meant but, assuming these things aren't just oversights, it might actually follow. Given that statement, and recent statements by Blizzard that color is based on rarity and NOT the power of an item, it leads me to believe this was done on purpose. They've gotten the idea that all people care about is whether items are blue or purple and not the actual stats on an item.
I think I speak for the majority of people who have a clue that this is indeed not true. Maybe your average joe retard who bought Lei of Lillies or Lifestone will fall for this but most players look at the stats of the item and not necessarily the color when determining what to wear. Given a relatively close chose people will of course pick the purple, but in any situation where the blue gives a superior advantage most people will stick with the blue. Ultimately this means a lot of people will be disappointed by Karazhan loot and end up sharding a decent amount of it.
That totem situation seems odd to be sure but otherwise I think you are missing big differences. Especially in your last two examples, at first the two shoes look the same till you notice the second one has sockets, that's big. In the last example the items look similar till you notice the second one has set bonuses, and a metagem socket fwiw.
The point here is that you arent seeing the same sort of jump in power level than you would get from UBRS to MC. I don't think they will ever do that again.
The two leather healing shoulders are pretty clearly just wrong -- both are level 70, but the blue is ilevel 115 and the epic is 100, and every stat that matters is better on the blue. I would have thought that there's a simple formula for a given item's required-use level versus its ilevel that results in its threshold for epichood, but maybe not.
I think I speak for the majority of people who have a clue that this is indeed not true. Maybe your average joe retard who bought Lei of Lillies or Lifestone will fall for this but most players look at the stats of the item and not necessarily the color when determining what to wear.
You just made a contradictory statement. Average Joe is by definition, most of the players.
There are plenty of people who have no understanding of the stats on items, and only understand "this is my class's set," or "that's purple" or "people say this is my first set, that is my second set." Other than that, they really have no idea which items are better (which number being bigger is more important?), and a lot of people got into raiding because they wanted the color loot, not for the upgrades nor the alleged joy of raiding.
Asking a bunch of university professors what they feel the average education level of Americans is likely to result in an answer far above the actual fourth grade reading level, because they're inclined to project themselves onto the unknown - it's a fairly common human failing.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
You can bet your bottom dollar that one of those totems will be changed soon, now that the disparity has been brought to light. Only depends on which one ;)
It was brought to light month or two before TBC release several times on the Beta forums when they first added that Totem in.
That totem situation seems odd to be sure but otherwise I think you are missing big differences. Especially in your last two examples, at first the two shoes look the same till you notice the second one has sockets, that's big. In the last example the items look similar till you notice the second one has set bonuses, and a metagem socket fwiw.
While those shoes are with sockets, the blue pair has a massive load of crit, loads of spirit, and even more spell damage. You'll be hardpressed to socket the epic to even make it equal with the blue pair. Doesn't really make a "big" difference in my eyes. I'd probably keep the blue pair (that I in fact have).
Itemization seems really out of balance. I think it simply might be related to how much loot they've made. I mean, casters out there should know just how many wands you could get, on the way to 70, it's quite silly. Sometimes with incredibly similar stats.
The difference on most is tiny at best, and the effort disparity between Sethekk Halls & King Manglur somewhat deserves atleast something better than what you get at T4, and T5... I dont really want to contemplate.
Im really disapointed by loot aquired from raiding, and that from trivial 5man instances in comparison, oh and staffs... I really dont get why anyone would want a staff when you can get one of the MANY 1h maces with 300~ healing, Int, Sta, and Spi or MP5... and ontop of that an offhand....
Wrynn Dynasty are an upgrade there in every stat except stam and the trade off to 20 str is really nice for threat unless you are starved for stam (15k unbuffed is not starved). Curator and most of Kharazan doesn't seem to be insanely hard, only very challenging. I agree with a lot of the other itemization being strange though especially class tier items.
Unless I am horribly mis-remembering an epic item simply gets 10 "free" ilvls of budget over a blue counterpart. So an ilvl 100 epic can be identical to an ilvl 110 blue.
They bumped up the highest blue armor you can get from ilvl 83 to ilvl 115.
They bumped up the highest epic armor you can get from ilvl 88 to ilvl 120.
Seems find to me. The 15 ilvl budget difference isn't going to be as dramatic as before since it is simply a smaller percentage. Not to say there aren't items that are stupidly mis priced (like that totem).
And no, durability does not come out of an item's budget, it is innate, like DPS or armor.
The difference on most is tiny at best, and the effort disparity between Sethekk Halls & King Manglur somewhat deserves atleast something better than what you get at T4, and T5... I dont really want to contemplate.
Im really disapointed by loot aquired from raiding, and that from trivial 5man instances in comparison, oh and staffs... I really dont get why anyone would want a staff when you can get one of the MANY 1h maces with 300~ healing, Int, Sta, and Spi or MP5... and ontop of that an offhand....
Sometimes I really cannot fathom what happens at the blizz Itemization team
They're decided to make a LOT more loot with minor differences. This is good as it allows people to get something that will do the job without wasting too much time trying to get it. It also allows more variety if people have slightly different aims (more mp5, more spirit, more stamina). Gems contribute a lot to this.
They've decided to make loot scale a lot more slowly. This allows people to move on to higher areas without doing the original ones to death. This is also good (and will probably help quite a few guilds stay together as you wont have as big a cap between those to get the loot first and want to move on and those who havn't got their drops yet).
They're added a LOT of loot and having got the balance perfectly yet. To be expected to a degree.
I don't think there's that much reason to complain.
I want the Shadow Labs sword because it looks nice and has the best +damage in the 5 mans. But I dont want to run it 50 times. It's nifty to know that I can just get the sword from CoT at revered and it'll do the job. The same feeling will apply to getting Kaz drops. I want my T4 because it looks great and will probably run the place a lot to try get it. But if it doesn't come quickly I'm glad that I can just use other drops, one of which will probably pop up, and be able to move on to higher stuff without much problem.
I'm not entirely sure what Blizzard was thinking, and while I'm not casual and the choices seem odd, I am enjoying it.
As a hunter and then later a priest I found a good deal of items that were epic and specifically labeled as my class loot usually ended up being the best choice for me, stats wise. Obviously the usefulness of trans 3 piece and 5 piece etc, and just the overall goodness of Dragonstalker, then later Cryptstalker when they got the sets correct made it something you coveted.
However, I also recall that it took me 38 Gehennas kills to get my giantstalker boots once upon a time so with the decreased amount of people in raids and Blizzard's seeming want of alleviating the frustration that comes from randomly dropped items, this appears to be a correct method of doing such.
I am quite curious as to why so many items are ridiculously close and are quest rewards for near the exact same thing. I am assuming it's to give you the option of gathering equipment for multiple specs; take this +dmg belt from this quest but take the +healing belt from this quest.
The quested trinkets seem to have achieved this nicely; you are never given the hard choice of +dmg clickie or +healing clickie, (so far) and there are several quests where you can take the +defense trinket and in another quest get something very similar for your dpsing needs.
We're not rushing to head into new content so I've had time to just coast to 70, seeing the sights and gathering items, rep, skills etc, and in doing so I've been able to take a better glance at things and I like it. It's much easier and much simplier especially as I run alts through the same things.
Edit: Oh, I had to say that as far as itemization, one of the funnier (Or perhaps depressing) things I've seen is a rogue on my server who never got death's sting, despite having had C'thun on farm forever. At level 70 they're now using Ced's Carver, a blue BoE dagger that has better stats and a better ratio than Death's Sting. I expected it and at the same time I am surprised heh.
Say hello to Supple Leather Boots: http://thottbot.com/?i=57928
Supple Leather Boots
Binds when picked up
Feet Leather
352 Armor
+19 Strength
+11 Agility
+24 Stamina
Durability 45 / 45
Equip: Increases attack power by 30.
Item Level 108
Green quest reward from doing some easy solo quest at Blade's edge. By far better stats (for druid) compared to any blue level 70 boots. By far higher armor compared to any epic level 70 boots (remember that bear form gets 450% armor bonus + talents).
I'm allright with replacing my level60 epics with blue items from long group quest chains or relatively hard 5-man instances, but "having" to use some simple green quest reward for probably a very long time in my feral set is a bit sad to be honest. But maybe I put too much emphasis on the color then.
Generally I get the feeling that there is no sense anymore in TBC itemization. The difference between level 70 greens, blues and epics seems minimal at best, sometimes non-existant. You could say that I should be happy about it since my raid guild most likely isn't going to progress to level 70 endgame content in the near future; thus I can stay on a competitive gear level with blues, old epics and some ridiculous green items. But still having some kind of a "raider mindset", I can't help but feel a bit offended.
Of course, the nice thing is that it allows to play the game on a relatively stress free level. I don't have to dream about some epics that hardcore raiders get from wiping day after day on a hard boss. I can just go and do some solo quest or an 5-man instance run and get the same thing, just without the purple color. It's nice on some level, but I'm not sure if Blizzard understands the long-term consequences of what they are doing. It might lead to a mass exodus in a couple of months when both casuals and raiders feel like they are "done with the game".
Women's breasts can be modeled as a cone and measured as V = (Db^2*h*.785)/3 and since breasts can be thought of as an amorphous fluid, you just have to worry about containing the volume of the breast.
I don't see this being a big issue at the moment. Right now it's the equivalent of Strath/Scholo/Dire Maul with some UBRS thrown in, and then comparing to a good part of MC gear. Karazhan offers some upgrades in places, Heroics will offer a bit more in others, but the real upgrading wont happen until you get into the 25 man instances I think. So I don't think there's any long term consequences. We're only a little over 2 weeks into TBC, I think it's a little premature to make judgements about itemization with respect to raids. :P
02/01/07, 5:59 PM
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