Infraction for Sillia: Grammar

• LodeRunner · 06/12/08, 1:03 AM

Post: Wrath of Lich King Stuff (was 'Blizzcon' thread)
User: Sillia
Infraction: Grammar
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Please watch the quote-splitting.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Shakes

We had a small amount of 25 man gear, but we were by no means an elite 25 man raiding guild. I think I maybe had 3 T5 level drops. None of our cloth DPS (which we tended to take 4 of per run) had any. We sometimes had people in not full Kara gear.

So on average, we had a T4 geared group I'd say.

I have a 10-man exclusive guild. We had kara and badge gear only, and it was pretty significant a gear check fighting Halazzi. Look around and see, very few 10-man only guilds are around, since the T4 and even beginning T5 content is easy.

I've heard this but it doesn't match my experience. I found the last two bosses to be significantly harder than the first 4, with the possible exception of dragonhawk.

That's your experience. We spent more time learning the animal bosses than the others; Zul'jin died on our third try. Malacrass took a bit longer to beat, but it was mostly a question of getting some shadow resist gear for most of the raid members, and having one player switch to shadow priest alt (pre-2.4 spirit changes). Conversely, it took far longer to gear up and defeat the other bosses in the instance, especially since we felt we needed to prioritize Karazhan over ZA.

You can only clear Kara once a week. If you're not a 25 man guild, what else are you going to do? Not log on for the other 6 days? Even most casual guilds raid more than one night a week.

You're misreading again. My point wasn't that we could clear kara one night and still have two, three, four, or whatever for ZA. My point was that clearing Karazhan is still a priority over progression content, and that shouldn't be.

See, here's the perfect example:

5 bits of badge loot = ~300 badges = ~15 weeks of Kara

But that's not how long it took. We hit the heroics pretty hard in order to obtain the badge loot. My warrior had bracers and pants by the time our first piece of tank gear dropped (shoes from Nalorakk, 1/7 chance). The second piece of tank gear came from Jan'alai, who was the last one my guild was able to beat. By then, I had four pieces of tank gear from badges (bracer, belt, pants, gloves).

5 bits of ZA loot = ~1/6 drop rate = ~3 weeks of ZA on average (plus offspec gear, plus nearly 80 badge to put towards badge gear)

Your math is way off. Assuming it took us one reset to learn each boss, with the first boss going down the first time, in 3 weeks we get a total of:

6 kills for first boss (bear)
5 kills for second boss (eagle)
4 kills for third boss (lynx)
3 kills for fourth boss (dhawk)

Let's even assume that we start getting the chests every other reset, starting with third. This means that we get first chest on week two's first reset, and second chest on week three's first reset.

Bear boss has a 1/7 chance to drop an item you want, so 6 kills means ~60.34% (1 - 6/7^6) chance to see said item at least once. Eagle has 1/7 chance to drop one item you want. 53.73% (1 - 6/7^5) chance of it dropping in that many resets. Lynx drops one item you want, 1/7 chance. 46.02% chance to get it from Lynx. Dhawk drops one bit you want, 1/7 chance means 37.02% chance to see it. We've got four chest #1s to try to get the item you want (1/6 chance). 51.774% chance to obtain shoulders after four attempts. Second chest has a 1/6 chance of dropping something you want, so 30.5% chance of getting that.

Chances of obtaining at least 1 item you want: 97.91%
Chances of obtaining all five items in the allotted time: 0.872%. Yes, that is less than one.

And this is assuming that each boss has an item you want (most of them didn't).

Two ZA attempts each week, since one day was for Karazhan. 3 weeks of progression ZA is not 80 badges. It's nowhere near 80 badges. 3 weeks of progression ZA is 30 badges, if we are lucky (6 bear kills, 5 eagle kills, 4 lynx kills and 3 dhawk kills). You couldn't even get 80 badges in 3 weeks is if you fully cleared the damn place twice a week (78 badges). It isn't possible to get 80 badges in 3 weeks going twice a week when you *farm* the place.

That's folly right there.

You're somewhat right. We geared our healers from progression ZA. Robes off Nalorakk, chest and hat off Akil'zon, chest off Halazzi. We've gotten a ton of healing gear from ZA. But cloth damage gear from animal boss ZA is not well itemized. [Fury of the Ursine] is pretty good. Ring from Akil'zon sucks unless you're offspec. Boots from Jan'alai suck unless you're already hit capped. Robes from Halazzi suck since it wastes itemization points on spirit, rather than crit or hit. Spellpower mace sucks for cloth casters, since only a priest can use it. But seriously, you are totally overestimating how good you can get it from progressing through ZA, because you're only looking at it from a farming ZA perspective and have no knowledge of probability.

To the guy going on and on and on about how ZA isn't doable without 25-man loot:

I am a part of a group that clears ZA every week with three chests. Each person in this group has approximately one piece of 25 man loot.

It isn't impossible. There are so many sources of gear currently in the game that, gear-wise, a player can skip the entire array of T5 dungeons and not even blink.

If this is aimed at me, I suggest you go back and read the posts I made. I clear ZA regularly with 3 chests and no 25-man gear whatsoever, and I've been doing so for months now. I'm not saying that it's impossible. I've never said it wasn't doable. I've never said it was too difficult. I'm saying that the loot pacing for Zul'Aman is unbalanced, because all the good loot comes after you don't need it any more. That makes it incredibly inaccessible to people who are entering from Karazhan without 25-man gear, and it discourages them from trying ZA. All they get for their efforts is a handful of pieces of crappy offspec gear and almost no badges to show for it even if they succeed, which is why so many of them don't bother.