Gear in DS and Cata - General Observation

[Vonarie]

Feral tanks, get 1 real option for a tank neck unless they are killing HM DW and it's a pvp neck.

[Fetzie]

With a large and unbalanced roster, not many locks/paladins/priests and a lot of warriors/hunters/shammies, and a really crappy droprate on said tokens it's just a massive headache.

We run ten mans and get at least 2/5 protector tokens per week. With 1-2 people on the token. That isn't a fault of the loot system, rather you (and we) need to get a more balanced roster. It is the raid team's fault that they are so weighted to a certain token, not the game's.

[Rennadrel]

There are a lot of things that are broken about the gear system, especially for plate DPS in WoW. Classes have different stat priorities, however tanks all benefit from the same stats regardless of class, yet the difference between Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights is quite large. I think a lot of it has to do with Blizzard's rather pathetic attempts at class homogenization and gear homogenization as well.

If people want to complain about gear choices though, if you are rolling a DK in PvP, you have zero choices and the gear sucks even worse then PvE drops. All the weapons have critical strike and resilience on them while the rest of the non set pieces are loaded with critical strike as the main stat, and even the PvP sets have some critical strike on them for some asinine reason. OK sure, since they fixed the crit scaling for Unholy pets, it's not as bad, but it still blows. I think part of the problem is the whole reforging nonsense. Rather then having raids with a few extra bosses, Blizzard got lazy and created reforging so that they didn't have to optimize a raid with every single perfect piece of gear for every class and spec, which bothers me. Why would I want to take a piece with crit on it just to reforge for 40% of it's value as haste? I'd rather have 100% haste and not have to reforge at all. It's just lazy developers is what it is, it's nothing more then that. They introduced reforging to reduce the size of raids, that's how I see it.

[Bigbad]

We run ten mans and get at least 2/5 protector tokens per week. With 1-2 people on the token. That isn't a fault of the loot system, rather you (and we) need to get a more balanced roster. It is the raid team's fault that they are so weighted to a certain token, not the game's.

In firelands it wasn't that much of a problem even got tokens for offspec eventually. But with 2 tokens per kill it just seems to take ages. For example after 10 blackhorn kills only 2 out 20 were protector for us, now if there would have dropped 30 tokens instead the chances of bad rng would have been smaller. Takes 50% more time for the same amount of tokens to drop for no good reason at all, just isn't fun.

[truculent]

It is the raid team's fault that they are so weighted to a certain token, not the game's.

Usually I don't like when something in the game gets streamlined, but in this case, Im on the other side of the fence. I dont see the point in having 3 tokens with several classes. Raiding would be a lot easier for everyone if there was 1 token that every class can use. The only possible result of such a system is that half way through a patch/tier, your going to be subject to RNG. Its a pest to say the least.

[Ion]

In firelands it wasn't that much of a problem even got tokens for offspec eventually. But with 2 tokens per kill it just seems to take ages. For example after 10 blackhorn kills only 2 out 20 were protector for us, now if there would have dropped 30 tokens instead the chances of bad rng would have been smaller. Takes 50% more time for the same amount of tokens to drop for no good reason at all, just isn't fun.

Welcome to what it's been like for 10 mans the entire expansion.

We have yet to see a protector chest drop of any kind. I think we had one helm drop, but hey at least we have had two whole shoulders drop. All this while everyone on the conq token has full 410 main set and one even has full 410 offset too. Even vanq has done reasonably well for themselves (at least 2 pieces, some with full 5 piece).

Random loot, as they say, is random. Just because you were over-rewarded in the past doesn't mean you should continue to be over-rewarded now and in the future.

[Bigbad]

Over-rewarded??

1/10 for 10man
1/8,3 for 3 tokens in 25man
1/12,5 for 2 tokens in 25man

I'd say 3 tokens in 25man would come closer to the 10man droprate then 2 tokens would, first time ever that 10mans have a loot advantage? Now that I think about it 25man bosses should drop 2 tokens + something else that would count as half a token. Handing in 2 of the "something else" should give you a tierpiece of your choice, would also decrease the rng a bit.

[Dreador]

Any argument for just having 1 universal token if you're going to bother with a token system? I mean we have 10 classes and 3 tokens, 4 classes get the shaft on that one. Next expansion we'll have another class to split unevenly.

[Theotherone]

We see a lot of Vanquisher tokens and we only run with one Rogue and one DK so lots of DE'ing going on.

[Rennadrel]

Any argument for just having 1 universal token if you're going to bother with a token system? I mean we have 10 classes and 3 tokens, 4 classes get the shaft on that one. Next expansion we'll have another class to split unevenly.

Personally, yes, I'd rather see a single token per slot that isn't class restricted but does still have the slot limitation. And 5 token drops in 25 man and 2 drops in 10 man regardless of difficulty as well.

[Theotherone]

They need to find a balance; they don't want people to gear up too fast, but they don't want them discouraged either.

The more I run DS and gear up alts, the more I realize that this was a spit and bubble gum job from the re-skinned mobs down to the gear drops. Only cloaks are the VP ones? No real weapons to speak of, limited necks, rings, etc. Ion did a good job listing the stuff. Hopefully, it's this way because MoP is ahead of schedule and they needed to get it out.

[Dreador]

They need to find a balance; they don't want people to gear up too fast, but they don't want them discouraged either.

The more I run DS and gear up alts, the more I realize that this was a spit and bubble gum job from the re-skinned mobs down to the gear drops. Only cloaks are the VP ones? No real weapons to speak of, limited necks, rings, etc. Ion did a good job listing the stuff. Hopefully, it's this way because MoP is ahead of schedule and they needed to get it out.

That's true, I almost forgot about all that malarky. One tank ring, no tank neck except the VP one (which means no heroic version, cloak too). Barely any offset gear to speak of. You have 2 pieces of crafted stuff, 1 boot, 1 shoulder, and barely anything else...I hope it doesn't spill over into MOP.

[Rennadrel]

They need to find a balance; they don't want people to gear up too fast, but they don't want them discouraged either.

The more I run DS and gear up alts, the more I realize that this was a spit and bubble gum job from the re-skinned mobs down to the gear drops. Only cloaks are the VP ones? No real weapons to speak of, limited necks, rings, etc. Ion did a good job listing the stuff. Hopefully, it's this way because MoP is ahead of schedule and they needed to get it out.

So what did that make ICC? We had over a year of it and the damn gear options were still limited with 12 bosses in the raid. I think knowing a lot of what we know now and the things Blizzard could change to make gearing more optimal, there should be no excuse for having VP items with non-ideal stats as well as raid drops with non-ideal stats. I just wish they never had introduced reforging and just made more gear options with the upgraded VP system we have now, that would be miles better I think, however it wouldn't be fair for certain classes or specs to have to save up oodles of VP in order to buy all their BIS gear because it happens to come from vendors, I think everyone should have items from both vendor and raid drop sources to maximize their characters with ideal stats as opposed to useless ones.

I think this would become less of an issue if certain specs had their mechanics changed or actual stats like Mastery overhauled. I knew Warriors who constantly complained about Fury having terrible Mastery and so it's understandable that they avoid it at all costs. Maybe those are things that need to be addressed, stat weights and stat value in terms of how it works for your class.

[Theotherone]

Well as pointed out earlier, ICC as least had different drops in the 25 man - so you could do 10 man heroic for 264 and get some different 264 in the 25s - I think it lead to more variety. I also liked being able to get Primordial Saronite with whatever the points were called. It really sucks to have to rely solely on the AH and drops for Essence of Destruction. In ICC you had some great stuff like the neck and ring with Armor on them; but you still had okay tank ring and neck drops.

The VP itemization really does kind of suck - the only tank piece worth a damn, IMHO, is the belt. Everything else is Dodge, Parry, Hit or Expertise; you need tier chest to just stay at CTC.

The one happy knock on effect of the gear drops is the entertainment value of the Official Forums as people just QQ over that mean old RNG in LFR. Some of the "solutions" are just priceless. You can pretty much see that the non-raiding population just can't accept that they don't win every roll or that different itemizations (mail spirit boots come to mind) are better for different gear sets hence why some roll need on gear they have "better of." Hell, if the bracers with mastery on them drop in lfr, you're damn right I'm rolling on them even if my pally has the 397 VP ones - no way I don't keep some extra mastery in my bags. Yet, these people will QQ like mad. It's some of the best reads around.

[Libellus]

Yet, these people will QQ like mad. It's some of the best reads around.

There appears to be an unlimited supply of this QQ as well. It is entertainment that keeps on giving.

It is also shows that SOME of the LFR using playerbase (and the word SOME here is very important) clearly have a very low tolerance for not getting the reward they think they're entitled to, after lala-ing through content with their eyes closed.

Clearly they wouldn't cope very well with 12months of ICC and not once, ever, seeing the tanking bracers drop from Saurfang. I think a tanking weapon dropped from Marrowgar once, but I let my raid team's Pally take that. Never saw it again.......

[Theotherone]

It's the fun and the curse of RNG - I do enjoy the anticipation of "what's going to drop"; then if my piece drops "will I win it." If I lose come back next week and try again.