Patch 4.2 PTR Notes - 06/14 Update
There was a minor update to PTR notes, nothing super important at first sight but Blizzard considerably increased the amount of Valor Points you will get from Patch 4.2 Raid Instances.



You will now get the following amount of points if you clear up the instance in a given week.

PlayersFirelands RaidBaradin HoldFirelands Raid
+ Baradin Hold
10-Man840 Valor Points120 Valor Points960 Valor Points
25-Man980 Valor Points140 Valor Points1120 Valor Points

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
General
  • Steadfast raiders have an opportunity to embark on a series of quests to create an all-new legendary caster staff. In order to begin the process of assembling the staff, players must first kill a Molten Lord in the Firelands. Once a Molten Lord is killed, players can accept the quest A Legendary Engagement from Ziradormi in Grommash Hold in Orgrimmar, or Coridormi atop the Wizard's Sanctum in Stormwind. The legendary item questline is only available to druids, mages, priests, shaman, and warlocks.

Currency
Conquest & Honor Points
  • Example: During the first week of Season 10 everyone starts with a rating below 1500. Therefore, the cap from Rated Battlegrounds will be 1500 and the cap from Arena rating will be 1000. In the first week, the character wins enough Arena matches to reach the 1000 point cap. After that point, Arena wins will no longer grant Conquest points for the week. However, the character can still earn up to 500 additional points, but can only earn those points from either Rated Battlegrounds, or from the Conquest Point bonus for holiday and/or daily random Battlegrounds. The following week the cap will be recalculated based on the character's ratings, and it is possible Arena rating could now generate the higher cap. The second week, the character's cap from Arena rating is 1600, and the cap from Rated Battlegrounds is 1500. The character has a total cap of 1600 Conquest points for the week. Up to 1500 points can be earned from Rated Battlegrounds, but the last 100 must come from a different source.

Valor & Justice Points
  • The number of Valor Points awarded for killing a boss in the Firelands is 70 120 in 10-player mode, and 90 140 in 25-player mode.
  • The number of Valor Points awarded for killing Occu'thar in Baradin Hold is 35 120 in 10-player mode, and 45 140 in 25-player mode.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 4.2 PTR Notes - 06/14 Update started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 120 Comments
  1. stgeorge78's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nymrohd View Post
    Did they really need the public outrage to realize that the initial design was poor? It is astonishing what is allowed in game design. In no other industry would this ammount of error be allowed.
    It's because they don't play their own game anymore. Internally they are playing Diablo 3 and Titan now. So many gaffs this expansion cycle because they literally are winging it on a lot of decisions. Ghostcrawler has always been a weak designer, but without oversight, all the designers (most of them junior and new to WoW) are really botching things on a regular basis. Their management is to blame also, for allocating far fewer resources and funding to the game - it shows when they cut corners to the extent they have. It's all about profit now.
  1. davep's Avatar
    *must find something to complain about.... OH I GOT IT*

    [sarcasm]This is bs, my guild is 10man and that means I need to do 1 heroic just to cap out for the week. WHAT THE HELL!!![/sarcasm]
  1. pragmalice's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by khatsoo View Post
    It's not about that I guess.
    It's 2 pieces against 5 pieces of the same loot table. The chance that the piece you need drops is much higer.
    Say if a boss drops 10 different items, in a 10-man raid you will see it 20% of the time and in a 25-man raid you will see it 50% of the time.

    In the case everyone's geared and most of the loot is disenchanted, you can even find full epic raiders with one blue piece missing (like me) because of the (increased) loot RNG in 10-man raids.

    Edit: And that blue piece drops from ****ing Magmaw, the first boss we downed and the one I've killed more times. So..
    You haven't accounted for competition in the 25-man group that is not as likely to exist in the 10-man group (or at least not to the same severity unless you have an incredibly unfortunate raidcomp). If you're a resto druid and the only one in the group for both sizes, then, yes, your analisys holds true. However, if you have a lone plate dps (warrior) in the 10-man group, but the 25-man group has two additional ones (dk and pal, assuming both want the item as well), then the likelihood that the warrior gets the piece he's looking for is actually less than the 10-man version for any given fight (50% divided by 3 is oftentimes less than 20%).

    Where your argument might really win out, though, is when you show the effects of compounding (i.e. taking history into account). Using our plate dps example, as I just said the odds that the warrior snags the item is less than that of running the 10-man. However, after, say, the deathknight wins the first one, the warrior's competition is reduced and his odds go up to 25%. If the paladin wins the next one then his odds return to 50%. So doesn't that seem faster? Let's examine the time frames in which this could happen, on average, with the two modes to find out.

    For 10-man, a 20% drop rate means 1 drop per 5 raids on average, thereby fully equipping our plate dps roster (only 1 warrior) with the item around the 5 week mark on average. For 25-man, a 50% drop rate means 1 drop per 2 raids on average, thereby equipping our plate dps roster (3 people) with the item around the 6 week mark on average.... wait, what? It takes longer?!?!?!

    Of course it does. Relative to the different sizes of the raid group the plate dps composition is skewed high for the 25-man group (3 divided by 1 is not equal to 25 divided by 10). So lets look at it in terms of a more straightforward comparison. 2 cloth dps for the 10-man group compared to 5 cloth dps for the 25 man group. The 10-man group will take around 10 weeks (5 weeks times 2 people) on average to get both of the dps the piece and so will the 25-man group (2 weeks times 5 people). In other words, they're running at the same rate assuming they're running with comparable compositions.

    Just to double check, lets run the numbers of our cloth dps example through the general binomial probability equation (look up binomial probability on wikipedia) to see if the likelihoods pan out as equal over the course of 10 weeks.

    p = probability the item drops (10: 0.2 | 25: 0.5)
    q = probability the item doesn't drop (10: 0.8 | 25: 0.5)
    n = number of raids (10 weeks)
    k = times we need the item to drop (10: 2-10 | 25: 5-10 ... need to run the equation for each number of possible outcomes and add the results together)

    % = SUM((n! / (x! * (n - x)!)) * (p^x) * (q^(n-x)) | x: k..n)

    10-man = 0.6241902592
    25-man = 0.6220703125

    Woah! In 10 weeks you're actually slightly more likely to gear your full roster in 10-man than in 25-man! If we see what 11 weeks looks like, then the 25-man scenario starts to take the probabilistic lead, though not by much.

    10-man = 0.67787743232
    25-man = 0.72509765625

    Keep in mind though that this is assuming a proportionate raid comp and that everyone capable of using a particular item actually wants the item. Both of these variables affect how many times we need the item to drop. Also note that the perspective of this math focuses on getting "everyone" in the raid geared up rather than any one particular individual.

    If you're pugging content, you can't really rely on a somewhat static raid comp and would therefore have to look at each raid individually and determine ahead of time a couple of break-off points in terms of competition you're willing to live with in order to maximize your odds for any given raid. As a rule of thumb, if you're looking at competition less than some proportion of 2.5 than you might expect from the other raid format, then stick around as your chances are higher (assuming you can down the boss). If you're seeing competition significantly higher than that 2.5 proportion, then you may want to consider leaving and finding a different pug to run with... you have 7 days in order to find a favorable pug composition and it doesn't really matter much if you do it in 10 or 25 man. as the above math shows.

    If you're not pugging, and you instead find yourself in an incredibly unfortunate raid composition you may want to consider re-rolling a different class that doesn't give you as much competition, convincing someone else to do that, or /gquit and find a more opportune guild. Otherwise you (and your raid leader) are just going to have to be content with having more shards than upgrades early on, and thereby potentially slower progression.

    TL;DR: In the end it all boils down to the raid comp. Drop rates are fine.
  1. subanark's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gurbz View Post
    The advantage there is offset by the fact that you can get up to at least 3 of the same item at once (I have never seen more than 3 at once so I think that is the cap but correct me if I am wrong). I am sure that if someone who understands statistical math a lot better than I do ran the numbers, 25s still have a slightly higher chance to get a particular item, but in the real world I have a toon that I run in a 25-man and an alt that I run through 10s. Both geared up at about the same pace. The loot advantage is not as great as people think it is.

    As for the VP change, it seems to me that the only complaint that has been addressed is the ability to cap VPs by raiding Firelands alone. T11 raids are still worth next to nothing, and someone running only heroics can still hit cap without setting foot in a raid. I wonder if Blizzard intended this to be the way it worked the entire time? As in, they knew they had a change that was gonna make people storm the forums. So they announce an even more drastic change, wait for the angry mob to arrive, then toss them a cookie by implementing the original change they wanted that, in comparison, doesn't seem that bad. The angry mob goes away because it thinks got what it wanted, and Blizzard gets to implement the changes they wanted to do in the first place without all that much fuss.
    You apparently never did a raid where 1/2 the gear was DEed due to not having any class in the raid that could use the items. Sure if you can manage to set up your 10 man with:
    1 Shadow priest, 1 mage, 1 warlock, 1 rogue, 1 restro druid, 1 restro shaman, 1 hunter, 1 holy paladin, 1 blood DK, 1 prot warrior
    then you may not have any gear DEed that someone doesn't already have, but for the rest of us, it isn't reasonable.
  1. Kalcheus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naidia View Post
    Most likely going to give JPS like the rest of the bosses in his tier.
    Yeah, that was in the update last week I believe, and hasn't changed so they didn't highlight it here. Think it's going to give 30 JP?
  1. pragmalice's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gurbz View Post
    The advantage there is offset by the fact that you can get up to at least 3 of the same item at once.
    Hmm, I was unaware of this. If it's possible to get all the same loot for a given drop then this changes the probabilities of the equations I used above to be slightly lower than 20% and 50%. We use the same binomial probability equation to find that for 10-man the probability of seeing at least 1 of what you want is actually 18%, and in 25-man it's 40.95%. Therefore the 10 week results look like this:

    10-man: 0.560836742222
    25-man: 0.390767903545

    This is a clear winner for running 10-man content! The probabilities don't come close to panning out even until the 14 week mark:

    10-man: 0.746879949849
    25-man: 0.744681435732

    After 14 weeks, 25-man starts leading the probability race, but we're already looking at significantly high probabilities in these time frames (~80%+), so you'd be insane not to run 10-man content just for the loot drops.

    The only thing holding you back in 10-man then is raid comp or otherwise being incredibly unlucky with RNG... the math just doesn't support that running 10-man for loot is inferior.
  1. Gurbz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by subanark View Post
    You apparently never did a raid where 1/2 the gear was DEed due to not having any class in the raid that could use the items. Sure if you can manage to set up your 10 man with:
    1 Shadow priest, 1 mage, 1 warlock, 1 rogue, 1 restro druid, 1 restro shaman, 1 hunter, 1 holy paladin, 1 blood DK, 1 prot warrior
    then you may not have any gear DEed that someone doesn't already have, but for the rest of us, it isn't reasonable.
    That's a bad comparison because the same thing can happen in a 25-man, especially when you can get multiples of the same item from one boss kill. My 25-man group DE'd loot off of our first T11 boss kill because Magmaw dropped 3 two-handed maces, and only 2 people in the raid could use it/wanted it.

    Check the post right before yours for the math that shows once all factors are accounted for, the chance of you getting a particular piece of loot is almost exactly the same between 10 and 25-man. 25-man does start to pull ahead as more and more people get geared, reducing the number of people rolling on a given piece of loot.

    Edit: After updated math, it seems that 10-man is actually better off.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterDinadan View Post
    You only have to do RBGs to cap your conquest if your RBG cap is higher than your arena cap.
    This.... Their ´real´cap will sink down to their abysmal arena rating score. The people who actually do arenas to win (other than just 10 of 40 games) will have an arena score above 1500, and thus will be able to earn their points just from arena.
  1. mmoc704a8b6868's Avatar
    Ah thats nice stuff, so if you raise your cap through arenas you wont be all to dependent on RBGS so you can do some random bgs to get the CP, i imagined this would be way worse.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nymrohd View Post
    Did they really need the public outrage to realize that the initial design was poor? It is astonishing what is allowed in game design. In no other industry would this ammount of error be allowed.
    Wow.. if only there was a test server where the public could go to test things and give feedback on those things before it went live. But you are right, if they did have a test server for the public, they would probably end up updating it frequently and players would only see half of some systems at a time and blow it out of proportion before the full change was implemented on that test server for the public.

    I can´t believe that a company as big as Blizzard did not think to have a test server for the public and that these terrible and stupid changes are ´ allowed in game design´..
  1. MysticalOS's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Naidia View Post
    Oh I know they did, I was quite annoyed by the huge amounts of QQ about not getting capped with raids and heroics getting you capped. That still hasn't changed, heroics will still get you capped. Which is why I'm looking forward to seeing what people have to say, because in reality, nothing changed, lol.
    i don't think you understood the arguments then, no one was complaining about heriocs capping you (if they were they were just retarded and injecting dumb thoughts into a legit argument), they were complaining that raids were NOT. It was about raiders not wanting to kill 7-8 bosses, then still have to kill 8 more bosses in obsolete raid content, or run a bunch of heroics after the fact to finish capping. raiders wanted to cap vp in the time they invested in the current content raids. that was the blunt of the argument. We did not want to be burdened with running a bunch of heroics on top of raiding several nights a week to min max our VP intake. If you're a progression guild and working on heroic encounters, clearning 7 bosses isn't going to just be magic faceroll first weeks, but you're gonna need VP caps the most the first weeks. so you'll invest al your raid time into progression and not want to bother with heroics. maybe when you have 7 bosses on farm and clear it in one night you won't mind heroics. but i personally don't want to raid several nights a week then be told i still gotta do several heroics on top of it. I make time for raiding in my schedule, but I'm not going to be bothered to run a bunch of heroics i don't need anything from just for VP. That was the argument that was made, and blizz did listen, because it was just common sense. Adjusting the Vp for raid bosses since there are less of them. Problem solved. No reason to change heroics, what for?i don't think that's what the majority complained about. I agree with you that anyone who did is just dumb.
  1. Azrile's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MysticalOS View Post
    i don't think you understood the arguments then, no one was complaining about heriocs capping you (if they were they were just retarded and injecting dumb thoughts into a legit argument), they were complaining that raids were NOT. It was about raiders not wanting to kill 7-8 bosses, then still have to kill 8 more bosses in obsolete raid content, or run a bunch of heroics after the fact to finish capping. raiders wanted to cap vp in the time they invested in the current content raids. that was the blunt of the argument. We did not want to be burdened with running a bunch of heroics on top of raiding several nights a week to min max our VP intake. If you're a progression guild and working on heroic encounters, clearning 7 bosses isn't going to just be magic faceroll first weeks, but you're gonna need VP caps the most the first weeks. so you'll invest al your raid time into progression and not want to bother with heroics. maybe when you have 7 bosses on farm and clear it in one night you won't mind heroics. but i personally don't want to raid several nights a week then be told i still gotta do several heroics on top of it. I make time for raiding in my schedule, but I'm not going to be bothered to run a bunch of heroics i don't need anything from just for VP. That was the argument that was made, and blizz did listen, because it was just common sense. Adjusting the Vp for raid bosses since there are less of them. Problem solved. No reason to change heroics, what for?i don't think that's what the majority complained about. I agree with you that anyone who did is just dumb.
    I think there was a little of both, you even see some comments in this thread where people are annoyed that non-raiders have the same VP cap as raiders. Agreed though, the bigger issue was where raiders were unhappy because they would have to do troll heroics to get capped. But I still think there will be some resentment lingering regarding non-raiders having the same cap.
  1. TheEaterofSouls's Avatar
    Nice change blizz. This is why people should wait before complaining IMO. I knew they would increase raid valor gain!
    (And yay and shammys getting the staff quest.) maybe ill roll an elemental.
  1. khh's Avatar
    so they DO cave in to whinning
  1. Bloodfire's Avatar
    I don't get one point...
    The weekly cap will stay 980 or 1250? With all this info from PTR and Blueposts only gave a headache.
  1. Hagu's Avatar
    I'm confused.

    In spite on what the table in the post says, if you do all 25-person bosses and BH, you still get the same 980 VP that alts running 7 trolls do. I.e., in spite of many comments, there was no cap change. Merely that successful raiders would no longer need to do any heroics to cap.

    Or was there a cap change?
  1. tusker's Avatar
    Did they really need the public outrage to realize that the initial design was poor? It is astonishing what is allowed in game design. In no other industry would this ammount of error be allowed.
    Lol, you guys are cute. Amount of error? Really? It didn't get pushed to live, did it? Also, how do you know it wasn't going to be changed regardless of "public outrage"?

    Quote Originally Posted by stgeorge78 View Post
    It's because they don't play their own game anymore. Internally they are playing Diablo 3 and Titan now. So many gaffs this expansion cycle because they literally are winging it on a lot of decisions. Ghostcrawler has always been a weak designer, but without oversight, all the designers (most of them junior and new to WoW) are really botching things on a regular basis. Their management is to blame also, for allocating far fewer resources and funding to the game - it shows when they cut corners to the extent they have. It's all about profit now.
    As for stgeorge78, just stop. We all know you'd like to pretend you're a forum allstar, but it doesn't help when you're blatantly spouting false information you don't even know about. At least next time try to make it more believable, I guess. Or maybe you're just a very smart troll? Hmm..
  1. Kalcheus's Avatar
    There was no cap change, it's still 980. This was done solely to keep the raiders out of heroics (for the most part) to cap.
  1. Bloodfire's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chrth View Post
    There was no cap change, it's still 980. This was done solely to keep the raiders out of heroics (for the most part) to cap.
    Thanks for clearing the fog.
  1. Solia's Avatar
    The weekly cap is still 980 according to patch notes. Mmo-Champ for some reason decided to add up addition VP from the new BH boss as well.

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