Why do certain heroics have high iLvl items than raids?

[Galbrei]

Blizz wants guilds to be able to jump into the current raid tier without having to farm previous tiers for months on end.

Pretty much this, it wasn't always the case tough. Back in TBC we had to first do all regular dungeons, then do heroic dungeons, than do the earliest raids and move up to higher raids. This meant new players would have to see all the content if they wanted to do, say Sunwell. We used to call that "gating" and many players nowadays hope Blizzard go back to this model.

The very notion gives me nightmares tough. If you were a top end raider doing Sunwell back in the day chances were your guild was very old and had been doing the same content for months, if not years. Sunwell and the enormous gating required to do it was the bane of many guilds back in the day because if you lost a player or needed to level an alt to fill in a specific role this meant the whole guild would have to stop progression for at the very least a whole month to carry the newcomer through all the old content (that they had done enough times to develop allergies to) until the new guy was geared enough to try Sunwell again. The chances of you losing another player in that month of backpedaling was huge tough, so many guilds would just disband if they lost someone this high in the progression chain.

[Viperdream]

Ask yourself the question above. Would YOU turn up 2 nights a week for no personal gain to get other people gear that you were already replacing to ensure that they might have a reasonable chance of being still half carried to current gear?

I totally agree with you, and with most of the players here actually. Running old raids to gear up people is indeed a pain. But now with the LFR tool this could be solved by letting them run raids themselves, so guilds don't have to worry about it. Maybe it could be still annoying if it's like your 5th alt you're gearing up. But getting the appropriate gear after 3 days already to raid is quite ridiculous as well.

So like I said, LFR could become more flexible regarding loot rules and bosses there could drop maybe an extra emblem? Like emblem of "insert random cool looking word here" and with that you could buy gear that's lower than the gear you get from emblems of valour and higher than justice emblems.

And I'm going to say it again, I agree that it's a pain to gear up players. I'd rather focus on progress as well. But you could just let them do LFR runs (if Blizzard updates it more and makes it more useful to farm, but only on lower raids)

Tons of new players are missing lots of content from Cataclysm. I, myself, took a long break and now I missed out on Firelands and no one wants to do it any more since it's not really worth the time any more with the 4.3 raids. Just this simple feature could give players a lot more to do.

[Ridesdel]

Ask yourself the question above. Would YOU turn up 2 nights a week for no personal gain to get other people gear that you were already replacing to ensure that they might have a reasonable chance of being still half carried to current gear?

Yes, Yes I would. Give me a reason why just because its not PERSONAL gain it's not GUILD gain?

Going back to the last tier of raid content also helps weed out the derps, without blowing any progression time.

In my OPINION, the BC model of actual TIERS of raiding(i.e. kara>gruul's>mag's>SSC>etc.) was nigh-on perfect. If one was to take attunements out, add in 5 mans that give gear equal to TWO tiers behind so that you would only have one tier of content to do to be caught up, i would think that that would be the perfect style

[Raxzar]

To keep low skilled scrubs happy so they can milk them further.

[tyggyr]

They did this until ToC in wrath.... but it meant that you would have had to do naxx + ulduar before ToTC. Not a MASSIVE problem providing you can actually get groups for the older raids. Damn hard for alts that you level up - you have to get pugs for those old raids to catch up with your guildies etc

This ignores the fact that you could farm the "blue" heroics for orbs and points (badges/emblems) in order to get sufficient gear for the current tier's raid.

In 3.2 (ToC) timeframe you could use the JP-equivalent to get some T8 pieces and off-set gear, and the VP-equivalent bought you a full set of T9-low. In 3.1 (Ulduar), you could use JP-equivalent to get some T7 pieces and other assorted pieces, and your orbs brought you gear which was sufficiently good to get you going.

I loved Ulduar - but as soon as ToC came out, my alts didn't have to set foot in either Naxx nor Ulduar to get geared quickly enough for ToC 10.

Really, Cata isn't doing anything very different than they did in WoLK as far as gear progression went... well there's LFR, but considering heroics and raiding.

[Helryx]

Leveling up an alt, spamming normals to be able to spam heroics to do raid tier one, get geared enough to go to raid tier 2, and then getting geared there just to get to current content goes against Blizz's beliefs that everyone should be able to see current content.I like it that way.I'd also imagine it's frustrating for Blizz to put loads of effort into some raids, and then being able to count the guilds that did it as current content on one hand, like SWP and Naxx 40.
But there's no one stopping you and some friends from doing it that way.

[Rivin]

I totally agree with you, and with most of the players here actually. Running old raids to gear up people is indeed a pain. But now with the LFR tool this could be solved by letting them run raids themselves, so guilds don't have to worry about it. Maybe it could be still annoying if it's like your 5th alt you're gearing up. But getting the appropriate gear after 3 days already to raid is quite ridiculous as well.

LFR didn't exist until 4.3, and it was still experimental. In MoP, who knows? We don't know what sort of things will drop in whatever dungeons they add after release, and they may indeed try to push LFR as the main gearing method. But for 4.3 it would've been safer to stick with the tried-and-true heroic dungeons.

[Kaneiac]

Yes, Yes I would. Give me a reason why just because its not PERSONAL gain it's not GUILD gain?

Going back to the last tier of raid content also helps weed out the derps, without blowing any progression time.

In my OPINION, the BC model of actual TIERS of raiding(i.e. kara>gruul's>mag's>SSC>etc.) was nigh-on perfect. If one was to take attunements out, add in 5 mans that give gear equal to TWO tiers behind so that you would only have one tier of content to do to be caught up, i would think that that would be the perfect style

We did this all the time in BC. 2 of our 4 raid nights were dedicated to clearing Kara/Gruul/Mag, SSC and 3/4 TK to get them set up for Hyjal/BT. We intentionally left Kael'thas out so they wouldn't pull a dickass move and leave us for another T6 guild as soon as they get better geared - which happened all the fucking time. It still happened occasionally, but much less often once they realized that someone carried them the entire way.

You know what happened? Burnout started to dramatically increase. We were losing handfuls of people every month, which meant we spent more time going back to old raids, burning people out even faster.

It was not a perfect system unless you had an incredible large, reliable recruiting pool on your server. Even then, people guild hopped like fucking crazy.

[fearcazic]

I don't understand why Blizzard does this. They are basically getting rid of perfectly fine content by their own hand.

What's the point in raiding raids like Twilight Bastion these days? Only to get the achievments, and I know that a lot of guilds probably farmed the shit out of it, but there will always be new guilds who haven't done it yet.

Wouldn't it be smarter if raids would ALWAYS have higher iLvl items than heroics? It'd open up a lot more content that's worth out time than Fall of deathwing and the Siege of Wyrmrest temple.

I suppose it'd take a lot more time to gear up for those final raids then, but it'd also feel a lot more satisfying then (at least in my opinion).

It's all for the health of the game. Imagine if your guild had 25 people doing raids on Madness and then the Tank and/or a healer quits. Now you have to recruit someone who is in heroic gears and you have to run older raids for a month to gear them up. Now once they are geared, you lose some DPSers because they got tired of back gearing/back flagging so they joined another raiding guild.

Blizzard designed WoW so that anyone can jump in and play at the end game within a couple of months and join a top guild if they got the skills.

I'm currently 1/8 heroic DS and I started playing WoW again in January by rolling a lvl 55 DK on a new server. I think that is pretty good for a game that allowed me to be MT in a guild on the current content without having a bunch of people helping he gear up or back flag me as it was done in EverQuest.

EDIT: I also know what you mean because I'm trying to max out my FL rep and no one ever run them so I have only killed Rag once and been to FL twice.

[Mormolyce]

So that you don't have to run old content raids to gear up alts and new recruits.

As someone who has been with a 25m guild through the last two content patches, let me tell you there is a lot of turnover and you are constantly recruiting players who don't necessarily have the best gear from the last tier. If we had to run them through the last 2 tiers to gear up we would never stop bloody raiding. NTY.

On the other hand if they keep the LFR for previous tiers running in MoP I think that would be an excellent solution.

[Azrile]

Why should the gear stay the same? Blizzard could still make the ilvl from the new heroics higher. Like, we started from 346, then ZG and ZA could be around 350 and the Hour of Twilight heroics could be around 360. While raids could have ilvl gear from at least 270 (applying on every raid)

Lots of people I know, and also from the forum if I look around, complain about a lack of content. I managed to gear up my newly dinged priest in 3 days to start doing LFR. (I know LFR isn't exactly end-game)

EDIT: Also, players could gear up via LFR instead of finding guilds that are willing to drag them through. But then Blizzard would have to make the loot rules a bit more flexible since it'll be farmed a lot then. And remove the cap on Valor Points. Even though this is just a suggestion.

Because we have already done it ´your ´ way in BC and it was terrible for guilds to replace a player.. an entire guild would have to redo old content to gear up one person. It also made it impossible for new players to ever catch up and see content because, despite your dreamland, there are not guilds running old content.

Ask amost any guild about BC and how guild-breaking it was to have to constantly run old content to gear up new members. We´ve been there, done it, it is not better. If you want to see older tiers, gear up, do DS, then try to get a group together to do one content on a retro night.

[StationaryHawk]

They don't want people to have to farm the old raid tiers in order to do the current raid tier.

[Viperdream]

Because we have already done it ´your ´ way in BC and it was terrible for guilds to replace a player.. an entire guild would have to redo old content to gear up one person. It also made it impossible for new players to ever catch up and see content because, despite your dreamland, there are not guilds running old content.

Ask amost any guild about BC and how guild-breaking it was to have to constantly run old content to gear up new members. We´ve been there, done it, it is not better. If you want to see older tiers, gear up, do DS, then try to get a group together to do one content on a retro night.

I know that, but read my previous posts. I know that LFR has been buggy and experimental for now. But once they get more experience with it, it could become like grinding heroics? Of course only for the lower raids. You don't have to run heroics with guild members either.

[asharia]

Because they want everyone on the most recent tier, so they give you the free passes with 5mans that gear you out like the previous raid.

[Ridesdel]

Because they want everyone on the most recent tier, so they give you the free passes with 5mans that gear you out like the previous raid.

then you have people complaining that there isnt anything to do on non-progression nights, so have 5man that give gear two tiers down from current, leaving only one raid needed+valor/badge/etc gear to get into current, keeping the last tier relevant longer

[MoanaLisa]

So like I said, LFR could become more flexible regarding loot rules and bosses there could drop maybe an extra emblem? Like emblem of "insert random cool looking word here" and with that you could buy gear that's lower than the gear you get from emblems of valour and higher than justice emblems.

LFR could possibly change things quite a bit down the road.

Just like you missed Firelands. Well, if Firelands was available in LFR, you wouldn't have to miss it. That said, I don't see Blizz going back to BC-style progression which is more or less what you're asking about.

We may eventually see something totally different though once LFR is a viable path up (which of course it isn't now).