The disastrous state of gear & loot in WoD

[Servasus]

I actually agree with the OP, and I'm quite frankly a little surprised with how many are in disagreement.

Anyone who raids Mythic difficulty (at any point in their tier's relevance) is going to care about exactly the same problems the OP brings up. Some RNG in gear is fine, it's always been in the game. But literally now the RNG is so prominent that it will become frustrating for a lot of you. You can sit there and say it won't, but you're all lying to the OP and to yourselves. INB4 the first time a Warforged Socketed + Tertiary weapon drops and you aren't eligible for it because you already won the regular version in a previous raid week and it's a larger upgrade for one of your other team members who doesn't even have the regular version yet. You can say, "Oh but that will be a SUPER rare situation" but the truth is you don't know that. Blizzard isn't going to release official drop rates for WF, Sockets or Tertiaries. For all we know, their version of "unlikely" is that one Warforged Socketed Tertiaried (That just sounds ridiculous. Don't you guys hear how stupid that sounds?) drops per raid lockout per week.

I get it, OP. Don't let the morons tell you otherwise. The sheer amount of RNG involved in the WoD loot system is horrible.

[Deleted]

Stopped when you mentioned enchanting and gemming as "customization". It's just as cookie cutter as it was before with less items.

Look, I'm a guy who loves customization. I favor Wrath as being the best time of talents (most tiers/points just before Cata ruined the system), but saying that Gems and Enchants were EVER customization is just laughable because they weren't. Unless you didn't give a shit about your performance, all 34 specs have a designated "best stat" and a stat hierarchy that you will follow because you will perform better that way. Blizzard knows this and I sure as hell know this. That's why they removed Reforging because it was purely a way to sink money into literally every piece of gear you get. Same with gems, same with enchants.


However, I will agree that WF/Random Sockets is a fucking stupid design, which used to be a reward to 25m and is now an irrelevant messm and sockets simply shouldn't be random. Instead, we should get maybe 3 designated pieces that come with a socket: Helms, Chests, and maybe Legs or something to that extent. Having this D3-style of gear is quite possibly the most retarded idea they could have come up with, especially since you can't reroll for WF/Socket/Tertiary.

I honestly dont mind these changes. The focus on gear and stats this expansion has been to much, and player skill has been to little influenced on the outcome. The difference in dps from a non enchanted supbar geared but skilled player, to a AMR using player who only knows his 1-2-3-4 rotation is laughable.

Dps rewards should be in knowing when to move, where to stand, your rotation(ovb) and fight experience + 5-10% luck(not in loot drops, but in trinkets, misses, ect.)

[Priestiality]

I actually agree with the OP, and I'm quite frankly a little surprised with how many are in disagreement.

Anyone who raids Mythic difficulty (at any point in their tier's relevance) is going to care about exactly the same problems the OP brings up. Some RNG in gear is fine, it's always been in the game. But literally now the RNG is so prominent that it will become frustrating for a lot of you. You can sit there and say it won't, but you're all lying to the OP and to yourselves. INB4 the first time a Warforged Socketed + Tertiary weapon drops and you aren't eligible for it because you already won the regular version in a previous raid week and it's a larger upgrade for one of your other team members who doesn't even have the regular version yet. You can say, "Oh but that will be a SUPER rare situation" but the truth is you don't know that. Blizzard isn't going to release official drop rates for WF, Sockets or Tertiaries. For all we know, their version of "unlikely" is that one Warforged Socketed Tertiaried (That just sounds ridiculous. Don't you guys hear how stupid that sounds?) drops per raid lockout per week.

I get it, OP. Don't let the morons tell you otherwise. The sheer amount of RNG involved in the WoD loot system is horrible.

If someone can't handle Mythic content without BiS gear, SPOILER ALERT, they don't belong there in the first place.

[methz]

I get it, OP. Don't let the morons tell you otherwise. The sheer amount of RNG involved in the WoD loot system is horrible.

People are morons because they disagree with reason. Makes sense.

Again, they're bonuses, if you think a gem slot is what makes you not suck, then you suck.

"Oh but that will be a SUPER rare situation" but the truth is you don't know that.

Sure, and you don't know the contrary, so that's kind of a shit point. Play well and you'll get what you need. Shit luck happens, but it's not game-breaking either way.

[Didacticus Syntacticus]

TL;DR.

Blizzard has discussed their reasoning behind this multiple times. They DON'T want people to have full BiS. Ever.

Exactly.

If you think you have a right to BiS gear from a reasonable number of clears, well, Blizzard disagrees with you.

I understand why people want full BiS gear. But I wish more people understood why being able to deck a character out in BiS gear is bad for the game.

Trust me the game is MUCH more enjoyable when you are wearing "the best gear I've found so far, but there's still better gear out there."

[methz]

Exactly.

If you think you have a right to BiS gear from a reasonable number of clears, well, Blizzard disagrees with you.

I understand why people want full BiS gear. But I wish more people understood why being able to deck a character out in BiS gear is bad for the game.

Trust me the game is MUCH more enjoyable when you are wearing "the best gear I've found so far, but there's still better gear out there."

This. Also I think it's kind of funny that the people with links to their armories that are complaining about not being able to get definite full BIS gear don't have full BIS after a full year of one raid tier.

[Tojara]

I actually agree with the OP, and I'm quite frankly a little surprised with how many are in disagreement.

Anyone who raids Mythic difficulty (at any point in their tier's relevance) is going to care about exactly the same problems the OP brings up. Some RNG in gear is fine, it's always been in the game. But literally now the RNG is so prominent that it will become frustrating for a lot of you. You can sit there and say it won't, but you're all lying to the OP and to yourselves. INB4 the first time a Warforged Socketed + Tertiary weapon drops and you aren't eligible for it because you already won the regular version in a previous raid week and it's a larger upgrade for one of your other team members who doesn't even have the regular version yet. You can say, "Oh but that will be a SUPER rare situation" but the truth is you don't know that. Blizzard isn't going to release official drop rates for WF, Sockets or Tertiaries. For all we know, their version of "unlikely" is that one Warforged Socketed Tertiaried (That just sounds ridiculous. Don't you guys hear how stupid that sounds?) drops per raid lockout per week.

I get it, OP. Don't let the morons tell you otherwise. The sheer amount of RNG involved in the WoD loot system is horrible.

Oh wow, what a terrible situation. You get something earlier than another person in YOUR guild, and to your dismay something better drops that your guild leader/officers won't allow you to have because it's a bigger upgrade for YOUR GUILD MEMBER. What a terrible fucking situation that is, a guild member getting an awesome piece of loot to help you progress and potentially get that gear treadmill rolling faster.

What's this? You're the type of person that isn't happy for other people getting shit?

Please. These are exactly the type of people most officers and leaders of decent guilds try to fucking avoid. It's a toxic mentality that hurts the entire guild in one way or another. If you're pushing progression in any sense you fucking suck it up and be happy whenever your guild gets an upgrade, you don't sit their and pout that you personally didn't get an item that would have been wasteful. On the opposite end of the spectrum you also have people who seem like nice guys. They pass on everything waiting for their perfectly tailored BiS item to drop, and try to push minor upgrades on people with the hope that they will be first in line for the massive upgrade. Meanwhile months pass, that item never drops and the next expansion/tier launches.

People put so much fucking emphasis on how much RNG truly effects progression. I don't follow the 'race' for world firsts in this game, but I can assure you that nobody from those top guilds complains at the end of a tier that their rival guild won because they had better loot luck than they did. The game is designed to be conquered with a certain threshold of gear and in most cases guilds acquire that threshold at mostly the same time.

Considering this post details Mythic raiding, I'd suggest people do themselves a favor. If you actually sit down and think about what matters in progression the most, it's actual time spent, strategy and player ability. Gear has a factor, but not a major factor. The quicker you realize that gear is to be used as a team effort, the better your guild is going to end up. Thinking of gear in an individual sense is just fucking toxic and I can assure you most people in the best guilds get happy for OTHERS in their guild when fucking upgrades drop. They don't hang their head and get pissed that their minor upgrade isn't as important to the collective guild as a moderate/major upgrade for somebody else.

Why people get so hung up on loot and talk about progression is just beyond me. If you're interested in your own well being that's perfectly fine, but that goes out the window when talking about progression in the truest sense. Also in the end it doesn't matter. All worrying about BiS gets you is stress. In a 6 month time window (or a fucking year at the end of an expansion) all of that worrying gets reset anyways and new gear gets released.

[Jack Burton]

I'm not personally concerned about the random gear, as I am about how they've ruined healing. I had fun fistweaver healing in MoP, and now it's totally ruined, they broke the class. Even Serpent healing takes way more effort and doesn't seem balanced with the damage.

If they don't retune healing I will never play a healer in WoD. Playing DPS is 100x more fun from my experience on beta.

[OreoLover]

[B] I raid with a US 100 guild on A52. I main a Retribution/Prot Paladin and am currently bouncing around top 3 US for the tier as far as PR and WCLAS are concerned.

This should have come up sooner, probably o.O... perspective is big.

Personally, I like the anticipation for chances at rarer & generally superior gear. I don't have much of an interest in min-maxing if one has a socket + speed bonus, another has warforged + survival bonus...maybe those alternative gear sets offer you some customization. That seems like a hassle to me, though less than in the past with reforging gone and bigger bags to store excess gear in.

Onto your ideas! Original tier could be a great modification. I figure they'd have to make them even more rare and powerful as sets in order to account for still having other chest/legs/head/shoulder/hands gear dropping. Would not enjoy the return of gems or more modifications in general. Currently feels too mandatory and frequent for my taste. These "customizing" factors are basically the cookie cutter effort area of the game. Guaranteeing tertiary stats would basically make them secondary stats, no? Doesn't seem right as they're supposed to be the new "SOMETHING extra" kid on the block. I would love to see them drop as modification tokens or something similar myself. In other words, something you used to "enhance" a few available armor slots, which you could trade, sell, decide who to give it to, wait to use on different gear, and use to customize truly unique/fun/creative stats.

...I'm actually really liking this idea... guess I'll start a thread to hear flaws. >_>

[Littleraven]

I don't really get what the big deal is. Honestly if you are already killing the hardest difficulty with little effort what does it even matter if you are BiS or not anyway? At that point it just becomes about epeen imo.

Of course you are gonna have your completionists who feel like they just NEED to have total BiS but honestly this isn't going to effect anyone except the top tier raiders who don't even need BiS to clear stuff anyway.

[Nelle]

They only do this so they can try justify these boooooooooooring 1½ year long tiers:
"But you don't have BiS yet, so this tier is still a valid grind, please wait another half year for new content"

Sucks.....

[Krommm]

As I've said before, the WoD gearing system is going to involve Diablo-esque loot. The difference is before you had sockets on many pieces and reforging for every piece. (barring some trinkets)

With RoS, D3 gains reforging and WoW loses it while gaining random "bonus" stats and removal of reforging. It's really hilarious if you think about it. In the end, I think it will work out if a bit annoying at times. There isn't much room left for customization with the changes so get ready to use non optimal gear like pre cataclysm.

[Verain]

With you 100%, but predicting no fixes for a whole tier minimum, possible whole expac.

[threads]

I have a good feeling that the RNG diablo raid loot will be WoD's version of MoP's daily quest disaster.

[zoomgpally]

While I think the removal of hit/exp AND reforging was a bit much, I don't completely agree with your stance on this topic. I think that removing hit/exp and keeping reforging would be good, because you'd get to keep those minor tweaks on your gear without it being a huge headache just to keep up with hit/exp caps. However, I'm honestly kind of excited for the loot system in WoD.

Always having something to look forward to in raid drops is a plus in my opinion. It may mean it's more difficult to hit the coveted BIS status, but at least you'll have more to look forward to. I suppose it just depends on how you look at it. If you're the type who focuses on bosses dying, you'll probably not be overly concerned. But if you're the type that is more focused on his character sheet (which I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with), I imagine making BIS more difficult to attain could cause a stir.

Personally, I've never been full BIS. As long as I have the gear I need to finish bosses, I'm happy. The more gear I get after that is icing on the cake for me, but if someone else in my raid group could use it more, they're more than welcome to it.

All that said, I do think tier pieces should be clear on exactly what they have upon dropping, not upon turning in. I hate the thought of taking a tier piece from a fellow raid member and having it turn out to be a flop that I don't need/can't use, and all of a sudden that awesome drop that could benefit your raid is not being utilized by anyone.

Which is why you focus on getting everybody their set bonuses before rolling for wf/gem/whatever chance

Only thing I fear is that items that SHOULD be upgrades are not because you have a socket for that slot. Would suck to disenchant loot 20 itemlevels above what you have just because the sockets are worth more than itemlevel...

[Ssateneth]

I stopped reading where they said the new enchants = less customization because there are fewer slots to enchant while ignoring the fact that many slots in MoP had only 1 enchant that was viable for your class/spec (shoulder, legs, chest stats or stam if tank, rings, etc). you have 5 fully customizeable enchant slots now to get the exact stat you want.

[Deleted]

These changes to sockets and tier, along with the introduction of tertiary stats, strike me as a flimsy attempt to A) extend the life of tiers and/or B) further simplify the game for the less motivated players. I'm fine with some things being simplified for players, and I'm fine with tiers living somewhat long lives, but there are better ways to do both. For starters, the skill pruning and stat squishes were good examples of simplification, and I think they were enough. Want longer tiers? Extra achievements and bosses might help.

ad A)
What does that even mean? As a top100 raider, you of all people should know, that EVERY tier can be cleared out with non-BiS gear. What is "extend the life of tiers"? A tier is done for a guild, when the last boss falls. Everything that comes after, like farming upgrades, is just that: Farming.

ad B)
How is this simplifying the game? And no, skill pruning was not simplification, it was getting rid of passives you never thought about anyway.

The changes to gems, sockets, and tier are superfluous at best, and are inevitably going to do little but cause great frustration and animosity within the organized raiding community. Maybe not at first, since everyone will be busy enjoying the fresh scenery and content, but eventually all anyone will be able to think about is when their off-set legs are going to drop as WF with a socket, or when they'll get another chance to turn in a tier token to try for WF tier gloves, or a chest piece with a socket.

This is only true, if you talk about a raid of loot-whoring egotists, instead of an "organized group", and if said group uses an antiquated system of loot distribution like dkp. This may come as a surprise to you, but this is not the case in many many many organized guilds. In fact, people are surprisingly content with gearing each other up, because what everyone REALLY wants, is bosskills. If that is not true for your guild, I pity you.

The worst case scenario (granted, it's a tad extreme) is that mid-ranking guilds have absolutely dreadful luck with loot and another one has incredible luck. The performance difference between a very well-geared group (lots of WF, sockets, and WFS + good tertiaries) and one with absolutely dreadful luck with suffixes WILL be noticeable for non-world ranking guilds.

Surprise, surprise, we had this before. Remember BT/SWP progress and Nihilum? No Warglaives for what...4 months after the world first on illidan? Meanwhile, Johnny Klickerdigger, from TheAwesomeraiders of LowPopDerpRealm, got 3 SETS of warglaives in 6 IDs. And, was that a problem? NO! IT WASN'T!

Loot doesn't need a "guarantuee"! BiS is not something you automatically deserve! Luck is important, or the game becomes boring the moment that last boss falls.



Without accusing anyone, it seems to me, that you are more worried about not getting to "tick off the list" before anyone else now. How dare Blizz deny you the satisfaction of E-Pride by presenting your awesome top100 lewt in the city before all those scrubs, amirit? How dare they involve something like luck, that could benefit someone else, but not you?

Hey, I have an Idea! Make crit a guarantuee! How dare blizzard make that bossfight 0.001% easier for that not top100 guild, because their best dps had a lucky streak.

[Deleted]

You are wrong. And anyone who agrees with you is also wrong.

"more powerful" gems and enchants, but fewer of each = less customization no matter how you spin it.

More options but no choices is WAY less character customization than less options but more choices. There IS NO character customization as of now especially if you go as far as min/maxing. You don't have "a lot" of gems to put in your several sockets. You have that one gem that you have to put there if you are min/maxing and that's it. You don't have a lot of gear to enchant. You have that one enchant that you have to place on that piece. You don't have any choices in glyphs or rotation either. The only part that is slightly changeable is talents regarding some encounters and even then not for very class. How can you even CALL what we have now as "lots of character customization". There is none. It's all fake and gimmicky. Anyone has done any kind of theory crafting has long ago realized this.

On a side note. Blizzard has stated that their current standing after removing reforge/exp/hit etc. Is that Flasks,Food,Enchants,Sockets,Warforged and Tetriary stats are a bonus. Raids are tuned around you being without any of them. Using them is essentially placing one foot into next tier. So while you can get better gear than you currently have you aren't required to have it to clear the content. Which is nice. It's always nice to have something to go for.

On the last note. I imagined that top guild would be the same as my mediocre raiding guild. That you would give the piece to the guy who gets the biggest upgrade from it for the sake of getting down that boss together. Judging from your post it seems I was wrong.

[Priestiality]

You are wrong. And anyone who agrees with you is also wrong.

More options but no choices is WAY less character customization than less options but more choices. There IS NO character customization as of now especially if you go as far as min/maxing. You don't have "a lot" of gems to put in your several sockets. You have that one gem that you have to put there if you are min/maxing and that's it. You don't have a lot of gear to enchant. You have that one enchant that you have to place on that piece. You don't have any choices in glyphs or rotation either. The only part that is slightly changeable is talents regarding some encounters and even then not for very class. How can you even CALL what we have now as "lots of character customization". There is none. It's all fake and gimmicky. Anyone has done any kind of theory crafting has long ago realized this.

On a side note. Blizzard has stated that their current standing after removing reforge/exp/hit etc. Is that Flasks,Food,Enchants,Sockets,Warforged and Tetriary stats are a bonus. Raids are tuned around you being without any of them. Using them is essentially placing one foot into next tier. So while you can get better gear than you currently have you aren't required to have it to clear the content. Which is nice. It's always nice to have something to go for.

On the last note. I imagined that top guild would be the same as my mediocre raiding guild. That you would give the piece to the guy who gets the biggest upgrade from it for the sake of getting down that boss together. Judging from your post it seems I was wrong.

It's not that we think the level of character customization stayed the same, it's that we think it never existed in the first place. Seriously you kids are mad because you don't get to go to Ask Mr. Robot and blow a few hundred gold every time you get a new piece of gear??

[Kuntantee]

You did not explain why this is really bad other than stating your opinions. What kind of effects this system could produce that would affect gameplay in a bad manner? You just say you didn't like it because it's random?

I am glad that
- they removed reforge because gearing was an optimization problem.
- they introduced WF and Gem as random and rare rolls because it will bring something more to pursue for normal (heroic in WoD) raiders.