LFR and Norm+ have completely different loot tables?

[Briq]

I was looking at wowhead to see drops in highmaul and noticed that lfr and norm have separate loot tables? I remember there being a few items that only dropped in norm+ in mop, but the vast majority of items were just higher item level versions of the same thing. Has blizzard said what their reasoning was for the change? I guess they want to motivate people to move on to the next tier of raiding rather than just completing a set at the tier they start at?

[Deleted]

LFR has a completely different set of loot, no class specific but only armor class specific artwork and only generic sets and trinkets in WoD, as it's not considered a real raid but rather an opportunity for the real casual players to literally see the content and have something to do. It's pretty much about the artwork and story of the raid and not much after that.

LFR is not considered part of the progression path and Blizzard wanted to emphasize that by doing a clear cut and seperating loot tables not only by itemlevel but also by itemization and artwork itself.

If you are able to do heroic dungeons, normal and heroic highmaul are your entry level raids. There should be no incentive or "need" for you to enter LFR because you need to get that awesome trinket or complete a set bonus. LFR is not part of the raid content but it's kind of a spectator mode for people who can't or don't want to raid but still want to see what the instance and its story is all about. Since the main story mostly revolves about what happens inside raids after the initial launch, it's only fair to at least let everyone take a loot at it if they can't really participate for whatever reason.

[Briq]

I see, thanks for the info. I assume it's a separate lockout like it was in mop? It's probably going to be worth doing at least for a week or two, 640 isn't too bad.

[Deleted]

Yes, you have a seperate lockout for LFR.
You have seperate lockouts for everything. You COULD run lfr, normal, heroic and mythic if you wanted to, but at least lfr won't be necessary at all. Especially since LFR will not be released next week.
My guess is that you might always only be interested in the difficulty below the one you are currently progressing in.

[TenDance]

Since Blizzard stopped to provide items with the same itemlevel, but different rarity, a different itembudget, the only "big thing" about epics is that they mark the starting point when loot doesn't drop in heroics any more. For instance, in classic and BC, when you completed a large questchain you got an item with nearly the same itemlevel as other drops in the region you're questing. But being of rare quality, stats would have been boosted. Nowadays, quality and itemlevel correlate, which makes it very easy to see that the difference between an epic 640ilvl-item and a rare 630ilvl-item is not that big - and that there is no "need" to get that in order to prepare for raids.
In fact, due to bad itemization, it is most likely worse than what you could get out of 5man-heroics.
Now take into account that a lot of people had ample time to run heroics until the first raid opens it's doors and the stuff they got might not even be itemized the way they wished for, but is on top warforged and/or imbued with a third stat/socket, which gets this item on par, if not ahead of a badly itemized 640-epic.

Therefore, atm there is no need to farm the 640-epics. I can't tell you how many of them you got from CMs are that badly itemized it's very hard to tell if they bring any improvement aside from a bigger healthpool.

[Deleted]

But lfr gear is not needed to raid normally right?