Define Welfare epics

[Soulstorm]

Imo.

1. Merciless for Honor is sick.

2. Good they added Personal Rating on items!

3. FFS BLIZZ CHANGE THE LOOK ON THROWING WEAPON! (How hard could it be?)

[Nezoia]

Define Welfare epics

Epics Windcape didden't like.

[BlazerWithTheLazer]

everybody will look at s2 geared players and just call them averagely geared.

exactly. epic is average when its supposed to be epic.
though the new rating requirments is a step in the right direction

[razzy]

welfare to me is S1 atm, and Kara items, there are some nice items from kara dont get me wrong, but when socketted with vendor gems and maybe pvp enchants total welfare springs to mind. lazy noobs with rep reward epics also.

But keeping average Joe in what seems epic items, keeps the RL gold flowing through blizz's doors

[emulous]

tbh I hope all you people die in fires and such, most of your comments are so self centers and pathetic you could have all just replied with:

"any epic thats a lower item level then the epics I'm currently wearing.. is welfare." I simply cannot understand why people pretend like they are skillful gods who play wow 23 hours a day since release and spent 10000k gold per item and everyone else just got it instantly in the bags after dinging lvl 70.

Fact of the matter is there are no such things as welfare epics. But since most of the people who play this game come from 3rd world countries they wouldn't understand that.. "welfare" is aid (money) that is given to un-employed people or people who are un-employable.

In wow terms if I were able to fill in a form to say that I was a casual player and blizzard then sent me arena points / honor points / badges / gold in the post every month.. that would be welfare..

Fact of the matter is in real life and warcraft the rewards reaped are not always directly effected by "effort" and rare given out justly.

EDIT: further more to my example they would infact sent me a percentage of YOUR honor / badges / arena points.

[Sokar]

Fact of the matter is in real life and warcraft the rewards reaped are not always directly effected by "effort" and rare given out justly.

Maybe in real life, but there was a time when it was more balanced, epic were epic and earned.
Then blizzard decided that everbody should wear epic because people don't care if an item is good or bad as long as it is purple...

[Soulstorm]

Well I'm not so good, but now that everybody got the items we worked hard for before, just doing BGs sounds a bit easy...

They could cost 50% Arena points + Honor points alteast! Or well wtf we kill them anyway...
Atm just getting as many diffrent classes as possible to 70, preparing for WLK. (Who knows what will happen?)

[Kierran]

Epics Windcape didden't like.

you lie, i used to be in wincapes guild ages ago and he had welfare epics(aswell as raiding epics but hey :P

[wriot]

welfare epic- Any epic attained through blizzard's nerfed reward system. The system of honor and badge points works to reduce turn-over in the population and increase player rentention. The result of getting epic items guaranteed over time has done much to besmirch the raiding population's effort to get high level/powered epic equipment that drop from very difficult raid bosses.


Here's a question

If gear progression was not guaranteed through badges and honor points, would anyone still play that has been stuck on a boss that is essentially a "gear check"?

[emulous]

Maybe in real life, but there was a time when it was more balanced, epic were epic and earned.
Then blizzard decided that everbody should wear epic because people don't care if an item is good or bad as long as it is purple...

No there wasnt. There were people who did raids and people who didnt..my priest had full T1/ benediction and tons of other epics within 3months of being lvl 60 and I only ever logged in once a week to do MC.. where as my mage only had 1 epic and I played him everyday for 6months only ever killed the first 2 bosses MC and didn't get the loot but I got rank 10 / exaulted with all Bgs. I would say I put around 1000x more effort / time / skill into my mage and yet like I said the only epic I used was the Sageclaw.

[Ttrust]

On a pvp standard i really dont have an opinion other then i like the rating system. But on a pve standpoint i would rather see that guildie running 5 mans and pounding out 100 badges for that one piece of gear then the guy that only logs on during raid nights and gets a piece of gear handed to him. So lets compare. 100 badges = average 30 heroic runs, even if it goes good or bad its at least an hour running them. So 1 of your so called welfare epics cost a person 30 hours of work. Another guy that only logs on for raids or those lucky few that get in after the initial "learn the boss" is done. I would call that welfare epics. Just my opinion.

[drakath]

I used to run pug-MC pre-bc. By your logic that makes MC epics about on par with kara epics and therefore also Welfare.

To me this is an elitist issue, and always has been.
"I don't want these people to have epics because I have epics and have had to work way harder for them"

[mrfinch]

To me this is an elitist issue, and always has been.
"I don't want these people to have epics because I have epics and have had to work way harder for them."

Trufax.

[vectrex]

Welfare epics is just wrong.. wrong, I tell ya! Honestly, it does take alot of challenge out of the game and the drive to improve the character. A game should remain challenging to be somewhat fun.

I have always thought of the PvP epics in TBC (those without the personal rating requirements that is) as welfares, simply cause all you had to do was to attend a small amount of arena games or AFK in battlegrounds to get it. My gear had a lower quality than the welfares in my early days of TBC, so this has nothing to do with it being epics of lower item level than what I'm currently wearing, as I didn't have a single one at that time.

It's not as difficult to get good quality loot as many people think. We got guilds raiding 3 days a week in Sunwell at the realm I'm playing at. There's other more casual guilds clearing BT as well. Just show a bit of dedication towards improving your character and stop thinking of WoW as any other solo game where you progress alone. It's a MMO, you should have to interact with others for the sake of your own.


@ emu: Welfare; "financial aid and other benefits for people who are unemployed, below a specific income level, or otherwise requiring assistance, especially when provided by a government agency or program". In this case, Blizzard is the government, the epics is the financial aid and those who don't want to play a part of the MMO part of the game is the unemployed.

[Warriorspwnwithhealer]

Those who say Pre tbc sucked either didnt play pre tbc, or was a noob at full green getting raped by ass candy in real old school AV

[metalhead]

To me welfare epix is anything you can hit 70 and do with pugs within a week or 2 or rep rewards.
Karazhan, ZA(the first few is very puggable), 4/5 s3, vindicator and as said Rep rewards.

As Xaith I'm happy they exist gives people a chance to "step up" if they want to raid instead of being lost in poor guilds for an eternity.

hyjal can be pugged... we do it all the time are those welfare ?

[memine]

welfare epics are/were the arena gear and badge gear. doing 10 arenas a week you get get in a few weeks. with season 3 bg gear got thrown into. in season 3 and now will be more common in season 4 will be team rating trades. this is done with 4 people with 2-3 sets of alts and a nice add-on to see who your up against.
but now you cant buy your PR like RAELI and QTPI on "kirn tor". this is where people that suck or cant get on a decent team. pay anouther team gold to scrub them threw to a good rating (welfare epics). this is where the real term came from.
with season 4 it will be harder to get gear. and all the people with 1850 or 2000 PR that cried to put a rating on all gear . will be crying hard when they cant get past 1550 cuz everyone stopped arenas becuase o the ridiculous Pr's on all but 3 pieces of gear. WELFARE T5 from badge vendor lmao

[noobj]

Welfare Epics is showing up to a raid... collecting free loot... den logging off till the next raid..

the time u spend learning the encounter = same amount of time people spend farming honor.. so it all evens out..

[coredumperror]

welfare epic- Any epic attained through blizzard's nerfed reward system. The system of honor and badge points works to reduce turn-over in the population and increase player rentention. The result of getting epic items guaranteed over time has done much to besmirch the raiding population's effort to get high level/powered epic equipment that drop from very difficult raid bosses.

I think that this is probably the best explaination on this thread for what defines a welfare epic, and why welfare epics are so reviled. I want to go one step further though, and explain further why raiders hate welfare epics.

As a raider, hardcore or not, you have to get a group of at least 10 people together who are good enough to actually *succeed* in killing raid bosses. Then, even if you kill that boss, you're not guaranteed to get the item you want, because of random drop tables. Then you also have to consider the 1-week lockout on all raids (except ZA), preventing even the amazingly good raiders, who can clear BT/Hyjal in 2-3 days, from getting any more gear per week than a single clear allows. So raiders put in time to:
1) organize a large group of people
2) teach them, through experience, to succeed in killing raid bosses
3) do it over and over each week until every person has gotten most of the gear they want
4) move on to higher level content, repeat from step 2 (or 1, if your guild has unstable membership).

As a player who relies on PvP to obtain their epics, there is a significantly reduced burden on that player to succeed. You, and all the friends you play with, will always earn honor/arena points, no matter how well or poorly you perform. You don't *have* to succeed to earn gear, and everyone of similar skill earns gear at the same rate, since there's absolutely no randomness factor in the acquisition of gear. Unlike raiding, with it's instance lockouts, the efforts of the really good PvPers are constantly rewarding them with more points to buy gear faster.

Unless you're talking about an exceptionally lucky alt, being run through Kara/ZA by an endgame guild, who happens to get just about every drop they could use from the instance in 2 or 3 runs, there's just no comparison whatsoever to the speed at which a player can earn epics through PvE compared to PvP. Getting an alt to 70, farming BGs for 3 week, and doing 30 arena matches, nets you 5-8 epics in 3 weeks, guaranteed, which are significantly better than the gear he could be getting out of kara. Once s4 comes out, and s2 gear is available from honor, it will be easy to completely skip kara, just farm honor for s2, and be well enough geared for 25mans and arena without ever seeing kara or any previous arena match.

If gear progression was not guaranteed through badges and honor points, would anyone still play that has been stuck on a boss that is essentially a "gear check"?

Yes, people will still play because all the bosses previous to that "gear check" are still dying and dropping gear, which will enable your guild to eventually have enough gear to beat that boss. And besides, there's hardly any gear check bosses in TBC. Leo and Brutallus are the only ones I can think of, except *maybe* Loot Reaver, but he's so easy that it hardly counts. And by the time you're getting serious attempts on Leo, it's really less about gear than it is about minimizing the effects of his threat table resets to maximize your DPS time. So the only really strong gear check is Brutallus, and he's only gonna be seen by the top 4-5% of guilds in the world anyway.

[Utal]

Welfare epics = Radiers looking down on those wearing out of date epics to get ahead in life


I am sure every raider here wore Karazhan epics at some point, just because NOW the content is easy for you dopesn't mean it's easy for everyone.