Trial of the Champion (5-Man) Loot Table (Updated)

[Higiyz]

I understand that the whole "emblem/5 mans give good loot benefits players who have real lives and makes the game more fun and even makes the game winnable..."

All i'm saying is the game loses depth. If you suddenly only had to play soccer 5 hours a week to be as good as Pele, who wouldnt! However, I'm betting some people who have played soccer for 50 hours a week for their entire lives would be a little annoyed seeing everyone around them becoming ub3r l33t as well... as well as seeing the player pyramid lose depth and competitiveness. I like the game (wow and soccer ) being hierarchical, makes it more fun imo.

[Rhai]

Although there are some very good posts in this thread, there is a very major topic left uncovered:

Why do players need gear for their characters?

Better gear equals to better mitigation/avoidance, better damage output and better/faster healing on each spellcast. And why is all this needed? To progress further through the game.

This is something that reading it seems very obvious, but most people who have posted in this thread (mainly the ones that call themselves casuals and state they don't have time to raid) tend to ignore.
Gear does not equal to being better. Let's put aside the /flex factor that having good gear gives to some players.

There is currently no instance in the game where a casual (casual meaning non-raiding) player will *need* ilvl200+ gear in all slots to be able to survive.
The irony in this, is that Blizzard enables casual players to get higher ilvl gear, but doesn't give enough content for them to use it, not even enough for them to be satisfied with.

This taken as a fact, the only players who benefit from this are people who do have enough time to raid, but not consistently. The people who want to join PuGroups when they have enough time to play, but otherwise can't join a raiding guild - even a "casual raiding" one.

Players who they and they alone were the people Blizzard had in mind when designing WotLK.

-Easier end-game raid-content with hardmodes so raiders are not let down.
-10 AND 25 man versions of the same instances so it is even easier for everybody to have a look at the end game content.
-Enormous changes to buffs so they match the "bring the player, not the class" philosophy, which ofcourse derives from WotLK's design revolving around PuG end-game viability.

This is how it is.

I personally am very dissatisfied. I believe that hard work should be rewarded better (not talking gear, but end-game instances)

EDIT: Removed whining at the end, I want this post to bring discussion, not crying (agreeing with me or not)

[Higiyz]

I've always thought of gear as a trophy that displays accomplishment/guild progression/time investment etc. Now gear represents /roll luck and not much else.

And yeah, the game isn't deep enough for all the gear already commonly in circulation, I definitely agree. BC welfare gear added depth to game play by making Tier 5 content accessible to semi-casual guilds. These new layers of Wrath welfare gear aren't making anything more easily accessible in terms of gear improving progression, it's simply making the content already accessible...easier!

This being said, I'm expecting 3.3 to have at least 2 raid instances with greater relative difficulty than Ulduar (and at least 1 on par) in order to stretch the game. Blizz still has some tricks up their sleeve, I'm sure.

[FourofaKind]

In before tidal waves of tears at epics dropping from a normal 5man instance...

Tears of the Vanquished

lolwut.

Seriously, tho, is this place hard like MgT? (A breeze in Tier/just under tier, difficult for all greens), or is it just simply a way to replace Naxx.

[Hirako]

Why do players need gear for their characters?

Better gear equals to better mitigation/avoidance, better damage output and better/faster healing on each spellcast. And why is all this needed? To progress further through the game.

Or maybe they could use it for PvP? and if they are not hardcore PvPers they could have fun in BGs.

If you suddenly only had to play soccer 5 hours a week to be as good as Pele

You also wont get better or equal gear to people who raid 3-4 nights a week with this 5-man.

[Higiyz]

You also wont get better or equal gear to people who raid 3-4 nights a week with this 5-man.

^^ Yes you will.

[Endolicious]

^^ Yes you will.

Got to love that supporting evidence. Sure, there's great gear in there, but... I don't think we should absolute eliminate 5-mans from WoW, right?

(The rest of this post isn't directed at the quoted individual)

Really, when MgT came out, my group of 4 friends and myself hopped into the place instantly and practically led general chat to victory with our fight strategies. We had an absolute blast getting through the place and laughed all the way through when we were screaming on vent how this supposed 5v5 was CCing us to the ground, or when our healer got 1-shot. It was pretty much the last memory I have of my small group of friends before three of them quit because of Wrath. Great times.

My point is that 5 mans can still be fun and rewarding. When I got that Shard of Contempt from MgT on my Rogue, I knew it was awesome, but I had to work for it all the same. I eventually replaced it through my days in Black Temple, it served me well.

There may be items in this 5-man that are better than things in Naxx 10 and even Ulduar 10 (though that might be nerfed), but if you really think that raiders who go 3-4 nights a week will be beat by a 5-man, then you are looking at a very narrow spectrum of raiding.
If such a guild limits themselves (or cannot budget beyond) to just Naxx 10 every week, then what can Blizzard do to help them? Well, here they've got a 5-man.
If the guild or any individual in that guild is angry because their Naxx 10s are becoming unimportant, then it is their fault for limiting themselves. I've done 4 bosses in Ulduar with a group that only had 1 DPSer above 2k. First time I stepped in the place as a tank, or any role whatsoever.

And for those that don't want to read it all:

5 mans can still be fun (if the group is light-hearted) while being rewarding, even for the semi-hardcore raiders. This instance will help out those who want to gear up alts, or just missed out on that trinket / ring last weeks from whatever raid. Those who want to complain while in their Naxx 10s (though I still do those as well!) should expand their horizons, because the alternatives out there (Maly, Ulduar, soon-to-be Coliseum) are great too while completely doable with some coordination.

[bittemei]

Actually it is a bad thing.
I'm sorry there are so many people that seem to be blurring the line between a normal retail game, and a subscription based one.

We all do not play some random star of a console game that you pick up for 4-40 hours depending the genre; then toss aside and most likely never play again.

Your character is a long-running investment. Ever-growing, ever-changing. To progress beyond max level, working for gear is nearly the only way in this game.

This mentality is an outdated relic of classic wow, and hasn't been relevant since BC was released. Progression based on gear is NOT persistent when biannual expansions function as a gear reset. If you associate the value of your time spent playing an MMO with the quality of gear your character has, WoW will continue to disappoint you - might I suggest FFXI?

In case you've been living in a cave for the last few months as far as developer comments go, the devs have realized that designing key content(raids) around tiny fractions of their playerbase(srs bsns/ilvl epeen raiders) isn't a good idea. They spend a major portion of their dev resources making raids, and they want the majority of players to be able to experience them. If progression remains flat(X months in Naxx before geared for Uld, X months in Uld before geared for Crusade, X months in Crusade before geared for Icecrown) then a lot of players won't ever see Arthas, and Blizz wants most players to get a chance to fight him. Honestly, if the idea of 'casual' players beating Arthas upsets you, just quit playing now, because it's going to happen.

Facing facts: A successful persistent world needs a grind, needs timesinks, and it *NEEDS* long-term and short-term goals to strive for.
WoW was so successful because it took these concepts and then made them accessible to a much wider audience without cheapening the experience.

As for right now it looks like Blizzard is giving Mario a Flute in World 3, and he's skipping his way to World 7.
(Moreso than it ever has. And I do remember the Sunwell badge gear, and Magister's Terrace. There is hardly a comparison here.)

You and pretty much everyone else complaining about this issue and the upcoming badge change try to misrepresent the issue by making it seem like you ding 80 and get handed a full set of BiS Ulduar 25 epics. The gear selection for casuals is still junk compared to raiding, and the amount of effort-per-piece required to get a full set of badge items from heroics is significantly higher compared to the upgrades a single run of Naxx or Uld 25 will give someone in blues. This change just lets players who started late catch up faster - by the time they've managed to drop their last blues, most raiders who can clear current content(HM or not) will be in mostly t9/equivalent gear.

tl;dr= Raiding is about experiencing the encounters, not the gear. Suck it, elitist dbags - Blizzard </3 you anymore.

*edited: spelling

[Oblvious]

You are all right to complain. I mean Naxx isn't so dumbed down that a 4 year old couldn't bang his face on the keyboard and win.

Seriously... think about how dumb it sounds

"OMG, IT is purple colored text from a 5 man instance = a 10 man instance from 9 months ago."

Naxx = Serious Business apparently.

[Gilian]

It's nice for my alts, but it will get boring really fast. And that good feeling of getting that new shiny epic will be gone also (if it was still there;p).

But yes, very good for new players/alts/casual players ofcourse. Trial of the Champion normal > Trial of the Champion heroic > Heroic daily > Normal daily = win.

[Alemayehu]

Okay, this is mainly for the whiners out there, I am pleased with this patch for many reasons:

1. Flying mount reward with champion seals...didn't feel like talking to a RL alliance on Boulderfist to trade pets. Also, a nice conclusion to obtaining free money for a couple of weeks.

2. MGT came early. I doubt it will be as challenging but then again this did not come out at the same time as "Arthas/Icecrown/Citadel, the Final Frontier" patch. Also with how easy it is to hit level 80 now (lets not even discuss the BoA flying book thing) and constant gold streams via dailies (just like SWP), I'm sure blizzard is catering to alts maybe 75% and casuals 25%. So, uh say thank you? LOL

3. The 10 man trinkets, especially the one with passive armor pen is superb. For example, my feral has 2 piece 8.25, uld 25 weap, and naxx gears yet still has hateful bracers and some heroic blue trinket. Though he is capable of doing hardmodes in 10/25 man, that trinket would be a wondrous upgrade, and at the same time I would be experiencing new content/obtaining achievments. Good deal in my opinion plus a throwback to heroic MGT when people with war glaives would run MGT for the expertise trinkets, or how SWP healers still used the trinket from heroic MGT because it was amazing, etc. Basically a great way to get people into the new, lower level content.

4. Conquest emblems. I have a level 80 paladin (retpvp/prot), warlock (destro) and druid (feral pve/pvp mostly). Now while they are all at maximum level (and its very easy to hit 80 now), I welcome this change. I figured out my classes quickly and became great at many aspects of them. However, since I am a Biology Major in college, I would have small breaks followed by periods where I could not even think about WoW. Substitute "College" with I don't know, spouse, children, emergency, career, and you have a large pool of players that are intelligent, skilled, know their class, but would prefer to work out or spend time going out rather than playing 14 hours a day, instead there have been times where I play about 9-12 a week (just raiding). Therefore, I see these changes as a way to grind rep on my other 2 80's while obtaining t8.25. That way, since I am skilled and intelligent, I won't be laughed at when I try to rejoin my guild and they have been clearing tier 9 content. Also, I feel that any person that is smart enough to figure out bosses, listens, and is a teamplayer deserves great gear. I get a chance to even out the playing field. Hard for me to compete with a 14 year old that has no responsibilities but has a whole lot of DKP :P

5. You're paying $15.00 a month to have fun! Instead of worrying about what people are going to benefit from easy epics hit ulduar hard. See if you can do hard modes or even take out Algalon's a$$. Maybe geta 3v3 team together and see how high you can get you're ratings too. Maybe make money for a a week or 2, pursuing tradeskills, playing the AH, and selling cooldowns. The reason this game has been so fun for me is that I am so busy that everytime I log on I am challenged and this makes me pretty happy! If you are bored with all of these interesting developments maybe take a break and hit the gym? Patches are a lot more meaningful and enjoyable when you don't know about all the changes before hand on MMO

[Deionara]

blizz has ileveled this stuff wrong its all better than its ilevel.

[nick5454]

The other problem that exists and one ALL hardcores whine about. Yeah when I was hardcore I whined in BC.

Now the demographic of 18-35, casual is now the dominant subscriber of the game. Every job I go to I get many casuals hooked. I play from 1-10 hours a week thats it. I have a very demanding job so I have no choice.

But, we as casuals, want to have the opportunity to excel or have the chance to. In the last year many casuals were cancelling thier account due to arena team ratings and the overall amount of time required to raid ( raid, farm, 3 weeks an item in 25 mans is bs ).

The last patch is perfect evidence to this happening. Almost every change has been targeted at casuals...extremely low team ratings TOC and a bunch of other changes...read the release notes. WOW's change has been happening for a year now.

It gives people with low time investment because of social lives, family, work, etc the abilty to enjoy the game the same amount as everyone else.

The MMO demographics have been changing and the casuals or starting to become to main subscriber. I believe we will see games start shifting this way because of the demogrpahic reports released earlier this year for MMO's. I'm happy for the shift. It's a good step.

My 2 cents