4.2 and Loot Tables - Problem?

[Mammoth]

Its either going to be more bosses (a 2nd raid) or more possible drops per boss. Both are possible, but if there is a 2nd raid, they're managing to keep it very quiet. Once 4.1 launches I'm sure we'll here more about 4.2.

[KaPe]

Or more RNG loot like in throne of the 4 winds.

This type of loot works, the only problem is that Al'akir drops items that are available from reputation epics/easier bosses - which was covered in one of dev talks and is supposedly getting fixed in 4.1.

[Deleted]

How about making upgraded valor points rewards available for purchase if you got the "heroic: *****" achivement. This would mean you cannot upgrade your current selection of items through valor points until you downed a certain boss on heroic.

Ofc the selection of gear is dependent on boss. Say neck + relic can be upgraded from first boss heroic, legs+oh for second boss etc etc.

[Czar]

Are you missing out teir 4.2's Baradin Hold boss? Emaloth, with T12 gear. He's gonna have 3 adds, and every now and again he makes one go big...

But in all seriousness, I don't see a major problem with gear at the moment. So what, we have to hope week in week out, but thats half the fun of raiding, the mystery behind it. As an elemental shaman there is at least one drop off every boss I can use (mostly contested with a resto shaman / other spell dps), and the rest i can fill in from VP. 7 bosses could be slightly more problematic in the current way gear is handed out, but it worked for TotC, in fact, that was the easiest it has been to gear up ever in this game. I took all 3 of my 80's at the time to have full T9, only one of which was even in a guild. Although i wouldn't want to see that happen again, it is possible to gear up off of few bosses.

[Ashareth]

Honestly IF there is only 7 bosses loot table will be hell (like in ToC, don't know for you but there is a reason while people well into ICC hm were STILL running ToC every week because the trinklets they needed still hadn't drop for them).

On my war/DK alts, i ran it roughly 30 times, the two added, and i NEVER saw the 2h weapon. That's a problem when loot tables expand.

One way to alleviate that is indeed to move some of the items into valor rewards, specially slots that concerns only a few of the specs (ie : shields, both tank and caster, relics, wands, ranged weapons).
It would favourize certain specs (in a way, it would take them a defined time to be sure to have an item, compared to a chance to not have it in weeks, but it could take them longer to get said item than if they had been lucky and it had dropped in the first 2 kills), but would greatly reduce the loot table.

Another way would be to move some drops as "tokens" for multiple classes, to be turned into the actual items that would be quite some variations (Relic are the first thing that comes to my mind).

Takolin : RNG items like in T4W are the worst thing. It's the exact same thing that puting more items in the loot table, except there is the added rng of the stats on it on top.
Put that as a token allowing you to buy any of the possible version from a vendor, and it reduces rng, reduces the chance of the item not useful to the raid AND makes gearing up a little easier.

[Butterball]

Its fairly obvious that there is going to be another raid alongside the Firelands one...

[Deleted]

Its fairly obvious that there is going to be another raid alongside the Firelands one...

Name me a single double raid patch in the history of WoW. RS doesn't count as it came many months after ICC.

While i'm not dismissing the fact there might be, it's not fairly obvious at all, unless when you look at the situation in this way.

and the rest i can fill in from VP..

Now put this in the context of heroic raiding, this element is completely removed ^^

[Deleted]

Now put this in the context of heroic raiding, this element is completely removed ^^

As I said this is a solution for that in heroic raiding

How about making upgraded valor points rewards available for purchase if you got the "heroic: *****" achivement. This would mean you cannot upgrade your current selection of items through valor points until you downed a certain boss on heroic.

Ofc the selection of gear is dependent on boss. Say neck + relic can be upgraded from first boss heroic, legs+oh for second boss etc etc.

[Deleted]

The obvious answer is that it would simply lead to people boosting others for money to get the achievement and thereby allowing them to purchase the entire loot table of a heroic boss simply by killing it once.

[Mowg]

Toc had 5 bosses, but look at the amount of stuff each boss dropped. They've managed with only 5 bosses, they can manage with 7 just fine. Just more rng added into the mix if there is only 1 raid.

The difference with then and now is that ToC had separate lockouts and different loot tables for 10/25. ToC had a good number of design flaws, and one of them was the fact that a 10-man guild had to PuG ToC25 to get particular slots that weren't available for them in ToC10. So technically, there were 10 bosses, if we go by the loot table (or 20 counting hard modes).

In Cata, both 10/25 mans share the same loot and the same lockout. So it's only 7 bosses, going by the loot table.

[Deleted]

The obvious answer is that it would simply lead to people boosting others for money to get the achievement and thereby allowing them to purchase the entire loot table of a heroic boss simply by killing it once.

First off, say one piece costs 2200 valor points, i.e Leg piece.

To upgrade them to heroic version: first boss HC achivement

To upgrade: 1100-2200 valor points again.

this way, even IF you have access to the loot table for that perticular boss you still need points to get it, and just because you have access to the whole loot table, doesnt mean you will be able to actually use more then 2 pieces. As the example: Legs from first boss achivements, you get access to the cloth, lether, mail and plate legs, but as a caster dps the only viable piece is the cloth dps pants so why is that a problem?

Also, "people boosting others for money", havent this been around forever? I know bc/wotlk used to have high end guilds selling gear for money, this time you know you'll be able to buy it. It's a guaranteed drop instead of a %chance of getting it.

[Azerate]

We dont have enough information to speculate on that. It will be solved somehow for sure.

[soulkeeperx]

They'll most likely have the CoT raid as well in 4.2...at least I really really hope so, 7 bosses with 1 raid lockout would suck

[PBitt]

There are also a few cases atm where one slot has too many options compared to others...for example, for hunter legs, we have tier, Magmaw legs, Al'Akir legs, and Sinestra legs if you get that far...while we only have one wrist, melee weapon, and neck option until Al'Akir gets buffed. On that note, Throne of the Winds could have dropped more useful loot to begin with, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we have enough legs and belts as it is.

IMO, it would make more sense to add at least one more tier piece to a token only (like the chest) and put it on a boss, still allowing non-raiders/slow raiders to get their two piece and this would kind of free up a different piece of VP loot to be obtainable on the vendor. They also should, and probably will, add at least a couple new craftable items for each class.

[Sunseeker]

I wouldn't be surprised to see an increased number of BoEs, in fact, I highly expect Firelands to be a more BC-style setup when it comes to trash.

But yes you're right there's going to be an issue with only 7 bosses. Even if we had only one item per type of class, we're still looking at 3 kinds of plate, 2 kids of cloth and mail, and 1 kind of leather(assuming they don't make tank specific leather). Only to increase the problem, they could make more overlapping gear. Hit/mastery, expertise/haste, crit/all of the above. As if we didn't have enough competition issues already *eyeroll*.

The problem will undoubtetly be solved in the same way it was for ToC: more badge gear. I wouldn't be surprised if we see, with such a small number of bosses, a transition towards more vendor gear to alleviate RNG problems.

[tibben]

One could also imagine that theyre not GOING to try and cover every single slot with a new item, but make it so you actually HAVE to go back to BoT/BWD/Totfw in order to get your BiS items still - so youre covered in half-372 and half whateverthefuck level drops from Firelands. If every single item in firelands is an upgrade, they just made BWD/BoT 100% obsolete and not worth revisitting for any highly ranked guild (as theres not even an legendary to assemble).

I don't really understand your reasoning here. Of course the previous tier is going to be obsolete. There might end up being a couple of items that are worth going back for in order to increase dps by 50 for min/maxers, but considering that in Cata the primary stats are so much more powerful than they were in any previous expansion I don't see many people going back to T11 after T12 comes out to farm for an upgrade.

[Dracodraco]

I don't really understand your reasoning here. Of course the previous tier is going to be obsolete. There might end up being a couple of items that are worth going back for in order to increase dps by 50 for min/maxers, but considering that in Cata the primary stats are so much more powerful than they were in any previous expansion I don't see many people going back to T11 after T12 comes out to farm for an upgrade.

Exactly - and do they want that? Don't they want people to go back to the previous tier and experience it, for as long as possible? If they could do this by leaving gaps in the next tier, then I could see them do it (to make sure people don't just have 7 bosses they need to clear. Remember, unless theres fucktons of thrash, 7 bosses is... Relatively short).