Master Looter

[Verdugo]

Any change that reduces the possibility for abuse or exploitation is a win in my books.
I welcome this change.

Only Blizzard is allowed to abuse you.

[tclphz]

If they tuned around a reasonable amount of play time in Legion, rather than what WF guilds were doing, Mythic raiding would have been a hilarious joke as those guilds cleared them in under 100 attempts total for sure. I wouldn't be shocked if some went the whole tier without wiping if they had tuned in Legion how you are suggesting. This would have been great tuning for me, and had they tuned this way I would probably still be playing. However, they instead tuned around WF guild behavior forcing much harder tuning on EVERYONE WHO RAIDS MYTHIC AND EVEN TO SOME EXTENT HEROIC.

The complaints were everywhere all expansion long when it came to how grindy Legion was. Are you being fucking serious right now that there were no complaints? Not all of them were directed at split raiding specifically, but it's a large part of the larger problem with Legion in how gearing and loot distribution was handled. In summary, horribly. Gear and loot distribution was handled horribly in Legion. Worst it's ever been done in the game. It led to a lot of people leaving an expansion that really did have good content and plenty of it. The grind was real, persistent, doubled down on even when it was clearly unpopular, and it was the last straw for many.

You want me to ask the devs to stop tuning for WF guilds just so ML and trading can continue? Do you think the WF guilds would be happy with an instance that was tuned that easy? Do you think the Mythic community as a whole would be happy with that solution? I doubt it.

Your premise completely relies on ML, trading, and split runs NOT being accounted for in tuning. That wasn't true in Legion... you didn't even try to dispute it. What makes you think that they won't continue to tune Mythic the way they always have? What if they say "NO" to your idea of "stop tuning towards WF guilds"? Then we're back where we started... bye master looter and hopefully trading and bye to anyone who honestly thinks it will affect the game negatively. Good riddance to all of the above.

The grind in Legion was not about split runs or ML, it was because you had to get the right legendaries, you had to grind up artifact power, you had to do large number of m+ in hopes for a titanforge (or a legendary). Maybe you need the right tier pieces in the right slot to fit your best legendaries. RNG personal loot and no trading (which I guess you're mad at too) doesn't make that process easier. The funny part is that I think you are right in many of your complaints about the grind in Legion, and right that the complaints were not directed at split raiding. But somehow split raiding and master looting became the focal point of your complaints. I also find it interesting that you think WF guilds would be unhappy about easier tuning, but don't realize that they're equally unhappy about the loss of master loot.

I feel like your entire argument amounts to WoW doesn't fit how I want to play WoW, so the devs should change everything so the game fits me. You want the game to be easier for you, but still hard for others (namely WF guilds).

[Deleted]

Loot councils get to steer loot for the benefit of the raid group, overall. If a plate item drops and 3 different dps classes can use it, it may be BiS for one, and just an upgrade for the other two. Who should get it? If you care about the raid, you give it to the person for whom it is BiS.

There are downsides, but that right there is the upside, to my understanding. If you're not in a competitive guild, then it doesn't really matter either way, but if you're racing for world firsts, giving that bis to the right player matters.

You can still trade loot if it drops on personal. People tend to forget that

[Prime92]

I was never in a guild that didn't shamelessly abuse master loot.

Some shitty guilds you've been on. All the way through from WotLK till now? Amazingly unlucky or biased as fuck cause of weird personality.

I remember getting replaced because they nabbed a better geared lock from another guild. Despite being there all the way to LK.

Maybe he was also much better? Maybe you were holding the raid back? Maybe he was comparable to you but had much better gear (what the fuck does ML have to do with it btw?)? + It's one example of one person. Doesn's mean a thing.

In Cata my guild leader would hand out dkp to people just because they ran dungeons. In MoP, loot council basically just meant friends got loot first. I remember busting my ass to get all the epics I could get before Vaults landed. Then the officer who was still in blues got every loot drop. Then they had their geared warlock, and kicked half the guild to do 10 man.

Still, it's likely he was much better, he was reliable (wouldn't abandon the guild mid progress), perhaps that was the class that was needed to progress certain bosses. You're raging as if a world was supposed to end, yet you probably never thought that you were just bad or at least worse than other people at the game. Switching to PL won't help you in that case, it's only going to hinder your guilds progress. Git gud.

I was always in guilds that never abused ML, there was always trial period for new people. You join - you agree to terms, you don't like the terms? - fuck off, don't even bother applying, find something that suits you.

You should also change the last sentence of your subscript to "Now I advocate for the game to become even more fucked up lottery driven crap and shadow of MMOs genre so I can finaly appear better than I truly am due to inflated lucky gains of item levels, and when it happends I'll have to find something else to rage about and blame for my failures #SadFace #TruthHurts".

No raiding guild is going to hinder their progress by handing out loot to bad players. Every other guild outside of top ~1500 perhaps ~2000 might do so, cause they don't even finish progress and they don't care. Deal with it.

[Hctaz]

Aaaahhh. I see what you're saying now, and you do have a point.

I think then, they need to re-implement actual raid lockouts, since I think that should bring the problem under control without screwing over most of their raiders. That should bring the issue under control. Sure, you can still funnel loot to one person, but that one character can only go once, and every character that did the instance is now locked out as well. Guilds would have to sport huge, unfeasible rosters to funnel loot to every one of their characters.

They won't. This is the way I wish things were as well, but they want raiding to be more inclusive these days. Back in the day, the different difficulty settings all shared a lock out with each other as well. If you did a boss on 10 man normal ICC, then you couldn't do that same boss on heroic. You would start the week by clearing your heroic bosses first, and then change the difficulty to normal to finish off. If you were saved to a boss, then you couldn't even walk into an instance unless it was further or equally as progressed as you.

[Drusin]

I hate split clears, but I hate forced personal loot more.

[RobertoCarlos]

Less options in a mmorpg is always better!!

[Drusin]

You can still trade loot if it drops on personal. People tend to forget that

What I do know is that whenever someone in my guild is having bad weather I'm going to suggest they get removed from the raid in the event they get loot and lose power. It happens, 100% legit, because my RL will check local weather reports to see if you're BSing lol.

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Less options in a mmorpg is always better!!

I still remember when Blizz said "More options isn't always better"

[Khallid]

Why are high end raiders complaining their taking Master loot away? I thought high end raiders hated being forced to do split runs? Don't guilds like Method hate running 5+ characters through heroic every week? Wouldn't forcing personal loot make it easier for other guilds to compete with method? Why are people complaining about removing Master loot as an option? Aren't you tired of Method winning every single race? Don't you want more people to take up high end raiding?

What's wrong with forcing it for a few weeks until a few guilds have killed the final boss on mythic? Or restricting heroic clears per account during the WF race and banning account sharing players?

It's mostly because players want choice. Rational decision is logically a better distribution system than pure randomness. I think they exagerrate with their hate though; loot will drop and someone will get it. The gearing up difference is not as significant in a well-ordered guild as they claim, because everyone is worth receiving loot in such circumstances. The only cases where personal loot is kinda shit in my opinion is when a noob who spends all the fights dead gets loot, which he doesn't really deserve. In flex raids the bosses get more health when you have more people, so a dead player has a negative contribution towards the kill; on mythic he would be taking the spot of potentially someone better. But in an organized mythic guild that happens a lot less, because that person would simply get kicked.

It's worth noting that the current form of personal loot does not kill split runs. So the high-end players get no advantage from the change. It's more helpful for weaker "regular" guids that screw up with loot by having favoritism or such nonsense, so I do believe that the benefits of personal loot outweigh the disadvantages for the majority of people.

[Cebel]

This is what I find strange about this whole thing. Why not just give people the option and let them decide? Why force everyone into some system? I like personal loot over master loot in pugs, there was an actually issue there.

But if the goal of this is to stop split raids... Let the world first raiders kill themselves doing split runs. That's their choice. Give guilds the choice in how they want to run their loot system.

Bingo, it's already happening. Especially in the US. You can find yourself a decent 3 night raiding guild full of ex-world top 15 raiders who simply dont wanna do it anymore and are getting solid results. Blizzard thinks they know what players want, when in reality what we want is to be left the hell alone to make our own decisions.

[Varitok]

I don't use Master loot and I am not a high end player but I am utterly sick of Ion and his terrible team removing every ounce of choice and non RNG mechanics from this game. This is the worst state the WoW team has ever been in, There is a complete disconnect between player and developer. I said it before and i'll say it again, this has everything to do with upping your time played metric to feed to the investors because they don't report subs anymore. You're going to have to play more if all your loot is forced personal.

[IceMan1763]

TThe grind in Legion was not about split runs or ML, it was because you had to get the right legendaries, you had to grind up artifact power, you had to do large number of m+ in hopes for a titanforge (or a legendary). Maybe you need the right tier pieces in the right slot to fit your best legendaries. RNG personal loot and no trading (which I guess you're mad at too) doesn't make that process easier. The funny part is that I think you are right in many of your complaints about the grind in Legion, and right that the complaints were not directed at split raiding. But somehow split raiding and master looting became the focal point of your complaints. I also find it interesting that you think WF guilds would be unhappy about easier tuning, but don't realize that they're equally unhappy about the loss of master loot.

I feel like your entire argument amounts to WoW doesn't fit how I want to play WoW, so the devs should change everything so the game fits me. You want the game to be easier for you, but still hard for others (namely WF guilds).

Mythic raiding is the part of WOW I need to be good to enjoy the game because it's by far my favorite part. I think it's an unfair competitive environment in Legion. You think I want Mythic to be easier... that's an unfair conclusion. I want it to be more fair and less time consuming to prepare your character for each raid tier. Much of WOW's history, especially the most popular eras, the game was FAR less time consuming when it came to maintaining a raid ready character. This gave people more freedom to explore secondary specializations, alts, alt runs, PVP, pets, transmog, whatever the hell you like. I want the fights themselves to be challenging as hell, just like Yogg 0 lights when I wiped 500+ times before we killed it in Wrath. Or the 400+ it took to down Rag in Cata. Considering my history I think it's a bit unfair to characterize me as someone who wants Mythic to be "easier". Time consuming doesn't mean difficult. And Mythic doesn't need to be tuned where time spent outside of raid is such a large and required part of the environment.

I have said consistently that the ablility to do split runs is PART of the problem with tuning and the grindiness of Legion, it's not the ONLY problem. It's hard to completely split and disconnect each piece though, know what I mean? For example, random secondary stats and WF/TF range being WAY too high made split runs far more lucrative than in past expansions, correct? Split runs (or more specifically, the gear acquired from them) had to be accounted for when tuning mythic raids, as did AP, M+ loot, and anything else that increases your character's power.

I know you can't read every one of the my posts, but here's a summary of my viewpoint on what Blizzard's path for the future of ML will be in order of the best case scenario for the game as a whole:

1) A complete re-examination of how loot and gear is distributed in order to come up with a system that is simple in nature, random enough to prevent gearing being TOO formulaic, but not so random as to hold players totally hostage to RNG rolls for their BIS legiondary, for example. My suggestion is a system of only PL with zero BOP trading backed by bad luck protection which is tied to high ilvl items on an individual item basis. We take something that they have done since WOTLK with quest drops (bad luck protection actually goes back that far), and apply it to high level gear. Killed a boss 10 times but not seen the drop you need? Guess what? Your chances are now significantly higher to see it than your first kill.
2) Do nothing
3) ONLY remove ML with no other associated changes

I think only removing ML is the worst possible solution, so I'm with people who are scared of that notion, especially with how short sighted this dev team can be.

[Cebel]

Something you took advantage of wasn't an issue for you? Shocker man.

It's literally an issue:

"Using multiple raid groups to funnel loot to a set of mains [is] a competitive advantage of the high end, it's not fun for people who do it"
- Ion

Signed, ex top 100 world raider on a 12 hour per week schedule, something impossible in today's WOW

False, theres numerous top 100 world raiders on 12 hour week schedules. We dont need blizzard to tell us wtf to do, I hated doing it, and stopped. Period. It's a game, its supposed to be fun, I wasnt "taking advantage" of shit, I was doing what I found fun at the time. As my life changed and my ingame goals changed, I made the decision to stop doing it.

[burek]

I'm not into guild racing, but slowing down progression is not fun. I don't care that every guild is equally effected. The issue is that the overwhelming majority of groups that used master loot did not in any way, shape, or form abuse it but used it to play the game in a way that was fun for the members of the group. Now all those groups are being punished because Blizzard wants to fix a problem that only exists for like world top 20 guilds.

But progression is already slowed down for most guilds because content is tuned for guilds that do split runs. If you remove split runs and tune accordingly that means the progression for most will actually be faster

[thatmikeguy]

Taking out filtered gear will be good for the high end of the game overall. When you have a few players that have the time to play many toons to filter gear at raiders, those few players tend to play together and nothing ever changes.

Taking out set items in BfA would have changed this to be worse than it is now. It is better to have all personal loot over going back to lockouts for all.

They need to drop additional loot in personal with this system IMO, with warforged and TF never going away.

I fear for how weapons will work, if they are individual as they were before Legion. I don't know if they could go to an artifact like system with new weapons or not, where all weapon slots would be filled but separate transmog?

[Grimnakh]

You can either eat a piece of chocolate or a piece of shit. 99% people are choosing the chocolate better find a way to make people eat that shit.

Gearing is relative. If no one can use ML no one needs ML. the only thing thay ever felt like a loot lottery in Legion was Arcano, a couple trinkets and leggos. I never felt like I wasnt getting slow and steady upgrades on my mains with PL. The issues with it are absurdly exagerated.

[burek]

Why take away the option?

Why do people keep parroting this as it was actually an option? Master looter is optimal, and thus mandatory. There is no option.

[Grimnakh]

Why do people keep parroting this as it was actually an option? Master looter is optimal, and thus mandatory. There is no option.

Because it sounds good as a talking point, it doesnt hold any water in reality, but theyre not arguing in good faith, so what do you expect, theyll say anything to keep thier special loot system.

[oland138]

But progression is already slowed down for most guilds because content is tuned for guilds that do split runs. If you remove split runs and tune accordingly that means the progression for most will actually be faster

How about don't restrict split runs, and tune for people who don't do split runs? Who cares if method clears mythic in a night.

[IceMan1763]

False, theres numerous top 100 world raiders on 12 hour week schedules. We dont need blizzard to tell us wtf to do, I hated doing it, and stopped. Period. It's a game, its supposed to be fun, I wasnt "taking advantage" of shit, I was doing what I found fun at the time. As my life changed and my ingame goals changed, I made the decision to stop doing it.

Great logic moron... you basically just said because it was fun you weren't taking advantage of shit.

LOL... I think stealing your money is fun.... so give me all of it and because it's fun I'm not taking advantage of you. DM me for my paypal address I'm expecting the money soon don't spoil my fun bra.

Also, FYI, the fact that you think split runs aren't taking advantage of the loot system doesn't matter at all, because Ion does:
“Using multiple raid groups to funnel loot to a set of mains [is] a competitive advantage of the high end, it's not fun for people who do it,”

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Because it sounds good as a talking point, it doesnt hold any water in reality, but theyre not arguing in good faith, so what do you expect, theyll say anything to keep thier special loot system.

I like you... you can tell the no lifers who so vigorously defend this asinine system are very scared they might not be able to compete if the playing field is leveled a bit.