ML changes kinda expose the problem with the WoW Forum community

[Lilija]

Giving loot to someone you know is going to be vital on the next boss (ranged DPS for Coven, your alt DK for Aggramar, immunities for Argus before the changes) is definitely going to help, no?

This single examples don't really prove the whole thing. My question is which loot distribution method taking into account all the possible factors makes more optimal gearing across the board in let's say all kinds of mythic guilds (and there is rather significant variance there already). Our intuition is that ML is better because we are in control. But how does it really compare numerically when it comes to the amount of loot that drops overall and if that particular item really gives that significant boost on this one person instead of some other person? Everyone comes from the point of their personal experience but no one really has the data of which one is REALLY more effective (given we are taking out the set bonuses). Not to mention that BfA loot design is still in progress. So my point is there is much more that we don't know than what we do and when it comes to which loot system is more effective it's mostly the arguments of type: because I think so and if you don't think the same you are dumb.

[Deleted]

This single examples don't really prove the whole thing. My question is which loot distribution method taking into account all the possible factors makes more optimal gearing across the board in let's say all kinds of mythic guilds (and there is rather significant variance there already). Our intuition is that ML is better because we are in control. But how does it really compare numerically when it comes to the amount of loot that drops overall and if that particular item really gives that significant boost on this one person instead of some other person? Everyone comes from the point of their personal experience but no one really has the data of which one is REALLY more effective (given we are taking out the set bonuses). Not to mention that BfA loot design is still in progress. So my point is there is much more that we don't know than what we do and when it comes to which loot system is more effective it's mostly the arguments of type: because I think so and if you don't think the same you are dumb.

Even without going into personal experiences, most specs in the game will want to have one, maybe two secondary stats in priority, out of 4.
Assuming all stats are gonna be distributed equally in every slot (which they're usually not in a single raid tier), that's already 50% of the loot that's gonna be bad for a single character.
You're always gonna be more efficient (if you're not stacking 15 characters looking for the same stats) if you have the ability to give the loots only to the characters that want to use them rather than letting everybody loot 50% of badly itemized gear.

[Lilija]

Hmm....I see the point you're making, but I think you might be underestimating the lengths people will go to determine optimal paths. Some of the higher-end raiders are real math-wizards with A LOT of data to work with.

The data we have as players as really small compared to all the data required to answer the question which system is better. People can optimize themselves, their raid group but only assuming certain perfect case scenario. Now when it comes to determining drop rate so far I've never seen anyone doing it (I guess mostly because no one thought the need to). I've tried to tier sets for our guild and even that was kinda complex and tier sets were easy compared to everything else.

But ultimately I think it comes down to what you said near the end of the quote: "People assume it's ML because they feel in control." That's not an inconsequential thing. Part of what makes videogames enjoyable is feeling somewhat in control. Especially a fantasy game which involves heroic badassery. By taking that away it hurts that feeling somewhat. It makes players feel less powerful.

I would say it's subjective as I personally don't feel that way when it comes to PL vs ML. From my point of view it's one type of RNG vs the other type of RNG. And maybe it's also that after years I've started seeing ML more as an illusion of control (tho that's just my perception as I don't know the answer to the question which really gives your more meaningful control).

The counter-argument is, of course, that not getting loot, or having to give up loot, DEFINITELY doesn't feel powerful either. But that just goes back to my stance about it feeling good to give something up in order to help your team get ahead. And that's also something that will be mostly missing from PL. You won't really be giving anything up, because in order to do so you MUST already have something better.

Better or equal So it might be a choice of do I get slightly better stats or trade it to someone for bigger ilvl upgrade. That's why I said PL also gives some level o choice - it's simply in a different spot. Sure, there might be an argument that some guilds might force people to trade in such a situation but personally I don't see it a working long time strategy from the social point of view. Unless you have 5 new applications every day I would not recommend pissing off your fellow raiders. And lack of recruits to higher difficulty raiding has been an issue since Cataclysm. I am well aware it doesn't apply to the very top but it is there and has been climbing up - tho luckily I think it slowed down thanks to flex and more natural difficulty progression when entering raiding. You are actually getting people who started the game post recently getting into raiding which was hardly the case in Cataclysm.

But I think you're right. It mostly comes down to a matter of perception. And sadly I think that Blizzard is going to push this change through, regardless of what some people want. Exactly like they did with flight. And it's likely going to cost them. Some people are inevitably going to treat this as a breaking point. But we'll just have to wait and see.

My opinion is that people do not quit due to game mechanics. People quit when it has been already growing in them to do so and mostly looking for an excuse. It is the social aspect that keeps people glued to WoW rather than the game itself regardless of the level you play at. I mean if someone doesn't care for social aspects of the game and just wants the challenge there are better games on the market. Also Blizzard is most likely well aware of the market and that people who will stay subbed constantly are a rarity. At least that is my assumption based on the direction the game has gone making it easier to jump back into the game after a break and having a lot of hype with every newer feature.

[lappee]

This single examples don't really prove the whole thing. My question is which loot distribution method taking into account all the possible factors makes more optimal gearing across the board in let's say all kinds of mythic guilds (and there is rather significant variance there already). Our intuition is that ML is better because we are in control. But how does it really compare numerically when it comes to the amount of loot that drops overall and if that particular item really gives that significant boost on this one person instead of some other person? Everyone comes from the point of their personal experience but no one really has the data of which one is REALLY more effective (given we are taking out the set bonuses). Not to mention that BfA loot design is still in progress. So my point is there is much more that we don't know than what we do and when it comes to which loot system is more effective it's mostly the arguments of type: because I think so and if you don't think the same you are dumb.

The effectiveness comes simply from being able to stack dps, the more gear one has the more dps he gets from the next upgrades as well given they're in different slots. You want to stack your main dps classes that are 100% going to be on every single boss with all good itemized items, the rest of the items go to the rest of the players.
Numbers change from tier to tier depending on classes and their scaling. I doubt anyone ever made any since it was very obvious with splitruns that ML was way, way better than PL.

Mathing PL vs ML doesn't work that well either since (I'd believe) guilds are running Heroic on multiple weeks rather than just one, possibly even multiple Mythics to get alts ilvl up which is something people aren't currently really doing.
Then there is the change from split raids going into armor type raids, we'll even probably see Mythic progress being done without every armor type present (Looking at you Mail users).
Another change to current would be using off-specs as loot specs for weapon/trinket drops on every possible boss.

If you'd like to take into account the changes done to main/secondary stat distribution then you'd have to wait for class tuning to be done for somewhat accurate statweights.


All in all if someone wants to make estimates and try to math it out, feel free. Its just common sense that current ML is just way, way better than PL due to split raids.

[Gothicshark]

How old are we talking about? Vanilla old? Gear acquisition has gotten easier and easier (due to more drops and fewer people in raids) over the years. Something in Vanilla where you had 40 man raid with only few loots per boss dropping even without ML it would take an eternity (on average) to get gear, not to mention gear wasn't as important in general.

It is a very different game and people who actually care about raid progress (rather than their personal gear e-peen) have always been in favor of deciding who gets what, whether its done by a loot council via ML or the whole raid by Group Loot. The same people will do whatever they can to be able to distribute loot as they want, which involves having lootspec on off-spec whenever there is a trinket or a weapon on the loot table so that they're able to trade the next one. Its far more complicated and far less effective than current ML but it will get you the edge.

WOW has always been gear intensive. It just took longer in Vanilla and TBC. As to who, well I'm Vanilla and TBC era, but I've met people from each expansion who finally gave up with Guild Dramas. I'd say the last big batch was the transition from MoP to WoD. I think people got burned out with SOO, plus the No flying until pathfinder caused a lot of people to quit WOW all together.

So yah, ML is a problem now the game is under capacity as much as it is. People are blaming LFR for lack of people willing to raid, but really it's the combo punch Guild Drama, LFR, and removal of convenience from WoW that has caused the change. I still did Guild runs with friends in MoP, even with LFR. However all those friends quit WOW in WoD. I'm the last, and I still want to raid, but I don't want to deal with ML BS. I don't want to compete with friends who've been together for 10+ years, if I trial, win or loose, I want to be treated with respect. I don't want to run some raids with a group to get their GFs who don't actually Raid regularly geared faster than someone who is consistently there, and knows the fights.

[lappee]

So yah, ML is a problem now the game is under capacity as much as it is. People are blaming LFR for lack of people willing to raid, but really it's the combo punch Guild Drama, LFR, and removal of convenience from WoW that has caused the change. I still did Guild runs with friends in MoP, even with LFR. However all those friends quit WOW in WoD. I'm the last, and I still want to raid, but I don't want to deal with ML BS. I don't want to compete with friends who've been together for 10+ years, if I trial, win or loose, I want to be treated with respect. I don't want to run some raids with a group to get their GFs who don't actually Raid regularly geared faster than someone who is consistently there, and knows the fights.

ML can cause drama, so can PL if people who take gear > progress are in guilds where progress > gear.

Likeminded people cause little drama, no matter what you're doing and this is no exception.

LFR is one reason why there are less people raiding, among the mass of other difficulties. People who used to raid for the story now only have to do LFR, some people raided for the gear and they can now get the same items from LFR even absolute BiS if they're lucky enough.

If you're trialing in a guild you should learn about it in advance too, asking directly how loot distribution is done. 95% drama avoided right there. After that if theres still douchebag guilds somehow surviving (since they actually need the raiders to keep raiding) then let them be on their own.

The change really just protects players(trials) from themselves but that only goes up to the point of them getting the first items. After that they're forced to trade whatever they can, just like they would not get loot with ML, in guilds that value progress over your loot. Be good enough and those guilds actually give you the loot.

It really is just about finding people that are like-minded. But then again, why would people do that when they can just whine to Blizzard and blame them for everything.

[SirCowdog]

I still want to raid, but I don't want to deal with ML BS.

Um....so.... Is there something stopping you from joining raids that don't use ML?

[Lilija]

Even without going into personal experiences, most specs in the game will want to have one, maybe two secondary stats in priority, out of 4.
Assuming all stats are gonna be distributed equally in every slot (which they're usually not in a single raid tier), that's already 50% of the loot that's gonna be bad for a single character.
You're always gonna be more efficient (if you're not stacking 15 characters looking for the same stats) if you have the ability to give the loots only to the characters that want to use them rather than letting everybody loot 50% of badly itemized gear.

And do we know how much more efficient across the board? We are operating the relative comparisons. But since the relative works both ways with various factors of being effectively geared plus how one actually utilizes the gear and how much the gear efficiency influences groups capability of killing bosses we cannot really say where is the point that ML makes a difference for real and not only in our imagination.

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All in all if someone wants to make estimates and try to math it out, feel free. Its just common sense that current ML is just way, way better than PL due to split raids.

I don't wanna debate split runs as I would say very few even in Mythic world do them as they are time consuming but if we include them they are just one more factor into the complexity of the issue.

So split runs at which point ML is really better and at which point we only feel it's better. This point exists for sure if you look across all Mythic guilds. Yet I don't think we really have the means to find it. Therefor the debate about which one is better is rather pointless as we have only some feeling of the extreme cases but not the reality of which loot system is really better for the guild's progression (not looking at the perfect higher progression guilds but the reality of all mythic guilds combined).

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Um....so.... Is there something stopping you from joining raids that don't use ML?

First we would have to convince enough guilds that raiding without ML isn't the end of the world. We can look at various topics on the issue how that might be going Basically, as I've put it earlier, choosing a guild based on their loot system isn't a too realistic scenario.

[SirCowdog]

First we would have to convince enough guilds that raiding without ML isn't the end of the world. We can look at various topics on the issue how that might be going Basically, as I've put it earlier, choosing a guild based on their loot system isn't a too realistic scenario.

Yes, but they DO exist. It's simply harder to find one the higher up you go into raiding. There are PLENTY of PL or /roll guilds at the heroic level.

This is the problem: People think that changing to PL is going to stop the kinds of players who manipulate the loot system. They're still going to find a way.

And there are other rules and disciplines that Mythic guilds require that have nothing to do with loot. Those aren't going to magically change, nor will gear make lower-level raiders able to handle them. PL won't solve everything.

[Lilija]

This is the problem: People think that changing to PL is going to stop the kinds of players who manipulate the loot system. They're still going to find a way.

And eventually will see that it's more hassle than value and will quit doing that

[Deleted]

And do we know how much more efficient across the board? We are operating the relative comparisons. But since the relative works both ways with various factors of being effectively geared plus how one actually utilizes the gear and how much the gear efficiency influences groups capability of killing bosses we cannot really say where is the point that ML makes a difference for real and not only in our imagination.

I can tell you how much optimizing your gear could do for some specs during Legion at least. I was playing fury during NH and ToS, and at some point the stat weights were around 40/40 for haste and mastery, with vers/crit around 15, with strength around the same value as vers and crit. I was equipping gear that was overall 20 ilvl lower than my bag ilvl (more than going from hc to mythic loot) and dealing more damage. I think it was around a 10% dps increase for me to equip the lower ilvl gearset over the higher one.

Another example from then, CoF / Draught of Souls / moonglaives. Those trinkets were RIDICULOUSLY overpowered for fury (like getting cof + dos was around a 20% dps increase with t19 compared to well itemized statsticks), and shit for a lot of specs. At the time of NH we were using PL, and I saw all of the other melee get draught before me and a fellow fury warrior got ours, including 3 rogues and 1 DH who just never used it.

That's part of what pushed us to make the switch to ML, because we spent weeks getting the most broken pieces of gear on the players who were playing one of the most broken specs at the time, while at the same time having trouble beating the enrage timer on krosus ... imagine the frustration we were feeling.

With the way gear currently works (it might be "better" in bfa, but we don't have the maths yet, and it has worked this way for a looooong time now), we will find a lot of specs where optimizing your gear will give you such dps / hps increase. And with such differences between loot you want to use and loot you won't use if it isn't like a 40ilvl increase, losing the option to optimize the raid's gear (not only our own) will make a huge difference in what numbers the players will be able to pull off, especially during the early weeks of progress.

Sure, you could have everyone getting only their bis gear, but when more than half the loot table in a raid tier is straight up garbage for your spec, PL definitely won't feel good ...

[Lilija]

I can tell you how much optimizing your gear could do for some specs during Legion at least. I was playing fury during NH and ToS, and at some point the stat weights were around 40/40 for haste and mastery, with vers/crit around 15, with strength around the same value as vers and crit. I was equipping gear that was overall 20 ilvl lower than my bag ilvl (more than going from hc to mythic loot) and dealing more damage. I think it was around a 10% dps increase for me to equip the lower ilvl gearset over the higher one.

Another example from then, CoF / Draught of Souls / moonglaives. Those trinkets were RIDICULOUSLY overpowered for fury (like getting cof + dos was around a 20% dps increase with t19 compared to well itemized statsticks), and shit for a lot of specs. At the time of NH we were using PL, and I saw all of the other melee get draught before me and a fellow fury warrior got ours, including 3 rogues and 1 DH who just never used it.

That's part of what pushed us to make the switch to ML, because we spent weeks getting the most broken pieces of gear on the players who were playing one of the most broken specs at the time, while at the same time having trouble beating the enrage timer on krosus ... imagine the frustration we were feeling.

With the way gear currently works (it might be "better" in bfa, but we don't have the maths yet, and it has worked this way for a looooong time now), we will find a lot of specs where optimizing your gear will give you such dps / hps increase. And with such differences between loot you want to use and loot you won't use if it isn't like a 40ilvl increase, losing the option to optimize the raid's gear (not only our own) will make a huge difference in what numbers the players will be able to pull off, especially during the early weeks of progress.

Sure, you could have everyone getting only their bis gear, but when more than half the loot table in a raid tier is straight up garbage for your spec, PL definitely won't feel good ...

What you are describing isn't loot system issue. Maybe with PL being the only loot system Blizzard will feel more pressured into actually addressing the ridiculous cases of scaling issues. And tbh I'd like that as it's annoying on its own and ML can mitigate it a bit but it doesn't fix the underlying issue.

[SirCowdog]

With the way gear currently works (it might be "better" in bfa, but we don't have the maths yet, and it has worked this way for a looooong time now), we will find a lot of specs where optimizing your gear will give you such dps / hps increase. And with such differences between loot you want to use and loot you won't use if it isn't like a 40ilvl increase, losing the option to optimize the raid's gear (not only our own) will make a huge difference in what numbers the players will be able to pull off, especially during the early weeks of progress.

Sure, you could have everyone getting only their bis gear, but when more than half the loot table in a raid tier is straight up garbage for your spec, PL definitely won't feel good ...

What you are describing isn't loot system issue. Maybe with PL being the only loot system Blizzard will feel more pressured into actually addressing the ridiculous cases of scaling issues. And tbh I'd like that as it's annoying on its own and ML can mitigate it a bit but it doesn't fix the underlying issue.

Blizzard has said that they intend to address the issue of difficulty as it relates to PL.

What bothers me about this is that in order for RNG drops to not completely cripple a raid's progress, the difficulty is going to have to be lowered fairly significantly. So it seems to me that in order to facilitate PL, we're not only giving up some amount of player agency with the ability to trade drops, but also challenge.

To me this is not a good trade. Now...if Blizzard was going to implement a system like M+, where raids could start out relatively easy, but increase in difficulty the more power the players acquired over the expansion through RNG? That might be something very interesting. But they've also said their ability to tune mythic difficulty properly relied on a static raid size, which would go out the window with any kind of scaling up system.

I think Blizzard is painting themselves into a corner by pushing PL through. We'll see what happens. If nothing else, Blizz is fairly innovative when it comes down to it.

[lappee]

I don't wanna debate split runs as I would say very few even in Mythic world do them as they are time consuming but if we include them they are just one more factor into the complexity of the issue.

So split runs at which point ML is really better and at which point we only feel it's better. This point exists for sure if you look across all Mythic guilds. Yet I don't think we really have the means to find it. Therefor the debate about which one is better is rather pointless as we have only some feeling of the extreme cases but not the reality of which loot system is really better for the guild's progression (not looking at the perfect higher progression guilds but the reality of all mythic guilds combined).

I know that my friends in 100-500 rank guilds are doing splitruns and splitruns aren't going away either so it needs to be considered.

Even if we only consider Mythic clear, ML would still be better due to loot stacking on certain class. Even if all players were equal in skill and with the same class ML would still be better due to it. The increase from items you get just snowballs that much. Once tuning has been done we'll get the math on this.
Items can (and should) be assigned to classes/players that people know will be there to remove all wastage of loot.
PL will have some wastage of loot whether its bad rings/trinkets or armor pieces
PL raids can completely disregard armor classes (as in leave Mail users out of the raid) as that decreases the chances of trading and thus increases chances of wastage of loot.
PL Off-spec as lootspec on bosses to get weapons/trinkets for later trading (direct wastage of loot and yet most likely worth it for those pieces)

Unless PL yield more extra loot compared to ML than it currently does, it just won't surpass it in terms of effectiveness.

[Lilija]

I know that my friends in 100-500 rank guilds are doing splitruns and splitruns aren't going away either so it needs to be considered.

There is other 500 Mythic guilds tho. And can you say that everyone in the first 500 does split runs?

Even if we only consider Mythic clear, ML would still be better due to loot stacking on certain class. Even if all players were equal in skill and with the same class ML would still be better due to it. The increase from items you get just snowballs that much. Once tuning has been done we'll get the math on this.
Items can (and should) be assigned to classes/players that people know will be there to remove all wastage of loot.
PL will have some wastage of loot whether its bad rings/trinkets or armor pieces
PL raids can completely disregard armor classes (as in leave Mail users out of the raid) as that decreases the chances of trading and thus increases chances of wastage of loot.
PL Off-spec as lootspec on bosses to get weapons/trinkets for later trading (direct wastage of loot and yet most likely worth it for those pieces)

Unless PL yield more extra loot compared to ML than it currently does, it just won't surpass it in terms of effectiveness.

PL is already yielding more loot than ML and it's actually the loot for the specs present in the raid so ML has wasted loot as well. We can talk pros and cons of both systems forever but as long as we don't have the numbers on the RNG and the real benefit of items on certain specs we cannot say at which point which system is truly more beneficial.

[Irian]

As a casual raider I'm like "eh, nothing new." Personal loot is how we distribute loot, with people being able to give away items for rolls or trade them personally based on their own prerogative. It's not the most elegant system but it works for the content we do: early mythics, as well and two clears of normal and a clear of heroic antorus each week, basically the casualest of the casual.

That being said, I really do agree that this could potentially be the nail in the coffin for seriously mythic raiding. It already feels like it's on the steep decline but being unable to control what loot goes to whom will mean that recruitment will very likely go down in the hardcore scene in favor of tried and tested players that have already stepped foot into mythic. They aren't just going to let the trials have the loot, they're going to either request that they give it away (which may be impossible, leading to "lost" loot), or require payment for trials, or simply not do trials. This isn't going to have the effect that Blizzard wants it to.

That being said I do kinda get the idea of the forum posters and devil's advocates. I don't personally believe the current state of mythic raiding in WoW is healthy for the game and it feels a bit too restrictive and suffocating to be inviting. That being said I think this change will have the opposite effect Blizzard is hoping it will have.

[SirCowdog]

There is other 500 Mythic guilds tho. And can you say that everyone in the first 500 does split runs?

I think it's fairly safe to say that if they did NOT do split runs, they would not be ranked in the top 500.

PL is already yielding more loot than ML and it's actually the loot for the specs present in the raid so ML has wasted loot as well. We can talk pros and cons of both systems forever but as long as we don't have the numbers on the RNG and the real benefit of items on certain specs we cannot say at which point which system is truly more beneficial.

If that's truly the case, then why push it through and not give players a choice? If PL was truly competitive, then why don't we see top end competitive guilds using it?

[Deleted]

I think it's fairly safe to say that if they did NOT do split runs, they would not be ranked in the top 500.

This is bias, we are top 500 and we didnt do any splits, at least for Antorus. Major issue was players start slacking as the Spring started.

If they don't make some major changes to personal, it would be shit. In legion you have legendary almost for every slot which covers WF/TF proc and allow you to trade items, but there will not be legendaries now to cover this, so my biggest worries is, that ~30% of loot will be vendored, because players couldn't trade it.

When there would be some rule, that you can trade item even if its like +10/15 than you currently have eq/bag, then the system will be guess ok. There is no raid set which would need to be distributed to right spec at the start (meaning best % boost).

PS: Anyway I was ML for EN/NH/ToS and 60% gear I got is from M+ anyway, so not that big a deal now without the tier sets.

PS2: By this it doesn't mean I'am rooting for personal. IMHO ML is and always be better than personal when it comes to raiding.

[lappee]

There is other 500 Mythic guilds tho. And can you say that everyone in the first 500 does split runs?

PL is already yielding more loot than ML and it's actually the loot for the specs present in the raid so ML has wasted loot as well. We can talk pros and cons of both systems forever but as long as we don't have the numbers on the RNG and the real benefit of items on certain specs we cannot say at which point which system is truly more beneficial.

I know there are ~1k mythic guilds that have cleared the raid and I'd guess ~75% of the guilds that use ML are doing splitruns. Split runs in general are for those who want to clear the instance asap, which is also why ML is being used.


Pl indeed does yield more loot but its not significantly more and because it yields loot for the specs it means that you can skip out armor class(es) just fine (taking couple, say Mail users leads to loot wastage), its something ML users go around by actually making the raid so it uses ~everything there is to use.

We can't say which system is more beneficial at the time its properly in place and implemented, we can say with 100% guarantee that currently ML is way better than PL for progression and if nothing changes with PL then ML would be better in BfA as well.
Now if you found a way to combat split runs done with ML AND class scaling properly worked with ilvl > stats then we could assume that PL would be better. However thats just not gonna be the case, ever.

[Lilija]

If that's truly the case, then why push it through and not give players a choice? If PL was truly competitive, then why don't we see top end competitive guilds using it?

No idea. But I would like everyone to include the psychology of why people prefer ML next to the which loot system is more effective (which we don't really know for 100% cases). As humans we tend to be oblivious to how much our perception influences our choices over the actual reality itself. And well... people don't like change unless it screams "improvement" right into their faces.