Can anyone explain how RnG has materially gotten worse since Classic?

[Charge me Doctor]

If people really see bis now as max tf with socket and leech, it's no wonder why people cry som much about it. What a terrible way to look at it. The whining finally make sense. Stop dreaming. If that's the way you look at it, then BiS is unreachable. Better chance to win the top prize in the lottery.

BiS is base ilvl within your raiding skill(normal/hc/mythic etc) So your BiS in mythic Uldir will be 385.

And yes, it's a lot easier to get BiS now than in both Vanilla and TBC. For non-delusional people that is.

Exactly, it's all about making reachable and sensible goals for your game

[Katchii]

I think the issue is that now, on top of their being RNG for just getting the item to drop, there's the added RNG for whether that piece will Warforge, or for Azerite pieces, what traits they'll have.

It may not actually be worse, but it feels worse IMO.

[Deleted]

If people really see bis now as max tf with socket and leech, it's no wonder why people cry som much about it. What a terrible way to look at it. The whining finally make sense. Stop dreaming. If that's the way you look at it, then BiS is unreachable. Better chance to win the top prize in the lottery.

BiS is base ilvl within your raiding skill(normal/hc/mythic etc) So your BiS in mythic Uldir will be 385.

And yes, it's a lot easier to get BiS now than in both Vanilla and TBC. For non-delusional people that is.

BIS
Best
IN
SLOT

If it is not the best it could possibly be, it is not BIS since it's going against the very definition of the word.

But sure let's play your game.
My best Azerite pieces are from mythic+ and the only way to get them on a decent lvl is from the weekly chest (which will be fixed). That is 1 chance for an item out of hundreds that could possibly be in that chest. Compared to that tbc or vanilla gearing was a joke because at least you could save DKP and knew which boss dropped what.

I did play both vanilla and TBC and the gearing now is a nightmare compared to then. Back then in a decent raiding guild that was not all about fucking people over everyone had their own list of what items they went for and if you had that item you didn't have to worry till the next raid. Now there is just no ending to it.

[glowpipe]

How to get BiS item in Vanilla:
Step 1: Kill boss
Step 2: Loot drops

Done

How to get BiS item in BFA:
Step 1: Figure out if it's from M+ or raids
Step 2: Kill boss/run M+
Step 3: Item drops
Step 4: Item needs to proc TF up to max
Step 5: Item needs to proc socket
Step 5.5: Item needs to proc tertiary stat

Done

you forgot the fact that you could kill that boss 1 time per week with no bonus coins, 3 items for 40 players, Sure thing. Just kill the boss and loot the item. it took me close to 2 months to get my first item in molten core. 2 months with weekly kills

[Deleted]

you forgot the fact that you could kill that boss 1 time per week with no bonus coins. Shared with 7-8 people your own class. Up to 20-30 people if it was multiclass items. And you know. 40 players. 3 items per boss. Sure thing. Just kill the boss and loot the item. it took me close to 2 months to get my first item in molten core. 2 months with weekly kills

so 8 kills and you complain? Tell when you get your pefect mythic+ azerite piece from your weekly chest. You can stop trying after a year.

[Charge me Doctor]

It's not just that, there's also warforging and titanforging now that make the situation even worse. It used to be that if you get BiS, you knew it was BiS and that there was nothing else that could top it.

There were cases when "BiS" item was worse if you break your ZG 2 set (especially for healers), so you had to obtain 2 "BiS" items in your bags first before they became "BiS".

- - - Updated - - -

Step 1, kill boss.
Step 2, loot drops.
Step 3, pray your class can use it.
Step 4, pray your class's raiding spec can use it.
Step 5, pray you don't have 4-5 people competing.
Step 6, pray you have enough DKP.

Step 7, pray your officers doesn't go "this one piece of leather gear goes to a warrior because he needs crit, we don't care about your personal bis lists we want to kill dragons"

[shadowmatrix]

BFA
You go into encount and beat boss, gear you want may drop - rng
Gear that dropped might have the stats your class wants - rng
Gear may upgrade into a high ilevel - rng
Azerite gear might not have the talent you want - rng
During Legion you might have gotten a legendary from an elite. -rng

vanilla
You got into encounter and gear may drop - rng
Gear drops and you roll against other people - rng
Gear may have the stats you want - rng
Gear might drop your tank below defense cap - rng
gear may drop your dps toon below hit cap - rng
You might not have the skill to use the weapon you got - rng
You might get a epic BOE from a random mob. - rng
I might have missed some in both lists.

[Charge me Doctor]

This sums it up perfectly.

It's mostly people that have an unhealthy of obsession with wanting BiS gear, which is basically impossible now. Overall, it's good for the game because it means there's almost always a chance for an upgrade and that extra surprise for the average player outweighs the negative of "needing" BiS for the tiny percentage of players that care about that.

I don't even want to remember amount of fucking drama over "THIS IS MY BIS PIECE WHY YOU GIVE IT TO OTHER HUNTER I DON'T CARE THAT HE RUNS WITH A ZG BOW" coming from DKP hoarding whores

[Emerald Archer]

If people really see bis now as max tf with socket and leech, it's no wonder why people cry som much about it. What a terrible way to look at it. The whining finally make sense. Stop dreaming. If that's the way you look at it, then BiS is unreachable. Better chance to win the top prize in the lottery.

BiS is base ilvl within your raiding skill(normal/hc/mythic etc) So your BiS in mythic Uldir will be 385.

And yes, it's a lot easier to get BiS now than in both Vanilla and TBC. For non-delusional people that is.

If that was the case, one you got full raid base you could go "Ok I'm done" But you aren't done, you would still have a lot of significant upgrades left.

In vanilla once you got full bis, you were done. There was no more loot to go for. It's a matter of this being a never ending treadmill.

"then BiS is unreachable" YES that's the problem. The rng to get bis is SO HIGH that it's unreachable. You will never complete your bis before the next raid/content, you will never reach a point where you're done.

Best in slot. BEST. It's not a debatable definition. It is the best possible item for each slot, not being delusional, just knowing what the definition is. How can an item be bis, when you can replace it with another item?

[Doffen]

BIS
Best
IN
SLOT

If it is not the best it could possibly be, it is not BIS since it's going against the very definition of the word.

But sure let's play your game.
My best Azerite pieces are from mythic+ and the only way to get them on a decent lvl is from the weekly chest (which will be fixed). That is 1 chance for an item out of hundreds that could possibly be in that chest. Compared to that tbc or vanilla gearing was a joke because at least you could save DKP and knew which boss dropped what.

I did play both vanilla and TBC and the gearing now is a nightmare compared to then. Back then in a decent raiding guild that was not all about fucking people over everyone had their own list of what items they went for and if you had that item you didn't have to worry till the next raid. Now there is just no ending to it.

So in practice you won't get BiS at all, so why even go for it? That's the point though, if you think like that, you have in practice no BiS list, because it would be impossible to get. Not impossible sorry, like 1 in a billion to get.

And yes, I am from that era myself, TBC raiding was for me the best thing in this game ever, and gearing was better then, because of the difficulty it was to get those items. Now we get tossed the gear after us even if we want it or not, and that's why we have the layers on RNG. I don't mind it personally, though it have been better times imo. I never got MoB from Illidari Council, or DW from Deathbringer Saurfang and I did that every week, but hey, RNG ftw

[cparle87]

There were cases when "BiS" item was worse if you break your ZG 2 set (especially for healers), so you had to obtain 2 "BiS" items in your bags first before they became "BiS".

- - - Updated - - -



Step 7, pray your officers doesn't go "this one piece of leather gear goes to a warrior because he needs crit, we don't care about your personal bis lists we want to kill dragons"

Oh, right. I forgot that. And non-clothie casters taking cloth. So they added the armor proficiencies in Cata.

[Doffen]

If that was the case, one you got full raid base you could go "Ok I'm done" But you aren't done, you would still have a lot of significant upgrades left.

In vanilla once you got full bis, you were done. There was no more loot to go for. It's a matter of this being a never ending treadmill.

"then BiS is unreachable" YES that's the problem. The rng to get bis is SO HIGH that it's unreachable. You will never complete your bis before the next raid/content, you will never reach a point where you're done.

Best in slot. BEST. It's not a debatable definition. It is the best possible item for each slot, not being delusional, just knowing what the definition is. How can an item be bis, when you can replace it with another item?

Yeah, so BiS is no more. Time for people to realize that then.

Just to rephrase it, you got BiS items, but those BiS items can be better. I see the former as BiS, because seeing it in any other way is being delusional, because you'll never get there.

[MoanaLisa]

At worse it hasn’t gotten better but it certainly isn’t worse.

I think you're probably right about this. I've seen people writing about RNG inside of RNG like nesting Russian dolls but there's not that much difference between a 2% chance for a drop and nested RNG rolls that come out to 2%.

I think that perceptually one thing that bothers people is that so much stuff drops that's essentially useless. I don't know how the psychology plays out over fifty chances to get something that you only get something once very rarely or you commonly get lots of drops that you don't need. Personally I find the first frustrating but I find the latter to be infuriating.

The other thing to note is that there are more non-raid, non-dungeon things in the game that have RNG associated with them. That probably contributes something.

For those that want to argue, I may well be off but that's how I perceive the differences between then and now. It might be better to get nothing at all rather than getting stuff repeatedly that doesn't do anything for me.

Also: signing on fully to the post @chazus made at #2. Combining that post with mine a conclusion you can reach is that loot is much less deterministic.

[Demise_]

I played Vanilla and I am going to tell you how.

Firstly, Lockouts. All content outside of raids had no lockout. You could run UBRS as many times as you wanted to get the gear that you wanted. Standard that dropped would have 2-3 contenders and quite achievable.

Crafting was an integral part of gearing which had little rng involved.

Pretty much all guilds used a DKP style of system, which greatly reduced RNG. Also raid tiers lasted much longer. giving a long time for drops.

World firsts weren't really cared about

DPS was far less important overall. Threat and other mechanics took higher priorities.

You got loot less often, but felt good when you did. Now you get heaps of loot, but its mostly trash.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think vanilla is the best system we have ever had, but the current one is pretty shitty.

[Charge me Doctor]

I think that perceptually one thing that bothers people is that so much stuff drops that's essentially useless. I don't know how the psychology plays out over fifty chances to get something that you only get something once very rarely or you commonly get lots of drops that you don't need. Personally I find the first frustrating but I find the latter to be infuriating.
.

Perception is always a thing when you come to BiS-obsessed player, the case of "i won't dump my DKP on nefarian cloth helmet, i need it for when onixia cloth helmet drops" was always the case, so this piece goes into disenchantment, because giving it for free "isn't fair" and players don't want to be in shortage of DKP when the BiS piece drops. Seriously, worst loot-drama-related memories for me are from experiencing outrage by those BiS-hunting assholes.

Oh, do i also need to say that the case of that-one guy who got his onixia helmet then got azuregos helmet and didn't use it "because it's worse now, i need to get boots from trash first and another set piece so i won't lose set bonus, but when i'll get there - it'll be my bis, yeah i know i've got my chromagus shoulders also but i can't equip them because ZG bonus is soooo good for healers, and i need BiS neck first" is always there, he just sits on a pile of treasure hoarding it like a dragon that we are supposed to kill.

[Deleted]

So in practice you won't get BiS at all, so why even go for it? That's the point though, if you think like that, you have in practice no BiS list, because it would be impossible to get. Not impossible sorry, like 1 in a billion to get.

And yes, I am from that era myself, TBC raiding was for me the best thing in this game ever, and gearing was better then, because of the difficulty it was to get those items. Now we get tossed the gear after us even if we want it or not, and that's why we have the layers on RNG. I don't mind it personally, though it have been better times imo. I never got MoB from Illidari Council, or DW from Deathbringer Saurfang and I did that every week, but hey, RNG ftw

That is why the term BIS shouldn't even be used in the current state anymore sadly besides maybe for traits (and even those chance every week it seems) I do miss vanilla/TBC itemization where i had my list of stuff i wanted and could cross off the items 1 by 1 when i got them. It was so nice to have that final piece knowing your character progression was over for a bit and you could do something else.

[Craaazyyy]

BFA


vanilla
You got into encounter and gear may drop - rng
Gear drops and you roll against other people - rng
Gear may have the stats you want - rng
Gear might drop your tank below defense cap - rng
gear may drop your dps toon below hit cap - rng
You might not have the skill to use the weapon you got - rng
You might get a epic BOE from a random mob. - rng
I might have missed some in both lists.

since there is a BiS list you would know what you need and what u dont need.. so half of this shit doesnt matter

also weapon skill isnt rng, and how does BOE rng for vanilla and not for BFA? same shit happens in BFA

[MoanaLisa]

Perception is always a thing when you come to BiS-obsessed player, the case of "i won't dump my DKP on nefarian cloth helmet, i need it for when onixia cloth helmet drops" was always the case, so this piece goes into disenchantment, because giving it for free "isn't fair" and players don't want to be in shortage of DKP when the BiS piece drops. Seriously, worst loot-drama-related memories for me are from experiencing outrage by those BiS-hunting assholes.

I didn't say this specifically in my post because I was responding without having read all of the thread but the comments about the death of BiS are spot-on and something to think about. I'm not really in that game any longer so it's a bit outside of my current thoughts about the game. But the vagueness that now surrounds Best-in-Slot along with less deterministic loot could easily combine into something that would be really easy to dislike. I've been there though with the BiS-obsessed and it's not always fun. There's a lot to love about being super-casual and being away from them and off the gear treadmill is a part of that.

[Doffen]

That is why the term BIS shouldn't even be used in the current state anymore sadly besides maybe for traits (and even those chance every week it seems) I do miss vanilla/TBC itemization where i had my list of stuff i wanted and could cross off the items 1 by 1 when i got them. It was so nice to have that final piece knowing your character progression was over for a bit and you could do something else.

Yeah, agree. I do miss TBC a lot ^^ It was different times back then, good ol' times!

[shadowmatrix]

since there is a BiS list you would know what you need and what u dont need.. so half of this shit doesnt matter

also weapon skill isnt rng, and how does BOE rng for vanilla and not for BFA? same shit happens in BFA

BIS doesn't mean jack till you got it, until then your still dealing with the list.
Vanilla BOE epic is balanced against the Legion legendary as something that put you ahead of the game.
Random trash item RNG in raids/dungeons is a basic thing so I skipped it in both.
Weapon skill matters since most players didn't level skills for weapons they didn't normally use.