So the second part is the other side of the coin I flipped last time around. I looked at wasted loot, and why it poses a problem to those focusing on progressing the raid team as fast as possible. This time we're going to examine the problem in which many people are trying to get the same piece of loot.
I'd like to start off by saying that this is basically the same problem that is expressing itself in multiple situations. I'm not saying it's a huge problem or that it's something that *needs* to be fixed since it does add another layer to raid comp and raid management.
Previously I assumed that half your raid roster is going to be using int gear. Half of that half is likely to value spirit highly, they will likely also value spirit even more in mop according to initial testing but the point still stands, and reforging will always make this the case. I'm going to use rings, trinkets, and weapons for this example for a few reasons. First you need 2 rings and you can play with them alot, this also means there more options for you, which diminishes the problem. Do rings drop twice as often? Not really but there are more of them from which to choose, generally. Trinkets are somewhat specialized even for healers vs dps. Weapons are also something you can mix/match and highly sought.
Examining DS rings we have 5 options, 2 of which have spirit the other three do not. 2 rings without spirit also have hit. So at this point we have 2 rings that exclusively for healers, 2 are exclusively for dps. 1 is for either and 2 of the rings are lower ilvl but from vendors. If you're maximizing rings based on ilvl and total itemization points you actually don't have any choices, there are only the two options for you. Reminder: I'm talking only of the rings with int on them. Also all rings are unique equipped. I'm ignoring the fact that ele shamans and boomkins don't require it since they can use the hit and spirit rings though at the very least the boomkins wanted the rings I've designated "healer" rings and not the one designated a dps ring. It balances out in the and I promise.
This means that all 15 of your casters are extremely likely to use the Ring of the Riven. This only drops from Hagara. If you are the luckiest group in the entire world and get 2 every week, and yes she can drop 2 at a time we've seen it once, you will be done in just under 2 months of farming it. If you're even moderately lucky and you get 1 every week, your'e done in 4 months. Most of us haven't been that lucky and my guild still needs something like 3-5 of them after farming heroic madness for over 4 months, having hagara heroic on farm for 8 months now. As a minor detail imagine you have some rotating members on your roster since changes are likely, we don't have anything near the same roster that we did at the start of the tier. This means that you need closer to maybe 17 or 18 over the course of the tier not counting off specs (which in many cases are actually important for progression).
The other two rings are in the grab bag shared loot which I really don't want to get into right now since that's another big page about the system that could work but really hasn't.
So that's rings, clearly there needs to be a solution for it since they aren't even that big of an upgrade by themselves. To put this into perspective, most gear has roughly 600 secondary stat points, split across two stats, where the rings are under 400. Helms have over 700 secondary stat points, not counting gems/socket bonuses which are also much more impressive, rings don't even get enchants of any sort which isn't really significant because you'd put the same enchant on your old weapon, but the point is they aren't a huge slot but if you really want it for your bis set to max your hit rating or whatever stat it is that's most important you have to put a lot of emphasis on beating other people to it. This is a problem.
Lets look at trinkets now. There isn't that much of a problem here this tier since madness dropped a trinket for everyone but tanks, and one for tanks come 5.0. So we only had to consider one trinket for everyone which makes it basically the same for everyone else with a nice middle ground. The problem this time around was the lack of available trinkets (the really good ones were in the grab bag loot slot or not very good). We still haven't seen more than 1 or 2 heroic windward hearts I think. You can see that there would also be a problem here without a spine like loot table that emphasized trinkets. Looking to firelands we had issues with trinkets since each role had 2. 2 agi trinkets, 2 healer trinkets etc.
Lastly I wanted to look at caster weapons. This was less of an issue in DS due to dragonwrath, however if we look at items that are not dragonwrath to evaluate the situation without legendaries we get the following: 3 2h weapons, 1 spirit, 1 regular, 1 from madness with a proc. 3 1h weapons, same distribution here. So there are 6 choices (assuming you paired up the mh with an appropriate oh which just means you have to wait a bit longer for the drop).
This is an altogether different problem due to the nature of progression. Since the really nice weapons that everyone wants are on the last boss, which isn't a problem it's just a different way you have to look at the drops, you're going to basically choose "staff or mh/oh." Some cases this isn't even a choice. Shamans and holy paladins will always pick the 1h + shield. I'm going to get a bit technical here to look at exactly how the secondary stats play out. Going to ignore madness weapons since they pose some interesting problems (especially since there is no non-spirit offhand at the 410 level).
There are 4 secondary stats that healers want, and 3 of those are also dps stats, 4 in the case of moonkins. There are 4 dps stats, one of which is exclusively dps.
Mastery: everyone
Crit: Everyone
Haste: Everyone
Spirit: Healers/Ele/Boomkin
Hit: Dps.
This means that there are 4P2 = 12 options for secondary stats on items considering that they have one stat higher than the other and 4 secondary stats. Lets assume we change this to just pick which stats are there since they aren't likely to have 2 items which have the same stats but flipped in value. 4C2 = 6 different options. Lets assume all healers want spirit, this changes it to 3C1 = 3 options for healers. Simiarly dps may not always want hit but it's a pretty strong stat for them and excess can be reforged away.
If you are not using a shield, the only offhand has spirit on it (410 level). Paladins cannot use a staff. This means that all cloth casters will use the non-spirit staff. I'm not terribly familiar with the stat weights of resto druids and healy priests but my understanding is that the mh/oh combo is best for priests and the staff better for druids. I could be wrong here.
After examining these numbers I've come to the conclusion that int weapons are entirely bottlenecked. This may change in mop with the increase in desirability of spirit for healers but as it stands too many people want the same weapon. There's a lot of options and in the DS expecience we had one person actually try out the spirit staff from blackhorn, I think 1 or 2 people used Ti'tahk while working on finishing up DTR more for trying it out than anything.
So we again had half the raid going for a split of 2 choices for the most part. Half wanted the healing mace and an offhand. Half wanted the hagara staff (if they didn't have DTR) and the ele shaman wanted the dagger from dw and a shield.
To conclude the last two posts I want to mention we got our first heroic hagara kill on dec 28 according to one of my guildies achievements. It is now, almost, august 28th. That's 8 months, or nearly 35 lockouts. We've disenchanted more gear than we've used by this point I'm sure but after 35 kills of a boss we still have people who need very specific loot. This was even worse during progression because that sort of things makes a huge difference. Getting BiS gear is really nice but the important part is that while you're progressing the problem being brought to light here is that we are disenchanting gear that no one on the roster needs due to us already having it, example being int plate belt from ultraxion, while we could benefit greatly from different gear dropping.
Maybe this is part of the game but we already maximize our raid group by making sure that if there is someone available that night who needs a piece of gear, that gear will not get disenchanted and will go to the raid team. We have no control over what drops, but we do have control over how we form the raid around what might drop. This doesn't really impact our raid decisions I don't think but it is frustrating for a large portion of the raid team and for a large number of guilds that see something like windward heart not drop in the 4+ months we've been farming it while we still have something like 8 players who want it.
I'd really like to hear what people think about the way loot drops are handled right now. If you have suggestions for what the loot system should be that would be great. If you want to share examples about your guild or other guilds you know that have similar drop problems please share as well. More data points are always good. Right now I'm not entirely sure that this is a major problem but I find it extremely interesting and something that one can really investigate. I'll likely look at this a bit more in the near future but I wont be able to really sink my teeth into anything until we get into raiding in mop since when that comes I might be able to trick my guild into helping me with a little project I have in mind that might make numbers easier to check out.
5.0 next week. Have a bunch of fun checking things out before MoP goes live.
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