I'd Like A New LFR Loot Design

I've been thinking for a long time, actually since the LFR first came out, that the LFR needs a better loot design.  They have made a great deal of changes.  First was group loot where people would roll need even if they did not need or roll need on things just to keep others from getting them.  This was bad design for random content with that many people that I am still amazed to this day that blizzard actually allowed to go live.

I remember that first week of the DS LFR and 2 bows dropped, I rolled need on them of course as a hunter, and a rogue won both of them.  The same rogue won both of them.  I was upset but not nearly as much as some of the other hunters in there.  If I remember correctly it took another 19 weeks for me to even see another bow drop in the LFR.

Events like that happened on a daily basis and that bought on a change that only some classes could roll on some things.  This fixed some issues but not all.  Like my shaman healer losing a shield to a retribution paladin.  First, why was a retribution paladin allowed to roll need on something that is not for their spec, and even if you allowed them to roll need for off spec reasons why did they get to +100 bonus when retribution paladins do not even use shields?

I put in multiple tickets, and this is most likely when I really began to lose faith in the ticket system.  Not one person that responded to any of my tickets answered my question which was how did a healing shaman that uses shields lose a healing shield to a retribution paladin that does not even use shields.

All I wanted was someone to say, it must be a bug.  He should not have won it.  Anything to acknowledge that there was a problem with the loot system but I got "if they can roll they can win" type responses.  Well, go screw yourself GM.

So when they went to the personal loot system I was all for it.  No longer would my hunter lose weapons to a rogue or my shaman lose shields to a retribution paladin.  I would either win or lose.

Admittedly I was never completely fond of it but it was better than seeing someone else win something they had no right to even roll on because blizzard could not develop a decent and fair rolling system.

I was okay with the personal loot system until the other week when doing ToT normal and I won something I had been looking for and immediately said, thank god I thought I would never win this, I've killed this boss a million times.

And then it occurred to me.  I did not kill this boss a million times.  I killed it 6 times on that character.  It just felt like a million times I have killed it because I have killed it so many times in the LFR on so many characters and it all starts to blend together seeing gold bag after gold bag and when I won something it felt like I had killed that boss a lot on normal when in fact I had not killed it all that often at all.

So while the LFR personal loot system is better than it had been when it was first introduced last expansion and first adjusted last expansion, it still seems to have a horrible side effect, at least for me.

It is making me lose track of who is killing what and where I am killing it because I have killed it so many times on so many different characters in both normal and LFR.  It starts to blend together.  You see baggie after baggie and gold after gold on coins and suddenly it is not one character killing a boss for 6 weeks that did not get anything, it is 8 characters killing that boss over those 6 weeks and it feels like you did not get that piece you needed after 48 kills.  Not 6 like it really was.

Loot dropping from the LFR needs to be removed completely.

You heard me right.  LFR should no longer drop loot at all.  Not even the rare chance of it.  Not loot, ever.

There has to be a better looting system for the LFR, one that does not make people feel as if all they ever do is lose.  After running it week after week and for some people on multiple characters, it can start to feel like you never win anything.  And as one of those people that feels that way I can tell you that is a really shitty feeling.

My proposed change to the LFR loot system would be two fold.  First remove all the gear from all bosses and place everything that drops at a vendor in the LFR version of the raid.  Second is all bosses drop a kill token.  As this tier would drop a T15 kill token.  If you use a coin you get a second kill token on the boss.  Just like loot currently is you can only get something off a boss once a week, so you can only get one kill token a week per boss you kill.

Now to that vendor I mentioned.  Every single piece of gear that would have dropped from bosses is now available at that vendor.  Rings, back and neck for 8 kill tokens each.  Waist and wrists at 10 tokens.  Trinkets and boots at 12 tokens.  Head, chest, legs, arms and shoulders at 16 tokens each and the tier versions of said items at 20 tokens each.  One handed weapons would be 10 tokens, two handed weapons would be 20 and offhands and shields would be 10.

What this would do is make the gearing patterns quite clear in the LFR.  No luck involved.  If you want the chest tier token you will not run it week after week hoping for a drop.  You will just kill 20 bosses and trade in for that tier token for your chest.

It would also remove that feeling of "gold again" off every boss that people have gotten accustom to by now.  No one likes to never win and no one likes to see someone say "hey look I got the shoulder token I don't need because I already have 3 of them" when you have been trying for 12 weeks for it and using a coin each week and still do not have it.

Loot, or not getting it, is just not a fun aspect of the game.  Sure it is fun to get the loot but it is not fun to not get it.  And it is even more frustrating when it starts to feel like you have killed a boss a million times and never get anything, even if you only really killed it 6 times.  Because it all starts to blend together seeing gold bag after gold bag after gold bag.

With dropping tokens that means every time you down a boss, you win.  No matter what.  It gives you incentive to kill all the bosses each week to speed up your process of collecting the tokens and every kill is one step closer to getting what you want.  It is no longer of case of "maybe I will get it this week" as it becomes a case of, I just need 5 more kill tokens to get my piece.  Which in the end, is a lot more exciting then seeing another gold bag pop up, don't you think?

I always have always been a fan of the earn your gear design over the luck design and this system would really support that.  You kill enough bosses you earn the right to buy the gear with tokens from those bosses.  No longer will you ever have to hear someone say, "I have had no luck with drops" because they have no excuse.  If they needed something that costs 10 kill tokens they just need to kill 10 bosses and get tokens.  No luck needed.

I think the LFR needs a new loot design, one that makes people feel like they are winning sometimes and something that does not start to blend in with the real raid as just "another week with nothing."

Monday Random Thoughts

- If history has anything to say about it the patch will be out August 27th.

- Being the last 4 or so patches have come out the day the PvP season ended that seems like a reasonable guess.

- I had guessed it would have been the first or second week of September.

- I am looking forward to flex raiding.

- Talking with others it seems like many are looking forward to it.

- Based on the few people I talked to flex raiding might, if done well, be the thing that saves the game for many.

- I've been experiencing a lot of frustrated players coming to me asking to join one of the 10 man teams.

- Our 25 man is only 4/12 but the 10s are 12/12 so of course those people want in on the more progressed group.

- They don't seem to grasp that they are the reason that the 25 is only 4/12.

- I am always polite about it but sometimes I wish I were not.

-When you are rocking a 508 item level and have not purchased a valor piece, a valor upgrade or even the barrens 502 boots in 2 months, you are not trying.

- I feel like saying, that is the reason you are on the 25 and not on one of the 10s.

- I also felt like saying "you" are the reason we are stuck on the 5th boss.

- When only 7 out of the 17 damage dealers are over 80K on a fight that requires a lot more of course you will hit a road block.

- But the 25 is more about letting people get to see raiding being 25s are easier than 10s and you can carry people there easier.

- Flex will take that spot and the 25 will die most likely.

- When you look at it, the "10 man" was the "25 man".

- Without those 10 the 25 would have never even gotten the first boss down.

- Flex will really allow those people to raid.

- But I am preparing myself for the inevitable.

- Just like the guy that does nothing to better himself and stands in everything avoidable that wants to get further because he "deserves" it, there will be people that I set up for flex only that will want to move into the normal modes.

- Yes, I am preparing myself for the inevitable.

- All in all I think everything goes back to the fact that they made normals too hard for normal players.

- I often try to explain that to some people but they just do not get it.

- I think it is because I am too polite about it.

- I have to learn to be a jerk about it.

- If a boss requires a minimum of 90K from all damage dealers instead of me just saying "this boss requires 90K so if you are under that hit the dummies and get a new piece of gear or two and we can get it next week."

- That is too nice.

- I need to start saying, this boss requires 90K, if you can not do that you will not be invited back.

- Seems a bit too hard core to say it like that for a casual guild.

- But normal modes are no longer designed for the casual raider.

- These people are the type of people that we used to have no issues with in 10s and now we can only carry them in the much more forgiving 25s.

- And even at that we can not carry them too far.

- I read someone say that this tier was the hardest normal mode tier in since the introduction of heroic modes.

- A great deal of people were agreeing with them as well.

- I am not sure I agree with that.

- But my view is really tainted by the long time it took us to down horridon.

- By the time we past him and then tortos, the other one that gave us fits, we were so grossly over geared the rest of the raid was easy.

- So perhaps I am not the best to judge.

- But if I had to, I would say everything past tortos was easier than ICC with the 30% buff.

- So no, I do not think ToT is the hardest normal mode raiding since the introduction of heroics.

- We did have to add a second night of 10 man to get it down in one week however.

- Too many bosses to down in one 2 hour night without extending.

- Perhaps a better group than ours could blow through that raid in 2 or 3 hours.

- We couldn't.

- The second night however made it easier.

- Funny how I went from not raiding much to raiding 5 nights a week seemingly over night.

- Two different 10s and sometimes a third and the 25 man which is now running 2 nights.

- With flex I can only see it getting to be more.

- At the start I am thinking of completely ditching the 25 man because lets face it, if they could not get past mag, they are not ready for the next tier.

- I see the 25 spending a few months in flex.

- And I don't see us having enough for more than 2 10s at the start considering that 530 seems to be the suggested starting level for raiding normal.

- But enough babble about raiding next patch.

- Back to alting.

- I started a new mage, it will probably just sit there, but I like starting out once in a while for a change of pace.

- A female worgen mage.

- Just so I could do that area again, it has been a while.

- I wonder if you could get a language warning for calling a female worgen a bitch?

- After all they are female dogs.

- Have I mentioned recently how horrible female worgen look?

- They look like a chihuahua.

- Their head is three sizes too small for their body.

- Seriously blizzard, how the hell did it ever make it live like that.

- This is my second female worgen, probably the last time I mentioned it was when I made my first.

- A hunter of course.

- It sits there doing nothing like this mage will most likely.

- Most all my characters I use hide helm, but this character needs a helm showing.  Desperately.

- I actually got a battle stone from one of the pet battle dailies.

- I only do a few each day, not all of them, but it has been a month since I had gotten one.

- I thought there was supposed to be some bad luck protection on those baggies.

- Being I do at least 2 a day, sometimes more, we will call it 2 and say I did 60 between getting stones.

- That is not bad luck protection.

- My luck is so bad I have bad luck with bad luck protection.

- I wonder if there is a best day of the week to do the PvP parts of the legendary cloak quest line.

- Have another character that is up to that point now.

- I just do not want to be stuck like someone in my guild has been for three weeks now.

- He logs on every day and does a few battlegrounds.

- Usually 2 or 3 a day as he can fit it in, and he still has not gotten a win in the mines.

- Not even my luck was that bad.

- Got it first try on one character oddly enough but another took me 7 times and I think 7 was my worst.

- He is over 20 attempts and all losses.

- I said, at least you are getting honor points.

- He asked, what use are they to me being I do not PvP.

- Mounts baby, mounts.

- So at least now in losing he is working toward something worthwhile.

- I might not have helped him win a match but I made losing that many times a tiny bit more bearable.

- I think early morning is best to win alliance side.

- I have a guild mate that has run 9 characters through the legendary quest line so far and he said he usually wins the first or second time in each match.

- He is an early day player.

- That has to be it.

- I would probably have 9 characters through it myself if it were not for the fact I passed the parts that drop the sigils and never went back.

- If I am valor capped, and don't need gear from them, the sigil alone is not motivation enough for me to do the lower LFRs on alts.

- Maybe with all the parts dropping in the new raid in LFR I will catch up some.

- If I even do the new raid in LFR that is.

- I can see it being 100 times worse than it is now with most of, if not all of, the better players on their mains doing flex.

- So imagine the nightmares to come in the LFR.

- I don't even want to think about it.

- I am looking forward to attacking the timeless island as soon as the patch comes out.

- Lots of things to get, mobs to kill, quests to finish off, at the get go I can see that place being ultra packed.

- Maybe it is best they do not add virtual realms at the same time they add the new patch and they roll it out a little later.

- Even on my mostly low pop server new zones like that are so packed.

- I would never want to do it on a large server.

- Hence the reason I am where I am.

- I would like a few more people, but not so many that you can not see 5 feet in front of you, like on most packed servers.

- Some people love those packed servers.

- To each their own.

- Have a great day.

Worried About a World Without Valor Gear

Unless something changed that I have not noticed the new patch will land with no new valor gear from vendors.  You would think that being I raid that would not worry me too much but it does.  As it stands, this tier is ended soon and I have won a total of 2 pieces from the raid.  Admittedly they were two powerful pieces.  I have the top two normal mode hunter trinkets, both thunderforged.  Can't really complain about that can I?

But maybe I can.  The tier is ending and those are the only two pieces I have won in the raid.  The only time I ever saw a hunter ranged weapon even drop was when I was tanking and even that it was only once.  I've played the role of the good prepared raider by getting my coins for my bonus rolls and using them on the bosses that dropped the best pieces for me, specifically weapon bosses, and I still come up empty.

It makes me wonder, where would I be without valor gear?  I would have no 522 neck, no 522 ring, no 522 wrists, no 522 waist, and no 522 off set piece (hands, chest or legs).  I am currently using the 522 legs as my offset piece because nalak, despite killing him every week since he first appeared, has not dropped the legs for me.  I was at least lucky enough to get the gloves off him however.  But between nalak and oon that is the only 522 piece I would have seen outside of the raid if it were not for valor.  Maybe I could have purchased the head or boots as craftables, but when comparing to what things are going to be like that is not a fair comparison as there will be no new craftable patterns that will be of current raid gear level the next patch either.

So no valor gear and no craftable gear of raid level next patch means little old me is basically left ungeared because of bad luck.  As it stands I am the only person on my raid team that sims under 200K, and that is a miserable 160K.

As someone said to me in vent yesterday, what I lack in gear I make up for in skill.  There have been a few, very few, times where I beat all of those 4 people that sim higher than me.  I am usually pretty close, but as they all get their thunderforged weapons and thunderforged offset gear and 522 tier pieces, I am being left behind.  I am becoming the weak link no matter what level of skill I play at.  When we get to the point where someone can completely screw up, like happened to someone the other day, they can still end up 5K or 10K ahead of me because of gear alone.

All I need is for a few agility pieces to drop, a few mail pieces to drop, and even if I did spend half the tier on another character I still have enough kills under my belt that I should have won at least a few pieces here and there.  Even the two trinkets I won were luck.  One was on a coin roll and the other was passed to me because they felt bad I had yet to win a piece all tier.

When we enter the next raid I am the weak link from the damage dealer department and my skill, no matter how hard I try, just can not compensate for the gear any longer.  I always went out of my way to do everything I could to offset my lack of luck.  I cap valor asap so I can get the valor gear, I spend like gold is going out of style for whatever crafted items there are or BoEs that might appear on the market.  So I might not win gear but I am never left too far behind because of valor.

I am currently at a 530 item level.  I got my legendary cloak without any help from raid drops, but that was more a skill thing than a gear thing anyway.  Although you hear stories of people blowing through it like it was nothing, they all had at least a 530 before they did the fight.  I didn't even have a 530 after it when I put the cape on.  So I needed to make up for gear with execution.  It was not a hard fight, but it was designed that you do not need a high item level to do it if you were lacking.  You could skill it.  You could earn it.

But that is what I am talking about.  I was rewarded for the effort I put into it.  What I could not win in the raid I made sure to get outside of it.  Be it valor gear, crafted gear or quest line gear.

What am I to do next expansion with my luck?  There is no valor gear,  there is no crafted gear at current raid level, there is no quest line to get me anything more than an augmentation to something I already have.   Without raid drops I will be nowhere.  I will get nowhere.  I will fall even further behind the rest of my raid team thanks to my incredibly bad luck.

I will become a liability to our progress the next patch because I will always be a dollar short and a day late to everything we do because I can not get gear except to wait for the random gods to smile on me.  And they won't.  Remember, we are talking a person that just got the mount from UP after over 1000 attempts on multiple characters over the course of years.  While I might have moments of luck here and there, over all, I am rather luckless.

I am really worried about a world without valor gear.  I am worried because as the raid leader if I want to put my best team forward next patch, because of gear, I would have to sit myself.  In the grand scheme of things, if I am this behind (simming 40K below the others) this tier with valor gear, how far behind am I going to be when everyone in the raid is in 553 gear except me who will still be rocking my 530 item level because there is no valor gear? 

I could grab a 535 or two off the island, but that too is luck based so I won't count on it.  I could grab some 545 craftable gear, but that will still be behind current level gear and I could never justify spending top dollar on lesser gear but I most likely will be forced to as it will be my only option and I hate that.  I will still do what I always do, I will try as hard as I can to make up for my lack of luck.  The difference is, no matter how hard I try, without raid drops I will be hurting my raid team and I just can not do that.

I have a feeling this might be the end of the line for me because of my bad luck.  I love to raid, but if I am going to hurt my team by being woefully undergeared and there is nothing I can do about it except wait for luck to throw me a bone I might just have to stop raiding all together.  And I don't think I would continue playing at all for very long if I can not do what I enjoy doing, and that is raiding with my team.  So yes, I am really worried about a world without valor gear.  For people like me, I needed to it at least attempt to keep up with everyone else.  Thanks to luck, or lack thereof, it looks like my days raiding might very well be drawing to a close.  Will my subscription follow?.

The Hunter Pass on the PTR

The first, or what I hope is the first of more to come, class adjustment patches has come out on the PTR and it is time to look at where hunters stand.  When looking at these numbers I try to keep two things in mind.  It is still only the PTR and more changes could come and where will our compensation for the loss of readiness come from.

I was hoping that we would at least see something that showed some sort of replacement in the damage department from the loss of readiness.  It seems I was hoping for nothing as it did not happen.  Lets take a look at what did happen.

Hunter (Forums, Talent Calculator)

• Arcane Shot now does 125% weapon damage, down from 165% weapon damage. Additional damage reduced by 43%.

Beast Mastery

• Kill Command now does 140.1% of RAP, up from 121.8%.

Marksmanship

• Aimed Shot now does 400% ranged weapon damage, up from 350%. Additional damage increased by 31%.

Survival

• Explosive Shot damage and RAP scaling increased by 18%

The above was taken from the front page at MMO-C.  Being they are on top of things we will take this to mean that these are the only changes that were made during the recent numbers pass.  Now lets look at them for a moment and see what they might mean to us.

Completely ignoring the arcane shot part of a moment, the numbers look good for hunters.  Two of the three specs are seeing their signature shot (BM - Kill command, SV - Explosive shot) boosted up a little which is a nice adjustment.  Our signature shots need need a little more life to them as they seemed rather lackluster previously.  Perhaps these boosts will help them feel more powerful when using them instead of them feeling like just another shot in the abyss of a million shots that all hit for what seems like the same damage.  Don't get my wrong, the signature shots were in no real danger of ever being ignored, they did more than enough damage to make sure we hit them on every cooldown, but they did not feel powerful.

I do have one question however, why did they completely ignore the marksman signature shot in favor of aimed shot.  Marksman is already the spec that is dead last of the three and in some cases dead last or near it when compared to all damage dealing classes.  Is blizzard trying to shift things to be that aimed shot is the marksman signature shot now?  If so it would be nice for them to remove the careful aim part.

Aimed shot is the secondary shot for marksman, a powerful ability that should be used at the right time.  It is the marksman version of bestial wrath or black arrow, a great power ability that supports its specs signature shot.  BW makes KC more powerful and black arrow procs explosive shots whereas aimed shot does nothing for chimera.  Yes, marksman needs a lot of work and perhaps the best way to start that work is to clue blizzard in to the fact that chimera is their signature shot, not aimed.  They have let the spec rot for so long I think they forgot how the spec plays.

I think this numbers pass shows that blizzard has no intention of doing anything with marksman, so while I held hope earlier in the expansion for something to be done with it, we should all chalk it up to not happening this time around.  Cheers marksman, see you next expansion, maybe.

Now back to the pass and looking at the arcane change.  They had previously buffed arcane shot a fair deal and with so many bonuses, like those from the set, coming from arcane shot being fired it made it that blizzard had to do something to make those signature shots more appealing.  They were teetering dreadfully close to arcane getting to the point were it could very possibly pass the signature shots and hunters would just turn into a cobra/arcane machine guns.  So the buff to signature shots was huge, it placed them back in the position where they should always be valued over arcane even as we start getting gear next patch.

So why did they nerf the previous arcane buff if buffing the signatures assured they would still be the best choice?  Good question.  I might not know the reasoning behind it completely but I am going to play the guessing game here.  They nerfed it because they still felt they would pass the signature shots in high levels of gear.

What we ended up with in the numbers patch, as I see it, is that some damage was removed from arcane shot and relocated to kill command, explosive shot and aimed shot.  The only spec that really lost in the long run there is marksman.  The other two specs should be in the exact same place they were before damage wise.  Based on some early napkin math from what I have been reading, it might even be a buff, albeit a small one, of roughly 2% give or take.

In the end however it does nothing for hunter concerns.  It does nothing to replace the loss of readiness.  And it leaves us with a more costly arcane shot that is not quite as sexy as it looked before it was nerfed.  But on the bring side, they finally took a step in the right direction of giving what are supposed to be our power shots a little more power.

I will hold out hope that hunters have yet to be compensated for the loss of readiness and that is still to come, but with the patch coming out two weeks from now I would not hold my breath.  Mages, locks and rogues are all gravitating toward the top of the meters while hunters will remain middle of the pack, a very sad place to be when you are a pure DPS class with no real utility.  Lets all hope that something is done to help out with that soon, as in less than 2 weeks, otherwise the rest of this expansion will be very long for hunters as we start to collectively hold our breath waiting for the next expansion.

Let me touch on a few of the previous PTR changes before I finish my post.

Stampede was boosted to more reasonable numbers in a previous PTR cycle and some will claim that this is part of the compensation for readiness.  I will respectfully disagree.  It is compensation for them nerfing it multiple time during the expansion for no real PvE reason what so ever.  All they did was return it, somewhat, to what it was before it was nerfed because it should have never been nerfed to begin with.  The stampede buff was them fixing a mistake they made previously, it was not reimbursement for the loss of readiness.

Silencing shot was removed from talents in a previous PTR cycle and given baseline to marksman only.  I understand this line of reasoning, partly, because silencing shot was just too good for its talent tier.  It was the only real choice in most every situation.  After some pushing blizzard added a new ability, baseline, for survival and beast mastery called counter shot.  It will interrupt a cast but will not having the silencing component.  That is better than nothing I guess.  I still think it fits neatly into the category of why waste time on something like that by adding a new ability.  They should have just made silencing shot baseline and been done with it.

Dash, dive and charge, the hunter pet abilities, will be free now.  This is actually a small DPS increase as pets were occasionally using energy to cast these abilities on certain fights.  It will not be something we will really take notice of damage wise, but it is a good change for us and it does help on some fights.

Over all, the hunter pass is still looking for a hunter pass.  For other classes this was a pass, for hunters this was a rebalancing.  Moving some damage from arcane over to other abilities.  We are still waiting for our pass, we are still waiting for our boost, we are still waiting to be compensated for the loss of readiness.

I could not find the tweet after a quick look but ghostcrawler said recently that hunters would receive a good boost.  I say we hold him to it, leave him a message on twitter, be civil about it, and say, thank you for adjusting our signature shots so they feel more powerful, but where is that boost to damage over all you promised.

Maybe, just maybe, they might throw us a bone for 5.4.  Moving the damage from arcane to other shots is not the boost we wanted, it was more balancing.  Fine.  Now lets have that boost please.  You did promise us ghostcrawler.

Edit:

I just tried my hunter over at female dwarf using the PTR changes and my hunters damage went down, but thanks to stampede doing  4 times more than it is currently doing I saw a massive increase in DPS of 274.08 DPS.  Yes, a whole 274 more DPS.  Woot, buffs baby! /sarcasm

Picking Apart the GC Twizzcast

Ghostcrawler left us a nice collection of comments from the twizzcast yesterday and as always I found a bunch of things I would like to comment on.  You can check out a summery of them over at mmo-c here but I'll just quote the ones I want to talk about.

Valor Points will not be converted to Justice Points for Patch 5.4. "Players who want to stockpile their 3,000 Valor before Patch 5.4 hits will be able to do that, and probably should start thinking about that."

There are two specific things I grabbed out of this by reading between the lines.  First is the obvious one I am sure most will pick up on and that is him saying we should think about capping now.  Being today is a reset day (tomorrow in the UK) does it mean that three weeks from this reset that 5.4 is coming out?

He did say to "think" about it, so that might mean it is close but it is not three weeks.  Maybe it is four weeks and that is why he said we should "think" about it.  Or perhaps he is just covering his ass, just as I would do the same, and the intention is for it to be out in three weeks but he said "think" so if they need to delay a week or two he can't be held accountable for saying it was going to be three weeks when it wasn't.

I think that is most likely what he meant.  It is expected to be out in three weeks, he gave us fair warning, but he did not guarantee it would be out in three weeks.  This is basically perfect customer relations at its best.  Perhaps good ol' GC has been taking lessons on how to say things.  Give people the warning, but do not promise them.  Nice touch there crab boy.

The other part of the comment that made me think of something was the first part.  Valor will not be downgraded to justice.  Usually when new valor gear comes out and older gear becomes justice gear and the valor points become justice points.  This is usually done to keep us from getting a head start on valor gear.  I never really agreed with it since they added the cap to valor.  Who really cares if I get one piece (or 2 small ones) faster because I had valor.  It always came off as rather petty to deny the people that worked for it a tiny head start in my opinion.

However, with that said and the fact I do not recall seeing any posts about new valor gear I am thinking that unless they add something last minute we will have absolutely no new valor gear next patch.  Basically this seems to be blizzard reenforcing the feeling I have said many have since the beginning of the expansion.  It is "raid or die".  When there is no way to get current level gear except raiding it is a raid or die design.  Bad move blizzard, really bad move.

I raid, so no huge deal.  Even my characters that do not raid it is no big deal as I will begrudgingly do the LFR for some gear.  But for non raiders, or for raiders with bad luck, those valor pieces were not only nice, they were required.  No valor gear is a huge slap in the face to every person that plays the game, raider or not.  You have three weeks, rethink this one blizzard.  Add valor gear.

It is easy for your character's level to advance much faster than your profession skill level. Fixing this will take a significant amount of developer time, as what to do with all of the recipes have to be considered.

No shit Sherlock.  Are you telling me it took you this long to notice what everyone with a brain figured out the first time they took a character through these new faster than lightning leveling processes since cataclysm? 

Oh wait, I forgot that one word there, brain.  Yes, it would have required someone with a brain to notice that when you speed up leveling you should speed up the professions too.  Because the things were so well designed as to be leveled together changing one should have meant you changed the other as well.  But no, that type of logic flies way to far over blizzards head.

Beside the fact that it took them well over 2 years to notice a problem that hundreds, thousands even, have posted about on forums, blogs, and twitter about they now say it will take significant developer time to fix it.

Who do they have working on the development team, the the puppets from sesame street?  Let me fix this for you blizzard.  No serious developer time needed.  Just read the following.

Make high chance skill gathering give 2 points instead of one per herb picked, node mined or animal skinned.  Lets normal chance give 1 skill point and let low chance give 1 skill point every other.  This will help speed up gathering professions so they keep up with the increased leveling speed.

For crafting professions, decrease the number of items you need.  Having leveled 4 leather workers since the change in cataclysm I can say with absolutely no doubt that it is 100% impossible to keep it leveled with your character because of the demands of each pattern.  When you need 12, 14, 16 or 20 leather per pattern at some points and you might only get a total of 60 of that type of leather while leveling before you out level the zone, if you even happen to be doing quests that allow you to skin something that is, there is no way your leather working can keep up.

Decrease the amount of leather needs per pattern to 2-6 pieces each.  Same for blacksmith patterns.  Tailoring can just a tiny turn down also.  Alchemy seems fine, as long as you do not get CRZed to death and go 20 levels without seeing one herb, which has happened to me.

And those special patterns in leather working, the ones that need turtle scale or scorpion scale.  Lets get real here blizzard.  Of the four leather workers I have leveled since cataclysm I did not collect enough of either of those to make one of those items, combined.  As in 4 characters skinning while leveling did not collect 20 turtle scales.  Lets lower those special case items down to 1 per pattern, maybe 2 at max.

That is how you fix it, lower the requirements needed for the patterns.  I did not need hours upon hours to come to that conclusion.  Just logic.  If I level 4 times faster than I did when the professions were created to develop hand in hand with leveling then the professions need to be decreased proportionately if I want to keep them tied together.

What type of developers do you have working there that it would take them significant time to figure that one out?  Seriously, I would like to know.  I understand what you said there is a customer relations thing just like the "think" in collecting valor was.  The difference is one was a hint (think) and this was an outright disrespect to the players reading it.  It would not take significant developer time to fix it, you just do not want pay someone to edit all those numbers to fix it.  Two completely different things.

The heirloom weapons are also intended to make Mists of Pandaria a little more alt friendly.

There were many lines in the raid portion I could comment on, all of them I could actually, but this one has to go first because I found this to be particularly humorous.

Alt friendly?  If they dropped in the LFR, which they do not, I can see your point about them making mists a little more alt friendly.  But to complete the actual raid to have a chance to get them it is not really all that alt friendly.

Lets forget for a moment that I am a weirdo that has a billion alts and will most likely finish the raid on at least normal difficulty.  Most alt-a-holics are not raiders.  They might be part time raiders, fill in raiders, some time raiders, but if anything they are more likely to be looking for raiders.

If you are making something for alts don't you think it would be best to make them available easier to the people that would need them the most?  People that just have an army of alts but not really a dedicated raid schedule.

There is no valor gear this tier, how about making those BoA weapons available for valor.  Now that would be alt friendly.  Do not say something is alt friendly and then put it in a place where most people that are just alt levelers will never see it.  I look forward to gearing my non raiding alts from my mains doing it as I am sure many others are as well.  But the difference is I am a casual raider with lots of alts.  I am not an alt-a-holic that happens to raid sometimes.  It will help many alt people, sure, but it will not help the people that actually would need it most.  The people that do not raid and just level alts mostly.

They are not being put in the game to make it a little more alt friendly.  They are being put in the game so that the main raids have something special in them that the LFR does not.  I think they could have put something special in the main raids a lot better than that and let that go where it should be, somewhere that everyone can have access to them.  Just another case of the "raid or die" mists attitude.

Siege of Orgrimmar has a little bit of branching in paths and ideally raids in the future will have more, allowing you to skip a boss or do bosses in a slightly different order.

After the success of the wrath raids that had options on how you do them, like naxx, OS, ulduar, ICC,  and the continued requests from the players for more path driven content, it took you this long to figure out that options are good?

Now I understand why you say changing professions would take significant developer time.  You people can not make a decision and move with it.  Everything needs to be months or years of discussion before you do it.  There is no reason it should have taken you this long to realize that one straight line in a raid can lead to burn out faster than anything else, even more so when the second boss is something like horridon and you have no other options.  Which leads us to...

The first three or four bosses shouldn't be too hard for most raiding guilds, allowing them to have bosses they can use to gear up with as they progress.

In theory this if fine but I've heard it before.  Stop talking about it and do it.  And do not take forever to fix things if there is a problem.  There are still guilds stuck at horridon as hard as some might find that to believe. I've watched multiple guilds disband on my server because of horridon, and even if you did make nerfs you never made them enough to even out the playing field.  There us no reason the second boss should be one of the three hardest bosses in a 12 man raid.  And if it so happens that it is, fix it ASAP.  Don't "wait til next patch" like you do now. 

That is going to be the huge key to if you live by what you just said there mr crab.  If one of those first three or four bosses starts giving the majority of guilds fits, nerf is fast and hard.  It is supposed to be easier.  You just said that.  So make it so.  Don't let a whole patch go like you have this one where you leave one early boss too hard when comparing it to the boss that comes after it because the third one is a joke.  Where is the building up difficulty in that when the third boss is roughly a quarter of the difficulty of the second one?

I feel bad for the people that ended up seeing their guilds destroyed by him.  I feel bad for a few people I know that have still not gotten past him.  You should always start slow and build up with raid design.  Listen to nike, just do it.  Stop with the talk and just do it.  I've heard this line before and you did not come through so excuse me if I do not believe it when you say there will be a ramp up in difficulty.  You are the same people that thought added crush was a good idea for the LFR.  You are not always the best of judges when it comes to considering what is too easy or too difficult for your players.

Proving Grounds could even be used to replace item level as the gating requirement for Raid Finder or other things that use matchmaking.

I support this idea and while I am at it I dislike this idea.  I can do both at the same time can't I?  I think having someone past the most basic of basic ability tests is a fair idea.  However, I do not believe it should replace item level.  I think it should work in conjunction with it.

Lets face it, if you can get a gold in the proving grounds it shows you know how to play your class.  But will someone that just hit 90 and is in 435 gear actually be helpful to their SoO LFR?  Even if they are the absolute best player in the entire world they will still drag down the group.  A 435 item level tank would not be able to take the hits that would be going out in SoO even on LFR level.  A healer would be oom instantly trying to keep people up.  A 435 damage dealer will in no way be able to pull 80K, when that should be the absolute worst anyone should be doing in there when SoO comes out.

So while I do believe using the proving grounds as a gate would be a nice idea I could support, it can not be a gate alone.  There needs to be another gate with it.  Lets say you need a 500 item level to get into the SoO LFR when it comes out they can scale it based on the proving grounds.  As in, you need a bronze and a 500 item level or a silver and a 490 item level of a gold and a 480 item level.  But even in the worst case, you would still need a certain item level.  There is only so much that skill can make up for this expansion where gear is everything.  And even at that I would question if a 480 tank would be able to take the hits, even if they are a gold caliber player.

Yes to proving grounds being a buffer to enter.  No to it being the only buffer.  Just think about it before you switch, doing proving grounds only will spell disaster.

Most guilds should be able to make progress in Flex difficulty.

Nice in theory not so nice in implementation if you are delaying its release until after the normal and heroic are out.  If indeed flex is mean to be "progression for friends and family guilds" then they should be allowed to start their progression at the same time normal and heroic mode raiders do.

Unless something changed that I did not take notice of flex is not coming out when the patch comes out, it will be rolled out later.  As such, it will force the people that should be in it to dabble in normal until it comes.  Why not just let them dabble in flex on the same day if that is where they belong.

I am sure most people, even most people that only use LFR, will agree that we understand the reasons for the LFR coming out after the real raid does.  But if flex is meant to be a form of real raiding like normal or heroic but for a different skill level it should be treated the same as normal or heroic and not thrown in with the LFR as delayed content just to see it.

Let the friends and family guilds start their progression with everyone else.  It is only fair.  If you want people to feel like raiders, let them raid when the raiders start raiding.  Not afterwards.

The developers have to strike a balance between making too many changes and making the necessary changes.

Last but not least I post this one with oh so many thoughts in mind and sit here ready to type out my thoughts but sometimes I consider what I am about to say and figure it might be best to keep my mouth shut.  There have been so many changes this expansion that seem like changes for the sake of making change and there have been countless things that have needed changes and fixes and yet we sit waiting as they do nothing.  I could make a post on this comment all in itself, and I just might do that.

But for now I'll heed those words I'm sure everyone's mother taught them, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything.  I will take that advice this time around and say to our friend the crab, I have nothing to say to you about that line.

Monday Random Thoughts

- This weekend was an achievement weekend for me.

- Kind of hard to have one of those weekends when you get a ton of new achievements when you are already pushing closer to 17000 but I did.

- Not all of them got me achievement points however.

- There is one less "problem" achievement for me now.

- I've Got 9999 Problems but a Bone-White Primal Raptor Ain't One.

- Doesn't award any points, but I am glad it is done.

- Mostly solo too.  Had some groups early on where I shared the loot.

- But I decided, I'm a hunter, I can do these solo.

- Someone in guild asked, when I said I was farming them, can you do them solo?

- I said, I'm a hunter, that is what we do.

- An hour here and there and it is done.

- I like grinds like that to just take a break from the norm sometimes.

- That is the type of grind I think the game needs more of.

- No achievement points, no in game help, completely optional.

- So I took the option to do it over the course of time.

- I got another achievement this weekend that gave no points.

- Ahead of the Curve: Lei Shen.

- I knew it would be coming soon and it did.

- The fight was not that hard, even more so with the advent of the LFR which was basically how the fight actually was.

- We needed a few pulls for the tanks to get used to the switch and run thing and for people to remember their places but once we got it down, we got it down.

- We had to hold back on DPS too, that was one of the minor adjustments we needed to make.

- Two attempts ended in upsetting wipes because we pushed the phase too soon.

- We basically sat there for about 20 seconds or so twice doing nothing.

- And still had 3 people rank on the fight.

- I guess lots of guilds were sitting and waiting.

- After the nightmare of horridon and the RNG hating tortos fight I would have expected the last boss to put up some sort of fight but he didn't.

- I would guess in part because we grossly over gear it now.

- I think the lowest was 517 and the highest was 534.

- If it wasn't easy with that gear, it would have been a sad thing for us.

- Based on numbers we are in that fiftieth percent of guilds that downed the first boss on normal who went on to down the last boss.

- So it is basically what I always like to say, my guild is just the average guild.

- I've often said that and now I have a little math, as anecdotal as it is, to back it up.

- I just know we could be so much better.

- We are not going to rush to heroics, we are going to try to do another clear for some people that were not there and deserve the kills.

- I still need tier pieces and a weapon too.

- Heck, I would like to get a full clear on one of my characters.

- Any one of my characters.

- My tank has not killed some bosses, my hunter has not killed some bosses.

- I switch around so often just to get runs going that I do not have one character that has a full clear of anything this expansion.

- Maybe my hunter has one of MV, but that is it.

- Everything else it is pieces of kills here and there.

- But back to achievements.

- Got a couple in ToT, not counting the no point ahead of the curve.

- Got the one for starting on all four corner despite this being my first kill.

- Bug much?

- Went back to some old content and got the last achievement I needed for ICC 25.

- Can't believe I still had one left, but was worth knocking out.

- Got a mount out of the deal too.

- Funny how fast LK goes down on 25 heroic now.

- We only had 13 or 14 people, 3 were healers and 1 was a tank.

- We killed him in the first phase.

- No kidding.

- He started to do the transition thing nearly instantly as we pulled.

- He was dead before he could even spawn one of the orbs that knock people back off the platform.

- Yeah, gear inflation is really that insane.

- I know it is two expansions ago but it should not have been that much of a push over.

- Maybe I am just upset because I remember all the wipes back then and am pissed it is so easy now.

- Oddly enough, it doesn't bother me that other old bosses are easy now.

- Just him for some reason, I hate that he is so easy.

- Not sure why.

- Did an ulduar 25 run as well for some people that have never been there.

- I love showing new players the raid for the first time.

- Hearing the oh's and ah's on vent is worth the price of admission.

- If even people that have never seen it and knew nothing about it and only do it when it is push over easy say "this is the best raid blizzard ever made" after it is done, shouldn't that tell blizzard something?

- Sharing ulduar with new players makes it feel new all over again.

- I think I actually snagged an achievement or two I did not previous have in there.

- Two people got "Its Over 9000" in there during that run.

- I laughed when they got it and said, when I got its over 9000 years ago it was in here also.

- I wonder how many people got that achievement in ulduar.

- After all, there are almost 9000 achievement points to be had in ulduar alone.

- At least it feels that way sometimes.

- How many times have I run it and I still do not have them all?

- Now that is how achievement should be, lots of different ones for doing things in lots of different ways.

- For example, the lei shen fight where I got the achievement for starting at all four corners.

- In uldaurs time there would have been an achievement for starting on each one and then one for all four.

- They just added all achievements in steps.

- Don't know about you, but I think it was fun, others call it over kill.

- But a toast popping up on the screen never hurt anyone, so I like it.

- Well, unless you are a clicker and it pops over what you need to click on, then it might kill you.

- Sorry.

- Keybinding saves lives from unfortunate achievement spam deaths.

- That should be a loading screen tip.

- So with the new raptor and new ICC 25 mount I finally finished I was getting ever closer to that 200 mount achievement.

- I figured, later I will spam some of my favorite never drop mounts for me dungeons and maybe I will get lucky and get my last three.

- But first, lets knock out some more achievements.

- Off to do some normal mode scenarios and watched toast after toast pop up as I went after achievements.

- I did not have many scenario achievements done as I did not really do many of them before they added heroic scenarios.

- So far nearly 300 achievements points this weekend alone.

- Not a bad weekends work if you ask me.

- I head to do some of my dungeons, set it to heroic and go into utgarde pinnacle to meet with my old friend skadi once more.

- I've been there what seems like 12 million times before.

- I stealth past everything.

- Thank you camouflage.

- As normal I engage skadi while arthas and syala are still talking, which I always find humorous.

- I beat him down and click to loot and low and behold the mount is finally there.

- Years of trying and the excitement could not match the feeling of relief that I felt.

- Over 1000 kills and finally it dropped.

- I earned that baby, that's for sure.

- Two more mounts needed.

- I switch to one of my horde characters seeing if maybe I could buy a few faction mounts as I am sure I do not have them all on that side yet.

- I look and it says I have 170 mounts horde side.

- What?  I have 198 alliance side.

- I guess horde only mounts do not count for alliance and alliance only mounts do not count for horde.

- Oh well, I would need to find two more for the alliance side.

- I never made the JC cats so perhaps it was about time to loosen those purse strings and spend some cash.

- I go and buy eight orbs of mystery at 18K each.

- Hey, if I am going to make them might as well make them all.

- Prospect a ton of ore and then transmute a ton more to get the ones I need.

- I craft the four mounts and combine them to one then craft another four so I will now have all five.

- I learn them and ding, mount parade pops.

- Another achievement and another mount that it gives you for getting it and my mount total is now 204.

- Does not mean I will not stop killing those other mobs that drop mounts, they might have the rest of the week off, but they will die again, soon.

- Over all not a bad weekend for the grumpy one.

- Finished the current tier while it was still current even if it was a lot slower than I would have liked.

- Got a mess of achievements to add to my toast collection.

- Got a few new mounts including one that was hard fought for over many years.

- Not a lot to be grumpy about right now.

- But trust me, I'll find something to complain about later

- Hey, it's what I do best.

- Have a great day all.

Ideas for Hunter Raid Utility.

As a hunter main I spend a great deal reading hunter related things.  Real surprise right?  I've read it all from people complaining hunters are the worse PvE class now to hunters are OP if you know how to play them right.  I've heard some stuff that was so far fetched I don't think I would believe it if you paid me too and read tons of numbers that could not be argued with because they are facts and not opinions or stories.

No matter which side of the fence these people are on, love hunters or hate them now, they all seem to come back to the same thing.  As if it is a single unifying aspect about hunters that all hunters can get behind.  Hunters would like to have some sort of raid utility to bring to the table.

I decided that I wanted to have a little fun with that and make up some hunterrific ideas for some sort of raid utility we can bring.   Not saying my ideas would be great, but its fun to think about what could be done which would allow us to bring a little more to the table in a raid environment.  More than just the fact that we are the best class in the game and we were collecting pets before it was the big thing for all the cool kids to do.

Aspect of the Pack:

First up on the hunter utility list is one utility we already have that could use a change.  Remove the daze straight out.  Lower the 30% speed boost to a 20% speed boost.  And there you have it, a flat 20% speed boost while it is active at the expense of the hunter sacrificing their own personal DPS.

Too strong, perhaps?  So add a 15 second timer to it.  Switching to aspect of the pack will give all raid or party members a 20% speed boost for 15 seconds.  After 15 seconds the hunter will return to their previous aspect and will be unable to reactivate pack for 30 seconds.

There you go, a little raid utility.  Not great, but it makes pack a lot more useful in the raid environment.  The decrease to 20% from 30% is to keep it from being too powerful in PvP being there is no dazing factor now.  This is also the reason why it will only last or 15 seconds and then put itself on a 30 second cooldown from being used again.

Call of the Wild:

This would be a new hunter ability, as if we did not have enough already right?  This ability however would be off the global cooldown and as such can be macroed into another shot.  Thus not adding to button bloat.  At least for the people that know how to make macros.

Call of the Wild:  Whenever a hunter triggers a signature shot (kill command, chimera shot, non free explosive shot) a stack of wild call will be added.  Wild call lasts for 1 minute and stacks up to 10 times, refreshing.  When there are 10 stacks of wild call the call of the wild ability can be activated.  Activating call of the wild will give all party or raid members a spirit animal that will duplicate all actions they take for the next 6 seconds.

Is six seconds enough?  I think so, any more and it could be too powerful.  It would be something that could be held for a burst moment or hit on cooldown so you can start building stacks again.  But every time a hunter triggers it for 6 seconds the entire raid gets better.  Healers cast double heals, damage dealers do double damage, and tanks split damage taken with their spirit beast.  This effectively makes call of the wild a healing, damage dealing and tanking cooldown.

Perhaps some tweaking would need to be done as the three signature shots all have different length cooldowns and it would effectively mean that you would be asked to play the spec that could trigger it more often.  So perhaps it could be something like 10 chimera shots (90 seconds) when in marksman and 15 kill command or explosive shot (90 seconds) when in beast mastery or survival.  There, that works much better.

Now the fun part, what spirit animals would represent each class and spec.  I could make a post on that all by itself and I think it would be fun to think about.

Now that we worked that out.  I WANT THIS!

Stampede:

They gave us back some of the damage we lost from stampede but they never returned the minor utility it had.  I hated losing the utility of the ability more than I did the damage.  I can deal with the lower damage, maybe I would not use if it if were too low, but the utility was a beautiful thing.  Even if I used that utility more while soloing than for raid uses, but that does not mean that a different type of utility could not be added to them.

Stampede:  While stampede is active all damage done to the target of the hunters stampede is increased by 10% from all party or raid members.

Glyph of stampeding spirit bond:  Decreases the damage boost all party or raid members get when stampede is active to 5% but all party or raid members will gain 3% of their total health every 2 seconds while stampede is active.

Glyph of stampeding revival:  Your party or raid will no longer receive any damage boost but all party or raid members that are dead will be revived at full health as uncontrollable NPCs that will attack only for the duration of the stampede.  When stampede ends all party or raid members will return to their previously deceased state. (that sounds fun doesn't it? can you imagine that 1% wipe when you were the last one left and you hit it and watch 24 of your temporarily revived teammates go for the kill while you are safe in the back after hitting FD?)

Level 45 Talents:

This could be the raid utility line of abilities just by updating all the abilities from being a you only thing to a raid wide this.

Exhilaration:  Instantly heal yourself for 30%, your party or raid members for 15% and your pet for 100%. 2 minute cooldown.

Aspect of the Iron Hawk:  Ranged AP thing + reduces all damage you take by 10% and all damage your party or raid members take by 5%.

Spirit Bond: While your pet is active you and your pet will regenerate 3% of your health every 2 seconds and all party or raid members will regenerate 1% of their health every 2 seconds.

Now all three level 45 abilities have a benefit to the entire raid.  I could see hunters being taken along, at least one of them, just for the blanket 5% damage reduction to the entire raid.  Maybe it is a bit much to give hunters that much raid healing however when they are not even a healing class so this doesn't feel that right even if it does seem like it would be some decent raid utility on the small scale.

Invigoration: 

A beast mastery only talent that could become something baseline that would be an amazing raid utility.  In its current state invigoration has a 15% change to regenerate 20 focus whenever your pet hits with a basic attack.  Having an ability like this baseline for utility would be better, but also having it offer so much in return to an entire party or raid would be way to powerful.

So perhaps a second ability like this, different however, would be more fitting.  Lets call it Invigoration 2 because of a complete lack of creativity at the moment to name this new ability.  So invigoration would stay beast mastery only and invigoration 2 would be a baseline.

Invigoration 2:  Every time your pet lands a critical strike there is a 25% change that it will instantly generate 2% mana, focus, energy, rage, or runic power to all raid members.

Aspect of the Rhino:

Following the design of aspect of the pack, set forth above, there could be another new aspect that would work for a short time, 15 seconds, and then return you to your previous aspect and put itself on a 30 second cooldown.

Aspect of the Rhino: The hunter takes the aspect of the rhino hardening the hunters and all party and raid members skin reducing all physical damage taken by 20% for 15 seconds.  When aspect of the rhino expires it will start a 30 second cooldown and turn the hunter to their most previously active aspect that is not currently on cooldown.

Aspect of the Beast:

While we are at it, lets add one more aspect and pile it on to make us the master of utility and raid cooldowns.  An old friend returns, without a glyph and in a different forum.

Aspect of the Beast: The hunter takes on the aspect of the beast increasing the attack prowess of the hunter and all party and raid members by increasing attack power and spell power by 10% for 15 seconds.  When aspect of the rhino expires it will start a 30 second cooldown and turn the hunter to their most previously active aspect that is not currently on cooldown.

Remember, you might think the aspect ones are a little too powerful and could be chained to run through an entire raid with 3 hunters in the group but that would mean three things.  One, excellent coordination would be needed so only the most skilled would manage it correctly and should be rewarded for doing so.  Two, the hunters would be sacrificing their own DPS by not being in hawk and rotating aspects for the benefit of the raid.  Three, a debuff could be added that people can not benefit from an additional raid wide aspect while any raid wide aspect is on cooldown effectively meaning that only one could be active for 15 seconds every 45 seconds, so adjusting it would not really be an issue, it would be a choice of the raid leader on which is needed.

What ideas would you have for adding some utility to hunters?

I am not saying we should get them all.  Hunters are pretty awesome as it is, but any one of two of them would be welcome addition and offer us at least some minor utility.

I don't know about you, but I want call of the wild now.  Pretty please blizzard, with sugar on top.

Now off to brain storm about what animals each class/spec/race would get when we call the call of the wild.  This should be fun.