One of the best things about Cataclysm...

[Silk]

Ulduar is 2 tiers back, not 1. The last tier was ToC, which is where 232s come from. I wouldn't mind players getting decent gear from heroics, but it would have to cost alot more badges. Double the amount of badges needed for the t9 and it might sound more reasonable. Then at least those who spent months raiding to get pieces of gear wouldn't feel annoyed when a fresh 80 gets the same piece in a day.

I really can't get my head around you being "annoyed" though - your gear was better at the time that you got it, then it got out-dated by the next content and became more easily obtainable. This has always and will always be the nature of a never-ending game. In the meantime you can now raid new content for new shinies which are better than the 232's by far.

But eventually you can expect that casual players will be able to get 264's more easily as well. Probably when cata is out, but who knows.

In the meantime you should be happy that people can get this gear and are able to raid with you (should you need them to, which at times, you will).

As for Ulduar/ToC - Yeah, my bad. Points all still stand though. Nobody runs TOC10, so good job I can get 232 elsewhere.

 

[Zooggy]

Ahey,

I have to say, badge loot annoys me a little bit as well, though for a whole different reason. I still want to run Ulduar. I want to get Algalon 10 and 25, and I want to get Yoggy 25. I want to get Sarthy-3 25. Hells, I even want to get the 25-man EoE key, which means going all the way back to Naxx. But, I won't, simply because no one wants to run that content any more. I blame badge loot.

That said:

I wouldn't mind players getting decent gear from heroics, but it would have to cost alot more badges. Double the amount of badges needed for the t9 and it might sound more reasonable. Then at least those who spent months raiding to get pieces of gear wouldn't feel annoyed when a fresh 80 gets the same piece in a day.

This confuses the hell out of me. Why do you care what other people have? WoW is a varied enough game that you can set your own goals and challenges and work towards them and be happy with your own accomplishments, without having to compare them with everyone else's toys. Seriously, why the hell do you care?

Cheers,
J.

 

[Huung]

This confuses the hell out of me. Why do you care what other people have? WoW is a varied enough game that you can set your own goals and challenges and work towards them and be happy with your own accomplishments, without having to compare them with everyone else's toys. Seriously, why the hell do you care?

You used to be able to tell roughly how good a player was based on their gearing. A player wouldn't be getting better pieces of loot unless they themselves had done well, and progressed to content which awarded that gear. Now, with the badge gear so incredibly easy to get, everyone has access to the previous tier of gear, and it's near impossible to tell who's actually got that via doing t9 content, or who's got it via a tiny amount of work in heroics.

You can have people readily geared to do ICC10 who have never stepped foot in a raid before. This to me just seems terribly wrong, when all they've had to do to get to that stage is a couple of weeks of heroics - if that.

I'm not bothered what gear others have, I'm bothered about the availability of gear to those who otherwise wouldn't have been skilled enough to have earned it when the gear wasn't just given away for 0 effort.

 

[Angelic]

And, Huung, do you have a solution? Because unless you want to enforce continuous gearing runs through previous content raids, you won't have a way to prepare people for newer tier raids. And let's face it, it is not viable to raid Naxx->Sarth->EoE->Uld->ToC just for the sake of new recruits that do not have the gear for progress in ICC (speaking in current terms). Even if one was in a hardcore raiding guild raiding 6 times a week, there's just not enough nights per lockout period to accomodate for all this gearing-up raiding - and none of us are (or indeed wish to be) in such a guild!

Basically, what the current system does is allows for alts to be raid-capable AND for people to take a break from WoW skipping one tier of content without rendering themselves useless for the rest of the expansion. That is a good thing, isn't it?

 

[Silk]

Also, if someone is as useless as you make out then they'd never be raiding with us anyway.. surely

 

[Huung]

Also, if someone is as useless as you make out then they'd never be raiding with us anyway.. surely

*coughs*

And, Huung, do you have a solution? Blabbity bla

Not in this expansion, no. However, Cata could just go back to how TBC did it, which was fine. 3 tiers of content, badge gear cost a lot of badges but was T5 equivalent without being T5 itself (therefore giving a small bonus to all the raiders who obtained the real T5 in raids as opposed to heroics). It worked. 4 tiers of content in Wrath messed this up really, not to mention the numerous emblem types, as opposed to just increasing the cost of a single type of emblem as better badge gear was released. More TBC TBH

 

[thatbloke]

The problem with TBH, particularly with the Sunwell raid, was that you HAD to be in full Black Temple gear to be able to survive in that place - if you weren't then you couldn't do it. At all.

This led to a number of high end guilds disbanding due to players leaving and new recruits not having the required gear, meaning they had to re-run an instance they had already been doing for months just to get, say, 5 out of 25 people the gear they needed so they could do the new stuff. This then cause some of those other 20 out of 25 people to get bored, stop playing, and... o wait - vicious circle. Not a good one either...

 

[Zooggy]

Ahey,

You used to be able to tell roughly how good a player was based on their gearing.

A'ight, fair enough, I understand this. For a guild recruitment officer, it might be significant.

But for a generic player, again, why do you care how good other people are?

I'm bothered about the availability of gear to those who otherwise wouldn't have been skilled enough to have earned it when the gear wasn't just given away for 0 effort.

So, your response to why do you care is "I care"? I still don't get it. Why do you care?

via a tiny amount of work in heroics

I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at you, but I've tried gearing up via heroics, it's a freaking pain! Seriously, it takes a major hard core player to gear up via heroics in any reasonable amount of time.

Cheers,
J.

Edit: Just to add, you're entitled to care, naturally, I'm not judging. I'm just genuinely confused and curious.

 

[Naamoo]

Nobody runs TOC10, so good job I can get 232 elsewhere.

Sorry to burst your bubble but toc 10 and 25 pugs are run as often, if not more some weeks, than icc 10 and 25 pugs

 

[Huung]

A'ight, fair enough, I understand this. For a guild recruitment officer, it might be significant.

But for a generic player, again, why do you care how good other people are?

Because as a (previous) member of the guild who wants to see good progress made, letting those people in who are geared but underexperienced is worse than letting in those who are capable but don't yet have the gear. It's like letting the rich kid play on your team even though he's terrible, just because he can afford the kit. As a player who wants to see the team succeed, this doesn't bode well with me.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at you, but I've tried gearing up via heroics, it's a freaking pain! Seriously, it takes a major hard core player to gear up via heroics in any reasonable amount of time.

As a DPS it takes slightly longer, as a healer or tank it takes no time at all. Say you run 3 heroics a night, you can easily get that done in an hour and a half (provided you don't get long instances like HoR). That's going to give you a good 13/14 badges. Assuming 4p t9, 245 head, both 245 rings and trinkets, and emblems to buy 245 crafted bracers; you'd be needing 465 emblems. Roughly 34 days, or 5 weeks. During that time you could get 232 pieces in the other slots, or 264 in the case of backs (the PvP ones have insanely better stats than the 219s even excluding resi).

If, like myself, you had more free time to run more, you could get geared in under 2 weeks easily, but that's stepping outside of the "casual players" by quite a way

I'd still say 5 weeks was definitely a "reasonable amount of time" to gear up in the best pre-ICC gear as a casual.

 

[Zooggy]

Hey,

letting those people in who are geared but underexperienced is worse than letting in those who are capable but don't yet have the gear. It's like letting the rich kid play on your team even though he's terrible, just because he can afford the kit

A'ight, fair enough, I take your point. I still disagree, but at least, I understand.

Say you run 3 heroics a night [...] Roughly 34 days, or 5 weeks

Er... no. I play WoW three nights a week. Two of them, I'm raiding. That means one night a week for heroics. So 34 days is 34 weeks, and that's, like, over half a year.

Even if I didn't raid at all, 34 days is still slightly over 11 weeks, which is almost three months, and that's if I devote my entire WoW time to heroics.

I call that hard core.

Cheers,
J.

 

[Elincia]

And, Huung, do you have a solution? Because unless you want to enforce continuous gearing runs through previous content raids, you won't have a way to prepare people for newer tier raids. And let's face it, it is not viable to raid Naxx->Sarth->EoE->Uld->ToC just for the sake of new recruits that do not have the gear for progress in ICC (speaking in current terms).

I can bring an easy solution. How many new recruits do we get in a week?
1, maybe 2? Well in that case we can just run Uld and ToC and carry him. And later on when we are up for it, carry him through ICC.

But you get a vailid point. Indeed these are problems we will run in when things change in Cata. Though people, Blizz never said they will change badgessystem, they only said they wanted to make CC usefull again

 

[Windzarko]

If memory serves, GC and another Blue mentioned that they wanted to use a two-tier badge system whereby the newest content gives the higher badge type, and all other content gives the lower badge type; much like now, except they'll keep it as those same two badge types and move it around when new content comes out rather than end up with three types of redundant badge.

But yeah, this topic quickly went to hell in a hand basket. I start by rejoicing at the apparently emphatic return of Crowd Control to Cataclysm-level 5-mans and Raids (likely, I would note, easier than BC CC, but more present than Wrath's) and the potential it has for not only forcing some people to tunnel vision less and start not only paying attention but learning more about their class than the same few damage buttons to press, but also the potential to make things more interesting and less of a perpetual AoE zergfest... and it turns into a massive debate about appropriateness of the current gearing system?

To be blunt, the way gearing works now does allow all those shite players who never used to get anywhere to get a little higher than they used to, sometimes at our expense. But it also allows US to get gear more easily for our mains and alts, and for our friends to do the same. It benefits us, it lets us have fun more easily in some cases. That system is still going to be in Cataclysm to some extent, so get used to it. Hopefully the changes to the game might help filter out the 'tards a bit and force some people to HTFU and result in an overall decreases in the bads and make PuG'ing a bit easier on us.

On the other hand, it could be a total disaster and we speculate endlessly and somewhat fruitlessly based on what little knowledge we currently have, descend into arguments and... oh... wait, that already happened. Whoops.

 

[Silk]

Sorry to burst your bubble but toc 10 and 25 pugs are run as often, if not more some weeks, than icc 10 and 25 pugs

Alright

But in my personal case this is still not doable - a raid is a raid, pug or not. It takes more time than I can physcially spare on most days. In fact a pug raid probably takes longer than a guild raid!

So still I argue it's a good job I can gear up via shorter bursts of gameplay - benefits me as a player (enables me to do harder content solo) and you as a guild should you ever need me to tank a raid.

 

[Silk]

Because as a (previous) member of the guild who wants to see good progress made, letting those people in who are geared but underexperienced is worse than letting in those who are capable but don't yet have the gear. It's like letting the rich kid play on your team even though he's terrible, just because he can afford the kit. As a player who wants to see the team succeed, this doesn't bode well with me.

But you said earlier you'd like to use gear to gauge how good a player is. So you wouldnt even give the "poor kid" a tryout in this case - gear sucks, so he must suck, right?

If the 232's were unobtainable I'd be in mainly ilev 200, due to time constraints meaning anything that takes 2-3hours+ in one sitting (most raids) isn't doable. Whilst I'm not the best player in the world, I'd say I can DPS / tank well enough for raids. I wouldn't be able to though - firstly you'd judge me because I only had low level gear so I wouldn't even get a raiding spot, and secondly, I wouldn't have good enough gear to be able to raid in the first place - nobody would backtrack to gear me up and I wouldn't expect them to.

As a DPS it takes slightly longer, as a healer or tank it takes no time at all. Say you run 3 heroics a night, you can easily get that done in an hour and a half (provided you don't get long instances like HoR). That's going to give you a good 13/14 badges. Assuming 4p t9, 245 head, both 245 rings and trinkets, and emblems to buy 245 crafted bracers; you'd be needing 465 emblems. Roughly 34 days, or 5 weeks. During that time you could get 232 pieces in the other slots, or 264 in the case of backs (the PvP ones have insanely better stats than the 219s even excluding resi).

If, like myself, you had more free time to run more, you could get geared in under 2 weeks easily, but that's stepping outside of the "casual players" by quite a way

I'd still say 5 weeks was definitely a "reasonable amount of time" to gear up in the best pre-ICC gear as a casual.

Hmm, it's taken me a good three months actually (would have taken longer but already had a pool of honour I used to get 264 cloak as soon as I re-subscribed). Surely it'd be faster to gear up when raiding, and you'd end up with gear twice as good in many slots too.

I should also mention you can't get all slots via badges - I am still missing boots. The so called easy/fast HC method isn't so easy/fast when some slots are only going to drop "on chance". As I speak, I have tried 21 times to obtain said boots (I Know this as I have killed mr. ass-laser 21 times in my stats). That's 10+ hours for ONE 232 item which I still don't have, who knows, might extend 20 hours by the time I do.

Sigh. Anyway, the only way you can judge a player's skill is to play with them. It's that simple.

All this arguing over who should be able to get what is silly, because at end of the day you need everyone to be able to get some form of pre-raid gear for your sake as well as theirs. Even in the days of MC, the pre-req loot was obtained from 5 mans so "doable".

Of course then it went a bit tits up and you could only do BWL with MC gear and so on and so forth. I'm not surprised Blizzard broke away from this system, it was insanely hard to get new blood in your 40 man raid. You had to backtrack to gear them, over and over for each batch od new recruits - you just ended up having a raid night for all the older instances, waste of most peoples time and caused a lot of resentment that they "had to" do this content again just so that we could continue as a raiding guild (bearing in mind they'd already run MC a good 100+ times).

Back then, I would have welcomed the change to allow new players to get my (very VERY difficult to obtain) T1 gear through x dungeon runs. It would have meant I didn't have to do MC anymore..

 

[Silk]

If memory serves, GC and another Blue mentioned that they wanted to use a two-tier badge system whereby the newest content gives the higher badge type, and all other content gives the lower badge type; much like now, except they'll keep it as those same two badge types and move it around when new content comes out rather than end up with three types of redundant badge.

But yeah, this topic quickly went to hell in a hand basket. I start by rejoicing at the apparently emphatic return of Crowd Control to Cataclysm-level 5-mans and Raids (likely, I would note, easier than BC CC, but more present than Wrath's) and the potential it has for not only forcing some people to tunnel vision less and start not only paying attention but learning more about their class than the same few damage buttons to press, but also the potential to make things more interesting and less of a perpetual AoE zergfest... and it turns into a massive debate about appropriateness of the current gearing system?

To be blunt, the way gearing works now does allow all those shite players who never used to get anywhere to get a little higher than they used to, sometimes at our expense. But it also allows US to get gear more easily for our mains and alts, and for our friends to do the same. It benefits us, it lets us have fun more easily in some cases. That system is still going to be in Cataclysm to some extent, so get used to it. Hopefully the changes to the game might help filter out the 'tards a bit and force some people to HTFU and result in an overall decreases in the bads and make PuG'ing a bit easier on us.

On the other hand, it could be a total disaster and we speculate endlessly and somewhat fruitlessly based on what little knowledge we currently have, descend into arguments and... oh... wait, that already happened. Whoops.

I like a good debate, I can't help it

I'm just not comfortable with them making what is supposed to be "short/burst gameplay" something that could actually be as long and painful as raids (therefore not doable by me as I can't control how good or capable other players are). An introduction of CC could be a world of pain, depends entirely how they do it - I go back to my class dependency argument. You're right though, it is speculation until we get more info.. but please.. lord.. don't let them make us need one of a certain class to CC undeads or any such nonsense..

Also if we must rely on CC, then if they could stop the obligatory DK being in the 5th spot every time I pug that would be nice too.

 

[Burrick]

Ok lithy started this thead to say he was happy that cc was coming back, tbh so am i , however this has now gone into a big pile of moaning bollox, STOP YOUR MOANING! and as i said before if you dont like it, dont play! Simple. However if you are gonna keep playing fucking deal with it.

 

[Windzarko]

don't let them make us need one of a certain class to CC undeads or any such nonsense..

Little to no Undead in Cataclysm. WPL will be clear of them, and EPL will have less. None in dungeons/raids.

And even if their were...

Repent, Shackle, Frost Trap, Turn Evil, Cyclone, maybe Hex. Easy.

They're more and more trying to do this "bring the player not the class" spiel with distributing buffs and abilities and whatnot around, so I sincerely doubt that we'd have any CC troubles. I mean, going off my current knowledge...

Humanoids: Repent, Trap, Hex, Sap, Cyclone, Sheep
Beasts: Trap, Scare Beast, Hex, Sap, Cyclone, Hibernate, Sheep
Elementals: Repent, Trap, Hex (?), Cyclone, Banish
Dragonkin: Repent, Trap, Hex (?), Cyclone, Sap

Those are the four we're mostly going to be encountering, and CC won't be an issue. The chances of you not having a single Mage, Druid, Hunter, Retadin, Warlock or Rogue is pretty low unless you've got an all-DK group or something... in which case you deserve to wipe nastily

 

[Silk]

Those are the four we're mostly going to be encountering, and CC won't be an issue. The chances of you not having a single Mage, Druid, Hunter, Retadin, Warlock or Rogue is pretty low unless you've got an all-DK group or something... in which case you deserve to wipe nastily

When did you last use Dungeon Finder?

I join with a mage and pally healer (and myself as tank ofc)

So we always get sheep for at least two of the four groups you listed. But that's one mob CC'd.

Sadly the last two spots are frequently a DK and warrior. So that's three classes of mobs we can't CC (undead/elemental/dragon). I very much doubt undead will completely vanish.

Sometimes we get a hunter/rogue instead of a warrior, but it's far from guaranteed. Hence my concerns.. I can't help the classes/dungeon that randomly get picked from Blizzards own tool.

I dont' want to go back to the days of canning a run because we lack a class. It was never fun, and the wrong kind of challenge (to find the class you need)

 

[thatbloke]

When did you last use Dungeon Finder?

I join with a mage and pally healer (and myself as tank ofc)

So we always get sheep for at least two of the four groups you listed. But that's one mob CC'd.

Sadly the last two spots are frequently a DK and warrior. So that's three classes of mobs we can't CC (undead/elemental/dragon). I very much doubt undead will completely vanish.

Sometimes we get a hunter/rogue instead of a warrior, but it's far from guaranteed. Hence my concerns.. I can't help the classes/dungeon that randomly get picked from Blizzards own tool.

I dont' want to go back to the days of canning a run because we lack a class. It was never fun, and the wrong kind of challenge (to find the class you need)

So perhaps the Dungeon finder could be upgraded to say that someone capable of a relevant type of CC can be used.

But again, it's all conjecture based on things we haven't even seen yet.