WoW is a game about carrots.  When you start out, there are a whole slew of different carrots you can chase.  One of the great things about WoW is how many carrots Blizzard managed to stuff into the game.  Instances, raids, PvP rewards, badge gear, vanity pets…there is just too dang much to list. 

But, things aren’t always perfect.  Just because there’s a whole mess of carrots, that doesn’t mean they can keep everyone interested.  Even fanboys like yours truly can get tired of the game.  I have been playing since the dawn of WoW, and even a little before, so it wouldn’t be surprising if I became a little burnt out.

But no, I am not tired of WoW.  Not yet.  I have, however, discovered a little something that irritates me.  As we go on, the paths of real progression grow ever narrower.  Before we really get into it, I’ll get into what I’ve been doing in game.

In Game Update

I do like to talk about what I’ve been up to in game, but I don’t wan to devote entire posts to it.  So from here on out I’ll try to separate these journalistic endeavors into an "In Game Update" within the body of larger posts.  If you don’t care what I’ve been up to, feel free to skip ahead to the next heading where I’ll get back to the meat of the post.

My Druid has essentially been functioning as a bank toon in Dalaran.  I am not done with the druid, and I’m happy to have a heroic ready healer in my back pocket, but he hasn’t been my focus.  Part of the reason is that I hate soloing with him, but the real crux is that I’m enjoying my warrior too dang much to log in my Druid.  If someone really needs a healer, I’m more than willing.

So let’s talk about that warrior.  I had been playing him as a tank for the first couple weeks after I hit 80.  I made great strides in his gear, and got him defense capped and comfortable tanking heroics.  I enjoy controlling the runs I am on, as it allows me the opportunity to pull like a madman.  I don’t like to mess around too much with long-winded explanations and stuff, I just like to roll in and blast stuff apart. 

The problem is that there are just too many tanks floating around my guild.  I was having an inordinately difficult time getting groups together.  Well, about 2 weeks back, someone was practically begging for a DPS to fill a heroic run.  While I had never really played as a fury warrior, the idea of slinging around two huge two handers was awfully enticing.  So I went ahead and took the plunge.  I made sure to let the tank know that my DPS gear sucked (and it truly did…I was using a two hander from a Borean Tundra questline for an offhand) and that I didn’t have a lot of experience.  He didn’t care, he needed a body.

So it was that my days as a Fury Warrior began, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever look back.  I am enjoying the hell out of the spec.  My DPS on that first run was admittedly poor, I was one of those chumps who couldn’t even keep up with the tank.

Well, a host of heroic runs and an investment in a whole mess of titansteel later, I began to see the true power of a Titan’s Grip Warrior.  I have probably four great pieces of gear, and a whole lot of filler everywhere else.  I’m still quite easily pushing 2k DPS in heroics, and have been as high as 2400.  That’s with mostly meh gear.  I can’t wait to see what happens when I upgrade my chest, boots, bracers, legs, and trinkets.  Visions of 3k DPS are dancing in my head.

So I find myself farming heroics as a DPS Warrior and having a grand old time.  I also found a late night group to run with, and can almost always find a heroic when I log on.  It’s great, and I only feel a little bad for my poor, neglected Druid.

More on Progression

When you first hit level 80 in WoW, it can be a little overwhelming trying to decide just what the heck you should do first.  Work on Hodir dailies for rep?  Grind instances or heroic instances for gear?  Do some PvP to grind for THAT gear?  Plan your eventual assault on Naxx?  There are many, many things you can do.  As you check things off that phantom list, however, your focus naturally narrows. 

I think that is where I often run into problems.  I’ve been a bit of an altoholic since I began the game.  I took way, way too long to get to 60, because I couldn’t stay focused on one character.  It wasn’t until quite recently that I figured out why I did that.

As my focus on progression narrows, I start to lose interest.  If I realize that to continue to improve I only have one or two choices, I start thinking about alts.  If I have to farm one or two heroics, and hope that ONE boss drops that ONE piece of loot that will really make a difference, I start to lose my nerve.  The trouble is multiplied if said drop or two comes from a raid instance.  Because then I have to make time or find a big old group of people to help me out.

Alts, on the other hand, can be a nice change of pace at that point.  You get your constant progression just from the act of leveling, and along with it you acquire new shiny gear, new skills, and perhaps work on a new tradeskill.  Suddenly all of these avenues for advancement are opened up to you again.

I can’t fault Blizzard for my particular form of dissatisfaction.  Like I said, they stuffed an awful big variety of carrots into WoW.  It just so happens that I have no real interest in a few of them.  PvP, for example, is something I wouldn’t get into, at least not on my server.  (If I want PvP, I’ll go to a PvP server…all or nothing there, if you ask me!  Hell, I even have a level 50 undead warrior on Warsong!)  I’ve also never gotten a lot of enjoyment out of dailies.  Yes, gold is great, but I prefer when it comes as a side effect of my natural adventures.  And yes, I know there is usually rep attached as well, but I’m not into rep grinds either. 

I also have to give Blizzard a lot of credit for the Achievement system.  This has helped alleviate my Progression Problem, as it gives me a lot of things I can do on my own for fun.  Soon I plan to go on a grand tour of old school instances.  There are still a few I have never seen, and it will be fun to go back and just destroy some of that old content. 

So What Can Be Done?

Sadly, I’m not smart enough to know.  It’s not a fault in the game, it’s just natural that as you go on, you have less to do, and your options narrow a bit.  Especially if you’re not interested in certain aspects of the game.  I wish I had some groundbreaking idea for the genre, some interesting way of keeping players occupied, but I don’t.  The only thing I could really come up with is this:  avoid making ONE drop from ONE boss in ONE heroic be the end-all for pre-raid gear.  I suppose it could be argued that its my own perception that makes those purple pants so precious.  The blue ones I have ain’t too shabby, but, well, they’re blue! 

Don’t take this post the wrong way.  I’m still enjoying the heckfire out of my Warrior, and I have plenty of work I can do on the Druid, not to mention my Hunter that languishes at 70, and my new DK.  Uh oh…there I go again….talking alts…

There may not be another issue revolving around World of Warcraft than loot and its distribution.  Once you get your character to max level, the only "leveling" beyond that is through loot.  It’s no surprise, then, that so many people take it so seriously.  I’ve always been somewhat vocal on this issue in my guild and elsewhere, and for a long time I’ve wanted to discuss it openly on the blog.  Before we get started, realize that this post will be chock-full of opinion, and I both expect and hope for much disagreement in the comment section.  Everyone has their own ideas on what is most "fair" and I’m sure I’ll rub at least one or two readers the wrong way. 

The good thing, though, is this:  I love a good fight.  Let’s get to it.

In the simplest terms, loot systems are designed to make the random distribution of loot less random.  Before you even get to the question of who should get a particular piece of loot, Blizzard’s calculators in the background must determine what will drop.  Therefore, before the players can even get involved, loot is already incredibly random.  With loot systems we normally try to remove as much of the randomness as possible. 

The goal of the many loot systems is to make that non-random distribution method "fair."

What is "fair?"

This is the crux of any loot system, and therefore the number 1 stumbling block.  Before you decide what loot system you should be using, or if you should use one at all, you have to determine what is "fair," at least in terms most of the people involved can agree on.  You won’t find a loot system where everyone agrees, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many out there!

There are many different ideas on what is fair when it comes to loot distribution, here are just a few:

• People who put in more effort are more entitled than those who show up occasionally, if at all.
• Everyone who participates in a particular raid should have the same chance at any loot that drops.
• Loot should go to those raid members who will benefit themselves and the raid the most.

I believe a lot of what makes a particular philosophy fair depends on your guild and membership.  If you aim to create and foster a hardcore, bleeding edge raiding guild, chances are you value who will benefit the raid most along with those who put in more effort.  If your guild is more casually focused, you are more likely to focus on a more equal distribution of loot that skews things less to the top end raiders.  Fair is too subjective a term to label any one system superior to the others in all situations. 

The problem is that many guilds could not classify themselves as either extreme:  all hardcore or all casual.  There are many gray areas, and trying to find where your "fair" should rest is questionable.  What if most of your guild is casual, but you have a hardcore contingent that wants more progress?  What if your guild is mostly hardcore, but you can’t seem to find all hardcore members, and have to pad your roster with more casual players? 

The Long View vs. the Short View

In the long view, the regular, random /roll is a fair system.  Over 100 raids, the numbers will normalize.  Sure, there will be spikes here and there, but a random  system is fair by definition.  The problem is that players don’t get the long view, and we rarely raid anything more than a dozen times or so.  Also, in my experience, the more a particular instance is raided, or the longer it is "on farm," the more loot rules tend to loosen.  Where in the beginning everyone is often interested in drops, as time goes on, and people begin to get focused, the pool of people interested in particular items naturally shrinks.  Toward the end of our Karazhan raiding, loot could be just short of a free-for-all, with new 70s getting many drops on their first run.

In the short view, /roll can be horribly distorted.  Because this system is truly random, each /roll is a separate entity, so individual players can (and often do) get high rolls an entire run, or for a few runs.  Obviously this is potentially quite irritating for other players who feel, for one reason or another, that they have put in more effort  and therefore deserve more.  It’s sort of like clearing the spawns around a couple of resource nodes only to watch another player swoop and in and take the rewards. 

In the short view, then, people understandably feel some kind of loot system is necessary — preferably one that rewards their level of effort.  Really, with the way raiding works in WoW, there really only IS a short view.  So how do loot systems try to address the problem?

The Question of Effort

Most loot systems try to translate your level of effort into gear.  If you raid more often, you will have more DKP or whatever your system uses in order to have more leverage when it comes to gear drops.  Conversely, if you raid less often or give less "effort," you are likely resigned, at least at first, to the drops that those with more points or what not don’t have an interest in or already have.  It makes sense.  If you raid more often, you should get more and better loot.  It’s good for you, and it’s good for the raid when a reliable raider gets better gear.

The problem with this thinking, in my opinion, is that those who raid more often already get more and better gear naturally.  Your effort is already rewarded by more chances at whatever piece of loot it is that you want.  In a way, loot systems will punish those who put out less "effort" when the RNG that determines what gear should drop is unkind to regular raiders.  I think the issue is with drops that are more rare than others.  No, I’m not talking about Legendaries like the Warglaives of Azzinoth, but just pieces that drop with less frequency than others.

These excessively rare pieces are often sought by many.  Does someone who raids more often really have any more right to it than anyone else?  I’m not sure.  I’m really not.  But I do know that chances are the people who raid more are better geared than those that raid less.  In fact that’s one of the only things of which I am fairly certain.

The Fix

So what can be done?  How do you make everyone happy?  Well, like I already said, you really can’t.  Loot systems are designed, for the most part, to try to appease both groups of players in some way.  The difference is in how the systems are managed and how much they are slanted either way.  Straight, capitalist DKP systems favor the hard core more heavily.  More liberal systems like weighted rolling systems and Suicide Kings tend to favor the more casual contingent, as they reward loot a little more evenly. 

In all honesty, there are only two systems that I believe are both fair and honest.  Loot council systems, and /roll.  Loot council systems at least don’t try to hide behind the machinations of a fictitious bureaucracy – real people make real choices.  There is blame to be had, yes, but at least those systems can be honest.  If your goal is to gear up regular raiders first, my opinion is that you should quit hiding behind a mechanical "system" and come right out and assign loot as you see fit.

That’s just me, though.

The regular old /roll system has its drawbacks, honestly, but it does give everyone a fair shake.  If you were in a group that helped kill a boss that dropped loot, you have as good a chance at anyone at getting said loot.  You don’t have to hear "sorry, player A tried more, so you can’t have it."  If you win the roll, you get the loot. 

I’d also like to add that I believe in the context of 10-man raiding, you should be able to just work things out without a system.  Honestly, if most of the loot that drops is only of interest to 2 or 3 people most of the time,  can’t we all just get along?  Especially if you are in a good guild?  Don’t you know that Player A has been begging that the loot Gods let that particular epic to drop while he’s around?  I know I would.  I know I’d step aside and let him have it, no matter my level of interest.  That’s just me, though.

I suppose part of me likes to rock the boat.  Part of me enjoys the random, slot machine nature of /roll.  I’ve been as burned as anyone else, but I’ve also come out on top.

They said it couldn’t be done, but I did it.  I got my druid to level 80 on New Year’s Eve.  Pretty appropriate, eh?  I dinged while doing the Sons of Hodir questline in Storm Peaks, specifically when turning in the quest that opened up Nifflehelm as a new town with dailies and such. 

I see rep grinding in my future.

Anyhow, at that point it was time for me to log, but the next night I went ahead with the respec to Resto.  I pulled out all my old healing gear, along with one or two quest rewards I had picked up, and a couple of crafted pieces.  It put me around 1250 healing or so in Tree form.  It’s funny how at one time that was a REALLY good number, and now it was iffy for most heroics.

Anyhow, I wanted to hit the ground running, and put out a call in guild chat for a heroic run, preferably an "easy" one, like UK or Nexus.  A couple of people wanted to do Heroic VH, and I said what the heck.  I feel fairly confident in my skill, and figured it to make up for any real gear deficiencies. 

So there I was, my first heroic Wrath instance, Violet Hold.  The first boss we got?  The stinking Voidwalker.

Ouch babe, very ouch.

He is one tough cookie.  As the fight wears on, it just gets tougher and tougher.  Though I have the use of Wild Growth for group healing, it can’t keep up with the kind of damage that guy puts out once he has a few of his adds spawned.  We managed to kill him on the first try, but I died, the only rezzer.  We reset and tried again, and the same thing happened.  On the third try, I basically ignored everyone else about 3/4s of the way through the fight to concentrate on keeping myself alive. 

That worked.  Only the tank and myself survived, but we had time to rez up and continue. 

The second boss was the Consortium dude you have to kite around the room.  Our tank had experience with that, so we plowed through him on the first try.  The last boss was also fairly easy, and we got it done.

All in all, I’m glad I had a tough job for my first heroic, it knocked the old rust off the leaves a bit.

This was also my first time really playing with some of the Druid’s new tools.  Wild Growth is helpful, but not overpowered or anything like that.  I found I was using a similar healing rotation from before 3.02.  The only real difference is I was keeping Regrowth up more often due to the nifty glyph.  I also found that my mana regen isn’t what it used to be, but I can keep up fairly easily with an occasional Innervate.

There is one spell, though, that is essentially useless in my early estimation.  Nourish.  I threw it in a few rotations to see what it could do.  it’s basically a fast, low return heal.  I get better numbers from Regrowth, and it has the added benefit of a lot of crits, the glyphed bonus, and the HOT portion.  Right now I don’t see a real use for Nourish.  If I need an emergency, fast heal, I’m using Swiftmend or NS+HT.  Nourish just doesn’t do enough healing to be effective, IMO.

Still, healing with a druid is just as fun, and I can see myself enjoying many more heroic runs and doing well on the healing meters in raid situations as well.

Since then I’ve also healed Heroic Nexus, which was a fairly smooth run minus a wipe on one of the four pulls in the flower area.  I also got a nice neckpiece off of Anomalus.  I also did a run of Heroic Azjol Nerub last night.  I had heard that this one was VERY tough, but I joined up with a very powerful PUG that was desperate for a healer.  The four DPSers (the tank included) averaged 2200, 2100, 1900 and 1700 DPS.  We blew a  frigging hole in that place.  From what those guys told me, having a shammy along made it easy.  The poison cleansing totem is the bee’s knees on the first two bosses.

So there you have it.  I have my first 11 badges, I’ve now crafted my first two epic LW pieces, the Earthgiving Boots and Earthgiving Legguards, and I’m sitting at around 1450 healing, and rising fast.  I should be in the 1600 range fairly quickly, as I have my eye on a bunch of easy upgrades.  Overall, I’m having a great time in game, and I’m happy to be back where I belong, max level and preparing to raid.  Thanks for reading!

Before I get to talking about quest rewards, I have some site news.  PTD has joined the illustrious ranks of such blogs as WoW Insider, World of Matticus and The Big Bear Butt.  No, I didn’t get a job with WI.  No, I didn’t get 1.2 million hits in the last week.  What happened is my blog is now blocked by the firewall at work.  Doh!  What this means is that I’m going to have to rethink how and when I do my posts.  I normally write and post during my lunch break, but with my access blocked that is now an impossibility.  Please bear with me if my posting habits change a bit in the coming weeks.

Now, about those early quest rewards.  If you were around when BC was released, there was an enormous gear "reset" because the stats and such on the gear in BC was far and away superior to anything you might have collected in the old world.  Raiders found themselves replacing shiny purples from Molten Core with green drops and quest rewards.  It was a little disheartening for some, as they had worked quite hard to get that great gear.  Once BC hit, that gear was VERY quickly replaced.

Because of this, people have feared the same would happen with the release of Wrath.  Well, I am here to tell you that this is not the case.  The drops and quest rewards are GOOD, mind you, but they aren’t leaps and bounds beyond top level BC loot.  Here is a pic I put together with a smattering of early quest rewards.  I was able to pick any of these up within my first hour or so questing in Northrend.

My apologies for the random distribution, I failed miserably at trying to arrange them in a sensible way.  I just wanted to get them all on one page. 

What I’ve gathered thus far is this:  if you are in a lot of T4 or higher gear, you won’t find a lot of use for the early quest rewards.  If you’ve got your drops from Kara, or from SSC or whatnot, you’ll be good for at least a little while. 

If you just recently hit 70, however, or you have a 70 you haven’t done much raiding with, you might be VERY interested in some of the quest rewards.  This is just one of the reasons that now is the perfect time to Change Your Main. 

These quest rewards can potentially also be very nice if you have holes in your gear you just never filled through raiding.  Maybe you’re still sporting a blue pair of bracers from Ramparts or something.  Maybe you just had bad luck with epic drops in a certain slot.  (I know my hunter has TERRIBLE luck with ranged weapon drops!)  You’ll probably find some good upgrades here.

There are a few general good things I’d like to note about the quest rewards. 

First, the change from healing or damage gear to just plain spellpower gear is a great help.  This really streamlines the gear table, and, in turn, the quest rewards.  In the past, many quests had to EITHER give a caster DPS piece OR a caster healing piece.  Not anymore.  While it’s true that this could make sorting out drops in instances more difficult, it has really improved the quest reward system. 

Next, I found that the quests had something for more classes this time around.  I don’t see any quests with a silly choice between a wand or a shield like in the old days.  Most quests were giving a wide assortment of upgrades that would appeal to MOST.  The quests I saw had at LEAST 3 or 4 upgrades to choose from, and they covered a lot of different bases. 

Lastly, one thing I noticed is there is a heck of a lot of stamina on some of this stuff.  I don’t know if this means we can expect to see mob HPs going way up or what, but there were some stamina numbers that I have rarely seen before.  Heck, the feral staff reward in that pic has more stamina on it than my Wildfury Greatstaff.

So there you have it.  Fear not, there is no huge gear reset this time.  Your shiny epics will remain shiny for at least a few levels in Northrend.  If you’ve been wondering whether you should bother continuing raiding for drops, the answer is why not?  Your epics will serve you well in Northrend, and what else do you have to do?  Also, if you’re gearing up a fresh 70, you’ll go all googly eyed over some of this stuff.  You’ll get some great upgrades, and you’ll get them FAST.  I finished most of the quests that gave the above rewards in about an hour.  That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Revenge.  I wanted to taste Zul’jin blood.  (Especially from his 10 Badge Vial.)  The last time PTD hit ZA, Zul’jin wiped him and his group out.  Sure, we only took two shots, but still, he wiped us out.  I hate to leave dungeons unfinished, and I could almost hear his mocking laughter as we called it quits and left.  It was embarrassing.

Well, last night was my chance at revenge.  The wife’s Mother is in town, so it afforded me the opportunity to sign up for a rare weeknight raid.  I have my eyes on the nice healing headpiece that the Dragonhawk drops, as well as badges for the Gavel.

We had a solid group: our two best tanks (warrior and pally), myself the tree along with our top CoH priest and a shammy for healing, and good DPS.  We went in trying for the first two timed chests.  Thus far I don’t believe we’ve been able to get the third, but I see that changing soon.

I won’t go into huge detail, but we one shot all of the aspects in this order:  Bear, Eagle, Dragonhawk (no headpiece, sob) and Lynx.  We did wipe once on the trash leading to the Dragonhawk, but other than that we were smooth. 

The real tests start after the four animal bosses are down, though.  That Hex Lord fight can be tough.  It turns out our mix of NPCs was decent, and it only took us two tries to take him down.  The first wipe was my fault, as I was standing a little too close to the Hex Lord and he went all Magey frost bolty on my barky butt and took me down.  They actually almost finished the job without me (I went down VERY early) and got him down to 6% or so before wiping.

Oh well.

We tried again and this time took him down pretty smoothly, with only a couple of deaths.  That is one tough fight, but it is also quite enjoyable.  Up to this point, I was leading the healing charts, but our priest cheated and racked up the heals with CoH during the Hex Lord fight(s).  No matter, the only meter that really matters is the "win" meter, and we were up on that one.

Next came my second look at Zul’jin.  Last time, if you recall, I had trouble with the third phase tornadoes.  Again, on our first try we had trouble with that phase, but did squeak through it.  We didn’t have enough people survive to continue though, and decided to wipe it and try again.

On the second try, I finally got a good tip on how to handle the tornado phase.  Keep a triple stack of lifebloom on myself at all times.  That allows me to toss LB on anyone who needed it without fear of the damage taking me out.  It worked like a charm.  (The tip came from the Shadow Priest who was with us, whose main is a Tree, and he is usually the tree in ZA runs.  My only question, Ease, is why didn’t you tell me before the FIRST attempt?  )

We got through that phase rather nicely on that attempt, and for the first time I got to see the Lynx part of the fight.  Man, does Zul’jin go nuts on people during that part.  My ability to help keep people up during his claws of fury attack or whatever is somewhat limited, but I did what I could.  A couple people went down during that phase, including one of the healers, but we got through it to his last phase.

Honestly, I don’t even know what was going on in that last phase.  I was busy trying to keep the tank up, and avoiding the fiery pillar thingys.  After a couple minutes or so of rolling lifebloom and rejuv, Zul’jin went down.  Yay! 

There was a time when ZA was released that the guild ran it at least 2 days a week.  I was never able to come, as they ran it on Monday and Tuesday, which are bad nights for me.  For a time we gave up on ZA, but it looks like we’re picking it back up again now that our gear is better thanks to T5 and T6 raiding.  Anyhow, as it turns out, this was only the second time we had cleared ZA in one night.  Yay for us!  And all together we’ve only cleared it around 4 or 5 times total.  I’d say we are a LOT better now than we were then, though.  I’m glad I was able to be a part of this run.

I think I can now safely say that I REALLY like ZA.  It’s challenging, there is great loot, and a decent number of badges for the time investment.  Sure, you get more in Kara, but Kara is mostly trivial to us at this point.  About the only time I find challenge in Kara anymore is if I’m in a PUG or trying to heal it alone.  ZA takes solid contributions from everyone to succeed.  You can’t carry a newb through ZA like you can Kara.  (I suppose maybe you could for the first couple aspects, but overall it’s not feasible…they would die a LOT.)  I look forward to more runs in the future, and since it reset this morning I’ll see if I can get something thrown together on the fly tonight.

Oh yeah, I suppose you’d like to see what I saw in terms of loot.  I picked up a nice belt for my kitty DPS set in Bladeangel’s Money Belt.  My kitty set is probably approaching T5 quality.  I need to get some enchants on a few things and pick up a good pair of DPS legs, but that’s about it.  This should help me level when Wrath hits, since I will most likely go feral to level.  I passed on the Staff of Dark Mending, but maybe I should have taken it.  It’s a very, very nice looking staff, but I’m saving up for the Gavel as I mentioned earlier, and I’ve always been a proponent of a one hander and off hand versus a staff.  Besides, after last night I’m up to 125 badges.  Yay!  The other stuff that dropped I paid little attention to, as it was mail or plate or uninteresting to me.  I know our Shammy got a pair of shoulders and another healy mail piece, and some fancy shield dropped off the lynx boss.

So that’s all for now.  I had a great time, got a nice off-spec piece, and a handful of badges.  Next time I hope the Dragonhawk drops my helm!