The Queue: The loot blues
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 30th 2008 at 2:00PM
Merry No Maintenance Day, everyone! Let's not waste it and jump right into things. Chilblain asked...
When my guild does 25-mans, it's not uncommon to have 2-3 Priests, 2 Warlocks and 2-3 Mages. Nearly one third of the entire raid is all rolling on Cloth armor, yet we go entire evenings where not a single piece drops.
If Blizzard insists on the ridiculous notion that cloth should be all things to all people, have they addressed the poor drop rate in comparison to other items? Our Resto Druids and Shaman are all decked out in 213 and while our Priests are still healing in Heroic blues.
Random loot is random is pretty much all there is to it. Right in the comments yesterday, others were saying their raids have more Cloth armor than they know what to do with. Raid composition is also a factor. My raid has six people in cloth. We also have six people in Mail and seven people in Leather. They're not all using the same types of Mail or Leather, but that doesn't mean they don't need to worry about drop rates.
A third of your raid is Cloth, and they have the ability to all pull from the same pool of items, generally. Hit isn't necessary for Healers and while the other pieces may not all be ideal for whatever specs everyone is playing, they can pull from the same pool of loot.
You said that nearly one third of your raid is rolling on Cloth. Nearly one third of my raid is in Leather. Druids of various flavors and Rogues. According to the Naxxramas loot tables, there are roughly the same amount of Leather drops as Cloth drops. For the sake of discussion, let's pretend they fall into all of the necessary slots evenly (I'm not sure if they do), and are distributed evenly across the bosses. It's less likely that my Rogues will get a drop that they can theoretically use than it is for your Warlocks. That Warlock may need to equip some gear that isn't ideal, but they can still use it. I don't think the Rogue has any use for the spell power leather, unless it looks awesome and they want to build a fashion set.
Loot luck sometimes sucks, but that's really all it comes down to here. Luck. There's plenty of gear for the Cloth classes.
Neirin asked...
I've got a follow-up question about tagging. In the 3.0.8 patch notes they say that all spells that make an enemy aggressive towards you will tag them. Does that include thorns and ret aura?
No, it's more referring to things like DoTs. Buttons you push to pull mobs/start attacking them, but don't tap/do damage immediately. For example, a Mage can spam Ice Lance all day and pull as many mobs as he'd like. Currently, my Shadow Priest couldn't do that with Shadow Word: Pain. I'd cast it, and that Mage could Ice Lance it afterwards and steal the tap. I'd have to resort to using Shadow Word: Death to tap which would proceed to hit me in the face for 1800. As of patch 3.0.8, I'll be able to tap by simply landing a Shadow Word: Pain rather than landing it, then waiting for the damage to tick.
You still need to take an aggressive action (key word being 'action'), it will just tap whether it does damage or not.
Arlendor asked...
When you go kill Artruis again to switch from Oracles to Frenzyheart (or vice-versa), what rep level do you end up at?
Your reputation shifts to Honored with your new faction, and Hated with your old one.
Medros asked...
I have a question about the Culling of Stratholme instance. WoW Head shows a lot of interesting lore figures, and I was wondering if there are any major events that can be observed there, such as the precursor to Ashbringer in Old Hillsbrad, or if even zoning in begins the encounter? Any NPCs you think are worth watching out for?
There's nothing as major as the meeting in Old Hillsbrad, but there's still cool stuff to see. You just run up ahead into Stratholme instead of messing with the plague crates, and you can see the city while it's still in one piece. Just make sure nobody in there with you will start the event while you're in there, or you will die a swift death.
There's not a whole lot to see, but there are vendors you can use to repair, and there are some NPCs there that you might've met elsewhere. A certain blacksmith, for example. There's also a vendor way in the back that sells Stratholme Lilies, which you may want to pick up to impress certain nerdy gals in your life. It works! I think...
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
??? Dec 30th 2008 2:08PM
is there going to be a cooking achievement guide coming to WI soon?
Abbadon Dec 30th 2008 3:10PM
Do we really need a cooking achievement guide?
Everything that pertains to ultimately becoming a Chef is pretty straight forward. I think the only thing I had to check outside of the game was a good location to get Critter Gitter.
The two achievements that are a pain, though, but luckily not part of the meta achievement, are the learn 160 recipes and eat 50 different kinds of Azeroth's delectable dishes. (the last one is actually under General and not Cooking)
I wish there was a way to export such info from WoW.... (and quests, too, for those Loremaster achievements)
For now, I can at least go to Thottbot or Wowhead and pull up a list of recipes and make a manual comparison to my known recipes to figure out which ones I'm missing. Unfortunately for the other, I'm just gonna have to eventually start from scratch and keep track of what all has been eaten.
MDC Dec 30th 2008 3:27PM
Abbadon: Winterveil is a great time to get the 50 dishes achievement, with the cooking recipes, as well as the holiday foods about. Worked for me, I got this done with just normal cooking foods, vendor faire, and the Winterveil goodies.
AyaJulia Dec 30th 2008 4:57PM
Abbaddon: Download the addon "Overachiever." It puts a note in any food/drink tooltip telling whether you've consumed it yet.
Cyno Dec 30th 2008 4:59PM
Abbadon: Theres a very light addon called "Tradejunkie" that'll list what recipes youre missing for each profession and where to get em. Unfortunately it hasnt been updated for wrath, but that wouldnt matter much for cooking.
Aust Dec 30th 2008 4:59PM
Abbadon: OverAchiever (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11361-Overachiever.html) recently gained the ability to display whether or not you have eaten/drunk any eligible food or drink item in its tooltip.
jaxson_bateman Dec 30th 2008 7:55PM
For the record, the 'cook 60 Northrend recipes' achievement (Northrend Gourmet part... 3? 4?), which is the one that is actually required for the achievement, is also a tricky one - in so much as that it can't actually be completed yet.
There are 62 recipes on the list that you can choose from when you decide what to cook. However, 4 of the recipes cannot yet be found in game. As such, the highest you can get is 58 recipes cooked.
Skrotus Dec 31st 2008 12:09AM
it only requires you cook 45 northrend recipes for the achievement not 60, but you're right it isn't possible currently because all the recipes are not currently in the game. this should be fixed in patch 3.0.8 though
Agathon Dec 30th 2008 2:11PM
Well I have to say that I do find it ridiculous that still to this day that a party goes into an instance and a boss drops gear that is not for anyone at all in the party.
It would be so easy to make it so that gear at least matches one class requirement in the party. (ie having Plate drop with no one in party that could even wear it)
The vendor prices dont help offset the time that all folks in the party put into doing that fight to get just a few gold.
Jay in Oregon Dec 30th 2008 3:10PM
I think the placeholder items are a step in the right direction, and the addition of Bind on Equip epics in Naxxramas (and hopefully later instances) will help alleviate some of that frustration as well.
A 10- or 25-man raid most likely has an enchanter, so the "disenchant and roll on the shard" option is viable. Another way to plug that hole would be to give enchanters an option to disenchant someone else's soulbound items via a trade window, but I can see that driving the prices of enchanting goods way down. Maybe make it a trainable option after, oh, 225 or so? With an 8-hour or 20-hour cooldown?
mirilene Dec 30th 2008 2:50PM
@2:
Because its too easy to game the system that way. You could get a 50% drop rate for some items by taking in (for example) 1 cloth class and 4 Plate, which your system would require it to drop either cloth or plate.
neadamthal Dec 30th 2008 3:13PM
totally agree. did VoA the other week and TWO mage pieces dropped and there was no mage in the group.
i agree the loot drops should at least match the classes present. even better would be letting everyone roll and who ever wins gets to pick a piece of gear. wouldn't that be nice :)
Elementary Dec 31st 2008 2:47AM
It's rather simple why they don't implement this.
Experiments have shown that sometimes always randomly rewarding someone with something useful when they open a box is (ironically) less addicting than only sometime rewarding them with something random that's useful and sometimes not rewarding them at all.
The current system will keep your attention longer, it's not in Blizzard's interest to change it.
Swash Dec 30th 2008 2:15PM
Regarding loot drops:
I sympathize with the person asking the question. I think Blizz needs to make it's loot tables a little more self aware...a perfect example:
Getting T7 pieces in OS/Vault when that class isn't even there. At that point, the gear is obviously completely useless except for a shard, but thats not the point of doing those raids.
I dont think the loot system should change too much, just make it so if no one in the raid can equip it or use it, don't put it in the random table.
Ahoni Dec 30th 2008 2:29PM
Won't work. Loot tables are created when the instance is created. If they limited the drops to the raid/group composition when the instance is created, then if you replaced your holy pally with a holy priest, you would still end up with loot you don't need.
Plus, there would be many ways to game the system to get specific drops, or at least increased chances of certain types of drops.
Random loot is frustrating as all hell, but it works.
Mort Dec 30th 2008 2:37PM
I think what he meant was if the instance were to notice, upon the group entering the instance, that there are no paladins in this group, and therefore it doesn't drop any loot that is strictly for paladins...
Ahoni Dec 30th 2008 2:54PM
Ok, lets make an extreme example to make it clear ...
I start the instance with
Prot warrior
Fury warrior
DPS Death Knight
Ret Pally
Holy Pally
After the first boss, the group changes, one player at a time, until before the 2nd boss, we have
Feral druid
Hunter
Mage
Warlock
Resto Shammy
No drops from the rest of the instance will be usable. Yes, extreme example, but it will happen. More importantly, people will game the system to make drops more favorable to them.
Example: form group with 5 plate wearers. Enter instance, kill some minor trash. Keep one plate wearer, and replace the rest with mail/leather/cloth wearers. Now, all the bosses are guaranteed to drop plate, right? People would do this all day, every day. Hell, I'd hire myself out as a group forming whore to make money helping people do it.
Random works. It is frustrating, but it works.
Verit Dec 30th 2008 3:03PM
Loot tables aren't created when the instance is created... I was told by a blizzard employee at blizzcon that the loot is rolled on when the monster is looted on the server side to determine what drops - wether you're solo or in a group/raid.
Ahoni Dec 30th 2008 3:15PM
Blue post here
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4311143050&postId=43107359902&sid=1#48
"As soon as you step into an instance, or a mob is created in the world, the loot that's going to drop has already been determined. "
Mitch Dec 30th 2008 3:22PM
Anything that is referred to as "frustrating as all hell" should not be acceptable.