Accessible content, valor points and the alt
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 10th 2011 at 8:00PM
I also raid. My raiding is semi-casual from my perspective, three nights a week for three or four hours a night, but we're pretty exclusively doing hard mode content -- so for some people, that's fairly hardcore. I won't pretend it's easy for me to do much beyond 5-mans and BGs with any of my alts. I play about 20 hours a week, more than some, less than others, and am pretty happy with my main and what he can do.
One of the problems when playing one of my alts is that they're simply not capable of even coming close to my main. Struggling through yet another Zul'Gurub slog on my Worgen becomes almost impossible when I know I could blast through it on my Tauren -- but the Tauren wouldn't benefit, whereas the Worgen needs the gear.
The announcement of Raid Finder for patch 4.3 has me thinking about how many of my alts will actually get to see raid-level content. New heroics will also debut with patch 4.3, and for the first time in Cataclysm, a heroic dungeon will offer gear on par with raiding. (Up until now, even the ZA/ZG tier of heroics offers gear a step below the Tier 11 raids.) This means that we're about to enter into a new way to play your alts.
Enervation and the repetition factor
One of the reasons I found Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman so uninspiring after running them to gear up my main before raiding was that they were the dead end of non-raiding content. The gear was a half-step below Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds, the three raids available at the time, setting up the dungeons clearly as places to go to fill slots where you just hadn't gotten lucky on a drop. They were also used to grind up valor points to buy set pieces and other epics from the vendors, which did give you a chance at pieces as good as raid gear.
Once you'd run them enough, clearly you'd no longer need valor points or gear from those dungeons. Worse, because the ZA/ZG gear wasn't really as good as then-valor and now-justice point gear, you quickly only farmed those instances for valor points and sharded everything that dropped. Simply put, sharding gear isn't fun. It may be inevitable, but when even undergeared alts pass on stuff because they know they'll be buying better in a day or two, it's a problem.
With each dungeon being fairly long (up to seven bosses in ZG, if you hit the two optional ones, and six in ZA), running them for your weekly valor fix became repetitive. Worse, doing it on multiple alts became mind-numbing. Once I'd run a third alt through them to the point where he could no longer benefit from gear from the dungeons themselves or from JP/VP gear, there was no interest in gearing up another alt. Even with the shaman, who wanted different gear from them and needed gear for bother enhancement and resto, it got to the point where I could predict exactly what was going to happen in each group the second I zoned in.
With raids offering not only better gear and more of it but also more interesting and varied fights that I didn't see over and over again, I ended up spending the limited time (10 or less hours a week) I spend on alts PVPing or working on professions. It's not that ZG or ZA are bad dungeons. They're not, not at all. As we discussed before, it's more that they were basically the only progression left to my alts, and two dungeons simply weren't enough. Yes, you may argue, I could have run the lower dungeon tier of starter Cataclysm heroics if I was bored of ZG/ZA, and I did, but when I did, I knew I was cheating my non-raiding alts of VPs for gear.
In essence, it comes down to whether or not you can justify to yourself not only doing something you've done before, but doing it in the exact same way. There isn't really anything you can currentloy do on a non-raiding alt for valor points that's worth doing except run ZA/ZG.
Options delay stagnation
With the coming of Raid Finder and the new system for heroics (all currently existing heroics will be folded into one tier, while the Hour of Twilight dungeons will be a second tier, and both tiers will reward the exact same valor points), I'm rethinking how to gear and alt and generate VPs. The new VP cap of 1,000 a week isn't the issue; it's very slightly less restrictive than the current cap of 980 and still too low, in my opinion. (The 1,260-VP cap from launch was near perfect.) But the flexibility of the system -- which will allow you to reach that cap via either tier of heroic dungeon, or purely from raiding, or half from Raid Finder and half from heroics or raiding with your normal raid -- is brilliant in terms of its long-term use.
Once I get bored of slamming my alts face-first through the new dungeons, I can shift into the larger pool of heroics and see different dungeons again. Let's be honest: With ilevel 378 and better gear (Hour of Twilight gear is 378), we'll be steamrolling the older content, but it will be a nice change of pace. It also means that if I'm not geared enough to run HoT, I can collect my 1,000 a week in the older heroics and buy 397 epics from the valor point vendor to bootstrap me into Hour of Twilight. I'm not punished for running older heroics.
All of this is before even taking Raid Finder into account. Not only will there be valor for those runs, but I'll be able to see the fights in a simplified form before I raid them on my main, and I will be able to gear up my alts via drops that will be at least 378, I would assume. (It's stated that the 10-man and 25-man normal raids will drop 397 gear and that Raid Finder gear will be a lower level.) What this all means to me is for the first time since Cataclysm launched, there will be superlative flexibility in how you gear, especially for an alt. I'm not forced to craft or PVP to get weapons that I'd be willing to take into a raid, for one example. For a while, the only DPS shoulders available to a non-raiding plate DPSer were the ones in ZA. Once you had those, you could forget getting better unless you were willing to have a ton of resilience wasted on your gear. Now, you'll be able to get shoulders from Hour of Twilight or from Raid Finder, which is two more options than anyone has now.
I find myself really looking forward to being able to pick different ways to pursue my characters' paths. I'll still raid on my main, but now it won't feel so terrible trying to gear up an alt and finding myself faced with a choice between the best possible option or a bad one. While not actually a Hobson's choice, it felt like one. Patch 4.3 will give a wider variety of players a wider array of choices, and I'm pretty excited about that.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
DracoSuave Oct 10th 2011 8:16PM
The biggest problem with the troll dungeons isn't their length, but that there's only two of them. Not to mention, the gearing isn't truly ideal, it only exists to plug holes in the JP gear. No trinket to grab, no pieces worth taking other than shoulder, head and weapon.
It's one of the few things I dislike about Cata design... it's not deep enough in terms of content to support the gearing. In the first dungeon tier, there was only one cloth non-spirit wrist. In Firelands, there's no cloth boot. Valuable pieces of gear are absolutely missing from loot tables, so there's no room for the 'variance of gear' that the designers claim they want to make available. Reforging isn't just a consolution prize option... it's the ONLY option.
robitrock Oct 10th 2011 8:26PM
Shannox drops cloth boots, no spirit on them but you shouldn't need spirit on every slot nowadays anyway.
Metric Oct 10th 2011 8:41PM
@ robitrock
Holy Priests might disagree.
patiencerose7 Oct 10th 2011 9:38PM
As a holy priest: there is exactly 1/3rd of a spirit cloth drop in Firelands (2 of 6 possible random enchant heads from Lord R). Nothing says exciting like "there is one third of a loot drop for me in the entire zone for cloth". Yes, I know that I can roll on the weapons, jewelry, and trinkets. If spirit cloth can't drop, why the heck are they dropping intellect plate all over the place?
Shrikesnest Oct 11th 2011 12:54AM
And for people who aren't in the know, Holy Priests have exactly one mana return mechanic: Holy Concentration, which lets us keep 80% of our spirit-based regen while in combat. That's it. No Divine Plea/Judgement, no Atonement/Archangel, no Water Shield. We don't just benefit the most from spirit, we also benefit the least from intellect out of all the healers. Without a lot of spirit-based gearing options we go OOM with cheek-flapping speed.
Parth Oct 11th 2011 2:25AM
@shrikesnest
You might want to check your action bars for Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope.
Revnah Oct 11th 2011 3:25AM
patiencerose7, I couldn't agree more. And while we, as you say, can roll on jewellery, trinkets, and weapons, on those we "only" compete with four other healing specs as well as shadow priests and boomkin... My main (holy priest) is a raider well into heroic modes and d'you know when I replaced my last 359 piece? Yesterday.
Wraithanne Oct 11th 2011 10:24AM
Shannox drops gear for healers? I've seen no evidence of this...stupid Shannox...
Harvoc Oct 10th 2011 8:15PM
I think Zul'Gurub only has 6 bosses: High Priest Venoxis, Bloodlord Mandokir, Edge of Madness, High Priestess Kilnara, Zanzil, and Jin'do the Godbreaker. The only optional boss now is the Edge of Madness bosses.
Metric Oct 10th 2011 8:39PM
Voidwalker (Maelstrom Crystal) Boss
Boobah Oct 11th 2011 2:03AM
If you count the voidwalker, then you really ought to count the bug, the turtle, the chef, the fisherman, and both mining berserkers.
Relpats Oct 10th 2011 8:16PM
Semi-casual? Really? I wish I had that kind of free time to devote to anything. I would call that semi-hardcore if not hardcore.
kaos95 Oct 10th 2011 8:41PM
As a hard core player (40-50 hours a week, 2 raid teams, 22 hours a week in raiding . . . yes I run H-FL on one toon, then dive back in on another to run it all again on regular on my other) I feel that if you say you are casual you are casual.
It's all about mindset, I go from hard core to casual at the drop of a hat, and it's really not about play times at all, but instead how you play the game, and how you view that play. I tend to call my between relationship periods as hardcore (ie, I tend to play a lot of wow with my buddies) then as I start feeling more social again head back into the fray and watch my wow habit move down to 12 hours a week. My view of the game changes from those two extremes, right now I am min/maxing, tweaking, and just doing whatever I can for that H-Rag kill. When I get bored with the game (again) I will grab something from my stable of alts and go full on casual, pvp for fun (I know, oxymoron), collect pets, and def drop at least 1 raid team.
tl;dr you are what you say you are, I know casuals who play way more than I do
Arbolamante Oct 10th 2011 9:18PM
It really is all in the mind - I raid three to five hours a week and tend to think I do it a little too much, so I'm using a very different definition of casual than Rossi. To each their own.
johnny.ramos1 Oct 10th 2011 11:56PM
KAOS95, thats a friggen full time job man!
Matthew Rossi Oct 11th 2011 12:09AM
Do you watch TV? I don't. I play WoW or read or browse the web. That's my leisure time. If you watch 2 TV shows a night that's about 2 hours gone a night for 14 hours a week. Most people watch more. I decided a while back I'd play Video Games instead.
Jason Oct 11th 2011 2:37AM
40-50 hours per week... so nearly 1/3 of your week raiding? I'd say that gaming addiction is a problem for you.
dj.clayden Oct 11th 2011 3:15AM
@Jason
Choosing to spend your leisure time gaming instead of other things doesn't mean you have an addiction.
I've spent over 50 hours a week reading at some points in my life, yet I've never heard anyone use the phrase "reading addiction", let alone use it in a negative way.
rayden54 Nov 29th 2011 2:19PM
@dj.clayden
When was the last time you told someone, "Sorry I can't do that right now. I'm busy reading?"
Most high-end raiding guilds (and even a lot of low end ones) have mandatory attendance. To them, this game takes priority over the rest of their lives. That is the definition of Hardcore. Not skill, not time.
I tried joining "casual" raiding guilds, but as they turned to progression, I found myself having to turn down other activities. Instead of being fun, raids became that thing I had to do because other people were counting on me.
paulmewis Oct 10th 2011 8:18PM
Talking about non raiding alts and inaccessibly, I've lost all will to continue after only unlocking one of either the Shadow Wardens/Talon Druids on 3 alts now, and I can't see I'll ever gain the will to do them any time soon either.