Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Heroic Loot in Icecrown Citadel

Heroic loot distribution in Icecrown Citadel is slightly different than in the three previous tiers.

In Naxx, Ulduar, and Trial of the Crusader, heroic loot dropped in addition to regular loot.

In Icecrown Citade, heroic loot drops instead of regular loot.

This small change has some subtle ramifications for guilds doing heroic content. It's now a lot slower to gear up new players to the heroic standard.

The new players can get to the i245 level fairly easily. But since you're doing hard modes, i264 loot is actually somewhat scarce. In the past, new people would be geared up very quickly with all the regular loot that the established raiders had already acquired.

But when you're working on hard modes, that regular loot doesn't drop anymore. You get mostly i277 gear, which the established raiders want, and the new people have to compete against them.

The only item that this doesn't apply to is class tokens. i277 tokens drop in addition to i264 tokens. As a result, it's really easy for a new raider to get all their tokens in short time period. However, then she's blocked on Emblems.

I guess the solution is to try and recruit more people who are already in i264 gear.

11 comments:

  1. Right now, someone who is short on emblems has the opportunity of farming Ahune for an additional 2 emblems per day. :)

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  2. 10-man guild. We got Kingslayer the other day. Therefore, lootship, at least, will never be tackled on normal mode again.

    My response went "Oh, great, now my alt priest will *never* get a Spyglass... Oh, wait... hell with that, now we're pinata-ing 264s to guild mains. Win."

    (It's a speedbump, not a full stop, to alt gearing, at least with our loot rules (/roll, but mains and mainspecs get priority)).

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  3. For the 25 man Hms guid 10 hm is a really good place for new players to gear up. Also 264 Tier tokens are generally pretty plentiful.

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  4. Yeah, I went from a mishmash of 251 10-man gear and 264 badge gear (with maybe 2 or 3 pieces of 25-man drops from PUGs) into 277s when I switched guilds to get into a crew doing 25-man HMs.

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  5. Hasn't this change been in place since ToC? It's been awhile since we did ToGC, but I'm pretty certain it worked the same way.

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  6. Dave, you could do both TotGC and TotC in the same raid week because they were so short. So you still had effective access to both tiers of loot.

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  7. Gearing can be harder depending on how accomplished the guild is. With all the patterns, emblems, and gear to be had I think gearing up isn't so bad, maybe even easier because of the amount of bosses that are downable.

    Getting trinkets is a premium as usual though.

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  8. "LFM ICC10, Must be 5.9KGS and link all boss death achivs. PST"

    Actual ad in trade chat two days ago...

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  9. I havent noticed it, I thought perhaps you where 11/12 but you look to be around the same progression as us. I do know we had 2 277 items go to offspec and one to de this week and its only our 3rd week since LK died. Perhaps because our relative newcomers are all rogues and hunters and their is little competition,none of our 3 rogues have raided with us more then 5-6 times.

    Bronte-> Try lfm Flame leviathan weekly, need 1 more tank and 2 healers, pst GS.

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  10. The token thing is unfortunate really, we have alot of new intiates with full 264 T10 4/5 set pieces and 251 other gear, which actually puts them in minus DKP, even harder to compete for 277 gear.

    However, the answer to most of this is heroic ICC 10, perfect for alot of (mostly) BiS 264 loot, and with the 25% (30%) ICC buff, it's going to be really easy for people with semi decent gear to atleast get 9/12 HM (maybe 11/12 HM).

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  11. One option is doing heroic 10 mans. A guild that is capable of doing heroic 25 mans is also capable of doing heroic 10 mans as well. Many guilds (mine included) are capable for fielding many heroic 10 man teams from their 25 man group, and their friends. Doing 10 mans also gives you more badges as well.

    While it might be more work for a new player to do 10 mans in addition to 25s, he's making up for lost time and catching up to the 25 man gear levels.

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