AV reward ratio

[Warlock]

Here is a disconnect. It seems to me that nonraiders think of toons that are just getting geared by guilds that have raid instances on farm mode, and think that 10 hr/epic is really a somewhat decent pace. It roughly fits the gear curve that they experienced from 1-60. They don't realize that if they had gear handed to them at this rate, rather quickly they would run out of slots, and completly out of content. They don't realize how steeply the curve has to jump up to try and keep people from running out of stuff to do. I'm on about 17 raided for epics, after more then a year of pretty solid raiding. 10 hr/epic is a joke, as is the new AV.

Keep in mind, if they nerfed AB and WSG the way they nerfed AV, you would be out of PvP rewards in a month, and nerfing AV has already dropped any semblance of requiring skill from the honor system. Either the entire server will be HWL soon, or the system just rewards people who fish near FW. 200k honor for 200 HK last week.

And that's not even getting into if general races are "actually fun to do".

I equipped two characters with raid gear at about ten hours per item in a guild almost wholly new to raiding (I raided for around eight hours a week and gained thirteen epics in the four or five months that I put up with it). I realise that filling the slots that have rarer or more contested item drops would have taken longer, but it takes a while to fill the last slots from AV too as most classes will want just two of the items there.

About half my AV runs since the change have been race style. I've also had some very fun 3-4 hour matches including fighting all over the map. Gone are those that I left after eight hours, came back the next day and found the front line hadn't moved. I agree that fishing leeches need to go away, but finding a way to do that while still making it worthwhile for people to play defence isn't easy. It's not perfect, but it's vastly better than it was - especially when only a dozen or so players are in there.

As for running out of content and rewards, those are different things. You run out of PVP content after your first win in each battleground which can be as soon as level 51. As for running out of rewards, given a PVP focused player and a raid focused player that each play for the same amount of time and are equally skilled, how much faster do you feel the raid player should gear up and how much additional progression do you think they should have?

[Warlock]

Replying to myself since I'm happy to leave it there but realise that it talks alongside the point I really wanted to make:

No-one playing the game should ever feel forced to do something they don't enjoy.

[oldmandennis]

Yeah, I'm sorry if my first post was a bit harsh. I was going to come back to it this morning with a fuller explanation and more details. I was a little annoyed at the time, because I was alt-tabed at the time in the new stupid AV, earning boatloads of rep and more honor then I ever did aggressivly playing AB/WSG.

So there are 8 armor slots, 6 for back neck finger trinket. Two one hand weapons, one two hand, a shield and a ranged. Call it 20 items. In a perfect casual world, there would be 3 tiers to match the raiders three tiers. Thats 60 items. At 10 hr/item, 15 hr/week, its less then a years worth of content. And that's if you get all the items at all the tiers, and don't skip half of T2.

I agree strongly that nobody should have to do something they don't enjoy. But making fun, new, exciting content as fast as people can consume is impossible.

I equipped two characters with raid gear at about ten hours per item in a guild almost wholly new to raiding (I raided for around eight hours a week and gained thirteen epics in the four or five months that I put up with it).

Something is off here. I don't know your situation, so I can't say what it is. If I had to guess, I would say you probably had a core of well geared knowledgeable people who were spearheading progress, and passing on alot of loot at the same time. But that is just a guess.

If you started at day one, and full cleared MC and Ony every week, thats probably about 30 epics per week. Five months make about 600 epics, over 60 toons is 10 epics per toon. But that progress is astoundingly unreasonable for people without epic or FR gear, and no experience raiding. I would call it impossible progress if you are only raiding two nights a week. And if they are raiding alot without you (assuming the rest of the guild are about as dedicated as you) then 60 toons are not enough. More toons equals less loot per toon, as well as harder progress because the average gear is lower. My guild, probably pretty average as far as progression is concerned, pulled in 400 epics during its first 5 months raiding.

At this point though, I don't think it breaks anything to pass out a few MC level epics for essentially free.

Don't forget you can get these new epics (and honor) just about as fast by fishing, chatting, or even cleaning the house and coming back to the keyboard every 5 min and hitting space bar. I've taken to queueing as I leave the house, usually they can zerg belinda in the 5 min before my toon /afks.

[Warlock]

Leeching in AV isn't good for the game, but if everyone does it you'll lose pretty swiftly. People can get epics while AFK in MC too (albeit at the risk of getting gkicked). I'm not sure how to solve it. Force people to participate in combat to gain rep and honour and you punish anyone on defence - who often make the difference between winning and losing a game, but spend less time in combat and get fewer kills even when they are in combat. As an active player it's already better to be up at the front to get NPC and player loot and the extra trickle of rep and honour. Besides, it's more fun.

We raided on weekends (mix of Australian and US players so practically impossible to do any other time) so two sessions a week that were in theory capped at three hours but usually went over. MC + Ony is a bit over 30 epics a week, counting crafts and trash drops. Call it 0.8 per player per run. That puts 17 weeks of regular attendance in a guild that can clear the instance at 13 per person - of your 60 player guild, they'd be concentrated on the players that came regularly. That ignores learning time, but playing a Warlock and a Druid helped. For me raiding was easy, extremely well rewarded and excruciating.

As for making new content, I don't see "we can't produce content faster than players will consume it" - which I understand and accept - as justification for "we will only produce raid content", especially when that raid content is being provided faster than most raid players are consuming it! The resources that went into Naxx could have been used for a whole tier of new non-raid instances. We'd have missed out on the insulting 'collect scraps so we can make armour for the real heroes' AD handins, but I could live with that.

[Mirajj]

A lot of the drops also depend on luck. Just about a full year raiding, and Mirajj is still short 1 piece on her GiantStalker set. Sometimes, the stuff just doesn't drop. Which is the slight advantage of PvP to PvE. With PvP, once you (eventually) grind high enough, the stuff is yours. With PvE, you are chained to the RNG, and hoping that eventually your number comes up...which it never may.

[oldmandennis]

AV used to have a rythm sortof. Push push push until you hit a block, bam one side pulls out a NPC and all of the sudden the stalemate breaks wide open. I loved following a group of wolf riders, frost shocking their targets and healing them up as they smashed through the SP GY.

The problem was that this happened so rarely, with idiots fireing off waves of NPC's at any spastic time, nobody watching the FWAS, nobody on mining, etc.. Without any coordination, and strong NPC's, it usually went way too long.

The other problem was organized groups vs pugs. Raid groups could still smash the old AV in 45min or so, which threw the reward/time all out of whack. That's why they banned organized groups in AV, leaving it to the gibbering idiots.

Unfortunatly it will take crossserver and matchmaking to allow them to restore join as group to 40man BG's. And that's not until the expansion.

The answer should have been to fix the problems without completly gutting the place. Now the average game takes less time then the average AB game. That's just wrong. Its supposed to be epic, and 20 min is not epic. And it screws the honor bonuses up.

Leeching in AV isn't good for the game, but if everyone does it you'll lose pretty swiftly.

That's the point. Go with the first charge and see if you have an exceptional group that will be able to defeat the alliances advantage in pure race games. If not, kill Belinda and a tower or two, then wait for the Allys to finish it, the faster the better. Once the raid groups are past each other, trying to defend against the main crush while the rest of the horde are messing with towers is only going to get you killed. The one thing you may want to defend is your captain - usually the winning side will only have a couple of people trying to get him, so 1-2 people may be enough to save him. Lots of people don't realize you get the same honor/rep bonus for saving your captain as you do for killing the enemy. And if you kill Belinda, 2 towers, and a bunch of named mobs, you get nearly the rep/honor that the winners do.

MC + Ony is a bit over 30 epics a week, counting crafts and trash drops. Call it 0.8 per player per run. That puts 17 weeks of regular attendance in a guild that can clear the instance at 13 per person - of your 60 player guild, they'd be concentrated on the players that came regularly. That ignores learning time, but playing a Warlock and a Druid helped. For me raiding was easy, extremely well rewarded and excruciating.

I think you mean week here, and not run. 17 weeks * 30 epic per week / 60 players is 8 epics per player. I'm deliberatly leaving out crafting, because casuals have no resistance blocking fights. But the biggest thing you are leaving out is learning. SR, help me out here. How long from first zone in to Rag down? We were about 5 months. And even if you are all complete naturals, with a deep and intuitive knowledge of the zone from write ups and movies.... you still need to hit honored with the hydraxians, which will take a few weeks. And you need to farm up cores for a while, if you don't want to be trollkabobs or toasted gnomemellows.

Again, you didn't answer me one way or another. Did you have a core of people who had already raided? People who already had their quintessence? Maybe a tank with 2/3 of a FR set already?

As for making new content, I don't see "we can't produce content faster than players will consume it" - which I understand and accept - as justification for "we will only produce raid content", especially when that raid content is being provided faster than most raid players are consuming it!

Hey it's a business decision. Once they changed C'thun to make him killable, there were pleanty of guilds that were done with AQ40. If those people started quitting because there was nothing to do, does that take the shine off the apple for the second tier raiders? Are there more people who would quit from that then casuals who can be kept around by another couple of 5 man dungeons? What percentage of causals would stick with the game long term for two dungeons they can beat the first weekend they are out? Is that a better or worse use of 6 months of the R&D time then a raid zone that will probably occupy raiders for 6 months? I don't know.

[Warlock]

We're discussing two different issues here -

Is the new AV more fun?
and
Are the rewards appropriate for the difficulty and time required?

I think it's more fun. In the last week on Khaz'goroth I've had some race games, some games that had skirmishing all over the map, some games whith big clashes of the raids and decisive use of summoned units. Even games that start as a race don't always end as one, with the side behind in the race hearthing back, saving their general and fighting back along the map. It's been far more interesting than the old games I had there.

To answer your question no, none of us had extensive raid experience prior to starting (this is what I meant when I said we were almost entirely new to raiding. A couple of us had been as far as Garr beforehand filling out other guild runs, none further (though we did pick up a couple of experienced raiders later). I don't think four months to clear is unreasonably fast - a month shaking down to a regular group, a month getting Magmadar farmable then averaging a new boss a week isn't exactly blistering progress.

To me one run can mean either a clear or a session depending on context. If of your 60 players 30 come every week and the other 30 once every three, those that come every week will gear up faster. We were learning the instance but I had good attendance with rare classes (and my total includes some of the crafted items that you prefer to disregard). I'd do better still if I went back to my old guild with an alt or accepted the invite I have from an AQ clearing guild; if I want AV rewards on an alt I need to do the entire grind again.

I enjoyed getting my AV epics more than those from MC. It took me somewhat longer to do per upgrade but it was far more interesting (not that it's hard to beat shadowbolt spam, chain healing a tank or tanking a single mob) and didn't require scheduling in advance.

I feel Naxx was a mistake - no group should feel left out in the cold by the devs and the non-raiding population is needing new content far more than raiders. By Bliz's own numbers about 15% of players have beaten BWL, I doubt the percentage than have Cthun down is higher. They've chosen to cater to that group instead of the other 85% of their player base... I don't think they got six million subscribers on the strength of their raid game and other developers are starting to target the wider market now that WOW has shown it exists. For instance the Conan devs have said their PVE content will never require more than ten players because it won't feel heroic - and whatever the games other flaws that's a very attractive statement to someone like myself.

[Mirajj]

For instance the Conan devs have said their PVE content will never require more than ten players because it won't feel heroic - and whatever the games other flaws that's a very attractive statement to someone like myself.

I dunno about this. I still get shivers when we drop Nef. 40 people working well together for a 15-20 minute fight is always a beautiful thing to me.

That said, that just means content that can't be zerged to me. There's nothing heroic about zerging something. But when a fight takes a wonderful amount of execution from a large group of people, that's outright awesome to me.

[Ashock]

You guys seem to be forgetting that epics from AV are not even close to epics that are gotten from anything except ZG, and it's not even as good as that. TUF is 61 DPS, that is just a little over some of the epics you get from non-raid instances. Lobo is 47, which is 5-6 points lower than pretty common raid stuff and a good 15 DPS lower than the high-end stuff and I won't even mention Noxx. These are just high-end blues of a purple color. In light of this, this whole discussion is pointless as it is comparing apples and cowpies.


-A

[Warlock]

You guys seem to be forgetting that epics from AV are not even close to epics that are gotten from anything except ZG, and it's not even as good as that. TUF is 61 DPS, that is just a little over some of the epics you get from non-raid instances. Lobo is 47, which is 5-6 points lower than pretty common raid stuff and a good 15 DPS lower than the high-end stuff and I won't even mention Noxx. These are just high-end blues of a purple color. In light of this, this whole discussion is pointless as it is comparing apples and cowpies.
-A

The AV items are closer to the weaker MC drops than they are to the best non-raid blues. Esk's right claw at 48 and Thunderstrike at 59 for instance. Non raid ilvl 63 blues weigh in at 41 and 54 respectively. I recognise how much further raiding goes but the new AV is a good start at restoring some balance to the game.

I dunno about this. I still get shivers when we drop Nef. 40 people working well together for a 15-20 minute fight is always a beautiful thing to me.

That said, that just means content that can't be zerged to me. There's nothing heroic about zerging something. But when a fight takes a wonderful amount of execution from a large group of people, that's outright awesome to me.

Good for you - far too many people raid just for the loot and not for the experience (I was one myself in the second half of my raid career). I'm not arguing against raiding, I'm arguing for variety.

[Ashock]

The AV items are closer to the weaker MC drops than they are to the best non-raid blues. Esk's right claw at 48 and Thunderstrike at 59 for instance. Non raid ilvl 63 blues weigh in at 41 and 54 respectively. I recognise how much further raiding goes but the new AV is a good start at restoring some balance to the game.

The question is: Why is it that the best BG rewards = the worst raiding rewards? Logically speaking, they should be about the same, right? Sure, the best PvP rewards are similar to the better raid items, but they are still somewhat weaker by and large and more importantly they are a whole lot more difficult and in most case pretty much impossible to get.

Having said that, I think that the PvP rewards are sort of fine as is. I think the problem is that good (not necessarily the best) raid items are too easy to get. Of course now that pretty much anyone who raids has them, there is no going back. I think Blizz made a mistake.... not to make raid loot this powerful, but to make it this common. They should change this in the expansion and make the better items in the new raids less common, sort of like Obs/Drag/Zods were in D1. Then things will even out as at lvl 70, the present uber items while still being nice, will no longer be that overwhelming and the Xpack items would be very difficult to get. Not that I think this will happen...


-A

[oldmandennis]

this whole discussion is pointless as it is comparing apples and cowpies.

Incorrect.

TUF is very close to shadowstrike or the earthshatterer, though it is probably worse then the OEB. The only other 2handers in MC are Rag drops.

TIO is very close to Drillborers. You woln't see a better shield in a 40 man instance until Chromaggus.

The offhands are at least situationally far better then anything in Ony/MC. They have less stats, but way more damage/healing.

The question is: Why is it that the best BG rewards = the worst raiding rewards?

Because when they were introduced, they were extraordinary gear. Since then they have had 1.5 tiers of raid loot, but they are still figuring out how to combine PvP and its rewards into the mix.

Back to the actual topic at hand.

Is the new AV more fun?

I think it's more fun. In the last week on Khaz'goroth I've had some race games, some games that had skirmishing all over the map, some games whith big clashes of the raids and decisive use of summoned units.

It's a judgement call. Obviously if you are having fun, I can't say that's wrong. I hit exaulted with my shammy, it was a substantial investment of time. Much of the time it was fun for me.

In a week, I have gone from 0 to 12/21k on my druid. I can count on one hand the number of games that have gone over 40 min. Lok has been summoned twice. I don't find racing through a supposedly epic BG in 20 min fun.

Here's what I wished was done. The main problem for me was the number of games that ended at the bridge. Return the old NPC's repop rate. Nerf the summoned NPC's by about 25%, but fix their AI so they aren't easy to train away. Fix their pathing so they directly run over and kill the grave yard guards. Have the other sides mine not make reavers, but make siege teams. If said siege teams can make it to the edge of the other teams base and have 5 min to set up, they can bombard the towers, for about 2k per tick. The bombardment taps the flag for the offensive side. Once the towers are destoyed, the bombardment moves around the rest of the base for 2 more min, killing the rest of the NPC's (except the general). If you can't break out of your base in 12 min, you deserve to lose.

This should be a game that takes 2-4 hours to complete, which is what I feel is right for an epic battle. This exact siege solution doesn't have to be the one they use, but something that feels natual given the nature of the BG has to be used to make sure it doesn't go for 24 hours.


4 months to clear MC sounds pretty reasonable to me. However that means you aren't getting 17 weeks of 30 epics. Your description means you have 2 months of 6 epics a week, then increasing by 2.2 epics per week for 11 weeks. That puts your total haul at about 230 epics for that 17 week period, devided by 40 people is 6 epics per person. You more then doubled what was fair it seems by playing less popular classes. This means there's 7 people who only got 5, because you were lucky.

[Ashock]

Incorrect.

TUF is very close to shadowstrike or the earthshatterer, though it is probably worse then the OEB. The only other 2handers in MC are Rag drops.

TIO is very close to Drillborers. You woln't see a better shield in a 40 man instance until Chromaggus.

The offhands are at least situationally far better then anything in Ony/MC. They have less stats, but way more damage/healing.
Because when they were introduced, they were extraordinary gear. Since then they have had 1.5 tiers of raid loot, but they are still figuring out how to combine PvP and its rewards into the mix.

Yeh, they might only be Rag drops, but so what... they still drop. It's not like AV has a super-exalted status that gives a better weapon than TUF. Also, MC is the first 40 man, it just get better after that. What does PvP get?

Yeh, when they were introduced, they might have been extraordinary gear, but they were also much tougher to get, weren't they?

Why did Blizz come out with 1.5 tiers of raid gear and nothing (almost nothing with the WSG boots and some other upgrades with 1.11, but no weapons) for PvP?

TIO? It's a shield, who cares if it's good?

What about all the 1-handers? What about all the other items? 2 weeks at most of running MC with a guild that has it on farm status and you get gear more or less on par and in some cases better than GM gear, which takes months of mind-numbing play. You don't see anything wrong with that?


-A

[MongoJerry]

What about all the 1-handers? What about all the other items? 2 weeks at most of running MC with a guild that has it on farm status and you get gear more or less on par and in some cases better than GM gear, which takes months of mind-numbing play. You don't see anything wrong with that?
-A

I see a problem with your attempted assertion that MC gear is in any way comparable to GM or HW gear in PvP, since GM and HW gear beats most of BWL and AQ40 loot. Some of our HW players like to think that their HW weapons are even better than the Dark Edge of Insanity that you get off C'Thun. That's probably going overboard, but those weapons are close.

Mind you, you won't get good PvE tanking and healing gear via PvP, but that goes under the "duh" category.

[Ashock]

I see a problem with your attempted assertion that MC gear is in any way comparable to GM or HW gear in PvP, since GM and HW gear beats most of BWL and AQ40 loot. Some of our HW players like to think that their HW weapons are even better than the Dark Edge of Insanity that you get off C'Thun. That's probably going overboard, but those weapons are close.

Mind you, you won't get good PvE tanking and healing gear via PvP, but that goes under the "duh" category.

I meant non-weapon gear compared to GM gear. Perhaps I was not clear about that. GM weapons are also outdone by some AQ40 weapons and Nef loot and GM gear is so much more difficult to get. Frankly I do not see how you could hit GM in the first place and play less than what... 10 hours/day or more... probably more, but you *can* raid regularly. Also, there are absolutely no good jewelry items from PvP aside from Don Julio's, so even a purely MC raider will outdo a PvP'er for jewelry. Hell, ZG is better.

I do not have a problem with the quality of many *top* PvP items as compared to raid items. My problem is that 1) The top PvP items are so much more difficult to get and even more importantly 2) There is a HUGE gap between the top PvP items and everything else gotten through PvP and there really is no large gaps as far as progression from ZG all the way to AQ40. It is a gradual transition, where a somewhat better item replaces another item as you move to higher and higher raids, so it's not "feast or famine" that it is in PvP.

.... and wait 'till Noxx gear starts spreading around. I took a look at the tables for that and it is sick. PvP got WSG epic boots....


-A

[oldmandennis]

Yeh, they might only be Rag drops, but so what... they still drop.

Because for whatever reason, Rag has the loot of a mid BWL boss. Don't ask me why. Bonereavers > Untamed. The weapons are pretty low percentage drops too - they are unlikely to be passed out like candy to people on thier first MC run.

Also, MC is the first 40 man, it just get better after that. What does PvP get?

but they are still figuring out how to combine PvP and its rewards into the mix.

Why are you bugging me when I agree with you on this? They need to figure out a way to seperate the skilled from the bored in PvP, so they can pass out gear that is equivelent to the skill needed - on par with the best PvE stuff. I'd rather they work on the first part then the second.

[Warlock]

Raiding doesn't seperate out the skilled in my experience. The leaders need to know what they're doing and be able to coordinate the rest of the raid but DPS #22 isn't hard and still gets gear. I've grouped with some truly awful players in full tier 2 (still guilded with raid guilds so probably not ebay). Maybe this changes in the later raids - Mongo, would a guild that normally farms AQ wipe endlessly there if a couple of people aren't at the top of their game one week?

---

I like the siege train idea. I'd be all for longer fights on average given a reliable way to break a turtle. I think average rep per hour is about right now but that's a different question to the length of individual fights.

---

Roughly twice expected loot sounds about right for my MC time. I got twice the expected loot from AV too (Warriors get four useful items, most classes get two) so for the ratio of invested time it's a wash. MC has 144 drops plus crafts, AV has eleven including six offhands. I'm still happy for the changes.

[Lissa]

Because for whatever reason, Rag has the loot of a mid BWL boss. Don't ask me why. Bonereavers > Untamed. The weapons are pretty low percentage drops too - they are unlikely to be passed out like candy to people on thier first MC run.

In the nearly 7 months Avarice has been downing Rags (4 months of that under two locks), we've seen 1 Bonereavers, 1 Spinal Reaper, and 3 Perditions. Meantime we've seen 4 UTBs, 2 Draconic Avengers (off the trash mobs), and a pair of Dragonfangs. If Avarice loot is any indication on rarity of the weapon on Rags, not everyone is going to get them (I should note we have had 2 eyes drop off Rags, we also had a complete Windfury drop on one run, back to back bindings).

Why are you bugging me when I agree with you on this? They need to figure out a way to seperate the skilled from the bored in PvP, so they can pass out gear that is equivelent to the skill needed - on par with the best PvE stuff. I'd rather they work on the first part then the second.

Agree 100%, it's why I stopped PvPing with my Hunter after reaching Knight Champion. There are people out there getting GM that don't deserve it because they don't have the skill, they just have the time.