Patch 2.4 Notes

[Kevin]

In addition to no attunements, they're putting T6 quality gear on a badge vendor on Sunwell Isle. And this is a mistake.

I agree with you that T6 gear purchasable via T4 content badges could be an issue since attunements are gone. I think that if there hadn't been attunements on BT/Hyjal with the T5 quality badge gear around that SSC/TK might have been skipped more than they had. So the easy fix in my mind is add a new badge type or add badges to the 25 man bosses. I like badges for smoothing out the RNG. My warrior had 2 pieces of badge gear that replaced blues because despite being in Kara, ZA, and SSC a fair bit where replacements could have dropped they never did drop. Having an option to fix that issue was very nice.

So you make the T6 stuff cost A LOT or take something else that only comes from the T5/T6 instances. That makes it work so that it works to help smooth that curve out. Smoothing that curve out really helps the guilds that can only raid 6-10 hours a week. The Terenas crew does 25 mans for 5-7 hours a week and then gets about 3-6 hours for some of the 10 man stuff that happens in off hours. The players are decently skilled and can handle the content given the time to get to it and the gear to pass some of the smaller gear checks that are there. The badge gear really helped them out.

So why not if you are adding a new badge have the SSC/TK bosses drop one of the new badges and one of the old badges. Incentive to keep learning what you don't have done in there at the same time it's helping flatten the gear curve if you are learning it. BT/Hyjal can drop just badges you need for the T6 gear. The doesn't have you jumping to Sunwell right away. But it does make life easier. You can make Vashj and Kael drop a lot of badges to make them really worth hitting so that the tough content still has incentives. If the other bosses only drop 1 and 1 you can make Vashj and Kael drop 4 each. If the average badge cost for an item is 50 badges that is still more than 2 full clears of both instances to get 1 item. That doesn't seem to out of whack to me. Though if you make the Hjyal/BT stuff drop 2 of the T6 badges each that still might pull you out of SSC/TK too fast. But it shouldn't have you jumping to Sunwell right away Dunno.

I agree with you and I agree with Mirajj. I LOVE the curve flattening aspect of badges. I love how it really helps the guilds that can't farm stuff as much and don't have as much practice time (Mags and Gruul were dumped early from our schedules to learn in SSC and there were good upgrades on both of them for many people in the raid) since better gear while not needed to win does make learning easier. But I don't want stuff set up as a way to just skip the gearing needed for content completely (and I know that gear is less important in TBC than it was before but it still has a big impact).