Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The Pros and Cons of the new Loot Model

We're heading into a brave new world of loot in 6.0, with some interesting implications for how gear is distributed, and what kind of gear is usable. It could mean big changes to the loot tables of various bosses, and how hard people will have to work on off-sets.

To recap:

All armor (meaning cloth, leather, mail, and plate pieces) will switch primary stats to match your spec (not that they would, but I wonder if that means that a warrior could technically wear strength cloth?) This change will be dynamic, so if you're an Enhancement Shaman with a Restoration off-spec, the moment you switch specs, all the agility on those pieces will switch to intellect. Secondary stats, namely crit, haste, and mastery, will all remain the same, but given that those stats work fine for both healers and DPS (and with the 6.0 changes, presumably tanks,) the gear will still obviously be usable.

In the case of necklaces, trinkets, rings, and weapons (maybe cloaks?) the stats will apparently not change. Thus, while you won't have to carry as much off-set gear, you'll want to have some pieces with spirit on them for your restoration set, and probably a healing mace and intellect shield. You'll switch those out, but unless you really, really want to switch for pieces with different secondary stats, the armor you wear will remain.

All three group roles will use the same secondary stats, while tank-specific Bonus Armor and healer-specific Spirit will only be found on these spec-locked accessories.

So what implications might this have?

Boss Loot:

Right now, a big raid like Siege of Orgrimmar has a whole lot of options for gear. For example, there are at least two sets of plate shoulders for tanking, DPS, and healing.

However, in the future, you won't need to have the intellect shoulders with haste and mastery in addition to the strength shoulders with haste and mastery. The two would be pretty much identical. Additionally, with the elimination of dodge and parry ratings, the distinction between tank armor and melee DPS armor becomes non-existent. While there will still be preferred stats for various specs (I doubt Protection Warriors will go for Haste, and likewise Blood DKs and Protection Paladins for Crit,) they won't be wholly inappropriate.

So I could see the number of items per raid dropping significantly, even while players retain many options for how to gear - even with a third of the plate drops from Siege of Orgrimmar, under the new system, you'd still have just as many options as you had before. Alternatively, you could have the raids drop just as many pieces of loot, but if you don't get your shoulders off the first boss, there are going to be five other bosses later on that you might be luckier with.

It also means that DKs, Warriors, and non-Holy Paladins will be able to get some sweet Paladin-themed gear.

Regardless of how they deal with the size of loot tables, you'll be seeing useful gear drop far more often. Never again will you groan because those Int-Plate shoulders dropped instead of the Strength ones you wanted. Everyone will be seeing a lot more gear drop for them (except maybe Shadow Priests, who have always been able to use any kind of cloth armor.)

Loot Competition:

So here's the bad news: While you will be seeing gear you can use drop far more frequently, so will everyone else. Holy Paladins are going to feel this hit the hardest, as their old exclusivity is going away, and they'll have to compete with eight other specs for their armor.

But even those specs that already had a lot of competition are going to get more. Rogues will have to compete not only with each other, Feral Druids, Guardian Druids, Brewmaster Monks, and Windwalker Monks. They'll now have Balance Druids, Restoration Druids, and Mistweaver Monks to contend with.

Essentially, we're all going to know the pain that Mages and Warlocks feel, though even they will have a little more competition from Holy and Discipline Priests.

So loot is going to be a bit of a feeding frenzy, with far fewer "safe bets" than there were before.

But that being said, I actually expect gearing up to be faster. The boss will be more likely to cough up something you want, and it only depends on your group/raid members whether you'll get it. Rogues might have to deal with 50% more specs to compete with, but there will be 100% more usable armor that drops from bosses.

So who is going to be hit hardest by this? Probably enchanters, as there will be far fewer shards to go around.

Hybrids:

Hybrid classes are going to have a lot of reason to be happy about this change. Even our tier sets will adjust when we change specs, so once you have a 4-piece bonus on one spec, you have it on all of them.

It won't be perfect, though. Weapons and accessories will still need to be switched out, and secondary stats will still probably be more favorable for one spec or another. For instance, at the moment Blood DKs like Mastery most while Two-handed Frost likes Crit. All of your crit gear will still technically work for Blood, but you might want to hold onto some high-mastery stuff if you really want to maximize your effectiveness.

Actually, it's for this reason that I hope they at least make crit do something to boost survival on Paladin and Death Knight tanks, and likewise make haste more attractive to Warrior tanks. They don't need to make it too powerful - some stats can still be favored over others - but it would be too bad if there were "wasted" stats. If they can make Crit as good for Paladins as Dodge and Parry are now (not great, but it still does something to boost survival,) that would be fine.

Also, a Note on Tertiary Stats:

While I think tertiary stats sound fantastic, I also hope they don't become overwhelming. I'd rather have these tertiary stats add a little flavor to an item than make them must-haves. For example, I wouldn't want to have to farm up an entire Cleave set to make sure I do well on AoE fights.

I think restricting these stats to single slots (for example: Movement Speed on boots, Cleave on gloves, Lifesteal on let's say helmets) would be a great way to make them feel special. Not all items would have them, but you might have that one pair of boots that maybe has haste and crit instead of your favored stat of mastery, but the 10% speed boost on them makes them pretty attractive.

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