3.2 - "Remedial Raiding Patch of '09"

Have you seen the latest patch 3.2 notes posted today by Blizzard? Haf started reading them to me this morning and steam started spewing from my ears...

Quote :

Emblem System Changes
* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.

from twitter today...

Quote :

Stompalina - It feels like they are devaluing the time/energy/effort/skill it takes to be a raider by giving raid-equivalent gear for running heroics
Stompalina - @Kreeoni This will now be known as the "Remedial Raiding Patch of '09". Grats, here are here purples and a trophy that reads SHAME ON BLIZZ
Mardogg - @stompalina you should do a poll to see what the general feelings about this is. I say it the Obama administration meets WOW, but that's me

So that's what I am doing... What do you think about these changes?

I don't have a problem with it. The argument that this devalues previous accomplishments is inherently invalid because it's your skill as a player that defines how good you are, not the gear. We've all seen people running around in characters they bought on eBay without a clue to use what they have so gear is merely a suggestor, not definitive.

Thus, what defines an accomplished character is not gear but behavior. There's no reward system Blizzard can implement or change to affect that basic truth.

Abashima wrote:

I don't have a problem with it. The argument that this devalues previous accomplishments is inherently invalid because it's your skill as a player that defines how good you are, not the gear. We've all seen people running around in characters they bought on eBay without a clue to use what they have so gear is merely a suggestor, not definitive.

Thus, what defines an accomplished character is not gear but behavior. There's no reward system Blizzard can implement or change to affect that basic truth.

Fair perspective. I think I tend to personalize my gear a bit more though. Drops earned from downing bosses are like little badges of honor to me. I think there are many that feel the same way. Knowing that any putz who can run a heroic can earn the same level of gear that I can from downing Ulduar bosses is devaluing the gear. But, that is just my opinion.

There's something else, too...

There are oodles and oodles of people who will never see the inside of even Naxxramas, let alone ultrah4dc0r3 places, myself included up until a few weeks ago, in fact. The guild I'm in is too small and too casual to even field enough people to do a single section of Naxx by ourselves. Some of us are better than others in manging our characters but the cold truth was that we could just never dungeon it up until we teamed up with another guild who brought us along.

And it turns out that some of us are able to compart outselves quite competently in high-level dungeons, much to our own surprise.

But since we're filling out the ranks and it's really their run, our chances of getting tier gear are really zero because they have first pick, unless there happens to be only one of a class available.

Anyway, my point is that even though we might play at the same level as they do, we'd never see the choicest rewards that are part and parcel of that competence.

What this change offers is the opportunity for guilds like ours, who have good players but are just too small, to be visibly rewarded for our good playing despite the unfortunate circumstance of not being a hardcore raiding guild.

We're good players and if good gear is supposed to be the reward for good playing, then small guilds like ours deserve the rewards too, I think.

This is horrible. Blizzard has folded to the Entitled Casuals. I do consider myself a causal but I don't want anything to be given to me. Will the easiness of Naxx, I personally find it difficult to find a group to run Heroics with many because Im play my 80 shaman as my main now. I don't think that running Heroic Violet Hold to get tier 8 gear is a good thing.

From my perspective, even since Wrath launched Blizzard has seems to be trying to destroy World of Warcraft. TBC was a great expansion and Wrath has started out good and has now become sub pair. I am severely disappointed with the way Blizzard is treating the WOW community.

Stompalina wrote:

Knowing that any putz who can run a heroic can earn the same level of gear that I can from downing Ulduar bosses is devaluing the gear. But, that is just my opinion.

I understand that completely, but there's not a 1:1 parity. Namely, it will take much longer for me to get these rewards than it will you, even though we may be equally skilled (not saying we two specifically are, just as a hypothetical). Also, one can't be a complete putz and finish the dungeons to begin with. In order to actually carry through all the way and get all the rewards, you have to be a good player.

If someone just, I don't know, does the first boss repeatedly just to get a single token then saves up over months to get some gear, then that person will still be functionally equivalent to someone who bought their character over eBay, and the fact that they don't actually belong in that gear will be apparent when you interact with them. And if you don't interact with them, it doesn't matter anyway because everyone who matters—your guildmates, your friends—know you're a good player deserving the good gear.

You get in what your put in, just like in real life. And, the fact is Blizzard has just changed this rule.

I have nothing against the casual players, they should be awarded with gear that is adequate for the level of challenge each encounter they face. SHOULD being the key word there... they have been on par up until this point. It was my understanding that the various level of badges that were introduced to the game, and the items that they can be used for, would also scale with the level of encounter that they drop from. This is basically undo-ing what they just did!

What is next, buying gear? This is almost the same thing in my eyes.

Instead of making people run Heroics and Naxx again why don't Blizz just give everyone free 8.5, that's basically what there doing anyway. Can you say "welfare epics". Danm you Blizzard and your cursed nerfs and bullshit. Blizzard should pay me to keep playing this crap. What reason do I have to want to see anything now if you 're going to basically give me the loot that I would otherwise only get be actually doing the raid itself.


Seriously some one give a good reason to keep playing this crap....

What's next free epic flyers, dibs on the free Uludar proto, sorry half

As I tend to agree with Stomp that this change does indeed cheapen what we as raiders have put our time and effort into getting I think Blizz is trying to fix a mistake and it will be painful when they do.

When the Badge of Justice system was implemented in Burning Crusade it was well received. Heroic Dungeons had a new meaning the Daily Heroic was and still is very popular. Blizz responded to the wave and decided to take it to the next step in Wrath. How ever in the way the decided to offer it I think it back fired. Heroics were easy, Naxx was tank’n’spanks and people skipped over the badge gear that was available. So the made something that no one will use or if the do keep it for a very shot time and drop it.

So in that each patch is now to have a new type of badge and new gear to make that is a ton of effort and time that could be spent other places. Blizz should have mage 1 type of badge and as in BC make new items and up the badge price.

Is this a good thing? For players who have invested a ton of time in game. No, but I do think it is a mistake they are trying to correct.

How ever if the continue to do this and make new badge types and ever so often take them out. Stop with the badge system all together and put more effort in to gear from 5Mans & Raids. But if this is an effort to continue balancing everything, knock it the hell off. This game will be boring to people who are serious about what they are doing.

That is my Two Cents,

Brutaliz

Are hard core raiders that dependent on emblems for gear?
I thought most raiders got their gear comes from drops.

If a player runs a daily heroic for several weeks,
they have done a lot of work. Grindy, tedious work,
but work nonetheless.

A raider will get a lot of drops in that two weeks, no?

This situation reminds me of the rep dailies. A player can run heroics,
which is the fast route, or they can grind out the dailies.

Making gear more available may help with the next expansion.
WoW doesn't need to separate into two classes, raiders with all the tier gear,
and the casuals. Maybe that is the problem Blizzard is trying address.

Out in the real world, in theory, anyone can own a Ferrari.
Some people get one out of pocket change,
but others could scrimp and save and finally get one.

Dear Mr Blizzard,

I don't want to raid, but I don't want to do heroics either.
May I get my tier gear from fishing dailies, please?

Sincerely,

A. Casual Player

Weren't you guys just talking about how no one bothers with the Northrend dungeons in a prior show? Well, this is Blizz giving people a reason to go and do them again, pure and simple. It's the reason that people were running BC Heroics until the day WotLK was released, and I don't really remember people complaining about it then. I could be wrong because I've never been a raider, but I thought most of the really good gear in Naxx and Ulduar was from drops and not badges. Apologies if I'm mistaken there.

But I really don't see this as a case of Blizz "giving in to Entitled Casuals" as so many people accuse them of. They made a shit ton of content that no one bothers to play, and they want to give people a reason to go play it.

blizz is trying to fix the prob they had before that there was such a big difference between teh players
there were the hardcore people with full tier sets and the ones that just want to play and only can get regular heroic epics
unfortunately, this is not the way to do it

salima wrote:

blizz is trying to fix the prob they had before that there was such a big difference between teh players
there were the hardcore people with full tier sets and the ones that just want to play and only can get regular heroic epics
unfortunately, this is not the way to do it

Then what is the way to do it?

I have to say, my take on this has cooled quite a bit since I first read about the badge changes. I simply looked back in my own history to see why I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Let's take my druid for example... /love Hafrack

I leveled him pretty late in TBC. In fact, he was being used solely to farm mats to power level BS on my shiny new DK to be coming out with Wrath. That being said, Stomp and I have always been in guilds that strive to raid at a "competitive" level. Unfortunately, that meant that I was called on frequently to fill in for folks that missed raids and was soon a regular raider. I spent virtually no time in Kara, no time at all in SSC or TK, but I was still between 5th and 8th in dps for most encounters where melee didn't ALL suck (supremus for example).

So how did I manage it? PvP and Badge gear. I had zero T5 and was able to contribute in T6 content specifically because of the gear available outside of raids. I spent alot of time in heroics and in battle grounds (which I think i have made patently obvious is the spawning ground of the devil) and was still reasonably productive in Tier 6 content. I even OT'd some in there. hehe So, even though this seems like handing over loot to people that don't necessarily deserve it. Let's take a step back and look at what's happened in the past.

The fact is ,that badge/PvP/Rep gear will not help bad players stay out of clouds or void zones or fire. It won't help them assist. And it won't help them understand their class any better. The badge gear is rarely as good as the gear of equal item level found in instances. This is simply making gear available to players so that content is more accessible to them. How would it be if you had horrible gear but were a good player just starting the game? I promise if the guild you were in was already into progression content, they would not want to go back to carry you through Naxx for gear just so you could be productive. This approach by Blizz, makes it a possibility to land viable gear so that good players won't have too much of a handicap when trying to step up their raiding.

People talk about how easily accessible "high end" gear devalues the gear they have worked so hard for... let's be very honest. I replaced the AQ rep cloak that I spent MONTHS working to get within 3 days of TBC coming out with a green item level cloak. Your gear will be "de-valued" one way or another. If the badge gear is that good, then get it. Otherwise, let the people who don't have access to the good stuff get what they can to help them improve. I;m not gonna get upset about it, especially since i haven't seen what's available from badges vs the instance items.

It think the new emblem system could work but then there will have many different levels in the amount different items cost. Furthermore there could be something like like a heroic/naxx10 boss give 1 emblem a naxx25 boss 2 or 3 and an ulduar boss gives perhaps 5. Then the differences in personal raid progression can be maintained while everyone (if they are just 80 and grind heroics long enough) has an oppurtunity to get ulduar or even colloseum gear.

My guild is pretty lackadaisical when it comes to raiding. IF any of our members want to progress, they kinda have to find a buddy in a progression guild or hop into ugly pug groups to get that chance. Not saying we don't have some fabulous players. We do, it's just that we lack leadership to get into the raids more often than not due to real life issues and conflicting availabilities. Recently, one of the least likely players in our guild caught the raiding bug, and I have happily been pulled into a few raids I never thought I would experience. I went from having seen and done nothing in 25 Naxx to being short one boss for the fall of Naxx heroic achievement. I went into that raid in crafted epics, dungeon blues, and a lonely heroic purple mace. We had just started doing heroics to gear up, in the event that we could get a whole 10 players together to attempt Naxx 10.

I like the changes they are adding, and mostly for a few of my guild mates. A few feel left behind, as some of us gear up insanely fast (5 pieces in one run!), and they log in just after the group is filled. I still will be running heroics to replace a couple pieces, so I look forward to helping them gear up with badges, if nothing else, so that we may all be on the same footing when/if we hit Ulduar as a guild. I believe there is no shame in hard won badges buying epics. The work is put in. With that work more knowledge of your character is gained, and you become a more valuable asset than the loser (/hide) that tags along in blues to grab gear.

My characters live on an east coast server, and me being able to raid anything is a chore for the rest of the family, as it takes me out of dinner and bedtime duties. I can't leave them, because they are family, a core group I've gamed with since my husband and I started dating.

There is no selection for "I'm happy with the changes because it allows me to nose to the grindstone and earn badges to gear up and catch up to my mates.". I didn't vote.

First post here after finding the podcast, so please be gentle, but not too gentle...

This is ticking off MOST Ulduar raiders, and I get where they're coming from, and I agree. I guess Blizzard is trying to be Progressive by pulling the lagards up the current raiding scene, or at least the previous scene(Ulduar). But, unfortunately, they already screwed it up adding the third, and now fourth, Badge type. Hence:

Emblem of Heroism = Heroics + 10 Man Naxx
Emblem of Valor = 25 Man Naxx + 10 Man Ulduar
Emblem of Conquest = 25 Man Ulduar

so, by their own system, the progression SHOULD be

Emblem of Conquest = 25 Man Ulduar + 10 Man Crusader's Coliseum
Emblem of Triumph = 25 Man Crusader's Coliseum

but they're resetting everything to

Emblem of Conquest = All Heroics, All Naxx, All Ulduar
Emblem of Triumph = 10 man + 25 Man Crusader's Coliseum

They're very inconsistent. BUT, if you don't make this change, then the gap between casual and hardcore grows yet again, in that no one runs Heroics anymore because the Emblems are obsolete, making Ulduar PUGs nearly the only way to get gear for the casual(Good God I can't image the horror of an Ulduar PUG). I think what Blizzard is trying to do is keep the Heroics scene vibrant and active for casuals and alts. They just suck at figuring out how to do it. The only positive out of it is, in the end, leading edge raiders will be in the AT Raids gaining tier 9 gear by then anyways.

If ANYONE can give me a better idea on how to keep Heroics relavent in light of 3 Raid instances, please speak up. The thought in our guild is a trade-up system rather than replacement, i.e. 5 Heroic = 1 Valor, 5 Valor = 1 Conquest, 5 Conquest = 1 Triumph.

Hey Chriasas. Welcome to the boards.

I will say that the issue with the badges seems to have been blown pretty much out of proportion at this point. I don't think it's any more welfare than the gear people could get at 70 with the badges and there were some "best in slot" items available form those. Why this is such a big deal?... I have no idea. I would rather not have to pay 150 emblems for one piece of gear again, but this seems to be the direction, so... so be it. I can still be working towards a sick item that will help me fill a gap in my trinkets (maybe) while we're not raiding on weekends and I can still be getting drops in the raids.

I just don't see how this is any different or any more detrimental to the game than it was in TBC. There will be some sort of a conversion since the heroic and valor emblems won't be around any more, but seeing as we have no up-conversion from heroic to valor or valor to conquest in game right now, I have a feeling the conversion will stop with emblems of conquest and you will have to earn Triumph through whatever means of rewards Blizz offers.

If anyone wants my take when the patch rolls out, you will find me in LFG searching for heals and leet dps for the heroic daily.

First post for me as well. :D

I can see both sides of this argument and this isn't the first time we've had this happen. I was a hardcore raider in vanilla and TBC. I had to do all the crap to get keyed for the " end-game" instances. Was I pissed when they removed the attunements? Hell yes. I'd worked hard to be able to go into those instances. I was sooo aggravated seeing people waltz right in that didn't have a clue. Then Sunwell came out and you could buy equivalent gear with badges from heroics. WTF??!?!?!? By that time, I had started to go casual, and I have to admit, I bought some of those pieces. Did I feel like it cheapened anything I had earned out of raids? Not really.

The badge gear isn't cheap. If you are a raider,you can spend 4 hours in a raid and potentially get a piece of gear or more, plus badges to buy something else. If you can't commit to a raid schedule, you can fit in a heroic once or twice a day and earn a few badges a day. It pretty much evens out. You can either spend the time in a full raid setting, or you can take that same amount of time and spread it among many more days to earn the same amount of badges. It's not cheapening anything that the raiders have earned. I'm still going to drool over something my raiding friends have that I won't see unless I decide to raid again.

How many guilds are complaining because they don't have the people to raid? There are a lot of good players that haven't had the chance to run Naxx continiously to get gear, for whatever reason. They could have been in school, just came back to the game, whatever. This will help a lot of those players gear up without making their guild run Naxx eleven million more times to gear someone out. Or, what about those players that decide to reroll because their guild needs x class? They can gear their alts out with a minimum of hassle.


TLDR version: We've seen it happen before and it won't cheapen anything the raiders have earned.

P.S. Haf, if I were horde, I'd heal for ya. lol

^^^

That was pretty much another point I was going to make. Without trying to come off as confrontational, I kind of get the feeling that a lot of times the cutting edge raiders seem to get into a mindset that if you haven't started raiding yet, you aren't a good player, and therefore should be kept at arms length from anything that might make them seem more on their level. I also get a sense that cutting edge raiders have a hard time viewing change that affects how gear is acquired as anything but a direct slap in the face towards the work that they have put in to that point.

But what if people do decide they want in? Let's use Stomp's brother as an example. Say he finally succumbs and decides he wants to get into this crazy thing, and wants to start raiding with Stomp. Sure, he's got to level and stuff. But now he's in Northrend and 80, and the StompRots have talked to the guild and they've decided he can get in to the next raid after Ulduar (because it's probably come out at this point) once he's more appropriately geared. How many people from that guild would really want to take time out of progression to go back and run him through multiple Naxx runs to gear him up, so that they can run him through Ulduar to gear him up, so he can raid with them? It would probably be easier, and possibly more beneficial to him, to run 5 man heroics with Stomp, Haf, perhaps Taffy and one other. He can learn the group dynamic in a more pressure free environment, and end up with Ulduar level gear to boot. I think this is where Blizz is coming from.

And just like everything that gets the masses out with torches and pitchforks in this game, people will forget they were mad about this as quickly as the got riled up.

He said, "The Journey is the reward."
She said, "No, the reward is the reward! That is why it is called the reward ! ! ! ! "

This is exactly why I like to pvp more because it seems that its really the only gear that takes skill to get for a more casual person can get. Besides that your guild has to raid and be super good at it to have the best gear out. Now they are making it harder for that to happen again with making it so 2v2 cannot get you and season 7 gear! AHH! hahahaha well atleast my 3v3 is decent enough!

Before I put in my two cents, I think a little background on my admittedly casual-friendly mindset would be helpful. The difference between casual and hardcore raiders for me has always been about how much time one spends raiding, and not about competency (though I do admit raiding four or five days a week will make bad people good a lot faster than one or two days). I had enough free time during BC to be hardcore, but ended up staying casual due to ties with my guild, which needed me as a raid leader for Karazhan and struggled to assemble enough people to go any farther.

I'd like to think of myself as a competent raider, in that I typically don't stand in fires, know enough about the mechanics of my class to maximize my DPS with my current set of gear, and enough about other classes to make sure I'm doing as much as I can to help them out and fill in gaps in our raid. On the other hand, I simply don't have the time anymore to commit more than one or two days of raiding the highest-tier instance - I go to college full-time and work part-time, and need to keep my priorities in check. That said, I pay the same amount to play the game every month as any hardcore raider, and put in the same fraction of my in-game time to making sure I'm the best I can be (though it may not be the same amount of time per week, that's outside of my control), so you can see why I like a change that makes it possible for me to assemble a gear set that willl let me enter the next tier of raiding without forcing the rest of the raid group to carry me.

I think a couple points on the issue have been neglected so far - the first of these is that with everything said and done, the 'heroic grinding casual raiders' who will appear and benefit from this change in 3.2 will not be able to get bleeding-edge gear or tier 9 pieces without setting foot in the Crusaders' Coliseum. There will still be a buffer zone for hardcore people to acquire the best and shiniest loot out of the newest instance. I think the underlying shift in Blizzard's mindset is that ALL gear should no longer be an expression of a player's hardcore-i-ness, because when the game is structured like that only the most hardcore get to see the highest tier of raiding (as they're the only ones with gear good enough to not wipe on the first trash pull). Instead, the 'bragging rights' loot has been shifted slightly to gear dropping from hard modes as well as the associated achievements. I have trouble seeing why letting everyone who takes some time to gear themselves up shouldn't be allowed the chance to run every available instance in the game - the way raids were structured in BC and Vanilla WoW punished people who lacked the time to treat raiding like a job, and that's just not fair. Sorry. =P

The other thing I'd like to point out is that this does provide benefit to hardcore raiders who want to gear up an alt - oftentimes sneaking a character other than your main into a raid is difficult, but this way one can take advantage of their increased time ingame to rapidly bring a second (or third!) toon to parity with the rest of the raid group. I don't see how that's a bad thing.

I think the badge system is intended as a supplement to loot drops, not a replacement - that's why no individual tier of badge loot has a complete set of gear, and why even after this change goes through it'll take a prohibitively large amount of time for anyone to assemble a full gear set purely with badges. Anyone who disagrees and gives us figures on how many days it would take running all heroics to get enough badges, keep in mind that someone who has enough time to run every single heroic every single day may not be a raider, but is definitely hardcore. =P

Okay, I just want to mention that I'm listening to Blue Plz at work right now, and I didn't realize that with this change you will be able to pick up badges for teir 9 by running normal instances. I think that is a terrible change. I'm fine with handing out the badges at one teir below the current raidiing level, but that's pretty retarded to give out current level badges for normal mode dungeons. I was looking at it as a way to avoid needing guilds to go back and do gear runs through old raids to get people ready to hit current stuff, not a way to completely skip the current stuff and still be uber leet.

There's a lot Blizzard has yet to explain here, and it doesn't help things that there will effectively be four versions of the new dungeon instead of two (10, 10 heroic, 25, 25 heroic). Provided they don't change anything from what they've already announced in the patch notes, I suspect tier 9's badge gear will be equivalent to the 10-man regular instance loot (same tier pieces, same item level). I doubt (hope) they won't put 10/25 regular on the same ilevel - maybe they will put in 25 man gear and it'll just cost a lot more badges, and 25-man bosses will drop more?

EDIT: Another change I found interesting was that while the heroic 5-mans themselves will drop Emblems of Conquest, the regular and heroic dungeon dailies will award 1 and 2 Emblems of Triumph, respectively.