Penance Priest

This is a post about loot. Hard to believe, since no one cares anyway :)

It’s not a post about how to distribute loot within your guild. There are many systems, and they all have varying degrees of suck. To minimize suck, look into EPGP and move on. Perhaps I’ll expand on that another day. Not now though.

No, this post is about what Blizzard can do about spellpower plate. But wait! Don’t run away! I promise, there’s more to it than that.

The problem

Spellpower plate is just the most obvious and extreme example of bad loot distribution by Blizzard. There are other examples, and it’s only gotten worse with the new “bring the player not the class” philosophy. BTPNTC allows guilds to run with groups that are (from a purely loot-oriented viewpoint) radically imbalanced.

My guild runs with two regular hunters. (Used to be three, but grats on the new baby, Griz!) We have no enhancement shaman. So every piece of mail gear goes straight to them, and they also get a shot at plenty of offset pieces. They’ve both got multiple 232 weapons and are well on their way to building separate gear sets for MM and SV.

Meanwhile, in our cloth-heavy guild, many of us softies are rocking four or five pieces of Ulduar gear. That’s after about 110 boss kills.

So what we have is a question of balance. Your guild might be the opposite, with tons of hunters and few clothies. Or lots of trees & boomkins but no priests. I love the BTPNTC philosophy to death, but this can be a real issue.

The spectrum of gear flexibility

Blizzard has a number of different loot distribution systems in place that attempt to address the balance concern. Here’s a diagram of those systems, arranged from the most specific (boss X drops the Ring of Not Again) to the most general (40 emblems gets you whatever the heck you want):

On the left we have a boss who drops some specific item; you have no choice in the matter. This, of course, is the way almost all raid-boss loot works. On the right we have a boss who drops a token that can be used to purchase any tier piece for any class (like the new T9 system). Emblem gear is similarly flexible, perhaps more so.

Previous tiers (I’m using T7 as an example) used a semi-flexible system, in which the slot was fixed (head piece, for example) but the class was flexible (rogues, death knights, mages, druids). There are also offset options within that (e.g., different types of druid headpieces for different specs), so there was an interesting balance of flexibility and specificity.

Blizzard has been clear that they don’t want bosses to drop only flexi-tokens. The badge system was designed to fill in gaps, to allow you to buy gear after the RNG clobbered you week in and week out. But bosses will not be dropping “Buy Any Loot Token #1” any time soon. The gambler’s thrill of hitting the jackpot is a key part of the game, which means losing rolls is going to happen until darkness descends over Azeroth.

(By the way, I’m glad they didn’t implement boss-kill statistics until 3.0. Otherwise I’d know exactly how many times I killed Prince and did not get my T4 helm. Even with the flexibility in the tier-gear system, the RNG is a huge factor, and is one reason I visited that dark castle so many times.)

Quest rewards

Probably didn’t see that coming, did you? Well. Think about it. Quest rewards give you options, but they aren’t innumerable. You get about 4 pieces of gear to choose from, and Blizzard has done its darndest to ensure that all specs and armor classes are accounted for during the leveling process. (Tanks will tell you differently.) Even if there are quests that have no rewards that interest you, over time you will certainly be able to build up a set of gear that tracks your leveling progress and power.

The proposal

Have raid-level bosses drop quest-reward tokens. (“This item begins a quest.”) For Ulduar, the quest turn-in might be in the foyer, so you can easily port around to receive your quest rewards.

The quest rewards would be tightly defined. Take Ignis, for example.

Ignis Weapon Token: quest rewards would be the three 232 weapons on his loot table (Worldcarver, Intensity, Scepter of Creation).

Ignis Accessory Token: quest rewards would the rings & neckpieces on his loot table (Cindershard, Pyrelight, and perhaps the Totem of Dancing Flame)

I haven’t thought through how all the tokens would be organized, except to realize it is a non-trivial but very solvable problem. You would have to combine things that don’t fit very easily (like that totem or a trinket). You could ensure that no token gave more than two rewards, as a way of keeping this system closer to the left side of my chart. (More options in the quest reward pushes it closer to the right, of course.) I’ll leave the subtleties of the quest-reward organization to the smart people. But the general idea should be clear.

I find this system very appealing: it still leaves a lot of randomness, while allowing a bit more control over gearing up your raid. And it leaves Blizzard plenty of control over how much or how little they want the RNG to affect your winnings.

And with that, there’s no need to change any fundamental mechanics of the game. No ridiculous strength-to-spellpower conversion talents in the paladins’ holy tree. No “everyone can wear plate” silliness. We’re just taking the edge off the randomness of boss drops, while still keeping the thrill of the rare drop and the thrill of a good roll as motivating factors.

By the way, has anyone seen Guiding Star? Fifteen Razorscale kills and no drops. And ten folks who would roll on it for their main spec. WTB better boss-drop mechanics. Even slightly better would be enough.

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Healing as Discipline in 3.1, in Ulduar, is nothing like healing in T7 content. With spammable shields, and fewer “omg tanks-gonna-die!” boss fights, my normal rotation looks very different than it used to:

Shield tank
Penance tank
PoM tank
Shield dps
Shield dps
(Beat)
Penance tank
Shield dps
(Two beats)
Shield dps
…repeat

That’s the basics, or something like that anyway. That doesn’t include the tanks-gonna-die phases, or AoE phases, and there is of course plenty of variation on that basic theme. But what’s missing from the rotation above? Why, Flash Heal, of course.

One more note on the rotation: I’ve always been able to do raid-heal support, even in T7. Even as a tank healer, I have plenty of GCDs available to help on raid heals. In the past, that usually meant tossing Flash Heals out on the raid when I could, to ensure that I had my PW:Shield cooldown up when I needed it. With the changes to Grace in 3.1, tossing out Flash Heals on the raid is a Very Bad Thing™, as it reassigns Grace to the FH target. So any raid-heal support comes in the form of bubbles. (And Prayer of Healing, but that’s another story.)

Flash Heal now makes up about 6% of my overall healing. So it is with excitement and trepidation that I have abandoned a traditional 57/14 spec for a 55/16 spec. (Am I late to the party?)

Here is my shiny new spec.

By the way, the points in Holy remain a somewhat unresolved issue, open to playstyle preference. Since Greater Heal makes up 0.0% of my heals, Divine Fury is a capital waste, and I’ve been spec’d into Spell Warding for a while now. The extra 2 points that I removed from Improved Flash Heal have gone into Healing Focus, which is more than welcome in the AoE world of Ulduar. Healing Focus has become a viable throughput talent in Ulduar.

I’ve kept one point in Improved Flash Heal until I can find a better use for it. The crit bonus is ok, but my raid-buffed crit is about 40% nowadays, so it’s no longer that exciting. And mana cost reduction? Also a non-issue. I finally removed my Flash Heal glyph, which had been glued to my glyph pane since day one. (That slot now hosts Prayer of Healing, as that spell now makes up an embarrassingly high proportion of my healing output.)

Is anyone else moving away from this “cookie-cutter” talent?

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I <3 Ulduar.

A little context first. In BC I was with a casual raiding guild. It's a concept that I find hard to understand in retrospect -- “casual raiding.” We would wander into TK on Monday night, wipe twice on Solarion, then give up and go run heroics. I hated it. I tried to get people to go into ZA, but they were terrified. They went and leveled their alts instead of progressing their mains.

So I never had the experience of pushing into new content. I got pugged into a few T6 raids, but they were a whirlwind. I was just a hired healbot.

I joined my current guild during a time when (A) Naxx was on farm, with only S3D remaining to be conquered, and (B) Lol Naxx? In other words, until now, WoLK has not exactly provided much of a challenge.

And...more context:

When I first encountered WoW, looking over my friend's shoulder as he was playing, I was completely confused. What the hell was the point of running around, killing a diseased bear, then running to the next bear and killing it? It held zero appeal to me. Then he described instancing. Five people who all needed to work together to accomplish a goal. You couldn't pick any five people, you needed people to fill specific roles. And they couldn't just do what they wanted: the healer had to heal, because there was no extra wiggle room for them to help out damaging the boss. In other words, teamwork. A well-oiled machine. Now THAT sold me.

It's like sports -- individuals who excel in individual events like powerlifting or gymnastics are amazing and inspiring. But more than that, what excites me about sports is when you have great individuals working together as a team, like in basketball or hockey.

Teamwork is why I started my WoW account. I don't mind playing solo or doing dailies. But the high points of WoW are all about the teamwork. And that doesn't mean just having more than one person in a group -- it means coordination, flow, trust, and everyone bringing their A-game to meet a challenge that can't be met without those factors. The more tenuous the situation, the more it demands that everyone is working at 100% capacity, the more satisfying the result. If you only need 90% or even 95% of your attention, it's just not IT.

So. Ulduar.

I love the fact that it's hard. Wiping is stressful. There are two responses to stress: either you give up, or you rise to a higher level. If you want to rise to a higher level, stress is your best friend.

I love the fact that it actually requires 25 people. Not 10 people with 15 tag-alongs. Not one person who knows the fight, 5 people who can listen, and 19 people who only know their best pewpew rotations. You need 25 awake people. Most (if not all) of them have to come prepared, having studied the fights, color-coded their raid frames with key debuffs, etc.

I love how it separates the social players from the serious players. Folks who love bantering even when it's obvious we're unfocused and struggling to make progress, versus folks who want to hunker down and find out what we did wrong and how we can improve.

I love how it brings out the best and the worst in people. Those who somehow forget to flask for a boss, versus those who couldn't imagine not being flasked for a progression boss. Those who ponder and complain in vent when they die, or those who wait patiently (even humbly) in support of those who survived and are still in the thick of it.

(Why would I want to see the worst in people? Of course I don't...but the fact that Ulduar brings out both the best and the worst is, to me, a sign that it hits the mark. Less stress would produce the sort of negative, backsliding results that we experienced because of lazy-mode Naxx; more stress would have us all quitting the game. Just the right amount, and we have progress.)

I love how I died in the fire on my first Razorscale attempt. No excuse -- fire is fire, whether it's the first attempt or the 20th. But I never die to void zones, and here I was so challenged and focused that I missed the obvious. If it were easy I wouldn't love it!

I love how much it stresses not only the individual, but the team. As other bloggers have noted, Ulduar has the potential to tear guilds apart. If that's the only possibility, let's all give up now, shall we? Because it also has the potential to bring teams together. And not in some huggy-feely kind of way, but in a functional, dynamic, higher-order-of-doing-business kind of way. A team that is willing to struggle and succeed is better in the end by a wide margin. Better doesn't mean more higher-level epics, or achievements ticked off the list. It means they have a higher degree of integration, or ability to work as a team, because they've tackled a harder project.

Personally, I'm thrilled by the stress. I want to rise to a higher level, both as an individual and as a team. I want my team members to want that too, of course, since that drive is the only thing that will bring us to that higher level.

If I stand alone in this, so be it. But Bravo, Blizzard!

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