Last night in ICC10 not one, not two, but three iLevel 264 BOE epics dropped...
Ring of Rotting Sinew from a Deathspeaker High Priest, 2% chance.
Leggings of Dubious Charms from a Val'kyr Herald, 3% chance.
Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets from Stinky, 5% chance.
For a combined chance of .00003% or 1 in 33333 according to wowhead's drop rates. Should be pretty accurate given the few thousand data points for each mob/item.
33333 raids is 641 years of weekly raids!
Considering we run three and a half hours a week that would be over 13 years of solid raiding if it were possible to repeat the instance back to back.
And after all that can you believe that the shirt from Precious didn't drop once yet with a 30% drop rate? Come on. :)
Not likely to see that happen again in any case.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
I recently updated a couple old posts:
Whats in a Name? describes how I came up with my character names and
Add-Ons I Use lists all the add-ons I currently use.
Whats in a Name? describes how I came up with my character names and
Add-Ons I Use lists all the add-ons I currently use.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Raiding Pro Choice
Wrath made 10 mans an option where as before there was really only one or two raids and they didn't have the same sense of progression that the 25 man content had. Still popular opinion places 25-man content higher in the pecking order and those who choose 10 man content over 25 man content are not taken as seriously and probably openly mocked in a PUG environment.
The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.
The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.
So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.
If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.
I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.
I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.
The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.
The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.
So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.
If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.
I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.
I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
I'm Obviously an Egg Ninja
I did all the Noblegarden achievements yesterday since my new thing is to get the long strange trip meta for the 310% flying speed in flight form. That meant a lot of egg gathering which in turn meant lots of competition for a limited resource. Luckily for me few can compete with a feral druid when it comes to hunting, no matter what the quarry. We are fast, we are sneaky and we have a 30 yard range omnidirectional instant to tag stuff.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
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