When Burning Crusade touched down we received a token system. The system tied multiple classes to a single drop from a boss. This allowed for less loot being sharded or discarded and allowed for quicker gearing as a guild. The tokens could then be turned in for your tier set pieces. A lot of people were afraid of this method, but it worked out really really well. Guilds were able to gear out their raiders quickly and efficiently and very little loot was left to rot. We began to see the starting of this in Vanilla WoW in Naxxramas and the tier 3 raid sets and AQ40 with the 2.5 pieces. “Token” bosses dropped two tokens a piece and everyone was generally happy.
When Wrath of the Lich King came out, it was more of the same. Naxxramas and Ulduar continued the token system along, but added with it two levels. A 10 man level and a 25 man level that we affectionately refer to as tier x and tier x.5. The system continued to work well. Bosses that were token droppers continued to drop two of them and it was even made so that we could purchase tokens with badges for two of the slots. Gearing was a bit faster now thanks to the addition of two purchasable tokens and content flew by for a lot of people.
Then patch 3.2 hit, and brought with it Tier 9 content. Trial of the Crusader distributed loot in a very, very strange manner. First of all the Tier 9 gear was split into three item levels of quality. We’ve been referring to them as Tier 9, Tier 9.25 and Tier 9.5. Tier 9 can be bough fairly cheaply with Badges of Triumph, the next level up 9.25 requires an amount of badges and a Trophy of the Crusade which can only be obtained in the 25 man version. The tier costs can better be broken down by this:
Tier 9 = ilvl 232 Tier 9.25 = ilvl 245Â Tier 9.5 = ilvl 258
Head: 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector(item level 258) or 75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Hands: 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258) or 45 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 30 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Chest: 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258) or 75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Legs: 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258) or 75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Shoulders: 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258) or 45 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 30 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Confused yet? Most people are. The stat difference between ilvl 226 gear (25 man uld) and ilvl 232 gear is not that big of a jump. going from 226 up to 245 is a big jump for most people. Enough of a gap that most pieces are clear upgrades. So why is this a problem? Trophies only drop from 25 man ToC. You get 1 per boss and a variable amount per tribute chest based on how many wipes you have. There are only five bosses in the instance. (Beasts, Jaraxxus, Champs, Twins and Anub). We’ll go with the model of running 25 man raids. You have 25 people, who all want that trophy. Being only 5 in total that means only roughly 20% of your raid a week can get them and upgrade. Lets look at Ulduar Five bosses drop token pieces, and two tokens per boss which is a theoretical 40% upgrade rate for your raid. The trophy system slowed gearing up way down because most people, especially those progression minded will be focusing on upgrades that can be obtained with Regalia (and it’s like tokens) from Trial of the Grand Crusader or Trophies and badges from Trial of the Crusader.
You can argue that with the drop increases from the tribute chest that better raids are rewarded based on performance, and that is true, but it does not really have any room for guilds that are done with Ulduar but not quite at Trial of the Grand Crusader (example would be guilds that just got a series of new recruits that need to be geared up before ToGC). This however can be chalked up to time spent in a normal version to gear people up, and get them used to the fights before heading into ToGC.
My main problem is the level of competition this generates in a raid. Right now in Ulduar if Gloves the the Wayware Protector drops, you know it’s going to a Warrior, a Hunter or a Shaman. When a Trophy of the Crusade drops, everyone in the raid is sending tells. Everyone wants them over just regular tier 9 badge gear. I’ve seen this cause resentment and bitterness already in a couple people, and it can lead to bigger problems down the line. How do you distribute loot fairly? What is considered fair?
It’s for this reason I’m not a fan of the trophy system. I’m ok with working on harder content for a bigger reward. That is fine and dandy, but when I see an entire raid of people sitting, waiting, wondering if they’ll get the item it becomes a problem. I never saw this problem with a token system. Players might be mad at the game for dropping Vanquisher over Protector but it was RNG and nothing could be done about it. It’s a different story when you’re eligible for the item and watch other people get it over you. It’s a lot easier to accept something out of immediate control like RNG.
It’s not a bad idea in theory. It allows you to select the item you’re upgrading, it allows you to make sure anyone and everyone can use the items instead of seeing them rot due to RNG but I personally feel the token system is the way to go. While loot distribution is always an issue for any guild, I think the trophy system has too much potential to cause harm and additional stress that is unneeded in a raid / guild environment. I asked a question on Twitter about what people thought about the Trophy system. I got a surprising number of replies with people who just won’t run the content or have all together stopped raiding as a result. I’ve also heard reports of guilds having to re work their entire loot system and policy because of this tier content, and that’s not good.
What do you think? Do you like the trophy / badge / three levels to the tier set? Do you hate it? Have you had any interesting stories revolving around loot distribution in tier 9 content?
Well, that’s my two cents on the subject until next time Happy Healing
Head 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector(item level 258) or
75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Hands 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258)
45 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 30 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Chest 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258)
75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Legs 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258)
75 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 50 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Shoulders 1 x Regalia of the Grand Protector (item level 258)
45 x Emblem of Triumph + 1Trophy of the Crusade (ilvl 245) or 30 x Emblem of Triumph (ilvl 232)
Frankly, I hate the trophy thing.
Mine is a pretty good but casual raiding guild, we accept part time raiders and have quite a few social members who often join our raids. Our focus is on having fun together, but while we have cleared ToC 25 fast and are at 10/14 in Ulduar 25, we’re definitely not cut for consistently beating hard modes (we’re doing the Ulduar 10 hard modes for fun).
Result? We have a large team, not all are regulars, and not enough trophies.
In our strive to be fair, we have decided to distribute one trophy to those who had more emblems ready. What we obtained is people piling up emblems and refusing upgrades. Now we just distribute to those who have had no trophy yet, hence people who raid maybe twice a month have 1 piece of tier 9.25, exactly as those who raid 3 times a week.
In my case (priest with perfect attendance, and dual shadow/holy spec so that I always end up in the line up fo one job or the other), after getting something like 300 badges I simply gave up and bought 232 pieces for …. my holy offset!
Result is that now my healing set is just slightly better than my main shadow set, as I had won a fair number of nice items from ToC 10, and plain tier 9 was not worth it there.
Frankly, this does not help raid performance, we need more dps etc if we want to beat the hard modes, and this trophy system is slowing us a lot.
Yes, we could distribute trophies by rank, or attendance, or performance, but we are a social-before-raiding guild, and it is just not our style.
Blizzard give back class tokens please….
I am not a huge fan of the current regalia/trophy system, for pretty much the reason you mentioned: since it’s applicable to every raider, in every slot they can get T9, it’s like a giant clusterf*** when it comes loot time.
On the other hand, I can remember the number of times I got screwed because the only tokens that would ever drop for me was, say, pants. I got pants 3 times in a row in Ulduar-25. I don’t *need* three pairs of pants: I needed, at max, two (and since I wasn’t actually tanking, one was really all that was necessary).
If I were revising it, I’d take half a step back: I’d tie the tokens to specific classes, but not pieces. It takes the number of people sending tells about tokens back down to a reasonable amount, but it allows them to purchase any piece of tier gear that’s a significant upgrade for them (and, after a few, weeks, purchase ALL of them, if they’re willing to shell out the DKP or have lots of lucky rolls).
.-= Stop´s last blog ..In progress =-.
It’s been OK for our guild so far, but we do use a DKP system, so the trophies are distributed that way. We’re a casual raiding guild and haven’t touched any grand crusader yet.
I am not sure if I want the class token system back though I wouldn’t mind if more trophies dropped. Gearing up one person per boss for tier gear is very slow.
“Players might be mad at the game for dropping Vanquisher over Protector but it was RNG and nothing could be done about it.” -Lodur
That is exactly why I like the trophy system. When my guild started doing Ulduar10, Hodir dropped the Priest/Paladin/Warlock token six times in a row. We raided at the time with one of each of those classes. First the Warlock got his legs. Then the Paladin got his legs. Then I got mine, but I had the Leggings of Mortal Arrogance from KT so I turned them in for shadow offset. Then the paladin got ret offset legs. Then I got another 2 tokens so I could shard the legs.
At the end of those six weeks only 2 of the 10 people raiding attained upgrades. If Hodir dropped a token that allowed anybody to get legs 6 of the 10 people would have received upgrades. The RNG is a bitch sometimes and I support anything that avoids these types of situations. If you want to bring the RNG back in to the picture just have people /roll on trophies 🙂
I also like having three levels of tier drops. I like that the lowest level requires only badges and I like the trophy system for T9.25. I think the T9.5 token system should instead be a Trophy of the Grand Crusader or something that can be used by any class rather than specific classes.
As a 10 man raider, my only complaint has been that the Trophies are at the END of the heroic. If Heroic 10 is supposed to award ilevel 245 gear ( and that is what the bosses drop) then I would prefer to get some Trophies.
We only get Trophies AFTER we clear the place the first time, exactly when we don’t need them anymore.
I’ll be very curious as to the system they use for Ice crown.
I think they should combine the two systems. Make the tokens available to all classes for each piece or limit the classes and allow them to be used for any piece they need. So either a glove token drops, and any class can use it. Or a Priest/Paladin/Warlock token drops and they can turn it in for any piece of gear they need yet.
I personally love the trophy system. Assuming every player wants to shoot for their 4 set, that means you’re going to need 100 tokens. That’s about 20 weeks of farming (4 pieces x 25 raiders). With Ulduar or naxx, there would be an additional element of RNG of whether or not a certain class piece dropped.
With the current trophy system in place, it becomes faster to gear the overall raid based on who needs which piece. Raiders are encouraged to get whatever off-tier upgrades they can get and then the rest are filled in with trophies. Some sets are better than others. Some people are willing to hold off or purchase normal T9 232 level items and take a hit so that others can get 245 quicker.
The result is a much leaner equipped raid in far less the time then it would normally take. It’s much better then getting 6 protector glove tokens in a row. Sure you might use half, but the rest of it is wasted.
After all, when’s the last time anyone’s raid ever sharded a Trophy drop?
I think it went too far in terms of opening everything up to everyone. If they had changed it so a chest piece could go to any class. Or they had a token for select classed it could be used for any piece, that would have been a better transition. It takes some of the anticipation and fun out of seeing what loot dropped. A trophy, yawn. And i loved listening to out resto shaman cry because we had a tank priority system. The same Shaman is now bitching about our tanks getting gibbed on beasts because we took it out.
I also hate the fact that pieces cost badges and trophies. Rerunning heroics again is not fun and I feel like if I downed the boss, the rewards shouldn’t costs extra. Now, if I have to do something extra to get the boss down, I can see that.
But really, the biggest annoyance is just the small pool of available loot. We got 6 bosses this patch, and the fire guy seems guaranteed to drop pvp loot for our guild. Ony is fun, but the loot generally is below toc loot.
Not to mention some of our lazy team mate, who only now after ten or so weeks of doing toc weekly, understand the system.
I like the Trophy system, because it pretty much eliminates loot rot until the instance is completely over-farmed. Those who don’t like it were the ones who had bosses drop their class token over and over, or are confusing their dislike of the system with the drop rate. Remember, Ulduar bosses dropped 2 tokens each, ToC bosses only drop 1. That is why a lot of people dislike the Trophy system. I do think the 75 emblems addition to the Trophy is a bit steep, but I assume it is designed to keep people running the ToC instances, since they need emblems. The emblem requirement puts a lot more emphasis on doing VoA, since you can potentially get gloves/pants without worrying about amassing emblems.
I’m enjoying the Trophy system. In our 25 man, we use EP/GP so we have assigned a GP cost to the trophies and they are handed out in an orderly manner – one per person – and then we go back through the list of people.
We just recently started our second pass through the list of raiders and I should be getting my second trophy tonight. It’s nice to know when you’ll get a trophy as you can plan for it rather than having to rely on luck for that piece of Rogue/Death Knight/Mage/Druid T8 to drop.
Additionally, we place a restriction on trophies that you have to have raided 3 weeks with us before getting a trophy. Since we give priority to people who have no trophies over people that have one, we can’t just be giving PUGs a trophy on their first run with us. It creates an extra layer of complexity, but luckily, my highly complex spreadsheet can track it all.
I just think that knowing when that upgrade is coming rather than having to rely on even more luck is a huge advantage. Now, if more than 5 would drop a week, I’d be a much happier mage.
.-= Blake´s last blog ..The Greatest Kitty =-.
I also like the trophy system.
The trophy system also allows DKP (if you utilize it) to stay relatively balanced. Yogg Saron dropped 1 pair of Conq. shoulders the entire 6+ months we were farming him. We’ve completed 2 Val’anyr’s, and still 1 pair of Conq shoulders.
Going into the TOC launch, we had Locks and Shadow Priests with double or triple the DKP of members with the same attendance (they were hoarding for the shoulder drop). The trophy system has kept our DKP system in check, and the badge requirements pace the upgrades for an instance with no trash.
Who knows what ICC will hold…
-Canes
Well I have yet to see a trophy, but I’m not worried about having loot issues over it. I am in a casual 10 man raiding guild. We do have some ready for Grand, but not enough to run it. On top of that ToC hit at a bad time for us….when some of our best raiders had to head back to school and some got burned out. So we are now working on gearing some new folks. Anyhow no trophies for us!
However we have already decided how to manage them. We use Suicide Kings to distribute loot (list of people, you drop to the bottom when you gain loot), when we start getting trophies we will have a second list just for trophies. Without trying it I cannot swear it will work, but it seems as if it will work for our group.
The trophy system is fine, it’s more efficient than class group drops, and is balanced to gear up groups as fast as the old system. If people are complaining to you about the fact that it’s going to others before them, it’s because the guild leadership is taking a hands on approach toward loot distribution.
The extra drama caused by a loot council (or any type of officer say in loot distribution) has to be weighed against the potential efficiency benefit that they give compared to a system (like rolling or dkp) which is inherently fair to individual raiders. In my opinion, now that trophies are class independent, the drama overhead of loot council systems is no longer worth it.
.-= EuripidesOutDPS´s last blog ..Appearance on TNB Tomorrow Night! =-.
There is no “perfect” loot system; there is only the loot system that is implemented in a way that works best for your guild.
We use a modified loot council system that we created when we finally decided in mid-T6 to ditch our dkp system due to the hoarding and inflation issues. The only added restriction for Trophies is that the people putting their names in for consideration already have the badges required to go get the item. Thus far we’ve not had anyone complain about how they get distributed because anyone can go to our site to see what is affecting their priority.
The only complaint that I really have with the trophies is that they’re usable by every class. As a player, it’s great. As an officer, it’s a bitch to look at our webpage to see who is up for the item; it’s led us to ask our resident code monkey to code in additional sort functionality beyond what we already have to make distributing those pieces easier & faster.
I hate trophies as well. I wish that they were never implemented and I think that that level of gear should have been done away with anyways and more tokens being dropped in the heroic versions (or maybe tokens from Anub himself for regular T9).
The main reason I hate the Trophy system is that it has literally nothing to do with me. They only drop in 25mans and we are a 10man guild that has Heroic ToC10 on a decent farm; 10man Heroic is much more challenging to us and it is allegedly an authentic raiding path yet it is never treated as such (read: Val’Anyr). It’s still a bit of a challenge and we have our hiccups but we can generally get it done well. Therefore as a 10man guild, we only have T9 and T9.5.
Like you said, trophies are also really competitive.
I think the trophy system is miles better than the token system. Whether you tie tokens to class and slot (as in the past) or only to one of them – you can still end up with getting a million and one gloves and bracers but no other slots or three classes in the raid get geared up to the point of things being sharded while others have to stand by not having had anything at all.
Loot is a tool for a raid group to be able to handle tougher fights – tokens that are distributed by RNG puts an artificial hamper on the gearing up of the raid force as a whole.
I think the move to trophies is great and I’m fine with it costing badges as well – you get those anyway as part of the raiding. However, I think that 5 trophies per week (unless you are able to do the heroic versions) is a bit stingy for a 25-man group. Like Matt said it means 20 weeks to get everyone their full tiers – or 5 months. That time frame seems a bit excessive. Though I guess at least we can buy the T9 gear for just badges.
I quite like the trophy system.
What I absolutely LOATHE is the VOA loot drops being so specific. I still haven’t seen a resto druid piece drop – the closest was a piece of feral gear.
Go back to tokens for VoA, at the very least :/
First, I call it T9, T9.5 and T9.75. Semantics, but needed to establish the reference.
I like the T9.75 system, one that you completely skipped over in your article above. Maybe that’s because very few guilds have 25-man Grand Crusader on farm (mine doesn’t). But I think dropping a single class all-slot token (rather than a multiple class but slot-specific token) is the ideal. I’m hoping all T10 and beyond gear works like the T9.75.
.-= Darkener´s last blog ..Trial of the Crusader (Northrend Beasts) 25man (HD) =-.
We’ve had no problems with it. Granted we bid dkp on them, the biggest pain for some was getting the emblems if they werent able to farm heroics as much, but now pretty much everyone is in it.
I could see resentment in a lootcouncil or “by guild rank” system. ewww.. yeah that could be nasty.
I dont care for it, nor did I particularly like the emblems. I sorta liked grinding up the dungeon sets in vanilla. However getting the same bracers from BWL every week sucked.
but yeah the token system is better. would be nice if they just had a token for each piece perhaps across all classes, then again, some upgrades are bigger for different classes and specs than others.
the trophy system does offer freedom. That is one thing I like about it, I could augment my gear effectivly.
I never liked the trophy idea, either. It takes some getting used to. I like the idea that tokens are for every piece so you have a little more flexibility in your gear choices but it does create a lot more competition w/in the raid. I’m glad I’m not longer in a guild that uses DKP for loot, because I think that would be a nightmare.
.-= Lilitharien´s last blog ..To Bloom or Not to Bloom? =-.
My guild uses a loot council for most things, but for trophies we went to a simple rotation, split by class roles. Basically it works out like Suicide Kings, except that there is one list for each class role. We alternated tank, dps, healer, dps, then back to the start. At this point, the 2 tanks have the tier pieces they want, so it is just alternating between DPS and healing. It has worked out fairly well, but it does rely on a stable roster.
liltharien’s why would dkp be “a nightmare” ?
that would be the simplest way to distribute it.
worked great for us, no impartiality, and people who show up to raids got their 245 sets first.
I think trying to convince people to LC the things is insane.
the fights are quite healer and tank dependent, as well as dps, its pretty broad guys.
i’m a healers, and glad my dps doesnt suck. convincing me that dkp system, that resets at least to some level considering “decay” of dkp is just fine.
The implementation of the tier loot in this stage has a number of problems, but there are a number of positives as well. I think Blizzard just felt like experimenting with the formula a bit to see what works and what doesn’t.
Certainly for a 25-man hardmode guild, the 245 trophy income rate is extremely high, much higher than any tier income rates of previous instances. We have 31 raiders, so we run 2 normal 25mans (15 mains, 10 alts), we run 3 heroic 10 mans (2 Insanity runs, and the other has some alts filling in, it’s skill/mad skill). Between all the runs we net 25-27 trophies per week. Even early on they weren’t difficult to distribute. The first few went to tanks, and after that we opened up for tells from anyone who could buy the piece they wanted on the spot. Given that half the raid wanted glove/shoulder upgrades, and the others wanted to wait for hat/pants/chest, that reduced the tellspam immensely. Also, with only 15 mains in a raid, that cut the tellspam down. Also, given that some people were buying other things with trophies (rings, trinkets, relics, etc), it split the tellspam even further. Last but not least, we took tells for all 5 trophies at once, after Anub died, so we only had to deal with mass tellspam once per raid. All of this was relatively easy to plan around. Frankly, the trophy income rate is probably too high.
Regalia, on the other hand, with 4 per week, is extremely problematic. Frankly, I think there should be one regalia drop per boss in heroic 25man, totally a maximum of 9 per week. That would fit better with previous instance tier income rates, and it’s problematic that most of the raid will be deciding between 258 offset and 245 tier pieces. The 4pc bonuses for most specs are anemic enough that they’ll end up going with offset more often than not.
I think I have a bigger issue with the delivery rate of tier pieces in T9 than I do with the implementation. T9.245 comes quickly, T9.258 is anemic. The trophy idea is excellent, in my opinion. In Sunwell, we had 13 total conqueror bracers drop. Vanquisher and protector were being sharded. That was pretty frustrating. I think my personal preference would be if “Tier Leg Tokens” dropped from one boss, and “Tier Chest Piece” from another, without class restrictions. Blend the systems in the one way they didn’t try in ToC.
More more more.
I can imagine issues in a sole 25 men guild about trophies but no-one has mentioned effort.
The tier tokens in Ulduar required a lot more work and a much better raid then the trophies in ToC.
ToC has opened up an incredible opportunity for higher gear for raiders not so hardcore. And what’s the comment: we don’t get enough trophies we want more.
It’s never enough.
You can clear the place in less then an hour, why should there be as many tier awards as in Ulduar which takes you several hours?
I think the system is fine, It just means you have to get your loot distribution system right. It reduces someone sitting on 3×9 for ages because only the leg token has been dropping.
Shoulders dropped from Yogg is a great example.
.-= Upyursh´s last blog ..Addon Guide: DoT Timer =-.
Definitely in favour of it – I’m so tired of seeing tier tokens from Ulduar and rotting on the boss because once again, we got a rogue/dk/druid/whatever token and every one of those classes have gear. We’ve been farming ToC25, ToC10, ToC10H since the start, clearing it every week, and we’ve never had a trophy go to waste.
Also, ToC10H drops trophies if you reach the tribute, so it’s not correct to state that they’re only accessible from ToC25.
One Ulduar yielded 10 token drops for us. However we always hated unpredictable RNG factor at loot.
Recently we started raiding 2×25 since it takes us only 2 hours for Ony/ToC25 with casuals/alts as 30% of raid force. This gave immense speed up in gearing for our core raiders since this way 10 people get tier item per week instead of 5.
35-40 raiders with 10-15 alts gives you opportunity to split your raiders in two groups and gear up much faster for ToGC
I’m kinda up in the air whether I like the trophy idea or not. While I agree it’s slow gearing people up, it also eliminates the RNG factor of the tokens. For example, my raid went 9 weeks without seeing a single Protector token drop off Yogg.
However, I feel my raid hasn’t had any real issues with the trophy system. At first it was: send a tell if you have the badges and you’re willing to break T8.5 4pc set bonus. Then it gradually just went to sending a tell if you’re interested. We handle the trophies just like any other item in that we look at loot received for main spec and the person lowest on the loot list will most likely get it. There are exceptions that weigh in like how well the person’s performance and attendance is. This past week I was the officer everyone was supposed to whisper for the trophies and I only got 4. Two were for the person’s 5th piece, one was 4 piece upgrade from ilvl 232 and then mine for 2 piece. I was highest on the loot list out of the 4 but I was awarded my 2 piece since I was the only one that didn’t have a set bonus and the 2 piece would allow me to use the other upgrades I had gotten in previous weeks.
We do run a lot of 10 mans and almost every one of our 25 man raiders has a 10 man that clears ToGC, so we do get a lot of our trophies that way as well.
I don’t think the system is perfect with only one tier upgrade per boss, but I think it’s better than the RNG of “oh look another Vanquisher piece”.
I think it works ok, but don’t like the sharing of emblems between the 10 and 25 man versions and using them for buying ilevel245 armor pieces. It means one should really run both 10 and 25 man (not good) or doing the daily heroic every day (debatable if good/bad). Running the same instance again and again leads to burnout. It does mean that one can get ilevel 245 gear in some slots from running 10man/heroic daily though.
From an elemental shaman standpoint, the current tier system is horrible, but that’s mostly due to most all the non-set pieces being tailored more towards resto (with all the MP5 on them). Our 4 piece T9 is amazing, though, which is why I went about picking up the 232 pieces; despite the lack of static stat increase, the set bonus made it worth it. I’m also puzzled by why the 245 items not only require a drop from 25, but ~50% more badges than their 232 counterparts. I would’ve rather seen both cost the same amount of badges, whether it was 30/50 or 45/75, with the trophies being the extra requirement for 245 items.
I don’t think we ever had a T8.5 token go to rot. Someone somewhere would be able to pick it up for an off spec. Maybe we were just lucky with that.
Hopefully, ICC/T10 distribution will be less clumsy in how it is set up.
My only complaint with the trophy system is that there aren’t enough. I mean EoTs are one limiting factor while the trophies are the other.
I know many who have gotten their 2 piece 245 and because there aren’t nearly enough trophies they’ve “settled” for 2 pieces of 232 for the 4 piece bonus. Which I suppose is fine but my guild has an issue where there are 15 regular raiders and 30 casuals/alts who come along too. Not to mention those of us that dual spec and dual spec seriously. So the tally is more like 50 sets. Which will not happen before 3.3 and there is no way to get more.
Considering my guild cannot do TotGC 25 yet that limits us to 5 trophies from TotC 25, 2 pieces that may or may not be used from Koralon and the 2 trophies that our 1 TotGC 10 group gets. So lets say 8 per week. If everybody were to gear up that would be 25 weeks (200 pieces/8) which is 6 months of Tier gearing.
I understand the pacing of 1 per boss per level which equals 2 per Ulduar Keeper but a “normal” group gets just as many tier tokens as a hard/heroic group in Ulduar while the “normal” group in ToC only gets 1.
I like the trophy system except there isn’t enough of them as people have mentioned. Our guild had a big fall out recently which has left us with recruiting and having to gear up a lot of people. We don’t have the numbers to run 25 ToGC also were still working on putting our dedicated 10 man hard mode group together so we aren’t able to run 10 ToGC either. This leaves us with 5 trophies to go around each week. With our DKP system you are basically having to fight against 24 other people for a trophy. IF people are fair about it, as in when they take a trophy they wait until everyone else has received one before they take another then it will still take 5 weeks in order for everyone to get a piece of 245, so that would be over a month. In order for everyone to get all 5 pieces of 245 it would take 25 weeks or somewhere around 6 months. Since 3.3 is already on the PTR its safe to assume that 3.3 will be coming up long before we are able to get everyone in there 245 T9 that is unless people get tired of waiting and they break down and buy the 232 version instead if there interested in the 4 piece bonus (i’m considering this myself). If people aren’t fair about taking the trophies then you either have to start hording DKP or hope that Koralan has something for you.