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The better idea would be to link party composition to loot.

ie - no pally, no warrior, no DK = no plate drops.

I personally love running a daily heroic with 3 of 4 bosses dropping a type of armor none of the 5 people can wear, let alone use ... and to top it off with an epic drop that gets sharded because, once again, no one can wear the damn thing.

There will always be many uneeded drops, something has to be disenchanted, yo? Who cares if green random suffix items drop that are just disenchant fodder? That's free money, not actually meant to be worn. They're meant to supply enchanting mats. It's not until Epics, and to some degree blues that Blizz starts caring about who's gonna wear this and proper itemization.

That's true, but it would be best for them to customize the loot table to match the group/raid composition in the instance. That way they could cut down on sharded gear while keeping feral druids from looking like rogues, and enhancement shammies from looking like hunters with no pets, etc.

I agree 100% with what MadCow said. Drops should be related to party.

DE fodder is ultimately disappointing.

Personally, I would have to say that customizing the loot to be only what is usable by the party is going way too far. It does seem kind of like cheating, but it's equally cheating (from a story perspective) that you can kill a boss multiple times and that a boss doesn't drop everything it owns when you do kill it.

From a practical standpoint, it will lead to a rogue rejecting warrior/paladin/DK tanks and priest/shaman healers just so they can shrink the drop list as much as possible to get the one item they actually need (or if someone needs a particular sword, then only bringing sword-using classes). They're trying to make tanks or healers mostly interchangeable (especially in regular instances), not give people even more reasons to reject certain classes.

As if a rogue will ever be the one to reject any tank or healer in a group.

@Saelorn

That doesn't even make sense. By taking a Druid tank you would increase your chances for the item you want to drop, but since Druid tanks now desire the same gear as Rogues, you've decreased your chance of winning the roll for it. In essence, the odds of you getting the item you want hasn't increase. Mostly likely, it has gotten worse. However, the odds that SOMEONE in the group will get something they can use has increased greatly.

@Breck

I meant getting your guildies together to farm an item for you. At least now in Burning Crusade, every heroic final boss is guaranteed to drop one epic; if you wanted the sword off of Pathaleon, because you're bringing up a new tank for the guild, then you would now be able to guarantee the drop.

I used the rogue and druid example because, even though they can all use leather with agility and attack power (thus ensuring it would drop), the tanks/trees/moonkin don't actually want it (thus ensuring the rogue would get it).

Why is this so hard for blizz? because if they dont make bonus armour gear for level 80 bears will just continue to wear the existing stuff, especially if they compensate by giving us a higher multiplier. As matters stand bears take bonus armour gear above all else (practically) until thye hit the armour cap. If i have > 30k armour at 70 with existing multipliers what makes you think i would tank with 20k at 80, with better multipliers, when i have high armour gear in my bank?

Armor has to make up for the damage reduction from defensive stance/righteous fury as well. If bears don't have armor vastly superior than plate or a similar modifier added to them, they will fail as WotLK tanks.

The problem here is you are using a current standing to extrapolate a future result, when the situation will have changed. For all you know, within three levels, leather gear will have armor levels equal to Season Three or Tier Five gear, but with better stats, making replacing it a no-brainer for the druid tank. This is Beta, the only people who know where things are going are the designers, and no changes are guaranteed to remain.

Bears being at armor cap was always a band-aid. Bear armor values were out of control in BC. There's no way they should've been hitting the armor cap unbuffed, it also meant they were missing out on all the armor procs from healing classes, etc. I have a SS on my paladin of me with 31,000 armor from various armor procs, ancestral fortitude, etc. With enough healers on you those procs are up for a significant portion of the fight. With stoneshield potion / elixir that would put me at 34,000 armor which is 1,000 away from the armor cap and with basically the same armor as a bear tank. Bears were missing out on all that scaling due to starting at the armor cap.

you mean in the way that we are now 2 expansions into wow and blizzard is finally addressing the paladin? or are you talking about the way that mages are just the glass in the "glass cannon" they are supposed to be?

now don't get me wrong, i didnt start playing a druid til tbc, and im convinced they are the lovechild of the developers, and that at the end of the day blizzard will do everything it's power to keep their little baby the best class in the game, but there are sweeping changes for druids in lich.

1. they intend to make them just as viable a maintank as any other class. this will mean that their mechanics will have to change somewhat. someone else already pointed out that the lack of crushing blows would make their current armor a little overpowered, but lets not forget that shield wearers are going to have increased block, so this may tranlate into leaving a druids armor insanely high.

2. as a resto druid, i'm scared to death of the dk in arena. disc priests are going to be better healers, particularly for single targets, and all their shields are going to present problems. i still think that the dk/disc priest is going to replace the ms warrior/resto druid as the best arena team since a druid wont be able to get rid of those forsaken diseases.

3. i dont care what anyone says, boomkin and kittens should NEVER dps on the same lvl as an equally geared rogue or mage. they should come close, but that expectation that they should be equal is insane. druid bring tons more utility than their primary counterparts and as such, no raid leader should expect them to have to contribute all they do and put out the dps of a pure dps class.

Nah, having tanking and dps in the same tree is a ripoff for the other tanks >: The prot pally tanking tree has EIGHT 5 point talents, only one of which is skipped for tanking. The feral druid tree has only THREE 5 point talents, one of which is skipped for tanking. How is that fair? If I'm spending all those talent points on JUST tanking, I'd better be a far more awesome tank that a bear tank, but that's not how it is.

If cats start going for strength, then this would defeat the entire gear consolidation thing they seem to be trying to do. While I have faith that Blizzard will figure something out, you have to admit that they've painted themselves into a corner with that one. Rogues are weapon dependent and druids use none - so how do you share gear between them without nerfing or overpowering one or the other?

"Anenome said...

Nah, having tanking and dps in the same tree is a ripoff for the other tanks >: The prot pally tanking tree has EIGHT 5 point talents, only one of which is skipped for tanking. The feral druid tree has only THREE 5 point talents, one of which is skipped for tanking. How is that fair? If I'm spending all those talent points on JUST tanking, I'd better be a far more awesome tank that a bear tank, but that's not how it is."

LOL @ Prot pally QQ. What about warriors? Prot warriors are next to useless outside of tanking unless we have a fully enchanted and gemmed DPS set with item levels comparable to the content being done, and even then our DPS is still barely viable. At least you can throw on some healing gear and spam FoL or go to Blades edge or SMV and kill 20,000 demons at once.