Kor'kron 501st

Coffee with the Devs — Mists of Pandaria Looting Explained – World of Warcraft via WoW Insider.

I’m excited about the new loot updates! Some of this was announced before, but some more details were given.

• Players no longer compete with other players for loot from world bosses or the raid finder.
• You can purchase bonus loot chances
• AOE looting
• Valor can upgrade equipment but not purchase equipment

Loot Rule Changes

The loot changes for the raid finder are huge. Currently you have to roll need on everything because everyone else will too. Then at the end, there’s an additional boss – convince someone to trade with you.

In the new system, after a boss dies you have a chance to get loot. This chance has nothing to do with other players. If the game determines that you win loot, you get a random piece of loot from the loot table that the game considers appropriate for your class and spec.

This will make the raid finder much, much better. The only real problem is that you can’t use it to get gear that’s not appropriate. If I want DPS gear, I’ll have to run as shitty DPS rather than good healer. (Although this seems to be a much deeper design flaw in the game.) They mentioned the possibility of a toggle allowing you to designate that you’re willing to accept any usable equipment. While not being able to receive non-spec appropriate gear could be seen as a negative, I really like this new system.

Bonus Roll

There will be Charms of Good Fortune that are purchasable with tokens from dailies that can be used for an additional chance at loot in the new loot system. If you use it, you’ll always get something – some gold, a flask, or possibly loot. My guess is that it’ll use the same probability as a normal roll except you’ll get gold or a flask in place of nothing.

I don’t know how often I’ll use these. I believe they only work in the Raid Finder, so they don’t really matter that much. I don’t think they hurt the game any though, so they should be fine.

AOE Looting

Finally. “Some recent games have incorporated a similar feature.” Yes, we noticed.

Valor Points

Blizzard has gone back and forth on this, and it seems that you’ll need to raid for the top quality gear. No gear will be available for Valor Points. Instead, VP can be used to upgrade your gear by roughly eight points. Raid Finder gear can be made better but not as good as normal mode gear, normal mode gear can be made better but not as good as heroic mode gear, and heroic mode gear can be made better but not as good as the next tier’s gear.

I’m optimistically excited about this change. The best gear should come from raiding, because that makes the gear seem more important than gear that’s sitting around the city. When the gear’s in the city, it brings up the question that I always have in RPGs: if I’m trying to save the world, can’t you just give me some gear, jerk? However, isn’t the system we already have? Valor Points can be used to fill some holes, but it’s very good. There are some pieces are in Raid Finder BiS for me, but come on, I’m using Raid Finder best-in-slot! The actual aspect of using VP to improve gear is very exciting. It’ll add an additional choice to the game – should I improve my gear or wait for the next drop I want?

I’m looking forward to the changes.