Dev Watercooler: Itemization in 6.2

Posted on May 22, 2015 12:22 pm by Glindaril

Some changes are coming to Raid Itemization in 6.2 to help improve the Personal Loot experience.

Itemization in 6.2

Personal Loot Improvements

Overall, the Personal Loot system offers many advantages over other group types.  However, Blizzard does recognize that improvements can be made.  Their goals going forward are as follows:

  • Make Personal Loot more consistent and rewarding
  • Bring Personal Loot up to be competitive with Group Loot.  This means players who prefer Personal Loot receive rewards comparable to groups using Master Loot or Need/Greed.
  • Celebrate rewarding Personal Loot within the group in a way that captures the excitement of receiving rewards in Group Loot.

Firstly, rather than treating loot chance as independent for each player (which sometimes results in one or even zero items for a group), a system similar to Group Loot will be used to determine the amount of items a boss will award based on eligible group size.  This will result in groups receiving a much more predictable number of drops when a boss is defeated.  Set items will reliably drop in Personal Loot, much like they do in Group Loot currently.  This will result in groups using Personal Loot acquiring their 2- and 4-piece set bonuses around the same time as group that use Group Loot.

Since Personal Loot items can't be distributed among group members, the overall rate of reward for Personal Loot has been increased.  This should definitely help increase your odds of finding that one item to complete your gear set.

The most visible change would be the Personal Loot UI.  The goal of raiding is progressing through the raid and improving as a group, not as an individual.  The Personal Loot system did a great job at celebrating individual rewards but would bury what groupmates received in the chat lot.  Think about it: when your friend finally wins that long sought-after item, it can be just as important to you as that moment you won your special item.  Now, when you loot an item, everyone in the group will see what you won!

The Personal Loot improvements aren't limited to Hellfire Citadel, as all Draenor dungeons have been updated (including Mythic dungeons) to use the same system.

Personal Loot is underway

Loot distribution is underway

Item Level Ramp

As Warlords of Draenor progressed, it's become apparent there is a mismatch between challenge and reward for guilds that run large Raid zones.  When the Item Level for rewards across a certain difficulty of a zone is flat, a staff from Heroic Imperator Mar'gok is pretty much equal in power to one from Heroic Tectus, despite Mar'gok being a more challenging boss.  Oftentimes, a guild killing a late-zone boss like Blast Furnace for the first time would disenchant most of the drops because everyone in the instance already had loot from earlier bosses in those slots.  Furthermore, many guilds move to higher difficulty levels before they fully complete a difficulty, mainly because Heroic Darmac loot is stronger than Normal Blackhand loot, and it can be earned with much less effort.

To address that, Blizzard is structuring Hellfire Citadel so the Item Level of loot awarded by bosses increase as player proceed deeper into the zone, culminating in Archimonde, providing the ultimate challenge and the ultimate reward.

To see the changes for yourself, join the Patch 6.2 PTR.  Feel free to join in on the discussion at our own Patch 6.2 forums at http://forum.warcraftdaily.com, or on Twitter @WoWDailyBlog.