Things Didn't Work The Way I Thought They Would
I was assuming there would be Trophies of the Crusade in 10m heroic. I'm a bit disappointed that the only Trophy drops from the Crusade chest at the end of Heroic 10 man.
With the release of 4 different modes to ToC, it appeared Blizzard was giving a true path to every kind of guild. You simply needed to find the level of content that fit your guild. You could be everything from a 10 man normal guild right up to a 25 man heroic guild.
Each level awarded it's own gear with it's own iLevel. 10N was 232, 10H, 25N was 245 and 25H was 258. We had assumed that 10 man heroic would also be 245 since that is what all the drops are, it would make sense that the 245 tier gear was also available from 10 man Heroic.
While you can debate the difficulty of the actual fights (and every guild will have a different take on the difficulty of each level), it is clear that 10H is a step up from 10N. It SHOULD award better tier gear. It SHOULD drop Trophys of the Crusade from every Boss.
But it doesn't. I don't agree with that.
So let's break down the way this works for Tier in reality. Let me first explain the Tribute system that is only for Heroic Mode (10/25). You get 50 'tries' at the instance. Every time you wipe, you lose a try. We wiped 5 times to Northrend Beasts and have only 45 'tries' left for the rest of the instance. When you defeat the last boss on Heroic, you get a Tribute Chest.
Joanadark on Maintankadin explained it like this:
Tribute to Skill (25+ wipes remaining) rewards 2 trophies plus another item.
Tribute to Mad Skill (45+ wipes remaining) rewards 3(? I need to double check) trophies, cloak, plus another item.
Tribute to Insanity (all 50 wipes remaining) rewards 4 Trophies, the epic land mount, cloak, and one other item.
10N drops Emblems. You can turn those Emblems in for iLevel 232.
10H drops Emblems. You can turn those Emblems in for iLevel 232. Heroic also drops 2 to 4 Trophies of the Crusade from the Tribute Chest. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear.
25N drops Emblems and 1 Trophy per Boss. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear.
25H drops Emblems and 1 Trophy per Boss. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear. Heroic also drops some number of Regalia from the Tribute chest These work like the tokens from earlier tiers, and are class based (e.g. Priest, Paladin, Warlock).
I had originally written that the system 'punishes' 10 man raiders. Now that I look at it, I don't think it does. It doesn't work the way I thought it would, and that's disappointing. But I can't say it's horribly unfair, or punishes one raid size or the other.
With the release of 4 different modes to ToC, it appeared Blizzard was giving a true path to every kind of guild. You simply needed to find the level of content that fit your guild. You could be everything from a 10 man normal guild right up to a 25 man heroic guild.
Each level awarded it's own gear with it's own iLevel. 10N was 232, 10H, 25N was 245 and 25H was 258. We had assumed that 10 man heroic would also be 245 since that is what all the drops are, it would make sense that the 245 tier gear was also available from 10 man Heroic.
While you can debate the difficulty of the actual fights (and every guild will have a different take on the difficulty of each level), it is clear that 10H is a step up from 10N. It SHOULD award better tier gear. It SHOULD drop Trophys of the Crusade from every Boss.
But it doesn't. I don't agree with that.
So let's break down the way this works for Tier in reality. Let me first explain the Tribute system that is only for Heroic Mode (10/25). You get 50 'tries' at the instance. Every time you wipe, you lose a try. We wiped 5 times to Northrend Beasts and have only 45 'tries' left for the rest of the instance. When you defeat the last boss on Heroic, you get a Tribute Chest.
Joanadark on Maintankadin explained it like this:
Tribute to Skill (25+ wipes remaining) rewards 2 trophies plus another item.
Tribute to Mad Skill (45+ wipes remaining) rewards 3(? I need to double check) trophies, cloak, plus another item.
Tribute to Insanity (all 50 wipes remaining) rewards 4 Trophies, the epic land mount, cloak, and one other item.
10N drops Emblems. You can turn those Emblems in for iLevel 232.
10H drops Emblems. You can turn those Emblems in for iLevel 232. Heroic also drops 2 to 4 Trophies of the Crusade from the Tribute Chest. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear.
25N drops Emblems and 1 Trophy per Boss. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear.
25H drops Emblems and 1 Trophy per Boss. You can turn in the Trophies, plus some Emblems for the iLevel 245 gear. Heroic also drops some number of Regalia from the Tribute chest These work like the tokens from earlier tiers, and are class based (e.g. Priest, Paladin, Warlock).
I had originally written that the system 'punishes' 10 man raiders. Now that I look at it, I don't think it does. It doesn't work the way I thought it would, and that's disappointing. But I can't say it's horribly unfair, or punishes one raid size or the other.
Comments
FWIW, it /looks/ like the mechanic is 1 trophy/regalia (for 10/25 respectively) per 10 attempts remaining when you clear the instance.
So, clear it with 30 pulls remaining, and you'll get 3 trophies.
well I think its okay that you only get the 258 tier items through the heroic mode. These items are a great improvement to the current gear especially for tank paladins (shoulders and hands were not that great in tier 8/8.5)
yesterday we got our first legendary mace in our raid. Though in my opinion that wasn't as hard as it may have been in the beginning we were still really proud that we managed to obtain it after a lot of tries.
If it would be easy to get those pieces everyone would flame along the lines:
- too casual
- wellfare epics
- wow iz ezy mode
and so on.
I'm fine with the new challenge :-) lets see how hard it is to get to the end.
I'm fine with only getting them through heroic mode.
What sucks is that you only get them from the last boss, and that they're in such short supply that you basically can only reasonably hope for 2 each week, and 4 if you're /really/ playing like champions. That's just kind of excessively punishing - it makes me wonder if there's any intention that we actually manage to put on this gear.
I'm not saying they should drop in normal - and 25 Hardmodes are certainly tuned tightly enough that I don't think anyone would call regalia from those bosses 'welfare epics'.
I may be distorted in my thinking because my main is a rogue and my 4t8 is so good that it isn't worth breaking without at least 2 pieces of 258 loot, but still - I just can't grok how absolutely asinine so many things about the mechanics of the coliseum and the tribute run are set up.
i dunno about raids only being able to get 2 pieces a week. i realize the encounters are tuned pretty tight but we managed to get to twins with 38 attempts life. also most guilds that are getting to anub still have ~15. once ppl have exeperience the fights will be that much easier. plus, you know for a fact scrubs are gonna QQ and they're gonna nerf the hardmodes (which REALLY is starting to bug me).