I freely admit I’ve been a critic of Blizzard/WOW over the past few years, but I also believe in giving credit where credit is due: The bullion vendor is a home run. This has to be the best idea I’ve seen from Blizzard in ages. It solves a number of problems without creating any serious new ones. Been raiding for weeks and not getting your bis to drop? Solved. Had terrible luck in your weekly vault? Solved. Tired of rolling a 3 when your item finally dropped only to lose it to the guy doing half your dps who rolled a 98? Solved. In addition it’s not a full raid loot table so it doesn’t remove the need to keep raiding. It doesn’t have m+ loot so it doesn’t remove the need to do that either.
Now I realize there will be people who disagree and that’s fine. Some may feel it’s “welfare loot” that people didn’t really earn. But my counter argument to that is A) it’s one piece every two weeks. B) You purchase it at minimum (493) IL and have to upgrade it 12-14 times which means you still have to do appropriate content. C) Those who some may consider “undeserving” aren’t going to get these items anywhere close to 528 IL, so having a low powered version of something is akin to an LFR drop. D) You don’t just get them for free like the garrison mission items, you still have to raid.
In any event, cheers to Blizzard for getting something right. I sincerely hope they keep this system for TWW.
TLDR: Bullion is awesome, please keep it.
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it was a thing in SL
and DF is better because u can even get weapon mogs for 1 bullion up to mythic tint
itll be a thing for every season 4
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Oh I took off SL S4 so I was unaware. Good to know. I’d like to see it for every season.
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I just started trying FF14 again and I really like the raid gear system they have.
From what I understand, bosses don’t drop loot, they drop currency, which is used at a vendor to buy gear. Higher difficulties drop higher amounts (or even a different currency, not sure?).
And from what I gather, higher difficulty clears earns upgrade tokens for the vendor gear, to give it a higher ilvl.
That way you work towards each piece of gear, and don’t have to rely on RNG or stealing pieces from fellow raiders.
And I THINK I understand the weapon system as their equivalent of heroic/mythic will drop weapon tokens, whereas their equivalent of LFR/Normal drop lesser weapon tokens, which will get you the same weapon, but takes 4x as many tokens. (I could be wrong though, I havent done raids yet)
And once an expansion is over, the currency that’s required to buy that expansion’s gear is changed to a catch-all currency for all previous expansions, that can be earned via the equivalent of the random dungeon finder in WoW, to help facilitate higher level/skilled players doing lower level things to help new players.
At least I THINK that’s what the system is, if I understood it right.
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I really enjoy the dinar/bullion vendors.
I finally got my staff bis and i felt i earned it.
So if my guild raids i can just give the staff to another caster. Its a win in my book and i wish they would keep the season 4 system for all seasons. It doesnt helps those like me with bad rng.
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I also like the bullion vendor. It guarantees us to get trinkets/rings/weapons etc. without to much hassle.
I had a couple of toons which never got the BiS weapons from S3 and now I got it on them. You are now guaranteed to get things which was hard to get during the previous season. The armor you need has less competition and is easier to get. Love that Blizzard did it this way.
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The problem with bullion (and dinars before it) is that it lets you buy items from bosses you’ve never defeated.
The ability to buy an item from a boss you’ve beaten is one thing; that’s bad luck insurance.
But that’s not what bullion/dinars are. They’re just a gear-mart. If they were ever put into actual seasons, they’d need to only unlock items when you’ve beaten the boss that can drop it (and at the appropriate difficulty).
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Meanwhile, the great vault this week gave me armor from Aberrus, despite killing Vault bosses.
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I think it’s a good idea, however 1 piece EVERY 2 weeks is FAR too generous. I think there should be a system going forward that gives a very limited number of Dinar/Bullion tokens per season - I think Shadowlands Season 4 had it spot on with 3, and I’d do it at something like 1 every 4 weeks. That way, it’s actually a bad luck protection system rather than just a “get full BiS regardless of what you clear” gear pinata.
I also think that Brewa has a good point, that you should have to kill the actual bosses that the loot drops from on at least Normal difficulty. I wouldn’t object to a separate currency/vendor for LFR but there’s such a big difference between clearing a Normal raid in a player-created raid where organization and mechanics are important and LFR where even if you wipe over and over, you WILL eventually kill it because Determination stacks will eventually buff your damage higher than a player in Heroic gear.
Also, in a regular season there won’t be 3 raids worth of items to choose from and so we won’t need nearly so many tokens. I think 3 would be enough, it’ll get you your best weapon and your two best trinkets, or 2 weapons and a trinket, etc etc. We don’t want to completely eliminate the need for gearing from the raid itself but it would be good to have a way to ensure that EVENTUALLY you definitely will get that “chase” item even if it takes a while and you won’t be that guy who feels like everyone else has their cantrip weapon that contributes 12% of their damage but it just won’t drop for you, or you keep rolling a 6 or you get it in the final week of the tier while your friend got to enjoy it from Week 1.
I think it’s important to balance ease of acquisition against frustration, because if you’re too generous then you create a system where you’re much less invested in your raid drops. However with 3 tokens over 3 months I think that hits a good spot where mid-way through the season most people will have at least most of the items they REALLY want and anything else can be obtained through the raid itself.
I also think that the items need to be the same level as the regular version of the item, and only be upgradeable to the level you have killed. For example, if I’ve killed Heroic Council of the Dream and buy a Thorncaller Claw then it should be upgradeable to 6/6 Hero track, and if I kill Mythic council later then it becomes upgradeable to 4/4 Myth track. This makes it so that there’s no advantage to buying the item with a token, where a Mythic+ player could buy a raid item and using their Aspect crests from M+ upgrade it into a Mythic raid item when they are only clearing Normal/Heroic.
Sorry for the long post, I have a lot of thoughts about systems like these and I think it’s important to balance gear acquisition even though my greedy little heart says “Give me ALLLLL the items!”
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I love it for the transmog, being able to get a weapon tint, item itself aside, is absolutely amazing. I understand player power, progression, trinkets, all this stuff, and its important I know, but being able to unlock a weapon tint is just really nice, especially for something I wouldn’t probably get, an agi 2 hander, for my warrior for example.
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Great Vault was invented for M+ (as the weekly chest) and should have stayed there.
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Two weeks. That’s really not a long time.
Idk, I think for bullion to work as bad luck protection in a normal non fated season, items would need to cost more bullions. Not getting an item after two tries (raids on a weekly lockout) isn’t really bad luck.
Easy fix- copy how ff14 distributes loot. give everyone a token from killing a boss where after you kill it 4 times you get to grab anything from that bosses loot table. Preferably a currency not something that gets tossed into bags, but still
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In a normal season the vault only gives gear options from bosses you actually kill. Like in Season1 if you killed every boss but Raz you wouldn’t have any gear options from Raz in the vault, just from the bosses you killed.
This is not a normal season so it can give you gear from any of the 3 raids.
Great Vault for raiding was a mistake.
Season 4 is a mistake.
Put both together… 
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Since people keep bringing up FF14 loot, does that game do anywhere near as interesting loot as wow does?
Is loot there anything more than just stats?
Vault was meant to replace the old bonus roll coins. The coins got frustrating since a lot of the time you just wasted it and got nothing. Vault is a little better.
Both are meant to be bad luck protection.
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Incorrect; Great Vault is just an expanded version of the M+ weekly chest. They just attached raiding to it because they don’t care about coming up with new ideas for raids anymore; all they care about is their tournament esport.
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I still don’t know what bullion is…
Except raiders were upset, understandably, that M+ players got extra loot every week and wanted the same.
Who does it hurt letting raiders get the vault as well?
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