For those of you unfamiliar, Elemental Distress is a step in the shaman rune chain for Earth Shield. This quest requires you to clear Baron Aquanis in BFD, which means it cannot be (reasonably) started before level 25, and likely not until a bit of investment is made into rounding out one’s gear with good dungeon/quest drops.
That being said, why does this quest incorporate a 0.03% drop from a world mob? Stone Spirits in the Charred Vale are the only source for the seismic motes required for this quest, and per WoWHead’s stats of 2,997 kills, this item has dropped one (1) time from Furious Stone Spirits, a level 26-27 drops. Enraged Stone Spirits, a level 24-25 mob, don’t even have drop data; making it questionable as to whether they even drop the item.
Now, for comparison, in 2 hours of farming I have received ten (10) infernal motes from the fire elementals around the zone. I received them from all variants, which makes me hopeful the lower-level stone spirits do drop the item. The reason why I have received so many of these other motes, though, is that the elementals share a spawn table—why? I need to not only hope that I hit a 0.03% drop rate, I also need to clear out fire elementals each loop while trying to dodge the other hostile 25-28 mobs in the Vale. And, even better, I get to compete against other players for the tag—and can’t group up with other shamans trapped in this hell, because it’s a personal drop rather than shared quest item!
How is this defensible? This isn’t a quest made in Classic, and left unchanged for sake of ‘nostalgia’ (which would still be inexcusable for how smoothbrained and disrespectful this design is), but one made specifically for this rune. They could have set up drops how they pleased, and adjusted spawns as they wished; they did not. Instead of feeling like I’ve accomplished or discovered anything on my way to getting this rune, I instead feel like my balls have been squeezed in a vice (and will continue to be, because I still haven’t gotten the drop) as I continue to make loops around this uninteresting, burned-out environment for hours on end hoping that I not only get the right mob spawn rng, I get the right drop rng as well.
At least make the motes tradeable. I’d rather pay 50g for them than spend 12 hours in the charred vale running in circles between basilisks and harpies.
