Please consider Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest Legendary changes

In Development Cataclysm Classic Beta
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Having been an officer in a raiding guild through out WOTLK Classic, Val’anyr and Shadowmourne fragment/shard drop rates both started off a bit too slow. Having to consistently grind out Ulduar to make sure the 5-6 healers in the guild had their legendary before Phase4 and ICC. It didn’t feel good and just added to additional burn out of the raid team. The fragment/shard drop increase happened too late in the expansion. I am proposing that drop rate is changed from the start, rather than waiting until Dragonsoul is released.

This will be a larger problem in Cataclysm if the drop rate isn’t adjusted earlier in Phase2 for Firelands and Phase3 for Dragonsoul. Most guilds will likely have upwards of 7-10 caster dps, all of which will want Dragonwrath.

To obtain Dragonwrath, it requires a lengthy quest chain. The fourth quest in Stage1 of the chain, “All-Seeing Eye”, requires the player to obtain 25 Eternal Ember. In a 25 man raid, you could receive 1-3 per boss. 10 man drop rate was 0-1 per boss. Which will take at most 4 weeks, or as little as 2 weeks.

The 3rd quest in Stage2, requiring 1000 Seething Cinder. For patch 4.2, they dropped at a rate of:
10m Normal: 18-23 per boss
10m Heroic: 23-26 per boss
25m Normal: 48-55 per boss
25m Heroic: 55-66 per boss

For 10man guilds in Cata, running heroic 10m Firelands, it will take >5 weeks to complete. 25man guilds running heroic 25m Firelands, best case scenario is about 2 weeks, but more likely 3-4 weeks.

The first quest of Stage 3 “Heart of Flame” requires the player to imbue the staff with “Smouldering” siphoned from the bosses, similar to the infusions for Shadowmourne. But unlike Shadowmourne, its not one siphon done from three bosses, you need 250 total Smouldering siphoned for any boss in Firelands except for Ragnaros. The amount you can siphon is different between 10/25man and between Normal/Heroic.

10m Normal: 3-5
10m Heroic: 7-9
25m Normal: 7-9
25m Heroic: 9-11

Which means it will take on average about 8.5 weeks to complete one Dragonwrath staff. Given the larger number of players who will want the staff, assuming 7 caster dps on average per 25 man raiding roster, could means over 40 weeks of raiding Firelands to get all 7 casters a staff. This is assuming you have three casters working to achieve the three separate steps above concurrently.

Assuming that Dragonsoul is released 4 - 5 months after Firelands (that is a big “if”), that would mean 25m guilds would continue to run Firelands for additional 4 - 5 months after Dragonsoul release. This could be worse for 10man guilds, if they have a heavy caster dps comp.

I think back on the Ulduar grind, while Ulduar was fun the first three months, by the time TOGC was released in Phase3, everyone was burnt out on the content and the fun factor of the instance was gone. Blizzard has made changes now (finally) to increase the drop rate significantly to allow players to achieve their legendary dreams for the expansion. Lets enable that sooner for Firelands and reduce the burn out.

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legendaries have always been (through classic, I have no idea about MoP and beyond) incredibly rare. You were lucky to get 1 tank with Thunderfury, 1 maybe 2 staves from OG Naxx, etc. They aren’t meant for every member of your guild to have one.

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thats not the direction they have been going for Legendary in WOTLK Classic, especially as of now with the significantly increased drop rate. I would like to see that continue into Cataclysm, just earlier instead of having guilds grind for months in a previous phase of content.

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I would agree with this sentiment. Since the phases are likely going to be compressed just like WOTLK Classic, it would make sense to increase the drop rates.

This is what I would recommend - speaking as a WOTLK Classic player who didn’t get even remotely close to getting Val’anyr or Shadowmourne (the first because I wasn’t “the chosen one” and the other because my guild couldn’t field 25-man groups due to burnout and other effects of player attrition):

  • Increase the number of Embers, Cinders, and Smouldering that are obtained from bosses significantly. Alternatively (or in addition), reduce the number of Embers, Cinders, and Smouldering that you need to complete the quests. This speeds up the total time required to complete the gathering quests, which is the bulk of this effort. This allows raid groups to get several Dragonwraths over the course of the raid tier.

Note: This is in line with some of the changes to the Shadowmourne questline (I’m looking at you, 1000 souls.)

  • Normalize the drop rates of Embers, Cinders, and Smouldering across raid sizes. There is no real mechanical difference between 10-man and 25-man raiding beyond the number of players. Don’t punish smaller guilds for being small. Not everyone can be in the top-rated most popular 25-man raid groups on a server. This is doubly true with the flex lockout system.

Note: Heroic difficulty encounters should grant more than Normal. This is to reward players for completing the harder encounters. You do the hard content? You get your legendary faster.

  • Make the Embers, Cinders, and Smouldering personal loot. That way you can have multiple people work on the quests at the same time. This would work if combined with the normalization factor so 25-man raid groups don’t have to break down to 10-man groups just to optimize the number of boss kills per Dragonwrath.

Note: This one is a bit more divisive than the others. On the one hand, you don’t have to be a guild leader/officer or have to politick your way into getting one early. On the other, it could potentially make the feeling of getting one a little less special. Which side of the fence you’re on about this is likely in line with your situation. If you’re in the position of being the first to get one because of your “station”, then you’re likely not going to want this because you want to be special. If you’re in my position, where you simply don’t get to get one, you want it the other way because you would like to get something cool for once.

The goal with these ideas isn’t to put a Dragonwrath into every single caster’s hands. The goal here is to put a Dragonwrath into every single caster’s hands who play the game and spend the time to EARN it.

If you are putting in the effort with your raid group every week and defeating bosses regularly, you should be rewarded by being allowed to play with the toys while they are still relevant.

1 Like
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Look at ulduar right now… it’s a wasteland that nobody wants to go pass a weekly or super geared people that only go there if you bribe with a gdkp…

I would suggest to you folks that are thinking on this that think on the “future” after FL ends and DS opens… blizzard made the terrible mistake of removing all sorts of reason to go to ulduar. That is where you start…

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or just gets through the phase and finish off your last staff into the next and call it? you dont need 20 dragonwraths just like you didnt need 5 valanyr

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not a reality, many guilds will continue to run Firelands due to the significant boost in DPS the staff provides to every single caster dps that can obtain it. With no changes, this will be a significant grind likely from Phase2 until probably the end of the expansion, especially if Cata is on an accelerated timeline. A large portion of the player base have a parse brain and min-max of their class. The difference between having the staff and not, will make running FL a long term requirement for many guilds.

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Maybe it would work well rewarded as “Personal Loot” or a quest item, where many can drop for everyone who is on that stage?

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Agree. Tarecgosa is an isane grind compared to shadowmourne. Considering shorter seasons in cata…they should definetly bump up drop rates or allow multiple ppl completing at once. And i think they will…

For ppl that wont read the OP, the staff quest chain is like farming shadowfrost shards but after you complete 50 piece quest you get two more same quests. + Killing a special raid boss. The staff isnt even that broken like SM, but the quests are way more grindy since bosses in FL are harder than anything inside of ICC and there is also less of them.

2 Likes
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alright… with the full accelerated timeline announced for Cataclysm… I want to bump this back up. Would love more info from Blizzard on this, and now with the extremely shortened timeline that no one expected, what will be the drop rate for all items in Cataclysm? How many tokens per boss, and will Justice Points be acquired at an increased rate as well?

2 Likes
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Dragonwrath is absolutely fantastic for it’s stats/ilvl alone, and the proc is really great. Every caster DPS could benefit greatly from having one, it’s not like valanyr where everything’s really easy so it doesn’t really matter anyway

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I assume they will have a higher drop rate.

They already have increased leveling, professions, badge acquisition, honor gains.

I’d be shocked if they didn’t change that but blizz does a lot of dumb crap that surprises me.

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It will be faster or you will be back farming it forever… wotlk I think they learned everyone gets an orange or it goes straight to hell…

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This is a really good idea and change. Just make it a personal loot drop and leave it drop the same on 10 or 25 mans. Normal drops less than heroic but it still takes 8-10 weeks to complete. At that point the raid tier is halfway over by their new timeline. It definitely needs a big change to make it viable for everyone to get.

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you want a nearly full game bis item FASTER?

no thanks

also, do casters all get nerfed to compensate for so many ppl having a legendary? Was apparently good logic to keep warriors down all wotlk to still lose to ferals, rets, and mages post-ICC.

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i think the casters ARE balanced around having the legendary staff are they not? isnt that already a thing? same with rogue and the daggers

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Shadowmourne was around 2x faster to get than it was in original WotLK.

ICC is going to be out longer than Firelands/Dragon Soul will be out in Cata.

3 Melee DPS could use the smourne axe. 5 Caster DPS need the staff.

I don’t know why you’re blaming players for warriors not scaling as well as we thought they would in ICC even though they’re still one of the top 5 DPS classes.

I also think that with the faster timelines and how it’s a redo of an old game that making most leggos easier to get wouldn’t be a bad idea. We don’t need the leggos to clear raids, it’s just fun to have them and go balls to the walls with them.

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it was at the end of the expansion, not the start, and there wasnt going to be a one year gap between wotlk and cata, so its not really the same comparison. If they increased drop rates for the legendary staff going into tier 13 or something that would be more logical than at the start, similar to how they sped up Valanyr in later phases but not its own phase.

Everyone that wasnt malicious or parroting misinformation knew it. We had sims that all ended up being right. They had a very similar damage profile to rets but somehow ret deserved a buff that now causes them to do more damage in single target fights in ICC than a full bis fury warrior.

Warriors had mostly parallel scaling to everyone until armor pen in phase 4 where combat rogue, marks hunter, and especially feral scaled. Feral scaled the hardest but didnt have a legendary to get and still beats warrior.

I heard it so many times on the forums and even aggrend himself, and they were all wrong. Its only fair to ensure casters and rogues in cata are bad without a legendary then, right? Thats the rules set forth by much of the community and the dev team itself in WotLK.

Casters already do too much burst in cata. Giving everyone and their mother the legendary will make most of the game feel pretty unplayable for anyone not using a legendary.

Again, if you want to increase drop rates at the end of the game like they did in WotLK thats fair, but if we all have to suffer through legendaries being handed out like candy thats going to stink.

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Fury is doing more damage in bis gear then everything except fire mage and feral on single target and way ahead on cleave/multi target, not sure what your smoking.

You also havent play cata if you think casters “have to much burst” in cata when the highest dps classes are mainly physical based classes for the first tier.

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firelands is in the middle of the expansion, just like Ulduar, and is only going to be around for only 3 months before Dragonsoul comes out, it takes an average of 2 months to complete a single staff. that means even the most hardcore guilds running 25H FL will only get 1 legendary before the next raid tier unless they run several split runs a week.

meanwhile SM was buffed to be completed within 3 weeks. and even before it was buffed, several guilds still were completing it within 6 weeks which is still faster.