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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  World of Warcraft  |  Topic: A question from a 40+ man raid hater 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: A question from a 40+ man raid hater  (Read 17593 times)
kildorn
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Reply #35 on: December 06, 2010, 02:50:39 PM

Scholo pre-nerfs was such a god damn horrendous trash slog. It was still bad even after they turned it into a true hard capped 5 man.

It was terrible for so many reasons. Tons of trash, a shitload of "boss" encounters with a 5% chance to drop a green set piece, 360 degree cleaving hall of LOLrogues, a boss that was only accessible at the end of some irritating quest line..

Right now, it's actually kinda nice. The trash packs were cut down a lot, and while there is still a "boss" gauntlet that rarely drops any actual loot, it at least doesn't take days to run it.

Is it bad that I look back at that Scholo as the "good" scholo?  I remember after they nerfed it how easily my guild mates and I farmed the place -_-.  Then again, I played way too much back then.

It was as bad as ZG for risk/reward ratio. It was difficult, time consuming, and handed out shittier loot than any alternative. It could be considered "good" if your idea of fun is "heavily challenging", but from an objective view even favoring very challenging content, the reward just wasn't there and the majority of it just took too damned long.

It's like holding up BRD and the Lyceum as a pinnacle of instance design.

Um, ZG was fantatsic for time versus reward when it was released. The blues from ZG were better than epics from molten core, and the epics from Hakkar were amazing. (Best trinket for caster dps in the game outside Neltharions Tear). There was a reason so many 40 player guilds raided it constantly when it was released, and it wasn't because we were starved of troll content. You could pick up some really good items there that were intelligently put together for a lot less time and effort than a 40 player raid force.

Yes, they were in some cases, mostly due to better allocation of points, no weapons were. Now, it would help if they were on par with BWL, which was released the prior patch :P

ZG was supposed to be smaller raid group alternate progression. But the problem was that the AWESOME epics (they were!) had something along the line of a 5% drop rate, and usually you got okay blues.

Most raiding guilds I knew who ran it constantly were either doing it because with BWL gear it was trivial to farm (so who cares about the drop rate, you can do it in an hour or so), or because they were chain wiping on BWL.

But difficulty of the fights compared to the gear that was likely to drop? Terrible, terrible instance. It would have been like Ragnaros having a 50% chance to drop UBRS gear.

edit: ilvls, all from the final boss:

MC Epics: ilvl 77

ZG Epics: ilvl 68

BWL Epics: ilvl 81
« Last Edit: December 06, 2010, 02:55:09 PM by kildorn »
K9
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Reply #36 on: December 06, 2010, 03:16:29 PM

ZG had some decent trinkets though, and some superlative artwork for that stage in the game.

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Chimpy
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Reply #37 on: December 06, 2010, 03:19:46 PM

You have to look at Z'G from the perspective of September 2006, not December 2010 though.

It was a big step forward in accessibility of good quality items. The bracers and belt from the quest sets were pretty good for most classes, and the items off Hakkar and the two staffs off Jin'do and Panther bitch were all late MC quality as far as usefulness in game went. And the blue ring sets were all really good items and dropped like candy.

The big problems with the zone (mobs stopping giving rep after honored, way too much fucking trash, lvl 30 crafted armor making panther bitch a cheese fest, Hakkar being snoozefest 2006) were all adjusted relatively early to make the zone more player friendly.

On the iLvL thing, ZG blues were iLvL 68-71 and Epic were 68, and most of the loot in MC was nowhere near iLvL 77, that was just items off of Ragnaros who was a tier2 boss.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2010, 03:26:09 PM by Chimpy »

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
K9
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Reply #38 on: December 06, 2010, 03:29:33 PM


I love the smell of facepalm in the morning
kildorn
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Reply #39 on: December 06, 2010, 03:32:03 PM

Non hakkar epics were ilvl 65, non Rag epics were ilvl 66.

ZG was unquestionably harder than MC by any metric, and tended to drop blues that only won a few slots because MC was itemized for shit.

Compared to the loot available in game, ZG was pretty trash. If you could get 40 people to go raiding, you could easily get better stuff than ZG.

It was a handout along the lines of Karazan versus every other raid available on TBC release. If you can't find enough friends, go here. But we're not even going to pretend you're getting anything but 3 patch old gear.
Sheepherder
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Reply #40 on: December 06, 2010, 05:08:53 PM

late MC quality as far as usefulness in game went.

Vendorstrike.
kildorn
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Reply #41 on: December 06, 2010, 05:21:56 PM

late MC quality as far as usefulness in game went.

Vendorstrike.

Nobody will ever know why they added a weapon a few ilvls lower than the rest of that instance in there, with a shitty proc and terrible speed :(
Selby
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Reply #42 on: December 06, 2010, 05:28:49 PM

I don't think it was even that challenging, it was just a slog.
The ugliest part of the Scholo slog was that any of the bosses that had a chance to drop anything remotely decent were at the end of the damn instance after you've slogged through and wiped several times (assuming the group didn't break up first).  At least Strat and UBRS had multiple bosses placed in sequence rather than all at the end.
Sjofn
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Reply #43 on: December 06, 2010, 06:21:33 PM

late MC quality as far as usefulness in game went.

Vendorstrike.

I'm sort of surprised there hasn't been a grey item with that name yet.

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