WoW Tier3 - Requires Materials

http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/news-87-1-latest-info-on-tier3-set-materials.html

Paladin Set

20 Arcanite Bars
15 Rugged Hides
7 Nexus Crystals

Mage Set

3 Arcane Crystals
21 Mooncloth
8 Nexus Crystals
6 Cured Rugged Hide

Warrior Set

20 Arcanite Bars
4 Nexus Crystals
19 Cured Rugged Hides

Priest Set

3 arcane crystals
21 mooncloth
8 nexus crystals
6 cured rugged hide

Rogue Set

5 Arcanite Bars
42 Cured Rugged Hides
5 Nexus Crystals

Hunter Set

106 Wartorn Chain Scraps
17 Arcanite Bars
18 Cured Rugged Hide
8 Nexus Crystals

Warlock Set

106 Wartorn Cloth Scraps
21 Mooncloth
4 Arcane Crystals
8 Nexus Crystals
6 Cured Rugged Hide

What are your thoughts on this? It’s bad enough that learning a raid / raiding requires a large enough cash sink with repair bills and the likes, but then to have materials added on top of already fighting the boss / more cash grinding to get your items i think it’s getting to the point of stupidsupreme.

I’m hoping this crap doesn’t go live and dies in the 1.11 PTR, but that’s doubtful. My guess is that, along with the new cash sink for the frost resist gear that’s been added, that places like IGE will set some new record profits!

I swear the people who develop this shit just get dumber each day.

Sounds alot like the Velious armor stuff from EQ.

Oh, and the guy leading the development team is Tigole. From what i’ve read, he’s an old EQ hardcore EverCrack raider. So, i dunno, maybe he’s just brain damaged from PoP raiding.

Dumber? No. Less creative? Yes.

Forcing you to grind means you’ll be playing the game longer to get your carrots. The longer you play, the more money you pay Blizzard. Sounds pretty smart to me.

If you’re 60, is there much to do besides raids? I quit at Level 59 a year ago because I got bored with the grind and I HATE dungeon raids.

Nice. It’s good to know that, long after top-end raiding guilds get every item they could possibly need from Molten Core they’ll still be stuck running the damn instance because their Tier 3 pieces require disenchanting Tier 1 pieces for Nexus Crystals.

Honestly, sometimes it seems like Blizzard sees WoW massive popularity as a challenge: How boringly obvious can we make our time sinks without losing players?

I dunno, I think I’m okay with it.

It looks like an NPC makes the tier 3 stuff from gear that isn’t too hard to come by, on a piece-by-piece basis. It depends on how rare the ingredient armor pieces (the “desecrated” armor in the screenshots you linked to) are.

Rather than doing the naxxramas instance over and over and over hoping for the piece you need to drop and then hoping you “win” it or are able to bid enough DKPs or whatever to buy it, this seems like a better way for players to step up to Tier 3 at a regulated pace.

In other words, after one or two raids, you probably the materials to get a piece of tier 3 armor made (or the items to sell to buy them). But because you’re getting them forged instead of random dropped, you get to choose which piece you want. Another run or two, and you get enough to get another piece.

The materials on those lists don’t look too eggregious. Not for a maxed-out character that already has it’s Tier 2 set. It’ll cost some money to get some missing materials, but WoW needs to pull some money out of the high-end of the game, anyway, because inflation is starting to become an issue.

This would be a real problem for the first-tier stuff. But this gear is meant for the guys who already have a loaded out Tier 2 character (not to mention, those that will go raiding with level 60-70 characters after the expansion hits).

It still takes less time and effort to acquire, much less keep, than the rank 14 PvP stuff. And it’s better quality.

This is so grindy that I don’t even understand exactly what is required (I’ve been in one UBRS raid in my entire life, otherwise nothing more than BRD). Even so, though, who cares? I think there’s a definite segment of the population – and I think (although I have no way of knowing) that it’s fairly substantial – that loves this crap. They bitch and moan about it, but once it’s out there they will do whatever they have to do to get it. I mean, even the original epic equipment is, for my taste, way too grindy to get. So I just don’t do it. Problem solved. The only issue is that it unbalances PvP, and that really is a problem, particularly as they inflate stuff with higher and higher tiers (it wouldn’t matter if they allowed casuals to “keep up” by making the lower-tier epics available to them, but they don’t – they say there’ll be casual epics but so far everything has been one gigantic grind or another gigantic grind). Outside of that, though, it’s not a big deal.

Of course I’d love it if there were more casual stuff to do post-60, but I understand that the casual game has to end at some point, and if it’s not 60 (or 70 after the expansion), it’ll be somehwere else. At some point I have to either start an alt or stop playing. It takes a long time to get to 60 in WoW and I definitely feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it (fifty times over, probably). It doesn’t last forever, though.

I was under the impression that (unlike when they first debuted) once you buy PVP items, they now remain available for use even if you lose the rank. Is that not so?

I’ve discovered that even at 60, there are many, many 60 instances to run just for gear, and it’s easy to find group mates in a guild. e.g. LBRS, BRD, Stratholme (Live Strat/Dead Strat), Scholomance, Dire Maul.

It’s quite fun to run a 45-minute dead strat, or a 45-minute DM Tribute run, for example. Then of course, there’s the PvPing, where you pit your pathetic Tier 0.5 against a Tier 2. I find that playing smart in Tier 0.5 >> 12-year old zerging in Tier 2.

For myself, raids are really just gravy if I happen to have the time to make it (every time I do them my wife gets REALLY upset for the amount of time I spend). The first few times at least, you will be quite amused by the amount of time/energy it takes to organise the raid, and then to run it. Sooner or later, you will have the RAP or DKP to get a piece of gear from the lower raid instances like MC.

I’m find I’m still getting plenty of value from WoW, though admittedly a lot less than the march from 1 to 60.

You don’t have to keep rank 14, or any rank. That rank is what’s required to buy the PvP items. Once you have them you can wear them forever. Should be interesting to see what happens when the level cap goes up, though. I guess everyone will have to get rank 14 all over again to buy the level 70 versions of things?

I totally agree. The old MC / BWL loot paradigm is silly, and most groups end up disenchanting loot for one class long before another class is done with their sets. Blizzard has, to their credit, been trying to innovate on this paradigm in ZG, AQ and now Nax. Good for them.

What I find stupid is that Tier 3 pieces, in addition to requiring Nax drops, also require high-end crafting components. You claim that raiders can afford it, but that’s simply not true: I raid semi-regularly with a competent group (We’ve downed Nef recently) and just being able to pay repair costs is a major hassle for a fair number of our raiders.

Ok I’m not dissing the token system that they’re doing, however the requirements needed is just stupid. I went and looked at the Velious quest set again, because I couldn’t remember it for the life of me, but I did remember getting the additional stuff needed wasn’t that difficult. You needed fire opals and other gem drops that you got pretty much anywhere off of certain level mobs, and it was fairly easy to attain, or trade other gems for the gems you needed.

As for the comment about money being fast and furious on the high end raider, that’s just not true. I would raid 5 days a week (stopped now because BWL = a total mess on Lightbringer with insane lag), and making money for repair costs was hard pressed for me. I would spend more time either tanking for people to get them keyed up or farming materails for the raids than being able to get cash for my repairs.

The additional requirements for this token system need to be tuned down from crap like nexus crystals and arcane crystals to something like they did with Velious (which was the best expansion ever for EQ I might add).

The high-end material requirements will ensure that top-tier gear remains in the hands of elite players and not casuals. It’s imperative that the best gear in the game is available only to those who are willing to play the game to its fullest. That means being part of an organized guild and hitting the endgame content. If the designers are going to invest such hard work in designing expansive and elaborate endgame dungeons, they have every right to incentivize players not to ignore them.

If the top-rated gear in the game was just as easily available to weekend warriors and casual gamers as it was to those who are much more dedicated and organized, we’d be in chaos. There’s still plenty of decent gear available to casuals, but it’s wrong to expect to be able to get the very best gear without really earning it.

I won’t complain about availability to ‘casuals’, as it’s just an extension of the usual ladder of progression. It just sounds like a mind-bogglingly large amount of tedium, even to those elite players.

And, as someone who’s long since accepted his non-uber status, they’re welcome to it. :D

Gary, I’m assuming you’re being sarcastic in that remark. If not, then the encounters themselves are enough to ensure casuals aren’t going to get it anyways.

Though I do think that the designers need to cater more to the casual crowd and design good 5, 10 and 15 man dungeons for them to enjoy. Raiding style particularily.

Given the fact that our most hardcore players spend a ton of time running smaller instances to gear up friends or alts, I don’t even see this as “catering to the casual crowd.” I just see it as “improving their game for everyone.” But apparently, we’re going to need to pay for an expansion to do that.

I doubt anyone will be able to get full tier 9 in less than 2-3 months. With the material requirements being the total needed for the entire set, it shouldn’t be too hard to gather the materials by the time you need them.

Going by the median prices from Allakhazam the material cost if my paladin were to buy everything on AH would be:
20 Arcanite Bars x 34g = 680g
15 Rugged Hides x 16s = 2g 40s
7 Nexus Crystals x 46g = 322g
Or (strangely…) close to 1000g in total.

So not far off what an epic mount costs, and we know how many people have those…

I’m on a permanent WoW hiatus after being disappointed with half the fights in BWL and annoyed at having to farm NR for AQ40. The guild’s going strong but has admitted it’s having to become more hardcore in order to be able to do the second half of AQ40 and prepare for Naxx.

Hrmpf.

Oh, please.

This is totally illogic.

By requiring extensive time and grinding requirements as entrance fees to these high-end dungeons the devs have given me plenty of incentive to ignore them and move on to other, more enjoyable games. I shouldn’t have to treadmill my way to content, nor should I be forced to be the pawn of teenage power mongers (read: guilds) to do nearly anything at level 60. Haven’t we learned anything from Everquest? Treadmills and Timesinks != Good times.