Challenge Mode Dungeon Testing
The Challenge Modes for the Scholomance and Gate of the Setting Sun dungeons are now available for testing, and should remain open for at least several days. Yes, just those two dungeons for now.*
A few relevant testing notes:
You must have completed the Heroic version of the dungeon once in order to attempt the challenge mode.
Item level will be normalized to 463.
There is no queue system for challenge modes; groups must be formed manually and you must zone in from the outside world.
While the challenge is active, the group leader may Reset the dungeon at any time via a drop-down accessible by right-clicking your unit frame.
On the live servers, gear will only scale down, not up.
Challenge modes do not drop loot of any kind, though they do award Valor for completion. You will be able to reset the instance mid-run on the live servers. You can run them as many times per day as you like.
Will we get the 5 instances per hour lockout on Challenge modes? This could be seen as extremely frustrating if we are trying to sort out a method for a beginning pull etc etc.
Resetting the instance while inside it, using the contextual menu option that is specific to challenge modes, does not count towards the lockout counter.
Challenge Mode Dungeons
They aren't AoE fests? They are actually as hard as the TBC ones? Can you also run them to gear up? Do they continue to drop the same items as the normal version? I'd much rather gear up like that!
Challenge dungeons don't drop upgrades. Actually, there's a mechanic in place that normalizes your gear, so that no matter what you have (that is, if you overgear it), you'll have the same difficulty you did before.
When you add the fact you'll be able to compare your times against other groups in your same realm, I'd say that might open up a very interesting competition to see which 5-man group is the best of the realm!
And as the reward for completing challenge dungeons, you'll have transmogrifiable gear. For example, the warlock challenge set has a close resemblance to Illidan's outfit (horns, tattoos and all). If you happen to have access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, you can check which gear you may acquire from the Challenge Dungeon vendor inside your faction city.
Challenge Mode Gear
Why can't it have stats? I like the look of it and would use it w/o t-mogging it.
We want these to be prestige items that you can show off without them giving you power. The power stats will come from Raiding etc. These will be that extra 'oomph' to show others your accomplishment in taking things to the "next level" so to speak.
LFR Loot System Feedback
So I have a 4% chance at getting loot every single time I down a boss in LFR... Yeah, I don't think I'm going to bother with that. Pretty much a complete waste of time.
What gives you that idea? Your chance of receiving an item from a given boss is much, much higher than that. If it were 4%, you'd expect to see on average one player per LFR kill receive an item, and that is far from the reality.
On average, you'll see about as much loot dropping in 5.0 as you do today in the live 4.3 game. The only difference with the new system is that any loot obtained is guaranteed to be designed for use by your spec (whereas on live you may have "wasted" loot, such as a tank shield dropping in a raid where the only tanks are a druid and a DK). In general, your odds of getting the item that you want will be higher in 5.0 -- often significantly higher depending on how contested your item of choice would be -- than they are today.
whereas on live you may have "wasted" loot, such as a tank shield dropping in a raid where the only tanks are a druid and a DK...
Isn't the point of the new system that you still get this wasted loot, but it just takes a different form? Like, if your tanks already have a shield they still get given a shield by the system (and thus said loot is wasted), but it means that you can't even get some marginal benefit from that shield by having someone win it with a greed roll for their offspec.
No, because everyone's chance at loot is independent. If the tank in my group gets a duplicate shield, that has no effect whatsoever on my chance at getting loot. It doesn't matter if 20 people in my group need drops from a given boss, or if only 3 do. Either way, my own personal chance is unaffected.
I know it seems like a bit of a black box that sometimes magically spits out epics. However, objectively, you will obtain the gear want more quickly from LFR under the 5.0 system than you did in 4.3, in every case except the special circumstance where you had an entire guild group funneling you gear.
The Challenge Modes for the Scholomance and Gate of the Setting Sun dungeons are now available for testing, and should remain open for at least several days. Yes, just those two dungeons for now.*
A few relevant testing notes:
You must have completed the Heroic version of the dungeon once in order to attempt the challenge mode.
Item level will be normalized to 463.
There is no queue system for challenge modes; groups must be formed manually and you must zone in from the outside world.
While the challenge is active, the group leader may Reset the dungeon at any time via a drop-down accessible by right-clicking your unit frame.
On the live servers, gear will only scale down, not up.
Challenge modes do not drop loot of any kind, though they do award Valor for completion. You will be able to reset the instance mid-run on the live servers. You can run them as many times per day as you like.
Will we get the 5 instances per hour lockout on Challenge modes? This could be seen as extremely frustrating if we are trying to sort out a method for a beginning pull etc etc.
Resetting the instance while inside it, using the contextual menu option that is specific to challenge modes, does not count towards the lockout counter.
Challenge Mode Dungeons
They aren't AoE fests? They are actually as hard as the TBC ones? Can you also run them to gear up? Do they continue to drop the same items as the normal version? I'd much rather gear up like that!
Challenge dungeons don't drop upgrades. Actually, there's a mechanic in place that normalizes your gear, so that no matter what you have (that is, if you overgear it), you'll have the same difficulty you did before.
When you add the fact you'll be able to compare your times against other groups in your same realm, I'd say that might open up a very interesting competition to see which 5-man group is the best of the realm!
And as the reward for completing challenge dungeons, you'll have transmogrifiable gear. For example, the warlock challenge set has a close resemblance to Illidan's outfit (horns, tattoos and all). If you happen to have access to the Mists of Pandaria beta, you can check which gear you may acquire from the Challenge Dungeon vendor inside your faction city.
Challenge Mode Gear
Why can't it have stats? I like the look of it and would use it w/o t-mogging it.
We want these to be prestige items that you can show off without them giving you power. The power stats will come from Raiding etc. These will be that extra 'oomph' to show others your accomplishment in taking things to the "next level" so to speak.
LFR Loot System Feedback
So I have a 4% chance at getting loot every single time I down a boss in LFR... Yeah, I don't think I'm going to bother with that. Pretty much a complete waste of time.
What gives you that idea? Your chance of receiving an item from a given boss is much, much higher than that. If it were 4%, you'd expect to see on average one player per LFR kill receive an item, and that is far from the reality.
On average, you'll see about as much loot dropping in 5.0 as you do today in the live 4.3 game. The only difference with the new system is that any loot obtained is guaranteed to be designed for use by your spec (whereas on live you may have "wasted" loot, such as a tank shield dropping in a raid where the only tanks are a druid and a DK). In general, your odds of getting the item that you want will be higher in 5.0 -- often significantly higher depending on how contested your item of choice would be -- than they are today.
whereas on live you may have "wasted" loot, such as a tank shield dropping in a raid where the only tanks are a druid and a DK...
Isn't the point of the new system that you still get this wasted loot, but it just takes a different form? Like, if your tanks already have a shield they still get given a shield by the system (and thus said loot is wasted), but it means that you can't even get some marginal benefit from that shield by having someone win it with a greed roll for their offspec.
No, because everyone's chance at loot is independent. If the tank in my group gets a duplicate shield, that has no effect whatsoever on my chance at getting loot. It doesn't matter if 20 people in my group need drops from a given boss, or if only 3 do. Either way, my own personal chance is unaffected.
I know it seems like a bit of a black box that sometimes magically spits out epics. However, objectively, you will obtain the gear want more quickly from LFR under the 5.0 system than you did in 4.3, in every case except the special circumstance where you had an entire guild group funneling you gear.
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