This is kind of out there, but I'm kind of done with grouping in WoW. I just don't have the time to play to other people's schedules, for me it's an enjoyable single player game.

I would honestly subscribe to a game that got all the support and new content of an MMO but was essentially single player in nature - i.e. ALL content could be done single player, or in small groups if you felt like inviting someone to your instance of the game.

I know to many people that must sound like I'm missing the point of an MMO, but one of the great aspects of an MMO is the constant new content, and that does not necessarily hinge on it being multiplayer.

I wonder if such a single player subscription RPG would have any sort of appeal in the marketplace.
 

Thanks again Tobold for posting.

Tobold: my preferred solution is to balance PvP and PvE in a way that the same hours spent in either gives comparable rewards

True as a general principle.

But perhaps there is a difficulty you overlooked. In raiding, the gear matches your progression over time. In PvP, you will need access to the best available gear very quickly from the moment you start, else you will not be able to compete.

For example, a guild starting raid today may take 12 months to go from Tier 4 content to Tier 5 to Tier 6. Thus the gear level of that guild's members progresses at the same rate. And it is no problem because their gear matches the content they are attempting. Whereas, an Arena team starting today cannot grind 6 months for Season 1 gear, then another 6 months for Season 2 gear, before finally starting on Season 3. They have to very quickly be able to compete meaningfully against fellow PvPers who have started one year earlier. So what Blizzard did was more or less the only option, as soon as Season 3 started, Season 1 & 2 gear are made available easily.

And this by itself is also not a problem. However, because of the overlap between PvE and PvP gear, it leaves the PvE raider who does not like PvP in a bad spot. They would be compelled to grind an activity they do not enjoy so that they can perform at a higher level at an activity they like.

Side note - I think the root of the problem is an underlying philosophy in WoW, that is all activities must contribute towards character development. If PvP as an activity was exempted from this rule since day one, this problem will not appear. Imagine if WoW PvP is like Counterstrike or Warcraft 3 DotA, pure forms of PvP, everyone enters the match on equal footing, and each match has no "memory" of previous matches. But perhaps too late for WoW PvP to embrace this now.
 

I believe the pvp answer is to make tiers of arenas/battlegrounds just like raids. For instance, look at amateur auto racing, there are different tiers of competition. Each tier has restrictions of what kind of equipment you can use on your car. This allows amateurs without a lot of funding to compete against each other. People who succeed will go up a tier and compete against tougher opponents with better cars, and win greater rewards.

I think this would be a great model for pvp. Blizzard has attempted this with the item matching, but perhaps it could be expanded.

I think the easier raid with lower quality rewards is great, and would indeed get more people raiding. The badges or other system for rewarding players would be necessary too, because a huge part of the problem of raiding is all the upfront organization. Any lifting of that burden would help tremendously.

But I don't think it will happen until Tigole is demoted or fired. He is just too damn elitist, read anything by him and it's all about how everyone who doesn't like things his way just wants "welfare" and to "not work hard". He needs to get over himself.
 

I have mixed feelings.

I like the idea of better early-on raid instances that can ease the transition from non-raider to raider. I don't think I like the idea of those instances being the same ones as existing more difficult ones, except as how it's currently implemented by Blizzard with ZA.

We need a second Kara-level instance. Or Kara should have had a 3-day timer, but with the addition of heroic badges, that's not practical any longer.

However, I think the second Kara-level instance should actually be a 20 man raid, basically a ZG for the 70s. Something that allows a lot of flexibilty in class choices and experience level of the raiders, that serves as a good transition to 25 man groups alike. Gear should be equivalent to about Kara/s1 pvp.

Fights should be fun and require some strategy, but not the sort where every member of the team must be 100% on the ball.



I don't like the idea of it being a guild limit on raid IDs, as much as it's a really cool concept. It'd be insanely easy to exploit with a tag team of a couple of guilds with a number of alts in them. BUT I think a limited ability to reset Raid IDs would be extraordinarily useful. Particularly since I've been saved to the same instance with two characters before just because one fight needed me to swap between dps and healer.

But I really like the switch to badges for gear, and I think increasing that concept - with different levels of badges for different kinds of gear - would go far. It would also increase the probability of successful pugs, since it'll solve loot-ninja worries and how fair the distribution system is.
 

@yunk

I really like the idea of pvp tiers, with battlegrounds. It should actually be fairly easy to implement, since it could be tied to the same sort of personal rating that was previously used in the old honor system.

Gear matching does not work at ALL. Not one iota. Or maybe it does on a perfectly balanced horde/alliance server where the same number of people queue at the same time, but right now it's all about bodies in the battlegrounds and how soon spaces open up.
 

Gear matching does not work at ALL. Not one iota. Or maybe it does on a perfectly balanced horde/alliance server where the same number of people queue at the same time, but right now it's all about bodies in the battlegrounds and how soon spaces open up.

Gear matching doesn't work because people with good gear like to roll people with bad gear. If people were forced to fight only people with gear of thier level PVP numbers would decline. That's why blizzard never carried through with it. PVP is all about squishing the newb at least for 90 percent of the PVP'rs in wow.

Most of the people participating now are just allowing the better geared people to kill them so they can get thier gear. I've talked to several people who's general attitude to pvp was this. "yeah it kind've sucks because we get rolled so much but it'w worth it for the gear"

Very similar to the stuff you heard about raiding pre BC.
 

Blizz has said they wanted to push arenas towards e-sports. But in order to do that they need fairness. I.e. gears have to have "fair" gear.

I think we'll likely see arena gear that is locked to arena use and on top has an equalizing function. I.e. everybody in a specific arena match has equal gear.

Else it will be hard to get an actual e-sport setup, because gear can't be allowed to play a factor.

An e-sports game where a racer with more play-time has a faster car wouldn't make sense either on that token.
 

I don't like the idea of it being a guild limit on raid IDs, as much as it's a really cool concept. It'd be insanely easy to exploit with a tag team of a couple of guilds with a number of alts in them.

That thought have occured to me as well, but that particular exploit is easy to fix, just have the ID exchange available only after 1 week of joining a guild.
 

I think I have a very good, and viable, solution to the raid ID issue. The game already supports "blocked rolls". When a crafting pattern drops, only the players of that profession can see and roll on that loot. Why can't raid ID's work the same way?

In other words, when I go to kara and clear to Shade, and then the next day my guild is starting back at Attumen with all new players, I should be able to join their raid and fight those bosses again. Except this time I won't see or be allowed to loot any of the drops until we get past Shade.

If the entire raid has the same ID, then all the bosses and trash is cleared when you enter and you play like usual.

If a player with no ID joins a raid that is saved, they have a pop-up window telling them what bosses are cleared, and they will be required to choose accepting the raid ID, losing out on the earlier bosse drops for that week.

I'm sure there will be a few cheats to address here (like 10 players with a prince ID splitting into 10 raids to get mass prince drops) but those could easily be worked out with minimum number requirements for an ID advancement.

This would allow players to backtrack to help other guildies while keeping the current progress tracking in tact from week to week.
 

If PvP gear is going to be locked into only Battlegrounds and Arena, then PvE gear should be locked into instances. Else, you are punishing one subset of players.

No one forces people to do PvP to get gear for raiding. They do it themselves. It's the same as grinding rep. It may not be their cup of tea, but they feel it is worth while to do so. That's their choice. As you can tell, I am almost exclusively a PvP'er. I don't think my gear should be stripped from me, with the raiders being allowed to wear their gear wherever. I have 2 sets of gear on my mage, and unless I'm in an instance, I run around the world in my PvP gear, for the obvious reasons.

Second, with raid ID's...how about an ID is created that represents what bosses have been killed. If you've killed through Curator, and Nightbane, your ID shows that. Other players that have done the same bosses could get together to do other bosses that none of them have done. Not seeing the loot from previously killed bosses would work, but it would be a way to grind rep with Violet Eye a lot faster, and might be exploitable.

Here is an idea, I'm sure not unique to me, that could possibly be fun if done right, and would provide the casual player some progression. It's not really raiding if by raiding you mean more than 1 group of players working together and getting epic drops every kill. But, its progressing, and could be akin to progressing in the current raid instances.

I think it would be really cool if there were 1 man instances...built around each class. A mage instance would require the mage to use their skills, etc. Part of the game is that you become a hero...why not allow players to do some solo heroing...not just killing mobs that reappear 4 minutes after you kill them out in the world zones. That, I believe, would be fun, and could definitely give a casual player a real activity that can be done on their own time. Progression could be had, multiple instances created, that allows the sole player to go out and be a hero. Gear rewards could be based on whatever difficulty that particular class instance is, and would not drop from each boss killed in the instance...maybe each boss gives you badges or something similar you use to redeem gear. Reset time would be increased to both allow a casual player to actually work on the instance, and to stop a player from just farming gear.

I know I would work on something like that. No worries about finding class balance, the dreaded tank/healer combo, etc. And since not every boss would give gear, there is still incentive for people to raid in big groups. If nothing else, it would be like the class-specific quests you get while leveling, but for endgame play.

I think Hellgate: London does something like that, but WoW 1 man instances would be... WoW'ish. The instance wouldn't end with killing the same bosses as the big raid instances, but I think that casual players would still have fun killing separate bosses.

Gear could even be locked into the instance, so that everyone starts with similar gear. If a T6 player enters the first class instance, they will find it easier, but of course the reward at the end would be subpar for them...they would be doing it for...get this...fun!

There has to be a way to allow for something like this, even with current classes. Gear that you get at the start could have some use functions that allow healing, or increase health, on cooldown of course.

Of course, if Blizzard is too lazy, and that's what it is, to even make 3 difficulty levels of their instances now, I realize there is no way they would go and make 1 man class instances that would rival the current raiding instances in progression (not gear, actual progression in the instance and following, harder instances). Just an idea I have, that I'm sure many people have had before.
 

I believe LOTRO raid locks actually work that way. You can join a raid that has killed at least the same bosses as your current lock indicates. So if you look at your raid lock screen, you actually see several locks for each dungeon. (the end dungeons that have locks). Obviously entering with a raid leader who has more boss locks also adds those to your list. At least I think that's how it works. So there's at least some precedent for it and for it working successfully in one game.
 

It's kind of funny to see the changes a year brings.

At this time last year, people in the PvP battlegrounds were getting crushed by raiders in their raid gear who flooded the BGs as the release of TBC became imminent. Now in '08, from the outcry of PvE raiders, one is led to believe that raid groups are composed of PvP-geared toons cruising through raid encounters!

What's really odd to me is that one reason the raiders swamped the BGs at this time last year was the revamp of the honor system and the introduction of so-called "easy epics"! So I have to wonder what's changed in a year with the "welfare epic" hubbub - since this time around the raiders are crying foul rather than flooding the BGs.

Maybe it's because this time the raiders don't own the BGs when they pursue the "welfare epics"...?

[And I'm compelled to add that if one floats the idea that PvP gear should be restricted to PvP BGs and Arena (even on PvP servers...?), I'll only take that as a serious suggestion if it is accompanied by limiting instance and raid gear to instances and raids.]
 

I don't think its that they don't own in Battlegrounds I think it's because the raiding game never recovered.
Pvp gave people another path so that sucked some people away and smaller guilds mean you need more leaders. But the percentage of leaders in the game is the same as it was pre BC.

Of course the fact that fewer people seem to be raiding is a really good indicator of how broken the raid game already was. It can be fun, but the time investment to reward ratio has always been silly.
 

I'm one of those casual raiders...
And I don't raid as raiding is too much compelling (time and presence).
Also I'm an Explorer and Socializer, so... well doing the same instance 1-2 times a week for months is a stopper for me.

But even if I don't like raiding, I would be very happy to have a chance to view those dungeons. And an easy mode raid would be perfect.
 

Nick: No one forces people to do PvP to get gear for raiding. They do it themselves. It's the same as grinding rep. It may not be their cup of tea, but they feel it is worth while to do so. That's their choice.

Somehow I feel that you have missed the point. Imagine if the situation were this. At this point, interested PvP'ers should all be aiming to gear up in S3 gear, and try to do well in S3 itself. What if now the faction rep rewards gives gear better than S3 for PvP purposes, and they are easier to get than S3? And you detest these rep grinds, and is in low rep with all factions at this point. It is of course true that "no one forces people to do rep grinds to get gear for PvP". However, won't you feel compelled to do exactly what you detest in order to do well in what you like? And further, do you not feel an obligation to your Arena teammates to make this personal sacrifice to increase your collective chances of success? This is exactly the quandary casual raiders are in! There is a rogue in our guild, a very good raider (does 800-900 dps on a lot of boss fights), but he has a couple of big gaps in his gear, including a blue main-hand. He does not like PvP. A couple weeks ago, he started Arena and BGs. In Arena he lost ALL his games. Nobody forces him to do this of course. But he still felt compelled to do it.

There are also starting raiders in our guild (remember that we are mostly casuals, hence we levelled a lot slower, and we mucked around in other things we are interested in, and it is harder for us to find a suitable raiding guild, hence the late start). The situation is even worse for these people if they do not enjoy PvP. When they ask for advice for pre-raid gear, what is the honest answer these days? For most classes it would be - do at least 10 games of Arena per week for some S2 maybe even S3 gear, run BGs as much as you can for S1 and other PvP gear, craft if you can, then fill in the gaps with instance runs. Is this situation not a very bad game feature and design?

There is one very important note I should make. Some hardcore raiders are also against PvP epics. If I am not wrong, their objection/plea seems to be - "my purples are harder to get than yours, hence they must be shinier and better!". That is not applicable to me and the casual raiders I know.

Nick: If PvP gear is going to be locked into only Battlegrounds and Arena, then PvE gear should be locked into instances. Else, you are punishing one subset of players.
Yep, really no objection for a symmetric lock, with the "world environment" being open to both set of gears of course. But the point is, the aim of proposal was not to "punish", but to fix a bad game design. However, like I have noted, while I think this way works, is not as good as just making both PvE gear and PvP gear more specialized, but without an articial lock. This will offer the flexibility for people who likes to both PvP and PvE to use their gear cross purposes, when they have no specialized gear immediately available. It will be like the situation some months back during Season 1. A lot of S1 gear is good for raids, but is nowhere near as easy to get then, and since it is specialized for PvP, raiders can get them if they enjoy PvP to fill in gaps, but if they don't, it is a small difference if their effort is spent on other gearing avenues. And vice-versa for PvP'ers.

The attitude of insisting on being able to use PvE raid gear to "pwn" in PvP, or to use PvP gear to do well in raids is something I don't quite understand though. From my point of view the situation is this. If you only like PvP, there is no issue if PvP gear is specialized for PvP. Ditto for PvE raid/instance gear. If you like both, you can collect two sets, with some overlap where you have not gotten specialized gear yet. There is an almost exact parallel to that for me. I like to both dps and heal as a priest. I respec whenever I can afford, back and forth between the two for normal and heroic 5-man runs (although I raid 95% of the time as dps, I have to specialize here since I don't have enough play time to gear for both to that extent). I have fun collecting the two set of specialized gears (with some overlap until recently), and have fun with the two different playstyles. I have priest friends who only like to dps, and also who only like to heal. They of course look only for specialized gear, and are not compelled to heal to get dps gear, or vice versa!
 

Anselm: In other words, when I go to kara and clear to Shade, and then the next day my guild is starting back at Attumen with all new players, I should be able to join their raid and fight those bosses again. Except this time I won't see or be allowed to loot any of the drops until we get past Shade.

I'm sure there will be a few cheats to address here (like 10 players with a prince ID splitting into 10 raids to get mass prince drops) but those could easily be worked out with minimum number requirements for an ID advancement.

The cheat you mentioned is exactly the reason why I think the way you proposed will not work; unless of course the second constrain I stated (that the loot available to a guild is proportional to the number of unique teams they can field) is strongly relaxed. Say you have twelve raiders. If what your proposed is followed, hardcore guilds will run Kara fully 3 times, one time for 10, one time with a sub, and another time with the other sub. In terms of raw numbers, maximum loot they can get is 3-fold the maximum loot of the current situation (average loot is much less than 3-fold the average loot of the current situation, but still higher obviously). If you have the minimum number requirement for an ID advancement, what would that number be? If it is 2, the problem still exists, if it is 3 then it defeats the very purpose of your proposal for the example of 12 raiders I am using.


Nick: Second, with raid ID's...how about an ID is created that represents what bosses have been killed. If you've killed through Curator, and Nightbane, your ID shows that. Other players that have done the same bosses could get together to do other bosses that none of them have done.
I think this would work too. But it will rely on all raid instances being retrofitted with an entry point for EVERY boss and his trash. Or by designing raid instances to have a "star" topology (the extreme opposite of a perfectly linear topology). Meaning that upon zoning in we can immediately have access to ALL bosses separately, akin to zoning in to the center of a star/asterisk shape, and the bosses are located the points of the star.
 

"When they ask for advice for pre-raid gear, what is the honest answer these days? For most classes it would be - do at least 10 games of Arena per week for some S2 maybe even S3 gear, run BGs as much as you can for S1 and other PvP gear, craft if you can, then fill in the gaps with instance runs. Is this situation not a very bad game feature and design?" - trevor

This is a common misconception that continues to persist. The fact is that for many classes and talent specs, there are only a small number of PvP items that are truly valuable for PvE heroics and raiding.

This very question came up on guild chat last night, asked by a newly-70 frost mage who wanted to gear for Kara. The discussion went on for several minutes, but not a single person suggested PvP even though several avid PvP-ers were in the discussion.

Suggestion 1 was to take up tailoring and get Frozen Shadoweave + Spellstrike as a baseline.
Suggestion 2 was instance gear -- Incanter's.
Raiding mages, according to the consensus, want spell hit, spell damage, and spell crit -- not the heavy stamina and resilience found on PvP gear.

And in my own case, I have two 70's - a warrior and a shadow priest.

The warrior gear path for tanking is definitely not PvP. The shield would be useful because of the high armor and stamina stats, but other than that, there is no defense on the PvP gear and not enough sockets to gem for defense.

The shadow priest has PvP-ed a lot, but for PvE she swaps out most of the PvP items, because for raiding the #1 stat is spell damage and getting to the spell hit cap. The PvP neck and spellblade are the two items I will keep for PvE. She is using a couple of other PvP items (ring and waist), but the obvious upgrades for those slots is not raiding, it's the Scryer's rep ring and the crafted Belt of Blasting. A great case study in the stark difference between DPS caster PvP gear and PvE gear is to compare the Arena S1 head and legs available in the BGs against the crafted Spellstrike.

Seriously, I don't know why the mistaken notion that 'just about every class can PvP their way into raid gear' persists. Anyone who does some class research and gear research quickly finds that PvP gear is rarely better than even crafted, rep, and badge gear for PvE. And in my own experience many crafting, rep, and badge grinds are faster than PvP gear paths too. Yet there is no "welfare epic" hubbub over that "loophole". IMO, if there is a "bad design" to be discussed in this context, it is that gear is really best researched and compared outside of the game, at wowhead or thottbot, rather than within WoW.
 

Well, when I said that PvP is the same as a rep grind...I meant it.

A mage for instance, since it's my main 70, grinded HH rep for the Blade of the Archmage, or whatever it's called, for raiding. Going for crit and spell damage on a 1h is a decent weapon.

For PvP, I used the Continum Blade from the KoT rep to start with.

There ya have it...I'm grinding PvE rep for both a PvP and PvE 1h to start raiding/bg'ing/arena'ing.

No one is forced to do PvP for PvE raiding gear. And if they do, for example to replace a green with an epic...that's their choice.

PvP gear is heavy on Stamina and Resilience. PvP stats. For a mage, crit goes down, hit is non-existent, and intellect also drops.

I've been a raider, which I thought was absolutely dull, and now I predominately do PvP on a mage and shaman. And I can tell you, I would NOT grind PvP honor to get gear for raiding. I'd rather do Kara in all blues from quests, instances, and maybe crafted items, than grind PvP for sub-par raiding gear.

Again, someone may feel compelled to do PvP to replace a green with a purple for raiding...but for raiding, the lack of "raiding stats" isn't worth it.

There are a ton of PvE rep grinds you can do for gear, with crafted items, that would be better than grinding PvP if you dislike PvP. By no means would I want someone raiding with me in all S1-S3 gear. They'd be better off in crafted and badge gear.

Some people really believe that if the name of the gear is written in purple, it is automatically good. My resto shaman has the S2 shield for BG's and Arena...and a blue shield for raiding. 6mp5 > stamina and resilience. If I kept raiding, of course I could get a better shield, but I just got tired of it. But I'm not going to stop using a blue shield because I have a purple one.

Don't buy into the "replace that blue with a pvp epic and you have better gear" because it's not always true. Yes, you might get better stats in a raid with a PvP epic than a green or blue, but its equally true with some item you need exalted for, or need to have crafted.

Grinding PvP, Rep, or crafted items, is all the same. I realize Trevor that you are a raider...but don't go hating on PvP. Some people think that the PvE gear providing raiders with better gear when the PvP first starts at level cap is bad game design. It's people's bias.

I just consider it normal for a game that splits off into 2 categories at level cap.
 

Doeg says:
This is a common misconception that continues to persist. The fact is that for many classes and talent specs, there are only a small number of PvP items that are truly valuable for PvE heroics and raiding.


Disagree with you. It seems like there is a huge disconnect betweeen the point of views of myself (and my guildies) and you (and your guildies). Perhaps it stems from simply the number of hours we have available to dedicate to raid and gearing up for raiding.

To start, let's consider your example of shadow priests. Right off the bat, you assumed that a newly minted level 70 caster preparing to raid is a tailor, and is able to get heroic badges and primal nethers with relative ease. I know of some hardcore guilds on my server that forces raiding casters to be tailors, but these guilds are in the small minority, perhaps the situation is different on your side. We all know that tailoring gets you gear better than T4, but we have a good number of non-tailor casters (usually engineers, that seems like the profession that attracts the most casuals). So imagine what you are proposing to them, drop your profession that you have taken months to level, learn tailoring, level to 375, and farm the insane amount of mats to make the usual 5 piece tailoring for raiding. For shadowpriests it is 3 FSW + 2 spellstrike. Secondly, is the question of primal nethers and heroic badges. COntrary to what you said, those are not easy for a starting casual raider to farm, nor are there that many item on badges reward better than PvP rewards. The badges trinket and off-hand of course are better than PvP gear, and maybe also 1 or 2 of the newly added pieces depending on class. But the trinket is about 40 badges, the new rewards are 60 or 75 badges. Say you are now in all good blues. You can run heroics maybe 2 times a week, about 3 or 4 badges per fully successful runs. Assume that you are skilled and have access to good heroic groups when you are able to set time to do heroics, you then can get 6 to 8 badges a week (I consider this optimistic to the extreme for a starting casual raider, unless the veterans in the guild makes effort to give him free rides). so it will take about 10 weeks to get a 75 badge piece of gear! And note the time spent is likely 5-8 hours per week, as opposed to 1 hour per week for Arena.

Now, let's do an exercise. Imagine that what you assumed are true, that all casters preparing to raid are tailors and have easy access to lots of heroic badges + nethers. Note that I have asserted above that the assumptions are not true, but we examine the situation even if. You seemed to have missed quite a few more PvP slots (you just mentioned neck and weapon), especially the vindicator ones (I will list here some not covered by tailoring):
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33913
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33921
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33912
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33853
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33853
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34579
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32053 or http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28297

There are other PvP gear as well for casters, but I am just linking the popular ones aimed for by casters. Now look back at I said:
"do at least 10 games of Arena per week for some S2 maybe even S3 gear, run BGs as much as you can for S1 and other PvP gear, craft if you can, then fill in the gaps with instance runs"
To me that advice stands even for tailors! Imagine the situation if you are NOT a tailor.

You mentioned that PvP gear is bad for raiding because of the distribution of stats is bad. I think you do not realize what the situation is since Season 3 (when season 2 & 1 gear access is much lowered, and a lot of new BG gear added, the purpose of which actually is to level the playing field for S3). What has happen is this - although a significant part of the item budget for PvP gear is spent on things only useful for PvP, the "wrong" stats as it were, but since the item level of the available gear is so high, the amount of item budget left over is enough to make them very good for raiders, especially those starting out! Some of them perhaps not the absolute best available pre-raid, but almost certainly the best in terms of reward/effort ratio. Even relative veterans like myself (with access to Tier 4 level gear) still has upgrades in PvP that have no peer in Kara and Gruul.

You have mentioned the caster weapon in an offhand manner. But maybe other readers will want to consider the following:

Season 2 caster weapon stats: +spell dmg 225, +hit rating 15, costs 2700 points (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32053)
Gruul caster weapon: +spell dmg 203, +crit rating 25 (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28802)
Season 1 caster weapon: +spell dmg 199 (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28297)
Rep reward caster weapon: +spell dmg 159, +crit rating 21 (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29153)
Level 70 instance drop: +spell dmg 130, +hit rating 14 (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27905)

Note that the S2 weapon has hit rating (!), a raiding stat, in fact that amount of rating there is one-fifth of what a shadowpriest need to be hit-capped for level ?? raid bosses!

Which is why I say from the point of view of the conscientious casual raider doing his best to help the guild access more content, he/she will be compelled to do heavy PvP-ing. As a side-note, for the caster, he/she will also be compelled to pick up tailoring. I feel this is also bad game design, but unfortunately I think for many, grinding PvE is something we have already accepted as part of PvE, hence there is less resistance to this path. Meaning that being compelled to be a tailor is more palatable to many casual raiders than being compelled to heavy PvP-ing, if they hate PvP of course.

Tanks of course have very little for them in PvP, but a lot still go for that shield because after hitting 490 defense, the conventional wisdom is to stack stam and armor, both of which that shield has a huge amount of.

The thing is, in this discussion, we only have looked at tanks and tailor-caster, the 2 types of raiders that have the least going for them in PvP afaik. Take a look for example at Arena/BG gear and weapons for rogues, and compare with pre-Kara gear, or even with Kara gear.
 

I've been a raider, which I thought was absolutely dull, and now I predominately do PvP on a mage and shaman. And I can tell you, I would NOT grind PvP honor to get gear for raiding. I'd rather do Kara in all blues from quests, instances, and maybe crafted items, than grind PvP for sub-par raiding gear.

Again, someone may feel compelled to do PvP to replace a green with a purple for raiding...but for raiding, the lack of "raiding stats" isn't worth it.


Ahhh... I do not realize this is a such a widespread misconception. Take a look at my long post above. A lot PvP gear are no longer "sub-par" for raiding (that is the situation in S1, not now). There are PvP gear better than Tier 4 or equivalents even after blowing the item budget on stam/resilience, and simply much better that the gear gained from the normal pre-raid path (instance blues and rep purples etc).


I realize Trevor that you are a raider...but don't go hating on PvP

I have never mentioned I hate PvP. In fact, I PvP as much as I can in my limited time. My BG premade group is loads of fun, and we have very high win ratio (obviously since we have the unfair advantage of premades). My Arena team is poor, with about only about 30-40% win rate, and I arena very little, I think I played only about 30-40 competitive games in S2.

The only reason I don't PvP more is just available time and respec costs. I prefer raids to PvP, even when I enjoy both, and since play time is limited a choice have to be made.

I am more speaking the case for many of the casual raiders I know who don't like PvP (it is a matter of taste more than anything).
 

@trevor

Yes, there is some nice gear out there if PvP is your grind-of-choice. And yeah, if you want to raid, too, the PvP gear grind will work for several slots for (in the case we've scrutinized) a shadow priest. I crafted a point-by-point shadow priest gear rebuttal which I could post if you like which essentially shows, again, what I said in the first place -- if you like to both seriously raid and PvP too, your raiding gear can benefit from the PvP main-hand spellblade and neck. Other than those slots, you'll prefer crafted & rep & badge gear to supplement your instance and raid drops.

If a shadow priest takes up Tailoring (maybe even dropping a 375 profession at level 70 like I did) that grind will get you into Kara. Or one could gather mats for crafted items together and tip for crafting & pay for nethers. Or farm gold to buy gear off the AH. Or gear up with an instance & heroic grind. Or get gear from rep grinds. Or perhaps best of all, a combination of the above that you enjoy most.

But no, there is no de facto 'requirement' for a person to heavily PvP for raiding gear 'for the team'. There are plenty of alternate paths to decent gear, especially for serious raiders. That is obvious just from looking at the Armory for toons serious raiding guilds.

So... PvP might help some toons get into raiding-quality gear -- bringing us full circle.
How does that negatively impact raiding -- unless raiding is otherwise broken? For one would expect those PvP-ers would be using those "welfare epics" to clear raid instances.

About the only thing that growing PvP and slowing raiding might 'prove', IMO, is that the classic raiding gear progression model heavily-dependent upon random drops acquired at a great time cost, requiring much social/guild organization, and high gold cost, is old, tired, and broken.
 

@doeg
Our guild have done exactly the analysis you said for most classes. Are you looking closely at some of the examples I posted for you? It is very very clear that PvP gear available since S3 are either the absolute best available pre-Kara (and even compared to Kara), or the best available considering reward vs time ratio; ESPECIALLY for casual raiders since PvP does not require uninterrupted chunks of hours. If you are not a tailor, then many slots are the absolute best available, and others slots the best given the effort. If you are a tailor, then you can reduce 5 from that (I am not counting the BT shoulder pattern and the SSC belt pattern).

For caster, we both agree on weapon and neck. Ok then have you looked at the PvP bracers? It is better than the Kara drop. Have you look at the PvP shoulders? It is better than the Kara drop. Have you look at the PvP belt? It is better than the early Kara belt (I forgot off the top of my head how it compares with Illhoof's drop). Have you look at the PvP chest? It is better than the Kara Nightbane's chest. Have you looked at the PvP ring? It is better than the Kara Attumen ring. And so on. Note I am comparing with Kara gear!! Not the good blues from instance, not the rep gear (typically a step down from Kara).

If you are a tailor, the grind for tailoring of course is open for you, and what it means is that after completing that grind, you take out 5 slots from the scenario. What you said for non-tailors - "tip for crafting & pay for nethers" does not work for FSW, PMC and Spellfire, since they bind. Furthermore, the mats required for the tailoring sets are.... scary... to say the least.

If you have access to good heroic groups, and then running heroics for the post 2.3 badge reward will perhaps remove another 2 slots from the scenario. But you will need something like 130-150 badges. Each full clear of heroic dungeons nets you 3 or 4 badges. So bear that in mind too.

"Farm gold to buy gear off the AH"? Have you researched on the quality of what is available for what price? For casters, the blue staff is cheap but far inferior. Purple chest is very expensive, and still inferior.

Now assume you just hit 70, and is a casual raider, say you can set aside 2 nites per week for uninterrupted hours of play, but who is willing to gear himself as best as you can outside of raid. With so many gear available in PvP (note I did not those with a arena rating requirement) that is far far better than what is available pre-Kara for raiding purposes, and even better than Kara gear, how can anyone say that PvP can be dropped without impact???

"There are plenty of alternate paths to decent gear, especially for serious raiders." Yes there are, but none offers better and easier gearing path. Which is a fine thing if the whole world enjoys, or at least does not mind, PvP.

What you said - "Or perhaps best of all, a combination of the above that you enjoy most." is well and truly the ideal! But that ideal is predicated upon the character advancement rewards being commesurate with effort. At this point in TBC, it is NOT arguable that PvP is the most rewarding activity in terms of gear, even when you "misuse" the gear for raids. And there is nothing wrong with it being rewarding in terms of gear, if other activities are more or less equal. Failing to achieve this equality, the obvious plan B to me is to separate PvP from PvE raid, which by the way I think is what Blizzard did at the beginning of TBC in Season 1 (with the emphasis on stam and resilience sufficient to minimize the overlap).

What is the difficulty in achieving this equality for TBC at the current juncture? I noted that in my reply to Tobold in the second post above in the thread.
 

Shadow priest Kara entry-level gear:
Wrist: Crafted Havok
Shoulders, Chest, and Feet: Crafted Frozen Shadoweave (if you're serious about raid progression)
Belt: Crafted Ruination or Blasting, pay for the BoP mats with dailies or questing or farming
Head and Legs: Crafted Spellstrike, pay for the Nethers (it will get you in practice for farming for gold to pay for raiding)
Rings: Headless Horseman (sorry if you missed that Welfare event), Scryer's rep ring (sorry if you're Aldor; I didn't research that any further)
Hands: Instance/quest Tempest gloves
Back: Crafted Black Void

The PvP gear would probably work for raiding, if you're content with less than the best pre-Kara gear. The PvP gear you've listed would drop spell damage, my most important stat. Casters who value crit won't find any of that on the PvP gear either. High stam and resil are great if you're getting hit, but in a raid you'll probably get two-shotted instead of one-shotted; you'd do better to download a threat meter add-on.

Kara drops generally stink; that is nothing new. That is a problem that has been complained-about since the first TBC raiders were sharding Kara drops because they were not upgrades from Heroic and rep and crafting gear (and not worth re-enchanting or re-kitting and re-gemming). In many cases, badges are what a Kara raider is really after. Frankly, other than the Attumen gloves, I don't think any Kara drop would touch my gear I already had coming in!

I have seen Havok, Ruination, and Blasting on the AH on my server, as well as the Runed Eternium Blade. Not cheap... but are you really serious about raiding? A raider who drops 20-30g for night of raiding is probably getting off cheap; the tank usually has it much worse. A serious raid tank (I'm casual and DPS) told me he'd drop 200g a night in a raid trying to figure out a boss.

You claim that PvP is easy. That is your opinion, and you're entitled to it; I'm not sure if you've actually tried it (I've been in the BGs on-and-off, sometimes very heavily, since before TBC release). Recent PvP gear time estimates I've seen are much less optimistic; if only PvP is your raiding gear path, you'll probably be gearing-up for months. If you wanted to PvP, that's great - you'll probably do well in the BGs and Arena. If you wanted to raid, you might never actually get around to it...

In your opinion, it is not arguable that PvP is the most rewarding activity in terms of gear.
I would agree that it is the best combination of accessibility and gear for the activity - PvP - in the game. Raiding requires organization and can get stupid expensive.
However, when the discussion turns to raiding gear, in my *experience*, my 70 shadow priest filled more slots with crafting / tailoring, and my semi-retired 70 warrior-tank will not be gearing for raiding in the BGs and Arena either.

There is no basis to claim that gear is "misused"; that's like saying that if you're running instances or raiding with non-instance or raiding drops, you're "misgeared"!
I wear non-PvP gear all the time in BGs because I don't have a full PvP set. I wear crafted, PvP, and holiday event gear into raids. I use my rep gear anywhere, not just in the areas specific to that faction.

I've already hit a "Tobold decision moment" in gear:
For me, there is no PvP gear upgrade that will benefit both PvP and PvE anymore.
So I decided to raid for PvE gear, and PvP for PvP gear... :)