Random Number Generator – Oh How I Hate Thee!

Published by Alinden under World of Warcraft on December 11, 2007

This subject has probably been done to death, and I know of at least two threads on other forums/blogs that cover it, but I thought I’d relate my guild’s experience anyway.

My guild has been clearing Karazhan for months now. We’re now also clearing Gruul’s Lair and have started work on Tempest Keep. We run two 10-man teams for Karazhan, on different nights and different raid IDs. This is an educated guess, but for the sake of the argument, we would have dropped Prince Malchezaar at least 30 times between the two teams (I’m fairly sure that’s conservative by the way).

We have a couple of raiders in the second team who are specifically after a couple of items, namely [Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix] and [Gorehowl]. I can’t say how frustrating it is for one team to have dropped Prince that many times and not seen either, while the other team is at the point where they are DEing them, or giving them away for entertainment value. Hell, I took my alt hunter into Karazhan once to fill a raid for an allied guild, and the damn bow dropped for my alt! I know who I’d rather had got it. Personally, I would also have liked to have picked up [Terestian's Stranglestaff], but neither team has seen that item drop from Illhoof.

Yes, I understand the nature of the random number generator (RNG), and I’m not arguing that it’s not working as intended, just that there has to be a better way. One suggestion I’ve seen was to replace the RNG with a weighted system that evened out the loot distribution, another involved allowing the Master Looter to select the item(s) from the loot table(s) once a particular boss had been downed a certain number of times, say 10, or even 20. At least either of those suggestions would give people hope.

Everyone has heard stories about people running UBRS 100+ times to pick up their T0 chest, and some never did get a chance to roll on it. It’s the same deal here. In reality there is no guarantee that the item you’re after will ever drop.

More Feral Tanking Gear, Sockets and WTF!

Published by Alinden under Druid, Leatherworking, Tank, World of Warcraft on December 5, 2007

Ok, as my previous post indicated, I levelled Leatherworking to 375 recently. As you might expect, I had a look at the patterns available for a feral tank and came up with a couple of interesting items, namely the [Boots of Natural Grace], a BoE pattern, and the [Belt of Natural Power], a BoP pattern, both from Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC)/Tempest Keep (TK).

Prior to patch 2.3 (and the included new [Badge of Justice] rewards) these items were awesome upgrades for items like [Manimal's Cinch], [Tree-Mender's Belt] and [Zierhut's Lost Treads], in fact they still are, however, I don’t think they necessarily stand up to the onslaught of items like [Waistguard of the Great Beast] and [Footwraps of Wild Encroachment]. Why? In the case of the [Boots of Natural Grace], the answer is simple – sockets, in the case of the boots, it comes down to accessibility. Having said that, the question I ask is: Is this the way it should be? Read the rest of this entry »

Powerlevelling Leatherworking 1-375

Published by Alinden under Leatherworking, World of Warcraft on December 5, 2007

I recently dropped Herbalism in order to take up Leatherworking. Naturally enough, I consulted various levelling guides, like the ones from BlizzardGuides and PowerLeveling 100. Although generally accurate from 1-350, it was after this that I found significant inaccuracies emerged. Finding these inaccuracies meant that the cost of levelling between 350 and 375 went from 1000-2000g to about 300g (after selling off the leatherworking items in the Auction House). As I said, the difference is significant. Read the rest of this entry »