The Five Hidden Laws of WoW

Doesn't it feel like sometimes games claim to use one kind of rules but in reality they run by a hidden set of rules designed to mock and frustrate you? A lot of this comes from biased thinking, meaning that when something has started to annoy you is when you'll start noticing it and you'll think that it stands out. You rarely recognize when things go your way but more often when things go bad. I swear that some games just seem to know how to tease you though. I don't know how many times I've said I'll give up grinding for something in WoW only to have it drop the minute later (proving I did not quit grinding after all, but I would've! Eventually...).

Continuing on with another post based on some notes I found in an old notebook of mine, this one is about video game logic or lack thereof. These notes (this post and the previous one) were written closely together so clearly I was in something of a pissy mood, hateful about players in general and my game luck in particular when writing these. Remember that these are written tongue in cheek, are based on my experiences alone and you might not agree at all. Also I use words like "always" very loosely. At the time they were probably just an attempt to vent some anger from my side. After (at that time) five years of playing WoW I thought I had its tricks pinned down - I knew that it worked around hidden rules that were designed to lure us into trying just one more time. Fake instant gratification!

1. In a group, whoever plays the worst will always get the loot.
All the entries on this list are frustrating, but I wonder if this one is not the worst one. I was ok with people who played badly (aka did bad dps/healing/tanking and/or a lot of mistakes) to get some loot. In fact this "rule" even worked to my favor on occasion. I clearly remember bringing my lock to Vault of Archavon once, playing utter crap and being the one to win the loot out of at least a handful of rollers. Playing badly is one thing, it can happen to anyone. But the amount of times this seems to have worked in the favor of the jerkwad of the group, I can't even count. You know, that one person in the group who seems dead set on ruining the day for everyone unlucky enough to be grouped with them. Numerous times have I've had people like that in my group, seen something really cool drop (even random epics, mounts or the like) and 9 to 1 the Ruiner of Fun would win it. Just to write "Lol! Screw you guys!" and leave with a digital finger aimed at the rest of the group. Oh sorry, I mean "LOL!!!! SCRUW U GUYZ!!!!".

Every... time... - wowhuntershall.com

2. Percentages are not what they say they are.
This might take some explaining so bare with me, but this is true as day. Imagine yourself fighting some kobolds in Elwynn Forest, chuckling at their cries of "No take candle!" and having a generally good time. Say, just hypothetically that you've got 100% hit chance and 10/10 swings are actually landing. Now imagine further that you somehow get a debuff that reads "10% reduced hit chance". "Ok" you might think. "So I'll only hit 9 out of my 10 swings, no biggie", shrug and move on to the next Kobold. The Kobold end up being the one laughing however as you stand there, wildly flailing your weapon at them, suddenly having a hit chance that seems closer to 1/10 than anything else. What am I trying to say? I always felt, nay unconsciously known, that debuffs that reduces stats had more than twice the actual impact than it claims to have.

It's like the game can't handle statistics and probability properly. I know this is how the human mind works (hence the existance of this list), meaning that we often think in either/or rather than in actual probabilities. But I thought a game, based on solid, programmed numbers would be better than that! As it is I often wonder if the game just runs by the commands "doesn't miss much" or "misses a lot", rather than actual percentages.

3. You always get dazed when you want it the least.
Which usually is always. But sometimes you're lucky and don't seem to get dazed much at all. You can bet your life (and it will be your life) that whenever you're being chased by a ganker you will get dazed by a mob. Or when you pull an elite. Or when you try to ride out of Zul'Farrak after having pulled half the instance.

us.battle.net

4. If you run between mobs to avoid aggroing them you will pull both and their stealthed friend.
See point 3. on this list for what will happen next by the way. This is just classic irony or perhaps Murphy's Law. By trying to avoid to get into trouble, you'll actually end up in trouble, and a lot more of it than if you had just wo/manned up in the first place and dealt with it rather than trying to chicken your way through. But I just hate it when I am simply trying to get smoothly from point A to point B (which happens a lot in WoW), I'm not in the mood for any skull bashing and this Gnoll just knows he has to ruin my day. So he brings his friend. And where the hell did THAT guy come from?!

5. It doesn't matter which class you bring, stuff for your other class will always drop.
This one is for all you alters out there, you know my pain! At one point I was juggling quite many, and did some 10 VoA runs each week (day? Don't remember how often they reset). And I swear, the more alts I had the more it felt like I lost out on loot. Which you know, makes sense, because every loot that dropped was something I could've used on one of my other alts. And I guess the more alts I had the more I got the sense that loot dropped just to mock me. Ok, maybe I can scratch this one and just write it down to me being damn unlucky. Or probably averagely unlucky.

Well this person had no trouble finding gear! - wow.joystiq.com

Bonus entry!
6. If you get jumped by someone while questing and you're about to own him, a paladin will come out of nowhere and kill you when your opponent is at 5%.
I think the title speaks for itself and I think this just happened to me when I wrote this list.

Ever felt particularly out of favour with the WoW Gods? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

No love (rocket) for me

I'm not a greedy woman. Admittedly I do expect to marry rich eventually and I do expect people to leave me the last cookie in the cookie jar, but that's not out of greed. That's because I deserve it. In WoW, there are very few things I expect to get and there are even fewer things I will bust my ass to try to get. But when I do bust my ass to try to get something, I do expect to get it, eventually. Still following me here?

Usually for event bosses that drop some kind of pet or mount I will try to get it. It's such a fast and easy way to get something cool, and since I have an army of alts I have several tries (9) each day to get what I want. It suits a lazy person like me perfectly. It's like hitting two birds with one stone (no it's nothing like that actually...)! It gets addictive the same way scratch cards do, if the scratch cards were free and only required me to spend some time scratching them (I wish). So I did the Crown Chemical Co. bosses every day (only missed out on one day!) on every alt to get the Love Rocket. I also wanted the Wasteling (because I totally adore those little Wastelings), but most importantly the Love Rocket.

I ended up doing the bosses 117 times, and these are the results;

4 Fumigator Masks
8 Lovely Roses (two on the same character)
4 Wastelings
0 Love Rockets

See that? No Rockets. Statistically I should've had at least one, with some luck two. But the beauty about chance is that if there's only a chance to get something, there is always a chance not to get it as well. The funny thing is that eventhough you know the chance is really small, like in the case of that damn Love Rocket, you will try just because there's a chance, and the probability of that chance doesn't really matter. In fact you will try harder to get it when you know there's only a chance to get it, than if you know exactly when to get it. Chance can have you grinding for ten hours straight, but a lot less people would actually spend ten hours farming if they knew that is exactly what it would take. And I fell for it damn it!

But you know what they say - bad luck in gambling means luck in love, so maybe I will get to marry rich soon.

At least I got the Wasteling to keep me company.

Addon Review - Karni's Crap Filter

It's been a time since I last wrote something about an addon. After the great addon-death of 4.0, I removed all my addons completely, and revamped my entire UI. Because I am very lazy, I decided to go with a ready and set UI, rather than bust my ass off like I had done with my old one. I chose Tukui, and am mostly happy with it. Many of the addons that stopped working pre-Cata have been updated since however, and I am seriously contemplating whether I should go back to my old UI, at least to some part. But that is not what this post will be about. Instead I intend to talk about an addon that I've only recently started to use.

Although it might seem difficult to believe, I'm not an addon-hugger. Love likes to use an addon for just about anything in the game, which makes his char about as automated it can be without actually botting anything. He probably has an addon to wipe the ass of other addons. But I'm not really like that. I do think using addons is comfy, and in some cases even crucial to do a good job (like some sort of healing UI). That doesn't mean I want an addon for everything in the game. I can recall at least a dozen occasions throughout a typical year where I will go "oh, I hate it when it's like this" or "wouldn't it be awesome if there was an addon that did this?". That could be just about anything, but mostly based on what I am sick of at doing at the time. If I've been fishing a couple of hours I'm sure to be saying something like "wouldn't it be awesome if there was some way to keep track of all the fish you've caught?" or "I'd love it if there was some way to make it easier to hear the bobber sound" to which Love nearly always replies - "there is an addon that does that". Whining about something doesn't mean I want to fix it though, but guys don't get that. I want him to go "yeah, isn't that annoying!" and he want's to solve my problem and be the prince in shining armor.

I couldn't agree more!

So about a year ago, or actually probably more, I was leveling yet another alt. When doing some sort of troll area, killing trolls and looting Troll Sweat, one of the most annoying gray items in the game, I was complaining as usual - "wouldn't it be awesome if there was some way to just not loot all the crap that mobs drop?". And Love of course goes - "there is an addon that does that". Yes indeed, Karni's Crap Filter (Karni Crap for short) will make sure that you never have to loot another crap item again. It sounds simple and awesome, kind of like the addon I've got that automatically sells all grays in my bags, an addon I'd never ever play without ever again. But when I heard about Karni Crap I merely shrugged. I thought "nah, there aren't that many things I'd like to avoid to make it worth having an entire addon for it". That's what I usually think. "I don't think this is troublesome enough to actually go to a site and download the addon and set it up". So months passed and I kept on looting all those Troll Sweats and other crap items that exist around the world.

I'm usually a crap collector though. I'm always astonished at people who don't loot Bastard Sword worth 3g to vendor, and then complain about not affording that shiny purple on AH. The easiest way to earn money is without a doubt to simply loot the mobs that you kill. It's not awesomely much, which probably is the reason people avoid it in the first place, but it adds up. And why not loot it? Aint got enough bag space? I am known to constantly run around with only 1-2 free bag slots, but as long as you vendor when you repair, and don't keep your profession in your bags, running out of bag space doesn't happen often. But even if 99% of everything that drops is worth picking up, those 1% can really become a nuisance. I kept on looting those 1% and throwing them out of my bags manually (because I wouldn't save them in my bags for vendoring), until I finally snapped.

I am currently leveling yet another prot warrior (my fifth or so), and having to remove some sort of water from my bags after every instance is what finally got me to download Karni's Crap Filter. Water is just one example of many of things that aren't worth anything, and that yet drops in abundance. Another example is the already mentioned Troll Sweat, and something that drops everywhere in Cata - Shiny Fish Scales and Fish Oils. Imagine to never have to think about that crap again? you're probably thinking "hah, I don't loot that stuff often enough to care about this". I understand you, so did I for more than a year. And you may be right. Depending on how you play, you might actually rarely get into contant with crap dropping mobs. After having looted my umptififth stack of water however, I decided to give it a go. And I can say, I have no idea why I didn't try it sooner.

So what does Karni Crap do? Quite simply, you tell it what the value of the items you're looting have to be for it to loot them. Say you think you can't be bothered with anything worth less than 1g, simply tell Karni Crap so and you won't loot anything worth less. You can also decide whether you want Karni to count the value of a stack or of a single item towards this limit, so say if you have a stack limit of 1g, you'll loot items that are worth 20s as long as they stack in more than 4. Some items are worth looting regardless of their vendor value, like cloths and meats for instance. You can easily tick these items off in a little premade list to make sure Karni doesn't ignore them. If you happen to grind some certain item that falls outside of your rules and don't want to change your entire rule set for that item, you can simply write /notcrap[item] and Karni puts it on the safe-list. The opposite goes with /crap[item]. Karni comes with its own built in auto-loot, which means you have to turn the regular one off in order for Karni to work. A side effect of using Karni Crap is that looting goes a lot faster, since it won't even show the loot window if there is nothing but money. You can have it give you a message about the loot it doesn't pick up, if you want to make sure you're not missing out on something good. And it can be found right here.

Are loot distributions fair?

I don't know about you girls and guys, but for some time now I've had a strong sense that loot distribution is somewhat skewed. It just doesn't seem fair. I just feel like some loot drop alot more than it is needed. It all started back at the beginning of Wrath. I started noticing that some classes seemed to gear up alot faster. Not because they raided more than others, or there were less of them, no. But because their loot dropped alot more often than that of everyone else. In my case I'm looking especially at caster shamans and holydins. Also the tier token of druid/dk/mage/rogue drops alot more often than that of everyone else. Even when taking into account that there are ~30% more people that use that token compared to everyone else that token outdrops all the other tokens by far.

And I'm that kind of person that when I find something doesn't seem right, I start collecting evidence. I have to make sure that this isn't because of some idea I've gotten into my head, but that there actually might be a difference. So I started recording all the loot that dropped in our 25mans into different categories. How did they turn out?

I want you to note that these categories are far from perfect. I did clump some types of gear together just to make it easier to categorize, for instance I didn't put cloth with spirit as healer cloth, because there are actually some casters that use them (unfortunately healers still can't use hit, which means they take our stuff and we can't take theirs >:( ). Also when it comes to weapons I've categorized all weapons that lacked an avoidance stat as a dps weapon, although dks can use these for tanking (and other tanks as well in some cases). So this list is far from perfect, but it might still tell us something. In some cases it's easy to separate between casters and healers. Like with trinkets. They've often got "when doing damage" or "when healing" meaning they can't be used by the wrong type of role. Same goes with tanking and dpsing. I had to make a fairly easy system for myself because we often start clearing trash while disitributing loot, and people expect me to keep them alive, not collecting data (silly people).

It's difficult to say in which manner Blizzard take the prevalence of a class into calculation to design the prevalence of a loot type. Does the fact that paladins and druids are more popular affect the chance at which their loot types drop? I don't think so, but I do think however that hybrids have a slightly higher loot percentage than pures. All rogue specs can use the same type of loot, but druids use three different loot types, so maybe there are a little more loot for each hybrid spec than just a 1 on 1 ratio. But in the end I don't know, so all I can show here are if there happen to be great differences. There are after all some classes that use their gear type exclusively, like holydins. They don't share their loot type with anyone, not even a little, so one could imagine their loot type wouldn't be very prevalent. But it is! For some reason.

Let's take a look at the class distributions at a 1 on 1 level.
There are 10 classes, 4 different roles (counting melee and ranged dps separately) and 4 different armor profficiencies.
4 Healers (1 cloth, 1 leather, 1 mail, 1 plate)
4 Tanks (1 leather, 3 plate)
5 Casters (3 cloth, 1 leather, 1 mail)
7 Melee (counting hunters as melee since they use those stats) (2 leather, 2 mail, 3 plate)

4 cloth users
5 leather users
4 mail users
7 plate users

Here is my list of loot drops based on 156 drops all in all over approximately 27 bosses killed in 25 man (there are some 10 man in there as well, since the loots are the same). The numbers are rounded towards their closest one decimal.

Cloth
Caster 17 (~11% of total) (100% of the gear type)

Leather
Caster 4 (~2,5%) (29%)
Phys 10 (~6,5%) (71%)

Mail
Caster 12 (~8%) (67%)
Phys 6 (~4%) (33%)

Plate
Tank 7 (~4,5%) (24%)
Dps 11 (~7%) (38%)
Heal 11 (~7%) (38%)

Trinket
Tank 2 (~1%) (9%)
Casterdps 11 (~7%) (50%)
Heal 1 (~0,5) (5%)
Phys 8 (~6%) (36%)

Neck
Caster 3 (~2%) (60%)
Phys 2 (~1%) (40%)
Tank

Back
Caster 4 (~2,5%) (80%)
Phys 1 ~0,5% (20%)
Tank

Weapon
Caster 6 (~4%) (20,5%)
Phys 16 (~10%) (55%)
Tank 2 (~1%) (7%)
Bow 4 (~2,5%) (14%)
Wand 1 (~0,5%) (3,5%)

Shield
Healer 3 (~2%) (100%)
Tank

Offhands 3 (~2%)

Ring
Caster 6 (~4%) (55%%)
Phys 3 (~2%) (27%)
Tank 2 (~1%) (18%)

Tokens (Only drop from end instance bosses and aren't counted towards the total)
Dk/Mage/Druid/Rogue 8 (80% of total token count)
Priest/Paladin/warlock 1 (10%)
Warrior/Hunter/Shaman 1 (10%)

Is there anything we can say from this?
First of all we have to make two things perfectly clear - this is a rather small sample, and as many other things in WoW loot drops are under the effect of luck. It is possible all these numbers have nothing to do with the "real" distribution of loot, and that I'm just unlucky. Well me and the people I happen to raid with. Remember I said I thought, already since back in the beginning of Wrath, that some loot dropped more than others? Have I been unlucky for 2 years? And has that bad luck rubbed off on the vast number of people I've come to raid with during these two years? Eventhough there is an element of luck and my sample isn't great, I think it says something. It points towards something. And in a game, if some people have bad luck all the time, there really should be something done about it imo.

In most cases the numbers might be interesting but the variance isn't big enough to warrant a comment. These can be ascribed to bad luck. Let's look at the things I thought were out of place before I started gathering these data - have I found something to warrant my suspicion?

There are way too many holydin drops;
I really dislike how Blizzard have designed holydins. It is one class with one spec, and they have their very own loot. In my opinion holydins should use caster mail, but that is another discussion. In any case we can probably agree that holydin loot shouldn't be very common, considering the above factors. So how common is it? Well in my guild, 38% of all plate that drops (so far) is holydin loot. That means that out of all the plate that can drop, 38% is usable by one class, one spec only. This is even more annoying to us since we don't even have a main spec holydin at the moment (feel free to apply! *cough*). Do holydins make up nearly 40% of the plate users in a 25 man raid? Not often. Are they as many as the dps dks, paladins and warriors? Nope, and yet their loot type drops as often. Fair? Not so sure.

There are way too many caster mail drops;
I feel like gearing my shaman is way too easy. Mail drops everywhere, both melee and caster, but mainly caster. Do my numbers point this way as well? Well yeah, but not by a big margin. 67% or 2/3 of all the mail drops to us so far have been caster mail. Do caster shamans make out 2/3 of the total mail users? No, they make out half - ele/resto shamans vs enhancement shamans and hunters. Still, the difference between the drop rate in these numbers aren't big enough to warrant any whining from my side. Maybe just a little.

The only damn token that ever drops is the dk/druid/mage/rogue one;
Throughout the nearly half year of raiding I did in 25 man ICC, I saw 2 or so priest tokens drop. Remember we killed all the end bosses (except LK) each week, so we had plenty of drops. The hunter/shaman/warrior token dropped about as seldom. We might be extremely unlucky, but in that case we have been so for more than half a year. And what do the numbers from Cata show us? That the dk/druid/mage/rogue token drops 8 times more than the other ones. 80% of our token drops so far, have been for dks/druids/rogues/mages. There is one class more that needs this token than with the others ones, but not 8 times more. 80% of our raid group does not consist of either a dk, druid, rogue or mage. In a typical raid these classes make out some 45% of the total. Not 80%. Priest/paladin/lock make out about 25% of our raid, not 10%. I'd like to think our raid compositions are pretty standard (although as mentioned we lack a holydin. Apply!) and I don't think dk/druid/mage/rogue make up 80% of anyones raid (maybe in 10 man occasionally, damn druids are everywhere!).

There are other stuff as well, things I hadn't thought about much before. There seems to drop way more dps trinkets than healer/tank trinkets. But there are generally alot more dpsers than healers/tanks in a group so that's not so odd (although 9 to 1 does seem like a little too much). Overall does tank loot seem to drop very rarely, but then again, tanks only make out 1/10 of a 25 man and 1/5 of a 10 man, so naturally the tank drops will be low. 3% of the total drops seems very low though.

Where am I going with this? Do I have a point? Maybe not. I wanted to see if my hunch was right, and unfortunately it seems to be to some extent. Is there something I can do about it? Besides whine? Not much. I could make Blizzard aware of this, but I am pretty sure they know of their distribution rates already, and maybe there is some guild out there that is taking all our priest tokens as I write this. Are you? *evil eyes*

A-o-R: AtlasLoot Enhanced

AtlasLoot Enhanced
Category - Loot mod
Necessity Level - Medium
Class/Role - Any

AtlasLoot is an addon that does alot of things. Most of them involve being able to look at loot. Loot that drops in instances, is bought by emblems, or is crafted by a profession, to mention a few options. To explain everything it does would take forever, but in short it answers just about any question you might have about loot. Questions like;

- What mats do I need to craft that item?
- Does that boss drop any nice loot?
- How many emblems does that item cost?
- What bonuses was there in that tier set?
- What do I get when I am exalted with that faction?
- How do I look in that item?

There are even some features that I've never used, like being able to display dkp-values for items (as set by your guild) and being able to bind "quick-buttons" to certain items to access them more easily.

The ui for Atlasloot is very user friendly, with a search window that will allow you to use keywords to search for any items and some easy to understand drop down menus to search for things "manually". I simply love this addon. I'm one of those people who check gear drops constantly, like when doing raids or instances, or to check what would be a nice upgrade next. I couldn't imagine playing without this addon, although it's not really necessary per se. It's just a damn nice addon if you want to be able to look at gear. There are several reasons why you should have this addon even if you don't like to look at gear though. If you ever want something crafted, you should know what mats are needed and have them ready. People hate it when you ask them "what mats is it?" and then take forever getting them. I also think that anyone who raids should be aware of what gear he needs and wants before he enters the raid. People hate it when you go "I don't know if this is an upgrade..." and then take forever deciding it (there are other addons that I will talk about that will help you with this issue further).

Loot is one of the major things that WoW revolves around. No matter if you're a loot whore or not, you will be affected by loot (maybe not if you're a hunter), so being able to have a full overview to quickly check whatever you might need to check will most likely be very handy. Unless you play WoW very rarely (and I doubt you do if you read this blog) I strongly recommend this addon.

The only drawback of AtlasLoot is that it takes alot of space. Fortunately it comes in modules, which means you can choose not to be able to look at vanilla/bc/crafting etc loot if you don't want to. AtlasLoot only takes as much room as you need it to and doesn't force information on your that you're not interested in.

I could show you some nice pictures, but they'd be just the same as the ones over at wowinterface.com, so go check them out there!

Top 5 Most Annoying Items

Yay, another list! I'm currently leveling a little rogue and have since level 35ish had to kill a whole lot of trolls. It made me think about the fact that there are some things, items, in WoW that really annoy the heck out of me. Everytime I have to experience them I feel the nerdrage boiling inside me. I won't tell you just yet why the trolls in particular made me think about this, since it has made the number 1 on my list. And no sneak peaking!

5. Food
Yes, it annoys the heck out of me that although Blizzard have been buffing us players plenty, they haven't made the food able to keep our pace. This is especially annoying when you're a mage because the food you're able to conjure will mostly be useless. Who wants to have to eat three times to get full mana/hp? That's more than a minute of waiting around. And the most annoying part is that the solution is so dang simple, one wonders why Blizzard hasn't changed this a long time ago. Just simply make all food based on percentual hp, instead of a fixed amount. If they worry that this would remove the needs for ranks, one could still imagine rank 1 gives 1% hp/mana, rank 2 2% hp/mana and so on. And anyway, why do we need different levels on our foods? Would percentual gain be that OP? I doubt it. All the food with fixed gains are dang annoying, and unfortunately that means most of the foods out there.

4. Items that force players into doing stuff
I am thinking Toy Train Set. I am thinking Piccolo of the Flaming Fire. They are fun sometimes. But mostly they're just annoying. I am glad there is a Wind-Up Train Wrecker, but he just isn't enough! Why can't all those items work like the D.I.S.C.O party ball, where you have to actively click on something to participate. Why do they allow items that force us to listen to emotes? Fortunately enough I can remove myself from these items, at least most of the times. But I really hate it when someone pops the train set after some wiping in a raid. That's so annoying... it's almost fun. ^^

3. "Special" skins that are worth less than regular skins
Some skins are worth alot of money, like Rugged, Thick and Heavy Leather. Annoyingly enough however, you have a chance to get a "special" skin when skinning. It's rare and cool and worth shit. Most hides and dragonscales for example. Everytime I skin a mob that drops rugged leather and instead gives me a feckin hide, I know I've just lost 1g. Same goes with dragonscales, which fortunately only drop from dragonkin. No one wants those silly hides! So I should be able to decide for myself if what I skin turns into a skin or a hide.

2. Shaman reagents
Shamans are special. Instead of having to buy their reagents, like everyone else (they don't even have to buy ankhs with the right glyph), they get their reagents on drops. And those drops are common. Extremely common. And no one else can use them for anything, but everyone still gets them. Every damn player in Azeroth has to do the fiddling with Fish Oils and Fish Scales everytime they kill something remotely related to a fish, just so shamans can have an easy supply of their reagents. Reagents they most likely won't use in the first place because there are glyphs to remove the need for those too!

1. Troll Sweat
The by far most annoying item ever, which really makes me froth, is Troll Sweat. It's annoying because it drops from nearly every troll, it only stacks in 5 (which means it will clog your backpack asap) and it isn't even worth the bytes that comprise it. I know that there are addons that prevent you from looting worthless pieces of crap like these, but it really annoys me that I would have to use an addon just to avoid ONE stinking item. Ok I would probably use it to avoid those damn Fish Oils/Scales too. But still! The trolls sweats are everywhere! And they are... so... worthless. Nearly every troll I loot has one of these and I have to stop to empty my bags from them every 20th troll or so. And trolls are everywhere too! Nerdrage, anger, graaah!

So ok. I have released my rage about these items some now so I am a little more relaxed. But like I said I'm currently leveling a rogue in troll areas (STV, Hinterlands) and won't get away from them for long. And then I'll get a break from them for most of Outlands fortunately, but then they return in Zul'Drak! Although I am not sure if those trolls drop Troll Sweat too? Are there any items in WoW that really annoys you?

Can I have your loot?

I need to have a talk about this, because it happened again some days ago. A druid claiming to have equal rights to cloth as clothies because this and that. So I thought we'd give "this and that" a work-through to see if there is something valid there or just plain old scrooginess.

First of all, yes I do main a clothie. A healing priest to be precise (disc/holy dual). I agree I might be somewhat biased by this, after all it is some of my loot you're after (I don't care much about the hit-rating loot though). I will try to keep this in consideration for the following arguments and so could you. I also agree simply saying "clothies should have cloth because it's cloth" isn't a wholly worthy argument. More is needed.

1. Ok, so let's look at some arguments pro. Or actually the argument I get to hear. Some of the cloth loot is simply BestInSlot to balance/resto-druids. While I haven't checked into this myself I have simply taken the druids word for it and so for this discussion will assume this is true.
I do think that if something is the besterest you can get your hands on you should have some shot at attaining it. Question is of course, should you have an equal shot as say someone who can't get anything else? So Blizzard have put slightly more/better stats into some cloth-gear. Why? No one knows. Perhaps the druids get punished by having that extra armor in their leather, which they apparently care very little for. This means in cloth, some armor has been turned into say spirit or intellect instead. Maybe most druids think there is too much spirit in the leather gear and want the spirit free cloth loot? There is spirit free leather loot too though so that can't really be it.

I can digg that one would prefer another stat over armor, heck maybe even stamina if you're a caster. So is armor such a worthless stat for caster-druids? Let's keep this to a pve-setting. Neither resto nor balance has any aggro reduce skill which means once they get aggro they have to live it through and wait for someone else to help them. Druids can't use shields either but have been compensated by this by getting extra armor in tree respectively chicken form with the possibility to increase it further with Bark Skin (which actually reduces dmg taken and therefor also works for spells). This would indicate armor is of some matter to druids. Clothies who don't have armor have threat reduce skills of varying quality so it would feel safe to assume Blizzard has planned it to be either armor or threat reduce skill to keep you safe. This is true also for shamans and paladins. Of course this doesn't have to have anything to do with how it works in game. It wouldn't be the first, and surely not the last time, Blizzard thought something would work some way and it definitely didn't in the end.

Is armor too easily frowned upon by druids? Can they play equally well (or better as they would claim) in cloth? This might not be completely impossible. I'd even stretch to say this is a fair argument in the druids advantage. So let's move on to the next argument and issue.

2. "There are way more cloth loot than there is leather with spellpower". I have heard this too and of course, everytime someone says that I have to say "could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that there are three times as many clothies than there are spellpower using leather wearers?".
That's a simple fact. There are three classes sharing approximately the same cloth loot (the only difference being whether you need hit or not) and only one class using spellpower leather. Therefor it should be about 3-1 cloth vs spellpower leather. And again of course, Blizzard most likely plan their loot tables after the assumption that class distribution is somewhat equal, which of course doesn't have to be the truth. Druids are very popular and resto and boomkins more so over ferals (at least on my server). Druids are actually the third-most played class after Paladins and Death Knights. But the differences are still not large enough to claim that there is too much cloth loot in comparison to cloth users. There are still alot of cloth users out there. Over at -http://armorydatamining.appspot.com/general?t=PopBigPicture- you can see for yourself that in November 2009 druids were played by 10,4% of total, while clothies made up 26% of total. Ok not three times as many, but removing the ferals from the pool would make it pretty damn close.

Are the cloth drops really three times as many? Let's look at our most recent instance addition - Trial of the Crusader. Looking at 10-man normal and disregarding anything but cloth- required and leather- required (and only counting one side, in this case horde-drops) one finds 8 cloth items and 3 spellpower leather items. Wow, that really is one third! At 25-man normal the stats look better though (for druids anyway); 11 cloth-items and 5 spellpower leather items. Hmm, half.

Let's add it up; if druids could need on cloth as any other cloth that would be an approximate (just a hip-shot here, I admit) 27% increase in the clothie-population (7% total casterdruids to 26% total clothies assuming one third of the druid population are ferals). Unfortunately my math skills suck so badly any attempts from me to crunch numbers beyond this would make you laugh (actually you probably have already). But in any case we've seen that spellpower leather is more common overall compared to the amount of spellpower leather-user population than cloth is common to the clothie-population. No one in their right mind would say it would be fair to give something to someone that already has more? Would they? This would mean this is an argument against druids being able to roll on cloth.

So to the conclusion.
We've seen two arguments around this issue and they end up in slightly for and slightly against. It appears it differs somewhat between a 10-man and 25-man setting and of course it could differ even more in another raid all together. Also once could take into consideration how many clothies one has in the raid compared to how many caster-druids. In 10-mans this could matter.
The fact that cloth is better itemized for druids than the leather loot in some cases is according to me a pretty strong argument and maybe something Blizzard should look into. Unfortunately I don't think the stat-gains are that huge that it would warrant an extra strain on the clothiedrop-pool as spellpower druids already have their fair share. What are we talking about here anyway, 2 extra spirit? 5 extra haste-rating?
No cloth for the druids in other words!