Waiting For An Alibi

Looking For Raid (LFR) words to send a shiver down anybody's spine. I have partaken twice this week and have had flawless raids on both occasions. I apologise to anybody who was in these raids because I was definitely in the bottom quadrant on both occasions. At least I do actually know what I am doing and didn't bring in the extra slimes or upset Yor’Sajh the Unsleeping and bring him into the fight whilst the slime where still up.

I am not even going to discuss the 45 minute wait, for 5 healers to show up. The change to the UI now shows the make up of the party and with LFR it is always a healer shortage. I have mentioned this way to many times in the past to discuss it now.

Today's topic is the new Personal Loot System. Now the old system did not work properly and almost everybody is in agreement on that. The system could be manipulated in several ways:

1. Guild runs - in which everybody rolled Need on all items to then pass on to the lucky recipient.
2. Individuals rolling need in hope of battering for something they actually needed.
3. Individuals rolling need and then doing the job of distributing to the most needy.

The system was in build with it's own QQ and griefing, people would beg for items and scream in Raid chat and pester in whisper.

Now in theory the new Personal Loot System, is designed to avoid all of the above and make the system fairer. Does it work in practice? Here is the description from Wowpedia.

Loot rules

Raid Finder uses a system called Personal Loot. When a boss is killed, every player has a fixed percentage chance of receiving a loot item. For each player, the game will decide based on a fixed percentage chance whether the player will receive loot. If so, the game will then select a class-appropriate item from the boss's loot table and immediately deposit the item into the player's inventory. All players who do not receive a loot item will instead be issued a bag of gold. All loot gained through this method is Bind on Pickup and can not be traded with other players.

Blizzard maintains that statistically you have more chance of being rewarded with this system. The big question is what is the "fixed percentage" ? The answer seem to be that nobody knows or else nobody is saying. So far I have killed 6 bosses and I am now personally 150 Gold richer.

If the droprate is 25% then I am just unlucky. If the droprate is 12.5% then you would have to complete the full Dragon Soul LFR to have a realistic chance of loot. If the rate is even lower then you can't even rely on a drop every week and then it is RNG gods as to which piece each week you might win. As I am writing this, it obvious that the Valor system does a much better job of assigning the right gear to the right person. So why no make it 600 Valor for each wing, put the LFR Tier gear or iLevel appropriate gear back in the Valor vendors inventory and let us equip solely through tokens.

Alternatively match loot with peoples inventory and/or  iLevels and make the percentages higher at the lower levels, and reducing with every item obtained. Do not distribute Tier shoulders to somebody with 5 already in their bags but without a helm after 12 runs.

Honestly I really want this system to work, but in it's current format it is going to end in tears.

If you are not in position to raid every week or even at all, but can jump into LFR due to unsociable hours, shortage of time, unwillingness to join a normal raid, then LFR is not offering a suitable gearing path, and is purely a tour bus of the current content. In my opinion it will be an empty bus in a few months.