WoW: Goodbye Personal Loot, Hello Group Loot, Blizzard Changes up Loot Systems for Dragonflight Season 1

| Tags: | Author
WoW: Goodbye Personal Loot, Hello Group Loot, Blizzard Changes up Loot Systems for Dragonflight Season 1

After years of complaining about how unrewarding Personal Loot is, Blizzard has finally ended its reign as the defacto loot system for Dragonflight Season 1.


We all love Personal Loot. Nothing beats loading into your weekly raid, knowing you just need that last item to complete your set and ascend to the top of those DPS meters. But wait, you just got loot from the first boss of the raid, and you need loot from the third. Well, at least you can trade it to a guildie. Oh dear, it looks like you forgot to put that high ilvl trinket in both slots, so now your new useless item is extra useless because no one else can use it. Master Loot died for this.

So that's gone at least, oh, but Master Loot isn't coming back, by the way. Sorry to break it to you, dear WoW player. Oh no, it's back to good old Group Loot. So after the experiment failed, it's back to rolling for our items. But what is Blizzard doing and how is the system going to work? Let's take a look at what Blizzard had to say in their Blue Post.

Personal loot is gone; time to roll

To clarify right off the bat. This is only changing for Raiding in Season 1 of Dragonflight. Blizzard will announce changes to Mythic+ at a later date.

Group Loot:

  • While inside Vault of the Incarnates, Group Loot will be the only loot distribution method. There is no option to select for yourself or your group to return to Personal Loot.
  • Some items, like professions reagents, may still use Personal Loot where appropriate.
  • Need & Greed UI will return, and we’ll be monitoring feedback to make the rules around when and how players can roll on items be as intuitive as possible.

Now, while this isn't Master Loot, Group Loot will at least give guilds a chance to distribute loot themselves, sort of. Thankfully, loot trading is also getting improved finally.

Loot Trading:

  • While inside a raid, all item-level restrictions placed on trading between members of that group are removed entirely. This means that even small item level increases that aren’t upgrades (as often with rings and necklaces, which are budgeted high in secondary stats) won’t be locked to a player even when they roll and win that item.
MORE FROM ESTNN
Augmentation Evoker, Everything You Need to Know

Ok, so that's good, at least. Finally, Blizzard confirmed the item level tiering for Season 1.

Item Level Tiering

  • There now exists a 3rd item level tier at which items may drop, up from 2.
  • 389 is the base item level for Normal difficulty and will drop from Eranog, Primal Council, Sennarth, and Terros.
  • 395 is a new intermediate tier (was previously final bosses) that exists now for Wing Bosses – Dathea, Ascended and Kurog Grimtotem.
  • 398 is reserved for Final Bosses – Broodkeeper Diurna and Raszageth, the Storm-Eater
  • These item level increases still stay within the +13 band for each ‘tier’ of difficulty – meaning that Heroic Base would start at item level 402, just +4 after them.

We also learned a little about Blizzard's new “Unique Drops” (which are not Titanforging, BTW so stop saying it):

“Additionally, we’re experimenting with a number of bosses that possess one item that intentionally drops at a higher item level – usually +6 or +7 from that boss’s normal table.”

Blizzard will also add “new tech” to show this off in the Dungeon Journal. You'll see a mix of unique appearances, special bonus effects, or powerful trinkets. It sounds a lot like RNG to us, so I'm sure it'll go down like a fine wine.

What are Blizzard's goals?

Thankfully I won't have to channel my inner Mystic Meg (Google it) for this one. Blizzard posted exactly their goals for the changes in the blue post, so we can hold them accountable in Season 2 when they ruin it again.

  • Retain some excitement from early bosses that groups typically master very quickly and no longer become challenging by spicing up their loot tables
  • Give more long-term goals for challenging encounters
  • Make a more significant push towards having Item Level accurately reflect the power of a particular item.

Unique Drops scare me

Blizzard wants to give more bosses unique loot, similar to what we saw with Sylvanas, without them being legendary. It also looks like they want to display how powerful the unique effects are without just having a higher ilvl. Again, the helpful folks at Blizzard shared some examples of how this will work:

  • A pair of unique rings from Eranog and Diurna
  • An ‘Omni Trinket’ (Str/Agi/Int) from the Primal Council that gets stronger with more copies
  • A unique bow from the Storm Incarnate herself, Raszageth
MORE FROM ESTNN
Team Liquid Claim Victory in WoW Dragonflight Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible RWF

With raid testing on the Dragonflight Beta now underway, it'll be interesting to see the feedback, and we hope Blizzard casts a broader net to more casual players to test this feature.

BOEs are changing

Everyone loves waiting for a new raid tier to come out. The hype of going out with your guild and claiming all that cool new loot. What's not cool, however, is when the local rich kid comes on, heads to the AH and buys up all those juicy Mythic Raid BOEs. Come raid night, they no longer care for helping the guild, only about getting the highest ilvl they can. This may be some personal bias, but WoW's very own version of trickle-down DPS doesn't work.

So, how are BOEs changing for Season 1? Well, no need to ask me; once again, Blizzard has us covered:

  • Regular non-boss enemies within raids will no longer have a chance to drop Bind on Equip Epic items. Instead, ‘Lieutenant’ enemies – named mini-bosses throughout the raid – will have chances to drop them instead. These would work like LT’s do in current WoW, where you’re only eligible to receive loot from them once per week, per difficulty.
  • BoEs would become scaled with group size like regular bosses do. This would guarantee a set number of BoEs each raid per group, assuming a full clear of the instance.
  • Lastly, we’d be placing more important items into the BoE pool. This could be anything from weapons to higher item-level pieces to make them more worthwhile to raiders.

Honestly, it sounds like Blizzard are fixing the idea of “Mythic BOE farming” runs while still allowing guilds to sell off BOEs from higher tiers to all of us lower-tier plebs. Blizzard is describing the raid itself as a “9th boss”, which is certainly one way of putting it. The reality is that this is to clarify how BOEs work and make them a targetable goal, not a farm fest.

Now, we've not seen this in action yet, but it's safe to say the general community reaction is mixed. Check out more of our WoW content.