Argent Coliseum – Loot design

So, I’m hearing about the new raid instance in the 3.2 patch that is forthcoming, and the loot system is going to be interesting.

There will be 10 and 25 man versions, and for the first time there will be “Heroic” versions of Both 10 and 25 man raids.  In the past, the 25 man version of a raid instance was said to be the “heroic version of the 10 man”. 

With Ulduar, they introduced the concept of (officially) Hard Modes.  We had already seen Hard Modes with Sartharion, but it wasn’t really official other than a few extra bits of loot and the special mount drop.  In Ulduar, we have official hard modes where killing a boss on hard mode activates an additional loot table that contains items that cannot be acquired any other way than doing the hard mode for that boss.  This is what makes these hard modes “official” to me.

To activate these “hard modes”, raid groups would have to do various things to switch the fight into hard mode.  Some were very easy and obvious, like the giant red button behind Mimiron that says “NO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON” – If you push it BEFORE you aggro the boss, you’re in Hard Mode.  Other hard modes are more tricky to activate, like XT-002 where you have to “Kill the heart” in 30 seconds or less to activate XT’s hard mode.  Once you do that, the fight mechanics change and it’s health resets. For Thorim, you need to reach him before Sif leaves to activate his hard mode.   Finally, some “hard modes” aren’t really even modes.  Hodir’s hard mode is just killing him faster.  There’s nothing special that happens when you switch on hard mode, because technically when you do it, the boss just died.  In other words, some guilds will start doing Hodir on “hard mode” by accident as they get more efficient at completing the encounter.

So, in the Argent Coliseum, I think what they are doing is now using the “Heroic Mode” Switch to activate the hard modes.  this means there will be a regular and heroic version of the 10 man.  There’s never been a heroic 10 man before.  There’s also never been a "non-heroic” version of a 25 man before.  So, now, the new question is – how do we tell an instance that we want 10 man heroic mode?  Does it switch from 10 man to 25 man if an 11th person steps through the door?  or will there be some new switch to throw?

One good thing I have heard is that all guilds will be forced to complete a raid on normal mode before they can attempt to jump to hard modes.  I’m not sure how they plan to enforce this… Does everyone in the raid need to have a “I completed normal mode” achievement before they can switch on heroic mode?  What happens if the raid is already in there, and they need to swap out someone who hasn’t completed it?  I suspect it will reject them at the door just like what happens when someone who is not in a raid group tries to zone into a raid instance.

So, now let’s talk about the loot in this new “Heroic 10-man” mode.  Loot in the normal 10 and 25 man raids sound like it will work as it always has in the past.  It’s the heroic(hard) modes that will work differently.  I’m not clear on this, but it sounds like the heroic modes will drop loot like on normal, and there will be a new “Tribute System” that will drop additional loot based on “number of attempts”.

This Tribute system will work like this… When a guild starts doing the raid on heroic Mode, there will be a counter that counts how many times the raid wipes.  It will probably be more like a counter that counts how many times the boss is aggroed.  If that’s the case, guilds will probably get especially pissed off at rogues, hunters, or mages who try to cheat death and end up re-aggroing the boss after everyone else has died, because it will eat an extra attempt count.

So, the instance will count how many attempts are required to kill a boss, and if the boss is killed within an acceptable number of attempts, there will be a “Crusader’s Tribute” cache added to the base loot, probably just like the “Cache” chests offered by many of the bosses in Ulduar.  Blizzard seems to like these chests, but they are a pain in the ass for raiders who want to click the corpse to see the loot before bidding DKP.  My guild always links the loot in chat, but it’s easier to see them directly, if you ask me.

The loot found in the Tribute will be adjusted based on the number of attempts used to defeat the boss.  Clearly the best loot will be found if the raid “one-shots” the boss, but it’s not clear on how the loot will degrade when more attempts are taken.  Will the iLvl go down?  or perhaps there will be a few pieces of loot and pieces will be taken away as more failures occur?  or perhaps a combination of lowering iLvl and count.  I’m not sure yet how it will work, but I’m looking forward to finding out in person! (in toon? heh)