[World of Warcraft] Did they ever roll back the useless Paladin and Shaman drops, or was the final decision that was “working as intended”? If so, did it have as big an effect on raiding as expected? Remember, it was explicitly done to allow faster problem fixes in paid-beta post-release Burning Crusade, so you get to be more demanding and vocal about any problems then.
: Zubon
The useless drops were never rolled back.
The impact on guilds raiding the more recent dungeons was somewhat limited since the class armour loot from them is tokenised – Shaman or Paladin would be only one of a selection of classes who could use each token. There were certain individual pieces dropping that were optimised for each class but at the very least they weren’t restricted so other classes could use them (Alliance came out slightly better here because Paladins can use Shaman-optimised-mail armour whereas Horde Shaman cannot use Paladin-optimised-plate armour). The only big problem was Kel’Thuzad dropping class specific rings. Given that most people haven’t made all that many KT kills having your final few before the expansion messed up with unusable loot is not nice.
Guilds still raiding Molten Core or Blackwing Lair hit most of the trouble because those two places still drop class specific items from every boss that cannot be used by anyone else. One Alliance guild on our server killed Nefarian for the first time this very week and had a Shaman chest piece drop. They were not impressed.
The decision was not rolled back, and even the thread that discussed it was deleted. And at least on my server (Defias Brotherhood EU), raiding is dead. One guild goes to Naxxramas (they are nowhere near Kel’thuzad, though), and that’s about it.
Well, I’d also say that raiding is pretty dead because Burning Crusade hits the stores soon. And since there are green and blue items that are way better than most of the loot from the current instances, many people don’t bother about wasting evening after evening in raids anymore. Instead of raiding, PvP is the way to go now, and why not: The rewards are pretty good, and much easier to obtain.
Yeah raiding has slow downed so much on my server that not many people are complaining about the useless paladin/shaman drops. Plus some guilds are using AQ20 and ZG as practice for the smaller size raids in the Burning Crusade. Since those raid zones are token based there’s not much of an issue.
Like someone mentioned above the main problems are when paladin/shaman loot drop from Ragnaros, Nefarion, and Kel’thuzad.
It quieted down overall, but I did see some new posts on the subject when I was reading the raid forums yesterday. Guilds that are just hitting those instances are understandably upset. They feel like the have very little time to get some gear before the BC bang, so drops of useless gear aren’t appreciated.
Got our first Leggings of the Grand Crusader in Naxx the other night, there was much swearing and bitching to be had.
The guilds in MC with non-token drops must be livid is all I can imagine.