And the point is...

Following on from my previous post, apart from the fun-factor, what's the point in raiding Ulduar?

Imagine a Goblin. He likes making money, and lot's of it. He chooses to always try and achieve the maximum amount of profit from the minimal amount of work. But he's not afraid of hard-work, as long as it pays off in the end.
A true goblin would stay the hell away from Ulduar. If you can farm heroics, which are much easier, to achieve a similar level of loot, then why would you want to go raiding?


According to WowWiki, the time taken on each Heroic is quite high, but speaking from alot of experience, they're not. I think you can easily slash about a third off the times shown on there.
e.g. VH is shown as 24 Minutes, but it's easy to do in 15. UK is 25 Mins, but our runs usually average 11-12 (and occasionally 10).
Even then, I still think that's a little high. Gundrak for example is shown as a 90 Minute run, and it's nothing of the sort.



But applying that to the whole of the list (-1/3 off all the times on WoWWiki) gives a total time of 444 Minutes, or 7 and a half hours. If you run all of them in one day, you would receive 52 Emblems of Conquest, + 2 Emblems of Conquest from the Daily Normal, and 2 Emblems of Triumph from the Daily Heroic.



In Ulduar (10), the Munquis raid twice per week, for around 4-5 Hours per night.And the average raid boss drops only 1 or 2 Emblems of Conquest. (Let's say 2 for ease).
Let's also presume that a good Munqui team can clear Ulduar in the 2 nights. and we'll shave a bit fo the time off too. There's a maximum of 14 Bosses in Ulduar, including optional.

So for Heroics 7 Hours = 54 Emblems of Conquest, 2 Emblems of Triumph, a hell of alot of Reputation gains, and a nice pot of gold to spend on Enchants, Gems etc... And the whole thing can be repeated every single day.

For Ulduar 9 Hours = 28 Emblems of Conquest, 0 Emblems of Triumph, 0 rep gains, possibly some gold (but repair bills might eat in to this), And the run can only be completed once per week.


The next part is easiest to see with a DPS'er. So let's use that as an example.

Let's say the DPS'er has some epic pieces, and can pull off 3k DPS in an average raid. He really wants to reach ToC.

If he grinds heroics, and daily heroics, he's not going to struggle much. It'll be a walk in the park for him, and he can earn loads of emblems every day.
But if he raids, he might get the chance of a random drop which is even better than some of the Emblem gear.

But how much better? Not a lot. And how useful? Again, not as much as it first seems.

Imagine a pair of boots:
The pair you have now has +80 AP. The Emblem / Rep version would have +100 AP, but the random Ulduar drop version has +120AP. That's another 20% increase, that's awesome.. right?
Right, but the Emblem of Triumph version has +150 AP. And you don't get Emblems of Triumph in Ulduar.

Remember though, that you only get a 20% increase in DPS once every piece you're wearing is upgraded too. Until then you only get a small % increase in your stats. There's 11 Equipment slots, not counting tabards. So you'd need 11 upgrades to achieve a full new set of gear.

So, for 3 months of Heroics, the original 3000 DPS -> 3750 DPS in Emblem of Conquest / Rep Gear -> 5400 DPS in Emblem of Triumph Gear


And, for 3 months of Ulduar, the original 300 DPS -> 4500 DPS in Full Ulduar Gear

Even if you didn't get a full set of Emblem of Triumph Gear, you'd still achieve more than the 4500 DPS of the Ulduar Gear. And certainly enough to move on to ToC.

So what's the point in Ulduar?

God Knows, But I'll probably still go.