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.

A tale of 2 Pallies

Once upon a time, in a land far-far away, but that millions of people visited every day, there was a Paladin.

The Paladin had goals. He had things in life that he strived for. He looked at others, and thought to himself 'I want to be like them'.
So he trudged his way up through the levels, until he reached 70. And when he got there, he threw away his tanking gear, that had supported him well up to that point, and began collecting healing gear.

He knew that to get in to groups, he would need to provide something that others couldn't. And at that time, that was healing. There just weren't very many healers around.

He completed long quest chains for some pieces, for others he entered heroic dungeons, to collect random drops, and badges that he could trade for entry-level gear.
Before long he had picked up enough kit, and invested enough time in perfecting his healing, to enter Karazahn. While there he had a great time. Sometimes it went well, other times it didn't. But it didn't matter, it was alot of fun, and for every boss that was killed he would receive random loot, and even more badges. but these could be exchanged for very high level equipment.
The Paladin thought this was awesome, and he could hopefully move on to bigger and better things, which he had no hope of doing without first mastering Karazahn. He didn't make it very far past Karazahn, but he wasn't too bothered. He still felt that he'd achieved enough to sleep at night. And finally, he retired happily.


12 months later, another Paladin was born. This one had similar dreams of glory, so he set off on his mission to reach level 80. Hoping one day to be good enough to enter raids, and experience all the adventures a young-man could want.
But when he got to 80, things weren't quite what he expected.
He also began to complete heroic dungeons, to gather his gear. In this case he didn't forsake his tanking, since it was still highly sought after in most groups.
At first the dungeons were difficult. He felt like he'd been there before, and knew all of the encounters, but being toe-to-toe from the mobs was much different to standing at the back of the crowd and shooting at them.
But before long the Paladin had mastered his art, and along the way he'd collected lots of nice equipment too.
The badges that were dropped by the bosses in the dungeons also provided him with a few extra nice pieces. Until he reached the point where those badges weren't worth very much to him anymore.

So off he went, all psyched up to enter the dreaded citadel of Naxxramas. Only, he found, nobody else was going there. Naxx was no longer a challenge, since the gear that he'd collected from doing heroics was equivalent or better than the stuff dropped in Naxx.
But he wasn't detered, he dipped his toe into the lava pools of Sartharion, and found it no problem, so he set his sights on the mighty gates of Ulduar, confident that he would eventually master it, and then be able to proceed to enter the Trial of the Crusader. Where, one day, he might be found worthy enough to face Arthas himself.

But.... It turns out that the emblems / badges dropped in Ulduar are exactly the same ones that are dropped in the heroics. So he was going to have to rely and nothing but random drops to provide enough equipment to allow him to reach the next level of uberness... ... ... Bugger.

Ulduar was hard, it was difficult. He was sure it would be a lot of fun to do, but the rewards weren't going to be very worthwhile.
But if he stayed doing nothing but daily heroics between now and the time of Arthas's arrival, he'd be one of the best geared Tanks in the land.
The reward for completing those daily challenges was 2 emblems of Triumph. And the only other way to obtain them was in the higher level dungeons.

The Paladin, being good at maths, sat down and thought it through:

'If I go to Ulduar, and I'm lucky, I could get some more emblems of conquest, and the chance to roll on some random loot. But I'd probably die alot, and waste alot of time. And I can only repeat it once per week.'

'But, if I just spent the same amount of time doing heroics, I'll earn tons of emblems of conquest. Probably enough to buy a full set of healing gear. Loads of cash from quest rewards and mob drops. AND if I do the daily challenge at the same time, I'll also pick up 2 Emblems of Triumph every day too.'


So did the Pally go to Ulduar?

Of course he did. But why?



The same reason a man does many things in his life................ Because his freinds were doing it.