Satchel of Exotic Mysteries is coming in Patch 4.1
Blizzard announced that Patch 4.1 will include a “Call to Arms” to encourage tanks and healers to join pug heroics dungeons. If you’re not a tank you can wait for 30 minutes for a heroic in the “looking for party” dungeon finder, which is a pain in the backside if your guild tanks are all busy, and the pug tanks all disenchanted their braincells at level 20. (Source http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2568337 ) Adding a satchel to the dungeon rewards is meant to encourage healers and tanks to join the call to arms in the dungeon finder.
My main is a feral druid, I queue 80% of the time as dps kitty. The 20% of the time I queue as a bear/tank is either due to misplaced hope or insobrietry. Big Bear Butt writes: “Is that the best they could come up with for a bribe? … I, personally, love tanking above all other group roles available in the game, and yet, I do not queue for randoms as a tank. Why? Because of the attitudes I encounter when I’ve tried. The behavior. The abuse.” I agree with him. Blizzard gave people dual spec which enabled some classes to keep a healer or tank spec in their second slot. That didn’t work at persuading us to tank, either.
Putting aside my concerns as a potential tank for a moment, let’s look at the bribe of “Satchel of Exotic Mysteries” which Blizzard offer. Maybe this will cheer me up as a gold-maker, instead?
Possible items included in Satchel of Exotic Mysteries
1. “some gold” Ok, I like gold, but how much is “some gold”, is it worth me tearing my hair out?
2. “a chance at a rare gem” Only a chance? Only a rare gem? That’s not worth much. You’d have to be desperate.
3. “a chance at a flask/potion” Again: Only a chance? You’d have to be desperate.
4. “a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets)” This is BAD news for gold-makers who sell these limited supply pets to collectors. It’s also useless for pet collectors, who generally already have these. Fail.
5. “a very rare chance at receiving a mount (those specifically only available through dungeons , like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister’s Terrace, and Deathcharger’s Reins from Stratholme.” A very rare chance? Big whoop. I’d prefer a very rare chance at getting these mounts by soloing the instances, without having to put up over-agroing dps, and healers who refuse to use their mana. these are not sellable or tradable, it doesn’t affect us as a gold-maker. Fail.
All in all, what a waste of time. Thanks a bunch, Blizz.
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
I myself am a tank on my main and while this change wouldn’t have convinced me to switch if I already wasn’ a tank, I do enjoy it. So I take it as what it is to me – An added bonus fro something I already am doing.
It has changed when I do actually run my tank in randoms though.
I now only queue when there is a tanking Call to Arms. I mean why would I do it for free, when I can wait a few minutes and get extra rewards.
As I mentioned on The Auction House Junkies gold making podcast (episode #8), I got a rare mount on my 3rd Satchel of Exotic Mysteries. Sadly, I already had the sucker on my main!
PRO-TIP: The Satchels are BoA, but the mounts themself are still BoP. So be sure to turn off your auto loot option before opening the bag – in case you already have the mount or pet. You can mail the bag to another character of yours, but only if the mount is still in the bag.
Just wanted to say the rewards so far for queuing solo as a tank are ridiculous. I avg about 80g per bag then some random flasks or piss poor gems. Granted it is helping me cut down on repair costs from failed groups in the new instances.
I agree with you the Satchel is just not giving me any reason to tank on my druid and honestly I don’t believe there is any reward great enough to get me to want to tank in random heroics unless maybe if they just made it super easy for tanks like a buff which increase threat generation by insane amounts especially for first time tanks maybe just make the buff less and less every time you tank the instance because there are already some horrid tanks out there I can’t imagine the type of tanks this little reward system will bring in. As for rewards I am not sure what I would want probably something useful or maybe just Valor or Conquest Badges and money of coarse ; )
I agree the rewards are not sufficient to cause many current tanks to decide to run more randoms. I think Blizz is trying to entice new tanks to enter the fray–perhaps transitioning from DPS to become a tank.
If there were a burning desire for current DPS to become tanks they would have done so already to avoid the wait times. After all the JPs are usable on their main spec for better DPS gear.
I’m not sure what the solution is but the bribe will result in longer queue times imho. An incentive to behave one way can also be viewed as a disencentive to behave a different way–i.e., queing without an incentive becomes abnormal behavior.