That's another issue, though it has less to do with drop rates and more to do with how the quest can reasonably be completed. We came up with a "parallelization" concept where a player could be on phase 3 of making Dragonwrath, while another raider in the same group could be on phase 2. We thought that would feel better for the players involved, and it did, but more because they were getting their staves faster than for any other reason. The real problem with this idea is that it made it very difficult to balance the time investment it takes to create a staff. The first staff might take x amount of time to create, but then subsequent staves could potentially come out the door a lot faster.
Legendaries aren't very legendary if 20% of the raiding population is carrying them -- never mind the ripple effects that their presence can have on game balance in PvE and PvP. Ultimately, 'parallelization' made a too powerful item, too easy to get, too quickly. In short, it was a mistake that we regret, and one we won't be repeating in the future. It also left us with a situation that we needed to address, though, which is why we nerfed the quest item drop rates to begin with.
All of that is merely by way of explaining how we arrived at this point. The heart of the issue for many of you has been 10-player raid drop rates and I’d like to take a moment to thank those of you who provided clear, constructive feedback in these threads and elsewhere. It’s been really valuable during our deliberations and helped us arrive at a decision that we think will address our concerns and yours.
We’ve decided to revert the drop rate change for 10-player heroic Firelands completely. We’ll also be slightly buffing the drop rates in 10-player normal. In the end, we should get the following results:
• 25-player heroic has 44% lower drop rates in phase 3 relative to 4.2 launch.
• 25-player normal remains unchanged from 4.2 launch.
• 10-player heroic remains unchanged from 4.2 launch.
• 10-player normal has 33% higher drop rates in phase 3 relative to 4.2 launch.
We plan to hotfix the new rates into place as soon as possible, and we should see them in-place pre-raid this evening barring unforeseen complications.
