The best loot comes from hard modes, not just Yogg-Saron
Yesterday, Ensidia earned the world-first Yogg-Saron kill. This is not the world-first Ulduar clear, because Algalon is designed to be the hardest boss in there, but that's a story for another post. What I want to talk about here is loot.
Specifically, I want to talk about the quality of Yoggy's goods, which is the same as the quality of every other drop in normal-mode Ulduar-25: ilvl 226 for armor, and ilvl 232 for weapons. The same pattern holds on 10-man, with Yogg-10's drops being ilvl 219, like the rest of Uld-10. This is a departure from previous tradition, where the last boss of a raid would drop items of higher caliber. Kel'Thuzad, for instance, drops items a full tier above the rest of Naxx (ilvl 213 vs. 200 on 10-man, ilvl 226 vs 213 on 25-man).
Blizzard has addressed the question, and says the new strategy is for the best loot in the raid to come from hard modes, not from the last boss. So, for instance, the items dropped by Flame Leviathan, Ulduar's first boss, on hard mode are better than the ones Ensidia has wrenched from Yoggy's normal-mode tentacles.
Does this strategy make sense to you, or do you think a raid's big bad should drop big loot? Personally, I can completely get behind hard-mode yielding better rewards, even if it means my guild won't see them for a little while. I'm having a blast in Ulduar so far.
