Why gearing in Timeless Isle is worse than new dungeon.

[Dakara]

Timeless Isle was a test run/experiment/preview call it what you will of how dailies might be changing. Obviously it needs some tweaking, but many people in this game only seem to see in black and white. It's either awesome or it fails.

We all got sick of dailies in MOP, and Blizzard finally listened with Timeless Isle, where most objectives are weekly, but can keep the daily grinders occupied.

I'm sure we can all agree on a few things:
1.) It needs to be dynamic
2.) The zone could be bigger
3.) As a "catch up" mechanic, it probably needs to drop weapons so people jumping into LFR can pull their own weight.
4.) It could probably be "slower" so people don't burn through it in a day then come to MMO champ and winge about it.

But instead of writing off the Isle, give it a chance, give Blizzard some feedback, and we might avoid the horror that was 5.1 dailies... (unless you liked them).

[Deleted]

It's not. not in the same sense that heroics in cataclysm were or heroics in wrath. It cannot be as if it were an actual alternative it would take away from the production of raids.

So for something to be an alternative to raiding, it must be developed by the same team that develops the raids? I'm sorry but that doesn't say anything other than "I don't like raiding and I don't want those who raid to have a good time!".

The lack of end game alternatives to raiding. TI is not an alternative. Especially not relative to the alternatives that people were doing in the past i.e buyign valor gear through dungeons

Timeless Isle is an alternative to raiding, as is Scenarios. Both are alternative means of obtaining gear and valor that is still subpar to raiding but good enough to catch up.

This was a common complaint on forums, it was certainly not a common complaint by players in game.

Actually it was, you just didn't hear it among the circle of friends that you hung out with. Do you honestly think Blizzard would change the way they develop content based on a loud minority? They get loads of feedback directly from players that we do not see on the forums, because it's sent directly to Blizzard.

The complaint in mists that it "offered to much to do" (which isn't really true btw it's just more obnoxious grind) could also be taken as a counter to that. While the complaint of lack of things to do was very frequent it was certainly not universal or one that should have been acted upon. The content being developed fast this expansion is a result of the streamlining process they did and basically why we don't have any more dungeons. Everyone being shoved into raiding allows to focus basically just on raiding.

More choice is still more choice, it doesn't matter if you consider it to be more obnoxious grinding. Both Timeless Isle and Scenarios are further alternatives, whether you acknowledge that or not.

They wanted more people to get into raiding, that is true, and there's a good reason for it too, they already spend a lot of resources on making the raids so making sure that more people can enjoy it is really neither a weird nor a bad thing.

This is of course simple untrue and some basic math could show you why. 16 slots of gear, 1000 valor cap. Let's say each piece is 1000 with the weapon being 1600. You've got roughly between 3-4 months (and that's assuming you cap every week). Given the current patch schedule of 5-6 months that leaves one-tw0 month for alts. RNG IS NOT NECESSARY.

Blizzard doesn't like that design because people find it awfully grindy (mostly because you can see the entire path that lies ahead of you), they prefer to give you a chance to be rewarded every now and then. The feeling of not knowing if you will get loot or not, and then actually getting loot is in their eyes preferable. Whether or not that is better is something you will have to talk to them about.

It sure as hell isn't necessary in PVP whose model is almost ENTIRELY ALL DETERMINISTIC. IT's a complete fucking MYTH because people were avoiding rng for TWO EXPANSIONS including wrath and nobody suffered.

The only reason it isn't like that in PVP is because they didn't have the personal loot rewarding system and it would be weird if it dropped loot in a battleground at the end of it. It's not a system they prefer, it's a system that was created in lack of anything better.

TI is not more casual friendly than wrath. It rewards less than wrath, takes more time to get anywhere and finally raiding by ANY MEASURE is not casual friendly and not something casuals asked for. It being easy is not the sole measure of casual or not. Making raiding the sole end game makes mists terrible not casual friendly.

The only option you really had outside of raiding in Wrath was dungeons, in MoP you have Timeless Isle, dungeons, scenarios and pet battles. All of these are more casual friendly (with exception of dungeon which is the same) because they require less time and gives you more options of what to do and when.

Each of these has to be less rewarding, otherwise there would only be one choice to really go with, which isn't really a choice.

I find it hilarious how you think that you can speak on behalf of all casuals, especially considering a lot of casuals raid. I consider myself a casual, as does our guild. We raid two times a week, three hours per time, aside from that I don't really log in much outside of a Scenerio every now and then.

[kassy]

you honestly think those people would do more than 50-60k if they're epics came from heroics they were carried through? lol

[potis]

you honestly think those people would do more than 50-60k if they're epics came from heroics they were carried through? lol

Those wouldnt, but others would.

I leveled my mage quickly because of Timeless Isle, i wanted to test out Fire Spec..I had like 30 Timeless Isle items ready for him , he is 496 item level exactly without a weapon and trinket from justice + Timeless Isle, 5 minutes after he dinged 90, reforged to 15% hit and everything, prepared him and:

The maximum DPS i can do solo, when stars align and it actually crits and i can throw some Pyroblasts is 60K DPS, i could spec frost and do 80K but Frost is utter boring, not counting Time Wrap, just proper combustion and mirror images etc etc.

Either way 60K and 80K in SoO is a joke even in ToT its a joke so i put the mage at the side, ignored he exists and went back to the other characters.

Now if Timeless Isle gear was ~510 item level lets say, the trinkets were like 0.5-0.7 RPPM with 10K stats instead of 1.2+ as they are in ToT and a weapon of 500 item level also, my shit mage would be doing ~120K and he wouldnt be useless anywhere but dungeons.

[Fullmetal89]

I hate the Isle and many of the new additions in MoP. I was bored after an hour of playing around in the Isle, it's great for those that find it fun but I can't stay there for more than 5mins. It feels like a chore to go around looting chests, killing random mobs and trying to get away from tools ganking. I rather have a well structured 5 man dungeon than this clusterfuck sandbox island as a gearing up system. If the next expansion is like MoP, in the sense that they only give us like 3-4 new dungeons and use LFR and a system like the Isle as catch-up, I won't be buying a sub. Even though I liked the theme, Pandaria and the Pandaren; MoP for me is the least enjoyable expansion I have played to date. I thought they couldn't do worse than Cataclysm but they proved me wrong with the boundless gating and linear raiding in this expansion (SoO is the only "good" raid).

[lunchbox2042]

You make a false assumption that those people pulling 50k dps in timeless gear would be pulling higher dps in better gear. Those people pulling 50k dps are usually the ones that don't know their class well enough to optimize it or just don't care enough.

[Wishblade]

All I know is that I'll take properly itemized gear over random stats ANY DAY!

I hate randomized items, so stupidly annoying to have to get an item several times before you might get the right stats you're looking for. Same reason I don't care for scenarios, randomized gear.

I'll happily do dungeons, as long as I know that once I get those plate legs off of the 2nd boss, then I'll be done praying for that drop! Plus, dungeons are more fun than all these random events that can die in seconds. Random events and all sorts of Timeless Isle aspects, sure, bring em on here and there, the elements are cool, but the Isle is crap.

[Dakara]

You make a false assumption that those people pulling 50k dps in timeless gear would be pulling higher dps in better gear. Those people pulling 50k dps are usually the ones that don't know their class well enough to optimize it or just don't care enough.

Some are, some aren't. Some are in 496 gear with a green trinket and weapons.

[Duito]

Shut up...stop complaining don't like it, sell all the gear you get for 5 gold...good day sir

[Socialhealer]

eternal kilnmasters are more deadly than anything that's ever been in a 5man dungeon, unless your a hunter/warlock then as usual your pet is a complete god vs a billion aoe damage.

[Deleted]

Timeless Isle's great. You can farm the gear at your own pace, without having to worry about anything else.

[Bashkar]

I loved the early cataclysm heroics, and would love for Blizzard to at the very least add another dungeon difficulty and put the early cataclysm heroic version there, so that those who can't handle it can keep on grinding their mindless npc's with no effort without being able to complain about losing out on dungeons. Alas, I doubt Blizzard will ever do this, it would be too good to be true.

This is something I would like them to do:
Heroic dungeons -> regular dungeons
new mode -------> heroic dungeons, requires a premade group (otherwise people will call out for nerfs).
challenge modes--> challenge mode

If anything, I see that being more likely than not.

IIRC, there was a blue post suggesting that they were entertaining the notion, can't seem the find it. They've already established a precedent with Flex and Heroic Scenarios; it's not too much of a struggle to offer more difficult content for those who want it. It doesn't necessarily need to be really difficult, but there's obviously wiggle-room between faceroll and hardcore content.

I'd expect tiering something along the lines of:

Scenarios and Dungeons < Heroic Scenarios = Heroic Dungeons = LFR < Endgame Zone(s) = Flex < Normal Raids < Heroic Raids

Personally, I love the isle. For someone who's capped all eleven classes, it's an absolute godsend. I'm able to at least bring everyone up to ToT level and ease into SoO. I can't just grind dungeons eleven times - I might have to murder someone.

In the future, I'd like to see a balance of directed content (dailies) and open roaming, moreso than just the Shaohao quest; give players some direction, while encouraging exploration. TI is obviously a test case, and they've already suggested TI was a success and will be offering similar content in the future. I'm excited for it, more options is fantastic, and I imagine future versions of it will be far larger in scale.

[Tucci]

I can't believe how many people are below 50k dps. There are ACTUALLY people at 20 and 30k!! I even saw a mage at 19k. This isn't just bad players. This is bad, half afk, carry me please, I just fully geared in 2 hours from timeless isle, time to queue for SoO players that are hitting what lights up when they aren't backpedaling out of fire that DBM has to scream at them 17 times about. I don't think I've seen such bad dps ever. You have a minimum of 496 ilvl. There is no excuse.

You couple this with 1 hr queue times and you get a lot of angry people including myself. Also, queue times when a tank leaves is sometimes as long as normal queue times when you aren't even in LFR yet so people avoid kicking tanks even if they're terrible. There was a tank yesterday who was ungemmed, unenchanted, not reforged and running INTO aoe and standing in it constantly, never listening and the vote to kick failed on him twice because people didn't want to wait. When it finally went through we luckily got another tank very fast and downed the boss right away. And people were getting mad at me for saying we should kick anyone under a certain dps (75-80k).


Blizzard needs to implement a system where if people are averaging under a certain dps for a fight (it would change from fight to fight) they would get a debuff or something that would start ticking down and if you didn't meet the dps requirement before the debuff was up, you get kicked, sort of like the debuff in BG's. The problem with this I guess is that sometimes you're doing a different mechanic of a fight than other people so dps would vary. They would have to make it something just there to kick the people doing ABYSMAL dps. 20-50k on iron juggernaut is ABYSMAL. The debuff could maybe kick anyone under 70k on that fight. I think that's pretty fair. If that was the case, we would've lost probably 5-8 people. My 85 mage does almost 40k in Cata gear. Again, there's no excuse. And for the record, when I mentioned we should look at low dps and kick people under a certain amount, dps shot way up next pull.


I'd say they also need to give tanks more incentive to queue. Something like 2k gold for staying and fully completing an LFR and/or extra VP or something. Can't believe how long SoO queue times are. Brand new wing, 1+hr queues.

[Florena]

IMO dungeons are fun at first but soon grow very tedious after you've cleared them a few times. And they take up art resources that could have been spent on the raids, which in turn last us a lot longer than dungeons.

[jangkun]

For gearing Wotlk and Cata last patch dungeon were pretty good and funnier than running around on Island.

I prefered 5 man dungeon than Scenario but HSce feel ok to me. I'm fine if they want to focus more on them than 5man now but I think it should be 100% chance to get an item. They could change the ilvl. HSce were released when ToT was here since 1 patch already and they dgave us a chance to get 516ilvl items. It's between LFR and normal. If it's 100% chance to get an item I'd lower ilvl to LFR one if released in the same patch. If they put new HSce between two major patch then a ilvl between last lfr/normal raid is fine.
Why 100% chance drop? old H5man had 3-4 bosses dropping epic + quest when you do them for the first time.

giving 1 item after last boss defeated in HSce is defeated isn't too much especially when you can get something you already have (since they released Hsce I got 6 weapons, 5 ring 3 boots).

Or they could increase reward when you complete it timed

And please bring back minimum ilvl to join them..

[Deleted]

I agree, the Timeless Isle sucks. No story, no difficulty, no variety.
I'm not particularly fond of chain dungeon running but it's surely better than this. In my opinion 5.1 style dailies plus slightly harder dungeons and heroic scenarios is the best mix.

[Rizendragon]

Why gearing in Timeless Isle is worse than new dungeon?
-people are just walking on an isle, killing mindless mobs,
-they can get gear just after they find chests(don't even need to kill mobs),
-new dungeon means boss fights, so people would be more prepared for a raid,
-new dungeons would be overall better than Timeless Isle, which is grind fest(of course doing dungeons is also grinding, but not as much as Timeless Isle, people enjoy more doing dungeons),

I just came to this conclusion after seeing many people in LFR with Timeless Isle gear, they were doing less than 50-60K DPS and they were just bad.

I think that Blizzard was just lazy, they just made an isle with loot all over the place, which is pretty stupid for me.
What's your opinion?

This thread isn't LFR vs Flex, LFR vs Normal/Heroic.
It's thread about gearing though timeless isle vs gearing in a new dungeons.

I couldn't agree with you more. This game is an mMorpg. That is massively MULTIPLAYER online role playing game. We need to emphasize that more. I prefer questing to grinding mobs etc. Isle of Thunder is my ideal area really.

And I loved timeless because I think instances and raids gets booring as hell after 2-4 clears since it becomes more about getting gear then rather having fun, while I had a blast in timeless isles and the gear there was more of a bonus. + The whole account bound <3<3<3 since there is no chance in hell I'm going to to the same thing I have already done tons of times before just to make them useful.
But then again I'm that person who also thinks the whole concept of instanced raids and such as endgame is an outdated concept and the quicker we get away from it in mmo's the better.

Yes because Rift showed how well that worked out...

- - - Updated - - -

I agree, the Timeless Isle sucks. No story, no difficulty, no variety.
I'm not particularly fond of chain dungeon running but it's surely better than this. In my opinion 5.1 style dailies plus slightly harder dungeons and heroic scenarios is the best mix.

I agree with everything here up to the scenarios. I'm not a fan of anything under 5 players really. The scenarios kind of feel like a few people out running around instead of 3 people going towards a common goal.

[Louis CK]

Why gearing in Timeless Isle is worse than new dungeon?
-people are just walking on an isle, killing mindless mobs,
-they can get gear just after they find chests(don't even need to kill mobs),
-new dungeon means boss fights, so people would be more prepared for a raid,
-new dungeons would be overall better than Timeless Isle, which is grind fest(of course doing dungeons is also grinding, but not as much as Timeless Isle, people enjoy more doing dungeons),

I just came to this conclusion after seeing many people in LFR with Timeless Isle gear, they were doing less than 50-60K DPS and they were just bad.

I think that Blizzard was just lazy, they just made an isle with loot all over the place, which is pretty stupid for me.
What's your opinion?

This thread isn't LFR vs Flex, LFR vs Normal/Heroic.
It's thread about gearing though timeless isle vs gearing in a new dungeons.

I'm not a fan of grinding, so from a subjective standpoint, I agree that I'd like new dungeons over a Timeless Isle setup. Every time I fly there my subconscious is like "really, dude, you're going here again?" I don't need any gear from there or anything, but I find myself flying out there randomly for some reason lol. Usually spend about 10 minutes and ask myself wtf I'm doing and hearth.

From a more objective standpoint, having dungeons over and isle isn't going to make people better players. We've had dungeons for how many years now?

Skill is a personality thing. People who want to be good will be good. People who don't care won't be.

[Hanto]

You coulda at least stated it was your opinion that the Isle is worse. Stating it's a fact and that there are people under you saying they like the Isle better kinda ruins your point.


Just for shits and giggles, I'll throw in my two cents: I prefer the Isle more myself.

[Aphrel]

from a hardcore POV. id say timeless isle is great for alts. you gear up by farming burdens->join flex grps (either pugs or guild altruns)->join a normal grp (again either guild altgrp or pugs). It simply let you skip (or at least shortens down) that horrible part of gear progression that is lfr. Later in the teir when we got heirloom weps there will be no need at all to do lfr anymore. and this is imo great!

i dinged lvl 90 with my priest the first week of this patch, did some rare farming for a week and then joined flex pugs. and now im 540. i did do the new lfrs once to see if they were as horrible as ive heard, and sofar they seem to be as easy as lfr usually are, the LFR raids arent getting harder, its the ppl that play worse.

now as for timeless vs new dungeons i think its quite an unfair question since its not the same dec team that makes dungeons as do timeless isle. rather ask yourself if you want an island with only vanityrewards, a dungeon and 4 less raid bosses. for me the answer is no.