alt characters dies in legion

[Maudib]

I couldn't disagree more with your comment. People who are interested in stockpiling gold have a lot of alts, sure; people who like actually playing the game don't. In my guild during BRF, I distinctly remember conversations with a few people who all said they basically stopped playing alts once they hit 630 and were done with heroic dungeons, because the next steps involved constant slow garrison leveling up, and highmaul + brf LFR to get gear and to get the legendary done. No one wanted to do it because it was a weeks long incredibly boring grind.

I have 21 level 100's, all of them are at LEAST 675. Thanks to timewalking and baleful tokens and Kazzak. This was done to prepare them for the gold haul that is Garrisons. Currently at 3 million and still going.

However, before this I had 12 toons.. one of every class and one on Horde. I did indeed "actually play the game" with all of them and enjoyed the different mechanics. I didn't raid on all of them.. didn't even LFR on all of them.

Your speculation as to people with and without "lots of alts" is just wrong. I've been playing this game since the beginning of BC.. so 10 years. And in that time I have switched mains a couple times, and leveled alts the old fashioned way.

Alts are a way for me to experience the same content differently... as opposed to grinding the same dungeons 400 times... I can do them a few dozen times on 12 characters... who is actually "playing the game"?

[Heladys]

oh we are the dumb people huh? really?
yet you can't figure out how they could of ONLY BUFFED THE GAINS and not increased the requirement if they wanted a better system

stop lying to your self

Settle down, Beavis. You read part of the change and launched off without reading the rest.

[Maudib]

Same reason I do it. My goal every time I level and gear an alt is to clear the current tier on heroic and I usually do that (4 toons brf 3 HFC, some playing multiple specs). I tank and heal and it's fun to figure out how different toons can work.

The problem since MOP has been that there's constant progression the entire time you level straight through until the point you finish dungeon content, then suddenly there's this one or two month boring grind for the legendary where you're basically stuck running otherwise unrewarding easy content. It's just a huge bore, and it's actually disappointing to realize you're done with dungeons because the next step is legendarygrind. Makes you want to stop playing.

I left game near end of Cata and did not come back until Timeless was added. I never even wanted the cloak... and I completely skipped the ring quest expect the second level on the first toon.

You are right that crap would force you to keep doing that content for the legendary... and the new random legendaries will somewhat be the same. If you aren't running main, you aren't increasing your chances. Same with titanforged... I think it's going to be so rare that it will not act as an incentive like they think.

[BiggestNoob]

Stop spreading false information please!
Yeah its right that the first research unlocks the lore book and the second gives 10% more power, but after that it grows exponential to 40% and Im guessing the next is 90-100% (can tell you on Friday or Saturday).
5 Days is also wrong that was 3 builds ago, last build it was 2 days and as of yesterday its 3 days, so you can clearly see blizzard is still experimenting with the numbers alot!
So maybe just wait until 2 weeks before launch until you get out your pitchforks.

No, we actually have data that contradicts what you just claimed.

Even if it ramped to 1000% very quickly, it's still a tiny drop in the bucket. Most people don't have a good understanding of exponential growth, especially considering they often think that quadratic growth is the same thing.

[Santti]

What's the problem? It's not like you need to have your artifact fully upgraded right away.

[Coffeh]

Listened to Ion's answer on the stream. Basically...alt characters are dead in Legion. At least from a practical sense. You will be massively underpowered for a long time.

[Hexxidecimal]

Listened to Ion's answer on the stream. Basically...alt characters are dead in Legion. At least from a practical sense. You will be massively underpowered for a long time.

That sounds like "Basically" with a bias slant. Could you at least paraphrase so I could make my own bias interpretation.

[shanthi]

No, instead that guy who logs in every day for 20 minutes to do the AP world quests and make progress on artifact knowledge will play a tiny fraction as much as me, doing nothing but completely trivial soloable content that has no risk of death and requires less effort than masturbating, will also max his weapon just about at the same speed. Clearly what we've got going on here is effort = reward.

This undercuts your entire point about what a grind the weapon is. If someone who plays 20 minutes a day can unlock his weapon as quickly as you can while you play a ton every day, that means the extra time you're spending is not important (for the weapon progression).

Corollaries to this is that, A. yes, you can put AP into your offspec weapon without much loss--any AP earned beyond that "20 minutes," by your own admission, doesn't really speed up your artifact progression and B. you can play alts as much as you want, once you've done your "20 minutes" on your main--as you've noted, extra time beyond that on your main doesn't really speed up your artifact progression.

[Deleted]

I couldn't disagree more with your comment. People who are interested in stockpiling gold have a lot of alts, sure; people who like actually playing the game don't. In my guild during BRF, I distinctly remember conversations with a few people who all said they basically stopped playing alts once they hit 630 and were done with heroic dungeons, because the next steps involved constant slow garrison leveling up, and highmaul + brf LFR to get gear and to get the legendary done. No one wanted to do it because it was a weeks long incredibly boring grind.

You might have a point there, but that's all based on your definition on what an alt is supposed to be and what not. Alts have always been used for making money, so I don't think should disqualify them in any shape or form. So I still think it's evident that alts have become more popular, even if it's those you don't like.

[Everwake]

Without the 20/20 talent, you only need 5.2 million to fill the Ret tree, compared to the 65 million you have in this picture. If you want to farm 60 million AP for 10% more damage, you deserve that 10% more damage.

There's no "want" in raiding guilds heh. You WILL grind that out!

[Sury]

Well if it was not posted. This is from the front page.

Alt Characters
-Legion is going to be the most alt-friendly expansion in terms of the diversity and replayability of the content.
-You won't be going through the same thing each time you level an alt.
-There are different Artifact story lines, different Artifact progression, different Order Hall campaigns, different leveling zone order.

Artifact Knowledge
-After Legion launches, it will become faster and faster each week to earn Artifact Knowledge. It applies to all characters, so alts and returning players will be able to catch up.

Seems alt's will be as alive as ever.

[munkeyinorbit]

Even with that so much slower then it was to catch up an alt at any other point of the game save vanilla raiding. Your raid loses a tank and somebody decides to step in on a new toon, good luck you are always going to be behind until people cross the finish line on their weapons.

What the fuck are you even talking about. Lots of people have been saying that it takes 1 week to get your artifact up to a suitable level. Not max level, but suitable. When have you known of an alt tank to just come on in and be exactly as geared as the tank that left? Only when shit has been on farm for months. Guess what? If you been farming shit for months you should have artifact power stored up OR already spent on your alt artifact.

Stop scaremongering because you don't like WoW anymore. It might be time for you to quit and move on.

[Alvito]

What the fuck are you even talking about. Lots of people have been saying that it takes 1 week to get your artifact up to a suitable level. Not max level, but suitable. When have you known of an alt tank to just come on in and be exactly as geared as the tank that left? Only when shit has been on farm for months. Guess what? If you been farming shit for months you should have artifact power stored up OR already spent on your alt artifact.

Stop scaremongering because you don't like WoW anymore. It might be time for you to quit and move on.

Not how it was working in the build that was live earlier in the week. They have now put in ways to speed things up but you will still always be behind on an alt or off spec, until a weapon is maxed out. Good job blowing a truthful statement out of proportion and going on a rant about things you don't really know anything about. But then again I'll just refer you to your first few worlds and leave you to your odd anger.

What the fuck are you even talking about.

[Spiral Mage]

Here's the reality of another poor decision from BLIZ and the consequences of it.

In the end, to be honest, playing an ALT at all means they aren't "dead" but if you consider "dead", as in, a state where they will either take far too much work or will simply never be viable outside of dailies, then you may be absolutely right.

Legion is an absolute trainwreck, in almost every way.

[Germs]

there is only 1 item that was confirmed to be buffed and those types of items are rare to find to begin with

It is very clear you are complaining just for the sake of complaining. Spending 2 seconds on the beta would show you that nearly all of the AP items increased by a minimum of 5 times.

[wholol]

I think some of you are missing the point, we only get 1 weapon this expansion, it's the same weapon you will be carrying around with you in all raid tiers etc so its obvious you won't be capping it to the fullest until the very last raid tier of the expansion, because it gives you a sense of progression with ur weapon since you cant change weapons at all.

Imagine if you capped your entire weapon the first week and you end up doing the entire expansion with a maxed weapon, you'd never get to replace or tweak, its the same stats all the time and might as well not even exist for all you care since your interaction with it is done ( hopefully you get my point ).

Since you are going to be changing gear per raid tier it's only natural that your weapon grows with every raid tier.

[MasterHamster]

I think some of you are missing the point, we only get 1 weapon this expansion, it's the same weapon you will be carrying around with you in all raid tiers etc so its obvious you won't be capping it to the fullest until the very last raid tier of the expansion, because it gives you a sense of progression with ur weapon since you cant change weapons at all.

Imagine if you capped your entire weapon the first week and you end up doing the entire expansion with a maxed weapon, you'd never get to replace or tweak, its the same stats all the time and might as well not even exist for all you care since your interaction with it is done ( hopefully you get my point ).

Since you are going to be changing gear per raid tier it's only natural that your weapon grows with every raid tier.

Stop it, logic isn't welcome because when players are somehow nerfed on the beta. And when that happens the arguments that essentially mean "if I want to cap within a week I should be able to." starts to pop up.
I won't pretend to know exactly how long it'd take to max out a weapon, but it's pretty damn sensible that we're not going to be capping our weapons in the LAUNCH PATCH, people!

-----------------

I'm so goddamn tired of this community.
Yeah, they increased artifact power needed to cap. Did the first balance pass on artifact power gain rate somehow get set in stone on the beta that most of you haven't even played? Have you even made sure this is a "nerf" overall?

Had these been the first numbers you saw you wouldn't be complaining, because you haven't tried it anyway. But whenever something is changed to take more time, whether it was because the first set of numbers were for testing or ended up being cleared way too quickly, the doom and gloom starts.

Same with that no-name island that apparently got shafted in favor of something else. I forgot that the very first list of features/zones announced to players are as holy and unbreakable as the 10 commandments.

[Goshko]

No, we actually have data that contradicts what you just claimed.

Even if it ramped to 1000% very quickly, it's still a tiny drop in the bucket. Most people don't have a good understanding of exponential growth, especially considering they often think that quadratic growth is the same thing.

He's right actually. Research notes are currently 2 or 3 days (didn't really pay that much attention). and the growth is not linear it's 1%->10%->30% (cumulative) from what I've see so far.

I only have 3 levels and green tokens from WQ grant up to 300+ AP with blues at 500+, sometimes going over 800.

Keep in mind new token AP looks really unfinished, tokens that were 5 are now 10, tokens that were 20 are now 20, or 140, or 200+. The 40s of yesterday are now anywhere between 200 and 500 etc.

[BiggestNoob]

This undercuts your entire point about what a grind the weapon is. If someone who plays 20 minutes a day can unlock his weapon as quickly as you can while you play a ton every day, that means the extra time you're spending is not important (for the weapon progression).

It doesn't at all. In previous expansions when you make an alt, you go get it some shitty gear and then you bring it into a lower difficulty raid with your guild or even the main raid if it's farm and within a very short period of time it's basically already sitting at 95%. This is important with multiple raid tiers. Classes tend to scale at different levels, classes get buffed/nerfed, content isn't identical from raid to raid (favoring certain classes over others), and so there's a huge benefit to switching things around mid-expansion.

In this case this requires maintaining every character you want to maybe play at some point in this expansion for the entire expansion. You can never stop maintaining them because there's no catch-up mechanic (like going into a raid and getting all the drops because nobody needs them). The catch-up is just playing that character all the time to the detriment of other characters, every day, for a very long time. That's why it's a grind.

The nature of exponential growth coupled with the bulk of AP gains being frontloaded means that someone who plays relatively little will within a few months be not terribly far behind someone who plays a lot. That doesn't mean it's not grindy, because there's going to be a massive gap when the first raid tier launches. It just means that I have to do that effectively mandatory content on every character I need to keep up with AND to grind dungeons on my main for parity in the first tier.

The problem in future tiers is main swapping with no catch-up mechanics, especially if you weren't maintaining a character for 8 months so you could switch to it later. And because the bulk of this AP you're applying to your main weapon to keep it competitive is one-time per day, your off-specs are actually going to be behind your alt characters' main weapons, even with a tiny fraction of the time invested in those characters. This means healers are absolutely fucked during farm and off-speccing in LFG content will be less common or to the detriment of the group.

This is quite a bit worse than split clears were. Nothing about this system is good. It's like they heard that nobody liked the legendary ring design and decided to turn that bad idea up to 11. It also helps to consider that for all intents and purposes, "alt" here or "main swapping" is synonymous with a new player joining the expansion or coming back to the game mid-expansion. It's not just a problem for cutting edge raiders.

Seems alt's will be as alive as ever.

Nothing in that quote implies this.

He's right actually. Research notes are currently 2 or 3 days (didn't really pay that much attention). and the growth is not linear it's 1%->10%->30% (cumulative) from what I've see so far.

I only have 3 levels and green tokens from WQ grant up to 300+ AP with blues at 500+, sometimes going over 800.

Keep in mind new token AP looks really unfinished, tokens that were 5 are now 10, tokens that were 20 are now 20, or 140, or 200+. The 40s of yesterday are now anywhere between 200 and 500 etc.

It was originally 1%, then it was changed to 100% (but no effect on either), then it was 110%, then people got to 20% and then 30%, and others are claiming to have higher values now. The AP values for things were changed. Drops are not inflated (basically worthless), nor are treasures. Quest rewards (specifically repeatables and missions) were inflated, but so were the costs for all but a couple of trait levels (primarily above 14 were massively increased). The baseline for most classes is still 22-26 nodes which will require in excess of a month of effort to an additional month depending on your spec.

Ion said there are "several dozen" levels, which implies it's not exponential (and is likely linear or ramps quickly and then is linear for a DR), but the math has been done with an assumption of a 12 AK ramp to 1000% and the numbers are still enormous for even 1 weapon and ~8 hours of play per day.

They've only started to reduce how bad AP is in general (it was far far worse outside of exploits before AK was improved etc) because people are complaining about the enormous grind that it is. Blizzard originally stated that they wanted Artifacts to take the entire expansion to finish, and they've already now moved away from that, so this was never their base intent. Even the legendary ring had a very small time investment requirement to complete and was never more than a few weeks of playing the game normally for any current step, and even the +3 ilvl upgrades took a maximum of 20 weeks and were totally gated by lockouts. This system requires doing specific content and prescribes play. It's like an indefinite Valor grind, and you can already predict things like each LFR wing giving 500 AP or something.

[Goshko]

It was originally 1%, then it was changed to 100% (but no effect on either), then it was 110%, then people got to 20% and then 30%, and others are claiming to have higher values now.

It was 1% early on and did nothing. As of the build that fixed Artifact research it become 100% at 1st research. This does not mean +100%, it means Artefact research is unlocked and you get 100% of the value of the token. Redundant and confusing but it's what it is. The second research note makes it into 110% (+10%) - you get 110% of the value. The third note makes it 140% (+30%) - you get 140% of the value of token. If the beta wasn't disabled yesterday I could have told you how much is the 4th research. I can't explain it more clearly than that.

There are screenshots of the first 3 stages in this topic if you need them (on pages 2 and 6 specifically).

Drops are not inflated (basically worthless), nor are treasures.

Incorrect. Drops are inflated but not to the level of tokens from WQ. Some treasures are also buffed, others not so much. Whether this is by design or unfinished I can't say but the latter would be my bet.

Please don't spread misinformation, it doesn't help anyone.