Why do people say Legion is actually alt-UNfriendly?

[Jaigar]

The problem is you cant have your cake and eat it too. WoD was arguably too alt friendly for raiding. All you need was your lendary rin quest progressed, a couple weeks being carried, and you'd to close to whomever you raided with. Now investing time into a spec matters and switching to what fotm spec is far less rewarding. HFC drove me nuts. Why did i have to run multiple dps specs within 1 raid session?

How does scaling past 35 work? Is it still 5% damage pet artifact level? I'm just a little worried becausr offspec tanking/healing will become much much worse ince we are at that point. A offspec tank for 3 tank fights like the spider boss, and later on the expansion is this still goung to be possible? I understand that we'll be able to max all specs eventually, but before that...

[Deadite]

Honestly I think people are just comparing the "ease" of gearing alts to WoD which was a shit show. They threw gear at us and gave us nothing to do with it. I'm having a very hard time seeing whats so "alt unfriendly" about this expansion, even after reading through this thread. Lots of entitlement though.

It is not realy about the gear on my alts. My alts are mostly just for crafting first then playing when i need a change. Crafting is just awful in this expansion and you need to do everything to level it. Every zone and dungeons, rep grinds for recipes and recipes from every form of content.

Then there is just how disheartening it is when you hit 110 and get 100 AP from world quests. Then you look at how long it will take to do your order hall campaign and the 31 days to uprgade your order hall assuming you you can be arsed grinding up the tens of thousands of resources. Now you don't have to do any of that if you have no intention of playing but why even level them?

[tehdef]

Just think at the previous xpacs... Your chars were not so much connected with each other.
Before wotlk there were not even heirlooms, and now we have the heirloom collection panel.
We have 1 free lvl 100 boost (plus chance to buy it).
You can now trade even currencies in your account.

Why do people always want more, when they already have been given of something?
What's the next step? Free 800 ilvl gear? Offline auto-lvling?

There is a proverb in my country which says:
I give you a hand, and you take my arm

I have 3 characters @ 110.

Legion is alt-unfriend-ish.

Why?

-Artifact Power and AK knowledge not really going as fast as I want, my Shaman has been 110 for 3 days played or more now, and only has AK4 while the others have AK10.
- Suramar - I'm exalted on my main, but I can't do CoS and Arcway on my alts? Fuck that, that's dumb.
- Suramar - I'm exalted on my main, but i have to get honored before I can buy more gear?
- WQ's - If you don't do the zone to completion you miss out on possible WQ spawns - What?

I'm sure there is more, but those are the major gripes for me.

[Dug]

People are used to being able to catch their alt up to their mains relative power level within a day, that's why. I used to be the same and thought Legion was super alt unfriendly but with the minor catch up mechanics in place for AP/AK my Ret has basically caught up with my Arms warrior already and I leveled him like 3 weeks after launch. It took me 2 days to reach 840+ on my alt whereas it took me that same time to reach 810 on main and then 2 weeks for 840. (obviously this is casual playing and not spamming mythics) but both main and alt were played the same.

Was it RNG? Maybe but the catch up isn't that bad.

[Glorious Leader]

If skipped, yes. But out of all those 3 things, only one is a skip, and even that one only because I never got my legendary and I'm not sure if you can get it without garrison missions.

First, there was crafting. That was not skip. While I hated the gating of crafting as a principle, it was not a problem. Getting your 3 pieces was easy enough. You did not skip it, but for the duration of getting those pieces you kind of ahd to log in daily and do garrisons, but after you were done, that was it.

Apexis grind was one of the laziest grinds ever (not counting pre Bc stuff) and very on the nose and unapologetic: fill up this bar. But, apexis was fairly useless. I wore like 1 to 3 pieces and quickly out geared them. After about 50% progress in the first raid, do you actually needed apexis for anything? So apexis was not skiped, but taken care of early and easy.

Now, in legion, you need to grind AP if you don't just wait out the emissary stuff. And if you wait for it, by the time you have decent AP, all other people on the server are done with the content and thinking of unsubing. So you need to do it and do it fast.

You need to progress with the nighfallen because you fear that 7.1 or 7.2 or whatever will need exalted status. I'm quite curious to see what the requirements for those "9 weeks of story" are in 7.1.

So, on paper, it feels that legion is a bit more alt-unfriendly. But the stuff you must do now is more involved and story driven, so it psychologically feels that Legion much is more alt unfriendly.

What feels more involved: use an ad-don to send and army of minions on quests, fill up a bar of apexis or travels all around the world, do random quests for rep and progress though a linear zone with heavy story (for a rep grind).

And this goes only in the scenario where you are happy with your main and want to change stuff up with an alt. I'm am very unhappy with my main and want a new main. I think my new boosted character into which I have invested all my time in Legion is compromised and probably can't be salvaged. In order to properly identify with my new main, I need to properly go though the progression, so I can't super powerlevel stuff and skip steps.

You can skip all of that in legion as well. You dnt have to grind ap. You dont have to dl suramar. Yoh dont have to wq.

- - - Updated - - -

Well ok, what shuold be in Legion account wide to make all less alt unfriendly? Only 2 things (and again you only read the first part of post it seems): 1) Artifact Power / Artifact Knowledge and 2) Reputation; And here we cuold argue how it shuold be done and so on.

As boring as it cuold be, you can't make account wide the class order experience, it wuold make 0 sense. In WoD it cuold have been a thing, because Garrison was not tied to a class story.

If you made AK/AP and reps acclunt wide legion would probably be the most alt friendly expansion. Only thing mkre alt friendlg would be alt fkying.

The class order experience can be folded into the lvling experience and/or skipped at max level. The class order story is not what makes legion alt unfriendly

[Deleted]

People are used to being able to catch their alt up to their mains relative power level within a day, that's why. I used to be the same and thought Legion was super alt unfriendly but with the minor catch up mechanics in place for AP/AK my Ret has basically caught up with my Arms warrior already and I leveled him like 3 weeks after launch. It took me 2 days to reach 840+ on my alt whereas it took me that same time to reach 810 on main and then 2 weeks for 840. (obviously this is casual playing and not spamming mythics) but both main and alt were played the same.

Was it RNG? Maybe but the catch up isn't that bad.

And what is wrong with catching up fast?

Switching specs is at this stage is still slow.

Switching characters even slower. And characters at 830-840 with low AP are not always representative on how they will perform at 860 with high AP. Maybe you went though all this weeks long process and once you caught up, you find that you are not performing well and need to catch up on a third alt?

Nobody wins by having to repeat stuff, especially stuff you find boring in order to catch up. Not you, because instead of doing what you want, you need to take time away from that to catch up.

Not your raid, because you are either benched or under-performing.

I believe all reps and attunements should be account wide. AK should definitely be account bound. There is no way you are catching up to your 2 month AP gain from your main. You will always feel like AP is holding you back, even when this is factually wrong.

And under no circumstance will you ever catch up if you are a bit casual.

- - - Updated - - -

You can skip all of that in legion as well. You dnt have to grind ap. You dont have to dl suramar. Yoh dont have to wq.

You need for sure AP. The rest could be potentially skipped.

If you are leveling an alt to perform well, you need at least 15-20 points in your artifact to perform depending on class. And if your alt becomes your main, you will start thinking about that 5% damage boost at the end of the path.

[Dug]

And what is wrong with catching up fast?

Switching specs is at this stage is still slow.

Switching characters even slower. And characters at 830-840 with low AP are not always representative on how they will perform at 860 with high AP. Maybe you went though all this weeks long process and once you caught up, you find that you are not performing well and need to catch up on a third alt?

Nobody wins by having to repeat stuff, especially stuff you find boring in order to catch up. Not you, because instead of doing what you want, you need to take time away from that to catch up.

Not your raid, because you are either benched or under-performing.

I believe all reps and attunements should be account wide. AK should definitely be account bound. There is no way you are catching up to your 2 month AP gain from your main. You will always feel like AP is holding you back, even when this is factually wrong.

And under no circumstance will you ever catch up if you are a bit casual.

Eh don't see how Blizz can win in this situation. People complain that it's too easy to gear up alts and that the game is just giving out free gear, they make it a little difficult and people say it's too hard.

Personally? I don't have a problem with "fast" catch up mechanics but I also don't have a problem with an alt being weaker than your main character because logically it just makes sense to me that your main (the one you spend the most time on) will be stronger than your alts.

Of course though you're coming from a raid optimization/performance stand point and I'm just looking at it with a general view of the game and "casual" progression. Like currently my main is my raiding toon that I've cleared Heroic on, my alts may get there eventually but I'm not planning on changing mains so I don't mind where they're at.

[Mad_Murdock]

Personally? I don't have a problem with "fast" catch up mechanics but I also don't have a problem with an alt being weaker than your main character because logically it just makes sense to me that your main (the one you spend the most time on) will be stronger than your alts.

My personal take is that players are becoming more like me, in which I don't view a single toon as a main. My account is my main, If we were ever to go to a model in which I had to just pick 1 character (or worse 1 spec) I'd probably have to quit. Not playing other classes and the other faction feels like I'm only get a fraction of my money's worth. I want both sides of the story. I want to know what other classes play like. I want the option to say, I just can't do this as a Priest, let me see if I can manage it has a Mage or Hunter, etc. we're not at that place and hopefully never will be.

For me, the new Professions are the biggest Alt-unfriendly aspect of the game. For all previous expansions having all the professions maxed and useful wasn't too bad. Now with all teh dungeons quest and high mat cost and the worst, the RNG nature of ranks, I've caved in to what Blizzard wants. In fact, I'm not motivated to even work on my main's professions. I have my druid Herber\miner and that is were all the sweet gold is at.

[Deleted]

Eh don't see how Blizz can win in this situation. People complain that it's too easy to gear up alts and that the game is just giving out free gear, they make it a little difficult and people say it's too hard.

Personally? I don't have a problem with "fast" catch up mechanics but I also don't have a problem with an alt being weaker than your main character because logically it just makes sense to me that your main (the one you spend the most time on) will be stronger than your alts.

Of course though you're coming from a raid optimization/performance stand point and I'm just looking at it with a general view of the game and "casual" progression. Like currently my main is my raiding toon that I've cleared Heroic on, my alts may get there eventually but I'm not planning on changing mains so I don't mind where they're at.

Well, it is already easy to get gear on any character. As difficulty goes, doing HC (a more old school model) is a lot harder than logging in each day, looking around for 30 seconds to see what is on your map and log out if no WQ provides an upgrade. It just takes a lot of time to gear up like this. Certainly more than chain running HC as a tank or healer. This should be balanced. Blizz should give multiple equal options, not have some exponentially faster than another.

Catching up is easy to do for alts, they just need to abandon plain stupid RNG as an implementation choice. I've been arguing for this for years. In 2016, I honestly thing if your system is plain dumb RNG, you are lazy as an developer and unambitious as a programmer. Add a smart RNG system, with tracking and bad luck compensation, with good luck being left unaffected.

Plus there is the achievement system for tracking. It would be trivial for blizz to add an achiev that tracks every 5 levels of you AK and once you earn that achiev, every time an alt finishes an AK level in that range for the first time, they get boosted up. The current catch up mechanic for AP might work just as well, but the scaling is not there yet.

And finally, if you are not thinking about optimizing gear for raids, being really good really fast, you don't really need that much catching up, do you? A fresh 110 with a weekend of gear, probably less, is ready for HC. Definitely ready for random non end game stuff. If you eventually might wish to raid, you will eventually get to that point. No need to rush.

[Deleted]

The issue with alts is that it's impossible to maintain them once they're 110. Most people don't even seem to have time for a single character, let alone several. You need to:

Do the entirety of Suramar, again.
Do emissary quests every day
Do other WQs every day for AP and gear upgrades, and for an alt you also need to care more about order resource WQs for AK as well
Do daily heroic + more for upgrades
Do Mythic+, which has no actual limit
Do your order hall campaign for the relic slot and do follower missions
Do all the profession related activities
Do LFR
Do normal and heroic raid clears every week

And you're still permanently behind because of artifacts.

Compare that to 6.0 WoD, which was:

Do garrisons
Do CM
Do heroic raid clears

RNG grinds for legendaries and titanforged, plus more systems for power acquisition and far less time gating (and worse time gating where it is present ie AK and order quest) is the issue with alts.

Oh so you have to play game in order to play alt? What a shock. So what you want. Free instant lvl 110 with full mythic raid gear?

[Deleted]

People are so overreacting on this bit.. like the WoW community does with everything really.
Here is my take on it:

This expansion is not alt unfriendly at all.

I have 5 level 110's at the moment.
My main is Ilvl 867 with 2 artifacts around level 23 I think. (surumar done)
My main alt is ilvl 853 with Resto artifact at 21 and Balance at 17. (surumar done except 1 quest line for exalted)
My second alt is ilvl 851 with enhancement artifact at 20 and resto at 15. (surumar done except 1 quest line for exalted)
My third alt is ilvl 850 with 1 artifact that is on 18. (surumar 4/11 story lines done)
My fourth alt is freshly dinged and is now ilvl 827 after dinging last night. (surumar 1/11 story lines done)

Its so fucking easy to get things done.

btw I had a 2 week holiday as well so I could have been so much more ahead if I was able to play those 2 weeks.
And no I don't play 24/7, I have a job and a family and I raid twice a week. Leveling takes 10 hours tops and the rest is piss easy to do.

Do you even life, bro?

[BergErr]

Ppl focus too hard on the wrong things.
Its actually easy expansion for alts. Alts is always wanted for their keys, easy gearing. Its not a total waste to run HC/Mythic on mains to boost friends. Doing the 4 WQs (which only have to be done every 3days) takes <10min. Missions almost only reward gold and AP and its not a lot (3-4k gold and some AP).

Getting to 850 with lvl20~ weapon takes close to no effort and you are ready for raids. AP will sort itself out pretty fast from AK research and most classes dont need past 26 points to reach peak performance.

The AP grind is only there for players that want the 5% increase before next raid so they can compete in the world first race.
My alt that only do its m+ keys, emissary and few WQs is already lvl22 and ilvl860.

[Deleted]

Just think at the previous xpacs... Your chars were not so much connected with each other.
Before wotlk there were not even heirlooms, and now we have the heirloom collection panel.
We have 1 free lvl 100 boost (plus chance to buy it).
You can now trade even currencies in your account.

Why do people always want more, when they already have been given of something?
What's the next step? Free 800 ilvl gear? Offline auto-lvling?

There is a proverb in my country which says:
I give you a hand, and you take my arm

If we're not talking endgame for alts, then the leveling pace Is awful, many people since Legion launched have gotten stuck at lvl 107-110 without quests to do... and that hasn't happened since Vanilla when you run out of quests to do at around lvl 55, I got stuck at 109 myself and just ran dungeon after dungeon and finding random quests.

It's not that there -werent- quests around, but most people did only the chapters and couldn't fully ding which Is bad pacing. That means, you had to go around the world, -forced- to do every, single, sidequest you found, In order to have enough XP to ding 110 and that's not counting XP boosts like Darkmoon/Hallow's end/Midsummer and so on. In WoD, as bad as It was had a good leveling pace, you only did the chapters per zone, and as you were half done with Spires of Arak you dinged 100 already, and going Into Nagrand as a lvl 100, despite the zone being 98-100 which ofcourse wass their Intention, to make Nagrand the last level zone where you already went to as a lvl 100, although they made a poor job of communicating that.

Yet they didn't here, Suramar Is the last level zone this time around, however here the not enough xp to ding could be solved by what they've done In all of the zones but one, and that's scaling levels. Why not go Into Suramar as a 109? You'd ding In no time, and get started on the story already. And really that's what I wouldn't not minded In Nagrand, yet it wasn't a problem since we could without problem ding to 100. In Legion, you even have to do those "Bonus zone" quests, that you would assume are bonus, as In not needed, bonus, optional.. yet they seem very forced.

And yes, completing the quest for the dungeon per zone does give like 3 bars of XP... but that's still not enough. I myself did mining/blacksmith quests, a few of the bonus areas as well, a few pet battles and each chapter per zone and got stuck at 109. For good pacing you should get 2.5 Levels per zone, yet we got like 1.5 or at best 2.0 levels per zone.
TLR - You're forced to level through the zones, doing the majority of quests In each zone, unless you get stuck at lower levels, only after completing each zone, getting each Pillar of Creation would you be forced to go out and find side quests cause the zones aren't paced well.

[Deleted]

All this things you mentioned are only about leveling. No one complains about leveling but rather what you need to do to gear an alt once at 110.

You basicly get free gear. My druid has been 3 resets on max level and i have 860 gear.

[tiptopmemer]

I am someone who has spent ~8hours ingame per day on average since the release of legion
I have 3 toons at 110 and 2 toons at 103 and 105.
My main is 872 ilvl with 28 primary and 25 secondary artifact points, i have nearly finished pve content (mythic clear)
My first alt is 861 ilvl with 21 primary and 10 secondary artifact points, it has cleared heroic emerald nightmare.
My second alt is 830 ilvl, it has 15 and 11 artifact points, its my herbalist and mostly run heroics.

I do all emissary caches and daily heroics.
Ive ceased doing all world quests on my main that arent super valuable (over 2.5k ap / 300g / 500 order resources)
I generally ignore all trivial world quests on my 2nd alt
I do the bare minimum+ upgrades on my 3rd alt.

I dont have a legendary on my main.
I have 2 legendaries on my alt (still hasn't researched the perk)
I dont have a legendary on my 2nd alt.

Until i have most of my mains legendaries, i cant stop doing mythic/mythic+ runs, this is a HUGE time spender, these runs can be anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes (when a mythic 0 goes for longer than a mythic+10, you know you're in hell)

I can barely support 2 characters fully.

The higher your skill and the time you have, the more content that is available to you, and if you dont have those shiny oranges, you need to spend more time on your main.

[Glorious Leader]

And what is wrong with catching up fast?

Switching specs is at this stage is still slow.

Switching characters even slower. And characters at 830-840 with low AP are not always representative on how they will perform at 860 with high AP. Maybe you went though all this weeks long process and once you caught up, you find that you are not performing well and need to catch up on a third alt?

Nobody wins by having to repeat stuff, especially stuff you find boring in order to catch up. Not you, because instead of doing what you want, you need to take time away from that to catch up.

Not your raid, because you are either benched or under-performing.

I believe all reps and attunements should be account wide. AK should definitely be account bound. There is no way you are catching up to your 2 month AP gain from your main. You will always feel like AP is holding you back, even when this is factually wrong.

And under no circumstance will you ever catch up if you are a bit casual.

- - - Updated - - -



You need for sure AP. The rest could be potentially skipped.

If you are leveling an alt to perform well, you need at least 15-20 points in your artifact to perform depending on class. And if your alt becomes your main, you will start thinking about that 5% damage boost at the end of the path.

You dont need ap? Why do you need ap? If performance is your concern then okay but that would mean you needed the wod legendary ring as well and we both agreed that could be skipped... beyond that point though AP can be skipped in the sense that youll just get it from whatever you do anyway for yhe most part. Its not like the legendary ring where its a quest you have to actively pursue.

[Deleted]

Most of the complaints started during the first month which happens in every expansion. Even WoD was considered alt unfriendly and look how that turned out.

Legion's more than friendly for alts, and a lot of the complaints are just pathetic / stupid (like account wide reputations and account wide AK).

[Jotaux]

Its not great for alts or off spec. Theres just too much that needs to be done. And for off spec you have to keep your loot spec as your main spec in case you get a legendary.

[Larynx]

This is so weird to me. Why would you feel the need to all this on your alt unless you plan on raiding mythic with it?

Because you'd plan on raiding mythic with it. That's why "heroic clear" is casually included in there as a weekly task.

[l33t]

Just think at the previous xpacs... Your chars were not so much connected with each other.
Before wotlk there were not even heirlooms, and now we have the heirloom collection panel.
We have 1 free lvl 100 boost (plus chance to buy it).
You can now trade even currencies in your account.

Why do people always want more, when they already have been given of something?
What's the next step? Free 800 ilvl gear? Offline auto-lvling?

There is a proverb in my country which says:
I give you a hand, and you take my arm

Alt-unfriendly means you have to do as much grind as you do for your main for your alts. It has nothing to do with leveling.
Closest example: Suramar dungeons. You can't run them with your alt because you have reputation requirement, and its reputation gain is time gated.
Another example is artifact power and artifact knowledge. In previous expansions you could just boost your alt through current raid and gear him in one day, nowadays you have to farm AP for months for him to catch up to your main.
Another example: gating of third artifact relic behind class campaign completing, which is again time-gated behind stupid mission table.
Etc, etc. Not to mention that you have to run a million dungeons with your alt to complete its class campaign and to unlock crafting recipes.

To hell alts. Legion is fucking offspec-unfriendly.