Legendary Nerfs

[Kellorion]

as ive said before

I have 1 legendary, foot on my prot pallys, wasnt looking for, didnt work for it (got it from random small treasure chest) could really care less if I had it.
This MoP/WoD/Legion everyone gets a legendary but rng horseshit needs to go.

[kamuimac]

For most specs, it's more important which secondaries are on an item than what the itemlevel is, with the "wrong" secondaries, a legendary is a downgrade from an 860 item for some specs, but that's another problem that Blizz hasn't done a single thing about...

It all blends together into a big mass of "How the hell did that make it to live?"

again 90 % of players dont give a singe f.... about stuff like perfomrance etc - for them even if its lowering their performance its still psychological upgrade pumping dopamines to their brains. it feels awesome when orange drops. thats why it made life.

[kryptik93]

I play MMOs for the grind. Thats what the genre was all about in rhe first place.

We all do, but hiding the grind behind some fucked up diminishing return / soft cap where players themselves had to make conspiracies about and eventually blizzard admitting it? lol.

[kamuimac]

I'm surprised it took them so long to actually do anything about it, after months of "we are looking into this"
Either way once you realise the whole game is just a grind(levels) to grind(AP) to grind(gear) to grind(raids) with hardly any social aspect to it anymore, its not a very fun game.

most people dont play wow as raid simulator game. deal with it.

[Zyky]

If I had it my way I would delete them.

I second this, as a top end raider. Its a horrible system to make some legendaries such massive dps increases(Fire bracers/Unholy bracers) or massive changes to a class that makes it actually feel like a good place(example Demon Hunter Ring making it so we don't feel starved with our resource).

Its a bad system that should have never went into game the way it did.

[DistortionSleep]

Now if they would just remove the system entirely I might actually consider coming back for more Legion but as it is no fucking thank you.

No one cares. I didn't even know you quit, and I could care less.

[Caolela]

One need not assume malice where incompotence will suffice. I dont think theyre evil they just either seem to miss the point or feel their own vision supercedes player feedback. Maybe some combination of both.

Except that in this case, "incompetence" does not suffice.

If anyone thinks that a large, rich, well-established gaming company like Blizzard really lets their employees sit around and create such disastrous results (from many players' viewpoint) for their flagship product by "accident" or "oops", then they're naive or refuse to face reality.

Blizz does this and most other things to WoW for one main reason only: maximizing profits. It doesn't matter how they go about it or if they play loose with the facts. When it's all said and done what matters to them is the bottom line.

We were told a pretty tale about the great things to come in future patches. We were told that if a given talent was chosen by the vast majority of players, then it should be made baseline for that spec. We were promised the return of some pruned utility talents. We were promised that no sweeping changes to classes would be made, that no one should feel they picked the "wrong" class. People listened to them at Blizzcon and trusted them to keep their word.

Then the PTR rolled out with its inexplicable sweeping changes to classes. Must-pick talents were not made baseline. Middle of the pack classes were nerfed. Utility talents were not returned. Predictably and understandably various forums erupted into a firestorm of complaints and demands for answers. Days later, we hear that the PTR changes are not complete.

That statement was either a public relations attempt to calm the rioting masses, or backpedaling on the part of the developers. Given that during Legion development the PTR code has always gone live with few or no major changes, there is every expectation of it doing so again for 7.1.5.

Most of us understand that there are some serious issues with itemization and character power level ramping up too quickly for being only three months into the expansion. Changes need to be made. But the changes we see on the PTR do not make sense, and will make gameplay worse for a number of classes. The talent changes look like an attempt to force players to pick certain unpopular talents rather than addressing actual gameplay issues.

Balancing classes around legendaries they may not have does not make sense. But the awful legendaries system will stay because it keeps the RNG grind going indefinitely.

That's the reality. That's the kind of prevarication and disingenuous results we've gotten from Blizz for years and what we'll continue to get. It isn't incompetence, it's well-designed bullshit disguised behind vague, feel-good PR spin while they march ahead with whatever the cost-benefit analysis tells them will return the greatest profit for the least overhead cost.

[God Save The King]

Blizzard attempted to make a system that provides cool, powerful boosts to random gameplay. It was similar to world drops back in Classic, at least that was the feel they were going for when they announced the feature at Blizzcon '15. The primary issue with this system, in today's gaming culture, is they will be seen as mandatory. Which is the root of the entire problem. In reality, the delta between the best 2 and worst 2 legendaries, among players at the 95th percentile, is below 8% on average, and the worst offender is fire mages as 12% and moonkins at 11%. Both of these classes are getting changes to their top legendaries.

As you go lower in the percentiles, the % delta shrinks.

Also, as time goes on, you will accrue more and more legendaries, and if you already have the worst legendaries, you can only get better. If you already have the best, you can't go up anymore. So, over time, the delta will shrink even more as more and more people get their best 2.

The point I was making here, is that legendaries should not and need not be seen as mandatory. They're a fun little boost. But the top 0.1% of guilds are farming the best two legendaries, so people internalize that they too need the best two legendaries to compete. Which is simply not true. I have the 3rd and 5th best legendaries, and I still place into the top 20% on warcraft logs (granted I'm a healer). I occasionally even push top 10%, and have 2 top 5% in the last 2 weeks.

We've gotten to a point in Warcraft where players view everything as either mandatory or useless. You can find forums saying how useless/pointless various features of Legion are. Micro-Holidays, Reputations, World Quests, Order Halls, etc. The thing is, those are meant to be fun little boosts. Blizzard knows if they put any power items as a reward, then the top 0.1% would feel "required" to do them, which in turn would trickle down into the raiding community and they too would feel "required".

Legendaries suffer the same issue as so many other cool or neat things in WoW; they provide some level of power boost so everyone feels obligated to achieve them, and when they don't get what they want, they're furious.

LFR set bonuses had the same issue, so they were removed. Highmaul had that issue when compared to BRF, so they buffed the drops (same with ToV). Today, rewards for doing anything but raiding is either really crummy gear, pets, and/or mounts.

People, today, feel obligated to farm every ounce of AP and endlessly farm m+ until they have BiS 895 + 2 BiS legendaries. Those features were added so you could make progress if you finished everything else and still wanted something to do; they were not intended to be a requirement to be competitive. It's the WoW community that made them so, so Blizzard is left with two choices. Either put a cap on these systems and make a way to get your best 2 legendaries and stop playing, or to nerf these systems and nerf your legendaries so the difference between the top two and bottom two are as close to 0% as possible.

AP was originally meant to be capless, but they limited it to 54 traits because people like Cerlieu exist. M+ dropped 5 pieces of gear, had higher ilvl drops, and granted extra AP for each chest completed. This was seen as too lucrative and nerfed into the ground. Now legendaries are receiving a nerf.

We know which path they took

[Demona3]

and then when you got it and automatickly "/g cya suckers /gquit -> join much better progressed team"

ye amazing times indeed

Yep, that's usually the way it went. =P Happened with us. I was in a guild back on stormrage, who was ran by a couple. The guy was getting parts for the legendary out of Uldar. Well, one day he got mad at his significant other /gquit and deleted his character. To which, pissed everyone off. I also seem to recall an officer of that guild doing "guild alt runs", getting the un-needed epics, DEing them, then selling them on the AH and pocketing the gold.
Good times.

Either way, I still wouldn't care if they removed legendaries completely. Nerf is coming soon anyway.

[A dot Ham]

Where'd you get that 0.001% number? Thin air, I'm guessing.

What you're saying makes no sense. Both of these changes (class tuning and legendary balance) are happening in the same patch. What's your goal here, exactly? You'd like them to tune the classes to be equal even though they've recognized that some legendaries are required for spec viability? So in your world, we'd balance all the classes without touching items that break class balance, and then... what? Balance the items later, letting the exact problem they're trying to solve continue? Why?

Where did I get that number? I pulled it out of my ass. But given the reports of people getting a legendary at all, I'd bet money its probably less than that. Essentially that is just 1/100,000 players. I'm sure we could find an exact number to find the probability of someone not only have a legendary at all, but having a specific legendary (the best for class/spec). Since we don't know the math its kind of hard to determine.

So I'm playing a DH which means 13 (10 specific + 3 shared) are available. Lets assume for a second that any given activity that drops a legendary has a 1% chance to drop a legendary. That's 0.1 the probability that you will get a specific item is 1/13 or 7.7% or .077 so if you take .077 times a drop rate of .01 = .00077 or .07%. So again assuming there was a 1% chance for a legendary drop at all that would mean a given player has a .07% chance of getting a specific (BiS) legendary. We know that the drop rate is not 1%. We also know that many players still don't have their first legendary. I think my math is correct on that. So assuming every player had a legendary, and the drop rate was 1% (which again it isn't) the chances of a person having that specific BiS item is .07% and you are going to do all your balancing around that select group of people? Are you daft?

Also, when in the history of WoW has someone with a Legendary item been balanced? They haven't been. They are OP they top the meters and dominate in PvP... get a legendary or gtfo.

So acknowledging that, we can assume that if a player has a legendary they are going to perform better than the average or majority of players. They can therefor be excluded from players that need balancing or rather that item not be included in the balancing process.

If a legendary is required for spec viability, that is a problem with the spec/class and NOT the item. Fix the class first, do something fun/unique with the item afterwards.

Yes balance the class first, allow the problem(s) to exist with the item, and then fix the item later. Because when the item is no longer needed/used the class/spec is back to be imbalanced.

IF you are in fact balancing to a class having a specific item. Then you need to make sure that at some point everyone who plays that class/spec has that item.

- - - Updated - - -

Balancing classes around legendaries they may not have does not make sense. But the awful legendaries system will stay because it keeps the RNG grind going indefinitely.

How does that play into your position that this is all part of design?

[Caolela]

People, today, feel obligated to farm every ounce of AP and endlessly farm m+ until they have BiS 895 + 2 BiS legendaries. Those features were added so you could make progress if you finished everything else and still wanted something to do; they were not intended to be a requirement to be competitive. It's the WoW community that made them so, so Blizzard is left with two choices. Either put a cap on these systems and make a way to get your best 2 legendaries and stop playing, or to nerf these systems and nerf your legendaries so the difference between the top two and bottom two are as close to 0% as possible.

Here we have again someone blaming the players but not the company that made the game the way it now is. The ridiculous part that puts the kibash to the whole spiel is that legendaries were made RNG with a few BiS and a few utter garbage. Not something that players wanted or that they feel they have much choice in IF they want to be competitive.

You don't have 'X' legendary or have a shitty one, you have a hard time getting into groups because the performance difference is that great. BLIZZARD set that up, not players. Players are responding to what's in the game and what [non] choices they're given.

And that doesn't even touch on the bad talent changes and class design.

[Vineri]

Since you guys have bitched about legendaries 24/7 since release, Blizzard is doing what Blizzard does best. Nerf to the ground. There is no middle ground with Blizzard.










https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...2626046#post-1

The amusing part is that the insane boosts have grossly affected progress already. To any that were not lucky, you receive the same nerf as everyone else, only you are still near the bottom, while the lucky are lightyears ahead. Bravo, Blizzard?

[Vynestra]

Good.

If I had it my way I would delete them.

I dislike you, and disagree on most things.

But I agree here to some extent, atleast in the "Good" part of it.

I have sephuz, arcane legs, and just got norgannons foresight, two of these 3 are completely useless for me.

The OP must think that because they got lucky and got 2-3 bis legendaries, that they are better than me as a player, and that I should lose on dps because i got unlucky.

Well guess what, it feels -bad- to get a bad legendary, they should be more balanced, bring the weak ones up and the op ones down. If the system weren't based on total fricken RNG, it could be different, but it's COMPLETELY random.

[Vineri]

Blizzard attempted to make a system that provides cool, powerful boosts to random gameplay. It was similar to world drops back in Classic, <SNIP>

Uhh Classic open-world powerful drops were BoE.

[Caolela]

How does that play into your position that this is all part of design?

I think any reasonable person would see it as is quite obvious, though it was also clear enough as I stated.

[Deleted]

I dislike you, and disagree on most things.

But I agree here to some extent, atleast in the "Good" part of it.

I have sephuz, arcane legs, and just got norgannons foresight, two of these 3 are completely useless for me.

The OP must think that because they got lucky and got 2-3 bis legendaries, that they are better than me as a player, and that I should lose on dps because i got unlucky.

Well guess what, it feels -bad- to get a bad legendary, they should be more balanced, bring the weak ones up and the op ones down. If the system weren't based on total fricken RNG, it could be different, but it's COMPLETELY random.

[Deleted]

Good, a more equal playing field is welcome

[A dot Ham]

I think any reasonable person would see it as is quite obvious, though it was also clear enough as I stated.

Pretty non sequitur actually.

[God Save The King]

Uhh Classic open-world powerful drops were BoE.

Similar, not an exact copy. I was referencing the Legion panel at Blizzcon '15

[Echocho]

Uhh Classic open-world powerful drops were BoE.

And pretty weak compare to a lot of the gear in the game. The only reason they were valued was because of how rare loot was back then, epics in particular.
A world drop in vanilla didn't increase your total DPS by 10-20%, often there were actually blue drops that were better but since the world drops were epics they were seen as better.

Having items this powerful completely left to chance with no way to target them was a big mistake. We've always had extremely powerful items in the game, mostly in the form of trinkets, but they have always dropped from a specific place, so even if you didn't get it for weeks and months at least you knew you were on the right path.