Why are YOU grinding artifact power?

[Soeroah]

I'm not. I'm focused on first leveling one of each class, and then doing all the class campaigns. Even so, my main has just reached Trait 35 on his main weapon, and in less than 24 hours I'll have AK25 on that character. That's just from doing the odd dungeon/raid and emissary dailies, not actively seeking out AP.

[Hctaz]

If you play 15-20 hours per week you aren't "passively" getting it. That's a grind.

I'm not grinding artifact power. I actually avoid those WQs because I don't see the point. At 33 AP.

That is "passively" getting it. He is saying that he plays 15-20 hours a day and just does whatever the heck he feels like without focusing on AP. Grinding AP is when you do nothing but mythic plus dungeons for 20 hours.

[ls-]

No, the design intent isn't that you skip World Quests because you can't be bothered with the disappointment of not getting a decent upgrade (or getting salty over an upgraded item you don't want).

Apologies if that was unclear.

But that's how you decide if item/quest/etc is worth your time/effort or not.

It's literally impossible to make everything always feel rewarding and fresh. Even if item rewards always had higher item level and better stats than yours, you'd eventually stop caring about it, and that'd happen quite fast, that's just how our brain works.

[Geldor]

This is where the fun metric should come into play. Are the traits from 35 to 54 necessary to the scheme of the game? Or are they arbitrarily there to keep people repeating content and stay subbed. This is where people look at the Devs and go this is nothing about the game being fun and more about making a dollar or reinforcing a system for no reason.

Now the adding a slot to golds later is a good idea and adds fun, but uninspired things like the 35 to 54 irk players. We could have been done at 35 and moved on, there was no reason to add those other bonuses. They only add to competitive players, or people like me who just like maxing as best they can within their skill/time window.

Am I mad? No, but I see where the top end is annoyed and how people can be a little disappointed in the implemented system, especially in an already alt unfriendly environment.

....

I don't know. I like there is progression besides RNG loot, I also like the pure damage increase. Like the OP for me it's not a grind at all. I currently enjoy most of the aspects of Legion, and do WQs, M+, heroic raids, and a bit of RBGs (pvp is the least part I enjoy in Legion, because I don't like how the template works for my spec).

I get AP for everything I do, and the only time I "grind" is, that I try to get most of the AP related WQs, and an occasional heroic dungeon. But mostly it's just fun. My main is now at 9% increased damage which you notice. More damage is more fun (for me at least). Anyway, I think it's difficult for them to come up with that many imaginative traits. Most traits before 35 also are flat passive increases of damage, or a stat or talent. There is no principal difference in providing 1,3,5% damage increase to one trait, or a damage increase to everything you do. That said I hope we get a few more interesting ones (like new spells, or things which influence rotation) when they bring out the new traits.

I really like that this is something I can continuously work on, but I would never do it, or stay subscribed, if I wouldn't enjoy the activities to get AP in the first place.

Next to raiders, I think it's a bad system for people who play a lot of alts, or like spec variety and such. Hopefully 7.1.5. makes it better for them.

I play mainly on my main, and mostly enjoy one spec, so for me the system is really good, because it provides something to progress, and to focus on while having fun. I'm not a big fan of the RNG loot, and before enjoyed getting pvp sets, or work on sets via tokens.

[KaPe]

I raid mythics and seeing how I'm not in World First guild, I need every bit of advantage I can get. In this expansion, this happens to include farming AP and getting all those seemingly "irrelevant" 0.5%. Said "unimportant" 0.5% (be it damage, healing or just stamina) did happen to secure at least couple kills which wouldn't happen otherwise, thus further proving the "need" to do that. I don't have angry RL/GM shouting at me to do that, but being behind on AP does make a character feel far less useful for raids.

I don't do it nearly as much as I could have, being fairly light on M+, but it's still enough to be tiring and far less enjoyable than any other expansion. Very successful at killing my will to play any alt, too - especially since AK25 didn't magically make the grind dissapear. And I wanted to max all three weapons... oh boy, so much "fun".

[Toijin]

I don't actually know, habit i guess?

At 41 main and 34 off-spec.

[PowerGamez]

I pretty much stopped grinding as soon as I hit 35 in my main spec. I've spent a bit of time farming it for my other specs but am almost at 35 with all of those as well (Balance 35/Guardian 35/Resto 35/Feral 29). I don't even do world quests anymore because i can't be stuffed. I'll go and do a big loop around the isle completing all quests once or twice a week now where as previously it would be daily. I use to run ~70 mythics a week, now I run ~30 a week.

[schwarzkopf]

I'm not - at the system performs better if you don't grind. If you choose to grind, it must be because you enjoy grinding.

I'm at 38 traits, getting 2 more a week - 0% grind.

[Hotmail]

Dopamine, why else?

[Damajin]

I want to get the 34th trait in all 3 weapons, have 2 finished and am at 31 on the 3rd. I don't grind AP, I will do Emissary and any major WQ rewards/Order Missions but I've got real shit to do and won't be bothered with spamming dungeons repetitively.

After I finish the 34 in all weapons I'll start towards the extra 20 in my main weapon. I'm content getting as far as I can manage with the time I give myself.

[Deleted]

For me it's just fun. I've always been a player who embraces the grind. Whenever there's a cheeky mount that requires huge amounts of currency to be purchased, I'm over there farming all week. That was just a basic example of course.

[HHHGame78]

Just do all the AP WQ for the day and 1 random Heroic and call it a day. Stop moaning about it being a grind.

[Super Kami Dende]

No, the design intent isn't that you skip World Quests because you can't be bothered with the disappointment of not getting a decent upgrade (or getting salty over an upgraded item you don't want).

Apologies if that was unclear.

I mean that design has been in the game since Vanilla, so its nothing new to me. There has always been bosses/quests etc I just skip because the gear it drops was horribly itemised on a secondary level.

Though if reforging still existed I'd likely not care as much.

[Spiral Mage]

Specifically for the stated reason: To stay competitive.
Even if you want to PUG, you need to be able to do the very best you can.

Especially with the kinds of expectations you often run into PUGs.
RLs of PUGs seldom have any realistic idea what kind of DPS the raid actually requires,
so the better you do, the less likely it is you will run into a problem even if the leader is ignorant as hell.

With so many tiers of gear though, this expac IS kind of bad admittably, for being able to know what is good and bad DPS.
Someone can do WQs and be very lucky and have a near 870 item level.
Someone else who's done the same amount of content, might have nowhere near that.

So those two might do very different DPS, and while both are fine for the raid, one looks far better off than the other, so that person is far less likely to get removed from the raid if the RL begins to imagine problems that aren't there. (Like blaming the wipe on low DPS when his tanks were at fault, or a healer F'd up, or something else.)

[Coffeexbean]

havent grinded at all and I have two level 31 weapons. I thought the "grind" was gonna be a lot slower and that I wouldnt recieve all of my gold traits on a single weapon until towards the end of the expansion. Nighthold's not even out yet and we can expect legion to last more than 2 years

[Marack]

Im somewhat of a competitive person, so there are a couple people in guild that are trying to push their weapons. Unfortunately, Im about a trait (main spec) behind someone (he's only using 1 spec, where-as I have a 2nd spec to 35)

[Thelxi]

I gave up grinding AP a long time ago. I don't do anything for it at all, I just get what I get. AK makes it a pretty stupid thing to farm.

[Deleted]

Have 3 rank 34 weapons. I dont grind it. It comes with WQ's and dungeons.

People just moan as usual... They want instant level 110 with free epics, free legendaries, everything maxed out, just so they can stand idle in SW/Orgri/Dala while posting on MMO-C or Battle.net forums to complain about having nothing to do.

[HitRefresh]

I don't really anymore, I used to get my AK every time possible but I don't feel like getting garrison points anymore so I stopped. Plus I have all the artifact traits that really matter already.

[Xuvial]

I have all 3 of my specs at 35 traits and have achieved that simply through being picky with WQ's (only bothering with ones that give a good heap of AP), mythic+ dungeons, and a bit of normal/heroic raiding.

Artifact research is everything.

Now I'm just dumping AP into my main weapon beyond 35 pts. But there is no way I'm "actively" going to grind that shit out, because it's purposefully built around being a ridiculously long process giving extremely minor boosts.