Locks Love more Power - A response to 7.2 AP

[krakdotz]

Hello World! .. of Warcraft fans/developers/friends,

Please Note:
- Post was originally intended for the battle net WoW forums but it was too long for their character limit.
- Everything I know about AP in 7.2 is based on Watchers post forums/en/wow/topic/20753277190 (omitted most of the URL Since I'm a new account on MMO champ.)
- My opinion (but not an explanation or solutions) is summed up by the 3rd comment down posted by Masabuns-Sargeras
- I don't want to make a giant wall of text but I'm honestly about to. Scroll to bottom for TL;DR, BUT if you want to actually respond and discuss, please read thoroughly.


Friends, I am about to make it. Hopefully tonight. I am currently 600k AP away from 54 traits in my Destruction weapon. Finally I will be given the privilege of bumping my other weapons to 35 traits and then dumping in whichever spec I wish.

I came back to this game after a 3 year hiatus, minus a month of game time after pre-ordering Legion to level my lock from 90 to 100 in preparation for Legion. The artifact power thing seemed pretty cool at the start of the expansion, your weapon got stronger as you got stronger. The weapon is the Scepter of Sargeras, it can rip holes through worlds, space-time and even a couple of raid bosses! So cool, I was so interested in this, and I still am. I'm proud to wield my Artifact.

But eventually you want to feel like you're max power in the game. Eventually you want to know that you don't HAVE to log in and spam keystones or bgs or whatever your choice of grinding AP was. Your going to go to that raid, play that BG, or run some 2's with your buddy, why?, because that shits fun. When you don't do it for a couple days and then come back, no harm no foul because you can just play. That's not the case right now, atleast not until after you get 54 traits in your main spec, and if you want/are required to by your guild to multi-spec then your in for a long haul.

I would love to have had the chance to try Demonology or Affliction on a few bosses this expansion, but I feel locked into the spec. I feel like any points I'm not putting into Destruction I am gimping myself.

Why am I talking about this? Everyone's almost 54 now, or if not who cares because 7.2 is just around the corner and there's a huge blue post about how they think they failed in a couple ways and have learned and improved the way it's going to work in 7.2. Well the answer is this, Blizzard actually doesn't understand what they are about to do.

The idea Blizzard is communicating is to make it so that the "Power Gap" is miniscule. The way they plan to do this is to have the points continue to grow in needed AP exponentially, and have Artifact knowledge increase again to scale. This sounds great on paper. It sounds like we are completely forgetting the 1% to me. What 1%? Where are the billionaires?!!? No, we arn't talking about the Elite wealthy IRL, I'm talking about the Elite mythic raiders. The ones who clear all of the hardest content in the game within a couple weeks of it's release while the rest of us take a few months to catch up (or even never do at all until the next expansion like the majority of the player base).

These players are not going to be ok with having any number of points they could have had not put into the weapon. They are competing with other players who also are not going to be ok with not having any points they could have had. Therefore, I believe, from launch of the new artifact system these players may end up sleeplessly grinding for this AP. The boost, no matter how small, is still a boost. I remember in MoP the feasts gave 300 main stat and personal food gave 325 (or 375?), my guild master said on several occasions for people to stop dropping the feasts everyone must be using the best food, someone eventually got gkicked for dropping a feast.

"KEK WTF Krak sounds like your GM needs to lighten up!?"

No, he was right, there was no reason to have lesser food. Just like with main stats being lower right now, if I eat 200 Int food instead of 375 haste food, I'm gimping myself. I'm in a bit more of a casual guild now (3/10 mythic currently 11/20 overall for the tier) and they drop the 200 main stat feasts. I do eat them when the progression attempts are going long, I'm starting to feel the drain on my own consumables what have you.

"Krak I checked your logs and you drink prolonged power instead of deadly grace and you come here to argue min/maxing?!"
No friend, I mean, I play what is consider the least viable spec outside of its "niche" fights this expansion, but I don't complain about it, it's the spec I like, the flavour of being a power hungry undead magic wielder who wishes to burn all living things... but I digress. I come here to tell you that maxing is taking too much right now. I work 9 hour days 5 days a week, it's so hard to keep up right now in consumables while still trying to have fun with the game. I want to go home and say, I'm going to run a couple BG's for fun, or I'm going to pug a Normal ToV for jokes, but I can't. I have to grind AP or mats for consumables for raid.

"Krak you chose this life, you wanted to raid"

I did and I do. So I do; I grind my ass off.

Back to AP, if you sleeplessly grind for 3 days to end up only 3 points better than the next guy, your still better than the next guy even though it's marginal. Even if it was 1 trait better, it's still better. There needs to come a point where players are all equal, they are as strong as they can be, less the gear that drops from the bosses you are bringing them to kill. Anytime there are untalented traits in your weapon, this is not the case.

"Okay Krak, you've been really good about putting words in our mouths and rebutting them, but this is just a giant wall of QQ, what do you propose Blizzard does? They want you to feel like your power is increasing in ways outside of gear at max level."

Alright friends, bare with me on this one. I'm going to pretend Nighthold is not yet out and it was the raid coming in 7.2 because I'm not familiar with the bosses of Tomb of Sargeras as of yet. Lets say they added 5 traits to the weapon when Nighthold came out, 4 unlocked by AP and the last one goes up to 3/3. How do you get the last one? You kill Gul'dan. Kill Gul'dan on Normal for the first point, Gul'dan on Heroic for the 2nd and Kill Gul'dan on Mythic for the 3rd. You've completed the game at the current tier and you are max power, congrats!

"Now that's stupid because I'll never get the 3rd rank!"

You don't need the 3rd rank, literally no one does, not world first level players, nor alt-aholics. It's purpose is literally only to make farming the Mythic content simpler after it's been completed.

"Well what about the second trait, groups won't take me to Heroic Gul'dan without it!"

You won't get into a farm kill of H Gul'dan without AOTC anyway, so you'll either join a group of people who don't have it, your guild who doesn't have it, or get lucky and pulled into a group even though you don't have it, just like you would without AOTC.

"But you're wrong about all of this Krak! You're stance is just as good as stopping the artifact power altogether since it doesn't make it so you are always gaining something(AP) no matter what you are doing!"

That's right, you're right, the only way to get these traits would be through cutting edge PVE content and no matter how many BG's you run it won't help you get them. I really don't understand the mentality that everything I do on the game needs to be making my character stronger. Why can't my character already be strong and I'm doing the things in the game for fun? That said, if you must you could gate these same traits on the PVP side behind ratings 1600, 1800 and 2200 respectively seem like good fits

Lets say this just won't stick, every player must get the opportunity to finish their weapon, need more traits to slowly grow in power, need everything you do to slowly offer this increase to you, whatever the logic is. Fine. The less favourable option to me would be to implement a weekly cap behind the AP. Blizzard's whole post is about giving it an imaginary time gate, my point is that the time gate won't help the way they think it will, so just give it a literal time gate with a not so hard weekly cap.

TL;DR: In closing, AP needs either be done now, or artifact traits need to be obtained in alternative ways that don't incentivize (or even require) constant grinding. AKA Punishment for going to work or playing a different game, or going to old raids for fun.

Did anyone go to the Scarab event in January? How was it? I would have liked to go but I wasn't 54 traits yet.

[Deleted]

Did anyone go to the Scarab event in January? How was it? I would have liked to go but I wasn't 54 traits yet.

but did you sleep because you didnt have 54 traits unlocked

[krakdotz]

but did you sleep because you didnt have 54 traits unlocked

Yep I did because I work, which is why I didn't have 54 traits then.

[Phookah]

You aren't forced to grind. Nothing makes you do it.
If it isn't fun, don't play.

Blizzard doesn't need to protect you from your own poor sense of self control.

[krakdotz]

You aren't forced to grind. Nothing makes you do it.
If it isn't fun, don't play.

Blizzard doesn't need to protect you from your own poor sense of self control.

It is fun, I'll continue to play thank you. I love to raid Mythic content, to be viable there I must grind. Yes I am forced to grind, Yes the game is still fun.

If I had poor self control I'd be unemployed and 54 traits in 12 classes all specs.

[Phookah]

It is fun, I'll continue to play thank you. I love to raid Mythic content, to be viable there I must grind. Yes I am forced to grind, Yes the game is still fun.

If I had poor self control I'd be unemployed and 54 traits in 12 classes all specs.

The fact that you think you're "forced" to grind shows that you have poor self control. You don't need to have your life collapse around you for that to be true.

Play the game naturally. Get AP as it comes. The game doesn't need to be designed around the .01% of the population that feels the need spam mythic Maw 2k times.

You wanna do that? Great! But don't ask the devs to change the game for you because its clearly something you don't enjoy (hence why you're trying to change it in the first place).

[krakdotz]

The fact that you think you're "forced" to grind shows that you have poor self control. You don't need to have your life collapse around you for that to be true.

Play the game naturally. Get AP as it comes. The game doesn't need to be designed around the .01% of the population that feels the need spam mythic Maw 2k times.

You wanna do that? Great! But don't ask the devs to change the game for you because its clearly something you don't enjoy (hence why you're trying to change it in the first place).

You're wrong. If I was still at 35 traits I wouldn't be on a Mythic core team. I would get dropped for low performance, that is what is forcing me to grind. I must do X in order to do Y.

AP doesn't come fast enough to keep up if you just do what you want. That being said I did let it come naturally mostly. I only ran carry groups a few times in January and Feb as I've been trying to finish off atleast my mainspec that should have been done in December to keep up with the rest of PVE'rs that complete content at my level and pace.

I'm not the 0.1% and I'm not asking for the game to be designed around that, I'm coming to the conclusion you didn't read my whole post.

I don't know how much your actually paying attention to the 7.2 PTR General discussion, but my opinion is a good majority of the posts on that forum, which is where this was intended to be posted but is too long.

[Ginantonicus]

You're wrong. If I was still at 35 traits I wouldn't be on a Mythic core team. I would get dropped for low performance, that is what is forcing me to grind. I must do X in order to do Y.

What you have just said is "I want to do Y so I choose to do x". It is your choice to do it.

[krakdotz]

What you have just said is "I want to do Y so I choose to do x". It is your choice to do it.

Yes, that's literally in my original post

"Krak you chose this life, you wanted to raid"

I did and I do. So I do; I grind my ass off.

[MasterHamster]

Overcome the ridiculous notion that you aren't viable/competitive just because your weapon isn't 54 and enjoy the content anyway. No one sits after a boss kill and checks "oh that guy is 51, that means he could've done another 7k dps had he just done another 300 maw runs!!!!!!"

It sucks to see that players have fallen into this trap of feeling gimped for everything.

[krakdotz]

Overcome the ridiculous notion that you aren't viable/competitive just because your weapon isn't 54 and enjoy the content anyway. No one sits after a boss kill and checks "oh that guy is 51, that means he could've done another 7k dps had he just done another 300 maw runs!!!!!!"

It sucks to see that players have fallen into this trap of feeling gimped for everything.

I appreciate the sentiment. I would certainly look at it this way if I was only doing up to Heroic content.

Doing Mythic content in time to clear Cutting Edge involves being in a guild, which is raiding with the same people every week who are putting in that work and want to run with other people who are putting forth the same effort.

[Super Kami Dende]

It's almost as if they originally said the Trait system was meant to be progression for an entire expansion yet retards are complaining they couldn't do it in 3 months.

Strange that huh.

[Ginantonicus]

Yes, that's literally in my original post

Then in your original post you have said that you are not forced to grind AP.

[krakdotz]

Then in your original post you have said that you are not forced to grind AP.

Forced is a poor choice of wording that if you CTRL + F on this page you will find the first instance of the word is in Phookas comment. I used it in a reply to said forum user in an ill thought out state as I chose to post with defensive intent instead of consideration of the fact that he hadn't really read what I wrote anyway.

[A dot Ham]

TL;DR I did though!

First, fuck your colors. Pretty sure I got an instant migraine.

Second, I actually just hit 54 on my main last week... and I wasn't ever grinding out AP. I just took it as it came.

I think where people are missing the point is that they aren't really intending you to MAX out AP... and THEN play. If I am not mistaken AP should be a constant increase in power for your character, and gear/ilvl is a once in a while thing.

I mean we've all hit that slump where we don't get item upgrades for weeks. But the one thing you can always count on... is increasing AP and hitting that next bar.

You don't have to max out AP anymore than you need BiS to down content.

I'm not at all advocating it, I did JUST hit AP cap... so to know that I am going to have another grind ahead of me soon isn't exactly thrilling.

But I don't plan on beating myself up to max it out either. I am going to play content and collect AP as it comes.

[krakdotz]

First, fuck your colors. Pretty sure I got an instant migraine.

Second, I actually just hit 54 on my main last week... and I wasn't ever grinding out AP. I just took it as it came.

I think where people are missing the point is that they aren't really intending you to MAX out AP... and THEN play. If I am not mistaken AP should be a constant increase in power for your character, and gear/ilvl is a once in a while thing.

I mean we've all hit that slump where we don't get item upgrades for weeks. But the one thing you can always count on... is increasing AP and hitting that next bar.

You don't have to max out AP anymore than you need BiS to down content.

I'm not at all advocating it, I did JUST hit AP cap... so to know that I am going to have another grind ahead of me soon isn't exactly thrilling.

But I don't plan on beating myself up to max it out either. I am going to play content and collect AP as it comes.

HAHA that quote joke. Yaa I did.
Lol ya, sorry about the colour I'll probably fix it later/tomorrow if I come back to this at all.

Basically like I say in the thing, I'm JUST about to hit 54 tonight, I obviously didn't grind like mad like the world first people do. What I was thinking about when I started writing this post is how I don't want to start gathering more very shortly. The world first people were kind of a middle of the post thought, but its true, and I'm wondering with the new super huge AP grind coming, if we might not hear about someone dying while playing the game this time. Although rare, it's happened in Asia plenty enough to know it's possible, although it won't happen in Asia because of online gaming limitations they have now, what about EU world first race guilds? They don't have timers cutting them offline and they've got multiple specs and alts to grind for split runs.

Again, I'm not going to be repeat running for AP. I might join a carry group here or there but mostly just making sure I get the best I can for weekly caches just like I did throughout this tier. My problem is being traits behind people more so then it is playing the game too much.

[Lazuli]

I don't even know how people are fucking 54 already. I have a life, work, etc. blah blah. So I also have to play all 3 specs, because I played pally and sometimes my guild need something else. We aren't huge and you can't depend on PuGs. I was 34 in all, but I don't raid mythic. Mythic will never fucking happen in my life time with this system.

I hate artifacts and I hate AP, it is pure cancerous bullshit. Why the fuck we needed another grind on top of gear is beyoooooooond me.

Yeah we aren't 'forced' to do anything, you're not forced to eat but you do when you're hungry motherfucker, terrible arguments aren't needed just admit that this is a terrible system.

I stop playing with guild, stop raiding, stop the game, and never would play a hybrid in this xpac,. after going through that just to get more grind.