Gear Progression

[Geyah]

With the forums and all of Battle.net down I thought I would come here and share something I've been feeling lately.

Enchants all over your gear feels rewarding.
Guaranteed gem slots feels good.
Reforging less desirable stats to favourable ones feels strategic.
Turning in valor points acquired over time from current content to upgrade (and essentially warforge) your own gear feels like direct reward for time put in.

Getting a non warforged piece with no gem slot or enchant possible these days feels bad. It is an uncustomizable slab of stats.

This trend has created a serious sense of distance from my gear that I never felt during past expansions. Going back to town after a raid and taking care of my new gear was an intimate post-raid cooldown and I miss this aspect of WoW dearly.

[Phenomina]

I disagree, I am happy with the current set up, although I would like to see more cosmetic Glyphs added

[gafney]

the problem is one I have been aware of from my early Everquest days.
The harder you make achieving or acquiring something the more valuable it is to you.
An item which is rare and difficult to obtain is valued, you are proud and satisfied to get it.
Change the game and make that same item easy to obtain and no one values it.
Game designer has to always confront this and try to balance the two.
If legionaries were mad significantly easier to obtain what good would they be everybody would have the legionaries they wanted
If they were made significantly harder to obtain everyone would complain about how hard they were to come by.
In Everquest there were these Epic quest chains that were incredibly difficult to complete. I remeber how impressed I was when I met or came across some character who had completed on of them. In fact I rember how impressed I was as a low level player when I encountered my first max level character because I knew how much time and work (in many cases over a year of regular play) it took to reach max level.

[Talvindius]

Look at it the other way, every drop being a possible upgrade feels exciting.
Every boss possibly dropping a Legendary is exciting.
Being able to get loot on off raid days that is competitive with raid loot is great.
Gaining dps/tankiness/healing efficiency from your artifact so even if you don't get gear for 2 weeks you'll still be stronger is great.

Progression in Legion is constant, and only gets better the more you play. What's wrong with that system?
"Aw my gear didn't warforge." Yeah, so? It means you had better loot already. What's wrong with that?

[Golden]

I have played some games where I was lucky to get even a 20% performance increase from getting the next tier set of gear. In WoW, you easily get a 200% performance increase with each tier. Multiply that by 3 tiers per expansion times 4 raid difficulties and you get a situation where new players are doing 100K DPS and other players are doing 1.4M DPS. How do you make any meaningful open world content in a game like that?

[Geyah]

Look at it the other way, every drop being a possible upgrade feels exciting.
Every boss possibly dropping a Legendary is exciting.
Being able to get loot on off raid days that is competitive with raid loot is great.
Gaining dps/tankiness/healing efficiency from your artifact so even if you don't get gear for 2 weeks you'll still be stronger is great.

Progression in Legion is constant, and only gets better the more you play. What's wrong with that system?
"Aw my gear didn't warforge." Yeah, so? It means you had better loot already. What's wrong with that?

1.) Every drop is still a possible upgrade. But with additional gems or uneven stats favourable gems could be added and higher stats can be forged to better ones.

2.) Every boss dropping a game-changing legendary is neat and I'd be cool with them sticking with it.

3.) Warforging in that aspect is neat. I concede that.

4.) Artifact weapon is exactly the valor point upgrade system under a new currency and name.

[VladimirM]

I disagree, I am happy with the current set up, although I would like to see more cosmetic Glyphs added

Amen sister

[Geyah]

I disagree, I am happy with the current set up, although I would like to see more cosmetic Glyphs added

This has nothing to do with this entire post. Please don't derail.

[Makorus]

If it wasn't for professions literally depending on them, Blizzard would have dropped Enchants and gems ages ago.

They suffer from the same problem as Reforging: It literally offers no depth, whatsoever, and is just more "hassle" before you can actually use your gear. It's an illusion of choice and customization.
Don't act like you "experimented". You simply followed your BIS stat guide. Sure, you could have done something else, but at that point, you are willingly gimping yourself.

I have played some games where I was lucky to get even a 20% performance increase from getting the next tier set of gear. In WoW, you easily get a 200% performance increase with each tier. Multiply that by 3 tiers per expansion times 4 raid difficulties and you get a situation where new players are doing 100K DPS and other players are doing 1.4M DPS. How do you make any meaningful open world content in a game like that?

Please explain to me how you get a "200% performance increase".

Even if a freshly dinged 110 gets his BIS legendary and replaces the worst possible item with it, it wouldn't be a "200% performance increase"

[MoanaLisa]

The harder you make achieving or acquiring something the more valuable it is to you.
An item which is rare and difficult to obtain is valued, you are proud and satisfied to get it.

Well and good and that makes sense.

It runs into the reality that everything in the game is obsoleted relatively soon by something else. Do you really treasure that months-long raiding trial that you and your guild went through to obtain in one expansion? How do you feel when it's relegated to junk a few months later after a new expansion launches? This is the reality of World of Warcraft which is why the ideal of your idea means less and less as real-time years pile up and the process repeats over and over again. Subconsciously this can also make you feel distant from your gear. That's one reason why transmogrification works. If you get a look you really like, then everything you wear may be a stat stick but at least the pieces assembled are very much to your liking and design and have personal investment.

[Phenomina]

This has nothing to do with this entire post. Please don't derail.

Hi Geyah, I can assure you derailment is not my intent. and at least 50% of my post was a response to your post!

[Heathy]

It runs into the reality that everything in the game is obsoleted relatively soon by something else.

this is a problem that has existed since the day we went from classic to tbc, tier 3 might have lasted you until 70, but you would have definitely replaced it with t4. the amount of effort required to get full t3 vs the effort required to get full t4.

I was still using 4 pieces of t6 at level 80 for the first couple of naxx raids. some gear lasts a bit longer than other gear but all gear eventually gets replaced by something better. probably why transmog came to be, ppl wanted to use the looks of older gear for their new gear.

don't know which itemization period was the best, I find the current system rewarding but ultimately lacking depth. the stats in this game have been consolidated down to the point that it doesn't matter what you equip if its 10ilvls better its an upgrade. the whole thing is too formulaic and essentially idiot proof. I think i prefer more convoluted stat systems to simplistic ones, the difference between oblivion and skyrim for example. older wow was more like oblivion, newer wow is more like skyrim. same game just more consolidated. it changes every other expansion so its tough to get comfortable with any stats in wow because at some point they'll get removed or replaced by something else. as a healer i liked having some control over my mana regen and my mana pool, we still have trinkets with regen effects but entire elements of game play have come and gone over the years getting attached to a specific system seems like its doomed for disappointment.

[MoanaLisa]

this is a problem that has existed since the day we went from classic to tbc, tier 3 might have lasted you until 70, but you would have definitely replaced it with t4. the amount of effort required to get full t3 vs the effort required to get full t4.

I probably didn't make the big point I was trying to make prominent enough. There's no disagreement that the problem has existed since more or less the beginning but I think that over 10+ years people have factored it into their minds that no reward, no matter how special, is really that lasting, i.e. that special. Which is why making people do more for a reward doesn't necessarily make it mean more any longer. That's a cycle that can last for a while but every time it repeats, the reward buzz is subject to a sort of mental version of diminishing returns. Which is why you see reactions on things that take a while as more relief and "Thank god that's over" than "Yay! I did this."

It is, no doubt, a difficult thing to tune.

[Deleted]

I hate the fact that you can't get fully BiS anymore. It was a huge part of raiding, to eventually after farming the hardest content finally be fully BiS equipped. Like you knew for a fact that would eventually happen. It was a great feeling, it was one of the biggest goals and motivators aside from having fun downing the content. It made your character feel very personal and the fact that it was perfected reminded you of how hard you worked. It's not a great feeling when you see someone walk around with a piece of gear that proc'd all the way to 925 with a socket from mythic+3, all while you have haven't gotten a single even remotely as good gear piece from doing the hardest content in the game

Not only that but having ilevel procs means balancing content is impossible. If they make the mythic version require ilevel from heroic, it'll be severely under-tuned for hardcore guilds who have farmed hardcore and have way over that. But if it requires ilevel higher than what heroics gives, since gear can proc and what not, then more casual guilds suffer a lot since their ilevel is naturally way behind thanks to not splitting raids and playing less in general. The ilevel differences in this game are SO out of hand that the game is starting to be impossible to balance. It's not a very good design to begin with that you literally deal 10 times the damage at the end of the expansion than you did at the beginning

[Dazu]

If it wasn't for professions literally depending on them, Blizzard would have dropped Enchants and gems ages ago.

They suffer from the same problem as Reforging: It literally offers no depth, whatsoever, and is just more "hassle" before you can actually use your gear. It's an illusion of choice and customization.
Don't act like you "experimented". You simply followed your BIS stat guide. Sure, you could have done something else, but at that point, you are willingly gimping yourself.



Please explain to me how you get a "200% performance increase".

Even if a freshly dinged 110 gets his BIS legendary and replaces the worst possible item with it, it wouldn't be a "200% performance increase"

When I fresh dinged 110 on my hunter I was doing about 100-120k dps. At 850 ilvl I was doing about 250k dps (before tier etc), and at 870 or so I was doing closer to 300k (rough numbers havent played in a couple of months now, but my DK and Shaman were running roughly the same differences). Thats without tier bonuses and other stuff, and without proper enchants/potions. Yes 200% might be a little over the mark, but a fresh player compared to someone in mythic NH gear level + right legendaries is too much of a gap (id say 400% easily). He was saying a tier set/level not a single item.

Thats before you take into account the increased survivability, scaling of abilities on AP/SP/Max health for self healing etc. Ive never seen gaps as big as this or last expansion.

[Deleted]

You technically CAN get full BIS, you just have to be incredibly lucky to do so.

I'm more likely to choke and die on my breakfast every morning I think, not exactly odds I'd ever recognize as a possibility in practice

[Deleted]

Not really. It's 0% that you would choke and die repeatedly(every morning). There's at least a negligible opportunity for hardcore players to hit BiS.

My dude, are you on the spectrum

Infracted

[Heathy]

attaining bis is more likely during the final tier when there is nothing but the next expansion gear to replace what you get. whatever you think is bis now won't be bis in 3 months. likewise what is bis in 3 months won't be bis 6 to 8 months after that.

hopefully the last tier will last a bit so you actually get a chance to farm it for bis. I haven't had a 925 yet so getting bis outside of mythic raiding can take a while which seems about right to me. if you want bis quickly then mythic raiding is where you get it.