There is no way Blizzard will give up AP as a reward

[Nurasu]

I don't know what you mean about weapons are only good for one spec. They can only be used by one spec. Are you really complaining about secondary stat itemization on your Artifacts? A single aspect of your entire gear? They barely give secondaries compared to other items such as rings or necks.

No, I mean before if I got a staff for example, I could use it for any spec even if the secondaries were better for one spec or another. Now if I put relics into my Discipline staff, I can only use that for Discipline and my other 2 specs are completely SoL unless I get additional relics for them of equal ilvl. Legendaries are a pain as well, you're right, I've just gotten lucky in that regard.

[Deleted]

I have to say that I'm really !@#$ing tired of losing personal power every single !@#$ing expansion - Not the gear itself, but rather abilities, talents, ect. Going from Vanilla->Wrath, you gained power each expansion. BC bought new talents. Wrath bought new talents AND a glyph system. Cata was going to bring the Path of the Titans, but then it initially got scrapped.

Then we enter MoP, when blizzard decided "All this shit needs to get the fuck out". Lost a lot of cool talent shit with this - Extra affects on AoE, DoTs being a bit more then just damage, ect. Not to mention the stupid ability pruning - Yea, sure, things like Mangle and Shred were kinda redundant, but things like Eye of the Beast, Sentry Totem? WoD was a little bit better with the "perks" that buffed up abilities - A few were retarded, but most were nice.

Then we got Legion, an absolutely HUGE power gain across the board for everyone. Sure, we lost Glyphs, which really sucks. But, hey, next expansion, we are going to lose even more without any guaranteed gain. Hati with BM? Thats going to be gone. Balance druid's moon cycles, which makes the rotation nice? Gone. Disc with Lights Wrath? Gone.

Not to mention the traits. Sure, a large number of them, such as "Ability deals X% more damage, or has Y% more crit" can just be baked into the numbers. But others? Resto's "Tranq can be used while moving" - Thats going to be gone. Fire's Cauterizing Heal - Thats gone. Blood getting a shit-ton of leech - Gone.

It really fucking sucks - They give us toys to play with and then take them away every. single. expansion. I'm honestly not sure if I will be buying the next one, depending on what blizzard does with this player power. If you lose it upon hitting 111, then yea, im done.
This doesn't even cover legendary buff. Can you imagine going into 8.0 as Havoc, with shit-all fury generation? I, personally, do NOT look forward to not having a huge radius on Thrash, or not being able to stack up multiple PS charges as feral.

It's just my baseless opinion bit I reckon that a lot of the spells and effects from artefacts and legensaroes are going to end up being added into the basic toolkit from 111+

[KrotosTheTank]

But it also creates a performance disparity between the haves and the have nots. Especially if 7.2 isn't the last time they move the goal posts.

Um, hello? This is an RPG still; there necessarily should be a difference between the haves and the have nots. That's the whole point of working towards becoming a have. Plus, that's a stretch, it really is. The only difference is time played which translate to speed. Who cares if person X gets 52 traits 2 wks before person Y? Person X doesn't affect person Y. They aren't taking up all the AP before the others can collect, they are just utilizing whatever means they have to improve.

Valor systems were worse. Because now you've put a nice cap on things that everyone can reach including those that barely play, and the rest of the players are left with nothing. With our current system, those that want to improve, albeit marginally, still can, while those who play less can eventually get 99% of "power" out of their weapon that the time dedicated have, though it may happen a few weeks later.

It's not like only those mages with 52 traits before ToS get pyroblast and the rest who don't have it by then get a cigarette lighter; it's literally an extra trait that gives a buff that so far is averaging to be about a 1-1.5% gain in player power, we're talking under 10k extra dps.... at MAX AP level it'll get up to around 50k extra dps, and that'll be when breaking 1M dps will be the low end for normal raiders. There just simply isn't a have/have not dichotomy here. It's a have now/have later one, and with AK, the difference is weeks at most.

No, I mean before if I got a staff for example, I could use it for any spec even if the secondaries were better for one spec or another. Now if I put relics into my Discipline staff, I can only use that for Discipline and my other 2 specs are completely SoL unless I get additional relics for them of equal ilvl. Legendaries are a pain as well, you're right, I've just gotten lucky in that regard.

I think it's less of an issue than you think though, especially because the relic type overlap isn't as consistent. I have only one type that is in all 3, and i just prioritize my most preferred spec first. Plus, an 890 relic which is awesome for one spec, may be worse than an 880 with a better modifier for a different spec. I don't think it's too bad. Glad you've had luck at least with the legendaries

[Valrysha]

I like AP, It keeps me playing and doing content, it does make content relevant.

However!
I do think there should be a cap on the Artifact Traits, the infinite trait is..frankly awful, Yes it keeps people playing. But I need and desire a tangible goal to acquire. A hard limit so to speak.

A few ideas could be to cap the amount of AP per week, but at what number? Who knows.

Or..Valor could return, as well as item upgrades, and remove AP in general, having the item upgrades (REMOVE TITANFORGING THO) means you can work on your gear even after getting some great pieces.

[A dot Ham]

Um, hello? This is an RPG still; there necessarily should be a difference between the haves and the have nots. That's the whole point of working towards becoming a have. Plus, that's a stretch, it really is. The only difference is time played which translate to speed. Who cares if person X gets 52 traits 2 wks before person Y? Person X doesn't affect person Y. They aren't taking up all the AP before the others can collect, they are just utilizing whatever means they have to improve.

Valor systems were worse. Because now you've put a nice cap on things that everyone can reach including those that barely play, and the rest of the players are left with nothing. With our current system, those that want to improve, albeit marginally, still can, while those who play less can eventually get 99% of "power" out of their weapon that the time dedicated have, though it may happen a few weeks later.

It's not like only those mages with 52 traits before ToS get pyroblast and the rest who don't have it by then get a cigarette lighter; it's literally an extra trait that gives a buff that so far is averaging to be about a 1-1.5% gain in player power, we're talking under 10k extra dps.... at MAX AP level it'll get up to around 50k extra dps, and that'll be when breaking 1M dps will be the low end for normal raiders. There just simply isn't a have/have not dichotomy here. It's a have now/have later one, and with AK, the difference is weeks at most.

It's not a stretch... its exactly what has happened. If, IF it was their intent to have it mirror any other armor token or anything else we have farmed in the past... they would have put a cap on it.

Conspiracy or not, intended or not, it is another system that has caused a gap between these "elite" players and the oh so hated "casuals". Kind of like how they discovered their "bad luck protection" wasn't working and was actually increasing legendary drop chances for people who ALREADY had legendaries. When they discovered the bug did they correct it by removing the additional legendaries? Nope. Those fucks got to keep em. Convenient. Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to work harder, or rather the way it was intended to get ours.

[Stardrift]

I'd imagine they'll keep their word and do away with the artifact weapons. But I think they will make a new item slot for our characters. A slot where we put in an item that can be upgraded just how our artifact weapons were upgraded, via relics and AP.

[Thetruth1400]

Wrong, see above. It is not "literally mandatory to progress". If it was then no one would be progressing, as no one will be able to hit the cap without more AK (beyond 50), not even those at the top of the AP ladder atm.

Stop saying mandatory, stop thinking the paragon points are better than they are. Missing a prepot will make a larger difference than an extra few points in the paragon trait. Better gear will WAY outscale any of those traits, particularly ideal Legendaries (which drop more frequently now). Don't pretend like those couple points will outweigh skill. Exorsus killed Gul'dan with average ilvl of just under 905 and that was prior to 7.2 where we all saw a huge boost in output and base stats. Guild's that haven't yet killed him just need to learn the fights or find ways to improve themselves as players (not saying that in a disparaging way). Getting an extra .5% dps from SEVERAL more paragon traits isn't going to win it for them; everything beyond 52 is icing, that's it and in some cases 52 itself is even a let down, and let's not forget all the filler points you put in to get to 52 that we only placed because we had nothing else.

It's. Not. Mandatory.

Cutting edge guilds are not indicative of the average player, even Blizzard admits that. Telling them to "Get better and learn the game" just shows how ignorant you really are about it. Additionally, most of those cutting edge guilds you're talking about force their players to max out or get as close to max as they can on their artifact weapons, demanding they farm mythics over and over and over again.

Literally every point in a weapon is an improvement of some kind, be it a direct percent increase, cast time decrease, or any other thing. After that, you have a chance of a proc that boosts your stats, again a clear increase. Besides just that, you're constantly getting a Stamina increase each level. Hell, even different relics can have drastically different DPS effects on players.

Gear in WoW is greater than skill. If you think not, lets see what happens if a group of naked players run even a simple dungeon they can clear no problem vs one fully decked out.

[Wries]

With the way each ap knowledge scales (exponentially) only a cutting edge raider or someone truly disilissiounal really cares about it. For anyone else, It's an entirely arbitrary thing that really doesn't affect the value of your character progression.

Unless they change their mind and accept that the progression of the paragon levels during 7.1.5 actually was well-balanced and fine (in terms of keeping motivation up for players to actually pursue AP-items and feeling IT made a difference in character power) I really hope that they get rid of it.

Because the current implementation is pointless.

[Miatog]

I agree and disagree with the OP. It's something I've been thinking about recently and this is the conclusion I've come to. Yeah artifact WEAPONS are going to be this expansion only. Next expansion we'll get artifact ARMOR. Let's look at the last few expansions. In MoP we had a chain that led up to getting a cape. In WoD they refined the process a bit with getting a ring and upgrading it throughout the expansion. Legion has further pushed this idea with artifact weapons. This idea has basically been around since MoP, just refined more and more till it became what we have in Legion. If they wanted to continue the artifact system, and improve it, they have a couple options.

1. Keep the exact same weapons we have now and have some kind of a reset on AP. IMO this is a bad idea. The AP reset with no new weapon completely kills any sense of progress that we've had.
2. Keep the system, improve it, and offer new weapons as the OP suggests. This could work, but really, what fun would this be? Same old same old.
3. Offer another slot as an artifact. And here we have what I think to be the golden solution.

The great thing about armor is that not only would we have new lore since there's so little major lore armor (off the top of my head I can only think of Doomhammer's armor), but we don't even have to go get the armor as some symbol of power. Armor, most notably plate, was typically crafted for one person to use. Yes chain mail and leather could be made more loosely for many to wear, but like a suit the best fit is custom. So why not MAKE our new armor personally? Have an armor crafter, say one per armor type or class, that sends you out on a quest to gather the first bits of a new armor fit for someone of your importance. He makes it, you spend the expansion pumping AP into it, and we have the same system with a new coat of polish on it.

There's also the fun of discovering new things about your armor. Like say after a patch an elemental shaman is fighting, has some kind of feedback on the armor and a quest pops up to go talk to the crafter about it. He examines the armor and finds that the materials are interacting with your magic in a way he didn't predict and thinks he can refine it and boom, new traits pop up like what 7.2 did. Only instead of it being other people pumping their power into your artifact, you found this functionality to your armor, that you helped make, and you helped to refine it, and now your armor is better than before. Personally I like this idea better than just pushing the same or new weapons at us.

[KrotosTheTank]

Cutting edge guilds are not indicative of the average player, even Blizzard admits that. Telling them to "Get better and learn the game" just shows how ignorant you really are about it. Additionally, most of those cutting edge guilds you're talking about force their players to max out or get as close to max as they can on their artifact weapons, demanding they farm mythics over and over and over again.

Literally every point in a weapon is an improvement of some kind, be it a direct percent increase, cast time decrease, or any other thing. After that, you have a chance of a proc that boosts your stats, again a clear increase. Besides just that, you're constantly getting a Stamina increase each level. Hell, even different relics can have drastically different DPS effects on players.

Gear in WoW is greater than skill. If you think not, lets see what happens if a group of naked players run even a simple dungeon they can clear no problem vs one fully decked out.

You're being retarded, yes, you're right, a NAKED fucking player won't kill anything current. I can exaggerate too *thumbs up*.

52 traits =! Cutting edge guilds

Telling them to "Get better and learn the game" just shows how ignorant you really are about it.

Only ignorant players think that there is no way they can improve. Feel free to look at logs all you want, you'll find TONS of guilds around the 3/10 to 7/10 M range with severely underperforming players, and these are people with 905+ ; I'm not saying you have to get 90 percentiles, just at least getting 50 would be a huge improvement for those people. A 52nd trait that LITERALLY adds under 2% damage increase will not improve those players nearly as much as improving their play, even just knowing the bosses, when to move, when you can plant and just tunnel, etc...

most of those cutting edge guilds you're talking about force their players to max out or get as close to max as they can on their artifact weapons, demanding they farm mythics over and over and over again.

You've taken only a small portion of what I've written. That being said, I was referring to people outside of those guilds, and how ludicrous it is for those guilds to think about demanding that with our new system. If they continue to do so, it's clearly because they don't understand how minimal the benefit is vs the time it takes to achieve. I'll repeat though, getting 52 traits before ToS, for anyone in any form of raiding guild, across all skills, will be easy as hell. I say 52 because everything beyond that helps, but it's going to make or break a fight for those same guilds. Does .2% dps matter for the top 3 guilds? Yea, probably, mostly because they are doing said fights extremely undergeared. The guilds who have not yet killed Gul'dan are not failing because of gear, they just need to learn the fights, there's a reason why those guilds tend to extend lockouts: more time on the boss > a couple of chances at a lucky TF.

Conspiracy or not, intended or not, it is another system that has caused a gap between these "elite" players and the oh so hated "casuals". Kind of like how they discovered their "bad luck protection" wasn't working and was actually increasing legendary drop chances for people who ALREADY had legendaries. When they discovered the bug did they correct it by removing the additional legendaries? Nope. Those fucks got to keep em. Convenient. Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to work harder, or rather the way it was intended to get ours.

You always call people who put a lot of time into some a fuck? Blizzard can't just arbitrarily remove items from people. You do realize that this happens the other way too right? Those "fucks" enter a raid early and get the "joy" of experiencing most of the early bugs that get worked out so the rest of us don't have to see it. Just because someone found a way to benefit themselves doesn't make them a fuck, they are opportunists and put in the work. There wasn't some magical button that only these mystical elite players get that they clicked and they got their gear, they still had to run shit. You're probably the type of person who thinks that those who use steroids just sit on a couch all day and get fit, doesn't work that way, they still have to work their asses off (im obviously not going into ethics on this, let's say im referring to non-competitive use)

[nekobaka]

I expect the system in some way to remain. The plan is for artifact weapons to get dropped and I hope that plan stays.

[Ajjax]

According to World of Warcraft lead narrative designer Dave Kosak, artifact weapons won’t be sticking around for the seventh expansion, whenever that arrives.

"It’s kind of like what’s going to be the marquee cool new thing in this expansion," Kosak told Polygon. "It was garrisons in Warlords of Draenor, and that was pretty cool. We take some of those elements forward, but otherwise that was a Draenor-specific thing. Now you have an artifact weapon, and it’s going to be very Legion-specific. Down the line, I imagine we’ll have something else really cool."

source

Get your facts straight before making baseless assumptions.

This is not a clear answer on if they are going to get rid of them or carry over the idea into something new. Its vague, they could spin that either way.

[Talvindius]

AP system is great. A constant reward for playing the game that makes my character stronger even when I don't get loot? Sounds good.

The only people who hate AP are people who are so stupid as to think grinding AP 24/7 to get all weapons to cap is how the game is meant to be played, which is a problem of perspective and lack of common sense. Blizzard uses AP as an additional means of pacing our strength so we feel progressively stronger over a long stretch of time, it is not meant to be farmed constantly, it's a slow trickle of power. The difference between people who farm hard for AP and people who just take it when they get it is so menial that it proves even further that the players who think the grind sucks, i.e. all those mythic crybabies who quit because they farmed themselves to exhaustion, are not playing the game the way it is intended and deserve the frustration they cause themselves.

If AP stays I'll be glad. If it goes away then it's only going to be replaced by something near identical in nature and wouldn't matter.

[Deleted]

They have said that we won't be carrying artifacts over into the next expansion though.

They could be talking about the actual weapons. The mechanics could stay around as a form of character development and power upgrades though.

[Deleted]

As long as they keep an AP driven system in the game I'll be pretty happy. It doesn't have to be through specific weapons, just an underlying system in place we can constantly work on throughout the expansion.

[Ddoc23]

If they don't give up AP it'll definitely be something else. We'll have to wait and see

[Booyakashaa]

They have said that we won't be carrying artifacts over into the next expansion though.

Haha haha


The same way they said Facebook games weren't coming back?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[A dot Ham]

You always call people who put a lot of time into some a fuck? Blizzard can't just arbitrarily remove items from people. You do realize that this happens the other way too right? Those "fucks" enter a raid early and get the "joy" of experiencing most of the early bugs that get worked out so the rest of us don't have to see it. Just because someone found a way to benefit themselves doesn't make them a fuck, they are opportunists and put in the work. There wasn't some magical button that only these mystical elite players get that they clicked and they got their gear, they still had to run shit.

Speaking of buttons, looks like I found yours. How dare I call out the WoW elite.

I call them fucks because they receive special treatment. Because its clear in many situations when it comes to the world first crowd, that Blizzard is playing favorites. Where are they now exactly? Didn't a large number quit and not even bother to participate.

You come across like every other thick headed elitist that thinks mythic raider = more play time. There are plenty of people who play the game a lot, who don't have the patience or time to devote or commit to an organized raid.

Lets take a look at the inconsistency of people benefiting from a mechanic not functioning as intended.

Dragon Soul when LFR was added and many top end guilds got suspended for getting extra loot from an unintended bug. (and removed additional rewards)

Even in legion you had people who got action taken against them for the bug that granted additional AP rewards for the WQ boss. (and removed)

But if you get additional legendaries (unintended) well good for you! So then they fix it, but don't make concessions for the fact that some people have zero legendaries and will now be subject to a system that will not grant them EXTRA legendaries after they get their first, meanwhile anyone who did (again conveniently top end players) are a +3 on anyone else.

RNG (if truly random) should have benefited even the most casual of players. There should have been someone who doesn't play regularly, who probably won't do anything beyond LFR, who also managed to benefit from legendary bonus. But no casual had such "luck". Convenient. Suspect.

You're probably the type of person who thinks that those who use steroids just sit on a couch all day and get fit, doesn't work that way, they still have to work their asses off (im obviously not going into ethics on this, let's say im referring to non-competitive use)

You are one of those people who makes wide sweeping generalization based on... zero information. Which is why you have taken it upon yourself to be a champion for the OP, and fervently the poorly designed Artifact system. (Which includes the artifacts, artifact knowledge, and the most tedious of the 3 artifact power)

[Booyakashaa]

Speaking of buttons, looks like I found yours. How dare I call out the WoW elite.

He certainly found yours too.

There are plenty of people who play the game a lot, who don't have the time to devote to an organized raid.

That literally doesn't make any sense. They play the game a lot or not? Which is it?

I call them fucks because they receive special treatment.

So shouldn't blizzard be the fucks.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[A dot Ham]

They play the game a lot or not? Which is it?

Oh you aren't familiar with people who play all the time and never raid. Well let me introduce you to the rest of the world.

You can have lots of free time, and have that free time be inconsistent. Inconsistent and unreliable aren't desirable qualities for raiders. If you know of a guild recruiting for such a player... please post.