You don't get it blizzard do you?

[Super Kami Dende]

ITT: people that still think AP is a grind even after being told multiple times that it is not.

Protip: You aren't meant to grind out concordance levels. They are just there so after a while of doing content you every so often will get a level.

[Deleted]

I wish people like you would just use common sense and read for once, just once.
Its so tiring seeing this shit over and over.

The intended design and the reality of a feature are not always the same. You know nothing. You're just parroting Blizz.

[Deleted]

I see so many clueless people here it hurts.

If you think your proc of 2000 stat will be the same as mine with 5000-6000 stat (if not more), just because you stopped farming and I didn't, well, you're dearly mistaken. That's the difference between you having an LFR trinket from BRF and me having Soul Capacitor Mythic from HFC. Yes, yes, I'm sure 10 people will now come and tell me that +2K is all that matters it's all that you need.

WRONG.

On a full 20 man Mythic team, having all Concordance 10 (which we will have during early days of ToS 100%) versus having Concordance I is huge.

The farm is not over. Any Mythic player worth their salt will continue to farm just like before. The farm just got way worse, from being able to finish at 54, which was not easy, but also something that we actually manage to do early Nighthold, to INFINITY, which we will never finish, just farm forever, until whatever point the raiding community will feel like it's not worth it and it's better to put in offspecs.

Now, for offspecs. "Taking away 50 didn't affect you, since you didn't have it". What kind of next level ************** is this? Of course it will affect all of us. At 50 we would have leveled offspecs to higher levels of Concordance easier.

In case you still don't realize what they have taken away:

AK40: 4000100% This is where we will farm for ages. Insufficient.
AK50: 55200100% This is where we COULD have farmed instead. But you are happy getting LESS for the same effort - right?

The difference is not trivial, is in fact huge.

I beg you, please stop being so naive. Please have an inquisitive mind towards what Blizzard say and do, they don't have your best interests in mind, but theirs and their shareholders. Don't just swallow everything they say as truth and trumpet it as fact. Try to understand the motivations behind the actions and the PR speak.

One more edit: a "competitive edge" doesn't need to be large, it needs to be present. It is in our veins to try and rise above others in all kinds of aspects of life. Gaming is but one of them. If the edge, however small, is there, determined people WILL go for it.

Your whole argument is flawed. The difference in time played between you and whoever else you'd have a competitive edge against stays the same and you'll keep that edge. The difference is that now instead of having to farm till trait X before it's no longer worth the time investment you only need to farm to trait X - C while more casual players will find X - C - C2 before they feel the same. What this achieves is that it makes it easier to put AP into your offspecs before TOS comes out.

The playing field is kept even for everyone at AK40 or AK50 but reaching the highest level of AK now makes it easier for people to put points into offspecs and keep alts up to date which is great considering that TOS is coming.

[Inari]

I see so many clueless people here it hurts.

If you think your proc of 2000 stat will be the same as mine with 5000-6000 stat (if not more), just because you stopped farming and I didn't, well, you're dearly mistaken. That's the difference between you having an LFR trinket from BRF and me having Soul Capacitor Mythic from HFC. Yes, yes, I'm sure 10 people will now come and tell me that +2K is all that matters it's all that you need.

Except it'll be more like you at 5000 and the person who didn't grind at 4600.

[DarthMonk79]

You can get to Concordence easily with AK 40 though. There is no need for that jump to 50. I have 11 110's. That right... 11 of them. Almost all of them are at AK 36-37 range and closing in on having concordence on their "main" spec's. I would have all them with one spec having that 52nd point easily except I try to keep all spec's doing at least decent. My main is at his 48th point for main spec, 45th for off-spec and 44th for 3rd spec. With the jump I get in the next 3-4 levels the AP I get should be insanely high and I'll have concordence on my main and most of my alts by the time ToS opens easily. Its already been shown that anything past that point is such a small dps gain that it would have no effect on you making or not making a raid. If I can have 11 characters to Concordence by the time ToS opens or most of those 11 then people with just a few alts should have nothing to complain about.

[Deleted]

I see so many clueless people here it hurts.

If you think your proc of 2000 stat will be the same as mine with 5000-6000 stat (if not more), just because you stopped farming and I didn't, well, you're dearly mistaken. That's the difference between you having an LFR trinket from BRF and me having Soul Capacitor Mythic from HFC. Yes, yes, I'm sure 10 people will now come and tell me that +2K is all that matters it's all that you need.

WRONG.

On a full 20 man Mythic team, having all Concordance 10 (which we will have during early days of ToS 100%) versus having Concordance I is huge.

The farm is not over. Any Mythic player worth their salt will continue to farm just like before. The farm just got way worse, from being able to finish at 54, which was not easy, but also something that we actually manage to do early Nighthold, to INFINITY, which we will never finish, just farm forever, until whatever point the raiding community will feel like it's not worth it and it's better to put in offspecs.

Now, for offspecs. "Taking away 50 didn't affect you, since you didn't have it". What kind of next level ************** is this? Of course it will affect all of us. At 50 we would have leveled offspecs to higher levels of Concordance easier.

In case you still don't realize what they have taken away:

AK40: 4000100% This is where we will farm for ages. Insufficient.
AK50: 55200100% This is where we COULD have farmed instead. But you are happy getting LESS for the same effort - right?

The difference is not trivial, is in fact huge.

I beg you, please stop being so naive. Please have an inquisitive mind towards what Blizzard say and do, they don't have your best interests in mind, but theirs and their shareholders. Don't just swallow everything they say as truth and trumpet it as fact. Try to understand the motivations behind the actions and the PR speak.

One more edit: a "competitive edge" doesn't need to be large, it needs to be present. It is in our veins to try and rise above others in all kinds of aspects of life. Gaming is but one of them. If the edge, however small, is there, determined people WILL go for it.

Most people will be around 65 traits by the time ToS is halfway, I don't see many people going beyond 70 either, because it's 4x more AP than 65 traits.

So at most some people will be around 1-3 traits ahead, but that won't be long since every 5 traits the AP quadruples and eventually they'll catch up to you within a reset simply because you hit the point where you don't have enough hours in a week to stay ahead.

I don't see you being 2000-4000 stat ahead at any point unless you compare casual WQ players to mythic ToS raiders. I see you being ahead of perhaps 400-600 stats, but that effect is so small, that one good piece of loot can entirely offset that advantage you have.

[Pull My Finger]

You say you nerfed AK down to 40 levels to lower the amount of time people feel like they are horribly inefficient. Nicely thought out, but completly ineffectual. It's much easier to never give a kid candy then to give candy to the kid, make it wait for 2 months to get said candy, and then call backsies after a month. Regardless of if the kid ever deserved candy, that kid is going to be angry with you.

That's what you have done. Instead of feeling like their AP farming again means something at 40, you've essentially ensured that players will now feel that their AP farming is useless for the entire rest of the patch cycle. Congrats, you extended the problem you sought to fix indefinitely.

The ironic thing is that your kiddie analogies are spot-on and very much describe your own situation.

[Deleted]

You can get to Concordence easily with AK 40 though. There is no need for that jump to 50. I have 11 110's. That right... 11 of them. Almost all of them are at AK 36-37 range and closing in on having concordence on their "main" spec's. I would have all them with one spec having that 52nd point easily except I try to keep all spec's doing at least decent. My main is at his 48th point for main spec, 45th for off-spec and 44th for 3rd spec. With the jump I get in the next 3-4 levels the AP I get should be insanely high and I'll have concordence on my main and most of my alts by the time ToS opens easily. Its already been shown that anything past that point is such a small dps gain that it would have no effect on you making or not making a raid. If I can have 11 characters to Concordence by the time ToS opens or most of those 11 then people with just a few alts should have nothing to complain about.

Obviously. I hit concordance just now and I only did weekly chest run, normal heroic and mythic raids, and barely any WQ (didn't bother with daily hc either).

My BM and SV weapon are both at 48 aswell, so it's not a hard thing to keep going, you just have to play to get it. With AK 40, I presume I'll get 52 in SV and BM weapon, and probably 52 on all my priest specs, lock specs, and my mw monk.

Before ToS opens mid June. Like really, people complain less, and just play, you don't have to farm mythic plus to get it, you just have do be active on a daily basis for just an hour or two.

[Deleted]

Alts would get 1-52 traits within 15x Mythic 10 keys at AK45 vs 56x Mythic 10 Keys at AK40.

It's high unlikely you'll have like weapons with 0 traits, but your effort on alts will be around 3,7 times slower than it would be at instant AK45.

But with AK capped at 40 and a main at 52 already the average player is more inclined to play their alt 50 days sooner due to not feeling as if they're wasting time if not on their main, so it really doesn't matter.

[MasterHamster]

I'll just chime in and point out that with AK50 and no new traits, you'd reach Concordance in about 1-3 hours depending on what content you'd do on that alt. Now I'm certain a lot of people to whom words like "pacing" and "bigger picture" means very little think that'd be a good thing since their guild apparently forces them to level new alts, but you have to see the consequences of us having AK50 without another layer of traits to go along with it.

You need roughly 2.2 billion AP to unlock Concordance... you know what a LFR boss AP token would grant at AK50? 138 million.
16 or so LFR token drops or equivalent and you've progressed to AP endgame. ???

But take a damn second to think how enjoyable it is to just blow through all those traits you're supposed to unlock gradually while gearing up, instead Artifacts with AK50 would genuinely devolve into smashing traits for a minute then NOTHING but Concordance.

I was looking forward to AK50 too for my alts, until I realized the multiplier was simply TOO INSANE. It's like heirlooms having +1000% exp gained instead of 10. And while people who 'hate leveling' would probably think that'd be a good thing, until they realize they run to a zone, do 1 quest, then have to run to the next. Oh how fun.
It passes the realms of enhancing the fun of unlocking traits rapidly (satisfying) and into the "I did a single heroic dungeon and now I have 46 traits". That is a joke.

A clear of LFR wings and you could reach Concordance. Then truly you'd hate the AP system because the ONLY aspect of it you'd ever notice until 7.3 (hopefully would've) added additional traits so you can take a break from spending a dozen billion AP on another rank of Concordance. Because with AK50 that is all you'd ever experience. +1 Concordance over and over. Every single other trait would be filled by default, more or less.

This whole controversy is an EXCELLENT example of shortsighted players thinking they know what they want. No, in the current state of Artifact weapons, you will NOT enjoy AK50 as much as you think, just because your goal is to reach as high as possible. Good thing Blizzard realized this before we actually reached 40 or above because jesus this community thinks 'being slowed down' is nothing short of a crime against humanity. Game design is NOT just about making things faster and easier for the players. Shocking, I know.

In the end, the only real consequence of AK40 instead of 50 is that we'll have a few ranks lower Concordance than otherwise, but the feel of progression in the Artifact system isn't destroyed completely in the process.

[Ozyorkbourne]

The only solution would be to nix AP and AK now. But we both know they won't do that. So I'd settle for AP made irrelevant by everyone easily capping it. But now they've taken away that too.

52 is more or less cap. The rest of the levels are minimal. At AK 40 it'll be easy enough to get 60-65 just playing casually before Argus. But guess what. You don't need it.

The general consensus in top 100 guilds right now is AP past 52 is just a case of do your world quests and w/e you get, you get. Given how easy getting 52 was at AK 35, getting it on alts with 40 will be easy af. With what they've done to concordance, it is already irrelevant.

Who put this stupid idea in your head that you need to get as much concordance as possible? For what, world quests? LFR? Mythic+, raiding?

[Deleted]

It´s funny how people complain about not geting something they didn´t earn yet nor need at all and just complain for the sake of not geting something. We all get fewer ranks in Concordance (just flat % resulting in no one loosing out due to scaling) but still will have at least something to bump our AP we get from raids etc. into (what I think is the reason we have this infinite trait at all). I even like this, because I now don´t have to research this stupid thing for 40 more days and save some resources on my alts. No one loses anything rly but it´s technically a nerf so why not cry and let´s see what happens. At this point I understand why blizzard often struggles with ballancing and work with feedback, because people will bitch about anything they can find.

[MasterHamster]

52 is more or less cap. The rest of the levels are minimal. At AK 40 it'll be easy enough to get 60-65 just playing casually before Argus. But guess what. You don't need it.

The general consensus in top 100 guilds right now is AP past 52 is just a case of do your world quests and w/e you get, you get. Given how easy getting 52 was at AK 35, getting it on alts with 40 will be easy af. With what they've done to concordance, it is already irrelevant.

Who put this stupid idea in your head that you need to get as much concordance as possible? For what, world quests? LFR? Mythic+, raiding?

Sadly, quite a sizeable portion of the community feel like all progression outside of raids is a checklist to be finished asap. A system like AP that is supposed to always have some progression available, while keeping older content relevant to some extent, doesn't fly well with them.

Just look at what happened when people felt like capping 54 traits for Nighthold before 7.2 was released, people burning out for minimal boosts.

The solution that works in order to keep AP relevant without making people think they have to attain a certain goal is to make the end trait (Concordance) powerful by itself (rank 1) and allow people that want to push ways to make it slightly more powerful, but they will never CAP it, so eventually everyone will find their ceiling where they don't think it's worth to clear everything, every WQ, run 50 mythics, for just another +200 stat proc.

I'm guessing that few people will feel "obliged" to push past maybe Concordance rank 10. If that. Rank 10 to 11 is about 7 billion AP in order to increase the Concordance proc by 5%

[Deleted]

I see so many clueless people here it hurts.

If you think your proc of 2000 stat will be the same as mine with 5000-6000 stat (if not more), just because you stopped farming and I didn't, well, you're dearly mistaken. That's the difference between you having an LFR trinket from BRF and me having Soul Capacitor Mythic from HFC. Yes, yes, I'm sure 10 people will now come and tell me that +2K is all that matters it's all that you need.

WRONG.

On a full 20 man Mythic team, having all Concordance 10 (which we will have during early days of ToS 100%) versus having Concordance I is huge.

The farm is not over. Any Mythic player worth their salt will continue to farm just like before. The farm just got way worse, from being able to finish at 54, which was not easy, but also something that we actually manage to do early Nighthold, to INFINITY, which we will never finish, just farm forever, until whatever point the raiding community will feel like it's not worth it and it's better to put in offspecs.

Now, for offspecs. "Taking away 50 didn't affect you, since you didn't have it". What kind of next level ************** is this? Of course it will affect all of us. At 50 we would have leveled offspecs to higher levels of Concordance easier.

In case you still don't realize what they have taken away:

AK40: 4000100% This is where we will farm for ages. Insufficient.
AK50: 55200100% This is where we COULD have farmed instead. But you are happy getting LESS for the same effort - right?

The difference is not trivial, is in fact huge.

I beg you, please stop being so naive. Please have an inquisitive mind towards what Blizzard say and do, they don't have your best interests in mind, but theirs and their shareholders. Don't just swallow everything they say as truth and trumpet it as fact. Try to understand the motivations behind the actions and the PR speak.

One more edit: a "competitive edge" doesn't need to be large, it needs to be present. It is in our veins to try and rise above others in all kinds of aspects of life. Gaming is but one of them. If the edge, however small, is there, determined people WILL go for it.

Have you actually looked at the artifact calendar? A 6k proc is 430 billion AP. The guys playing 12-18 hrs a day are at 12 billion right now. I'm going to totally ignore the "if not more" in that because the difference between 6k and 6.2k is 129b AP or in more understandable numbers 10 times what the current Rank 1 AP grinder has at the moment.

Anything mythic raider my ass, the amount of people actively grinding has taken a huge nose dive because anyone that isn't fucking stupid realises it is in no way healthy to play this game 18 hours straight weeks on end for what amounts to 2% more damage, or less.

[Cassidin]

Always with the negativity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbEucjsNFU

[Raelbo]

The general consensus in top 100 guilds right now is AP past 52 is just a case of do your world quests and w/e you get, you get.

Which is exactly the attitude they probably should have taken from the start, instead of convincing themselves of the *need* to farm AP to death to reach the cap. The sad thing is that it took Blizzard having to go to these lengths to make these people see the light.

AP was never meant to be an objective in and of itself. It was always meant to be something that we collect passively by just playing the game and that ended up rewarding those who spent more time playing with a minor advantage. Instead people took it to extremes and decided to place a higher priority on the acquisition of AP than was really justified based on the return on (time) investment.

The only difference now is that by reducing that return on investment to even lower levels, it has finally become obvious to (almost) everyone out there that if you want to advance your character, there are muchbetter ways to spend your time than on simply farming AP.

[weedburst]

there is always a new level to go for if you want a small gain and AP locks at a point which will make that possible for quite a while. this change seems good to me tbh, my only thought is whether or not they will fuck up the same way they did before and unlock 50 traits later, effectively fucking everyone who capped their AK out asap and grinded once hitting 40.

[MrCool]

Which is exactly the attitude they probably should have taken from the start, instead of convincing themselves of the *need* to farm AP to death to reach the cap. The sad thing is that it took Blizzard having to go to these lengths to make these people see the light.

AP was never meant to be an objective in and of itself. It was always meant to be something that we collect passively by just playing the game and that ended up rewarding those who spent more time playing with a minor advantage. Instead people took it to extremes and decided to place a higher priority on the acquisition of AP than was really justified based on the return on (time) investment.

The only difference now is that by reducing that return on investment to even lower levels, it has finally become obvious to (almost) everyone out there that if you want to advance your character, there are muchbetter ways to spend your time than on simply farming AP.

True, but the initial implementation with 54 traits used a linear scale for the last 20 traits, which offered decent rewards for time invested to these hardcore players.

Now they have moved to a completely exponential scale and NOW they agree that grinding concordance is pointless.

[Deleted]

You say you nerfed AK down to 40 levels to lower the amount of time people feel like they are horribly inefficient. Nicely thought out, but completly ineffectual. It's much easier to never give a kid candy then to give candy to the kid, make it wait for 2 months to get said candy, and then call backsies after a month. Regardless of if the kid ever deserved candy, that kid is going to be angry with you.

That's what you have done. Instead of feeling like their AP farming again means something at 40, you've essentially ensured that players will now feel that their AP farming is useless for the entire rest of the patch cycle. Congrats, you extended the problem you sought to fix indefinitely.

The fact that you keep using the phrase "AP farming" means that actually, it's you that doesn't get it.

[Cassidin]

there's 50 more points after that that quadruple the strength of concordance
so yeah it does matter. sure not as much as the old 0.5% used to, but it does. if i stop farming it at least at a reasonable state i will feel like im letting the guild down, not to mention how since because i still have no idea which of my 3 specs is gonna be the best i basically have to keep all 3 of them up

You do realise that in order to get that even at AK 50 would take a very very very very long time (maybe I missed a very) of right clicking AP items even if you had an unlimited supply of them? Maxing out concordance is possible I guess.... if you played at lvl110 with your artefact for the next 2-3 expansions.........

Simply fact is - we are not MEANT to max out the artefact. The only reason it has any points beyond concordance (unless they are going to redo it again in 7.3) is just "somewhere" to put the AP items you still get once you have got concordance. Putting another point in there wont really do much - but its better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.