Oh I completely agree. The hoops to jump through for competitive raiding were already ridiculous and the AP grind made it 10 times worse.
I commend these guilds for basically being like "fuck you Blizzard we're not gonna put up with these bullshit grinds anymore". Maybe some of the most well known guilds doing this will finally wake up the devs and make them realize what a shitshow this has become.
I'm surprised they didn't quit after their embarrassing performance at Blizzcon '13.
I'm somewhat doubtful that people are getting excited over 0.5% dmg increase, after doing few dozens of world quests. Unlike a shiny new item, this is pretty much invisible and barely noticeable until they get a few of them. People like that wouldn't really care if the grind ended at 45 levels instead of 54. 10% increase instead of 14.5%? Sure, fine, whatever.
Let's not forget this is weapon specific. Even after reaching that point, there are (1-3) other specs to develop. Or maybe alts. If people like doing this, they still can. If they don't, they're finished earlier and it doesn't turn into a tiring grind - at least to the same extent.
enjoy your wod 2.0 log in and raid simulator that you pay 15 bucks a month for then, maybe the grind could be toned down, but to remove it for the 1% is just silly.
I enjoy having things to do when i log in, i enjoy being able to get upgrades from prior raids, i enjoy spending more time logged in each week than the 12 hrs i raid, WoD was bad.
So you love doing mundane shit for hours
Congrats most of us would rather have nothing to do than run Maw Of Souls for the 50th time this week.
I doubt it is just the Ap grind. Add in the way Legendaries drop and having BIS versus getting bad ones means I bet many top guilds play multiple of the same class in order to make sure one of the them has BIS legendaries then of course they have to cap Ap also on those characters.
This all makes the game much more grindy than it ever has been for those at the top.
Yeah the ap grind is pretty terrible. I just wish the paragon traits didn't exist we don't need them
If they had just made the cut off 34 Artifact Traits it would've been fine. The Paragon system, though I get the whole "We want you to feel like you're getting stronger!!" makes literally no sense.
I mean, I'm at 46 on my weapon cuz I haven't had the time like my other Guildies to grind. It literally would've been fine without the unneeded extra 20 traits.
As for new traits in 7.2, ehhhhhhh? I mean it would've just renewed the grind. It would've been smarter to just let us keep pouring AP into our weapon for "fun" and then refund it once that patch came out. We didn't need a flat damage boost.