May 22 Hotfixes - AK Cap Reduced to 40, WoW Arena Cup, Con Before the Storm

I absolutely LOVE the AK cap reduction. Not because I don't WANT the extra AP, but because, this more than anything else, really should tell people "don't bother farming AP once you have the first rank, just play the game and get a rank when you get a rank". It's awesome!

reduced AK? why blizzard why

Man, I was looking forward to AK 47

aww i got ak50 on ptr and world quests give 300-400m ap :/ really sad to only get it to 40...

Originally Posted by Deeth

reduced AK? why blizzard why

They literally wrote why in the post. Read more than the headline and find out why.

Originally Posted by deathfury

Man, I was looking forward to AK 47

LUL 10 chars



Infracted for spam.

Oh this is going to start a flame war in the forms now, goring to grab my popcorn BRB

in all seriousness, as much as i would like the 50 over 40 (mainly for 47) , it's just concordance i have left, so i don't care too much

Knowledge 40 now seems more than sufficient for players to reach Concordance, and the prospect of months’ worth of additional Knowledge still left to research makes some players feel like their efforts in the interim aren’t meaningful. Therefore, we’re rolling the cap back to 40.


THAT PROSPECT of clicking 1 button every 5 days to progress AK research.....

is insane, my poor fingers are saved!!!!

Originally Posted by Ambrodel

They literally wrote why in the post. Read more than the headline and find out why.

Its called a joke. It wasnt a literal question. Internet much?

Originally Posted by Zan15

Knowledge 40 now seems more than sufficient for players to reach Concordance, and the prospect of months’ worth of additional Knowledge still left to research makes some players feel like their efforts in the interim aren’t meaningful. Therefore, we’re rolling the cap back to 40.


THAT PROSPECT of clicking 1 button every 5 days to progress AK research.....

is insane, my poor fingers are saved!!!!

They aren't referencing solely AK. They are referencing the fact that right now getting AP would be useless compared a month down the road, which is entirely true. One hour of 'work' getting AP now is about the same as two minutes of work getting AP in a month.

This is achieving two things. One your work now isn't completely useless and two the effective 'cap' on how much longer you need to 'grind' AP just got reduced by a lot. Considering they every AK rank is basically 30% more of the previous one, we will reach the upward limits of how many ranks of concordance you can really obtain a lot sooner. With AK 50 after 3-4 months you might have seen people in the upper twenties, or the low thirties at the absolute maximum. With this change you're going to see people around 15.

Considering concordance gives less overall DPS than the flat 0.5% ranks in the old system, they are basically telling you that you need not worry about AP anymore (unless you're really far behind, but even then if you have AK 40 it wouldn't take long to to get to 52).

Originally Posted by Tojara

They aren't referencing solely AK. They are referencing the fact that right now getting AP would be useless compared a month down the road, which is entirely true. One hour of 'work' getting AP now is about the same as two minutes of work getting AP in a month.

This is achieving two things. One your work now isn't completely useless and two the effective 'cap' on how much longer you need to 'grind' AP just got reduced by a lot. Considering they every AK rank is basically 30% more of the previous one, we will reach the upward limits of how many ranks of concordance you can really obtain a lot sooner. With AK 50 after 3-4 months you might have seen people in the upper twenties, or the low thirties at the absolute maximum. With this change you're going to see people around 15.

Considering concordance gives less overall DPS than the flat 0.5% ranks in the old system, they are basically telling you that you need not worry about AP anymore (unless you're really far behind, but even then if you have AK 40 it wouldn't take long to to get to 52).

your grind does not need to get worse

it can get exactly 0....as you decide when to stop

Originally Posted by Deeth

Its called a joke. It wasnt a literal question. Internet much?

Jokes are supposed to be funny to all parties involved, not just the joker. You failed at making a joke.

Originally Posted by Tojara

They aren't referencing solely AK. They are referencing the fact that right now getting AP would be useless compared a month down the road, which is entirely true. One hour of 'work' getting AP now is about the same as two minutes of work getting AP in a month.

This is achieving two things. One your work now isn't completely useless and two the effective 'cap' on how much longer you need to 'grind' AP just got reduced by a lot. Considering they every AK rank is basically 30% more of the previous one, we will reach the upward limits of how many ranks of concordance you can really obtain a lot sooner. With AK 50 after 3-4 months you might have seen people in the upper twenties, or the low thirties at the absolute maximum. With this change you're going to see people around 15.

Considering concordance gives less overall DPS than the flat 0.5% ranks in the old system, they are basically telling you that you need not worry about AP anymore (unless you're really far behind, but even then if you have AK 40 it wouldn't take long to to get to 52).

The truth is more likely that many players reached concordance during the last days and then stopped farming AP cause they could as well wait for level 50(by doing 1 click all 2 weeks) and then doing catch up with just a few WQs....and get the other artifact weapons up in no time. Blizz was afraid people won't sink enough time into AP.
Need proof? Well, they could just up the % increase for 40 levels(so spread the increase about 40 instead of 50 levels). That would pretty much cover their given reason. But Blizz ain't going with that simple solution....

Making AK cap at 40 means only that Blizz found out that AK 50 would make possible to max weapon, and this is not what they want. They want people to farm AP until Legion is done... Oh well I only care now to do ToS and then I can wait until next raid ...

Originally Posted by Pacster

The truth is more likely that many players reached concordance during the last days and then stopped farming AP cause they could as well wait for level 50(by doing 1 click all 2 weeks) and then doing catch up with just a few WQs....and get the other artifact weapons up in no time. Blizz was afraid people won't sink enough time into AP.
Need proof? Well, they could just up the % increase for 40 levels(so spread the increase about 40 instead of 50 levels). That would pretty much cover their given reason. But Blizz ain't going with that simple solution....

This! AP is most crappy thing this expansion IMO. (except mythic+).

Did they really think AK 50 was needed to get concordance? are they high? I can't possibly believe they added 41-50 because they felt it was actually needed to get the first point of concordance.

Originally Posted by Tojara

They aren't referencing solely AK. They are referencing the fact that right now getting AP would be useless compared a month down the road, which is entirely true. One hour of 'work' getting AP now is about the same as two minutes of work getting AP in a month.

This is achieving two things. One your work now isn't completely useless and two the effective 'cap' on how much longer you need to 'grind' AP just got reduced by a lot. Considering they every AK rank is basically 30% more of the previous one, we will reach the upward limits of how many ranks of concordance you can really obtain a lot sooner. With AK 50 after 3-4 months you might have seen people in the upper twenties, or the low thirties at the absolute maximum. With this change you're going to see people around 15.

Considering concordance gives less overall DPS than the flat 0.5% ranks in the old system, they are basically telling you that you need not worry about AP anymore (unless you're really far behind, but even then if you have AK 40 it wouldn't take long to to get to 52).

That work later is better than work now isn't a bug, it's one of the two major driving forces which allow players to not give a damn about AP if they don't want to, the other major force being the incredibly small benefits of additional points in Concordance.

Capping it sooner is just pointless, and makes doing things like working on alts, swapping mains, and the like harder for no reason.

I guess we're not meant to go too deep into concordance then? That's a 44,001 multiplier and a 552,001 multiplier.

I hit 37 today. I didn't expect to 3 levels from the cap already.

Originally Posted by Montegomery

That work later is better than work now isn't a bug, it's one of the two major driving forces which allow players to not give a damn about AP if they don't want to, the other major force being the incredibly small benefits of additional points in Concordance.

Capping it sooner is just pointless, and makes doing things like working on alts, swapping mains, and the like harder for no reason.

Not really. Given the timeline of patches this expansion, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that 7.3 is likely ~3 months away. 7.3 will likely have changes to AK once again, or new traits, much like 7.2 had.

Given that AK50 would have been finished slightly before such a date, it's probably better for alts anyway. When are you going to have time to swap alts/mains when AK 50 hasn't been out for long, and 7.3 is right around the corner. At least this shifts the goal post a couple months earlier. If you want to start working on alts/mains, you can pretty much do it now. My mage who does nothing but emissaries and mission table stuff is 48.

Most classes don't gain anything tangible between 47-51 (class varies), with 52 being the only 'big' point. "Big" point is kind of misleading, as while concordance is a boost, some classes gained more from single points in their old 3/3 points than even the big point in concordance gave them. Basically if you want to work on alts or change characters, (even though ToS is on the horizon), now isn't a bad time to do it.

I fully realize that work later is better than work now, that's been the fundamental benefit/flaw of the entire system since it was released this expansion.

Their reasoning is shitty though. You only need a simple understanding in math to conclude that 50 wasn't needed to get concordance. Also on that same note, you only need to understand simple math to understand that even at 50... maxing the weapon would take well beyond Legion to accomplish lol.

Originally Posted by Alexeht

Making AK cap at 40 means only that Blizz found out that AK 50 would make possible to max weapon, and this is not what they want. They want people to farm AP until Legion is done... Oh well I only care now to do ToS and then I can wait until next raid ...

No, it wasn't possible to max out weapon at AK 50. You had to do 2.9 million mythic raid bosses with AK 50 to get max concordance. It'd take somewhere around 20 years of constantly doing m+s to get there.

Originally Posted by Zardiay

No, it wasn't possible to max out weapon at AK 50. You had to do 2.9 million mythic raid bosses with AK 50 to get max concordance. It'd take somewhere around 20 years of constantly doing m+s to get there.

Oh well. Still shitty move imo. Especially for people with alts.