AP: The catch-ups are real.

[Archibalde]

That's good to hear, I'm currently not subscribed until some more stuff comes out and it's nice to be able to catchup within a couple/few weeks.

I know that this pisses off the hardcores that play and stay subscribed all expansion though.

I can't really imagine this system pissing anyone off. You can catch up reasonably fast but the more hardcore players that play throughout the entire expansion will still be ahead by a fair bit. Currently the person with the highest level is at 37, most people are probably not even at 30 yet. And a lot of people stop caring after certain points because there are minimal benefits to keep grinding AP. 2 crit, haste and mastery for every level is negligible at best when it takes a week to get a level.

[De Lupe]

I don't care enough about the necklace to farm Azerite up. I only do the things I want to do, which almost never include Azerite-only activities/rewards. I mostly level it up passively just doing my own things, so I like that it's easier to level as the weeks pass. Guarantees that I never have to grind it. It'll get there eventually. The 5 alts I have up right now are all right around the 17-21 range, which isn't far behind my main at 24.

Good system for alts.

[Byleth]

I'd say Blizz did pretty good at making BfA alt-friendly.

I don't really have anything to add to this topic, I just wanted to praise Brew for his excellent mog

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I don't really have anything to add to this topic, I just wanted to praise Brew for his excellent mog

Thanks.

[HuxNeva]

Yup, the neck is pretty alt friendly. My DH is 32 now, after being 120 for about 5 weeks. That's from doing what you described in the OP as well as every AP WQ as well as a bit of PvP(for weekly chests).

You realize 32 could place you in the top 300 US, top 1.000 of players worldwide, do you? You don't get there by 'casual play'.

[Tradu]

You realize 32 could place you in the top 300 US, top 1.000 of players worldwide, do you? You don't get there by 'casual play'.

It could also place me around top 6000(not sure why US rankings would be relevant at all, I'm not US and regional ranks don't matter), although wowprogress is hilariously inaccurate with its AP rankings. It doesn't include any Asian region(because it can't without manually adding the players/guilds, and which is why it calls it "west" now rather than "world") and doesn't update very often unless you do it manually. After updating my character which still said I was at 30, it says I'm rank 4909 west.
That said, I never said I played casually. I specifically said what I did to get to 32 in 5ish weeks. Weekly island quest, every AP WQ(starting a few days after 120), every CoA WQ until I hit revered regardless of AP or not, weekly +10, enough PvP to get the weekly chest there as well, a bit of raiding(not a full clear every week), warfront contributions and warfront quest.
Personally I would consider that fairly casual, only taking maybe 10-15 hours a week depending on how efficiently you do it, and only including activities that are fairly accessible, with no island grinding. That said, what's "casual" obviously varies from person to person.

[XDurionX]

It's 30% less every week, that means 2 months (9 weeks) later, you only need 4% of the AP to reach the same levels.

[Mardux]

Rolled a new character Wednesday last week. It's neck 25 now. Neck levels are super fast

Yeah it is. Just got my dk to 120 yesterday (5th 120). From the 8-10 hours spent going from 110 to cap my neck was 13. Within 3 hours /played at 120 i was 325 with a lvl 20 neck.

Bfa is super alt friendly.

[kamuimac]

Just realized my alt is 28 necklace, while my main is only 30.
I do the same things on both: 4 WQs/day for emissary, 4 Islands/week for bonus, weekly guild raid, and a bit of M+.
My main has 7x the time played, but is only 2 levels ahead on neck.

I'd say Blizz did pretty good at making BfA alt-friendly.

its pretty weak nerfs for casual crowd . unless you farm it on daily basis and weekly expeditions you would be on 22-23 atm . which is still very weak for 370 pieces.

[Deleted]

The AP catch ups are great indeed, capped an alt 3 weeks ago and am sitting at lvl 30 doing AP WQs, some islands if I can be bothered to, and gear related activities (HC raiding, a few MM bosses, 5-10 M+ a week.
It really feels like something that progresses quite nicely and gives a decent boost to a character when you're in the 10-20K ap / lvl range. Any more than that and it starts feeling like a grind to me, but even then it's not that gruesome to farm.

Which is why I get pretty pissed at people in my raid who're at fucking 24 neck level on mains right now, thus can't use defensive traits and die to like 500 damage overkills because we have some poor plays, and can't put in 1h in the game to get 2 to 3 levels right now and unlock them all.

I'm baffled how the fact that AP levels are easy to get turned so quick to "AP levels are so easy and will only become easier, so I might as well never get them".

[Tradu]

its pretty weak nerfs for casual crowd . unless you farm it on daily basis and weekly expeditions you would be on 22-23 atm . which is still very weak for 370 pieces.

In what universe? It gets nerfed by 30% each week, that's massive. Even playing casually, so let's say just doing your emissaries(as in 4 WQs a day, so maybe 20 minutes), you should easily be around 27 or higher.

[phantomlink]

You realize 32 could place you in the top 300 US, top 1.000 of players worldwide, do you? You don't get there by 'casual play'.

I'm seeing myself at US 1162, realm 10, class 1 at 32 with warmode off. How do you determine casual or not? All I do is mainly quest

[Mijati]

rofl are u seriously so stupid ? there is NO catch up .....after all yet !!

the reducing of needed AP each week is not a catch up ....ofc your alt is faster, cuz the needed AP already gone down a lot.
holy crtapp realy. cant stand such stupid dumb posting anymore here on mmo champion ....
why ppl cant use there brain after all ?
when your alt needs 50% less AP its normal that he is faster ....but this is not a catch up, espacaly not, since if u start a main now u have the same bonus after all.
just a verry big facepalm for your posing

[Sixy]

In Legion you could hit many break points that gave you considerable power increases, especially in the last patch there were some later on. In BfA it doesn't matter at all after you've unlocked the first 2 rings on the gear you can reasonably aquire. Since the nethercruicible is now upside down you get the last meaningful talents immediately ad we are already past the catchup point for even mythic gear. The 3rd ring is just nice to have and the center piece is vastly over priced for what little it does.

From someone who has center rings, I can tell you that is incorrect. The center ring is often worth more than the 2nd ring dps traits if your first trait is good, since the 5 ilvls actually increases the power of the first and 2nd trait by 5 ilvls in addition to the stats. The 8.1 thing showing that it increases the traits as well is only a tooltip update not a change.

[Tradu]

rofl are u seriously so stupid ? there is NO catch up .....after all yet !!

the reducing of needed AP each week is not a catch up ....ofc your alt is faster, cuz the needed AP already gone down a lot.
holy crtapp realy. cant stand such stupid dumb posting anymore here on mmo champion ....
why ppl cant use there brain after all ?
when your alt needs 50% less AP its normal that he is faster ....but this is not a catch up, espacaly not, since if u start a main now u have the same bonus after all.
just a verry big facepalm for your posing

That is literally the definition of a catchup mechanic. It's something that lets your new characters/returning players speed through some sort of progression, neck levels in this case, to (almost) catch up to people who were playing all along. Reducing the AP required massively is absolutely a catchup mechanic.

[HuxNeva]

rofl are u seriously so stupid ? there is NO catch up .....after all yet !!

the reducing of needed AP each week is not a catch up ....ofc your alt is faster, cuz the needed AP already gone down a lot.
holy crtapp realy. cant stand such stupid dumb posting anymore here on mmo champion ....
why ppl cant use there brain after all ?
when your alt needs 50% less AP its normal that he is faster ....but this is not a catch up, espacaly not, since if u start a main now u have the same bonus after all.
just a verry big facepalm for your posing

Oh, the irony.

[Tradu]

I am surprised at how much the third ring is being downplayed here, those traits are a solid boost to survivability. And I think in 8.1 the +5 trait might also buff all the other traits when picked instead of just raise the ilvl.

Yes, AP is very easy to grind with the catch up. The Azerite gear itself though is still a mess that crowds my bags and bank.

It already does, because raising the ilevel also raises the power of the traits. Just like how the trait on a 370 is stronger than on a 355. They just decided to add it to the tooltip, presumably because people don't realize that it works that way.

[MikeBogina]

I can't really imagine this system pissing anyone off. You can catch up reasonably fast but the more hardcore players that play throughout the entire expansion will still be ahead by a fair bit. Currently the person with the highest level is at 37, most people are probably not even at 30 yet. And a lot of people stop caring after certain points because there are minimal benefits to keep grinding AP. 2 crit, haste and mastery for every level is negligible at best when it takes a week to get a level.

You'd be surprised then. During the end of WotLk, one of the raiders in Ensidia(I think it was their raid leader) did an interview where he complained that WotLK's catch-up mechanics because his main toon which had 100's of days on it and his alts that only had a couple dozen had the nearly the same ilvl/gearscore. Which meant that all the noobs were also always slightly behind the top raiders and never deserved to be so close.

I'm pretty sure if we did a poll asking if people liked it or hated it, we'd get a good amount of haters even on a casual site like this.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I'm pretty sure if we did a poll asking if people liked it or hated it, we'd get a good amount of haters even on a casual site like this.

We could poll literally anything, and find plenty of haters. Since when have forum posters missed a chance to hate on anything?

[A Chozo]

It's a good thing for this expansion imo: Do whatever you like, you'r still progressing. I only level alts, do emissaries and the heroic raid with the guild, and my necklace is Lv 28. Nice and awesome.