Is the current Benthic gear horrible game design?

[McChikkin]

I don't even care about the socket as much as the fact that there is 425 questing reward gear that is better then the unreleased raids mythic ilvl equivalent and in some specs cases like boomkin u can get 4 pieces that are literally better then mythic raiding rewards. That's not how it should be ever period.

[sam86]

doesn't benthic only go to 430ish?

425, and i'm pretty sure next raid jumps far higher, like over 40 ilvl higher without procs even

[Twdft]

Gear has little to no value when you get showered with casino-style loot that's out of date before you even get a grasp on what you've got equipped.

I am pretty sure that players on average spend way less time in the game compared to vanilla. If you play 4 hours every evening you'll get showered with loot, but for those who play an hour every other day (probably the majority) it might feel just right. These players would have nothing to look forward to in their play session and quit instead of getting a new item every two weeks or something.

[Wilfire]

In a patch with horrible zone design, horrible achievement design, horrible collectibles design and horrible pvp design you're surprised pve design is horrible too?

[Big Thanks]

Its perfect game design for a roleplaying game.
Its my favorite thing of the entire patch (apart from essenses).

Gem sockets already got nerfed because of this...no need to remove more of my pixels...

Wouldnt be surpried if Blizzard removed even more of my pixels...but PLZ dont.

[Emerald Archer]

none of this benthic gear is BIS

I'm a little confused, because I was under the impression you were a decent raider. But saying this now i'm not so sure.

Benthic pieces are BiS. As in fully upgrade to 425 with a socket, they are better than base mythic raiding gear (445ilvl gear) by a notable amount.

For BM, Mythic bracers with a socket don't beat 425 socketed benthic bracers. Same with the gloves. A mythic raid socketed belt and boots make it equal to the benthic gear.

I'd suggest doing a bit more research into the benthic pieces and their bis for every dps spec in the game who have 1-4 pieces as bis.

[Zigrifid]

No i want to lvl my alts now for heritage armors and i can just mail them free gear!

[Daevied]

i stoped when i got the pieces with the stats i wanted, dont know about the bonuses

[Marrilaife]

I'm glad to finally get some decent gear in the world, not the best, but still great.

That's the problem. For many dps specs it is THE best gear basically making any form of challenging content like mythic+ or mythic raiding obsolete. But hey, at least casuals are happy.

[Marrilaife]

Benthic pieces are BiS. As in fully upgrade to 425 with a socket, they are better than base mythic raiding gear (445ilvl gear) by a notable amount.

For BM, Mythic bracers with a socket don't beat 425 socketed benthic bracers. Same with the gloves. A mythic raid socketed belt and boots make it equal to the benthic gear.

I'd suggest doing a bit more research into the benthic pieces and their bis for every dps spec in the game who have 1-4 pieces as bis.

That's the sad part, Blizzard wanted to "simplify" the gear game and make it so "ilvl is king" and time and time again they work against this rule so you have to sim everything and then find out your high ilvl shinies are worthless because this 20 ilvl less item has socket and "increased crit damage" or something (which is not factored into the ilvl / stat budget).

[A Chozo]

People obsessed with their BiS are the scourge of the postgame community.

[Emerald Archer]

I wonder if this is why they're nerfing the good gems - gems should obviously be an increase, but I feel an item that 10 or even 20 item levels lower but with a gem slot is a little silly, but I guess it's worked that way for awhile now

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Does it really matter if average/ bad players are given easy good gear? If I give someone hard stuck on normal BoD a full 425 geared toon, they aren't gonna then go and one shot Jaina.

The gem nerf didn't change anything though, it wasn't enough.

And yeah it kinda matters that 4 pieces of a mythic raiders bis is from world questing. That's the entire point of increasing the difficulty of content done, your rewards go up.

[Marrilaife]

Does it really matter if average/ bad players are given easy good gear?

Yes. It disincentivizes to even try the challenging content, because why put yourself into that inconvenience if there's no reward?

In b4 someone says but hurr durr it's the challenge that matters. Nope, I can tell you if you'd make minimal wage being a lawyer or surgeon most people would not study to become one.

Reward structure in games is the main tool to manipulate what the playerbase will focus on. If Blizzard wants to kill challenging end game and make it for the sub 10k players that will play it "only for the challenge" and cater to some "e-sports" crowd, so be it, BFA is on the straight track towards it, the problem is most of that challenging end game requires other players to group with, so shrinking that pool makes it harder to find other players interested in that content to play with.

It also forces people to grind menial world quests / rares to min max their gear for pvp, m+ or raiding, which again makes more people quit because they can no longer min max to the extent they wish, or spend their limited time on activities they enjoy instead of activities that are "gatekeepers".

If the casual gear was let's say 10% worse than the best gear in the game, do you think casuals would even notice? Since they don't min-max, don't sim, don't follow guides, just loot & equip? But then anyone who would have aspirations for more, and start researching, reading guides, optimizing etc. would see there's a room to grow and better loot to obtain, and the game doesn't end at grinding rares and world quests.

It's quite hilarious that atm it's the casuals claiming that "benthic gear is good but not the best" since they don't sim, don't optimize and believe in ilvl. In the meanwhile raiders who do all that stuff say "for my spec the best gear for several slots is benthic gear with correct upgrades rolled on it". So basically, if that gear wasn't the best, casuals would lose nothing, they already believe it's "not the best".

[Big Thanks]

The gem nerf didn't change anything though, it wasn't enough.

And yeah it kinda matters that 4 pieces of a mythic raiders bis is from world questing. That's the entire point of increasing the difficulty of content done, your rewards go up.

But what do you suggest happens? Just curious...

What option wont bend us over a nazjatar coral and molest us (benthic gear players who benthic is endgame)
Or you are pretty confortable with Blizzard bending us over?

The only thing would be to remove the special effects in the raid...and only work in Nazjatar.

[Emerald Archer]

But what do you suggest happens? Just curious...

What option wont bend us over a nazjatar coral and molest us (benthic gear players who benthic is endgame)
Or you are pretty confortable with Blizzard bending us over?

The only thing would be to remove the special effects in the raid...and only work in Nazjatar.

I think removing the effect from raid is absolutely the best option here.

Or simply halving the effect of the items. I wouldn't call giving world questers heroic raiding gear equivalent items being "bent over", I just don't see a reason for it to be BETTER than mythic raiding gear.

I think if anything, what I would like to happen the most, is the benthic gear be allowed to work in Naz and Mechagon only, but the effects to be made even stronger. So you can feel super strong out in the world, but 0 effect in raid.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The 4 raid difficulties set apart by 15ilvl, WF/TF and raising reward ilvl every season is the horrible game design.

This is the real problem. I agree. Benthic is just a signal of this much larger problem.

[Otimus]

Yes. It disincentivizes to even try the challenging content, because why put yourself into that inconvenience if there's no reward?

In b4 someone says but hurr durr it's the challenge that matters. Nope, I can tell you if you'd make minimal wage being a lawyer or surgeon most people would not study to become one.

Reward structure in games is the main tool to manipulate what the playerbase will focus on. If Blizzard wants to kill challenging end game and make it for the sub 10k players that will play it "only for the challenge" and cater to some "e-sports" crowd, so be it, BFA is on the straight track towards it, the problem is most of that challenging end game requires other players to group with, so shrinking that pool makes it harder to find other players interested in that content to play with.

It also forces people to grind menial world quests / rares to min max their gear for pvp, m+ or raiding, which again makes more people quit because they can no longer min max to the extent they wish, or spend their limited time on activities they enjoy instead of activities that are "gatekeepers".

If the casual gear was let's say 10% worse than the best gear in the game, do you think casuals would even notice? Since they don't min-max, don't sim, don't follow guides, just loot & equip? But then anyone who would have aspirations for more, and start researching, reading guides, optimizing etc. would see there's a room to grow and better loot to obtain, and the game doesn't end at grinding rares and world quests.

It's quite hilarious that atm it's the casuals claiming that "benthic gear is good but not the best" since they don't sim, don't optimize and believe in ilvl. In the meanwhile raiders who do all that stuff say "for my spec the best gear for several slots is benthic gear with correct upgrades rolled on it". So basically, if that gear wasn't the best, casuals would lose nothing, they already believe it's "not the best".

The sub-10k people are probably the only people raiding anything above normal (and the rare heroic pug) as is. The whole "goading people into raiding with stuff" boat has long sailed. Even when it was literally the only option, barely anyone did it. Trying to bribe people doesn't work and it never will. Not in any meaningful amount, anyways. People just don't want to do that content. Not even very many people even bother with normal. (Even at times when it was VERY rewarding, bosses were super nerfed, AND there was no LFR, like at the tail end of WOTLK) Even LFR doesn't even get close to being nearly done by everyone.

I'm not disagreeing with the merit of what you're saying, in general, just pointing out that the game is designed around content most people don't care about and nothing is ever going to change that.

As for the actual topic at hand -- something really needs to be done about Blizzard designing items that are much lower level that are more powerful than items that are much higher level. That problem crops up every damned expansion, and they seem grossly incompetent at keeping it from happening (Almost to the point that it seems like they don't fully understand how to balance the gear they make, and are just hitting like a damned make-random-gear button half the time). That's the real problem. It probably won't ever get resolved now that they've gone down this rabbit hole of making everything so damned random/RNG.

[FelPlague]

I'm a little confused, because I was under the impression you were a decent raider. But saying this now i'm not so sure.

Benthic pieces are BiS. As in fully upgrade to 425 with a socket, they are better than base mythic raiding gear (445ilvl gear) by a notable amount.

For BM, Mythic bracers with a socket don't beat 425 socketed benthic bracers. Same with the gloves. A mythic raid socketed belt and boots make it equal to the benthic gear.

I'd suggest doing a bit more research into the benthic pieces and their bis for every dps spec in the game who have 1-4 pieces as bis.

lets compare my 425 benthic boots with a socket to the 445 boots from mythic azshara


oh look the mythic boots are abit better, but what is this they have a special effect not counted in the DPS!

[KaPe]

You do realize this is Mythic Azshara gear, right? As in, by the time you get this, you'd have spent weeks/months in the instance, using Benthic gear that is, at best, marginally worse - despite coming from much easier content.

[Gaidax]

none of this benthic gear is BIS

This is actually false. The said benthic boots with crit are BiS for several specs to the point where if you get a pair with socket you can't replace that one in 8.2 at all, not even with WF Mythic socketed boots from M.Azshara.

Belt is bona-fide BiS for 2 encounters and there is another item with frost damage proc that is also very strong - pretty much better than Mythic items.

Boots are particularly retarded though for specs where over 50%+ of the damage they do is crit.

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lets compare my 425 benthic boots with a socket to the 445 boots from mythic azshara

Now try Destruction or Fire...

kk.

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You do realize this is Mythic Azshara gear, right? As in, by the time you get this, you'd have spent weeks/months in the instance, using Benthic gear that is, at best, marginally worse - despite coming from much easier content.

Pretty much.