Should the game be ruined in pursuit of utopian competitive equality?

[kaminaris]

You are not locked but right now on the beta changing can take more than two weeks.

For you only top 50 guild care about optimisation? Again, im not saying its mandatory. But its still better, you say 0.5% but its also ~3% damage reduction, its more than 0.5% in aoe ect.

By the time 50th guild killed nzoth it was a month difference between world first. Far beyond being necessary for that 0.5% considering difference in gear (471 vs 465). It is absolutely fine. Not to mention it's not even best dps for most specs since it's versa. Damage reduction is the good part here, but faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from necessary.

[Raelbo]

The gap was greater in the 8.2, making it a must have. With corruption amp stats, versatility has lowered in the stat weight. It is still in the top 3 minor essences for most specs.

Your problem in this discussion is that you're so fixated on what is *the best* that you fail to understand what is sufficient.

[Specialka]

Your problem in this discussion is that you're so fixated on what is *the best* that you fail to understand what is sufficient.

It depends simply if you want to kill the last boss after 1-2 months or 4-5 months. And you won't kill it in the 2 first months if you go with your sufficient method (or your raid is carrying you).

[Raelbo]

I don't get you... are you so desperate to win you are trying to somehow bend hard numbers around you?

It's been explained to you multiple times to the point I am surprised your not dinged for trolling or attempting to derail the conversation.

You've explained jack. Only tried to insist that you're right (argument of authority fallacy 101).

I have explained multiple times the difference between required and wanted. So has @kaminaris. But I guess you just want to complain about forced to do stuff and won't allow reason or logic to intervene.

The game has never been balanced as you claim it has been and it won't be balanced like that in sl.there is always going to be a right choice that overshadows all the others for specific types of content.

If you have to put words in mouth, clearly you can't argue against what I am actually saying.

[kaminaris]

It isn't 0.5 dps...

If you have to constantly lie to support your argument it isn't that good of a argument. I am not even sure what I am supposed to refute here...

It's like the kid who writes " god did it" for every question on a test because he thinks its clever.

Dude, it is. C&S as secondary is around 100-200 versatility.

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It depends simply if you want to kill the last boss after 1-2 months or 4-5 months. And you won't kill it in the 2 first months if you go with your sufficient method (or your raid is carrying you).

The 1-2 months or 4-5 months isn't on essence, its on your skill, skill of all other players, tactic execution, amount of overall gear.
C&S is like difference between 27days and 28days at best.

If you blame your kill time on gear then you are simply not good enough as limit killed nzoth with faaaar worse gear than was available month or two later.

[Specialka]

Dude, it is. C&S as secondary is around 100-200 versatility.

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The 1-2 months or 4-5 months isn't on essence, its on your skill, skill of all other players, tactic execution, amount of overall gear.
C&S is like difference between 27days and 28days at best.

If you blame your kill time on gear then you are simply not good enough as limit killed nzoth with faaaar worse gear than was available month or two later.

The time to kill is an overall of everything and every bit helps, essences included. Limit was also deck with tons of corruptions that any "normal" guild could not afford.

[Krakan]

You've explained jack. Only tried to insist that you're right (argument of authority fallacy 101).

I have explained multiple times the difference between required and wanted. So has @kaminaris. But I guess you just want to complain about forced to do stuff and won't allow reason or logic to intervene.



If you have to put words in mouth, clearly you can't argue against what I am actually saying.

I mean it isn't hard to your trying to argue a fairytale exists... there will not be balance between the covenants. Each will eclipse the other in some form of content or be a dead pick. Slowly picking apart your example and leaving you nothing but simmed dps you don't understand the meaning of has already been done.

What is left to argue? What point do you think you have left? You can argue that the game is better if we incorporate a cast system where you simply won't do as well as another player for a choice you made but we cannot pretend there is balance in that.

[Auxora]

Wow has been around for 16 years now, so worrying about "ruining the game" isn't a strong way to start your argument.

There's a secret sauce to wow that longtime players understand but new players haven't quite figured out yet. There will never ever be perfect balance in wow. It won't ever go back to the broken days of 1.x or even 2.x, but there won't ever be complete balance. Additionally, the dynamic is constantly changing by design which is another reason it will never reach a utopian balance.

That fact is hard to debate, the only question is why Blizz has strategically made wow a moving target in terms of balance since launch. The best and most rational explanation I can come up with is replayability. In a perfectly balanced wow utopia, if you like playing a class and get a toon of that class to max level, there really is very little incentive to keep playing beyond what is needed for that toon. You'll never probably level another toon or experience the leveling content again, or repeat the max level grind until the next expansion.

Blizz is always in a tough spot on this though because players have been clamoring for perfect balance since the start of wow both for raid and pvp competitiveness. But from a pure business standpoint that conflicts with replayability. So for the entirety of wow Blizz has rode this fine line of trying to keep the "balance things" player crowd happy while also keeping things dynamic. So in the end Blizzard doesn't *really* want utopian balance. They want short periods, like 1-2 minor .x patch levels, where a couple of classes are stronger than the others. That pushes large numbers of the playerbase to reroll (ahem replay) other classes and spend hundreds of hours replaying content under a new class, and keeping players playing the game is the goal. A couple minor patches later nerf that OP class and reshuffle the class deck, buffing another class so players move to that one. Rinse and repeat, and you end up with a game where players continue to play for many years, replaying the same content to get many (or even every) class combo to max level so they have classes that are "strong" at any given time of game state.

This is really why Blizzard has talked balance for many years, but unlike other games can seemingly never get there. They can, it's just intentionally kept slightly imbalanced, and that balance is changed and re-shuffled every 6-9 months to keep you grinding on the hamster wheel.

As a side-note if you want to see the most blatant example of this see the hero classes. DKs and DH both just happened to be conveniently OP for a while after their release before getting nerfed, why do you think that is? It's the exact same approach as above, a new class just makes doing what I described easier than buffing an existing underpowered class to get people to play it for awhile.

[Krakan]

Dude, it is. C&S as secondary is around 100-200 versatility.

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The 1-2 months or 4-5 months isn't on essence, its on your skill, skill of all other players, tactic execution, amount of overall gear.
C&S is like difference between 27days and 28days at best.

If you blame your kill time on gear then you are simply not good enough as limit killed nzoth with faaaar worse gear than was available month or two later.

Gear isn't how this tier works. Ironically until months of player buffs later the first few kills of z noth actually had a easier fight due to how powerful their corruptions were... I can't pinpoint at what point that changed but it wasn't for weeks later players got buffed back to that level...

[Thestrawman]

Expansion as bland as a water with no selling point whatsoever.

Why is that? You clearly must think that without the covenant abilities the covenants must be boring and bland.

[Otimus]

fun fact: casuals outnumber the vocal minority (hence minority). Blizzard will always cater to the largest portion of people giving them money.

right or wrong, its how the world works.

I'd argue they only superficially cater to the really casual players, and that superficiality has gotten worse and worse since the end of MoP.

[Krakan]

I'd argue they only superficially cater to the really casual players, and that superficiality has gotten worse and worse since the end of MoP.

You have to remember casual to most wow players means struggles with lfr not time played as it should and I would agree.

[korijenkins]

The first response this post got is absolutely true, and if you disagree with it being true, you're wrong.

Making covenants fluid does NOT affect you. It simply doesn't. Despite that fact, casual loser players continue to bitch and moan about something that helps EVERYONE including them! It's shocking.

Casuals who rage at the often correct "vocal minority" are as dumb as the white knights who constantly defend immoral actions by Actiblizzion as "just business"

[Raelbo]

It depends simply if you want to kill the last boss after 1-2 months or 4-5 months. And you won't kill it in the 2 first months if you go with your sufficient method (or your raid is carrying you).

Aside from a bit of exaggeration, sure. I never said otherwise.

But it's not on the basis that you'd be unable to put out the required performance. Because the difference that having CnS is going to have on performance of the raid isn't anywhere near enough to cost 3 months. That is patently absurd.

No, it's on the basis that the best groups consist of people who are going to have CnS and will exclude other people who don't have it, because not having it creates the perception that you're a slacker unwilling to pull his weight. And you can sit there all you like moaning and complaining about how the problem is with the essence system, but you'd be entirely wrong. The problem has nothing to do with the essence system, it's about the nature of the exclusive "club" that you want to be a member of.

PS: I have no problem with the fact that top players want to maintain an exclusive club. What I do have a problem with is people who want to be part of this club but want to blame a game system for making it hard/annoying to qualify.

[Thorcall]

Dude, it is. C&S as secondary is around 100-200 versatility.

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The 1-2 months or 4-5 months isn't on essence, its on your skill, skill of all other players, tactic execution, amount of overall gear.
C&S is like difference between 27days and 28days at best.

If you blame your kill time on gear then you are simply not good enough as limit killed nzoth with faaaar worse gear than was available month or two later.

With a neck level 90 C&S give 66 vers per stack, or 528 vers at 8 stacks. The value change a bit with your neck level but even at 50 (where you unlock essence...) it give you ~400. Can you stop lying to "prove" your point?


Also, this progress was particular. When Limit killed n'zoth, they had a much better stuff than a lot of player behind them, because of corruption. They spent hundred million of gold to buy boe with bis corruption, I'm not saying that 1 month after players had worse stuff but the difference was much closer than previous progress.
I gained ~50k dps this tier, 35K is from corruption, 5K from gems, and only 10K from gear, from 450 to 480, the difference between 471 or 465 is very small.

[Specialka]

Aside from a bit of exaggeration, sure. I never said otherwise.

But it's not on the basis that you'd be unable to put out the required performance. Because the difference that having CnS is going to have on performance of the raid isn't anywhere near enough to cost 3 months. That is patently absurd.

No, it's on the basis that the best groups consist of people who are going to have CnS and will exclude other people who don't have it, because not having it creates the perception that you're a slacker unwilling to pull his weight. And you can sit there all you like moaning and complaining about how the problem is with the essence system, but you'd be entirely wrong. The problem has nothing to do with the essence system, it's about the nature of the exclusive "club" that you want to be a member of.

PS: I have no problem with the fact that top players want to maintain an exclusive club. What I do have a problem with is people who want to be part of this club but want to blame a game system for making it hard/annoying to qualify.

The issue is that the game system is badly designed. Period.

It was a time when you just needed to gear your toon and you were ready character-wise to tackle heroic and mythic mode.

And if you are unwilling to put effort in getting CnS, that also means that most of the time, you did not put effort in the rest either.

[Lumineus]

just because Johnny Bravo and his friend want to do a +30 key in SL and don't want to feel they are forced into a certain covenant?

It's called wanting to do a 15 key through the LFG tool where you already have to pay massive amounts of gold to grifters to raise your Third Party Worthiness Value Rating TM and C Hi Ho Raiderio just to get a passing glance.

But what do I know, I've only played a Ret Paladin since 2005, I couldn't possibly weigh in on already losing the game in the menu system.

we can't let the game be hijacked by top50 raiding guilds and top10 mythic+ teams

It's tough to blame them when it's Blizzard's ineptitude and internal biases that lead to their behavior. If you think it's "fun" to be forced out of even vaguely competitive avenues of play because the devs took a massive dump on your character, I question your judgment.

[Raelbo]

I mean it isn't hard to your trying to argue a fairytale exists... there will not be balance between the covenants. Each will eclipse the other in some form of content or be a dead pick. Slowly picking apart your example and leaving you nothing but simmed dps you don't understand the meaning of has already been done.

My argument has nothing to do with covenants or balance. It has to do with essences and the BS complaint about how they are a "mandatory grind".

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The issue is that the game system is badly designed. Period.

It was a time when you just needed to gear your toon and you were ready character-wise to tackle heroic and mythic mode.

Honestly, I cannot remember a time in WoW where "grinding" was not a requirement. I mean just hop onto any Classic forum and they will go on and on about how much better Classic is because not everything is quick and easy....

The difference now is that the game has systems designed to specifically reward grinding. But the design is very clearly intended to keep what is mandatory fairly moderate, while making what is possible pretty much insane. And it's left to us, the players, to decide where we want to sit on that continuum. That is the opposite of "badly designed".

[Specialka]

My argument has nothing to do with covenants or balance. It has to do with essences and the BS complaint about how they are a "mandatory grind".

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Honestly, I cannot remember a time in WoW where "grinding" was not a requirement. I mean just hop onto any Classic forum and they will go on and on about how much better Classic is because not everything is quick and easy....

The difference now is that the game has systems designed to specifically reward grinding. But the design is very clearly intended to keep what is mandatory fairly moderate, while making what is possible pretty much insane. And it's left to us, the players, to decide where we want to sit on that continuum. That is the opposite of "badly designed".

Sure, if you want to clean the raid 4 or 5 months after its release, meaning you are just overgearing it at that point.

[BeepBoo]

Honestly, I cannot remember a time in WoW where "grinding" was not a requirement. I mean just hop onto any Classic forum and they will go on and on about how much better Classic is because not everything is quick and easy....

Someone doesn't remember WOTLK. Once you got past the first grind to get crafted epix and got on the raid train, that was it. No actual grinding necessary. Raidlog, get BIS, quit. Sure, you could do things like daily heroic dungeon to get deterministic amounts of valor and accelerate your gear acquisition slightly, and there were those argent tournament dailies at one point, but neither of those things was necessary to maximize your potential. BIS was BIS, and it had a hard Ilvl cap and only came from ONE place.

In addition, you basically never had to farm herbs or anything. My guild raked in enough gold from raid clears to sustain all our consumables. This was because 1) raids were one of the best sources of gold still, and 2) farming was the end-game for most casuals. The feedback loop worked like this:

Raiders got gold from farming raids
Casuals got gold from raiders buying their farmed mats
Casuals used gold from sales to buy BoEs or crafted epix since that's all they'd have access to (outside of maybe a few drops when dabbling in previous tier raids)

The difference now is that the game has systems designed to specifically reward grinding. But the design is very clearly intended to keep what is mandatory fairly moderate, while making what is possible pretty much insane. And it's left to us, the players, to decide where we want to sit on that continuum. That is the opposite of "badly designed".

No, to me, anything that enables nolyfing and endless benefit is a bad designed game. Someone will do it and get a mechanical competitive edge through brute forcing, and someone like me (who might be physically as skilled and capable as that nolyfer, or hell 99% of the time actually more skilled) will suddenly have to either participate in the arms race or give up the ghost and settle. Here's the thing: the entire reason I play (played?) wow was to compete. No competition possible within what I consider reasonable? No reason to play. Hence I no longer have a subscription.

Just clearing a raid is boring and a bitch task that is simply guaranteed to happen at some point. Settling for "good enough" is pretty much the antithesis of my personality. As well "doing shit you don't like that is actually unrelated to what you do like" is also antithesis to my being.