Mandatory Maw - the biggest SL problem now?

[Krakan]

What power is offered in the Maw that may be needed for mythic raiding?

The ability to get sockets and level up the few conduits tied to your renowned level without renown.

It isnt massive by any means but with raiding you are always talking about collective gains in the group not the individual.

[MythoS]

"the biggest SL problem now" is people complaining about everything. just stop. thank you.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

The real question is: Why did you tought Hell would be fun? Enjoy purgatory.

idk because I bought a videogame to have fun? Going to hell in Diablo was pretty fun.

[Tradu]

I don't see how.. being made to move slowly in boring dull content where in the second zone every second mob has a spell that slows you by 90% isn't that enjoyable of an experience for me. It's made worse by the fact that killing anything but rares actively punishes your total gains by the day.

It's a terrible and counter productive mechanic that makes everyone miserable.

It is pretty silly that things that give no rep increase your GTA bar. They also failed at balancing the things that do give rep in terms of efficiency, but at least the small rares give something.

[FelPlague]

The ability to get sockets and level up the few conduits tied to your renowned level without renown.

It isnt massive by any means but with raiding you are always talking about collective gains in the group not the individual.

it levels up your LOWEST conduits, you dont get to choose, plus renown conduits? what?

Also the sockets are not really mandatory since you can just get them on the gear itself, and there is only a couple slots you can put them in.
that extra 2-3 sockets aint gunna be a big difference

[Greyfang]

The ability to get sockets and level up the few conduits tied to your renowned level without renown.

It isnt massive by any means but with raiding you are always talking about collective gains in the group not the individual.

Thanks for clarifying. That seems to be useful for CE, but definitely not mandatory at the level OP is suggesting (they specified they're casual and don't do hardcore content). That being said, CE guilds have done way more tedious things to get that slight advantage, I dont think doing a coulple dailies would be too annoying for them.

[Tradu]

it levels up your LOWEST conduits, you dont get to choose, plus renown conduits? what?

Also the sockets are not really mandatory since you can just get them on the gear itself, and there is only a couple slots you can put them in.
that extra 2-3 sockets aint gunna be a big difference

It's like 6 slots. Even if you have half your items in those slots with natural sockets, that's a lot of extra power on your whole raid. That said, they won't really be relevant for progress this tier. It'll probably mostly be for next tier, same as getting multiple covenants to high/max renown.

[Krakan]

it levels up your LOWEST conduits, you dont get to choose, plus renown conduits? what?

Also the sockets are not really mandatory since you can just get them on the gear itself, and there is only a couple slots you can put them in.
that extra 2-3 sockets aint gunna be a big difference

Certain conducts are tied to your covenant quests and table as the sole means to obtain them the ilv of these rewards is tied to your renowned level. You level up the conduits you get from drops then use the upgrade to level those.

An extra 3 sockets to one person is an extra 60 sockets to a raid team.

It might not be needed I have no way of knowing currently. If this tier is tuned like last it will be needed for early kills.

[Tradu]

Thanks for clarifying. That seems to be useful for CE, but definitely not mandatory at the level OP is suggesting (they specified they're casual and don't do hardcore content). That being said, CE guilds have done way more tedious things to get that slight advantage, I dont think doing a coulple dailies would be too annoying for them.

The dailies themselves aren't really the issue, it's the design of the zone as a whole. It's designed to be frustrating and unfun on purpose, which is a bit odd. That said, it's one of the very few things you have to do in SL, so compared to the past 2 expansions that's pretty good.

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Certain conducts are tied to your covenant quests and table as the sole means to obtain them the ilv of these rewards is tied to your renowned level. You level up the conduits you get from drops then use the upgrade to level those.

An extra 3 sockets to one person is an extra 60 sockets to a raid team.

It might not be needed I have no way of knowing currently. If this tier is tuned like last it will be needed for early kills.

It won't be needed for early kills because the sockets won't even be available for the actual early kills(assuming you mean world first, or even up to world 50 probably)

[Krakan]

The dailies themselves aren't really the issue, it's the design of the zone as a whole. It's designed to be frustrating and unfun on purpose, which is a bit odd. That said, it's one of the very few things you have to do in SL, so compared to the past 2 expansions that's pretty good.

It does seem weird its like the simply question " but is this fun?" Was never asked during its development. During beta the maw just felt like the entire zone existed because torghast needed a portal.

Right now our guild just rolls over the entire zone in a group skipping mobs by spamming ccs.

I am not looking forward to doing the second area solo or even the third when momentum slows for it.

True though I think people underestimate how much the maw snowballs once you rep up. I make roughly 1.4k daily now with the second zone and the third increases the gains further.

I honestly dont know if it will be used this tier. It will be a bit but you are right next tier it will matter more.

[Greyfang]

The dailies themselves aren't really the issue, it's the design of the zone as a whole. It's designed to be frustrating and unfun on purpose, which is a bit odd. That said, it's one of the very few things you have to do in SL, so compared to the past 2 expansions that's pretty good.

Totally, I mean I agree its kind of frustrating, I only do the dailies there if I have nothing else to do. But Im not raiding mythic so I dont feel I'm forced to squeeze every little advantage from it.

[kaid]

I wonder what do you mean about mandatory maw

there is no gear there , nothing interesting to get besides 4 sockets - and nobody sane will do that besides cutting edge raiders.

at this point maw exists only as a placeholder to put thorgast in for 99,9 % of playerbase

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there are rumours about ash dropping from mission table thought

so you may be incorrect about this

supposedly there are rare 120 ash mission on level 20.

Honestly if you don't like the maw you can pretty much just do the once per week stuff and be fine. Doing the daily stuff unlocks stuff a bit faster but overall the big weekly stuff is the main objective. Otherwise you are getting stygia to make it easier to do torghast and the maw and if you don't like the maw the latter stuff probably won't be important to you. I think the timer aspect of it combined with the lack of mounts is what kinda kills the maw for me. Its not horrible but I don't spend a lot more than the required time in there. Torghast is fun though so doing some maw to make my torghast stuff better is worth while.

[Tradu]

It does seem weird its like the simply question " but is this fun?" Was never asked during its development. During beta the maw just felt like the entire zone existed because torghast needed a portal.

Right now our guild just rolls over the entire zone in a group skipping mobs by spamming ccs.

I am not looking forward to doing the second area solo or even the third when momentum slows for it.

Yeah, that's my worry. Currently it's pretty easy to get guild groups, or even group finder groups, and just stomp the mobs. Hopefully people won't get tired of it before "exalted" rep, but chances are they will.

[Krakan]

Yeah, that's my worry. Currently it's pretty easy to get guild groups, or even group finder groups, and just stomp the mobs. Hopefully people won't get tired of it before "exalted" rep, but chances are they will.

I know at revered you get a daily worth 700 and unlock group mobs that reward several hundred a kill.

It snowballs at least I expect by exalted you will be close to upgrading a conduit daily or getting a socket.

[FelPlague]

Certain conducts are tied to your covenant quests and table as the sole means to obtain them the ilv of these rewards is tied to your renowned level. You level up the conduits you get from drops then use the upgrade to level those.

An extra 3 sockets to one person is an extra 60 sockets to a raid team.

It might not be needed I have no way of knowing currently. If this tier is tuned like last it will be needed for early kills.

no.
no they arnt
there is zero conduits locked behind the covenent quests and table.
all of them come from raids, dungeons, world quests, etc

Show me the one locked behind the table/covenent quest here.

[Krakan]

no.
no they arnt
there is zero conduits locked behind the covenent quests and table.
all of them come from raids, dungeons, world quests, etc

Show me the one locked behind the table/covenent quest here.

Is your counter argument my classes doesn't have it so it doesn't exist?

I will grant you there isn't any potency conduits tied to it and those are the most important ones but several good finesse ones are unless your a gladiator I suppose

[Tojara]

I'd get the complaint if not for a few things.

Most power systems in Shadowlands are weekly instead of daily. Callings (emissaries) don't matter, artifact power beyond 1000 doesn't matter and Torghast is something you only have to do a couple times over the period of a week. This week and beyond you have another weekly mission within the Maw that takes a miniscule amount of time, and again, it's weekly, so you can pick and choose when you want to do it.

I hope people realize that while Torghast is more or less mandatory that you quickly reach a point where you don't even have to do that anymore. You're bound to one legendary this expansion (thus far) and once you've upgraded it fully, the reasons for continually going into Torghast sort of diminishes. Sure most people will want a few to change based on the content that they're doing, but unless you play multiple specializations, I doubt the drive is there to hard grind it.

The Maw as an isolated system is the only real source of daily power gains really left in the game. The only real tangible power comes from placing sockets on up to 6 pieces of gear (down from 10-11 from last expansion) and it takes a decent amount of time to grind one of these out. If you do the weekly event and stick to the quests, it's a pretty short amount of time. If you fill up to 5 bars every single day, it's going to take a bit more time.

To me I would fully understand the complaining about this place if I wasn't looking at the big picture of the expansion as a whole. Most things have been shifted back to weekly power gains (kind of like valor point caps of the past) with just as much content, but in the form of cosmetic gains if you choose to min/max it. There are plenty of systems intertwined in those systems that aren't necessary that give a bit of power growth (the mission table randomly giving soul ash), but I certainly didn't do Island Expeditions in BFA for the small chance that I would get the Azerite dust mission, and I assume most people didn't. If you hardcore stress about adding sockets to every single piece of gear, that's kind of on you. Most players (even in very good guilds) aren't going to require people to sit in the maw and maximize grinding stygia to add sockets to gear, especially when said gear might get replaced pretty quickly. This might be true for a few guilds, but the vast majority, this isn't going to be the case.

Adding sockets is only to six slots, and most people aren't going to randomly throw it on any old shit. People are going to put it on BiS gear within the content group that they can reach (arena, raiding, vault gear, etc), and what that content is would be entirely down to the person. Gear can also still come with sockets baseline if you're lucky too, thus saving you time.

They want you doing different types of content clearly. Renown, Maw, and Torghast are the gameplay systems they push you into, with the only portions that are really necessary for an extended period of time being those that give you weekly renown sources. As I stated, Torghast isn't something you need to do for an entire content cycle, and the amount of time you really need to spend in the Maw is being heavily exaggerated by some in this thread.

One of the big problems with 8.3 was that they put TOO much shit into one source of content and that source of content became the most efficient source of everything. Visions were a great concept, but everything revolved around them solely which made plenty of people fatigue from them part way through the patch. You did them for sockets, corruption resistance, gear and it was the most efficient source of currency to buy both essences (if you were behind), or corruptions when the vendor landed on the servers. Just taking the systems out of the Maw and placing them elsewhere basically has a real potential of overloading another source of content, and making that just feel mandatory. Having shit spread out is better, as long as it's not spread too thin (which currently, it's not).

[Cyanu]

I hear very good reviews from other players. Seems like Blizzard realized their BFA mistakes and fixed them in SL. I like, that SL is more casual and alt friendly, as I wanted and asked for. It has limited weekly content. It doesn't have infinite grind. I hear, that world isn't so overcrowded now - sharding works properly. And overall I like whole Covenant idea. Simple thing. The hardest thing for "hater" - is to realize, when game is actually fixed to make it better for you, so it's time to stop hating it and return to it. So I even started thinking about buying SL and returning to Wow despite of fact, that flying isn't available now.

But mandatory Maw is one big no no for me. It's one single big offender, that spoils whole picture. Because it's way too hardcore for me, so I don't want to even set a foot to there. But souls are required for all Covenant upgrades. It's just impossible to skip them. What do you think? Will Blizzard fix this problem in a nearest future, at least in 9.1, or we are doomed to have this problem till the end of SL?

For me it's the same problem, as with dailies in MOP, 8.2 reps and 8.3 Visions. I didn't wanted to do them, but they were required, as everything else was gated behind them. For example no visions -> no cloak -> no corruptions -> no progression. It's just big mistake to gate whole xpack's content behind some hardcore activity. It's just tells us everything about Blizzard and their "unfun, but forced" content. And it just kills all other attempts to go away from such concept in SL.

chill, the Maw is not that hard and you don't need to spend too much time in there

[Aggrophobic]

Yeah, it's boring as heck. Blizzard was told it was boring during alpha/beta but they just did not listen.
The zone and the questsare boring but to make it even worse and have the silly debuffs and no mounts is just beyond stupid. I can't for the life of me understand why a single designer thought this was a good idea and how it when live like this is just so silly it's embarrassing.

[Krakan]

Yeah, it's boring as heck. Blizzard was told it was boring during alpha/beta but they just did not listen.
The zone and the questsare boring but to make it even worse and have the silly debuffs and no mounts is just beyond stupid. I can't for the life of me understand why a single designer thought this was a good idea and how it when live like this is just so silly it's embarrassing.

I feel like it was actively forgotten about once torghast became popular and then panicked changed.

It just feels like...why? Why is this a thing. It feels like blizzard is compelled to add at least some tedious content to expansions now even if they are unsure of why.