Aren't casuals are getting better gear than ever? Was calling it Valor the mistake?

[Lei]

If I remember right (forgive me if I don't ), there was two pieces of normal iLvl tier loot from the vendor, and a few other pieces that could be bought/crafted if you could afford the Primordial Saronite (which were comparatively more expensive than reasonable BoEs now because of all the people that were chasing SM at the time).

Comparing a few slots of 25N iLvl gear & some of 10N gear to needing to do high M+ is a bit of a stretch. I'd say a fair comparison is pugging HC Nathria & maybe doing a +9/10, which would reward a 216/220 from the weekly vault, which I'd say is pretty equally rewarding to a best case scenario in Wrath at the very least - You can get every slot covered with this system, which wasn't possible back then IIRC.

But again, this thread was aimed at the people who aren't willing to do any form of premade content. I'm not comparing Covenant loot to people who farmed ICC, & I'm not comparing heroic Nathria loot to people who didn't make it past Heroic Oculus. My point is that someone who did absolutely no premade content then would be further behind the gearing curve than someone who does absolutely no premade content now, although I do contest that gearing is at the very least pretty comparable across the board to what it was back then. Raider.io is no worse than Gearscore was either (it's actually a lot better), so I don't really think that's all too relevant.

You'll hear no arguments from me on the state of profession gear, however. It's an absolute joke how far they've let this system down, & while I'm not suggesting we should go back to a TBC-style system where things like Engineering helms were BiS until you managed to drop Vashj, there definitely should be some value to crafting, as right now it doesn't even have short-term value, never mind anything beyond that

You could get full ilevel 251 tier set just from farming badges from queueble "heroic" dungeons and never stepping foot into ICC. There was a couple of ilevel 264 items on the vendor for badges (belt, chest, gloves, cloak, trinket, accessories like totems librams) as well and then your 2 piece ilevel 264 crafteds (boots and legs). Saronite wasn't THAT costy at least on my realm bar the first 2-3 weeks or so thanks to ICC being highly puggable from the get go.
So max ilevel was 277* which was heroic 25 man ICC, and you could get ilevel 251, you could get your tier set bonuses, your sockets, and a lot of ilevel 264 pieces.
Compare that to today. The gap, the quality of the items, everything.

[cparle87]

Real talk, what is the purpose of LFR when it grants the same gear as M0s? Anyone can do M+4s also with minimal gear, so who exactly is LFR for? I legit haven't done LFR this expansion because there's no purpose. You can deterministically get PVP gear that's higher ilevel with no waiting (skrims in between BG queues), and you don't need to be good at pvp to do it. So it makes me wonder who the heck LFR is targeted for?

(My point is, in the past there was a clear progression of dungeon blues -> entry raiding -> mid raiding, etc.. But when dungeons give the same gear as the entry raiding, why does it exist? I actually think it makes sense to be this way, but also I'm clearly anti-LFR. And the thing is, I think Blizz must be too. Otherwise they wouldn't set gear ilevels the way they do. I wonder what the participation rate in LFR is....)

To get mogs you can't get anywhere else and see the raid storyline, same as it's always been.

[FelPlague]

In terms of loot rewards, pugging 7 bosses of ICC25 (264) would be like pugging 7 bosses of heroic CN (213).

Neither should he considered “casual” in the way the topic is being presented (limiting content to queues only).

normal icc was hilariously easy, nothing close to heroic castle nathria.
while the "old normal is heroic and old heroic is mythic" is true, icc was a different time.
Normal icc is more in par with late normal castle nathria
heroic icc is more on par with heroic castle nathria
and late 25 man icc is on par with mdi mythic now.

normal icc was hilariosuly easy, while heroic was the actual issue.
we used to bring fresh 80's in normal runs to gear up alts in spots we had no gear needed in.

[Lei]

In terms of loot rewards, pugging 7 bosses of ICC25 (264) would be like pugging 7 bosses of heroic CN (213).

Neither should he considered “casual” in the way the topic is being presented (limiting content to queues only).

But in ICC times you only had your realm. Now you have your whole region at your fingertips. Getting into a pug was somewhat easier in wrath you could say, because the leader needed to fill the group fast, otherwise people started to leave. Doing that on one realm, advertising on trade.

[Zyrinx]

The (vast?) majority of the playerbase accumulating a currency they won't ever use is just not good design, IMO of course. Everything in here is opinion.

I guess it's supposed to get people to try M+ but I really don't think that's likely, because of the real or imagined barrier of entry aka Not Queueable

If they were going to try M+ they already would have, and maybe even did. It's just not a playstyle that's appealing to a lot of people who dislike timed content.

Argue all you want about people "needing" gear, but if 75% (a made up number, but I would guess roughly accurate) of players have zero progression path for their characters they are going to quit. In droves.

[Compher]

As a solo player (aside from an occasional WQ group or world boss) I'm happy with my loot. Main and alts are 195 give or take a level, which is fine for the stuff I do.

This right here.

Why do casuals need gear if they only do casual things? You don't need 220 gear to do your WQs or whatever it is casuals do. Gear isn't a reward, it's a tool used to accomplish things in the game. Do harder content to get better gear to do even harder content until you reach the hardest content, if you aren't pushing the harder content, you don't need the better gear.

[Traveler Voltin]

arent some spec still heavily reliant on gear?

[kranur]

I think the problem ppl have with current valor is it's ties to M+

[Zyrinx]

This right here.

Why do casuals need gear if they only do casual things? You don't need 220 gear to do your WQs or whatever it is casuals do. Gear isn't a reward, it's a tool used to accomplish things in the game. Do harder content to get better gear to do even harder content until you reach the hardest content, if you aren't pushing the harder content, you don't need the better gear.

You asked, I'll give you a reason:

They fucked up the legacy scaling making old content objectively harder now at 60 than it was at the end of BFA. Then (disingenuously? Who even knows) suggested it was intentional.

So a type of content that many "casuals" take part in is harder now, because of broken scaling. So they need to overgear it.

Beyond that having no progression isn't good.

[kranur]

Real talk, what is the purpose of LFR when it grants the same gear as M0s? Anyone can do M+4s also with minimal gear, so who exactly is LFR for? I legit haven't done LFR this expansion because there's no purpose. You can deterministically get PVP gear that's higher ilevel with no waiting (skrims in between BG queues), and you don't need to be good at pvp to do it. So it makes me wonder who the heck LFR is targeted for?

(My point is, in the past there was a clear progression of dungeon blues -> entry raiding -> mid raiding, etc.. But when dungeons give the same gear as the entry raiding, why does it exist? I actually think it makes sense to be this way, but also I'm clearly anti-LFR. And the thing is, I think Blizz must be too. Otherwise they wouldn't set gear ilevels the way they do. I wonder what the participation rate in LFR is....)

LFR is not there to gear up. If you look at it that way, you're doing it wrong.
LFR is there for people who don't have time to raid with a guild and don't want to deal with the pug toxicity but still want to see what is inside the raid and finish the story.

[clevin]

I agree. Im not exactly sure what casuals want. Covenant and max renown honor gear gives 197. Combined with the 235 ilvl lego, they will be 200 ilvl without doing any sort of grouped content.

200 ilvl is enough to do old world stuff for tmog and collectibles, all the world quests, kill anything in world while picking flowers, kill world boss for 207 ilvl, do normal raids if they want 200/207 ilvl gear, do up to m+10 fairly easily for up to 203 ilvl drops or 220 GV reward, push into heroic raid for 213/220, push to 1400-1600 rating for 207/213 ilvl gear.

The problem is casuals want some sort of gear progression once full covenant gear, but dont want to do any group content. Unfortunately for them its an MMO and not a single player game. The gear they get for single play (cov gear) is good enough for all single player content and beginning to mid group content.

If they don't want to do grouped content in an MMO then they can't be helped. They will complain about not getting invited but they can start their own group. Depending on time of day and region and faction and spec, it might take a little longer to form a group but it does happen eventually.

At some point it always seems to boil down to them paying a sub so they feel entitled to certain things. Blizz seems to disagree with what they are actually entitled to tho

You almost had it, then you had to go full elitist jerk.

I'm at 202. I can pretty easily do up to a +10, the alt normal CN runs the guild does, etc. So it's not really the item level that is the problem. AS you point out, ~200 is fine for most stuff until you get to higher keys, heroic CN or beyond etc.

The problem with the systems actually IS that it's so easy to get to 200. They screwed up the gearing curve and can't fix it now. Covenant gear and honor gear should never have been upgradeable to 197 but should have stopped at 184. That would mean LFR would be a slight upgrade and M0 and the low keys would be real upgrades (esp the low keys).

But now, you quite literally zoom up from whatever you had when you hit 60 to 19x now. Finish the campaign and get about 4k anima and you can upgrade all of the covenant pieces. Renown level isn't a barrier now either. You can pretty easily PVP and get the honor gear and upgrade it to 197 to fill slots not covered by the covenant gear.

That's the problem. You can quickly and easily get to 195 or so.. and then you stop. Nothing from +2 to +10 will be much of an upgrade for any slot where you have the 197 gear. WQ gear will be 187 or occasionally 194 so it's almost never better. LFR? M0? Useless gear because... it's lower than what you easily got already. All of the content that should be for people who are playing casually is, from a a gearing perspective, utterly useless.

If you're relatively casual in terms of the time you want to put in, you VERY quickly hit a point where you have almost nothing to do unless you're willing not just to group, but to be a lot more serious and probably spend more time. But... see 'casual'.

My solution to this is simply not to play WoW as much. Valor doesn't interest me since it's a lot of jumping through hoops. So I PVP here and there for fun and do other stuff. This is fine with me, but if Blizzard wants to keep people playing and not have them drop off, it's not great for them.

PS: The problem with this Valor system is that, unless you're running a fair amount of M+ already, you have to time +5s (easy) to +10s (less so for casuals, but still not hard) and then gather VP... to upgrade a piece. Not buy a new piece.... upgrade one.

Contrast this to the old VP system where you could buy a piece that might fill in a weaker slot, etc. You just got VP, went to the vendor, boom. No "Do this to get $TITLE" first, etc. They could have done this here with higher amounts of VP required to get better item level gear. But no, they had to complicate the system.

[kamuimac]

This isn't hard to understand.

IF you dislike M+ , and there are any number of obvious reasons this could be the case which I won't list here, then the entire Valor concept is a complete miss for you. By design.

Period full stop.

i semi-enjoy m+ and this system is anyway dead for me.

i would have to farm hundreds of m+ and unlock KSM to even use it properly

f.... that when i can just do 1x10+ a week on each alt and gear up in 220 gear.

and i was goingit since my alts were 197-200.

i would have to be literaly insane to farm current version of VP

its also dead to me because i literaly cannot upgrade gear from any other source - including gear i already own . lol. who does that in mmorpg ?

they went full loco mode. the outcome will be disastreus for game's future thats the worst part of this

- - - Updated - - -

"Aren't casuals are getting better gear than ever?"
Than ever?
Basically all badges and crafted gear from tbc to the end of mop begs to differ.
I used to have 3-4 characters raiding from mid wrath to the end of mop (usually from the second tier). Crafted gear, badge gear, and/or upgraded LFR gear in mop.
If you pugged ICC normal (does that mean 25 man normal or 10 man normal tho) even up to 7 bosses, then you had access to ilevel 264 gear, tier tokens (Saurfang is tier token heaven) etc. I should know, I had 3 chars pugging ICC (bm hunter, disc priest, resto druid) fully geared in 264 gear, even some 277 with lootship besides my main (resto shaman with 11/12 HC). PuGs on smaller/"less hardcore populated" realms stopped at 7 bosses, so yeah.

there is a reason why WoLK is considered golden age of raiding with ICC being absolute pinacle of raiding - it never was as good as then after it ended..

systems back then were pure perfection from casual point of view.

all they had is copy the systems they used in ICC for every single raid after that. but they just had to start to reinvent the wheel . :/

[schwarzkopf]

Then why are you happy it's gone? How did it affect you in a negative manner?

Because it was pure RNG, just because I'm casual doesn't mean I don't want to work towards better gear.

Problem is - there is no way to do so.

[oldgeezer]

That's the problem. You can quickly and easily get to 195 or so.. and then you stop. Nothing from +2 to +10 will be much of an upgrade for any slot where you have the 197 gear. WQ gear will be 187 or occasionally 194 so it's almost never better. LFR? M0? Useless gear because... it's lower than what you easily got already. All of the content that should be for people who are playing casually is, from a a gearing perspective, utterly useless.

If you're relatively casual in terms of the time you want to put in, you VERY quickly hit a point where you have almost nothing to do unless you're willing not just to group, but to be a lot more serious and probably spend more time. But... see 'casual'.

.

Sure, as someone who plays solo I've pretty much hit a soft wall at 195, but that's fine. Progression will happen again for those toons in 9.1, but in the meantime I'm working on alts and collecting covenant transmog gear and in general doing the stuff that casuals do. There's plenty enough to keep me entertained in game without needing to group up.

[ellieg]

As opposed to those barring them from content with artificial third party barriers that Blizz seems to agree with because they gauge the amount of subs they stand to lose from each side.

I don't see why you loathe "casuals" so much or what difference it could ever make to you what others have. Everyone wants something for themselves. You got yours? Well done don't bother with what others want/need.

If ppl don't want to do group content, their progression stops at ~200 ilvl which is enough gear to easily demolish solo content. If ppl want to keep progressing, they move onto more difficult group content.

They can create their own group. No one is required to invite u. If u can't get into their groups, make your own and be as selective as you want.

I dont hate casuals. I am probably considered a casual. I do about 4 m+ a week and play maybe 10 hours a week. If I can do a WQ for 226 gear, or mythic raid for 226 gear, the vast majority will just do the WQ. Hard content is fun because u work up towards it, finally clear it, and then get somewhat exclusive rewards for it. Letting everyone have the reward just for doing pet battles kills the entire purpose of an mmorpg

[Golden]

PS: I don't care what gear anyone has, as to me it's just a tool rather than the reward. I'm making this thread because the pity party going on right now just makes no sense to me, as I can't remember a time where players across the spectrum would get as much gear as this.

Over the years, I've found myself starting to lose interest in MMOs because of their communities. It seems like people have one of two types of attitudes; either they have the hero's attitude or the warrior's attitude.

The hero's attitude is that strong people should protect the weak. It's the understanding that we are all in this together and we are all going to need help sometimes. Maybe if I help this person when they are in need, someone will be there to help me when I am in need, etc.

The warrior's attitude is that strong people have the right to prey on the weak, and if weak people don't like it, they should get strong. You see this attitude when people say things like "get gud" or "stomp the noobs" and sadly this is the predominant attitude in MMOs these days.

In Shadowlands, it seems like Blizzard has fully embraced the warrior's attitude in their game. They removed Warforging, LFR drops lower gear that than what's already out for casual players, world quests are more boring than ever, many collectibles out in the open world now require 3+ people to click on stuff (forced socialization) just for the opportunity to farm them, and gear scaling was removed from random BGs. Why would a non meta-gamer want to play in a game like this?

[ellieg]

You almost had it, then you had to go full elitist jerk.

I'm at 202. I can pretty easily do up to a +10, the alt normal CN runs the guild does, etc. So it's not really the item level that is the problem. AS you point out, ~200 is fine for most stuff until you get to higher keys, heroic CN or beyond etc.

The problem with the systems actually IS that it's so easy to get to 200. They screwed up the gearing curve and can't fix it now. Covenant gear and honor gear should never have been upgradeable to 197 but should have stopped at 184. That would mean LFR would be a slight upgrade and M0 and the low keys would be real upgrades (esp the low keys).

But now, you quite literally zoom up from whatever you had when you hit 60 to 19x now. Finish the campaign and get about 4k anima and you can upgrade all of the covenant pieces. Renown level isn't a barrier now either. You can pretty easily PVP and get the honor gear and upgrade it to 197 to fill slots not covered by the covenant gear.

That's the problem. You can quickly and easily get to 195 or so.. and then you stop. Nothing from +2 to +10 will be much of an upgrade for any slot where you have the 197 gear. WQ gear will be 187 or occasionally 194 so it's almost never better. LFR? M0? Useless gear because... it's lower than what you easily got already. All of the content that should be for people who are playing casually is, from a a gearing perspective, utterly useless.

If you're relatively casual in terms of the time you want to put in, you VERY quickly hit a point where you have almost nothing to do unless you're willing not just to group, but to be a lot more serious and probably spend more time. But... see 'casual'.

My solution to this is simply not to play WoW as much. Valor doesn't interest me since it's a lot of jumping through hoops. So I PVP here and there for fun and do other stuff. This is fine with me, but if Blizzard wants to keep people playing and not have them drop off, it's not great for them.

PS: The problem with this Valor system is that, unless you're running a fair amount of M+ already, you have to time +5s (easy) to +10s (less so for casuals, but still not hard) and then gather VP... to upgrade a piece. Not buy a new piece.... upgrade one.

Contrast this to the old VP system where you could buy a piece that might fill in a weaker slot, etc. You just got VP, went to the vendor, boom. No "Do this to get $TITLE" first, etc. They could have done this here with higher amounts of VP required to get better item level gear. But no, they had to complicate the system.

The point of m+ is to gain progress on the GV. The actual gear that drops is to fill in random slots u happened to miss. Thats how u shld treat m+. Its the same at all lvls. The ppl at 15 aren't using the drops either except for 1 or 2 slots.

Casuals wanted better gear so blizz gave them cov gear. If u kept it at 184, they'd complain they were 40 ilvls lower than mythic raiders.

If blizz didn't require achieves for the Valor point system, they'd keep it at 200 ilvl. Wasn't back in wrath the badge gear gave u 2-3 pieces of normal raid ilvl? They aren't gonna give u better gear in all potential slots.

[munkeyinorbit]

200 gear is not good. Its not even average. So the so called casuals who don't get the rewards anyway, are also rejected from getting the tools that could help them progress. Vicious circle as you don't get accepted if you don't have the gear and to be accepted you must have the gear. In the minds of pleayer high gear = good player simply because higher gear allows for more mistakes and bad play than low end gear. Sure the gear is the tools for work but the game is not letting others reach the tools.

Do 1 single +3 and you are guaranteed a 203 ilvl. There you go. That person locked out of content is starting to get higher gear.

If you are behind you cannot expect to start getting 226s. You have to start from the beginning. You have to gear up. It takes time but if you form your own groups you will start to see gear. A casual should be able to form their own groups up to about a 7 if they're around ilvl 200. Saying that casuals are locked out is just calling them lazy.

[Simple Rick]

so... one item per person, again as i said "unless you get super lucky, maybe 1 peice"
you are comparing classic dungeons to M+

M+ is a complete endgame content
dungeons in classic were for pre-raid gearing with maybe a peice of 2 that would last a bit longer.

they are non-comparable, and far different from eachother.
you cannot get "raid geared" just by doing dungeons in vanilla

Are you now swapping your argument so that because you use one item for what... 3 whole tiers of raiding dungeons have no part in progression...at ALL?

All that has changed is the system scales to your skill level. If you raid mythic you gear in 15s. If you raid heroic you hear in 10s. if you raid normal... to be honest I don't know where you gear I assume 5s?

You keep going to further and further absurd examples to try and help your argument. Saying that " Well in THREE tiers of raiding ( four if you count zg) You will replace a dungeon item so AHA it doesn't matter is a insane position to take.

[FelPlague]

Are you now swapping your argument so that because you use one item for what... 3 whole tiers of raiding dungeons have no part in progression...at ALL?

All that has changed is the system scales to your skill level. If you raid mythic you gear in 15s. If you raid heroic you hear in 10s. if you raid normal... to be honest I don't know where you gear I assume 5s?

You keep going to further and further absurd examples to try and help your argument. Saying that " Well in THREE tiers of raiding ( four if you count zg) You will replace a dungeon item so AHA it doesn't matter is a insane position to take.

ONE ITEM compared to ENTIRE ARMOR SETS

you cannot compete with a raider while being in full dungeon gear.
my dude, you have to be trolling.
you are literally arguing that dungeons were an endgame progression comparable to raiding in vanilla, which is the most bullshit claim you can make.



especially after you threw out random numbers like "but a dungeon run in classic gives 20 loot while a dungeon in live only gives 2! and a 20 man classic raid drops more loot then a 20 man on live!"

which are both incorrect.