Gearing - Whats wrong with Blizzard ???

[bjoerninger]

yea, how pathetic, it's almost like endgame needs a group, right?

stupid mmo! uh wait.. nm

[Electric Lighter]

The issue (which I struggle with too) is that in m+ you’re going to fail as you move up, and you have to take your lumps and learn from them. In raiding this happens more naturally because you can just go back and try the boss again 10 minutes later, but in m+ you might not see that dungeon again for two weeks, and when you do the affixes will be different, so the learning curve is very steep at points.

I think some people have a hard time with that. I know on my alt I accepted that at my low io I was never going to finish some keys and sank the key down a half dozen levels when it proced something bad.

[clevin]

It looks like you are gear-walled based on the content you can do. Heroic raids offer 213, Mythic+ offers 210s and beyond (valor points and weekly chests). If you want better gear, do harder content.

OP's point is that you are gear walled because of the flat gearing level from around +6 to +9 or so. I've noted this here before and the problem is that the gearing curve goes up like a rocket from 150 or so to 200. It's VERY easy to get to 200 or thereabouts. But once you're there, you run into this:

1) You can easily do N CN and M+ through about +8 or so (assuming a same leveled group, no carries).

2) You will find it hard to do +10 or beyond in time and are very unlikely to get a PUG invite to those if you're ~200. You will also find it hard to get a PUG invite to H CN at that item level.

3) M+ and N CN will have NO upgrades for you aside from very minor ones (replacing a 197 with a 200 etc) or the Vault until you can do +10s and time them (the odds any one person will get a 207 from a 10 or better is small if there's only 1 drop from a missed timer). +7 and lower are the same level of gear (or worse) as you get from pure honor PVP or covenant armor.

So you don't have a good way to get from being able to confidently do +7 or 8 to +10 or above *precisely because* the 6-9 range of M+ doesn't help gear.

This actually violates the "do harder content to get better gear" rule that you're quoting. OP *is* doing harder content. A +8 is harder than a +4 but the gear is really no better.

For several levels in M+, the item level of the gear is flat, mostly because there are too many M+ levels. If they made the gear in 8s much better than in 4s, imagine what 15s would get you compared to raiding.

What they should have done is 1) fixed the 150-200 gearing curve and 2) squished the M+ levels so that what is now a 15 would be a 10 (basically compress the first 15 levels to just 10) and made every level up a slight upgrade. So going from 4 to 5 might get you a very slight upgrade (2 levels perhaps) but going to a 6 would be more significant, etc.

[ellieg]

OP's point is that you are gear walled because of the flat gearing level from around +4 to +11 or, really +12 or beyond. I've noted this here before and the problem is that the gearing curve goes up like a rocket from 150 or so to 200. It's VERY easy to get to 200 or thereabouts. But once you're there, you run into this:

1) You can easily do N CN and M+ through about +8 or so (assuming a same leveled group, no carries).

2) You will find it hard to do +10 or beyond in time and are very unlikely to get a PUG invite to those if you're ~200. You will also find it hard to get a PUG invite to H CN at that item level.

3) M+ and N CN will have NO upgrades for you aside from very minor ones (replacing a 197 with a 200 etc) or the Vault.

So you don't have a good way to get from being able to confidently do +7 or 8 to +10 or above *precisely because* the 6-9 range of M+ doesn't help gear.

This actually violates the "do harder content to get better gear" rule that you're quoting. OP *is* doing harder content. a +8 is harder than a +4 but the gear is really no better. For several levels in M+, the item level of the gear is flat.

The solution is to nerf cov gear below 197 but no one gonna be happy about that

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

It's probably already been said in this thread, but Blizzard have got no content ready. They've known this would be the case since atleast last year, but they still want your money and more importantly, your precious time. So they have stretched what little content there is so thin that it's transparent what their bullshit intentions are.

It's another WoD situation. I'm sure they are working on more bullshit systems for the next expansion that will play you, not you playing a game.

Don't fall for it! Don't give them what they want, because this will just continue. Unistall this piece of shit "game" and don't look back. There are better games out there with better developers that care about their fanbase and don't use them like pawns for their business goals.

[ellieg]

It's probably already been said in this thread, but Blizzard have got no content ready. They've known this would be the case since atleast last year, but they still want your money and more importantly, your precious time. So they have stretched what little content there is so thin that it's transparent what their bullshit intentions are.

It's another WoD situation. I'm sure they are working on more bullshit systems for the next expansion that will play you, not you playing a game.

Don't fall for it! Don't give them what they want, because this will just continue. Unistall this piece of shit "game" and don't look back. There are better games out there with better developers that care about their fanbase and don't use them like pawns for their business goals.

I'll Uninstall as soon as people who haven't played the game in months stop coming here to tell us how bad the game is.

[Twdft]

From an alt perspective the gearing system is underwhelming,

Never been less stressful. With KSM on your account you do four +8 and can choose between two 216 items every week with enough valor to upgrade to 220. If you feel lucky do only one +8 and more in another week to catch up on valor.

[huth]

The solution is to nerf cov gear below 197 but no one gonna be happy about that

Solution to what, exactly?

The problem is mostly in the community stonewalling people by instituting unrealistic gear requirements, not gear availability. As usual. The claim that M+ only rewards 200s to +10 is also incorrect; that's just the participation rewards from the end of dungeon chest. Your main reward is the weekly chest, which is above 200 in everything except +2.

[iinverse]

1) You can easily do N CN and M+ through about +8 or so (assuming a same leveled group, no carries).

2) You will find it hard to do +10 or beyond in time and are very unlikely to get a PUG invite to those if you're ~200. You will also find it hard to get a PUG invite to H CN at that item level.

I timed 10-12 in 198-203 ilvl gear back to m+ season start. Most dungeons was nerfed, also you can grab a couple of 210+ in party, so its easier to do it now.
So OP just whining that he can't do harder content because he can't do harder content.

[Frosteye]

Buy a boost and buy the 4 226 raid BoEs.

Although ilvl means nothing, the rewards (aotc/ce; elite set/vicious mount; ksm) are the stuff that matters.

Game feels like it was made to make people more apt to turn to boosts to get what they want, given the reduction in micro-rewards (gear). Just look at pvp, riddled with boosting and why blizz had to fix 2s rating cause it wasn’t inflating at the rate they thought it would (cause glads/r1 and blizzcon players try to retain their rating in 3s, and use 2s for boosting).

Yup. I think Blizzard intentionally made some of these systems really shitty, because they know they can make more money on $20 tokens vs $15 subs. I think if anyone doesn't think Blizzard is assessing these things, they are naive. They are a publicly traded company and their sole goal is to squeeze as much money out of you as possible, whether by making great games, or through other means.

Also, @Niwes: Speaking as a fellow healer, we always have to carry a bit in M+, or people die and get pissed and blame us. In lower M+ it just means they take absurd damage that we have to spam heal, but at least in higher M+ it usually means they get one shot, so they can't really blame you. I was doing ~10s after 200 item level (mistweaver) and its not impossible.

[clevin]

The solution is to nerf cov gear below 197 but no one gonna be happy about that

Well doing it now would be a dick move. But they should have never allowed it to be 197 in the first place. It and honor gear should have been upgradable to 184 max. That would allow LFR to be a valid activity for casuals as well as M0 and it would make the first few levels of M+ a valid thing to do in order to get upgrades. AS they did it, though, there's no reason for anyone to run M0 or LFR. If you're willing to spend some time in epic BGs you can get 197 honor gear to fill out the slots not covered by the campaign gear. Source: Me. It's how I geared my alt druid.

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I timed 10-12 in 198-203 ilvl gear back to m+ season start. Most dungeons was nerfed, also you can grab a couple of 210+ in party, so its easier to do it now.

And we're all just SO IMPRESSED.

PS: for all the people saying "just do a 10 and you get a free 220!!!" Yeah, you do. But last week I was busy and didn't have time for any, but I knocked out a the weekly which gave a 213. What did I get? Legs. Nice! Except... I have my legendary item in that slot and it's 225.

My point is that things like that and the vault can easily end up being slots you already have covered and this is MORE likely the more of those reward you get since you'll have more slots in vault gear over time.

[ellieg]

Solution to what, exactly?

The problem is mostly in the community stonewalling people by instituting unrealistic gear requirements, not gear availability. As usual. The claim that M+ only rewards 200s to +10 is also incorrect; that's just the participation rewards from the end of dungeon chest. Your main reward is the weekly chest, which is above 200 in everything except +2.

The solution to the jump in difficulty. Cov and honor gear gets u to 197. I understand most of my upgrades come from great vault. But newer players hit 197, want to try end game content, and quickly realize there's no more immediate upgrades. M+ doesn't give ilvl upgrade drops until +7 and thats only 3 ilvl upgrade. Same with normal raid. Same with unrated conquest gear.

I personally love it cause it lets me Jumpstart my alts right into +10s. For the first time player, it might be better to have cov gear be 184, so they do lfr, work their way up thru m+, do normal raids and acquire conquest gear. That way they keep progressing. Idc either way tho.

[iinverse]

And we're all just SO IMPRESSED.

Impressed by ordinary things?

[Marakara]

10s are easier than 9s once you get the pride mechanic down. If you're trying to join other people's keys you need to work on your io, but if you lack the patience to apply to multiple groups (even as a healer), you need to use your own key. It'll go down sometimes, but it's not hard to get it up to 10+ and have YOUR choice in the overgeard/overio'd people applying

[huth]

The solution to the jump in difficulty. Cov and honor gear gets u to 197. I understand most of my upgrades come from great vault. But newer players hit 197, want to try end game content, and quickly realize there's no more immediate upgrades. M+ doesn't give ilvl upgrade drops until +7 and thats only 3 ilvl upgrade. Same with normal raid. Same with unrated conquest gear.

I personally love it cause it lets me Jumpstart my alts right into +10s. For the first time player, it might be better to have cov gear be 184, so they do lfr, work their way up thru m+, do normal raids and acquire conquest gear. That way they keep progressing. Idc either way tho.

Well, you might notice that most of the ones complaining here aren't new players, but oldtimers. Whether the issue is actually real is rather questionable, so there's a good chance you'd simply hurt those that don't engage in premade groups for no gain.

[MoanaLisa]

Because blizzard is reinventing the game every expansion... Something works great? Throw it in dumpster and invent a new broken thing...

This is the nature of the game now. It always has been to some extent but it's more blatant now since you get an endgame boost with every expansion purchase. Expansions are for intents and purposes standalone games. There is a lot of denial about this but the evidence for this is piled pretty high by now.

Design-by-consensus/committee practically dictates this. There's no one much at Blizzard any longer that has any interest in expansion continuity in systems, story or anything else you can think of. That's always been a weak point with them but now they ignore it totally and have even said out loud that maintaining and updating past expansion systems is a pain-in-the-ass so "temporary powers" were their first idea. At some level, players hated this and Blizzard says they've backed away from it but I haven't seen it and am tired of waiting for it.

As for Gearing: I've been thinking for years that Gear-As-Progression is terrible. However, that's the game they want to play so here we are. Some system based on what you do in game would seem to be the easiest way to go: do hard things and collect a lot of XP points (or currency) for that; do easy things and you collect much fewer points but character power would reside in where you are on that scale instead of what clothes you pulled out of the closet that morning. That's an entirely different game though so it won't happen. It's unfortunate that WoW is stuck in this box on progression since most other power progression systems are more sensible.

[Alroxas]

You obviously don't pvp.

Not seriously no, but this season I was able to get from CR 0 to 1600 via YOLO groups in group finder for rated bgs. Took approx. 2 weeks and about 4 different groups. Granted the most gains came from 1 yolo group that used discord comms to help direct players (i.e. "all move to X objective" or "focus on player X") but even without comms, just having coordination usually worked in the group's favor.

Now moving above 1600, that's likely to be a greater challenge but to be fair, at Challenge (1600) you can upgrade conquest gear to ilv 213. That's mostly heroic Nathria level (minus last 2 bosses).

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This actually violates the "do harder content to get better gear" rule that you're quoting. OP *is* doing harder content. A +8 is harder than a +4 but the gear is really no better.

? +4 rewards 194 ilv at end of dungeon which becomes 207 in weekly vault, +8 rewards 200 ilv at end of dungeon but weekly jumps to ilv 216.

Now you could say that end of dungeon rewards aren't much better but unlike say a raid, you can run M+ every day as long as you have keys to run. It's a near unlimited opportunity at loot compared to raids. Hence the lower end of dungeon loot but the trade off is in the weekly. Even at +8 you're getting better than the first 8 bosses of heroic castle nathria loot. Yes, you're limited to once per week but that's inline with raids lockouts.

And ultimately, that's the key: Blizzard designed the loot systems so that there is loot acquisition parity between a M+ runner vs a raider vs a PvPer. However, even that parity isn't quite fair because inherent issues of each system. Such as how (relatively) fast it was to reach 2400 PvP rating to obtain ilv 233 weapons way before players could do so in Mythic raid or the ilv ceiling cap of M+ compared to high PvP or Mythic raiding. And numerous other issues that have sprung up.

[Luxeley]

Not seriously no, but this season I was able to get from CR 0 to 1600 via YOLO groups in group finder for rated bgs. Took approx. 2 weeks and about 4 different groups. Granted the most gains came from 1 yolo group that used discord comms to help direct players (i.e. "all move to X objective" or "focus on player X") but even without comms, just having coordination usually worked in the group's favor.

Now moving above 1600, that's likely to be a greater challenge but to be fair, at Challenge (1600) you can upgrade conquest gear to ilv 213. That's mostly heroic Nathria level (minus last 2 bosses).

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? +4 rewards 194 ilv at end of dungeon which becomes 207 in weekly vault, +8 rewards 200 ilv at end of dungeon but weekly jumps to ilv 216.

Now you could say that end of dungeon rewards aren't much better but unlike say a raid, you can run M+ every day as long as you have keys to run. It's a near unlimited opportunity at loot compared to raids. Hence the lower end of dungeon loot but the trade off is in the weekly. Even at +8 you're getting better than the first 8 bosses of heroic castle nathria loot. Yes, you're limited to once per week but that's inline with raids lockouts.

And ultimately, that's the key: Blizzard designed the loot systems so that there is loot acquisition parity between a M+ runner vs a raider vs a PvPer. However, even that parity isn't quite fair because inherent issues of each system. Such as how (relatively) fast it was to reach 2400 PvP rating to obtain ilv 233 weapons way before players could do so in Mythic raid or the ilv ceiling cap of M+ compared to high PvP or Mythic raiding. And numerous other issues that have sprung up.

You got very lucky with your run to 1600. That's not a testament against your skill, idk if you are skilled or not, nor do I know if you played a healer or not, but your XP is NOT the norm. Exceptions always exist, consider yourself to be lucky you nested within an exception. If you're 1400 you're punching out of your weight class at 1600 and the rule slides and scales 1600 is punching out of your weight class at 1800. In all probability the gear differential wasn't so bad much earlier in the season and one can present the same argument at this point in the season. But then again, there are quite a few high rated players at this point in the season with BIS pvp gear selling rating tier's in pvp for gold. So now if you're 1600 and 213 give or take, you're facing players at 233 or even 226 on a regular basis.

And on your comment to another person about parity between M+ vs Raider vs Pvper, that is completely NOT TRUE. There is no parity between the 3 end game modes with regard to pvp, this isn't my opinion, this is fact.

According to Ion Hazziclueless in an Icy Veins article sometime mid-March - to paraphrase -loot from one end game mode is performing significantly better than in different game modes. To such a point, Blizzard is strongly considering bringing back pvp with ilvl scaling in pvp modes much like the pvp gear from WOD. To prove I am not creating fiction here's the article link = https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/top...g-in-patch-91/

So if parity truly existed, Blizzard does not consider and more than likely take this new approach. You are completely mixing up what Blizzard "intends" with what they actually do and create.

[Niwes]

Yup. I think Blizzard intentionally made some of these systems really shitty, because they know they can make more money on $20 tokens vs $15 subs. I think if anyone doesn't think Blizzard is assessing these things, they are naive. They are a publicly traded company and their sole goal is to squeeze as much money out of you as possible, whether by making great games, or through other means.

Also, @Niwes: Speaking as a fellow healer, we always have to carry a bit in M+, or people die and get pissed and blame us. In lower M+ it just means they take absurd damage that we have to spam heal, but at least in higher M+ it usually means they get one shot, so they can't really blame you. I was doing ~10s after 200 item level (mistweaver) and its not impossible.

first part: when looking at the game design the last few years and some of blizz stances or design descission to me this seems EXACTLY how it really goes.

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Bro I played this expansion for 3 weeks and I got 212 ilevel

without guild ?
without using any gold for BoEs ?
without using any gold for Boosts ?
without being carried ?

ok. tell me how. (meant serious)

[Nite92]

yes, ofc. i totally believe this. but its the same argument as „join a guild“. i never met this xpac any pug m+ group that ever would be able with avg 191 doing 10+....

so its the same problem as with raiding: „if you wanna go 200+ join a guild for raiding or a fixed premade m+ grp.“ these are not in the slightest the relations the old xpacs had (BfA, Legiin, WoD...). i find this rather strange...

That is not true. You do not need a guild to do that.
You need people you can learn with, and especially, you need people that recognize an error, and know how to deal with it.
This can easily be done by adding people on bnet.

I am not sure what exactly you are doing wrong, but I did pug my ksm 2x in legion on different chars, becuase I like the challenge. You can do it. First, you must carry it. By knowing tactics, knowing what went wrong.

Nothing worse than wiping on plaguefall 2nd boss, and the tank calling the dps shit, because the explosion went off. But what he did not realized was that him putting the purple blob next to the explosion add caused the wipe.

By becoming a good player you can easily get your ksm. You just need to be willing to learn.