M+ change to make gear valuable

[Jujudrood]

Pre-SL, M+ used to drop relevant gear to the difficulty of dungeon.
This was both good and bad in that it was good that you could gear up and continue progressing at your pace to get good gear, with the bad being that it was essentially infinitely farmable gear and became the ideal way to gear up.
You got a weekly chest where you would get a comparable item to what you completed.
It was simple, yet flawed.

In SL, M+ gear per run was purposefully lowered to combat the "infinitely farmable", but what that has done is made it effectively just an infinite farm of shards and vendor trash, with a weekly chest that overinflates gear way too much.
Example: clearing a M+10 gives you a 203/203 (or 203/200 if not timed) at the end, which if you are clearing 10s, odds are you have very little to no use for 203/200 level gear, but at the end of the week, you get a 220 in your chest, far higher ilevel than that of the run itself.
This is a huge hike in gear, even if it's once a week, to where you have this inflation happening at a weekly interval, making gear much more spiky (nothing useful throughout the week, maybe something start of new week).

The compromise I feel would be better would be to allow M+ to begin dropping gear of a relative ilevel of difficulty, like Legion/BFA, but limit the number of loot eligible runs to 10 total M+ runs.
This means that, regardless of the key level you run or the dungeon you choose, you get 10 chances per week to get an item from that end-of-run chest.
After the 10th run, you no longer get loot (you get gold/AP/whatever else is thematically proper), but each run still builds towards your weekly chest of options, so there's still value to run.
Then, your weekly chest would drop items relative to the highest + you cleared, based on their current formula of key levels so you can still push higher keys to get higher chest drops.
This would then work similar to how raids work, where you are eligible once a week per boss, then once you are no longer eligible, you cannot get drops, you cannot have items traded to you, you are just there to build your weekly chest and get currencies.
Your weekly chest would also be the same as raids as well, where you are getting relative rewards to what you complete.

The one thing that would need worked out is loot drops and eligibility percentages.
With this change, the first thing I thought was "4 loot locked people could carry a 5th, who would then be guaranteed all the loot", so it would need to be adjusted based on eligible looters.
Raids have (or had, at one point) a loot rule where each eligible person represents 20% chance at loot, so you would be guaranteed 1 item for every 5 eligible people, with non-5 divisible amounts of eligible leading to a % chance of drop (1=20% for additional, 4=80% chance for additional).
For M+, you would have to do a similar calc, where each person represents a 40% chance, with 2 items being the max, where:
- if all 5 people are eligible, you have 100% chance at 2 items.
- if 4 people are eligible, you have 100% chance at 1 item and 60% chance at a second item.
- if 3 people are eligible, you have 100% chance at 1 item and 20% chance at a second item.
- if 2 people are eligible, you have 80% chance at 1 item
- if 1 person is eligible, you have 40% chance at 1 item
This would curb the carry crowd to prevent guaranteed loot funneling like in raid, where a bunch of non-eligible people affect your total loot drops.

Then in terms of today's loot ilevel, completing a +10 would reward 213, then your weekly chest would reward 213.
+5 would give 200 (normal raid), and +15 would give 226 (mythic raid).
With 10 chances, this becomes supplementary instead of infinitely farmable, and people will still want to push at 10 +15s a week.
There would still be benefit to running more than 10 M+ if you do less than 15s because of it building your weekly chest and you still get currencies, so it's not "just do 10 and walk away with no reason to play", but I feel like this would be a better compromise than "run M+ infinitely for vendor/shard trash guaranteed each time".

So, the question: Would something like this be an appealing change to how M+ loot works?
It limits loot chances to just 10 runs, so people running 20 or more dungeons farming gear early in a season/patch gets stifled, but it makes each key run a bit more valuable in that the items each dungeon drops are more useful on a per-run basis throughout the season/patch.

The TL;DR:
Change M+ per-run drops back to equivalent ilevels similar to past expansions with a M+ loot lockout to curb the "infinitely farmable", then adjust weekly chest to reward accordingly.

[ellieg]

So if the upgrade I wants only drops in SD I have to suffer thru 10 SD runs before I can even think about doing any other dungeon?

[Jujudrood]

So if the upgrade I wants only drops in SD I have to suffer thru 10 SD runs before I can even think about doing any other dungeon?

How do you get that item today?
You run SD a bunch in hopes it drops?
Or, you run up to 10 other dungeons and hope it's one of the 3 out of several dozen in the weekly chest?

Maybe clarify the question.

EDIT: I think I get your question.
You are worried about burning your "loot chances" somewhere else before getting to the one you want.
The alternative would be to have each dungeon have a set amount, like 3 attempts per week.
The goal is to remove the "infinitely farmable" gear from the dungeons, but also by making them worth a crap because, today, you can run SD all you want and the loot that drops will probably not be very useful (its the end of week chest that's more useful).

[Tradu]

How do you get that item today?
You run SD a bunch in hopes it drops?
Or, you run up to 10 other dungeons and hope it's one of the 3 out of several dozen in the weekly chest?

Maybe clarify the question.

Your idea punishes you for mixing in non-SD keys into your 10 first keys of the week, because it directly removes loot-eligible SD opportunities.

[Jujudrood]

Your idea punishes you for mixing in non-SD keys into your 10 first keys of the week, because it directly removes loot-eligible SD opportunities.

Yeah, I kinda figured that out mid-reply.

All I want to do is make running M+ actually worthwhile because today, it's not.
After like the first 2-3 weeks of it opening, people who run it were finding themselves with as much "infinitely farmable budget gear" that they could handle, and it was the weekly lotto that brought any real upgrades, but that lotto is 1-3 items from dozens of options, so it's not exactly targetable.

Let's say this switches to 3 per dungeon per week, then there's still a limit in place, though it's more than double in total, limited to the dungeon so you can run SD thrice, move on to the next, bump up your numbers, etc and still have benefit.

[Kaizun]

Isn't this what valor was designed to do? I'm not really arguing whether your way or their way is better, just clarifying. Valor is (suppose) to make it so the 203 ilvl gear you get can be upgraded to something that is useful to you. Do you not think it accomplishes this in an easier way than what you are suggesting? It 'limits' the gear by having a valor cap.

[Tradu]

Yeah, I kinda figured that out mid-reply.

All I want to do is make running M+ actually worthwhile because today, it's not.
After like the first 2-3 weeks of it opening, people who run it were finding themselves with as much "infinitely farmable budget gear" that they could handle, and it was the weekly lotto that brought any real upgrades, but that lotto is 1-3 items from dozens of options, so it's not exactly targetable.

Let's say this switches to 3 per dungeon per week, then there's still a limit in place, though it's more than double in total, limited to the dungeon so you can run SD thrice, move on to the next, bump up your numbers, etc and still have benefit.

Another issue would be that you're heavily incentivized to armor/class stack in order to (try to) force the items you actually want to drop, because if I'm a mage and some hunter loots bracers, that's still one of my loot eligible runs gone. Sure, it could be a priest looting a helmet (legendary slot for mage), but the risk is higher when there's no overlap.
Valor already solves the problem of dungeons not being rewarding, the only issues are that the valor upgrade costs are slightly too high and that you can't get 226 loot from it. The costs are easily fixed (just reduce them by 20-30%), but 226 loot is a bit tougher. You'd need to require something like all +20s timed, because otherwise it just wouldn't be comparable to raiding (or PvP).

[Jujudrood]

Isn't this what valor was designed to do? I'm not really arguing whether your way or their way is better, just clarifying. Valor is (suppose) to make it so the 203 ilvl gear you get can be upgraded to something that is useful to you. Do you not think it accomplishes this in an easier way than what you are suggesting? It 'limits' the gear by having a valor cap.

It was a half-assed way they wedged in after the fact, which is stifled by clearing all dungeons in tiers in order to even unlock them getting stronger.
The root of the issue, though, was that they drop the items at lower ilevel than is relatively useful, then overdid the weekly lotto and rewarded gear far better than your completed dungeon.
I'd rather it just be brought back into line without bandaid systems to try to address it partway through.

[Tradu]

It was a half-assed way they wedged in after the fact, which is stifled by clearing all dungeons in tiers in order to even unlock them getting stronger.
The root of the issue, though, was that they drop the items at lower ilevel than is relatively useful, then overdid the weekly lotto and rewarded gear far better than your completed dungeon.
I'd rather it just be brought back into line without bandaid systems to try to address it partway through.

Your system would be a "bandaid" that gets added part way through as well, though.

[Jujudrood]

Your system would be a "bandaid" that gets added part way through as well, though.

If it was added now, yeah.
It would be more for the next expansion, or at least on a new patch.

The goal is to create a smoother gear progression that relates gear to the dungeon level.
Maybe we do bump the top level to +20=Mythic raid, then everything scales down from there, but this is what I've seen, just in my experience of the ~50 or so people in my guild for the last 2-3 months of M+
These people, ranging from 200-220 ilevel, run a +10 to +15 and get typically nothing of value from the run itself; sidegrades and loot passed around for alt specs etc.
Then, at the end of the week, everyone who ran a 14 or above gets a 226 in their box, but it's not even remotely controllable as it hits 32 bosses from 8 dungeons, with like an average of 3 items per boss, or nearly 100 items.

Now, Valor does help with upgrades and whatever, but only if you time ALL dungeons for the tier (some dungeons are harder than others for certain comps), which is a limiting factor, then should your weekly chest smile upon you, you may get an item that replaces one you've spent Valor on to upgrade, which feels bad.

I would just rather see each run have value so you're not just building up your weekly chest all week then playing the lotto on Tuesday.