Looking back on 2 biggest controversies of 9.1 PTR times

[Azerate]

During the long testing period of 9.1 we've had some major debacles around weird features and bugs in the game, some more and some less justified. Now after 3-4 weeks of 9.1 many of those ptr complaints have been verified and at least these two major 'issues' turned out not to be a big deal at all. Oddly enough, I myself have bought into these controversies, which is quite a new thing for me, and that's why I decided to make this thread to remind everyone about these old opinions and point out how far were they from the actual truth. This should also be a good reminder for the future to think twice before we jump on a bandwagon, even if it makes complete sense at the time and seems completely justifiable.

Recrafting legendaries

Potentially the biggest drama of pre-release 9.1. Thousands of disgruntled posts, emotional videos on youtube, agitated reactions on twitch. Huge campaign of dissatisfaction, based on mostly accurate information, though with some fake news shoved in here and there. The problem was of course the fact that people who had their legendary previously crafted in a slot that in 9.1 has a domination socket item would have to recraft their legendaries because of the massive power boost from the new socket.

So how is it? In 9.1 we gain 2000 soul ash passively just by running the weekly torghast for cinders, 1000 for each wing. Next run we get 500 soul ash each, and the third run per week and the subsequent runs are 200. (For layer 12 - lower layers have similar rations but lower rewards obviously).

In practice this means that you can get enough soul ash to craft a 4/5/6 leggo in 3 weeks. This also means you can get it in 2 weeks by running torghast twice as much as you need. And finally, this means you can just grind soul ash. This is especially easy in lower layers that you can now speed clear easily on a character geared in the open world. Clearing layer 8 takes me about 12-15 minutes and provides about 170 soul ash. If you're more skilled and you can quickly clear higher layers, this will go up. If you choose to grind it, you can get about 700-800 soul ash per hour.

Now, is it bad on principle that we have to recraft something - sure. But in reality it's a non-issue, as most players will just get the soul ash passively from doing the exact same work as they would have done anyway (3 weeks of torghast = 3rd week is when you can craft rank 6 leggo for the first time).

In conclusion, this is barely an issue. The massive pre-release outrage was not at all proportional to the actual issue.

M+ Rating and KSM requiring both fortified and tyrannical

Inclusion of the in-game m+ rating was mostly received positively, however, following this change we've also seen an overhaul of the KSM requirement, and to the dismay of many of us it turned out that it's no longer enough to just time all dungeons on +15, but instead you need 2000 rating which will require getting score from both the rotating main affixes (fortified/tyrannical).

Again - on paper? Really bad change that will make it harder to get KSM for everyone because you have to run every dungeon twice. The forums and social media were pretty unanimous in their negative opinion on this change, including myself. Everyone was up in arms because blizzard was clearly trying to force everyone to participate in tyrannical weeks against their wishes. There were some voices that it's not such a bad thing, but these were few and far between.

So now that season 2 of mythic+ has been live for a couple weeks, what is the reality of this change? It is actually much easier for almost everyone to get KSM, except for maybe a very small minority of players. The first major reason for that is KSM no longer requires you to do anything in time. The achievement no longer has anything about timing keys in its description, just the ranking requirement. That is something many have not realized before, but you get decent rating for untimed runs now as well. This fact paired up with the second big thing about this new system, which is that you can make up for a lower score on one affix by a bigger score on another, almost trivializes the achievement in comparison to previous seasons. As an example, you can run a +16 or +17 on tyrannical and miss the timer by a couple minutes, and then run it on fortified +13 and you will probably reach the average score required per dungeon to get the achievement. Basically, you can boost your score massively by untimed runs of higher keys than 15 and just do the 'alternate' run on the second affix much lower than 15 and get the achievement that way. This also makes it much much easier to help your friends with the achievement (and of course easier to boost as well, if you're into that - I'm not).

There is a small group of people that will lose on this change, sure. These are the people who can reliably time every single dungeon at +15 while at the same time not being able to do +16 and +17s reliably and thus cannot quickly negate the score requirement from both affixes. Everyone else wins. The system is more nuances and more flexible.

[justandulas]

Disagree hard with your first point. If I’m a mythic raider and don’t want to do torghast ever again, I’m literally being forced into weeks or even months of it depending on the # of legendarys I need. It’s a horrid systems imo and soul ash should be given from everything from boss kills to world quests.

Your 2nd point is just fine tho

Refreshing to see a wow post that isn’t about that elephant in the room currently this week.

Agree to disagree on your first point tho, it’s just subjective. Have a good weekend

[Azerate]

Disagree hard with your first point. If I’m a mythic raider and don’t want to do torghast ever again, I’m literally being forced into weeks or even months of it depending on the # of legendarys I need. It’s a horrid systems imo and soul ash should be given from everything from boss kills to world quests.

That sounds like a different issue. You are forced to do Torghast regardless - for soul cinders in order to get your leggos to ranks 5/6. The point is recrafting leggos doesn't add to this issue by itself, as you are still basically doing the same amount of torghast as you would even if they refunded your soul ash.

[Zantera]

The legendary issue wasn't really much of an issue for me because I had tons of soul ash and I got enough gold that buying a new rank 4 piece wasn't that big of a deal. I can relate to the people who are more poor in game, but I also feel like anyone who has been playing the game actively can probably cover the cost as the gold we get from Emissaries/WQs/Callings in the last few expansions usually stack up pretty decent. But yeah they could have let us recraft or reshape our legendary into another slot, I wouldn't have complained at all.

The M+/KSM issue I actually view as something that probably should have worked like that from the start when they introduced it. By only needing to do a key in time once it quite clearly favors Fortified weeks and in the past you would have people pump through the keys on the easy week. I kinda appreciate the fact that you need to do it both on fortified and tyrannical because it does impact the dungeons, even though it means twice the work.

[Tyris Flare]

The biggest issue with #2 right now is that the upgrading doesn't seem to be account bound. Needing an alt to do 16 dungeons just to spend Valor is insane and will kill alts for a lot of people.

[Lolites]

During ...

long story short, something happened, people didnt even bother to get information about HOW it actualy works, overreacted as hell, and then, when they actualy found out its not even issue shut up about it (some STILL dont know how it works and whine about it)
so bussiness as usual...

[Pheraz]

Imo these systems are annoying and contra their "let loot be loot" PR Blabla.
There are no weapons on wqs except some very very rare exceptions.
And the legendary system is annoying if you are a casual altoholic like me

[Azerate]

The legendary issue wasn't really much of an issue for me because I had tons of soul ash and I got enough gold that buying a new rank 4 piece wasn't that big of a deal. I can relate to the people who are more poor in game, but I also feel like anyone who has been playing the game actively can probably cover the cost as the gold we get from Emissaries/WQs/Callings in the last few expansions usually stack up pretty decent. But yeah they could have let us recraft or reshape our legendary into another slot, I wouldn't have complained at all.

The thing is you didn't really need to recraft the rank 4 on a different slot. Could have just waited for rank 5/6 and craft it from scratch then. That way you wouldn't have to spend additional gold for another rank 4 base item. Though even that wasn't that much of a problem as rank 4 base leggos were like 20k on AH, on my server at least.

The only real setback of leggo recrafting was probably if you were someone who really wanted to get multiple leggos up to the highest rank ASAP. Then yeah. If you just care about one for your main spec, there was no additional difficulty.

The biggest issue with #2 right now is that the upgrading doesn't seem to be account bound. Needing an alt to do 16 dungeons just to spend Valor is insane and will kill alts for a lot of people.

I'm not really an alt person so that's a drawback I have not experienced myself, but I can see how that can be annoying, especially in contract to s1

Imo these systems are annoying and contra their "let loot be loot" PR Blabla.
There are no weapons on wqs except some very very rare exceptions.
And the legendary system is annoying if you are a casual altoholic like me

You can get 200/207 weapons fairly easily now from korthia dailies. There's one daily that always has Crystals or Item, at least in EU, the item was a weapon for like 3 days within the first week of 9.1

[antelope591]

Yeah the first issue was basically the straw that broke the camel's back as far as streamer whine. These guys basically acted like this change was the end of WoW as we know it and instead turned out to be a complete non issue. The only thing that's turned out to actually be an issue is the ridiculous cost of runecarving white items. Something that was completely ignored pre patch because everyone was too busy crying about dumb stuff.

[Rustykeyboard]

soul ash is not the problem the 1mill gold for legendaries is the problem

[Ryzeth]

soul ash is not the problem the 1mill gold for legendaries is the problem

Sounds like you're playing on a pretty rubbish server if your legendaries are that much.

Just bought 3 R6 legendaries this week (1 plate, 1 leather, 1 cloth), didn't pay more than 150k each, and the cloth one was only 105k. Even just since the patch launched, I've made more gold than that from mission tables/callings + the occasional skinning/mining.

[Jastall]

Yeah the first issue was basically the straw that broke the camel's back as far as streamer whine. These guys basically acted like this change was the end of WoW as we know it and instead turned out to be a complete non issue. The only thing that's turned out to actually be an issue is the ridiculous cost of runecarving white items. Something that was completely ignored pre patch because everyone was too busy crying about dumb stuff.

Seriously. I don't mind running Torghast but I'm not an AH baron and not a fan of professions in general, which means I'm hardly rich. But the insane costs of crafting base legendary items means they cost a good 150K+ for rank 5, 200K+ for rank 6, and that's for less sought after pieces. And a lot of that is just to cover vendor costs even, so the price won't noticeably depreciate over the course of the patch. I can hardly gear my main in something more than rank 4 Leggys, and forget about my alts. That's a much bigger issue for me.

[Gaidax]

I do think that base items cost obscene amount of gold. I, personally, have no issue downing 450-ish k gold on all I need, but it is pretty damn high for what is basic stuff needed to actually make 9.1 ilvl legendaries.

[Azerate]

I do think that base items cost obscene amount of gold. I, personally, have no issue downing 450-ish k gold on all I need, but it is pretty damn high for what is basic stuff needed to actually make 9.1 ilvl legendaries.

Yeah the cost is definitely way too high and the system makes it really hard to get for something that literally everyone needs. I'd take the legion system over the current one any day. Then again, I have to point out that the cost is a disadvantage of the system as a whole, not specifically of the reforging 'debacle'. Reforging doesn't cost you any extra gold, unless you planned to keep your rank 4 from 9.0 forever.

[Coldkil]

The biggest issue with #2 right now is that the upgrading doesn't seem to be account bound. Needing an alt to do 16 dungeons just to spend Valor is insane and will kill alts for a lot of people.

Yeah, that's the only bad thing i have to say about the m+ changes. Why this is a thing i don't know, i have alrady done said content with a character which likely doesn't even need to upgrade stuff with valor excluding the odd bad luck piece or the trinket i dropped week 1. The upgrades were the perfect way to gear up alts but now i have to redo the whole thing from scratch? Even less incentive to do it on my main - i'll farm my BiS trinkets and then call it a day, because i have zero interest in scores that give me nothing.

[darklogrus]

Sounds like you're playing on a pretty rubbish server if your legendaries are that much.

Just bought 3 R6 legendaries this week (1 plate, 1 leather, 1 cloth), didn't pay more than 150k each, and the cloth one was only 105k. Even just since the patch launched, I've made more gold than that from mission tables/callings + the occasional skinning/mining.

Cheapest thing is a 262 cloak for 200k, everything else is 400k-700k pretty much across all armor types for rank 6 and the 5's aint much cheaper with the majority at about 400-500k with one piece of cloth and a plate item at 250k. So since I play 2 specs pretty much 50/50 Im looking at 1.1mil to buy from the AH. An I havent even factored in Alt cost..

[Ryzeth]

Cheapest thing is a 262 cloak for 200k, everything else is 400k-700k pretty much across all armor types for rank 6 and the 5's aint much cheaper with the majority at about 400-500k with one piece of cloth and a plate item at 250k. So since I play 2 specs pretty much 50/50 Im looking at 1.1mil to buy from the AH. An I havent even factored in Alt cost..

Yikes.
Sounds like an underpopulated server.

[Gaidax]

Yikes.
Sounds like an underpopulated server.

It is a real issue from desert servers, my guild is on one and we constantly "smuggle" such items from other server transfers.

[darklogrus]

Yikes.
Sounds like an underpopulated server.

26 Raiding guilds and Im 1 of 2 guilds with a Mythic kill. only 4 of the guilds managed 10/10 Normal and only 3 of us are above 6 kills on Heroic.

[Azerate]

26 Raiding guilds and Im 1 of 2 guilds with a Mythic kill. only 4 of the guilds managed 10/10 Normal and only 3 of us are above 6 kills on Heroic.

It's pretty weird that there are still realms like that after all the realm connections we've had. Are you on an RP realm? A non-english eu realm? My server was connected twice, and our connected server now consists of like 5-6 separate realms, this seems to have remedied the AH issue completely. Most expensive rank 6 leggos are like 300k atm.