Can we agree that crafted legendaries failed?

[neescher]

Basically what I was thinking.

The whole design of these legendaries was with that scummy token in mind.

To be fair you don't need to buy a token to make it work. If you do your emissaries ever day, your anima/soul weekly every week, mission table missions and just a bunch of WQs and outdoor stuff, you can afford a legendary after a few weeks, even in the worst case.

Casual players don't need their legendaries day one. They also don't need 10 different legendaries, and technically they wouldn't even need it at the highest item level (even though that's totally possible).

At the beginning of the expansion, a casual could just get skinning and farm for an hour. Hides were extremely expensive because half the classes need it for their legendary.

Everyone has to farm for their legendaries, not just casuals. Don't equate "casual" with "gets everything for free without spending any time to get it". Casuals have way to generate gold, it's not something you can only get in mythic raids.


/edit: Just to be clear, I'm not defending the way legendaries were crafted in S1+2, I'm not even sure I like the way it is now. I just don't like the whole "I'm casual, so I can't spend an hour farming for my legendary" argument.

[Squigglyo]

To be fair you don't need to buy a token to make it work. If you do your emissaries ever day, your anima/soul weekly every week, mission table missions and just a bunch of WQs and outdoor stuff, you can afford a legendary after a few weeks, even in the worst case.

Casual players don't need their legendaries day one. They also don't need 10 different legendaries, and technically they wouldn't even need it at the highest item level (even though that's totally possible).

At the beginning of the expansion, a casual could just get skinning and farm for an hour. Hides were extremely expensive because half the classes need it for their legendary.

Everyone has to farm for their legendaries, not just casuals. Don't equate "casual" with "gets everything for free without spending any time to get it". Casuals have way to generate gold, it's not something you can only get in mythic raids.


/edit: Just to be clear, I'm not defending the way legendaries were crafted in S1+2, I'm not even sure I like the way it is now. I just don't like the whole "I'm casual, so I can't spend an hour farming for my legendary" argument.

A casual wouldnt be likely to roll a new character or drop their professions to get skinning if they didnt already have it.
A casual likely would not have the time to do emissaries every day, multiple world quests, outdoor stuff, etc ontop of actually playing the game

A casual player... plays casually. You cant equate 'easy' with 'casual'. Time is the biggest contributing factor that makes someone casual. Daily Emisarys, World Quests, Weekly Souls, Torghast, etc. All of the 'neccesary' stuff over the week would equate to at least, an average of an hour per day, every day without missing a day. Add on grinding for gold, and youve filled a casuals entire playing week, if you hadnt already.

And why wouldnt a casual need a legendary on day 1? They dont want to casually raid? or casually push their io? Or... play the game?



Not disagreeing with the 'legendaries this xpac were done wrong', but the distinction of what is a casual and what you expect them to do just doesnt sit right with me.

[neescher]

A casual wouldnt be likely to roll a new character or drop their professions to get skinning if they didnt already have it.
A casual likely would not have the time to do emissaries every day, multiple world quests, outdoor stuff, etc ontop of actually playing the game

A casual player... plays casually. You cant equate 'easy' with 'casual'. Time is the biggest contributing factor that makes someone casual. Daily Emisarys, World Quests, Weekly Souls, Torghast, etc. All of the 'neccesary' stuff over the week would equate to at least, an average of an hour per day, every day without missing a day. Add on grinding for gold, and youve filled a casuals entire playing week, if you hadnt already.

And why wouldnt a casual need a legendary on day 1? They dont want to casually raid? or casually push their io? Or... play the game?

So are you saying legendaries should just be free? I'm genuinely interested in how this should be solved then.


My position is, someone who plays 1 hour a week shouldn't have the same level of gear after the same amount of time, as someone who plays 2 hours a day. You only have time to play 1 hour a week? Then it takes 3 weeks for you to get XY. Someone who plays 2 hours a day might be able to get it in one week.

[cparle87]

A casual wouldnt be likely to roll a new character or drop their professions to get skinning if they didnt already have it.
A casual likely would not have the time to do emissaries every day, multiple world quests, outdoor stuff, etc ontop of actually playing the game

A casual player... plays casually. You cant equate 'easy' with 'casual'. Time is the biggest contributing factor that makes someone casual. Daily Emisarys, World Quests, Weekly Souls, Torghast, etc. All of the 'neccesary' stuff over the week would equate to at least, an average of an hour per day, every day without missing a day. Add on grinding for gold, and youve filled a casuals entire playing week, if you hadnt already.

And why wouldnt a casual need a legendary on day 1? They dont want to casually raid? or casually push their io? Or... play the game?



Not disagreeing with the 'legendaries this xpac were done wrong', but the distinction of what is a casual and what you expect them to do just doesnt sit right with me.

We're back to the age old argument. If you're the super level of casual guy you're describing, who may not even finish their callings in the 3 day window they have to do it you won't be raiding or pushing IO in the first place. A guy can log on, do a 20, and log off. Would you call him a casual cause he only plays an hour a week? Casual/hardcore is a left wing/right wing thing, but a graph with both X and Y axis.

Like this.
https://imgur.com/vx9EjkJ

Way things are is pretty good. With a bit over the minimum time and effort investment you can get the same legos are the hardcore guys, 4pc, and normalish raid conduits and gear.

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So are you saying legendaries should just be free? I'm genuinely interested in how this should be solved then.


My position is, someone who plays 1 hour a week shouldn't have the same level of gear after the same amount of time, as someone who plays 2 hours a day. You only have time to play 1 hour a week? Then it takes 3 weeks for you to get XY. Someone who plays 2 hours a day might be able to get it in one week.

This. A large time investment doing even easy content, like gold farming, should give an advantage.

[Squigglyo]

So are you saying legendaries should just be free? I'm genuinely interested in how this should be solved then.


My position is, someone who plays 1 hour a week shouldn't have the same level of gear after the same amount of time, as someone who plays 2 hours a day. You only have time to play 1 hour a week? Then it takes 3 weeks for you to get XY. Someone who plays 2 hours a day might be able to get it in one week.

If it takes 100 hours to get fully decked out in gear, thats fine. Hardcore players get there faster.

Play time is one thing, but gold is another.
To a casual, legendaries cost money AND time, not just one of them. Legendaries were over 100k at one point. That could be more than 10 times the life savings of a casual player. No amount of time spent by them would make them happy about spending that gold. Even if they spend 100 hours over a few months getting that gold, having to spend 'everything' is a pretty shitty feeling.
Ive raided with people who barely have the gold for flasks, their playtime allows them to raid, but not enough time to spend hours 'preparing' to raid, there shouldnt be 'prep' time for enjoy a game.


Having legendaries tied to gold rather than time or skill was the issue.
If the goal was to make them available to 'everyone' then any other pathway would have been more enjoyable.
- Tie them to a rep that has a daily hub but also gains rep in a raid (could even cap the rep weekly, so if you clear the raid, you have no need for the 'casual' level stuff).
- Could tie it to a dungeon/raid currency like Valor
- Could have given 2nd version of the recipe with BOP drops a casual could spend time aquiring instead.


The main issue i have with the legendaries is the gold cost. Regardless of 'everyone can make gold', expensive things are just simply out of reach for the average casual player.

[kamuimac]

playing efficiently is different than getting carried by fully geared mates

0 being carried - pushed my own key in complete pugs on week 1 up to timed 17 NW. because you know pushing your key is the avice i always give to people and honestly its best advice possible. and it was after i hit 250 itlv

only next week i started to run it with guild because i played it mostly in morning (home office rules ) :0

[Kalisandra]

If it takes 100 hours to get fully decked out in gear, thats fine. Hardcore players get there faster.

Play time is one thing, but gold is another.
To a casual, legendaries cost money AND time, not just one of them. Legendaries were over 100k at one point. That could be more than 10 times the life savings of a casual player. No amount of time spent by them would make them happy about spending that gold. Even if they spend 100 hours over a few months getting that gold, having to spend 'everything' is a pretty shitty feeling.
Ive raided with people who barely have the gold for flasks, their playtime allows them to raid, but not enough time to spend hours 'preparing' to raid, there shouldnt be 'prep' time for enjoy a game.

Legendaries costing gold plus time grinding stuff in Torghast (which is something that does not make you gold, so it's in direct opposition to making gold) also made life very hard if you were trying to gear up an alt without a great deal of time (especially as you also needed to grind renown and normal gear). Likewise off-specs if they needed legendaries that differed from your main spec.

I preferred Legion, for all its faults. Your weapon powered up as you played the game on that character, and you got legendaries by playing the game on that alt, so all you had to do was play the game. Not ideal if you needed to get an alt up to speed in a hurry, but better than the current model.

[kamuimac]

teach me master and i am saying this without any irony.

np - you start with having full set of 226 gear ready . then you farm ZM heavily but efifciently - means you just focus on sand dunes rare which give you currency for gear - you spam farm all possible flux/236 gear from boxes with handynotes addon and knowledge where what is and how to get it - this in a week shoudl get you 10k flux easily if you include rares farm . if you have alts send cinders and ash from alts - i didnt have it on hunter because previous week i compelted upgrrading all leggos on alts to 291 siince prices of leggos dropped to 15-20k .

most impotant thing is to use lfg addon and do not waste time waiting for particular rares to be up - just focus on sand dunes rares like otaris , mother, garudeon etc which seem to be almost constnalty up on one of milion servers you have access with lfg

make sure to have 50 % drop item send from main for thingies for console. its very important and effficient.

buy 262 craftable item

you may finish the storyline (its like 1.5 hour) for 265 belt to make farming a bit more efficient on day 1 before you get 2nd leggo.

after all this ? get a key to m+ from vendor and start spaming you key - i named my key " Lf nice people who can help me get GV " - this got me to +15 done in time for +2 and for 17 i named key "weekly survival big aoe" - we timed it easy

and ye most important - play meta spec that everyone want and does sick aoe :P

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Legendaries costing gold plus time grinding stuff in Torghast (which is something that does not make you gold, so it's in direct opposition to making gold) also made life very hard if you were trying to gear up an alt without a great deal of time (especially as you also needed to grind renown and normal gear). Likewise off-specs if they needed legendaries that differed from your main spec.

I preferred Legion, for all its faults. Your weapon powered up as you played the game on that character, and you got legendaries by playing the game on that alt, so all you had to do was play the game. Not ideal if you needed to get an alt up to speed in a hurry, but better than the current model.

no point wwasting time in thorgast - flux buys you that stuff. better spend time with handynotes addon knowing how to get flux from boxes.

[neescher]

no point wwasting time in thorgast - flux buys you that stuff. better spend time with handynotes addon knowing how to get flux from boxes.

I think he was talking about the start of SL.



Also, I'd like to see someone finish the entire ZM campaign in 1.5 hours. Agree with your other points though, but 10 hours played to 257 as DPS without any help seems a bit understated

[Coldkil]

The thing is, the most difficult part of gearing alts is getting groups. If you have a guild group (I'm not even saying you need to get carried, just get a few people's alts at 230-245 ilvl) you can easily gear your alt quickly. Just spam those m+

Spend a few hours in ZM to have enough flux for a couple of set items, and you're good to go.

I'd also add the fact that the later you get in the loop the harder it gets. Simply because of a mix of three main things:
- good people who feel they're "done" are not playing
- good people who still keep playing usually have their own groups for faster/easier progress
- people stuck in lower tier of content are usually the worst players skill-wise, while you need that as a stepping stone to reach further.

I want to get Curve, but i started late this patch. There's plenty of jailer groups running, i'm 6/11HC because i miss pantheon/livhium/halondrus and i have anduin and lords down (i would have rygelon but you know RL and missed the kill night). I'm sure i would get more invites if i was 10/11, i'm trying to get groups for those but either it's a curved/alt run or it's a progress one that means i'm going to wipe all evening on a boss.

Fortunately if the goal is just to gear a character, M+ is just a godsend because it really doesn't matter who you're in group with, until it's not a disband halfway in the run you're not really wasting time (though it took my fresh DK 40 minutes to join a +2 even if my main has KSM).

[Puri]

no point wwasting time in thorgast - flux buys you that stuff. better spend time with handynotes addon knowing how to get flux from boxes.

I mean, talking about "waste of time": You can easily run Toghast layer 9 in less than 10 minutes with any 230 equipped char, you need to run it 4 times to get enough soul cinders for a single legendary.
In no way you can make 3000 cosmic flux in the same time once your one time chests are looted, especially considering that you also need flux for crafting the legendary itself and for converting set tokens. It only makes sense once you have another char with flux surplus so you can send the accountbound bag to him.

[mojusk]

intended fail, many grabbed their credit card to afford them.. ooopsiiie

[Easyclassictopkeklel]

big win. finally you could craft something that was worth crafting and selling for lots of gold. "blahblahbla intended cash grab". Shut it. Lets remove the whole economy and items then. yeah, much better mmorpg. genius move.

[RobertMugabe]

big win. finally you could craft something that was worth crafting and selling for lots of gold. "blahblahbla intended cash grab". Shut it. Lets remove the whole economy and items then. yeah, much better mmorpg. genius move.

Yeah I feel like that everything in the future which in any way has anything to do with gold will be called a cash grab.

Blizzard can't really "win" here anyways, because some people just have impossible demands and suggestions.

Gearing up has never been easier and less grindier than in 9.2

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Sand circle mobs spawn rate is ridiculously low. Not many chances he will drop a weapon in 6/7 hours. Probably he won’t even see one of the 3 up in 6/7 hours. And gl if he needs offhand also.

Rares have 236 but drop is not 100% and duplicates may occur quite frequently. Treasure gear is quite rare too. And then there’s trinkets. Sandsworn Gear is not even an option.

Seems VERY unlikely to me, sorry, unless there are all sort of astral combos like once every century or so.

It MAY be possible within a reset, but surely not in 6/7 hours total.

wdym, 6-7 hours for 242 is completely reasonable.

I have leveled several alts recently and I got to ilvl250 within a couple of days by doing casual content, which is Crafting/AH, Zereth Mortis and random BG's.

[Celement]

To be fair you don't need to buy a token to make it work. If you do your emissaries ever day, your anima/soul weekly every week, mission table missions and just a bunch of WQs and outdoor stuff, you can afford a legendary after a few weeks, even in the worst case.

Casual players don't need their legendaries day one. They also don't need 10 different legendaries, and technically they wouldn't even need it at the highest item level (even though that's totally possible).

At the beginning of the expansion, a casual could just get skinning and farm for an hour. Hides were extremely expensive because half the classes need it for their legendary.

Everyone has to farm for their legendaries, not just casuals. Don't equate "casual" with "gets everything for free without spending any time to get it". Casuals have way to generate gold, it's not something you can only get in mythic raids.


/edit: Just to be clear, I'm not defending the way legendaries were crafted in S1+2, I'm not even sure I like the way it is now. I just don't like the whole "I'm casual, so I can't spend an hour farming for my legendary" argument.

I mean I don't want games to be designed around " well it's free to play if you do a bunch of shitty grindy content" more so on a subscription game.

I know it's the new trend but it isn't something I'm happy with. The goal of leggos was clearly get your bis and cap its job the system really works against upgrading cost benefit wise.

[Lodreh]

Can we agree that crafted legendaries failed?

No. The vendor mats were too expensive and the leveling up the crafting profession was tedious. However, predeterministic stats on BiS gear is awesome. Only real complaint is limiting 1 legendary to certain slots while the other can go anywhere. Rather be able to have both in any slot.

[Eosia]

Overall the system worked fine. We were not dependent on a double RNG system like Legion where we had to hope a legendary dropped in and of itself and then hope again that it was one we wanted/needed versus fluff ones. With the crafted system it allowed us to target the one we wanted and go for it. I also liked the Missive part of it too where we can dictate the secondary stats that go onto it as well although I would like to see some kind of a system that allows us to reforge them with new missives so that if/when secondary stat priority changes in the middle of an expansion, those stats can be changed without having to recraft a new one.

That being said, it had some weaknesses. First the item crafting experience. To put it bluntly, this sucked. The cost of having to level up the crafting was insane in both time and/or gold. It was made even worse by the fact that you could only level up individual slots versus the entire batch. So I could max out my ability to craft the base helm, but shoulders I may only be able to do level one. It was even worse for Leatherworking since they have both Leather and Mail sets. If this kind of a system is implemented in the future, then I would hope that they keep it something along the lines of only having to craft five of any of the item type to upgrade all of them. This would also apply to LW simultaneously for Leather/Mail rather than having them have to do double the work Tailors and Blacksmiths do.

The other problem was the legendary powers being locked to only two slots, seemingly at random. This was a huge problem because with the introduction od Domination gear and reintroduction of Tier, it forced a lot of folks to have to recraft legendaries repeatedly. It also caused the problem of having to have specific loot drops if it could only be crafted for gear slots shared with Tier. So other the old Legion system where Tier gear had 2pc/4pc bonuses but included Cloaks to make it 6 pieces of the set. I would also add in boots/bracers/belt as well. There is no need to go to a 6pc or 8pc bonus either. This has the double effect of not allowing people to be forced to choose between a legendary effect or tier bonus as well as getting them their tier bonuses faster in general.

The third complaint, which I think Blizzard realized and fixed, were the raid drops for these legendary memories. This is a huge problem since raids become harder and harder to find groups for as the expansion moves to the next tier. Not to mention people want to be in the new instances, not the old ones since, Season 4's changes not withstanding, there is no incentive for folks to run them. They should also have a near 100% drop rate as well.

Finally, the amount of worthless legendary powers. Blizzard has the data so they know which ones people were using and which ones no one touched. They need to get rid of those powers. Why bother with them if no one is going to use them or they have such an edge use case that it still would not be worth the effort. In a similar vein, passive effects only as well. I am sure I am not alone in saying that the Hunter legendary memory involving tar trap and flare was awful. It seemed to be buggy as hell with the tar trap landing and triggered and the flare not activating the legendary effect even though it was inside the trap. Pair that with the stupid cooldown on Flare (Trap CD obviously OK) and it made for a lot of frustration.

Also, on a picky note, I hated the name stamping on Legendaries in Shadowlands. Don't have that on any future iteration. I didn't want some random stranger's name on my gear.

[Skildar]

0 being carried - pushed my own key in complete pugs on week 1 up to timed 17 NW. because you know pushing your key is the avice i always give to people and honestly its best advice possible. and it was after i hit 250 itlv

only next week i started to run it with guild because i played it mostly in morning (home office rules ) :0

you did say that your guildmates were playing with you and not random low level characters...

[Mardux]

it might been a lottery, but the legendary was good and a boost even the most bad of them, so it was exciting.

Lol. So just like now then?

Also, why are you ignoring March of the Legion, Betrayer's Prison, Achor, Norgannons, Pillars, Insignia, Mannoroths, etc?

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Yeah I feel like that everything in the future which in any way has anything to do with gold will be called a cash grab.

Blizzard can't really "win" here anyways, because some people just have impossible demands and suggestions.

Gearing up has never been easier and less grindier than in 9.2

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wdym, 6-7 hours for 242 is completely reasonable.

I have leveled several alts recently and I got to ilvl250 within a couple of days by doing casual content, which is Crafting/AH, Zereth Mortis and random BG's.

Yeah, ive done 5 alts in the last few weeks. The only one that took longer than maybe 10 hours to bump from 235ish to 260 was a shadow priest just because most players can't handle thinking about running with a comp that isn't pure meta.

[Snowfunk]

wdym, 6-7 hours for 242 is completely reasonable.

I have leveled several alts recently and I got to ilvl250 within a couple of days by doing casual content, which is Crafting/AH, Zereth Mortis and random BG's.

Yeah, ive done 5 alts in the last few weeks. The only one that took longer than maybe 10 hours to bump from 235ish to 260 was a shadow priest just because most players can't handle thinking about running with a comp that isn't pure meta.

Same here, I've level 4 alts these past 2-3 weeks.
Within 10 hours of hitting 60, they we're all 235-240+, friendly with Enlightened (All conduits unlocked, at ilvl 226).

Farm your Sandworm relics, clear LFR, loot vault. And with the help of the Creation Catalyst, you probably have a 4-set bonus after a reset.

With Cosmic Flux being available in crazy abundance, I've had zero issues feeding these alts with mats with for double 291 Legendaries.

Really feel like we've hit this expansions golden age of alts.