current gear systems

[huth]

You get to a point where you only need flightstones to upgrade. When? And how does WoW notify you about that? Do you have to use trial and error? Does this count for alts?

When you already had an item of that level for that slot (two for rings and trinkets).

It's really not difficult.

The current system is extremely inconsistent and that's probably what's most confusing.

No, it isn't. You're just really bad at research.

[LordVargK]

When you already had an item of that level for that slot (two for rings and trinkets).

So... do I have to buy a notepad to track that? Or how am I supposed to know that? Granted, most likely I will have this equipped.

No, it isn't. You're just really bad at research.

You know what "inconsistent" means?

[Thirtyrock]

Benefits and drawbacks of the system.

Drawbacks -
Changing from tier/season to tier/season causes confusion - I think if we're going to have them iterate on the system, there's a certain amount of change to be expected. I really hope we land on a system soon and can use it going forward. Personally, I'm really happy with the current system
Bag Bloat - Unsure if it would be better for all the crests to be currency or not
Somewhat confusing to see what you need for any given item would like to see this in tooltips somehow
Cannot upgrade gear from one tier to another (i.e. adventurer to Veteran to Champion...) - I would like to be able to purchase an upgrade on an item with like 5 or 10 crests. Then the item could continue to be upgraded into the next tier. Maybe cap it at Hero or something

Benefits -
Far more paths to improving your gear from appropriate content
Less incentive to run low level stuff to farm upgrade currency since appropriate upgrade currency only drops from appropriate content

Closing thoughts -
The valor system was too simple, too narrow, and didn't solve the problem of incentivizing high level players running low level keys to farm valor. I think this system is the best we've seen and I hope they continue forward with only minor tweaks.
I do get how some of the stuff could be overwhelming for new or returning players.

[Dragonflight Enjoyer]

I made an account just to reply to this. The current gear system takes a simple explanation to realize that it is far superior to anything that has ever been in the game. If anything, it's a little bit TOO easy to gear right now, which is why by week 2 of raid plenty of people were essentially full BiS with very little gear improvements to be had over the rest of the patch. This is bad if you're a one trick because you now feel like your sense of progression has basically halted until you get a few key pieces from the last couple of mythic bosses, or 447+ from your vault. However if you like to play alts it's actually awesome because you are able to catch a new character up in a matter of days and enjoy a different perspective on the game.

SIMPLE EXPLANATION OF NEW GEARING - Yes Blizzard made it sound very confusing at first and I was looking at spreadsheets and charts and all this bs about how it works prior to release and I thought it seemed very confusing.

1. Flightstones are required for all upgrades, but luckily you get them from doing LITERALLY anything in the game. Kill a rare? Flightstones. Complete a Mythic +? Flightstones. Kill a raid boss? Flightstones. Do your campaign quests? Tons of FLIGHTSTONES!

2. Remember last patch when heroic bosses and mythic + 11-15 gave primal infusions? Wyrm's Crests. Remember when mythic 16+ or Mythic bosses gave concentrated primal infusions? Aspect's Crests. The only added step is that if you are using these to get a piece crafted, an enchanter must take 4 of them to give you the item required to craft a higher item level piece. Whelpling/Drake tokens are essentially nothing. They are dropped from random world content or very easy content, thus only usable to upgrade quest gear, or very low tier gear. Anyone who even relatively kept up with last season will likely never need those, or if they do they will need very few.

3. The reasons why this system is GREAT is because gear can be upgraded with the appropriate token to become as powerful as a piece acquired from an entirely higher tier of content. For example, you can get a piece from heroic raid, and it can be upgraded all the way to 441, which is the same as what drops off the first half of MYTHIC raid. Same for normal drops to heroic. This means that if you are a more casual player, or you only really like to do M+, or maybe you're lower on the totem pole to receive that first mythic trinket drop, it's not a huge deal, because you can take a heroic one and power it up to Mythic ilvl anyway.

4. The upgrades made with the crests are PER SLOT, rather than per item. Did you ever get a piece from M+ in season 1 and want to use it as a placeholder until you found a more ideal piece, but you couldn't afford to spend your valor on it because it would be a waste and it was such a scarce resource? Now you don't have to worry about that. Just upgrade anything, it doesn't matter, because let's say you upgrade a 428 trinket that isn't ideal to 441. Now when you find your ideal trinket at 428 (or whatever ilvl) you can upgrade it to that same 441 essentially for free, as it only requires flightstones, which are infinitely grindable.

5. Some people are worried about aspects crests vs wyrms crests. Think about it this way. Since your gear is upgradeable to a maximum of 441, and the only time you need an aspect crest is to go from 437-441, this means that for each slot you will only EVER need ONE aspect crest. Currently (before reset 5/30) you can have a maximum of 30 aspect crests. You will only need a maximum of 16 aspects crests to get every slot to 441 FOREVER. Every other aspect crest you ever get will be used on crafted gear, at a cost of 4 each, or to be downgraded to wyrm's crests, which is totally viable and a good strategy for gearing.

6. The system may at first seem complex, but all it boils down to is play the game. Do content. Spend your crests to upgrade gear. Embellishments aren't confusing, just think of them as enchants that you can only have two of that go on crafted gear.

One final thing to address is having to go farm content that is too easy for you in order to get wyrm's crests. I agree, it is tedious, but it has positives and negatives. On one hand yes it's a bit annoying to have to do easier content than you would like in order to get crests to upgrade. On the other hand it keeps players of a higher caliber doing some lower tier content to help smooth things out for groups of maybe a lower skill level. If you're doing a +11 simply add "wyrm farm" to the title of your key listing and see that you will get better players applying who will happily help you complete your key because they don't want to drop their +22 key down to an 11, but they need wyrm crests too.

Hopefully this helps someone. If you are still confused reply to this and if I see it I will try to explain how something works in simple terms.

[Temp name]

crests and flightstones are too much, should be simplified into 1 currency instead of 5 especially when all the crests take up space in your bags

otherwise good

[FelPlague]

So... do I have to buy a notepad to track that? Or how am I supposed to know that? Granted, most likely I will have this equipped.



You know what "inconsistent" means?

Do you have an item in that slot that is higher ilvl?
No? You need crests to upgrade it.
Yes? Then you only need flightstones.

[klaps_05]

Gear tracks were ok, I would just say remove flightstones and fragments. Just use crests for upgrades and once you have max ilevel on the slot, upgrade new pieces for that slot for free. Flightstones dont need to exist and fragments just make people dizzy.

[GabrielKnight]

No, it isn't. You're just really bad at research.

One of the most basics things in the game shouldn't require research. I enjoy the new system but I have to admit that I was extremely confused at first, something that never happened to me before. The fact that a guide from Wowhead is required to understand it properly is an absolute failure in design. And since this is a common complaint from plenty of players, it's clear that they screwed it up.

[Ragnarohk]

You have to be an astronomically massive idiot to not be able to look at crests/tiers and the upgrade guy once and be like "OK this is easy".

It was understandable from blizzards overcomplicated dogshit post about the system.

But basically after day 1 of the patch, it's a "you're an idiot" problem.

I mean, I do understand the system, but It's unnecessarily tedious and overcomplicated (many posters above state examples and share the opinion).

A simple 1 currency (Valor) system would suffice. Also, why do all of these things take bag space.

Do we really need 4 types of fragments to form 4 types of crests, and each has the capacity to upgrade 2 (to a certain threshold) of the 5 tiers of gear

The "but we would be forced to do XYZ content" crowd has to rethink their lives.

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Gear tracks were ok, I would just say remove flightstones and fragments. Just use crests for upgrades and once you have max ilevel on the slot, upgrade new pieces for that slot for free. Flightstones dont need to exist and fragments just make people dizzy.

This would be better, yes

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One of the most basics things in the game shouldn't require research. I enjoy the new system but I have to admit that I was extremely confused at first, something that never happened to me before. The fact that a guide from Wowhead is required to understand it properly is an absolute failure in design. And since this is a common complaint from plenty of players, it's clear that they screwed it up.

Yeah, if you are constantly having to look for other sources to explain basic features. Then the game is probably the problem.

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And yes. The system is inconsistent.

They try and re-invent the wheel every patch. I wonder what new systems the next patch will bring, that will replace these.

[koltec]

The only thing I personally dislike is that if I get a Hero item from a 16-17 key, I must have a Wyrm tokens to upgrade it ( from 11-15 keys ).

So instead of doing harder content, I have to go back and do lower keys? This is kinda ridiculous tbh.

this blizzard has already stated there looking to change in 10.2 say once you cap aspect or any fragment you will begin to get fragments 1 lvl down doing same content .. and they are looking to move them all to currency

[Thirtyrock]

I mean, I do understand the system, but It's unnecessarily tedious and overcomplicated (many posters above state examples and share the opinion).

A simple 1 currency (Valor) system would suffice. Also, why do all of these things take bag space.

Do we really need 4 types of fragments to form 4 types of crests, and each has the capacity to upgrade 2 (to a certain threshold) of the 5 tiers of gear

The "but we would be forced to do XYZ content" crowd has to rethink their lives.

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This would be better, yes

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Yeah, if you are constantly having to look for other sources to explain basic features. Then the game is probably the problem.

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And yes. The system is inconsistent.

They try and re-invent the wheel every patch. I wonder what new systems the next patch will bring, that will replace these.

Valor had problems, primarily that it was available from all key levels so it incentivized running lower level keys for the fastest valor acquisition. That's a legitimate problem, whether you're affected by it or not. This system does better at incentivizing players to play the content that is most relevant to them.

I do agree that flightstones plus 4 types of plus each gear has 2 different tiers, etc. is a bit much. I get WHY they did it that way, but it's a bit overwhelming.

I think they're trying to hone in on a system they can reuse in the future, which means there's going to be some iteration. I think we're better off than when it was just valor, but not where we need to be quite yet.

[FelPlague]

this blizzard has already stated there looking to change in 10.2 say once you cap aspect or any fragment you will begin to get fragments 1 lvl down doing same content .. and they are looking to move them all to currency

That is coming in 10.1.5
What is coming in 10.2 is crests being a currency instead of a bag item. So no more fragments and crests, just currencies

[Jester Joe]

A simple 1 currency (Valor) system would suffice. Also, why do all of these things take bag space.

Do we really need 4 types of fragments to form 4 types of crests, and each has the capacity to upgrade 2 (to a certain threshold) of the 5 tiers of gear

Blizzard already explained why they went with this method.
Valor didn't come from raids and raid gear was unable to be upgraded, so they made a system that works for both m+ and raiding that doesn't force you to do both.

Personally, i don't know about you, but I like that I know I can upgrade my low pieces of gear while knowing that I'm not wasting any that I might need to save for that piece of tier that I want to get to 441, and also then you end up having to add random restrictions like the old "you need x rating to upgrade this item further" and then that carrying across every single character. Now, you earned the aspect crest from timing two 16s? You get to use it. Before youd have to still get your m+ score up higher.