Possible way to make 5-Mans more meaningful later down the line?

[GenesisZero]

Its no secret that 5-mans at this point in-time have long since served there purpose now that gearing though first tier LFR has been made much easier via increased loot chance, coins and the shear amount of coins you can get from coin runs in the treasure trove.

So where do they fit in? No where at this time as there is no redeeming purpose for doing them outside of "practice" (though I would go LFR if I wanted slightly more meaningful practice).

My suggestion is really taking something that ToT introduced and instead making it more of a progression path rather than luck on a drop. I am ofcourse talking about Thunder-forged gear. At this time "if" you are the max point of progression that you can achieve you are not praying the RNG gods that your item drops but you are also praying again that it might also be thunder-forged. A double layer of RNG on when all stacked up together is a sizable difference in what you have (regular gear) and what you could have (TF gear). This is rather undesirable as most would agree.

I would instead have 5-Mans bare the way that Raid gear is upgraded in such a fashion. Envision harder 5-mans for a start, back to the way that cataclysm set the mark if not just a little lower just to make it doable for the general audience. From that point you got a good basis for adding Ulduar-style hard-mode triggers into these 5-man which can serve as the way to upgrade gear.

For example - Grim Batol first boss. Achievement is finishing the fight with 3 stacks of a (at the time) deadly buff on the boss. Have this serve as an example for such a requirement for the augments that you can earn.


With the base idea down there are various distributions and ways to acquire the augments such as -
(note - the augments would apply in a similar fashion to gems/enchants)

- An item that is class-bound that all viable classes can roll on at the end of the fight, similar to tier tokens. As it operates under 5-man heroic rules this would impose a 1-day lockout on achieving this item (this would even apply in LFG instances, you get one shot at one bosses augment per day).
- A daily to kill X boss under hard-mode conditions that will reward you with said augment.

Alternatively these could be earned out of doing Challenge Mode or a similarly styled difficulty. As its aimed at raiders the difficulty for achieving these items would be equiv to/or as close as a raid encounter. There is also no reason that these dailies and/or bosses could provide Valor/Coins for Bonus rolls. It awards you for doing what you want to do.


Now comes the question of balance as with all features there are no doubt methods to abuse. Here are a couple ideas on how this would fit in with too much abuse -

- Thunder-Forged is 6+, I would lower to 4+ and have it sit along side the current Valor upgrade system. This allows 12+ max on any piece of gear at anyone time.
- The augments can be various things such as base stat increases, additional stats added, specific stat upgrades. These are down the players choice allow more control how you want to shape your gear.
- Hard-Modes would only allow these augments to be available to players that have gear that can be upgrades. For example say the upgrades are split into 5 different tokens, spreading gear slots over them. If Head/Shoulder/Back token drops of X boss and said players has no upgradeable gear in these slots and/or bags the item will auto-pass. The system would check if items that do check these boxes for loot are soul-bound to avoid crafted/world-drop abuse.
- Only X amount of items can be held at any one time, likely 3. This negates stacking of augments to allow "power on a whim" for gear. This system is designed to take some time but not forever to upgrade a set of gear.


Problems this system could solve and some positives -

- Gear progression block at the hands of RNG reduced (to a degree).
- Raiders like to raid, so adding more PvE content styled to aid in raiding would add to the pool of content for this audience.
- A larger audience for 5-mans, and more commitment to this format of PvE
- Genuine challenges that don't feel artificially introduced. You do hard challenge, you get meaningful rewards.
- More leeway in balance for raids. Scale Flex/Normal/Heroic with these in-mind.


That's the general gist of my idea for making 5-mans relevant in the future with enough satisfaction for multiple parties and opinions.
If there is anything that you would like to comment on, add or any thoughts you might have on the state of 5-mans please feel free to comment.

[kamuimac]

Its no secret that 5-mans at this point in-time have long since served there purpose now that gearing though first tier LFR has been made much easier via increased loot chance, coins and the shear amount of coins you can get from coin runs in the treasure trove.

So where do they fit in? No where at this time as there is no redeeming purpose for doing them outside of "practice" (though I would go LFR if I wanted slightly more meaningful practice).
.

They still serve the same purpose as they server in 5.0 meaning gearing up people for lfr - just because smart players can skip part of them by acquiring pvp 476 gear mix with 476/496 craftables and world boss drops doesnt mean every player odes this - there are people who ding their first lv 90 char and have no idea such shortcuts exist - and this is the purpose of HC dungeons atm.

[GenesisZero]

They still serve the same purpose as they server in 5.0 meaning gearing up people for lfr - just because smart players can skip part of them by acquiring pvp 476 gear mix with 476/496 craftables and world boss drops doesnt mean every player odes this - there are people who ding their first lv 90 char and have no idea such shortcuts exist - and this is the purpose of HC dungeons atm.

In which you yourself just mentioned that you can bypass the whole thing with padding Ilvl with items from PvP and AHing then "maybe" doing a couple to fill the rest in. But I am damn sure that the majority skip this step, especially if it ain't there first time. Its incredibly easy to get geared fast with the right prep/luck from LFR. And I'll also bet the amount of people right now within the last 3-6 months have been alts over first timers, regardless of this there is no clear cut way to know.

But you appear to missing the main point of the post, HCs have the time to fulfill there intended purpose when, and only when at the start of an Expac when there is no catch up or gear sling-shot to the more current content because well, that is the current content. My point is that heroics can hold a relative clean point of existance at any stage of an Expac should there be ample reason to.

Lets state for example PvE and PvP progression paths as it stands -

PvP = Normal BGs > Arena/RBG
PvE = 5-mans > LFR > Normal > Heroic
EDIT - PvE (for the dedicated raider) = 5-Mans > Normal > Heroic - LFR fills gaps in but is not imperative to their play.

Now I won't claim to speak on behalf of PvP that aint my game but PvEs "roots" lose purpose very fast. Even more so with the easier ways to gain valor and all that. There just isn't enough justifiable reason to go back and do them. Though from what I know about PvP (feel free to correct me) normal BGs still hold enough reason to do them when you aren't doing arena or you are doing RBGs.

With something like what I suggest it would give that heroic raider the reason to go back and do 5-man heroics. If such a system existed there might also be more 5-man releases with the in-between patches like 4.1 for example.

Now I speak from a strictly profit driven prospective, when I play something I play with an aim and unless I'm doing it for gain then I likely won't be doing something and I am sure a enough other people also play in this manner.

[Normie]

- An item that is class-bound that all viable classes can roll on at the end of the fight, similar to tier tokens. As it operates under 5-man heroic rules this would impose a 1-day lockout on achieving this item (this would even apply in LFG instances, you get one shot at one bosses augment per day).
- A daily to kill X boss under hard-mode conditions that will reward you with said augment.

There's nothing I disliked more than zoning into a 5-man in Cataclysm and finding 3 dudes from the same guild and one of them says "k prest gona do cheiv now u do ths".

Harder "extras" in random 5-mans? I don't think so.

[GenesisZero]

There's nothing I disliked more than zoning into a 5-man in Cataclysm and finding 3 dudes from the same guild and one of them says "k prest gona do cheiv now u do ths".

Harder "extras" in random 5-mans? I don't think so.

Various ways to balance this and I can agree that there are times that you will want to just get on with the dungeon but sometimes something a little more meaningful that a virtual badge saying "I did this" can bring the best outta players, I know that with the plenty of people I have played with over the years.

But assuming the worse outta the player base there are ways this could be balanced to not ruin normal queues and still serve its purpose such as making it limited attempts in LFG or premade groups with 5 only.

That said another idea is expanding upon the current queuing system to add more control and depth on who you queue with and what kind of dungeon you might get.

For example say there are couple possible things that you might out of your 5-man such as -

- Fast runs
- Achievements
- Augment runs
- Social-able runs

Similar to how you can queue yourself a possible leader you can drop a box, say what kind of run you are looking for then queue for it. Yes this might inflate queues but it greatly increases the chances that you get what you want out of your run.

Could even be simplified to point where you queue for a group with the specific option to run the hard-modes. Though using chat and a little effort to form a group never hurt anyone.

Personally a little more player control would go a long way in WoW hence the above suggestions. Full of ideas so fill free to discuss but try keep as on topic as possible to the original post.

[Sebsmash]

id enjoy this as I have zero time to raid and having a smaller group than 10 to do something worthwhile with is highly appealing to me.