Mage Tower and AP

[Emancptr]

It's very frustrating and not very fun. As soon as the Mage Tower is active the best way to get AP is by spamming Random Heroics in a premade group. This method gives you upwards of 6-8 million per hour (~ 2 or 3x better than farming M+).

Mage Token is ~50% drop rate for 520k AP (AK 27) from every single boss in Heroic with no diminishing returns (i.e. repeatable endlessly and doesn't require a key). Whereas the Mage Token can only drop from the chest containing AP on M+ (1 possible drop).

A solution would be to not give a static value to the token. Instead, make the Mage Token duplicate whatever token dropped from a boss. This would make M+ viable again for farming and completely eliminate the Heroic farm spamming (Heroic boss tokens are only 70k @AK27).

[arr0gance]

Perhaps it's by design that Blizzard doesn't want you to farm M+ for AP

[Emancptr]

Perhaps it's by design that Blizzard doesn't want you to farm M+ for AP

That's fine. And I'm sure that Blizzard doesn't want us farming M+ for AP as much as we have. But giving us another way to farm AP (2 to 3x better than M+) doesn't really make sense. At least M+ is somewhat of a challenge for the AP that you're earning. Doing Heroics for more AP is a complete and utter joke.

[TyrianFC]

I dont see the problem here.

You WONT be able to outgrind the Concordance proc by doing this, even if you can get a couple extra traits up front right now... which we'll all have access to anyway when ToS pops.

If ToS was out next week maybe I could understand your point. Big deal if you're heroic farming ultimately nets you literally a couple concordance +200 lvls max by the time ToS comes out in 11 weeks.....

[SFBayGamer]

AK system given we are all at 27 with an upper limit of 50, makes current AP grinds nearly useless as at best you will be a few traits ahead of the herd. I think this translates into tenths of a single percentage point...time far better spent elsewhere.

[Deleted]

It's very frustrating and not very fun.

And that is why Blizz designed the new traits to work as SF wrote:

AK system given we are all at 27 with an upper limit of 50, makes current AP grinds nearly useless as at best you will be a few traits ahead of the herd. I think this translates into tenths of a single percentage point...time far better spent elsewhere.

[Emancptr]

AK system given we are all at 27 with an upper limit of 50, makes current AP grinds nearly useless as at best you will be a few traits ahead of the herd. I think this translates into tenths of a single percentage point...time far better spent elsewhere.

So, what happens when heroics are still the best method to farm once you're AK 50 and pushing for Concordance traits? Obviously, this has very little impact for overall AP values currently. But if you leave the system in place it will still be the method to farm AP later and that is the frustrating thing.

[Narzok]

just a quick overview

let's assume ToS comes out 11 weeks after 7.2 (somewhat hinted at by the bluepost posted here on mmo-champ on the 29th march) and you have finished the artifact questline for AK26 on the first day, then you would have 77 days to get up AK until these 11 weeks are over.

1 lv of AK takes 5 days, so you would get 15 lv worth of AK and have 2 days left.
as you get 26 by completing the quest, you would be at 41 after 75 days.
since you want some time for farming, let's say you start farming right after getting to AK40

going by the value given on Wowhead, AK 40 will give 4 000 000%, AK 27 gives 130 000%, that is about 30 times more AP.

now, lets take my noobish monk with his crappy WW artifact as an example:

he has just bougt his 36th point today, so he has roughly 8.7 mio AP in his artifact. 8 766 330
in order to get all traits on 4/4 and the first point of Concordance, he needs 2 220 000 000 more AP

you stated that heroic farming with mage tower nets about 6-8 mio AP per hour at AK27 (i assume)

assuming an average gain of 7 mio AP per hour, times 30 (remember, AK40 gives 30 times more than AK 27), equals to 210 mio AP per hour.

finally, taking that gain and looking at the 2 220 000 000 AP my shitty monk still needs, that would be a bit over 10 hours of farming at ak 40.
do keep in mind that to profit from the mage tower bonus, you would ned to do the 10h farm while it is up
these are just some statistics. i leave it up to the readers to interpret them

and i HIGHLY doubt that they will tune around people having multiple points in concordance, as they intend for it to be a AP-dump

sorry for the long post, if there are any flaws in the math above, please tell me.

[Bombercloner]

I would rather do mindless heroic with a full guild group than have to do slightly harder content with 3 guildies and a pug. Also some people are trying to maximize their weapon right now because not everyone is done with Nighthold.

[Emancptr]

You're way too focused on the numbers. The numbers literally do not matter at all. Focus on this:

Why is the easiest and most repeatable content (Random Heroics) rewarding the most AP by a significant margin?

That is the only question you need to ask yourself. And the answer is, Random Heroics should not be the most rewarding content.

[Bareno]

I think it's pretty fun, it's a challenge not to die if you try to 5 dps it lol

[Lucetia]

You're way too focused on the numbers. The numbers literally do not matter at all. Focus on this:

Why is the easiest and most repeatable content (Random Heroics) rewarding the most AP by a significant margin?

That is the only question you need to ask yourself. And the answer is, Random Heroics should not be the most rewarding content.

So when the mage tower offers the buff for World Quest AP instead of Dungeon/Raid will you be upset that World Quests will be the most rewarding content for the easiest amount of work? The Knowledgable buff won't be up every time the Mage Tower is up. So just because it's the easiest thing time means nothing. Next time tower is up we could just have +30% Rep instead. Then you and others will be upset there is no buff to grind AP with.

[Emancptr]

So when the mage tower offers the buff for World Quest AP instead of Dungeon/Raid will you be upset that World Quests will be the most rewarding content for the easiest amount of work? The Knowledgable buff won't be up every time the Mage Tower is up. So just because it's the easiest thing time means nothing. Next time tower is up we could just have +30% Rep instead. Then you and others will be upset there is no buff to grind AP with.

I can't do World Quests without a cap. I am limited by the number of quests available. That mechanic will function perfectly fine. With Random Heroics I can literally do as much as I want as quickly as I want.

And I'm not going to complain when the World Quest tower isn't the AP reward. I think this is stupid and broken that's what I said in the OP. Am I going to abuse the hell out of it while it's active? Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't think the system is broken.

Edit* Also, anecdotally, drop rate for the Mage Token buff seems down since I first posted this. Don't know if it has been hotfixed or not.

[Lucetia]

I can't do World Quests without a cap. I am limited by the number of quests available. That mechanic will function perfectly fine. With Random Heroics I can literally do as much as I want as quickly as I want.

And I'm not going to complain when the World Quest tower isn't the AP reward. I think this is stupid and broken that's what I said in the OP. Am I going to abuse the hell out of it while it's active? Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't think the system is broken.

Edit* Also, anecdotally, drop rate for the Mage Token buff seems down since I first posted this. Don't know if it has been hotfixed or not.

You may be capped, but for instance there are 55 world quests up atm. That's ~55 chances per day to get the bonus token from AP. WQ imo take way less time than running a heroic dungeon. At 4 bosses a dungeon that's the equivalent of about 13.75 dungeons a day. So it's as broken as the other one is really if you wanted to go that route.

The thing I'd imagine only a small percent of the player base would run more than 5 dungeons a day or do that many World Quests in a day. You can't always adjust the system to make sure it's balanced for the 5% while hurting it's true intention for the rest of the player base.

[Narzok]

You're way too focused on the numbers. The numbers literally do not matter at all. Focus on this:

Why is the easiest and most repeatable content (Random Heroics) rewarding the most AP by a significant margin?

That is the only question you need to ask yourself. And the answer is, Random Heroics should not be the most rewarding content.

because AP is not meant to be an active target for farming? i don't know how often blizz has stated this, but AP SHOULD NOT BE FARMED! that is their opinion, and as the guys who make the game, they make the rules.

any argument that has to do with farming AP is directly invalidated with: blizz doesn't want you to farm it, so they don't have to care about what gives how much AP

if heroic dungeons would give the best chance at high end loot, THAT would be an unacceptable flaw, but AP is just the random bonus sprinkled around so that everyone gets something, even if it isn't a piece of loot.

[Emancptr]

You may be capped, but for instance there are 55 world quests up atm. That's ~55 chances per day to get the bonus token from AP. WQ imo take way less time than running a heroic dungeon. At 4 bosses a dungeon that's the equivalent of about 13.75 dungeons a day. So it's as broken as the other one is really if you wanted to go that route.

From the perspective of a person pushing their AP. I get 4 chances at the Mage Token in a 8-10 minute dungeon. You get 1-2 chances doing 1-2 World Quests and eventually run out. I can get your 55 WQ worth of AP in under 2 hours of farming Heroics and then continue to spam dungeons for another 10 hours. That is broken and disproportionately rewarding.

The solution I outlined in my OP is very simple. Instead of rewarding 520k AP for a Heroic boss give me a 2nd 70k AP token. People are still given a bonus, but it isn't disproportionately rewarding.

because AP is not meant to be an active target for farming? i don't know how often blizz has stated this, but AP SHOULD NOT BE FARMED! that is their opinion, and as the guys who make the game, they make the rules.

any argument that has to do with farming AP is directly invalidated with: blizz doesn't want you to farm it, so they don't have to care about what gives how much AP

Then Blizzard needs to stop putting in methods that reward AP farming. Just to give you some perspective, I'm almost 50% into my 44th trait. If this AP farming method isn't changed I expect to finish my 44th and either have my 45th or be close to my 45th trait later today. That would already put me 3-4 traits ahead of the majority of players (41-42 being generous here). That is already outside the 1-3 trait range that Blizzard said they would like to keep players within.

To put that in perspective, I would not have expected my 44th trait for 2-3 more days without this method of AP farming.

[zyniker]

From the perspective of a person pushing their AP. I get 4 chances at the Mage Token in a 8-10 minute dungeon. You get 1-2 chances doing 1-2 World Quests and eventually run out. I can get your 55 WQ worth of AP in under 2 hours of farming Heroics and then continue to spam dungeons for another 10 hours. That is broken and disproportionately rewarding.

The solution I outlined in my OP is very simple. Instead of rewarding 520k AP for a Heroic boss give me a 2nd 70k AP token. People are still given a bonus, but it isn't disproportionately rewarding.



Then Blizzard needs to stop putting in Methods that reward AP farming. Just to give you some perspective, I'm almost 50% into my 44th trait. If this AP farming method isn't changed I expect to finish my 44th and either have my 45th or be close to my 45th trait later today. That would already put me 3-4 traits ahead of the majority of players (41-42 being generous here). That is already outside the 1-3 trait range that Blizzard said they would like to keep players within.

Hey, I remember seeing your exact same thread on the official forums a few hours ago. Why'd you leave?

[Lucetia]

From the perspective of a person pushing their AP. I get 4 chances at the Mage Token in a 8-10 minute dungeon. You get 1-2 chances doing 1-2 World Quests and eventually run out. I can get your 55 WQ worth of AP in under 2 hours of farming Heroics and then continue to spam dungeons for another 10 hours. That is broken and disproportionately rewarding.

Except, as I illustrated in my post you quoted. Only about 5% of the playerbase will run more than the 13.75 dungeons needed to meet the same quota as dungeons per day.

It would also take you more than 2 hours to do the 14 dungeons (based on prep, travel, porting, etc).

So for ~2 hours of dungeon farming you get 55 chances. ~2 (maybe 3) hours of World Quests you get the same chance, don't rely on others and not zerg same dungeon basically.

Sure you eventually hit a hard cap on World Quests (as more spawn through rotation). But the point is realistically only a small portion of the player base will do enough dungeons for it to matter.

[Myztikrice]

Huh? There is no prep, travel, or porting for random heroics, and it's not the same dungeon it's random... world quests are the ones with travel times

[Protean]

From the perspective of a person pushing their AP. I get 4 chances at the Mage Token in a 8-10 minute dungeon. You get 1-2 chances doing 1-2 World Quests and eventually run out. I can get your 55 WQ worth of AP in under 2 hours of farming Heroics and then continue to spam dungeons for another 10 hours. That is broken and disproportionately rewarding.

The solution I outlined in my OP is very simple. Instead of rewarding 520k AP for a Heroic boss give me a 2nd 70k AP token. People are still given a bonus, but it isn't disproportionately rewarding.



Then Blizzard needs to stop putting in Methods that reward AP farming. Just to give you some perspective, I'm almost 50% into my 44th trait. If this AP farming method isn't changed I expect to finish my 44th and either have my 45th or be close to my 45th trait later today. That would already put me 3-4 traits ahead of the majority of players (41-42 being generous here). That is already outside the 1-3 trait range that Blizzard said they would like to keep players within.

To put that in perspective, I would not have expected my 44th trait for 2-3 more days withiu this method of AP farming.

Don't do it, or don't complain. There's always going to be a best method and there's always going to be people who objects to whatever is currently best.

At this point it's getting tiresome asf to listen to.