Time to increase gap in raid loot?

[Kaesebrezen]

why are you so conveniently not mentioning m+? which is the major source of inflated ilvl? current situation is, exclude the tier pieces, the most efficient way to get near maxed gear is to spam m+10 instead of trying to find 5 rouges and wiping for 600 times for avatar just to finally down it and have it drop something with the same ilvl. the effort is NOT equal.

Because it's just not the case. If people wear mythic gear, then it's usually their weekly mythic chest reward, that titanforged to 940 or something. That happens in one, two, maybe three slots.

Those people decked out in 940+ gear from mythic+ simply do not exist. Just as your miracolous mythic raid geared shadow priest from argunite vendor(which btw you still did not link to us)

M+ titanforging causes no problem. M+ loot is inherently more random by a large margin compared to raids. Unless you specialize your group (into one armor type - which works for leather and plate - not for cloth and mail), you signficantly lower your loot gained. Then you need to actually get an item for a slot you actually need gear for, and finally this item has to titanforge at least 30 level.

Regardless of how fast you spam +10s (which is still limited in the number of times by the keys in your group, once you start carrying randoms for their +10 keys, you signficantly reduce your own loot, and increase runtime), getting even one 940 item takes quite a while. Using a similar frame as heroic titanforge (+2 940 items for a mythic group that clears heroic once per week - which is imo quite unlikely), you'd be looking at 4.5 hours of mythic+ farming to get 2 item at 940 - which again - are signficantly less likely to be usable than any raid drop.

Again: Show me some (not one) character that is equally geared to a mythic raider with a large amount of titanforged mythic+ gear.

If you can get to that same level without the time investment, then why bother?

What if i told you that for your non-top end mythic guild (strict 3 maybe 4 days a week), mythic is the most time efficient way to gear?

[Orwell7]

Again: Show me some (not one) character that is equally geared to a mythic raider with a large amount of titanforged mythic+ gear.

What if i told you that for your non-top end mythic guild (strict 3 maybe 4 days a week), mythic is the most time efficient way to gear?

That's because the target audience for those two types of gearing are mostly the same!
Show me ONE character who only does M+ and does not have tier bonuses.

You have to do both. That's the problem!

[TorikSAn]

That's because the target audience for those two types of gearing are mostly the same!
Show me ONE character who only does M+ and does not have tier bonuses.

You have to do both. That's the problem!

One...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...81%D0%B0%D0%BD
Two...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...B8%D1%83%D1%81
Three...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...BD%D0%BA%D0%B0

Yeah this may restricts us from making M22-24+. But we enjoy going as high as we can. We never farm low M+. Time spent is 4 days a week (3-5 high 14+ per day) https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/17532

[dakalro]

Why is it so hard to understand that it's not just about LFR heroes getting massively overrewarded? The main issue is that it incentivizes degenerate gameplay like running old raids/lower difficulties to get upgrades, which is much more efficient than doing mythic in terms of time spent(as my numerous 935+ heroic-only alts clearly show), because of how much time progression takes on mythic, whereas heroic is something you can easily clear in an hour or 2.
And you can say "just don't do it, then" as much as you want, but that doesn't change the fact that somebody not participating in that degenerate gameplay will be behind people who do.

Except for a couple of trinkets/relics, you won't run lower content much after you farm Mythic, will you? The chance for LFR gear to TF to even Mythic ilvl is 1 in a few million, I wouldn't run an old raid (or LFR for that matter) for those odds.

Titanforging is fine. Legendaries add 5 ilvls so it looks worse on paper when you compare loot drops on first kills vs. raid ilvl.

Even with the best of luck I will not get 945 ilvl in the majority of my gear before Antorus (I pug HC so that's what I'm comparing). I only have 1 relic that is above at the moment, everything else is 925-940 (and this is because of the M+ weekly chest, not raid).

As a former hardcore raider the only thing that is annoying about TF is that you can't really get or have a BiS list. Which isn't too bad, except for the OCD I used to feel when new tier was approaching and I was not in BiS.

[Aaronioslo]

Because it's just not the case. If people wear mythic gear, then it's usually their weekly mythic chest reward, that titanforged to 940 or something. That happens in one, two, maybe three slots.

Those people decked out in 940+ gear from mythic+ simply do not exist. Just as your miracolous mythic raid geared shadow priest from argunite vendor(which btw you still did not link to us)

M+ titanforging causes no problem. M+ loot is inherently more random by a large margin compared to raids. Unless you specialize your group (into one armor type - which works for leather and plate - not for cloth and mail), you signficantly lower your loot gained. Then you need to actually get an item for a slot you actually need gear for, and finally this item has to titanforge at least 30 level.

Regardless of how fast you spam +10s (which is still limited in the number of times by the keys in your group, once you start carrying randoms for their +10 keys, you signficantly reduce your own loot, and increase runtime), getting even one 940 item takes quite a while. Using a similar frame as heroic titanforge (+2 940 items for a mythic group that clears heroic once per week - which is imo quite unlikely), you'd be looking at 4.5 hours of mythic+ farming to get 2 item at 940 - which again - are signficantly less likely to be usable than any raid drop.

Again: Show me some (not one) character that is equally geared to a mythic raider with a large amount of titanforged mythic+ gear.

What if i told you that for your non-top end mythic guild (strict 3 maybe 4 days a week), mythic is the most time efficient way to gear?

someone posted it here

One...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...81%D0%B0%D0%BD
Two...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...B8%D1%83%D1%81
Three...
https://www.wowprogress.com/characte...BD%D0%BA%D0%B0

Yeah this may restricts us from making M22-24+. But we enjoy going as high as we can. We never farm low M+. Time spent is 4 days a week (3-5 high 14+ per day) https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/17532

they do exist and more and more people are leaving mythic raiding to do m+

if you full clear mythic ToS and gets two 940 each week( which is a big if, as most guilds can't full clear mythic plus getting 2 pieces of gear from one CD is very unlikely) it's still not as efficient as just spent all that time doing m+

many mythic raiding guild had died due to this

you are too dense to convince, I give up

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Bigger gap.

LFR 900
Normal 950
Heroic 1000
Mythic 90000000000

That way you can one shot all heroic bosses after just one or two pieces of mythic gear. You deserve it. After all you are special as fuck.

[Aaronioslo]

Bigger gap.

LFR 900
Normal 950
Heroic 1000
Mythic 90000000000

That way you can one shot all heroic bosses after just one or two pieces of mythic gear. You deserve it. After all you are special as fuck.

look, king of hyperbole who contributes nothing to discussion and ironically only does it to feel special

[Zan15]

someone posted it here



they do exist and more and more people are leaving mythic raiding to do m+

if you full clear mythic ToS and gets two 940 each week( which is a big if, as most guilds can't full clear mythic plus getting 2 pieces of gear from one CD is very unlikely) it's still not as efficient as just spent all that time doing m+

many mythic raiding guild had died due to this

you are too dense to convince, I give up

Lol 1600..1700..mythic plus runs...yup those people should be used as typical examples.

Everyone can get 955 hear you just need to commit 70 hours a week

[Lahis]

The reason is because Titanforging is actually good for the game the way it is. You should be able to do any piece of content and have the chance of being rewarded with something higher. It gives you incentives to do other parts of the content rather than one area. If you know it's going to cap out at X lvl then you'll get to a point where you aren't wanting to do it because it gives you nothing. Titanforging helps give parts of the game an incentive to still be active. If World Quests has a cap then after you are X ilvl you wouldn't even consider doing them. That in turns starts to make WQ useless and then that part of the content is gone. This continue to applies to other areas of the game.

Strange. I feel no motivation to do anything below Heroic ToS even with Titanforging (and even that only because it takes an hour to do). Doesn't seem to be working too well.

[Aaronioslo]

Lol 1600..1700..mythic plus runs...yup those people should be used as typical examples.

Everyone can get 955 hear you just need to commit 70 hours a week

can you not read? 3-5 high 14+ per day does not require 10 hours.

[Kaesebrezen]

That's because the target audience for those two types of gearing are mostly the same!
Show me ONE character who only does M+ and does not have tier bonuses.

You have to do both. That's the problem!

You do not have to do both to clear m+. Is it the optimal way? Yes. It is required? No. You can just as well farm mythic (and one hour heroic per week) for 2-3 more weeks to get your itemlvl up.

At the same time, if your guild enforces you to farm m+, you'd question why your guild simply doesn't go with split farming? It's far more efficient in getting useful gear (especially relics/trinkets - which are still the most powerful gear slots). If your guild enforces you to splitfarm and spam m+ for itemlvl, then there are other issues.

if you full clear mythic ToS and gets two 940 each week( which is a big if, as most guilds can't full clear mythic, getting 2 pieces of gear from one CD is very unlikely) it's still not as efficient as just spent all that time doing m+

many mythic raiding guild had died due to this

you are too dense to convince, I give up

Correlation != causation.

What is more likely?

That with shitty mechanics and tuned bosses such as Mistress, Avatar and Kil'Jaeden - people choose to quit instead banging their head against the wall because you do not have easymode 4 rogues to soak on Avatar?

or

That people quit raiding because they can get near mythic quality itemlvl from m+(which due to the lack of set bonuses and raid trinkets doesn't allow them to compete in the top tier m+ brackets - as those still give a very hefty difference in power level)

Obviously, for streamers/youtubers and their most loyal forum fanbase, the sole evil and contributor to mythic raiding dying (which can not even be proven due to how atrocious tomb bosses are and kills just not happening) is titanforging...

Yeah, arguing against a wall...

And looking at the few people linked: They spend an EXCESSIVE amount of time in m+. Far more then your average mythic+ raider spends raiding.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

look, king of hyperbole who contributes nothing to discussion and ironically only does it to feel special

Kind of the exact thing by replying to it, contibutes nothing to the discussion, but ironically only does it to feel special.

[Deleted]

Of course the ideal situation is to remove Titanforging, but if Titanforging is here to stay, then I think it might be time to revisit the 15 ilvl gap between each tier. 15 item levels is far too small of a gap in a world where non-Mythic gear can proc upwards of 50 item levels. Most of the loot is disenchanted when a mythic boss is killed for the first time which is not fun for anyone. Here are the gaps I propose:

LFR --> N = +15 ilvls
N --> H = +20 ilvls
H --> M = +25 ilvls

For example, ToS would drop 900N/920H/945M gear with the 955 TF cap.

Any thoughts about this?

No ... this will translate into extremes. Either Normal stats will hardly make any difference, or the Mythic stats will get ridiculous.

[Aaronioslo]

You do not have to do both to clear m+. Is it the optimal way? Yes. It is required? No. You can just as well farm mythic (and one hour heroic per week) for 2-3 more weeks to get your itemlvl up.

At the same time, if your guild enforces you to farm m+, you'd question why your guild simply doesn't go with split farming? It's far more efficient in getting useful gear (especially relics/trinkets - which are still the most powerful gear slots). If your guild enforces you to splitfarm and spam m+ for itemlvl, then there are other issues.

Correlation != causation.

What is more likely?

That with shitty mechanics and tuned bosses such as Mistress, Avatar and Kil'Jaeden - people choose to quit instead banging their head against the wall because you do not have easymode 4 rogues to soak on Avatar?

or

That people quit raiding because they can get near mythic quality itemlvl from m+(which due to the lack of set bonuses and raid trinkets doesn't allow them to compete in the top tier m+ brackets - as those still give a very hefty difference in power level)

Obviously, for streamers/youtubers and their most loyal forum fanbase, the sole evil and contributor to mythic raiding dying (which can not even be proven due to how atrocious tomb bosses are and kills just not happening) is titanforging...

Yeah, arguing against a wall...

And looking at the few people linked: They spend an EXCESSIVE amount of time in m+. Far more then your average mythic+ raider spends raiding.

how is 3-5 14+ per day FAR MORE than 3 days of 4 hours raiding plus m+ on the off days? and who's this streamer you keep bringing up? is the hate toward such streamer clouding your judgement?

and it didn't start happening with ToS, just the bad design of ToS had made the situation worse

[Kaesebrezen]

and it didn't start happening with ToS, just the bad design of ToS had made the situation worse

Then i'll ask you one last question: Why do you think that Titanforging is the primary cause people stop raiding mythic?

If you go back to nighthold, people didn't cry about titanforging. "back then" the issue was farming Artifact knowledge to get your 20/20 0.5% damage trait per tier. By your logic, people back then would've quit in rows, with the primary reason being the absolute requirement to get the 20/20 trait as soon as possible.

A weaker concordance and artifact changes largely negated that requirement for mythic raiding.

Now suddenly the issue is titanforging (which suprisingly didn't matter when people spammed even more m+ for AK)? And people quit raiding in droves because of it?

No. People are sick of the boss design and tuning. That's why the quit. Titanforging is an enhancing factor, but not the primary cause.

Additionally you are in the usual mid to late addon cycle, were people just no longer get entertained by Worldquests, No flying Argus, and the still the same Mythic+ dungeons. So they might quit the game regardless of raiding or not.

[Sencha]

Agree with OP. Mythic raid gear should really be mythic.

[Arainie]

Why is capping titanforging the only viable solution to that problem?

As you write it, the issue seems to be the "extremely worthwhile for gaining power"-part.

Is it really that extreme though? Some guy here previously wrote that their weekly heroic clear nets them ~2 930+ titanforged items. Let's say those are 940. Over the course of 6 weeks, on a 20 person raid, that's an upgrade of 0.9 itemlvls over the, on random slots (e.g. it could be on bracers/rings, or it could be only on relics), assuming your raid setup is 100% the same on every boss kill. Further, the more mythic bosses you kill, the less of an power upgrade farming heroic for titanforges become, as you get to a base itemlvl of 930.

Which brins us to - splitfarming:
There are two factors: Splitfarming and Titanforging.

As shown above, with a single heroic clear each week, the power gain is marginal at best.
If on the other hand you splitfarm HC with 4-5 groups in a single week, fuelling all the loot to 4-5 people in each group, then you increase that marginal gain of one single heroic clear for titanforge by quite that much.

First fix split-farming, then talk about that single 1 hour heroic clear most guilds do once per week on their mains for a marginal titanforging gain they perceive to "extreme".

The problem we have here though is that Blizzard has no fix to split farming that doesn't do more harm than good. The only solution we have even come up with as a community is to cap Titanforging if no other genious idea has eluded me.

"We" generally don't care what loot others get even though I think it's a bit stupid you can hit 935-940 without stepping foot in a raid or high M+ nowdays. What we're truly against is titanforges from lower difficulties or old raids to the absolute cap, effectively making those raids a target for upgrades even if you claim that the chances are slim. For example, the first raid mission (heroic quality item) in Nighthold awarded me a 925 life relic with a good trait. The base ilvl of that relic was 890, I looted it in January and I've been raiding Mythic non-stop. I still use the relic to this day, which to me feels like a massive flaw in game design. I won the lottery on a lower difficulty and didn't even have to look at life relics again for over 6 months!

Here you go, a pictoral description of the flaw that is uncapped Titanforging. I'll throw in a bonus for the sake of it, looted about two weeks in to ToS. Most likely won't replace them before Antoras even though Mistress M is on farm now.

If you go back to nighthold, people didn't cry about titanforging..

We thought Titanforging was just as bad in NH, our complaints were just overshadowed by the massive AP farm whine (of which many of us didn't even have a problem with).

[omeomorfismo]

it's not that RNG, if you do a lot of content frequently TF will more or less average out on the raids ilvl

to the individual sure, it's super RNG, to a whole guild, not that much(it's still rng, but nothing significant)




it's not missing proof, they didnt kill it, there's your proof

yeah you can do math, and by that logic if you wipe on 1% on a boss you should get the kill cos you couldve killed him if you got a bit more lucky.

im not disputing they may have been able to kill it, but they didnt, and noone else did, no matter how much math you do nothing will dispute that.

a million things can go wrong in those last 5% (I should know, i had sub 1% wipes on both avatar and KJ before killing them)

so all bosses are math impossible before being killed? lulz, interesting "theory". at least you know what is a proof?
and btw, noone kill pre-hp nerf, sure, but the reason wasnt "math impossiribru" how you suggested, neither method and exorsus mentioned that nerf as even noticeable, the important nerf was the stacking buff one (and still nobody said that was needed).

[Meiffert]

The game didn't work in the past and if it did we wouldn't be here. You had to do lower content to get items for higher content (such as trinkets, set pieces etc).

I don't think I follow you here.
In the past, you didn't need to do "lower" content, because the item level would make those item irrelevant after a while.
It is now that you "have to" farm Emerald Nightmare for relics and pray, or Nighthold for tier etc.

Once you got what you needed from a raid it was just boring farm for everyone else and you had nothing to look forward too. Now you have something to look forward too and any piece of loot that drops you can see if it's an upgrade.

Do you think that anyone actually enjoys split running trivial Nighthold in 950 item level for the small chance of t19 or Convergence finally titanforging?
I'm not sure why incentifying players to run 6 splits every week and burning out should be seen as a good thing.

I understand your concern about running out of content.
But here is what I consider a better idea: a tier last 6-8 months. Make it so that farming the raid once every week for that duration lets you just about complete full BiS set of gear. Shortly after you achieve it (or maybe even while still missing a couple pieces) a new tier comes out.

I think this used to work just fine. Then they increased the drop rate over time (from 2 pieces in 40m raid all the way back to 4 pieces + tier in 20m today). Add in parallel sources of said gear (bonus coins, mission quests) and some tier lasting longer (mostly last tiers, like Dragon Soul, SoO, HFC) and you might finish gearing up a bit too soon.

That's where warforging comes in. In SoO, the gear could warforge for extra item level. I think the chance was 20 %, which effectively increased the required timeframe to obtain full BiS about 5 times. As a result, I never did, despite clearing every week. Warlords released with me still missing 2 pieces and I thought it worked just fine.

At the same time, warforged items were better, but limited to the point where I didn't feel forced to do lower difficulties, which is no fun for me.

Blizzard says that they like the idea that I can get an upgrade from LFR, so I don't feel bad for running it. While that is true, I don't understand why I should be "bribed" to do LFR when I'm 9/9m. What does that achieve? I am bored and the other players in the group are bored as well, because I can solo heal everything and they are useless.
Maybe I'm just missing something obvious here...


I guess my point is: MoP warforging/titanforging was strong enough to deal with the issues you talk about (running out of possible upgrades too soon in a tier), while still not too strong to cause burn out.


The other big problem with TF now is that by split-running heroic (you can do a lot of clears even in a single week) and spamming m+10 (which you can repeat with no lockout), it is too easy to get to over 930 item level before even stepping into mythic.
Which means that mythic has few upgrades outside of TF itself. You are correct, of course, that the chance of getting 950 is much higher in mythic than it is in other content, but it is still too low to allow character power progression.

This is an issue in my opinion, because in the past, you would wipe on a boss for an evening or two, then after the reset you would reclear the instance and get a noticeable power increase, allowing you to kill 1 or 2 bosses more than you did week before.
Nowadays you get nothing, or maybe a couple TF pieces, but the overall effect is insignificant, because you already had 935 before starting mythic. More and more guild opt to not even clear and just extend lock-out despite only killing the previous boss once, because nobody needs upgrades from it.
More and more guilds are also hitting walls that aren't naturally nerfed through gear and Blizzard has to introduce 7.2 new traits or 7.3 Crubicle to artificially boost players after a couple months, because there is no natural progression in the game.


You are correct that I'm not a designer and it is more than possible that I'm missing parts of the bigger picture.
It is also possible that I'm only looking at the design decision from the PoV of a mythic raider and players in normal, pvp players, collectors, achievement hunters and role players might disagree with me. I admit that my view a bit narrow, but at the same time I think that despite being the minority, mythic raiders are by far the most affected by balance and "obtaining-of-power" design.

From my narrow PoV, some sort of cap (such as 20 % for WF 5 ilvl and 5 % for TF 10 ilvl, no chance on higher) would be preferable.

If Mythic guilds feel they need to run previous raids to stay competitive then that is an issue they've created. Nowhere does it say that they need to run Nighthold Mythic in order to stay competitive or anything like that. They have the current tier and can put it on farm. Run it so you get your titanforges a lot easier.

Sure old content has some decent trinkets you could still, but this has always been the case and there's nothing wrong with it. In fact that encourages those individuals to try and create their own raids which gets more of the community involved.

No, it wasn't always the case.
It was occasionally the case that you would use a 1 tier old trinket, but you already had it, because you farmed it while it was current.
After more than 1 tier, the item level difference made it irrelevant, so you didn't have to go back on new characters.

Now I farmed my 925 Convergence, but as soon as Tomb opened, the cap was retrospectively increased to 955 and it's BiS again. Why shouldn't it? The effect is strong and it won't be pushed into irrelevance by item level, because the max item level is being increased.
Next tier it will be increased to 985 and be BiS again. That's the biggest part of the issue.

[tratra]

The gap on gear seems pretty low tbh yes.