I'm an sure Blizzard views the -forging system in Legion as one of the expansion's big wins. That part where they talked up increased late-expansion player engagement at the last earnings call? You (and they) can thank -forging for that. The system prevents early gear capping while encouraging social catch-up gearing.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
the problem with titanforging is that it makes running old content necessary hoping for a high titanforged trinket, tier gear etc. I know they are removing tier next expac, thank fuck, but you shouldn't have to run heroic of the previous tier hoping for a high titanforge.
I think they should be able to go up to the next difficulty base ilvls. So normal max TF would be heroics base ilvls. Heroics highest TF would be mythics base ilvl etc
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I'd be happy with a cap that stopped at whatever the max for that item's tier was. I don't think you should still be farming first tier items for titanforges when the expansion's final tier is out. Of course, there will be outliers such as fury is seeing this expansion with the NH trinket where the stats don't matter as its the reduced cooldown that makes it BiS. I'd just rather it not be another arcanocrystal situation.
WF and TF need to go away all together. Nothing is worse than seeing a lucky lfr roll compete with an item that drops on the hardest difficulty. It serves no purpose other than to inflate ilvl. If someone wants to advance ilvl they should step up the difficulty.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I preferred this system too. If WF/TF is a binary system, it still adds longevity and excitement to gearing without this absolutely ridiculous RNG we have now.
Alternatively, allow items to WF/TF up to the next difficulty (or +15, whatever makes more sense) but also add a way to deterministically upgrade your gear to that +15 cap with a currency or guaranteed item drop (think Pantheon's Blessing off of Argus).
Titanforging should be removed but it makes the casual playerbase happy and theyre 90% of players so its not going anywhere. I do believe TF should be limited to its difficulty though. If you want mythic quality gear you should raid mythic, some mythic bosses require leagues more skill and patience to kill than even the hardest heroic boss. Welfare loot is bad for the game
Remove WF/TF as it's the single worst feature they have ever implemented in this game.
Here is why I feel Titan Forging is bad and needs a drastic change. Every week I clear heroic. Yet my bracers are a titan forged drop from LFR at ilvl 960. For months now bracers after bracers have dropped and none of them have WF/TF to surpass LFR loot. You know how much that bugs me? I am doing more difficult content and I need RNG on top of RNG with some luck to actually get an upgrade.
Yes I know the ilvl 960 bracers from LFR are viable. This is more about showing how out of control the swing can be. NO ONE! I repeat no one should be getting heroic or mythic raid quality loot from LFR. Up to Normal Raid loot is acceptable in my opinion.
I wonder whether this is because you look at gear as a goal, not as a tool.
This discussion is reminiscent of certain streamer's video about people chasing better gear to presumably become better players, resulting in a never-ending treadmill.
I tend to preoccupy myself with thoughts about how I can improve my gameplay instead. I am chasing my skill cap instead of chasing more gear. As long as I am capable of becoming a better player, this game is fun and meaningful to me. And I think that any time investment in reaching a skill cap is much more valuable than time investment in inefficient ways to farm gear (e.g. farming titanforges out of M+ or HC raids).
Is this game too simple? Is it the case that many people are already at their skill cap, and have a reason to dwell over the (non)-availability of all the tools to min-max their performance? Do you go with the assumption that you and most other players are already skill-capped and the gear drop randomness is what unfairly makes you perform worse than other players?
Uhh... where's the "cut the entire damn thing" option?
Doesn't bother me what others have. I'm happy for people who gets lucky, I don't cry and scream about it everywhere. I don't feel like I deserve anything over anybody else just because I kill a mythic boss.
People should really get over what others have and stop being self-centered pricks IMO. When an alt I don't play much receives a 985 from a M+11 cache, it happens, shit happens, you can't have everything you want.
If a friend or even random pug get a 950 CoF from Nighthold Normal, great for them. I think it's awesome. Doesn't actually hurt you, don't be so negative! It's incredibly rare.
With that said, I'd much prefer a progressive system (like Valor upgrades) over this, but hey-- we can't get everything we want.
No cap is fine. Someone did an analysis of TF drops across a few months, and found it was somewhere in the 25-35% range, you can probably find the post on the forums somewhere. It we take the higher end and assume it is 1/3, I'll show you real quick why no cap is fine.
In order for a Heroic piece (945) to titanforge to mythic (960), it requires (1/3)^3, or 1/27, or roughly 4% of the time. You'll need ~27 pieces of gear to drop to get one mythic level item, on average. With 11 bosses dropping 4 items each, that's 1.6 mythic items per week, on heroic.
If you're doing Mythic ToS, that drops 940 gear. That's a 1/81 chance to get a 960 item. With 9*4 = 36 pieces of gear dropping per week, you'll more or less get a piece every second week.
Once you're into <935, it becomes a joke quickly. At 935, it's a 1/243 chance. 930 it's 1/729.
The odds of going from LFR (915) to Mythic (960) is 1/19683.
That means, on average, if you do LFR every week, get an item from every single boss and bonus roll, it will only take you around 27 years to get a single piece of mythic gear.
Exponential growth is really hard for humans to intuitively grasp, which is why the idea of WQ drops Titanforging to Mythic seems bad, but in reality is fine. Capping it at +15 really has no impact on the system. A +20, at a 1/81 chance, and with the average raid dropping 40~ pieces of gear, it'd take a team clearing every week for 2 weeks to see a single piece of current mythic gear. It's just far more efficient to wait for titanforges from the current mythic content. In the same time frame, they'd get 80 pieces of mythic gear (plus misc. TFs) just from doing current content. 2 weeks for 1 piece of gear, among 20 people.
All of this becomes even more ridiculous the lower the base titanforge chance is. As an example, with a 25% chance to titanforge, getting a +20 goes from a 1/81 chance, to a 1/256. That means you'd need to clear the same raid for 6 weeks for a single drop. In the same time you'd get 240~ drops from current content.
All of the proposed solutions really would have no impact on the system. Running old content fishing for TF is just not feasible; it provides a tiny incentive to do them, but you're kidding yourself if you think you'll ever really see a +30 or +35. You probably don't get enough drops in the whole expansion to see a +35. You'll probably see somewhere around a couple +20s across the expansion.
There's an argument to be had for removing TF all together. But the idea that the TF system allows LFR raiders to become decked out in Mythic gear is just disingenuous. Same goes for heroic raiders getting all mythic gear. Rounding the above calculations on 1/3 up, a raid would be lucky to get 2 pieces of mythic quality a week while running heroics. With 20 people having around 15 slots each, or around 300 altogether, that's 150 weeks, or three years, to gear a heroic team in mythic loot.
Last edited by God Save The King; 2018-05-26 at 07:11 AM.
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