Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[Mightytasty]

First two points are objectively incorrect, there is a very clear bis to gun for and there are certainly items you very well know.

The other point is quite literally how WoW is working for many many years all the way from WoTLK and even before really. Why is new raid tier obsoleting previous tier suddenly is a such a problem now? Where have you been back in 2008 with this?

1) Gear earned in the previous raid used to help you progress into the next raid more than it does currently. Particularly with weapons, tier sets, legendarys, and trinkets. Nowadays your mythic raid gear is replaced by the next Patch’s Warfronts and LFR loot.

2) Not only is gear reset harder, but far more frequently. There is no reason for a gear reset BEFORE a new raid comes out.

[Akibaboy]

I prefer the ease of gearing and the system we have no in comparison to what he's proposing. This system allows for them to tool the game around it being 80% skill, and 20% gear. In the past, those numbers were flipped - raid bosses and strats were very simplistic and didn't require much skill, but hard checks of required resistances and dps to pass checks before the healers went oom. It was all tied to your gear, not how fast I spammed Shadowbolt and nothing else.

Even if you have to upgrade every cycle with the "gear treadmill", it's simple and straightforward and you get the tools you need to do the content you want to engage on a fairly quick basis. If a player can't do content with the appropriate gear, that means they need to get better, or wait for those more pristine items. Being good at the game means you can meet the milestones you want faster. The argument that someone needs to farm up the absolute best items in order to progress is wrong.

If we go back to infrequent, powerful drops then the game needs to validate their existence by creating content that demands said drops. This would effectively act as a time gate, as no matter how good you were you still just gotta wait for that gear to drop. Even in Preach's own points, the idea of slow, better items is in practice how titanforging works - you get frequent regular items, and then infrequent pristine items. Basically he's asking for content to be time and gear gated again. No thanks.

[Mightytasty]

Idk about you but I know most casters will definitely be able to name Sliver from opulence

Can definitely still have fun pushing DPS rankings on farm for fun, take this from a Rank 1 healer DPS.



This is clearly just a meme

Good point but those items are more few and far between.

[Boo Radley]

Preach is that you?

Lol no but I wish I was Preach, and so does every pathetic armchair quarterback on this forum. Imagine having people actually care what you think? Just the concept makes people on here angry.

- - - Updated - - -

Deeply saddened by the number of blind Preach haters and BfA supporters in this thread. I guess it makes sense because all of the people who agree with his philosophy on WoW have already quit the game and no longer browse this site.

How anyone can argue that player progression isn’t completely broken at max level is beyond me. Chasing BiS has been replaced by grinding Azerite. As many many others have said, I can’t name a single piece of gear my character is currently wearing and it’s a HUGE problem. He brings up a really good point: why would a heroic raider continue to farm Dazaralor after killing Jaina once? His heroic gear will be replaced in 3 months by normal mode Azshara gear.

Another great point which Preach didn’t address in this video (but has in the past): Titanforging also killed the DPS rankings scene which used to be a fun part of farm.

Its good to see there's another reasonable person on here. Thank you for supporting the good cause.

And yeah, he really has put forth some good ideas. Its a shame these people are too biased to ever take them into account.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Pathetic really - why attack the argument when you can attack the person.

why attack the argument when you can attack the person.

attack the person.

https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/wowpedia/thumb/4/42/Ion_Hazzikostas.jpg/300px-Ion_Hazzikostas.jpg?version=ade7b69ac2340b90d96b82c8e64680aa

Yep. It's as easy as that.

Fire the arrogant piece of shit who believes Azerite was a great system. Truly believes it.

Look at the eyes. He's basically dead inside.

It shouldn't be this hard to follow your own advice.

[MoanaLisa]

If you're a casual and you don't want to improve then you're obviously going to hit a ceiling. But no - Blizzard has deemed it so that a mouth breathing moron can punt 15 squirrels in a WQ and attain the best gear in the game.

That's exaggerated greatly. No one is doing WQ's and getting showered by Mythic Raid gear.

I dislike very much the "play the patch" meta they have now but the argument seems to be that "the not best gear in the game" is still too good. I'm ambivalent about that. I've already said my piece about treadmill progression. It's bad if people think of it as a treadmill. That's what they've chosen for progression so that's on them. I've been going on for years here about progression as defined in the clothes you're wearing. It's a bad system and they ought to put their brains together and figure out another after 14 years.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Good one Pebrocks. Keep fabricating bullshit.

The thread you just linked we were specifically talking about ways to fix WoW. My argument was that the current design team are horrible at their jobs - which they are. Specifically a change in leadership would do the game well. So - fire Ion.


But yeah - good job derailing the thread. I thought trolling was bannable?

Funny how you ignored the part where you insulted Ion, aka "attacking the person".

arrogant piece of shit

[Lurker1]

Blizzard should just remove garbage unnecessary RNG and titanforge/warforge BS.

Forges ftw!

[Yunaqt]

If you're a casual and you don't want to improve then you're obviously going to hit a ceiling. But no - Blizzard has deemed it so that a mouth breathing moron can punt 15 squirrels in a WQ and attain the best gear in the game.

I would be genuinely interested to see the WQ god rocking gear better than mythic raiders.

Even still wouldn't be the best gear in the game even if they had the best luck imaginable TFing to infinity & beyond.
Best Azerite in most cases comes from raids as the raid specific traits are bis for many by a solid margin. For those that don't care for them the Azerite in raids is really well itemized, yeah casuals can get the random rolled Azerite from a vendor but it's going to take them a pretty damn long time to save up 1600 residuum getting the 36(?) they get for DEing 385 gear when they eventually get a emissary cache. Even then they need to gamble for traits. Can also get it in the weekly pvp cache as well but that's 2100+ iirc. Not exactly "mouth breather" territory.

Weapons being the other big one which Mythic is the only place you can get a base 415 weapon and roll to 425, since even M+10 weekly caches cap at 420.
I guess they have a possibility on a 2.5 week(?) cycle to try roll a weapon from the warfront, if that double forges they can get a 410 weapon. Better off just pugging the first boss of M BoD and rolling coins there though.

[Mister Cheese]

There are smarter people than him. You should not listen any idiot that is on you tube. His name fits his story - Preaching nostalgic bullshit that no one wants except nostalgic players. Luckily, not everyone is nostalgic.

You don't need a genius to figure out this game's gearing is fundamentally broken.

[Lurker1]

Good video. Preach is right.

Nope he is dead wrong.

[Mightytasty]

This thread in a nutshell ^

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Funny how you ignored the fact that it is relevant to the argument.

Calling someone a "arrogant piece of shit" is somehow relevant to that argument? How do you manage to defend yourself insulting someone and call other people pathetic for doing exactly what you do?

You just attack his person.

Show me where I once did this.

[Mightytasty]

You don't need a genius to figure out this game's gearing is fundamentally broken.

Like Preach or not, I think we can all agree on this.

[Mister Cheese]

Nope he is dead wrong.

Explain how he's wrong rather than just saying "HE'S WRONG!!!"

[kubaje]

Quit a week before BoD opened. Had 385 ilvl. Came back a week ago and won't even get invited to normal BoD pugs.

Exactly this is what's broken. Why put any effort in getting the highest ilvl possible when it's absolutely worthless and trash when the new raid is released? That is the definition of wasting time.

[niil945]

This discussion boils down to two sides. One side agrees with Preach. This is the side that cares about the gear other people are wearing and are upset if the relative difference is reduced like it has been in Legion and BfA. This is the extremely vocal minority of hyper active players and they often say things like, "they're shit!" when talking about the skill of others like Preach did in this video. Then there's the other side. That side is happy to have progression even if it's time gated by warfront turnovers and emissary quests. They don't care how self important mythic raiders think they are. To them gearing is a means to an end not a measurement of the size of one's genitals. They never deluded themselves to believe that the progression treadmill was ever anything more than what it is and they play because they enjoy it and not to derive a sense of self worth from video game accomplishments. I laugh at lot at the former group, most because when I was younger I was actually in that group and believed a lot of similar things.

[Mister Cheese]

I'm gonna be honest the first 15 minutes of this video is still relevant today nearly 8 years later and even more so. The state of this game has worsened and even raiding has become less and less relevant because lower difficulties can end up making it so you can just get 425 gear. Why bother doing mythic when you can just spam heroic to get 410 or 415 titanforges. Or just do mythic 10s which can be easier or harder depending on the week or your group comp. Raids become easier and easier over time riduclously fast blizzard doesn't even have to nerf content anymore despite doing it anyway. It's become a joke.

[niil945]

1) Gear earned in the previous raid used to help you progress into the next raid more than it does currently. Particularly with weapons, tier sets, legendarys, and trinkets. Nowadays your mythic raid gear is replaced by the next Patch’s Warfronts and LFR loot.

Except LFR loot is 15 ilvl behind Mythic loot of the previous tier.

Uldir LFR = 340, Normal = 355, Heroic = 370, Mythic = 385
BoD LFR = 370, Normal = 385, Heroic = 400, Mythic = 415

Math is hard.

Warfront gear is once every ~3 weeks for a single guaranteed random slot ilvl 400 piece. And while that's higher ilvl than Mythic of the previous tier, it's not frequent enough to meaningfully impact gear for someone who progresses in Mythic raiding. It will for someone who only does normal. But you're not talking about normal raiders. You're talking about mythic raiders. Which means your post is so hyperbolic it's actually dishonest.

[MoanaLisa]

I exaggerate for the sake of proving a point. The point is that it should not be possible for someone who ONLY does WQs to ever attain that level of gear. Unless he/she/it is willing to put the work in to get it - by improving.

That sort of exaggeration doesn't prove anything. Lies don't reveal truths. As for the latter part I don't have much of an opinion about it. I've advocated in the past for a sort of badge system that allows people to collect whatever gear they like, just at a much slower pace. That's putting in the work as well if it's judged correctly.

WoW as some self-improvement project is a ridiculous idea at this point. People keep flogging it but it's pointless. Some people log on to raid and push mythic+ or PVP. Most of the rest are looking for a place to pass some time or have fun with a friend or two. It's not where the audience is and it's unlikely to ever be that way again. You can perhaps get away with stuff like that in a new game but a game that's been around for 14 years is going to have different incentives to keep people around. A very good incentive is the very rare random drop of something nice from some piece of casual content. People go on about it like a nice drop every month or so is some game-breaking deal. It isn't and most people are 1) willing to agree that it isn't and 2) don't really give a shit what other people are getting from the game.