Originally Posted by
potis
Not at the start of each major patch whenever they do something like this.
Any semi-decent player will farm their neck up to whatever its needed for the next tier.
In Legion it was to unlock the 10%/10% for Nighthold, then it was the secondary wheel that had OP traits later in the game, etc.
At the start of BFA it was exactly the same, there were many guilds facing the problem of a few people had unlocked all their traits with the defensive included and they would take up to 30% less damage during some big AoE, where someone else would die, because they didnt have Resounding Protection x2 for 25k more shield, and a Gemhide for 10% reduction from AoE after the first hit through the avoidance it provides or many similar things per class.
I have seen it with other guilds, saw it in my own casual friends guild, as example a 75 energy, Tantrum from HC Grong early on aka 4 months ago+, would take the 2-3 players that had unlocked level 38 neck (Therefor the defensive traits) to 20-30%, while it would kill off the combination of lesser geared players + no defensive traits.
That is huge for any guild and not minimal at all.
Obviously it doesnt require insane farming, as i said before, 1h every 3 days and you should be up to par, but thats with combination of actually doing your islands, and generally weekly things and not slacking.
These are things, raid loggers dont wanna do.
Raid loggers wanna gear up for a few weeks by doing whatever is necessary and then raid log, pay some chinese for gold or do some herbing/alchemy main and voila.
And they had that from Vanilla to Legion, and then Blizzard told them "Yeah, you have to grind this thing to be able to keep up".
It all comes down to how you view the game,i have no reason to farm AP, i do it because i dont enjoy my character being considered in the "cesspool".
Just because i gave up "serious raiding" in the top 100 scene at early Cata, doesnt mean my mentality as a player has change, i will do the maximum in the minimal time required to keep my character competitive without exceeding my limits.