Article: Patch 8.3 PTR - BoA Item Level 410 Catch Up Gear, Brawl Change to Arathi Blizzard

[sch1ntus]

No sense of progression anymore.

Raiding is unrewarding and serves no purpose other than transmog. It would be at a good place if it dropped the best stuff. I'd go as far as to say even LFR should drop better stuff. Benthic was a horrible mistake alongside the weekly PvP/warfront quests.

Gear is oversaturated, especially thanks to M+ and catch up gear. There's just so much of it everywhere. They're very easy things and far too rewarding. Catch up gear needs to be removed entirely or at least saved for the last patch of an expansion. With M+ being slightly worse than raiding gear with its top item level dropping from M+20s instead of 10s. Those changes would help out a lot.

They (re-)use the same patch strategy and have been doing so since WoD... Take a look at the previous expansion patches and see that they actually introduced the "Benthic" concept before... Just - of course - with another name ;-)

[Blackmist]

Can those ilvl 400 items be upgraded? If not, why would anybody get them over Benthic items? Throw a day of pearls at an item, and it's already better than these.

[Thetruth1400]

Not sure why we would need catch-up gear at all. We already have professions, why not let them craft the catchup gear?

Because that would take effort and the news Blizz motto is "As little effort as you feel like putting in, but high rewards no matter what!"

[Stardrift]

Sounds like you're mad that you can't be elitist.

You want to feel special and people to see you as special for having an ilvl you feel "plebs" shouldn't reach. Its not about the challenge to even beat the bosses to you, it is about having some status with your pixels.

Blizzard is listening to player feedback and all people can do is whine they aren't going to be able to lord their gear over people anymore.

With having more options to get equality gear it cuts out a lot of the "gambling" people complain about. Now you don't have to feel like you wasted a whole week when gear doesn't drop for you. Now you can earn gear by "grinding" enough for it. They even got a resource you can collect to buy specific gear from a vendor to eliminate more "RNG" from the gear process.

So:
- Eliminating Titanforging
- Able to earn quality gear through effort not RNG
- Able to buy specific gear from a vendor.

I don't see how this cannot be seen as a huge win for players. It is literally all they have been whining for after all.

No, not elitist. There's just no character progression at all. You can get geared within a week or two after a content patch comes out.

You aren't working for your gear. You sneeze and you get a heroic raid quality piece of gear. It's just too over rewarding, and has made raiding useless. Why raid when you can just do WQs and warfront dailies? It's boring.

Idc about being "elitist". Your whole spiel here is redundant.

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So many dumb people in this thread.

The catch up gear isnt meant you make you be able to smash current content. It's intended for your freshly dinged 120s which are still on super low ilev. Thanks to catch up gear like this you are instantly able to queue for lfr / rhc, farm nazjatar gear without being one shot and you have at least a way to go straight into 8.3 content, with some difficulty still but 400 >>>>>> 280 the moment you ding 120.

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Why dont you quit now? How hard it is to understand that Classic and Retail have entirely different late game philosophies? Catch up gear isnt anything new so you picked a strange time to feel triggered.

I've been upset about it for a long time now. Lots of people have been saying enough of it. It's only been this bad since WoD.

It used to be that catch up gear would be introduced in the last patch of an expansion. Now it's every. Single. Patch.

I'm not looking for classic's itemization and loot philosophy. I'm looking for more rewarding gameplay. Where an upgrade means something.

Because as of right now you just do M+10 once a week, a warfront once a week, a PvP quest once a week, and you're shat on with free heroic gear. It just doesn't feel rewarding.

[Kyphael]

Good for alts.

[Stardrift]

what exactly do you mean?

Read my responses above.

[Ielenia]

There was no catchup gear in TBC.

Did you forget that you could buy raid gear with badges you could get by doing heroic dungeon, and dungeons dailies, back in TBC?

[Big Thanks]

Blizzard gave up on the idea of upgradable catchup gear?
I dont know what to think of it...i kinda liked the idea...but the concept is very difficult to make it work...without people raging:

"World quests giving heroic raid quality gear! WAAAAAA Blizzard i will unsub!"

I guess that was the problem of this concept of upgradable gear.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Farming pearl to get better than 400 ilvl is already considered welfare gear since there's no effort or skill involved. It makes no sense for catch up gear to exist at this point in the game, it should come with 8.3.5 to make your alts catch up to your main once progression is over, so you can get toons "ready" for Shadowlands.

A catch up mechanic that comes at the beginning of a new tier makes no sense because you'll be playing your main, not your alt, gear that up to 460 or some shit, and then you'll "catch up" your alt to 400? 60 ilvl behind is not catching up.

None of this makes any logical or mathematical sense. And that's coming from someone with no bias as I am not playing alts at all and will not use this gear (even if it was 450 ilvl), I'm only baffled at the lack of understanding of their own game.

[Fullmetal89]

Can those ilvl 400 items be upgraded? If not, why would anybody get them over Benthic items? Throw a day of pearls at an item, and it's already better than these.

Yeah I was just thinking the same. It seems entirely pointless. I understand a lot of people where upset with Benthic gear because of the socket procs, but the system itself was fine. Allowing your character to purchase the BoA gear and mail it to alts, as well as giving you the option to upgrade the gear was nice. It made me want to level a few of my alts.

Really, the only 'catch-up' mechanic they should introduce is BoA heart of azeroth traits. Doesn't matter how much gear there is in the game, if you still have to farm all those goddamn traits, nobody will want to play an alt.

[Doffen]

So this sale, it's ending late monday right? Not to the 2nd, but through 2nd of december?

Sorry, I mean the blizzard sale on games etc.

[Niwes]

lol. who needs 400 item level ? you can equip a char in 2-3 days to 400 already, without any effort. hell, you go full 385 instant with nazjatar and get 400 from WQs (the 3 times a week stuff) then. when i look at the item level normal raid drops in 8.3, well then 400 is laughable to call that catchup.

the whole token shit at this item level is pointless. better invest your time in content and quality blizz. laughable.

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Yeah I was just thinking the same. It seems entirely pointless. I understand a lot of people where upset with Benthic gear because of the socket procs, but the system itself was fine. Allowing your character to purchase the BoA gear and mail it to alts, as well as giving you the option to upgrade the gear was nice. It made me want to level a few of my alts.

Really, the only 'catch-up' mechanic they should introduce is BoA heart of azeroth traits. Doesn't matter how much gear there is in the game, if you still have to farm all those goddamn traits, nobody will want to play an alt.

and this a thouuuuusand times.

cant wait for shadowlands when they (hopefully) get rid of all that shit.

[Xentronium]

Did you forget that you could buy raid gear with badges you could get by doing heroic dungeon, and dungeons dailies, back in TBC?

That was the birth of the phrase "welfare epics" wasn't it?

[Niwes]

Blizzard gave up on the idea of upgradable catchup gear?
I dont know what to think of it...i kinda liked the idea...but the concept is very difficult to make it work...without people raging:

"World quests giving heroic raid quality gear! WAAAAAA Blizzard i will unsub!"

I guess that was the problem of this concept of upgradable gear.

i explain you what happened in the typical extreme manner in blizzard hq:

8.1: they want upgradeable and tragetable gear you can work towards in the wild instead raids.
8.2: benthic gear (with waaay too huge bonuses for, lol, the raid. i said lol because: why give nonraid obtainable gear raidbonus ?)
8.2.5: omg, they hate benthic gear because its better than raid gear (surprise)
8.3: no upgradeable gear at all for ppl not raiding.

cheesus christ. that idiots at blizzard are a swinging pendelum, swinging from one extreme to the another. how stupid a company must be, to not get that world gear with raid bonuses is stupid in the first place by design ? and how stupid must a company be, to only learn from that to not do it all. what this company, if not stupid like an ape, SHOULD do: just find your fukin mid ground and simply do it right, by giving ppl tragetable and upgradeable world gear, that have no special shit for some raid and that has just same or -5% power/stats. this works for catch up, for nonraiders and for filling up holes in gear of raiders not lucky on a special slot without working parallel to raid on 27343645 pearls. its simplest shit in the world. they already did it with TBC and MOP conquest points and NOBODY had a problem.

in short: blizzard is stupid like a piece of wood.

[Doffen]

That was the birth of the phrase "welfare epics" wasn't it?

Pretty much. Then came WotLK and gave us some bis items from start :-)

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Adding more junk to the amusement park...
Their desperation for retail players is showing so hard.

They have had stuff like this since mop how exactly is it desperation now?

[Tyris Flare]

No, not elitist. There's just no character progression at all. You can get geared within a week or two after a content patch comes out.

You aren't working for your gear. You sneeze and you get a heroic raid quality piece of gear. It's just too over rewarding, and has made raiding useless. Why raid when you can just do WQs and warfront dailies? It's boring.

Idc about being "elitist". Your whole spiel here is redundant.

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I've been upset about it for a long time now. Lots of people have been saying enough of it. It's only been this bad since WoD.

It used to be that catch up gear would be introduced in the last patch of an expansion. Now it's every. Single. Patch.

I'm not looking for classic's itemization and loot philosophy. I'm looking for more rewarding gameplay. Where an upgrade means something.

Because as of right now you just do M+10 once a week, a warfront once a week, a PvP quest once a week, and you're shat on with free heroic gear. It just doesn't feel rewarding.

This is massively ridden with hyperbole, but even if we accept the premise: there is a shift from character progression to personal progression. E.g. I still try to kill mythic raid bosses and push keys because I want to improve my play and achieve something beyond gear. In classic, this is impossible because the content is trivial and the skill cap is non-existent - it is almost all gear.

These are very different philosophies!

[TickTickTick]

Can those ilvl 400 items be upgraded? If not, why would anybody get them over Benthic items? Throw a day of pearls at an item, and it's already better than these.

Good luck going straight to Nazjatar with your freshly dinged 120 which has around 280 ilev.

[oldgeezer]

Good luck going straight to Nazjatar with your freshly dinged 120 which has around 280 ilev.

Not a problem if you've been collecting the BOA Benthic tokens on your other characters.

Anyway. Looks like I'll continue to work on Benthic gear when 8.3 releases. The Uldum/Vale gear is fine from a transmog collector point of view.

[Temp1on2]

What ilevel will dungeons be dropping?