Originally Posted by
Oxyra
Hey look, a thread full of people who think they're Cutting Edge raiders, telling other people to get good.
No one is asking for nerfs, they're asking for continuous progression in player power. Literally every expansion (including Legion to an extent since your Artifact was worth way more than the shitty neck and you usually didn't cap it till towards the end of a tier) had a growing player power level every week.
Now, we don't have that.
Whether it's applying a nerf to the raid of 1% every week / 5% every month, whatever (shit idea imo, it works in theory but it's kinda lazy and clunky), or just simply giving players a way to increase their character's strength each week.
Wrath we had the basic gearing mechanism, and bosses dropping 3 pieces of loot split 25 ways meant you were continuously gearing up, plus the ICC buff increasing by 5% a month at the end of expac.
Cata, similar thing. Basic gearing mechanism was the nerfing factor, people killed bosses, got more gear, got stronger, on the end of expac raid they had a similar ICC buff. I will mention that bosses in Cata did drop substantially more gear per player so it did make capping power a lot quicker. Interestingly, this happened to be the expansion where lots of players started burning out because there was no way they could increase their characters power.
MoP was done quite well imo, you had the minor RNG factors of Titanforging gear brought in during ToT and the subsequent Warforging in Siege, but since this was the only form of RNG and was a static +6 iLvl to an item, you could still achieve BiS, you also had a high chance of getting upgrades each week, and with Valor Points and upgrading your items 0/2 or 0/4 with a cap on Valor Points, meant every week even if you didn't get a new drop, you could gain power.
Also in the prior three you had tier bonuses which were another slow nerf on top of general gearing. With the introduction of LFR and then Flex (later renamed to Normal), people could acquire the large jump of power from tier bonuses sooner by running multiple difficulties. This was somewhat softened in WoD as LFR had its' own separate tier sets but even so, previously you could be a couple months into a tier before you were finishing off everyone's 4 set, so not only were people getting continuous little jumps in gear, a few people each week received a big boost in their tier bonus.
As more and more loot dropped in Cata -> MoP -> WoD -> Legion, it became expected that you'd get your full tier set in the first week or so.
WoD, similar thing to MoP but increased RNG with the removal of sockets from gear as a guaranteed thing, socket bonuses etc. We got the same system of a static +6 iLvl when an item Warforged, but there was the added RNG of sockets/tertiary stat. With the increased loot drop rates as well, RNG began to become the main source of a raid finding upgrades towards the middle of a tier. Casual reminder that WoD was not remembered fondly.
Legion, sure you got all your gear quickly, but with relics on your weapons, Mythic + Chest having a decent probability of giving you something actually equivalent to Mythic, Warforging, Titanforging, and Artifact Power (on an Artifact that wasn't a dogshit neck), there was a sense of people getting stronger every week. But since most of it boiled down to RNG factors and AP was an increasing grind that required playtime outside of raids as well, player progression slowed and you needed to play more to maintain your progression.
See those Valor Points etc. in Wrath/Cata/MoP? You could acquire 90% of your weekly cap by clearing the raid on the difficulty below what you were progging on, where you were also probably still getting upgrades from. So you could just raid log. Or in some cases you'd have to log on for one dungeon run a day or something to get bonuses, a whole 10 minutes of your time to smash through a Random Heroic for some badges, etc.
WoD, raid logging was still possible, hell I don't recall anything that required you to be online outside of the raid day.
Legion, you had to make sure you kept up with that AP grind and did your M+ cache, it still wasn't too bad.
Another major factor is that every expansion prior to Legion had fairly interesting classes. WoD did reduce it a lot and I'd consider MoP the pinnacle of class design personally.
Legion with Legendaries + a full artifact did compensate for your barebones class, it was a bit shitty earlier on.
BfA. You have to basically be doing your emissaries every day, do your weekly cache, clearing Heroic hoping for Titanforges, then you cap your AP, there's no tier bonuses, you reach a cap of Azerite pieces and there's no way to get stronger pieces there, you can basically cap your player progression at the start of each tier of content, besides AP and Mythic+ which is your only source of progression beyond that. That's a huge fucking grind. Azerite bonuses are a heaping stack of shit, and you're not even getting a new fancy tier bonus to play with, you're just using the same Azerite bonuses every tier on slightly higher pieces. Oh and classes aree boring as fuck two button shits.
The ONLY positive I see is that with corruption effects + the growing (apparently infinite) corruption reduction you get from your cape may mean there's a sense of growing power, given that T3 corruption bonuses seem to be worth upwards of 150+ secondary stat each (compared to 50 from a gem) and you can equip more with less penalties each week. Sure. Maybe. It's a wait and see there.
Main point, the game needs endless progression for your character in some way. Saying "GIT GUD" doesn't count. I've been top 20 US for many years, I don't anymore. I'm not too fussed about raiding seriously these days, when I get into it, I can still perform at a really high level. Not everyone is capable of this. Not everyone wants to push themselves to the absolute peak, not everyone even has a peak that high.
It's a game.
It's meant to be fun.