I think wow needs to remove alternative progression or fundamentally change it.

[Kokolums]

Clear? No. Reasonably do well? First half in two to three weeks give or take seems about right assuming the skill level is there.

So a casual should be able to clear the first half of mythic 2-3 weeks after hitting 120? What is a casual to you? How much time do they put in per week? It would seem to me that just learning the fights might take 2-3 weeks. Are you saying they should just be given full 470 gear so they can learn the fights?

[XDurionX]

No. Progression is the hallmark of RPGs, if anything, WoW needs MORE progression. Otherwise you could just play CoD.

[Saltysquidoon]

I kinda remember your daily FIRST completed heroic dungeon giving Emblem of Frost (ICC times). So it wasn't really grindable. Unless logging in for a daily roflstomp heroic is considered grinding just like corruptionsessencesnecklaceazeritemythicpluses.

I mean this guy's theoretical character is being invited to ICC10 groups in blues so I suppose being able to grind the heroics for purples would be infinite upgrades for him.
You are right though, the first random gave the relevant tier badge reward, subsequent randoms gave a lesser reward but you could sidestep the lockout.

[Tuor]

I kinda remember your daily FIRST completed heroic dungeon giving Emblem of Frost (ICC times). So it wasn't really grindable. Unless logging in for a daily roflstomp heroic is considered grinding just like corruptionsessencesnecklaceazeritemythicpluses.

- daily HC (any)
- weekly Voa (both 10 and 25)
- Weekly raid quest

And most people should be able to farm icc10 in 232 gear (from triumph badges + ICC 5 mans), most people could do it in 5-6 days.
The point here is that everyone remembers ICC, but very few remembers ToC or Ulduar, getting pre-raid gear was a lot more grindy.

On-Topic:
I think there should be mandatory catch up mechanics, like reputations, but they shouldn't take more then 2 weeks, anything longer then that is normally a wish i want that mind blow.

[Nnyco]

Youre deluded, ICC was the peak of GEARSCORE ---- If you were in blues you would never be invited, what planet are you living on.

WOWs Gear Path has been a thing since classic, you had to grind fire gear for MC frost gear for Naxx...
TBC epics meant something, and you needed those epics to even have a chance of completing BT
Wotlk was probably a tad easier, epics were more freely available but the normal (WotLK LFR) still required you to have at least the 10 man mode gear from the prev raid.
id go on but the point is clear if you think what we have now is hardcore you need to have a real hard look around.
Literally welfare Epics EVERYWHERE.

If you want to Do Endgame with the big boys -- git gud

"TBC epics meant something" hahaha, did you even play back then. You literally had arena and badges gear thrown at ya.

[XDurionX]

spoken like someone who neither does play this game seriously nor CoD

Oh please enlighten me how someone plays this game "seriously".

[Elias01]

Grinding stuff was added because of massive outcry of casuals that dont have the skill set to set fooot on mythic or even heroic raiding demanding that they too should get gear.

It have nothing to do with skill. Its just back in Vannila, TBC upto Cata game wasnt so acessible to the point where casuals could finished entire game in couple of days as it is now days. New difficulty is not new content and casual playerbase is not interested in some aritificial difficutly slider and go harder content they alredy did just for sake of doing bigger numbers when those numbers have literaly no meaining to do in first place.

Getting to see Illidan. Stand in front of Lich King or clearing Kara was goal what most casuals had and it took them monhs to reach it thats why game didnt need any sort of stupid grinds and gating. But with garbage like LFR and other covinience nonsense in the game content barely last couple of days than you can quit or redo all that on higher difficuty which isnt exactly anything what casuals care about.

[Osmeric]

The grind is there to condition us to accept it, so that when they game becomes F2P they can make it even worse and charge to skip it.

[Lolites]

It's, let me get a few extra echoes for another expedient rank 3 so i'm going to run lfr on my 475 character.

or you could run +15-20 m+ and get the echoes you need and possibly some gear... alternate progres is just that, ALTERRNATIVE to do when you dont want to do the content that is "best" at your level...

- - - Updated - - -

There wasn't these weird systems we have now where your waiting upwards of a month to get essences.

you can literaly farm m+ whole week to get all the gear and echoes for essences and corruptions and catch up with your main no problem, HOW THE HELL is it different from farming hc dungeons in wrath to get badges for gear?

- - - Updated - - -

I kinda remember your daily FIRST completed heroic dungeon giving Emblem of Frost (ICC times). So it wasn't really grindable. Unless logging in for a daily roflstomp heroic is considered grinding just like corruptionsessencesnecklaceazeritemythicpluses.

first HC a day gave you badges for ICC gear, other gave you badges for TOC gear, so just a tier lower, so yes, you could grind it

[Baine]

I am one of those who only do world content. I complete emissaries on 4 characters. I just genuinely enjoy to play my characters even if progression is slim these days (gold). I just like to roam freely and kill stuff in the world. So I am fine with long grinds.

[Lei]

- daily HC (any)
- weekly Voa (both 10 and 25)
- Weekly raid quest

And most people should be able to farm icc10 in 232 gear (from triumph badges + ICC 5 mans), most people could do it in 5-6 days.
The point here is that everyone remembers ICC, but very few remembers ToC or Ulduar, getting pre-raid gear was a lot more grindy.

On-Topic:
I think there should be mandatory catch up mechanics, like reputations, but they shouldn't take more then 2 weeks, anything longer then that is normally a wish i want that mind blow.

I mean.
Ulduar "required" naxx gear but
1) naxx was easy to even pug
2) VoA lootfest
3) badge gear was plenty, also gave 2 piece of tier, with 2 tiered badge it means 2x2 tier pieces.
4) easy pvp gear
5) crafting was easy and simple, didn't require crafters to do shitty questlines and dungeons, also was easier to level up, getting recipes (no idiotic ranks, no rep recipes for rank 2/3 gates etc).
6) small ilevel jumps between naxx and ulduar
7) Toc times trial of champion
8) easy weekly raid quests (such as kill flame leviathan) was a good chance to get some ulduar gear.

- - - Updated - - -

or you could run +15-20 m+ and get the echoes you need and possibly some gear... alternate progres is just that, ALTERRNATIVE to do when you dont want to do the content that is "best" at your level...

- - - Updated - - -



you can literaly farm m+ whole week to get all the gear and echoes for essences and corruptions and catch up with your main no problem, HOW THE HELL is it different from farming hc dungeons in wrath to get badges for gear?

- - - Updated - - -



first HC a day gave you badges for ICC gear, other gave you badges for TOC gear, so just a tier lower, so yes, you could grind it

Grinding specifically for 232 badge gear in ICC times was a massive waste of time tho. You were better off to just do the 3 ICC dungeons on heroic (normal first for ilevel 219 I suppose), run VoA, and pug ToC itself. Especially in times when raid quests were a thing. 232 badge gear in ICC times were a nice passive filler for unlucky slots but nothing more.

[kingj56]

I played wrath and it was SUPER alt friendly the friendliest alt friendly expac wow has ever had. The badges you got were always for current teir and enabled you to jump right into the current raid at the min requirement. And the grind wasnt that bad because it wasnt time gated. I could get a brand new 80 and get him ready for ICC in weekend not to mention have a 2set for that current raid or a 4set from the previous. It was very very easy to do. Now you have to grind ALOT. If i was a new player and had gotten a brand new 120 inorder for me to even compete i need rank 3 essence which can take a month depending on which one you need. God help you if Life force is your BiS which means you HAVE to grind Azsharas palace for a month. Good luck! If i level a new character which i just did I have to wait 4 weeks or more to get him to up to current I have 1 purple trait and only pull 20-25kdps. 3 more weeks for all purples and even longer for a max cloak probably 4-6 weeks if i do EVERY daily. Its pretty shit in comparison to previous expacs to much grind not enough catch up.

[Krakan]

So a casual should be able to clear the first half of mythic 2-3 weeks after hitting 120? What is a casual to you? How much time do they put in per week? It would seem to me that just learning the fights might take 2-3 weeks. Are you saying they should just be given full 470 gear so they can learn the fights?

A casual is how often you play. Not the level of difficulty. Now in that example I do add extra play time to gear up... I would say if you put in 12-20 hours in those two weeks it would be doable with under 10 the following weeks.

You don't really learn the first 3-4 bosses of a tier they are almost always freebies that die in 10 pulls or less.

- - - Updated - - -

or you could run +15-20 m+ and get the echoes you need and possibly some gear... alternate progres is just that, ALTERRNATIVE to do when you dont want to do the content that is "best" at your level...

- - - Updated - - -



you can literaly farm m+ whole week to get all the gear and echoes for essences and corruptions and catch up with your main no problem, HOW THE HELL is it different from farming hc dungeons in wrath to get badges for gear?

- - - Updated - - -



first HC a day gave you badges for ICC gear, other gave you badges for TOC gear, so just a tier lower, so yes, you could grind it

It takes a LOT longer and is only a option if you already unlocked the essence on another character. Considering I doubt you can do 15s without at least a rank 3 major essences you are talking about close to 50 dungeon runs if not more...

- - - Updated - - -

Right back to you - since you still do not tell us what this "lionshare of expansion" encompasses where you could just jump into the highets difficulty of raiding withing a week of being max level. So basically when you set up your point you were talking about the past..yet I may not?

Yeah..maybe you could "could hit icc within a week" - but for 25 HM? No bloody way if you wanted to pull your weight. And that is attacking your OP where you claim you could immediately hit the highest difficulty. You could not

Definitely not nitpicking when I need to remind you of the TBC attunements https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20070207064601. You needed heroic 5 mans..gl grinding the rep to even enter them fast. Then you needed to raid to get raid quests to do further raids. Not to forget items from old raids to attune to the next raid.

So it is indeed only fair to point out x-pac after x-pac where your claim in OP was just wrong or exaggerated. You hitting lv 85 and your guild taking you to HM Firelands within a week? Yeah..I think not...maybe they needed especially YOUR alt and really, really helped you.

Then it is still only anecdotal evidence and nothing else.

If your point however is that AP and Essence hold your alts back longer now to really pull their weight...fair enough..we had that topic to death. Maybe Blizzard changes that after all the complaints. Maybe not. People are complaining already about anything that is in SL alpha. As they will complain if they see anyone get to their gear level within a week who just quit and came back while they worked for their gear in the hardest current content.

The highest levels to me means mythic/ heroic in expansions with those options.

Here is where is suspect we won't agree. For the majority of the expansions you absolutely could get geared to catch up to the hardest difficulty in a couple of weeks.

For vanilla you would focus the last 5 levels before cap to working on your starting raid gear and attunements. If you hit ZG asap followed by bwl you could easily be ready for aq. The only real stumbling block was the atunement for naxx.

For tbc if you focused on crafted items, heroics, za and kara it wasn't hard to get ssc/ tk ready though tbc was the hardest expansion for skipping.

Wrath was super duper easy mode 360 no scope to catch up. The first tier was such a joke pugging it when it was new took a week to clear on average. Get to cap smash Naxx hit heroics especially the catch up ones like toc or the icc 5 man dungeons and you could easily with very little effort be ready to enter 25man heroic. Now you wouldn't be geared to full clear it but you could easily kill the first few bosses.

Cata... cata is a really,really mixed bag... this is an expansion where I didn't actually level an alt myself. I know zg/za got you geared super quickly and was actually spamable with how often pugs would leave open instances of it in lfd but I really cant comment on this expansion pre catch up dungeons.

MoP if I recall right had overly powerful and extremely accessible pvp gear that was good enough for heroic.

WoD had mythic dungeons that worked super well for catch up.

From legion onward is when the long grinds started to appear to get your character to base line... before that it wasn't hard to get caught up...

[Feral Druid ist Op]

In the past to get into raiding (outside the first tier) you either had to get carried and/or (later) farm badge gear/reps. At least now with M+ you could theoretically grind out some raid ready gear.

lmao gear is your last worrie if you want to get near 95%+ parses in a mythic raid nowdays you have to grind 2+ months woth of echos/essences if you dont have them unlocked on a main and you have to hardgrind ap still, 1 neck lvl = 600-800 dps depending on class

luckly blizz removed all of this dogshit in SL i cant wait to test it my self in the next 2 weeks after beta is up and we top raider geting our invs

[Kokolums]

A casual is how often you play. Not the level of difficulty. Now in that example I do add extra play time to gear up... I would say if you put in 12-20 hours in those two weeks it would be doable with under 10 the following weeks.

You don't really learn the first 3-4 bosses of a tier they are almost always freebies that die in 10 pulls or less.

Lets say 12 hours per week is casual.

10 pulls or less to clear each of the first 4 bosses. That's gonna require multiple raid nights per week. Let's say 6 hours of mythic raiding just to kill the bosses. So that leaves 6 hours to gear up a fresh 120 with 470 gear to run mythic. Is that correct? It seems to me the only way this works is if you hand out free 470 loot to a fresh 120.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

Lets say 12 hours per week is casual.

10 pulls or less to clear each of the first 4 bosses. That's gonna require multiple raid nights per week. Let's say 6 hours of mythic raiding just to kill the bosses. So that leaves 6 hours to gear up a fresh 120 with 470 gear to run mythic. Is that correct? It seems to me the only way this works is if you hand out free 470 loot to a fresh 120.

in what world do you need 10 pulls for the 4 first bosses right now? i pug 7 mythics in lfg tool on my alts in less than 3 hrs, 3 weeks or so ago we cleared mythic with lfgs method scribe did the raid lead and we wiped like 5 times? or so

[Krakan]

Lets say 12 hours per week is casual.

10 pulls or less to clear each of the first 4 bosses. That's gonna require multiple raid nights per week. Let's say 6 hours of mythic raiding just to kill the bosses. So that leaves 6 hours to gear up a fresh 120 with 470 gear to run mythic. Is that correct? It seems to me the only way this works is if you hand out free 470 loot to a fresh 120.

I mean you would gear first but yeah that is more or less how it works.

[A Chozo]

A casual is how often you play. Not the level of difficulty. .

This is incorrect. Casual is obviously about difficulty level too.

You can't "casually" beat the hardest level of difficult in a game and say that it only took you 30 min - that means you're hardcore and quick.

[Schizoide]

I do think WoW alternate progression needs to be fundamentally changed, because it centers around the concept of "rental powers", stuff you only get to keep for one expansion. Now if that's limited to item drops and zone buffs that's perfectly fine, but no-- they make you grind for it. Artifact power and Azerite power, Garrison resources, Order resources, War resources, people put substantial effort into increasing those numbers over the course of an expansion and then at the end-- **poof** it all goes away, either completely removed or rendered valueless. The problem there is grinding is incentivized for its own sake due to its impact on subscription retention.

Now all that said, there is not supposed to be any "AP" equivalent in Shadowlands. We aren't supposed to be grinding "Anima Power". If that's true, groovy. I have my doubts.

[Halfaheart]

I've played consistently since wrath and there's always been a Grind X to get ready for Y. Go play on a private server to remind yourself lmao