Dungeon Sets: A possible solution to the M+/Raid rewards dilemma.

[ydraw]

[crossposted from R+D forum]

It's clear that Blizzard doesn't want people to be able to gear up too quickly for raiding by way of M+, which is why they've reduced the ilvl of M+ gear in Shadowlands. However, this change unnecessarily punishes people who prefer M+ as their primary content – it essentially pushes them into raiding for gear.

My solution is an old one, but it's one that definitely deserves another look now that dungeon gear scales with difficulty – and that is dungeon sets.

Dungeon sets have been done before, most notably in classic and TBC. The issue with dungeon sets was always how quickly they were replaced by raid or crafted gear (especially in TBC).

But what if that didn't happen?

What if these dungeon sets scaled at the same level as the other gear that drops in M+, and what if we made sure these dungeon sets were never going to unbalance raid or PvP by enabling their bonuses only in dungeons?

Having these sets be dungeon specific means that the set bonuses can be more interesting than just the pure throughput buffs that we get from the old raid tier gear, because much more of a class' toolkit is useful in dungeons. It also means that the bonuses that are throughput related can be tied to AOE abilities instead of single target.

My idea is that every end of dungeon boss (8 in total in SL) drops a different armor slot for each class. There are 8 pieces in total, and there is a 2 pc, 4pc and 6pc bonus for each set. The bonuses that affected damage would be % based so mixing and matching the ilvls of the dungeon set gear would not affect the magnitude of the bonus.

Having each end boss drop a piece additionally would have the beneficial effect of encouraging people to tackle all the different dungeons, instead of for example just trying to PUG into a +15 freehold (or whatever the easiest shadowlands dungeon is) each week for your chest, you might want to target the dungeon that you don't have the dungeon piece from yet.

So here's an example of what I'm talking about

[BM Hunter Helm]

ilvl 165
46 Agility
72 Stamina

[2 set] reduces the cooldown of counter shot by 4 seconds
[4 set] increases the damage of Beast Cleave by 20%
[6 set] If your Multi-Shot hits 3+ targets in a single shot, you shoot an additional wave of bullets at those targets, and the cooldowns of Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Turtle, and Aspect of the Cheetah are reduced by 1 second per target hit.

[these bonuses are only active while inside dungeons]

Obviously the last bonus there is just the azerite trait “Rapid Reload” which was mandatory for hunters in M+, but will no longer exist in Shadowlands. There are probably similar abilities for each class, and I'd love to hear from others some ideas for dungeon set bonuses for other classes and roles.

[Bellows]

I think this is a pretty interesting idea that solves some problems. It rewards those that are dedicated to mythic + as their form of endgame content. On the flipside, I could see these sets becoming a prerequisite for pug groups that would make it a bit more annoying for people that don't have the time to get their 6 piece.

[Tziva]

Duplicate of: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ewards-dilemma

Please don't cross post