There is no way Blizzard will give up AP as a reward

[Valette]

I really dont understand people complaining about AP nowadays. Back with the 20 scaling traits (+0.5% one), I could kinda understand it. As someone with 20 traits were what 11.5% stronger than someone without. But that is not the case now, at all. Now, since we wont be finished with artifact knowledge for a good long while, people cant just rush farm away from you, and as concordance is much weaker per rank than the 20-trait was, zerg farming it wont have that much of an effect. Sure, getting the first concordance will be a somewhat big spike, But in a couple of weeks, AK will be so high that getting the first concordance will be a complete cakewalk.

After that it'll just be a 200 mainstat increase per rank (for a proc). Which is much less than it sounds. Say someone down the line has been playing pretty casually and are currently at 20 concordance (254 billion AP cost),while their friend is at 25 (943 billion). The "casual" guy will have a proc giving 5800 main stat, while the friend will have 6800. For having spent nearly 4 times as much AP, the friend only got a proc thats 17% stronger. That really isnt something worth getting enraged over. Atleast in my opinion

[Deleted]

Anyone who is "grinding" ap is a legit moron.

[moremana]

The problem with Blizzard and the new "features" they try to add to the game is they take it to extremes. Instead of it being a part of the game, they make it a sole objective in the game. WoD and the Garrison wasnt a addon, it was the major part of the xpac, so is AP.

Blizzard needs to stop making their ideas the major thing to do.

[Joeygiggles]

Theyll add the AP system to something else and improve on the system. The weapons are going away next Xpac

[Deleted]

For the same reason Atiesh, greatstaff of the guardian became obselete and replaced with greens. These weapons will too.

[Erisique]

Anyone who is "grinding" ap is a legit moron.

I absolutely second this one. I do not get it how the whole "casual" community still whine about AP grind, where it clearly is not necessary. I personaly am 7/10M raider, not big deal, but I can compare with my guildies which did AP grind and which did not AP grind. There are not differencies for real. Just play the game, do what you like.

[Deleted]

They will have to find a very good lore reason as why why would dish such powerful weapons as Doomhammer or Ashbringer..

[yetgdhfgh]

It wont be called artifact power thats for sure but bet your first born it will be called something else and they will roll with it.

TBH for all the hate for AP it certainly got me out of my class hall and into the world so mission accomplished there!

[Xar226]

I disagree. They'll get rid of them. Probably some goofy story arc about how we need to extract the power of our weapons in order to lock away the Legion or some nonsense like that.

The problem is that if you want AP to be a continuous, desired reward--and I agree that they clearly wanted it this expansion and I have no idea why they wouldn't want something like that next expansion--then you have to guarantee that it remains important. That's why we have nearly unobtainable power levels on the new artifacts; so that there's always one more point to put in, even if most of us never get there. There's no point at which AP becomes useless.

But if AP is super important in order to fulfill its design goal, then that automatically means it is harder to gear either off-specs or alts, depending on the exact implementation. Even if you made AP be power on the player versus on the weapon, i.e., applicable across all specs, that doesn't help alts. The fact that it needs to be continuously desirable means even if you help alts catch up, there will always be that one more point for them too and that playtime comes at the expense of playing other things. There is no "rest." No point at which you say "I've maxed my weapon, now I can focus on somebody else."

That's bad for players, bad for the game, even bad for the hardcore mythic guys who are burning out at a ridiculous rate. I don't see how they can fulfill their design goal of making it continuously important and simultaneously fix the issue that players only have so much time in a day to play and they have to choose where to spend that.

If there is some kind of "AP" style system going forward, it will fade into the background much more than current AP does. It won't be "whatever content you wanna do at max level [...] [you] get a reward that helps you progress your character over the course of the whole expansion," it will be something with defined, attainable stop points. But my expectation is they do away with that style of power progression at least for a while to give people a break before they introduce that kind of revamped system.

The artifacts themselves? Don't see them moving forward. Too hard to balance, too important to get wrong. They talked about how they would be quick to make power adjustments, but they haven't been--at least not successfully. Better to get rid of them.

[Dracullus]

No matter what they've said, and they haven't even clearly said anywhere that artifact weapons aren't gonna carry over into the next expansion, but even if they had, AP has become too much of a universal reward for them to give it up. It's something they've wanted to do for years. Whatever content you wanna do at max level - dungeons, raids, PvP, quests - you can do it, and get a reward that helps you progress your character over the course of the whole expansion. There is no way they are just gonna let go of that.

Well, you created thread about really obvious thing.

1) Of course artifact weapons are only for Legion, every expansion is hard reset and almost different game. From lore perspective, artifacts probably will be destroyed during fight with Sargeras.

2) AP system will stay, just like world quests and mythic+ (in one form or another). Imagine your playtime without AP - most things would be pointless or (if we would have some valor system) you would just cross things from list and be done for a week. Now you can do whatever you like every day - Legion is all about choices and many love it.

And with AP they have suitable reward for things like Suramar. Every time when content don't award gear they can throw AP into it.

My suggestions for 8.0 "AP"

- don't create another weapons, let us enjoy weapon drops this time (of course we can return to spec weapon in another expac, why not, variety is good thing)
- instead create some powerful class relic that can have different tree for each spec (for example some horn for warrior or tome for paladin)
- AP is class wide, not spec wide
- paragon traits are account wide OR even less meaningful than Legionfall (for example, when we get paragon point, we can exchange it for box with heroic raid gear, 5.000 Honor token or 2.000 gold)
- no more consumable items, AP is added automatic to your char (as we don't have spec specific artifacts)
- Artifact Knowledge is region wide buff that slowly increase with every reset.

[xindralol]

Well that's the big problem. They committed to making wow as grindy as they possiblty could. There's no turning back now.

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I absolutely second this one. I do not get it how the whole "casual" community still whine about AP grind, where it clearly is not necessary. I personaly am 7/10M raider, not big deal, but I can compare with my guildies which did AP grind and which did not AP grind. There are not differencies for real. Just play the game, do what you like.

If you want to be competitive you better have concordance etc. but if you're playing you main all day every day I guess you get it 'passively' by just playing a lot. For those of us that don't have the time to play 10h a day it's a grind because we're either expected by our guild to have high artifact level or we simply want to compete in pvp without a massive handicap.
As of right now, the AK of everyone makes concordance at lv50 impossible to reach; look up the definition of 'grind' before you post further nonesense please.

[Magicpot]

AP as a concept has taken root and has been way too successful at driving up revenue and time played, they won't let this go forever now. A single unified currency that everyone wants and nobody can ever get too much of. It's too good for blizzard to drop again.

Well that's the big problem. They committed to making wow as grindy as they possiblty could. There's no turning back now.

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If you want to be competitive you better have concordance etc. but if you're playing you main all day every day I guess you get it 'passively' by just playing a lot. For those of us that don't have the time to play 10h a day it's a grind because we're either expected by our guild to have high artifact level or we simply want to compete in pvp without a massive handicap.
As of right now, the AK of everyone makes concordance at lv50 impossible to reach; look up the definition of 'grind' before you post further nonesense please.

I'm in a guild that just killed Mythic Krosus last week (4/10 now)
There isn't a real "competition" in our guild in that sense. Nobody is forced to farm AP, and we don't switch people out for it. I suspect most guilds are this way. Nobody is coming for my raid spot. Though that again may be because I'm a healer and always have been a healer main.