Significant change to M+ gear drop rates in Shadowlands

[Firebert]

If anything this is just normalizing the amount of loot dropping in m+ compared to raiding. 1 drop per 5 people is and should remain the norm, especially with Blizzard's stance on "gear being gear", IE you won't have to farm for the best version of that gear besides increased ilvl from higher difficulty content.

Usually that's true on a per-boss basis; this has been extended to cover the entire dungeon.

Shrine of the Storm M+ is now 1 drop per 20 people, for example.

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You can bet that if M+ drops 1. Raiding drops will be reduced by x3. Instead of 2-3, you'll get 0-1 for 10 bosses.

I think that's unlikely; as raids aren't repeatable I expect the drop rate to stay the same and for other content to revolve around that.

[Huzzaa]

You can bet that if M+ drops 1. Raiding drops will be reduced by x3. Instead of 2-3, you'll get 0-1 for 10 bosses.

That makes no sense.

Raids are a weekly lockout.

M+ you can grind however much you want, in term infinitely in a sense.



Now, that change, good or not, is yet to be seen. However the direction I think, is correct. Loot needs to matter more. This is one way of doing it, if it's the right way, well. We shall see.

[froschhure]

Why nerfs when they can rework raids and also let them scale endlessly. Raid+, ez gg wp, /closed XD

[Tyrilion]

I'd like to know who this "many" is because outside of hardcore Classic fans, I don't really see it. To me this sounds like Ion doubling down on his defense against their removal of Master Looter (another remarkably shitty decision on Blizzard's part) with the added bonus of making one of the most enjoyable aspects of this game (imo) much less appealing.

Then you don't understand game design, they've reduced the loot in dungeon because the choice of loot in the weekly chest has been increased and varied, making it much easier to target the loot you want, its a reduction in RNG not in valuable loot options...

[JoakimB]

Not sure if its been asked in the thread before, but:

"The weekly loot chest will still have a greater selection of items to choose from (still one a week) but that should be a more reliable source of upgrades since you can best pick the one that suits your needs out of a wider range of things that you've earned."

Have they changed anything on this that ive missed? Can you "manually" pick something?

[Mirishka]

Not sure if its been asked in the thread before, but:

"The weekly loot chest will still have a greater selection of items to choose from (still one a week) but that should be a more reliable source of upgrades since you can best pick the one that suits your needs out of a wider range of things that you've earned."

Have they changed anything on this that ive missed? Can you "manually" pick something?

Yes instead of one item in your chest, you will get to choose from a selection of a few random pieces of gear. Increasing the chance that you'll get something useful.

[Sunnydee]

They better make raidgear better/more drops with different stats then. i mean there's like (outside of trinkets and weapons) 2-3 items i have use of. and vexiona? ONE item. this is for most of my chars and not just one.

Downside will also be that if they put some sort of "bad luck protection", you sorta screw over your group if you do more dungeons than them before hand so you get higher chance on loot. can allready see increase in armor stacking like never before just to get the most use out of a key.

[owbu]

This is the logical conclusion from having gear be gear, right?

With Titan forging they dropped a bunch of items but only some of them were actually useful after the first week or so.

If you remove titan forging you of course have to remove all the items that were never intended to be farmed. Otherwise you would completely break the reward per instance ratio of the game.

(Or did I misunderstand something? Feels pretty obvious to me that this has to happen)

[Laqweeta]

They're trying to make gear matter again.

[dcc626]

This is the logical conclusion from having gear be gear, right?

With Titan forging they dropped a bunch of items but only some of them were actually useful after the first week or so.

If you remove titan forging you of course have to remove all the items that were never intended to be farmed. Otherwise you would completely break the reward per instance ratio of the game.

(Or did I misunderstand something? Feels pretty obvious to me that this has to happen)

i knew that when they said the rng nature of gear was going away, that people would flip out because gear would be less available. people dont do anything in this game unless it gives them something, and thats fine. but people who want to be fully geared in a week are going to have to realize this isnt going to happen anymore.

you wanted a BiS list, you get a BiS list. you also get pre legion gearing back again. remember, you asked for this.

[Cizr]

They better add some currency from end of dungeon chest that you can use to buy a gear or else I dont see any motivation in running m+ except the one for weekly.

[Drusin]

As stated by yourself, M+ was the easiest method to gear in the game. A nerf is very well deserved, especially since the entire game is moving to a bit slower gearing pace with simpler gear - something asked for by many.

Easiest method for me was WQ

[Kalisandra]

In shadowlands let's say dungeon A gives your bis ring and helmet. There is not even a theoretical chance of getting upgrades from it anymore after you receive those two items. Either the drop rates need to go really low or you go through all 9 dungeons quite fast when it comes to gear.

You are assuming that you already have BiS or near-BiS pieces in every other slot. In fact for quite some time at this new drop rate it's likely that sub-optimal pieces will still be upgrades, so while they might not be what you really want, they'll still do, and will still help you perform better.

This is how it used to work.

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You can't really have one without the other. Especially if Soulbinds go live with Conduits needing to be farmed. If M+ ends up being the "easiest" way to farm new Conduits and it's a 1-item-per-run scenario it's going to burn people out very quickly.

I'm pretty sure the conduits are separate from gear. They'd pretty much have to be if it's one piece per run.

[Azerate]

Looks like this has mostly slipped under the radar but this is a pretty big change (especially for those of us who exclusively play M+). Moving into SL, it looks like Blizzard is going to decrease the drop rate of gear in M+ to a single piece in the box at the end of the dungeon. Obviously this could change at a later date but this will effectively neuter one of the easiest ways to gear your toon in the expansion.

Here's the interview, and the specific information from Ion quoted below:

So the exact quantities are still evolving (please don't quote me 100% on this) but notably for Mythic+ it will be one item from the end-of-run chest that is repeatable. The weekly loot chest will still have a greater selection of items to choose from (still one a week) but that should be a more reliable source of upgrades since you can best pick the one that suits your needs out of a wider range of things that you've earned. We're continuing with personal loot and tradability. The baseline reasons for moving away from Group Loot/Master Loot to Personal Loot 3-4 years ago haven't meaningfully changed. I think if anything, some of the potential abuses inherent in Master Loot, where people lose agency or control over their own items--the items now belong to the guild master, or a PUG leader that has arbitrary rules--these things are even more-heightened when things are scarse. So we feel like also without the randomness of Warforged/Titanforging messing with tradability, personal loot should be more consistent then ever in terms of distributing upgrades.

I'm usually a supporter of Blizzard but after seeing the way that Soulbinds are going to work on top of this change to M+ I'm deeply regretting my decision to preorder this expansion.

This is literally what the majority of whiners (aka. "the vocal minority") wanted. For gear to be more meaningful.

Now let's see if the game is more fun with this.

[burek]

Lowering the rate loot drops in M+ will not see a return of “raid or die”, it’ll simply bring the efficiency more inline with raiding.

No it won't if other things stay the same. Without titanforging or similar systems you can only get one potentially useful item per week from M+, which is much worse than what raiding offers. End of dungeon items are useless if they are 15 ilvls lower than raid drops, there is really no point in nerfing their drop rate.

If the only way to get high ilvl loot is through the weekly chest, it will take you at least 4 months with a lot of luck just to get your average bag ilvl high enough. And even more luck to have decent secondaries on those items. Mythic raiders will again have a huge advantage over everyone else, so yes it's gonna be raid or die.

[Fayolynn]

The whole point of M+ is to push the key to a higher level so that you get a better reward from the weekly chest. That's the whole point of pushing to +15 for most players. That's the reason to have a timer.
But isn't it a good thing to not be punished if you just want a chill run?

If the "whole point" was the end week chest then the dungeons wouldn't have offered any loot drops at all. The fact that completing runs (including ones where you group failed the timer) resulted in you getting loot means the was part of the "whole point". The fact that beating the timers resulted in more loot meant that was part of the "whole point".

You aren't punished for wanting a chill run, you are rewarded for beating a challenge.

[Benitora]

But the crafting gear has been very viable the entirety of BFA, every tier you've been guaranteed 2 mythic ilvl pieces. Before 8.3 those could be replaced by titanforged pieces though. Other than the deterministic crafting method they have revealed for SL has anything else changed?

It's a guaranteed 2 mythic level pieces with random stats which may or may not work for your build. And they used the worst system imaginable to be able to craft them: Scrapping and RNG.

In Shadowlands, being able to pick your own stats and ilevel on the gear gives more reliability.

Nope.

The legendary crafting system doesn’t create items in Shadowlands. They’re like trinket proc or set bonus enchantments. We knew this even before today’s blog post.

What are you talking about? In the latest Alpha release, we got to see the legendary crafting system. It's basically that you through a profession craft say, Pants. And with those pants, you can infuse them with a legendary power and stats.
That's the very basics of filling a slot on your character. So it's creating a item. You are talking about soulbinds I think.

[Nevcairiel]

Easiest method for me was WQ

Well sure, but WQs will only take you so far, and after that point you either raid or do M+.

[Wuusah]

You aren't punished for wanting a chill run, you are rewarded for beating a challenge.

And you are still rewarded for beating a challenge. That is a higher key and time saved.

Maybe you'll get a second item for beating the timer. Maybe you'll get a chance for a second item. Maybe it's one item no matter the timer. I'm sure they're going to look into it and find a decent solution.

[xblubbx]

2 thoughts:

1) m+ loot ilvl in Legion was lower than in BfA. Did it hurt m+? Obviously not. Reducing loot amount in m+ won't hurt m+ either.
2) No titanforging/corruptions anymore means people would run way less raids/dungeons than they run today as they're not incentivised anymore by knowing something can procc. Less loot is the NATURAL CONSEQUENCE for Blizzard to counter this.

In the end titanforging (not corruptions) was a GOOD thing. Statistically a mythic raider would always have better gear than a heroic raider. This crying about "oh no I can't get my BIS gear cause to me BIS gear means max level proc with sockets on all items" was just plain stupid. Stop getting self confidence by gear and instead get a CE title or a high m+ score.

Loot is going to become very boring. Great thing for classic lovers, gz.