They should nerf Cov gear

[czarek]

Nerf? Nooo. They should boost it imo. Upgrade over 197 with valors or conq only.

[ellieg]

Geting quick 197 at this point in time is not a problem. It being able for people to catch up a little bit in gear after several months is not a bad thing.

I agree. I enjoy it how it is. It allows me to instantly jump into around m+7 and start progressing thru m+10+ by the next week.

I'm just trying to find a solution so casuals can still have the progression they keep asking for

[oldgeezer]

Covenant gear is absolutely fine as it is, mainly because it is something that can be worked for by the solo player (and casual) community. And no, you don't acquire it overnight.

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I'm just trying to find a solution so casuals can still have the progression they keep asking for

It's called levelling an alt.

[paxen]

You make it sound like 197 is crazy gear. (spoiler: its not)

Yeah, but they then point out what 197 invalidates: any dungeons below m7 (including heroic and m0), LFR, even, to be honest, normal castle nathria.

It IS very nice to be able to play abit, get the renown, then do the quick quests for anima and be ready for m+, but if you're looking to get gear upgrades, whole swathes of content are irrelevant.

[mysticx]

Yeah, but they then point out what 197 invalidates: any dungeons below m7 (including heroic and m0), LFR, even, to be honest, normal castle nathria.

It IS very nice to be able to play abit, get the renown, then do the quick quests for anima and be ready for m+, but if you're looking to get gear upgrades, whole swathes of content are irrelevant.

There are still slots the covenant stuff doesn't fill, including the arguably most important ones: Weapon(s), off-hand, and trinkets.

It's a decent way for casual players to work up to the probable gear-baseline for 9.1 content, when the new tier is going to move all the gear goalposts anyway.

[Duroga]

So a lot of "casuals" are complaining about progression?
First of all, you use "Casuals" as if it is a synonym for bad player.

1. it takes a lot of anima to geht every piece to 197. (not possible in 5 hours)
2. you still need Rings, Trinkets, Off-Hand, Neck
3. you need at least 1 week to get your campaign to 40 (as a "Casual")
4. what about the Soulbinds, Conduits and Followers
5. what about the Maw, Reputation and so on

Conclusion: Your whole Post is bullshit, pulled out of your ...

[paxen]

There are still slots the covenant stuff doesn't fill, including the arguably most important ones: Weapon(s), off-hand, and trinkets.

Trinkets I'll give you, but weapons are covered by the 187 tokens you get from completing the campaign.

I actually like that you can get relevant gear from the campaign, the problem is that it runs into issues when you compare it to other paths.

Although, with the new sanctuary achievements, you do have a real choice: spending the 3k anima (4k with TC questline) you get on gear, or spending it on upgrading the sanctuary and unlocking more anima income?

Looking at it now I think covenant gear should cap out at 184/187 (comparable to lfr and m0), perhaps unlocking higher ilvl behind sanctuary upgrades?

[Dilbon]

Buff LFR gear to 200. Or 199.

[Yarathir]

How about no. Let people enjoy things even if they're not as hardcore as you are.

It's also good alt catchup stuff.

[Magnificent Madmartegan]

You're forgetting the secondary stats though.... half the covenant sets have the worst stats for your spec. I mean the amount of pieces that are crit/vers are insane, if not crit/vers its mastery/vers. Very few pieces have haste, my spriest has this problem right now. I've almost upgraded all the armor as I'm using Anima to unlock at least level 1 of all 4 abilities of the Necrolords. I've upgraded 7/9 of the pieces to 197 just this week and she has 19% crit, 8% haste and 17% vers. How is that good except in maybe PvP with the Vers. Its the same with a lot of my classes with the covenant gear. I'd rather have a 194 piece with the proper secondary stats than a 197 piece with stats that aren't even in the top 2 that I'm gunning for!

[sunxsera]

i absolutely like the covenant sets for gearing alts. it`s super efficient. Level up -> buy crafted gear -> do hc / myth dungeons ... some anima quests & campaign and you can easily reach 195-200+ ilvl solo after a week. If you don ´t have a guild or prefer to play solo you clear lfr and have some easy anima for the set and the legendarys too. That`s a nice progression path for solo players / casuals / alts etc.

I´m just sad, that all my classes are eighter kyrian or night fae, so i still need to do venthyr / maldraxxus campaigns on an alt.

[MrLachyG]

Buff LFR gear to 200. Or 199.

going by previous expansions, LFR gear in 9.1 should be 213 ilvl

[Zyrinx]

The casuals im referring to like to do mostly solo content, or queued content. The ilvl of cov gear invalidates all queued content. Leaving very very little for this type of player to progress.

The solution would be lowering the ilvl, or gating it. Maybe do enough heroic dungeons or world quests or something will open up a slot in the vault. Slot would be a 197 piece. Or maybe only 1 slot and it unlocks an upgrade token

The solution is more content, not less. Which is to say, something to do at 200. But it's irrelevant now of course.

[Zorachus]

it took me until last month to get to 200. I am super casual. It is not as quick as you think for people like myself who play an hour or so a day.

Exactly thank you.

I am casual I have five characters at level 60 and only one of them is over i200+ ( i209 ) rest are i185 to i195.

I’m like you only play about an hour a day if that sometimes just 15 or 20 minutes a day I’m just so bored with this expansion.

[Azerate]

I'm trying to decide which is dumber. This thread or the one where the OP suggested removing items from dungeons and making mythic 0 the same difficulty as the current m+15.

Covenant sets are a great system. If there's an issue with that progression system is that it stops at a too low ilvl. People complain about lack of casual progression not because they want even less of it (duh) but they want more.

Here's how covenant sets should have worked in 9.0 - past 197 ilvl (or whatever the max is now) there should be more upgrades available, but potentially requiring more time consuming / grindy world content. They added graceful offerings whose only purpose is to buy transmog...maybe incporate that into the casual gearing. Make it so that past LFR raid ilvl, you can still upgrade your covenant gear, but with those offerings. Let's say it costs 1000 anima and 30 graceful offerings to upgrade your 197 ilvl chest piece into a 203 ilvl piece, and so on. That would give the non-raiders and non-dungoneerers a feasible way of attaining higher ilvl gear, in a slower way. Raids/dungeons/pvp would still be much quicker and efficient, but there would be something to chase (gear-wise) for people who don't want to do those things. And clearly the cosmetics don't seem to be enough because people look at gear as the main treadmill, which I'm not saying is the correct way to look at things, but it's the existing one.

[Jujudrood]

If you changed the way covenant gear was acquired, either by getting the item itself, the cost to upgrade it, or the ilevel max of it, all that would happen is more people shitting on everything about it being "unfriendly to alts".
That's pretty much the only purpose of covenant gear; a catchup mechanic to get to the content you want to play.
It effectively lets you negate the dungeon climb through heroics and even m0 and jump right into raid/M+, and it serves that purpose well, but it does give casuals a far too easy path to their "max gear" as well, and I agree on that.

I think the better compromise, if we had a time machine, would be to increase the cost of the upgrades.
Right now it's like 1k anima per piece to max out, so instead, I would have it effectively double each step of the way.
Upgrade Level After Completing New iLevel Upgrade Cost
Up to 2/7 Chapter 4 (Renown 8) 164 50 (no change)
Up to 3/7 Chapter 5 (Renown 11) 171 100 (no change)
Up to 4/7 Chapter 6 (Renown 13) 177 150-->200
Up to 5/7 Chapter 7 (Renown 17) 184 200-->400
Up to 6/7 Chapter 8 (Renown 20) 190 250-->800
Up to 7/7 Chapter 9 (Renown 22) 197 300-->1600

This way, you would have to make a choice on which piece to upgrade, and with the anima costs for getting to 197 being so high, it would give easy access to 171, relatively easy access to 184 (M0), and make it an uphill climb to go further.
This would still allow alts to pull in 3k anima in a day or so of hitting 60 and getting 184-ish items, so it wouldn't be too terribly unfriendly to alts, and it gives the non-end game players something else to buy with anima.
The steep cost makes the choice harder; do you spend it on gear or sanctum/cosmetic/mounts?
There's other means to get gear, and maybe it will nudge some people to venture into group content.
Yeah, the community is toxic as all hell, but once you find a good guild of like-minded folks, group content is actually pretty fun.

[Ludek]

Covenant gear is pretty baffling for me.

Should they nerf it? Of course no, who cares about 197 gear? Crafters? Well crafting is dead for years now, even without covenant gear crafting pieces mostly suck (that's actually a bigger item power scaling issue).

I just find it funny that in the beginning covenant sets was almost worthless because of the timegating, and now they are perfect for alts allowing them skip straight to low m+ / normal raid.

[Yarathir]

If you changed the way covenant gear was acquired, either by getting the item itself, the cost to upgrade it, or the ilevel max of it, all that would happen is more people shitting on everything about it being "unfriendly to alts".
That's pretty much the only purpose of covenant gear; a catchup mechanic to get to the content you want to play.
It effectively lets you negate the dungeon climb through heroics and even m0 and jump right into raid/M+, and it serves that purpose well, but it does give casuals a far too easy path to their "max gear" as well, and I agree on that.

I think the better compromise, if we had a time machine, would be to increase the cost of the upgrades.
Right now it's like 1k anima per piece to max out, so instead, I would have it effectively double each step of the way.
Upgrade Level After Completing New iLevel Upgrade Cost
Up to 2/7 Chapter 4 (Renown 8) 164 50 (no change)
Up to 3/7 Chapter 5 (Renown 11) 171 100 (no change)
Up to 4/7 Chapter 6 (Renown 13) 177 150-->200
Up to 5/7 Chapter 7 (Renown 17) 184 200-->400
Up to 6/7 Chapter 8 (Renown 20) 190 250-->800
Up to 7/7 Chapter 9 (Renown 22) 197 300-->1600

This way, you would have to make a choice on which piece to upgrade, and with the anima costs for getting to 197 being so high, it would give easy access to 171, relatively easy access to 184 (M0), and make it an uphill climb to go further.
This would still allow alts to pull in 3k anima in a day or so of hitting 60 and getting 184-ish items, so it wouldn't be too terribly unfriendly to alts, and it gives the non-end game players something else to buy with anima.
The steep cost makes the choice harder; do you spend it on gear or sanctum/cosmetic/mounts?
There's other means to get gear, and maybe it will nudge some people to venture into group content.
Yeah, the community is toxic as all hell, but once you find a good guild of like-minded folks, group content is actually pretty fun.

I really wonder why people feel the need to micro-manage even a pitiable amount of sub-200 ilvl gear.

[Azerate]

If you changed the way covenant gear was acquired, either by getting the item itself, the cost to upgrade it, or the ilevel max of it, all that would happen is more people shitting on everything about it being "unfriendly to alts".
That's pretty much the only purpose of covenant gear; a catchup mechanic to get to the content you want to play.
It effectively lets you negate the dungeon climb through heroics and even m0 and jump right into raid/M+, and it serves that purpose well, but it does give casuals a far too easy path to their "max gear" as well, and I agree on that.

I think the better compromise, if we had a time machine, would be to increase the cost of the upgrades.
Right now it's like 1k anima per piece to max out, so instead, I would have it effectively double each step of the way.
Upgrade Level After Completing New iLevel Upgrade Cost
Up to 2/7 Chapter 4 (Renown 8) 164 50 (no change)
Up to 3/7 Chapter 5 (Renown 11) 171 100 (no change)
Up to 4/7 Chapter 6 (Renown 13) 177 150-->200
Up to 5/7 Chapter 7 (Renown 17) 184 200-->400
Up to 6/7 Chapter 8 (Renown 20) 190 250-->800
Up to 7/7 Chapter 9 (Renown 22) 197 300-->1600

This way, you would have to make a choice on which piece to upgrade, and with the anima costs for getting to 197 being so high, it would give easy access to 171, relatively easy access to 184 (M0), and make it an uphill climb to go further.
This would still allow alts to pull in 3k anima in a day or so of hitting 60 and getting 184-ish items, so it wouldn't be too terribly unfriendly to alts, and it gives the non-end game players something else to buy with anima.
The steep cost makes the choice harder; do you spend it on gear or sanctum/cosmetic/mounts?
There's other means to get gear, and maybe it will nudge some people to venture into group content.
Yeah, the community is toxic as all hell, but once you find a good guild of like-minded folks, group content is actually pretty fun.

And you are the best example of that toxicity if you want to increase prices of some weak starter gear.

[Bigbazz]

Nerf it? They should buff it so it can be upgraded further to 203 or something, at 197 it's effectively worthless anyway and is a fair time investment to collect that anima and upgrade them all to 197. Ilvl 197 gear is worthless, we're at the stage of the game where pretty much everyone has ilvl 220-226 gear even on several alts.

If you nerf it or make it cost more you make it even more worthless than it already is.