This whole discussion seems odd to me. Catalyst is a relatively new tool and was originally designed as a catch-up mechanic; now people are asking for it to be a baseline tool in gearing going forward?
I raid and M+ both, got KSM/AOTC/etc. on my mains and enjoy both content … but M+ is a relatively new addition to this game. It’s more convenient than raiding because it’s easier to get five people together rather than 10-20 or more but it is not harder until you get well over the +20 level and even that’s debatable. The game was and still is designed around raids and the raids is where the storyline runs through (which is half the reason you have LFR, to let non-raiders see the progression of the story to its terminus). Raids should reward the top gear just like rated PvP should reward the top PvP gear. If you don’t like the content, skip it (as I do PvP), but just know the people that don’t skip it are going to get something you don’t have because they chose to work for it. I wish I had a bunch of the PvP transmogs but that’s the consequences of my choice.
If delaying Catalyst helps push people into raiding, good. And since I’ve seen this brought up several times in this thread: If the set bonuses are weak going forward, who cares whether you get them or not? You won’t need them to complete M+ keys so don’t worry about it.
They have to strike a balance between having two PvE gearing paths but they don’t have to make both of them “endgame;” they can choose one or the other for that and they picked raids. I doubt that will ever change during the lifespan of this game, either, Ion or no Ion.
Again, let’s just be glad we have Catalyst and tier sets again. The argument that if you’re a M+ player only and don’t have access to tier, that you won’t be viable for M+ content or picked for keys is a bit nuts. If you’re running so close to the razor’s edge for M+ content that you get declined for pug keys due to lack of tier, you need to join a M+ guild at the start of the xpac, even before it if possible, and get out of the pug scene altogether.
You mean like there was in Season 3? Oh, wait, there wasn’t. It was 1 per week AFTER catalyst tier was enabled. So it took normal raiders a full 12 weeks to get their tier. The ones who hadn’t given up over the issue.
“Trust me” isn’t exactly confidence inspiring, when so many times we’ve been told by forum posters that “It says that, but they definitely will change it”. And it never happens.
Why would it? It’s going to push people out of raiding. Raiders who don’t have the gear they need to kill bosses because the gear they need is time-gated off into the future aren’t going to do hundreds of pulls because you said this is good for raiding.
No, it is about the ones that went into threads about that being butthurt that now the shoe is on the other foot they don’t like what they said thrown back in their face.
Bottom line, if you don’t want it dome to you, don’t do it to others, if you do it to others, don’t whine when you have it done to you.
Again, I think the delay is a BAD idea, I just see those that complain about such when they rallied against better gear/content for solo players made their bed and now have to sleep in it, if you are one such, good day, if not sorry and I hope the delay is removed.
It’s “relatively new” when taken in context of the game’s entire life cycle. Borrowed power is as well, but was still present in three xpacs, and may it die a quiet death.
I realize Catalyst “made the game fun” but what it really did was serve as bad RNG protection for me when stuff wouldn’t drop out of raids fast enough. I’m sympathetic to bad luck protection but not so sympathetic to content avoidance protection, which is what getting tier outside of raid really is. The exception to that is alt gearing for people who don’t want to complete the same content 5-10 times.
Then I guess the question there is really “why?”. The answer has to be MDI, so one way to fix this is delay MDI consummate with a delay in Catalyst. Otherwise, you’ve got M+ players raiding mythic raid to get gear that will outgear M+ gear so they can … run higher M+ keys for gear that continues to be substandard? As others have noted, valor upgrading has its own built-in delay and you can’t val-up raid gear, so this puts the M+ guilds forever behind mythic raid anyway (assuming val-up caps don’t exceed mythic raid … at which point it is itself limited by time, etc.).
Solution to that would be to not pack MDI too closely to the val-up limit, which makes mythic raiding no longer all that important for guilds focusing on M+. The only thing that can mess that up is if tier bonuses were OP, which they sound like they’re really not.
WTH are you talking about. Your solo players friends also don’t get Catalyst early.
This isn’t about the shoe being on the other foot, everyone is impacted by this.
Stop trolling with nonsense.
What ? No.
The more you push, the harder stuff hits and the more health it has to soak damage. At some point, M+ Valor gear alone starts lagging. Early season when Valor is cap, the raid provides much more upgrade opportunities to help push IO earlier in the season.
We didn’t even have tier or a Catalyst up until six months ago; it’s not going to push anyone out of raiding.
And again, what would change that formula would be if tier bonuses were super-strong, which would indeed make that gear a requirement for clearing content. But even then, you’d have to define what kind of content you were talking about being un-clearable: Do you mean M+25? Or mythic raiding? The M+ keys will take care of themselves through valor-upgrading, but that’s been delayed every season already by the weekly valor cap. Mythic raiders will eventually get past the bosses the old-fashioned way – by being better and/or getting OP gear from wherever they can find it (M+, PvP, multiple mythic raid drops, etc.).
If anything, it would send more mythic raiders into M+ trying for a workaround, but it’s not going to push anyone out of raiding. Given that tier bonuses sound like they will be mild, you probably won’t need tier to clear heroic raid content at all, maybe even more than that.
I know how it works (we all go through this every season when suddenly that +20 you cleared last week has you struggling to clear it on +17) but again I’m skeptical of what that even means for the purpose of this discussion.
Yes, in Shadowlands, val-up M+ gear could lag behind tier, even to the point you were better off running 246 relic tier gear if you had to, just to get the bonuses. But the reason for that was that tier bonuses were stronger, especially for certain specs (Survival hunter). That doesn’t sound like the case going forward.
So you want to push IO? OK, but for what end? To not get declined for keys? I’m assuming if the player really wants to focus on M+ in the game and not raid, he/she has taken the time to build the gaming experience to suit those goals. Which in this case, means applying to and joining a guild that specifically says “we are a high-level M+ dungeon guild.” And once you’re in one of those, the rest of the stuff kind of melts away.
If we’re talking about the guildless, or the puggers, then yeah, not having Catalyst on Day 1 is going to affect them … maybe? … if they feel they are getting declined on keys because of their specific gear pieces. But that’s not what Catalyst was about when it was designed. And it just seems like a really odd thing for people to hang their whole Dragonflight experience on.
Eh, maybe if the starter gear or crafted gear is able to be converted, and even then likely not that big of deal.
But again, those that are guildless or pugging are possibly more likely to not worry too much about gear until they feel they are ready or run out of the content they actually do.
Since Season 4 launch with Catalyst mechanic introduction, the tier sets aren’t the same as before.
As mentioned by the Community Manager:
It includes World content players, S4 introduced Sandworm relics that could change to tier sets, it’s not only about using this power bonus on a raid but that you can use it for anything that you want.
The problem with acquistion mentioned by the blue post regarding 6 weeks:
It’s that now tier sets aren’t a raiding specific reward, on previous expansions some pvp players had to do raids in order to get the bonus set and mix pvp, pve pieces; however, this games continues to evolve, now any kind of player will get access to create pieces with the bonus or the weekly vault from M+, rated pvp will provide the set bonus.
Now Devs must think of a way to balance acquisition between all kind of players
They have also said there will be an M+ big dev post coming soon, (I’d say probably next week, along with M+ testing on beta), so a lot of the raid vs M+ gearing arguments could be made obsolete with the changes.
