That’s just not true… Certain pieces only come from certain activities. I don’t even understand how you think this way… Gear = choice . Essences =/= choice? They are identical in the respect that each essence-- and each piece of gear-- has a designated activity it can be acquired from. The pools of loot are different. You can’t PvP your way to a Raid drop, for example. Much like doing Nazjatar dailies isn’t going to get you Blood of the Enemy. It’s the same situation for both cases.
There exists only a single way to get Rezan’s Gleaming Eye … run M+.
You can’t get certain Azerite combos outside of Rated PvP rewards.
There is practically no way to get Ink Pod other than raiding.
You can’t get Benthic gear and Pearls to upgrade it outside of Nazjatar for all that can be considered reasonable.
13 max level characters, more than I can reasonably play at one time.
All of them are above 385. A good three of them are close to/above 430 ilvl. I’ve acquired most essences more than once. I enjoy engaging with this system on my alts. Acquiring essences is much the same as gear for my alts.
Instead of hunting trinkets and weapons, I find myself hunting essences. The major difference between the two categories is that Essences are devoid of RNG. It’s easier to obtain the essences I want; compared to the desired trinkets or weapons on alts.
This I’ve loved the essence system. Got me to finally play the game after hating how ret performed in Uldir and then becoming a world quest/warfront player for months. In fact I am just waiting for the weeks to pass by so that I can get my 5th legendary essence (I can feasibly get 2-3 more if I work at like I have been). The lack of rng for the drops; the visual progress check of where you stand; and the noticeable impact they have on how you play really sold it to me. If I wasn’t held up at work for almost 50 hours, not counting daily commute, I would likely have 3 more characters be where you are at. Instead I just have 9 120s from 380-410 and this character. Just wish the game launched like this at the start.
There are specific BIS gear that gets dropped from PvP and Mythic plus. I and many others have been arguing for a separation of the pvp and pve gearing systems. There was a time where pvp gear would come from a vendor solely that I want us to go back to.
But on a more basic level you still do get gear from a variety of sources. Not every BIS drop but 95% of the pvp gear is good and some trinkets and rings that drop from pvp are BIS. So I see you want to shift the argument from only BIS gear drops from specific places but that still does not counter the argument that you can get gear from a variety of places.
There are, undeniably, good arguments on both sides of the fence but keeping essences character-wide instead of account-wide clearly outweighs the other side. If it wasn’t for essences I’m not really sure what I’d even log in for until 8.3 since they give me something to work towards. I am honestly glad that the developers also see that character-wide essences have more going for it than account-wide do.
I think at some point to draw people in a progression to account-wide should happen though. However not to the level that people want it. I would be perfectly happy having a rank 3 gives a 1 and rank 4 giving 2 sort of system for alts. You get a majority of the tools to get you going but the grind still exists. Also they really need to remove the timegating. From what I last checked mechagon is getting fixed so that the progression sprockets drop regularly from m+ after the first kill of the week. However the lockouts for AEP essences, Ripple in space (yeah I know not a desirable one), and the m+/cns have to go. The latter one can drop from m+ end chest and end of match at a rate that Blizzard deems the average person did m+/rated pvp in a week (so say like every 4 or 5 dungeons, and 15 matches you get the currency amount you would have gotten in your weekly chest). That way people can binge play in a week to get their rank 3s, if they really tried hard enough.
Well, grinding essences out makes working on alts seem torturous to me. Even with the reputation nerf coming in 8.3 its still going to be awhile of doing daily content. Also want to point out that for Nazjatar, if you don’t pet battle it takes even longer to get the remaining rep.
I do not think keeping essences character-wide outweighs anything. The game is boring to me because I have this Shaman, geared to the teeth and have my essences. My DK on the other side, is at 430 something now so its good enough for an alt, but the essences are taking longer. Same with any other alt. It sucks.
I agree. Rep Tabards or the 100% increased rep token would do wonders to help with the timegating, and the Tabard could eliminate it all together.
When I last checked they were putting in BoA rep tokens. They should make the spare crates boa (yeah the recycling box is that sort of). Mechagon was the real pain when it came to essences. The rep came naturally but the resources were so annoying.
Lastly, what they should really really do is attach rep to the dailies in nazjatar (you only get it from the level up). I got level 30 on all the followers and my rep gains have plummeted since then. Forced to use a contract and do the 8.0 WQs at times when I want to get the paragon box for rank 4. Shouldn’t be like that. Also buff the rep from each WQ there and the overall WQ in mechagon by 25%
They should add a vendor that sells all Rank 3 Essences that are BOA for a nominal ($1000g) fee once you have reached exalted with the new factions. That way all the returning players don’t have to grind all the outdated zones, and up-to-date current players can fairly easily equip their alts.
8.3 is all about the corrupted gear, and making us waste time on the Essence grind is just stupid. C’mon Blizz, just let us buy them.
Those of us who play the game and don’t just post on a 110 alts who definitely have like, a bunch of mains but we dont play them much because our dad works for nintendo won’t be silent Spottl.
All to level 30!? My boredom meter flew off the gauge and no cloak will save my sanity for it and those bodyguard dailies.
I was so turned off from a lot of BFA when I saw at launch how low the reputation gain is… it’s like if that’s your main mechanic to slow people down, at least make it from more options, give us a bone and boost the damn things once in a while… I swear you’d think the people at HQ Blizz see the player as a mouse in a maze and the human moving the cheese every time you get close to it, lol.
So true. Honestly for about 2 months, I blew off doing the bodyguards because akana (the hunter bodyguard) had the WORST dailies to do. Terrible drop rates and annoying ways to get credit. Had I started with the rogue or shaman it would have been more fun.
And really the only reason why I did it was to get the rank 4 essence. It’s a pipe dream by Azeroth’s champion looks like such a great title.
Kudos for getting them to level 30 though - once I got pathfinder, I left the two zones for a long while, I’ve really only done them now recently for an alt to get her extra rep.
Good luck for that achievement/title though, seems like something that would kill anyones’ soul to ever touch WoW again! lol
[quote=“Marshmellowg-shattered-hand, post:473, topic:375614, full:true”]
There are specific BIS gear that gets dropped from PvP and Mythic plus.[/quote]
Gear <> Essences
the difference in BIS piece that comes from pvp vs the same piece minus a minor trait is minimal.
lets say the pvp one gives you gutripper, the pve one M+ give you overwhelming power and the raiding one give you idk you name it.
the difference in those 3 pieces is less than 1k dps.
the difference in 1 essence at rank 1 vs rank 3 is huge. not having the right essence vs using what you can get from the content you want to do is also huge.
based on your logic then AP shouldn’t scale and we all should be like level 20 and our alts should be 5 or so, nobody is grinding the AP game 3-4 times.
right now if you level an alt, in less than 2 weeks you catch up. on AP and gear doing the right content (I just did it 2 times pugging M+ on 2 chars) you will unlock your 65 neck 3rd essence and you wont have any to put there.
heck my paladin which is a tank only spec has only 2 essences while the neck is level 65. I cant unlock anything because I only tank dungeons with him.
The achievement for Memory of Lucid dreams rank 4 has been made account-wide on the 8.3 PTR.
This means that you can get Memory rank 4 on any characters so long as one of your characters has done the achievement! This has been tested and you can see the latest article on wowhead.
Seems like an early step toward the idea that earning a rank 4 allows you to get it on alts with rank 3, we’ll see more later I suppose
Well technically, if its 8.3 for a year you’ll have plenty of time to gather the essences on your alts… LOL
I do agree with account bound, just not the argument you used…
You can acquire different essences from a variety of sources, from raiding, dungeons, PvP, and even pet battles can be used to obtain the reputation ones…
???
No change.
The argument was clear;
No. No, you can not.
PvP all you like; you aren’t getting Ink Pod or Visions of Perfection out of it. Much like you aren’t going to get Blood of the Enemy from raiding EP.
Unlike gear however, essences are completely devoid of RNG. You want a particular one? Cool. Go over and pick it right up.
You can get all Rank 1 Essences within a single week.
Pretty sure you are wrong on this. But then again, you are just throwing out random numbers without context.
I don’t know why you focus on Minor traits, Majors are by far the more impactful ones we can compare. Plenty of Major trait combos are only available through pieces obtained from PvP, M+ or Raiding exclusively. There aren’t multiple options for many of these. E.g. Arms Warrior: Lord of War + Striking the Anvil on Shoulders. Is a combo you find on PvP pieces. Warrior: Bastion of Might + Reckless Flurry on Shoulders from M+. Not found in PvP.
Really?
Bloodmallet has some pretty informative charts… that don’t match up with what you are claiming here. A lot of Major essences have a difference of around 1k- 2k going from Rank 1 to Rank 3 according to Bloodmallet. Even less pronounced among minor essences. Heck, some essences like Purification Protocol Rank 1 > Rank 2 & Focusing Iris Rank 2 > Rank 3 are just plain flat when it comes down to it. Hardly a difference at all between adjacent ranks in both cases.
You are confusing the words “most gear” with “all gear”.
I hope you realize that there are bis trinkets from pvp also. It also means you can get all the slots of gear for your character from only pvp or only pve. You can have good fear from head to toe. With essences you are forced to the most boring daily grind ever invented for BFA for weeks without having a shred of entertainment value in there.
Only essences force you to do one type of content for power progression.
and those bodyguard dailies.