3rd character, end me now.
3 Likes
Here is a good reason to make the essence grind less ridiculous. In 8.1, I would have 7 raid ready/M+ ready characters. This means I was running heroic BOD and a weekly 10 on most of them and with very little effort, they were viable for mythic raiding and key pushing.
With the essence and benthic grind, it’s not possible to do that unless you play the game as a job. This means instead of me doing weekly 10’s and carrying people on my alts, it just means I don’t play my alts. The casual player struggling to get a 10 key done for the week will have less chances to get it done because hardcore players literally have no reason to do lower keys.
15 Likes
4th. Literally chosen because it had the least painful bis to farm.
Exactly this. I have played overall less time in season 3 I think because instead of logging to alts I log out and go do something else. I went from 6 characters that I would do weekly keys on down to 2 now.
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this is objectively false
Conflict and Strife, one of the best essences for anyone, is only possible to acquire in 3 weeks at 2100+ rating, which is not the case for a majority of players
Visions of perfection takes 4 weeks minimum, acquiring rank 1 and 2 by doing mechagon, and then doing the dungeon in hard mode twice to get rank 3 quicker
unironically farming the bg essence in less than 3 weeks takes a burden on your sanity, so congrats to you if you managed that
it’s true for a few of them, the “takes months to complete” part is due to the incredibly unmotivating factor there is in the grind.
now please contribute to the thread in a constructive manner or just go away would you
arguing how long essences take is not relevant, once again the point is doing it on alts after you did it the first time on your main is incredibly tedious and has no point since you’ve done it all already.
literally no downside to boa essences 
15 Likes
I mean, if you’re going to judge the amount of time it takes and start making up numbers based on an unmotivating factor then we might as well say that it can take literal years to finish some of them.
Some may argue that it goes against the idea of character progression, which is a standard from the darn of the mmorpg genre.
Some may argue that if we’re going to have certain account-wide gear handed to us then we might as well just have all gear become account-wide.
Some may argue that lazy players shouldn’t be rewarded for not putting in the effort needed to progress alt characters.
Some may argue that alt characters are alts and should not be treated as mains unless you put in the same amount of work as mains.
Just because you don’t like what someone says doesn’t mean they aren’t contributing to the conversation. You’re not the judge on who has input on topics on the forum and who doesn’t. We can all contribute to topics.
1 Like
Pretty much this.
If the content was good, I wouldn’t care.
Grinding dailies and WQs for a month is NOT fun.
But whatever, Fury’s still a good spec, no need for me to play anything else, even though I’d like to try some other classes.
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We have benthic gear that mains can send alts to give them a boost. Why not have similar for essences. Atleast it would be a start.
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well now that you’ve finally said something we can work with…
I agree with this
however, in a world where current WoW is closer to an arpg than a mmorpg (the game basically resets every 6 months with seasons and bfa and major patches in legion), I think this factor has a much smaller weight than it used to in the past
I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the essence system.
Essences are not gear, they are passive/active effects that will entirely disappear in 9.0. It is not a natural character progression system, only an external one meant to compensate for the issues to the azerite system.
They are simply not comparable side by side
Sure, but is there really a point to make you work for your alts to unlock this external character progression? The only thing this does is gating your alt(s) by 1 month or so until your character is actually playable in the high end content.
Considering this, I see only cons to not introduce boa essences, and only pros if Blizzard eventually introduces them.
10 Likes
What are the essences for?
Various specs.
Its particularly harsh on those who play more than one spec.
I’d play at least 3 times as much as I do now if essences were account wide, but I simply refuse to grind time gated, mindless dailies and WQs day after day. I’m in favor of a more alt frienly system for essences.
13 Likes
I mean, ten is a bit of a exaggeration.
I think Yesuna is missing the point a bit.
Anyone whose done mythic content at a high end level knows that every little bit helps and that the essences do play a significant role in the current tier.
With the state of the tier, as well as several guilds losing large portion of their playerbase due to classic, a lot of players have been feeling forced to re-roll (or bring in alts) so that they can better optimise their raiding composition and contribute towards a kill - which is precisely what Tim has done. Therefore, he has had to re-grind all of those essences AGAIN, after just finishing up on one character, and feels like a lot of that time was wasted because it cannot be transferred to a new toon, which as a result cannot optimally perform until the rank 3 essences have been acquired.
There is nothing players can do to speed up the process; it is merely a time-gated and extremely boring grind. Meanwhile, raids continue. As a result, from what I’ve heard from several players, most feel punished in their decision: “do I re-roll to play a better class to better support my team which will not be fully optimised until 2 months’ time or do I stay on the ‘worse’ class which I’ve already finished the grind on.” This can lead to players being burnt out or feeling locked to their current character. I’ve seen players re-roll their class only to quit a few weeks after because they are too burnt out by the essence grind. Tim seems to be among the few who have persisted, and maybe that’s because of his guild and friends.
At least, this is how I see the issue - Tim, correct me if I’m wrong. Having essences account-bound would help to negate these issues, such maximising the player’s ability (ie. bring them in on alts) or help players re-rolling not to feel so punished, “behind” or burnt-out as a result of their choice. The removal of the mindless boredom and mundane nature of the essence grind is really just a bonus, imo, and I commend you for still playing the game on your third essence grind - that’s impressive lol.
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I admire your dedication, OP. I literally cannot be bothered. I want to play so many of my alts, but my god I can’t bring myself to grind essences again. Essences are literally the one thing holding me back. BOA essences please
2 Likes
Now that 8.3 is upon us with more Essences, Azerite levels and Shadowlands content around August 2020, this strongly needs to happen for patch 8.3. Grinding out four Rank 4 Essences on my main was rewarding the first time, now doing this again even slower on my alts, I’ve pretty much settled with rank 3. I’m only concentrating on 3 characters right now, but those grinding out +10 alts with all this grind has got to be painstaking to ensure all of them reach Rank 3 essence levels to ensure maximum capabilities of their traits. I’m very certain those juggling all those alts with endless grind would appreciate if Essences were BoA. Now, on the other side, I can understand that Blizzard never told anyone that Essence grind would be easy, just very time consuming from Worldvein Reconnaissance which takes 3 weeks to grind out and mats within Eternal Palace depending of difficulty and bosses that you’re rewarded with Condensed Life-Force, x9/x18/x36 respectively for Rank1/2/3. Those who are dedicated raider should be able to attain this within 3-4 weeks of grinding EP N/H each week.
In short, this climatic change would benefit WoW players and I can guarantee this will bring in more players back to BFA including new and old.
1 Like
You are just stretching a fair claim, months ago i would had agree with you because we had the azerite power progression, regular gear progression and azerite gear progression.
But then add on top of that another one? Is just too much progression for 1 character and that screws on playing alts.
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Seriously Bind of Account essences is a literal free goal for Blizzard.
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I’d actually be interested in playing my alts at 120 besides the occasional low dungeon run or old content raid run if essences were account-wide. As it is, I simply don’t have the time that I’m willing to commit to re-farming them.
Gearing up is really the easy part of making a new/alt character viable.
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I love how in all of these threads 95% of posters are in favor of the change, but Blizz does nothing
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