Account-Bound Essences

Most of the essences are hidden behind a long grind. Many of these grinds were “softened,” but they’re still long, boring grinds. I have many alts and I used to enjoy running mythics to keep them geared, but since 8.2 I have let most of them rot as they are gated behind such a long and boring grind. This seems to be a problem that has plagued a large portion of the community. I am proposing a simple fix to this problem.

Account wide essences are the solution. Players will still have to earn the essences, but they will no longer have to earn them again and again and again before toons are even worth playing. This will remove the issue of player fatigue while maintaining the challenge of obtaining the essences to begin with.

What are your thoughts on making essences account-wide? What do you see as a con to this simple and elegant solution?

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You can have account wide essences when I get account wide rings and trinkets.

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My thoughts are let’s make a megathread, because there are way too many topics spamming the forum about it. We can keep it all together there and not spread out.

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What are you trying to say here? Rings and trinkets are obtained through a very different means than essences and have a far less impact on gameplay. While account-wide gearing would be interesting, it would have a very different impact than removing arguous rep grinds/quest chains/timegates that prevent people from playing alts.

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They have a huge effect on gameplay, Azshara’s Font of Power was used during mythic N’zoth lmao

They have the technology.

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Have my support, I still haven’t opened up mechagon on this guy yet to get the essence from there because I don’t feel like doing the boring intro quest then the following grind.

That of course leads to a problem of new characters not having enough essences to fill all the minor slots eventually, I had that issue shortly after maxing this guy, got my third slot very quickly but only had two essences so had to find the least annoying grind to get a third just to get the UI to shut up about the empty slot.

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So you are opposed to account-wide essences because certain trinkets, which are loot drops from a raid, are better than other trinkets?

This is comparing apples to oranges. You can’t step foot into real content without first grinding out essences, which can take weeks. Your toon just won’t function properly. You can, however, do most content without the best trinkets and rings.

Players will still EARN the essences if that’s where your argument is coming from, but they won’t have to grind the same essence, in the same way, over and over again.

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No I want BoA essences too, I was just stating that trinkets have a huge impact on gameplay which is contrary to what you said about them.

Imagine comparing essences to gear. Bye.

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Im not really a fan of account bound content in most situations. But the degree to which they have lessened the grind isn’t nearly enough either. But this expansion has just gone from bad to worse, and now we just have an endless grind loop to cap it off. And IMO no part of the loop is actually fun. Ive given up on WoW for the remainder of this expansion. I’ll try again when Shadowlands comes out.

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I understand the hope for account-wide trinkets, but a full group of people that don’t have their bis trinkets can walk into a mythic 0 and still have it go relatively smooth.

The same can not be said for essences. If you try to do any content without your essences equipped, good luck.

I normally don’t like measures that just erase gameplay from the game but, NGL if I could just not bother with Mechagon on my DH, that would be awesome.

I already Purification Protocol rank 3 on 6 other characters and Null Dynamo rank 3 on 5 characters (before the 8.3 nerf) I don’t have it in me to do all that again.

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My thought is that essences should be account-wide to the same extent that other character progression, like gear and experience, should be account-wide.

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It’s an easy way to dismiss the topic.

Funny thing is, a lot of the people who were dumping on account wide essences have vanished off the face of the planet after Blizzard added yet another layer of systems with the cloak.

Maybe they finally know what people were talking about when they said the multiple layers of systems in BfA aren’t fun to do more than once.

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So is working towards gaining BiS gear. Will that be your next demand. Will you cry and QQ how hard it is to get the BiS gear and since you have already earned in on another class it should be auto for alts?

It isn’t a mount, battle pet, cosmetic gear or a title like everything else that is bound to account yet you want it treated as such because to have it otherwise means you have to work at getting your alts to top DPS.

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Rank 1 should be. With how quickly you unlock essence slots and how slowly you gain essences…

But no more than that.

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It does not make any sense, when has any part of character progression ever been account wide? Essences are tied to your neck. The neck is a piece of gear. It makes absolutely zero sense for it to be account wide.

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I’m working on some essences which I’ve found annoying. I have them on two of my other characters at level 3 but not this yet; Conflict and Strife level 3. I understand Blood of the Enemy is another one that frustrates people.

Besides the PvP one, I don’t see any essence that hasn’t already had a big hit to the requirements be it a drop of 21k rep (exalted to revered) or a decrease in mats required (mechagon). Memory of Lucid dreams 3 now takes a week and one day.

If this were the case then there wouldn’t be such an outcry from the community to make them account-wide. Essences aren’t simply a piece of gear, they are an essential talent that you have to unlock through long and often timegated grinds. Unlocking them once makes sense, but unlocking them on every single alt prevents many people from maintaining their alts.

If you are actually curious about what the argument for account-wide essences is, then I suggest you actually read the initial post and the comments that follow.

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