Legion set the bar slightly lower and the lowering of the bar started at Warlords.
It’s so low now that not even James Cameron can find it.
The fact that you can practically skip on normal-mythic 0 and go straight into m+ without learning the dungeons thanks to how spoiled we are with loot from wqs, emissaries, and warfronts is primarily what I’m talking about.
It’s not necessarily just that casuals have gear like this, it’s that there starting point in dungeons would have to be mid-high m+, or at least heroic for raiding.
The earlier levels are extremely trivial and arguably not as effecient when you can just use catch up mechanics.
When your starting point for pve is considered challenging content, when you haven’t even touched the lower difficulties for said content, the progression system is flawed.
When I say linear I mean normal-heroic-mythic-m+, but obviously the lower difficulties and non current tiers seem to always be left in the dust.
Edit: Another problem is that professions aren’t a feasible means of progressing your character anymore. That would be a much better/linear way of improving your character as a casual player.
2 Likes
Absolutely agree, and the issue is worse for newer players who need to be doing content such as M0 and normal raids to learn that content.
When the gear curve automatically pushes you past the point of that content you seek to jump onto the ladder at the point you are at currently.
A lot of people have difficulty because of this, they are going from content such as LFR and warfronts trying to get into Heroic raids and +7s.
The skill gap between those contents are immense and the game is just setting new players up for failure.
It’s like playing junior football and instead of stepping up into club football you go straight into A-League games.
You obviously won’t be prepared for it.
You’re going to do miserable, and you aren’t going to feel good about it.
2 Likes
Honestly, the majority of this could be fixed if professions worked as the primary way for casuals to gear. It would probably feel a lot better to gear through your own hard work being put into your craft, rather than “progress” through a bunch of catchup mechanics. The primary focus would be you playing solo, but still finding a way to contribute to the community.
1 Like
Would also make reputation rewards valuable instead of junk. Because lets face it, rep rewards right now are just 500g transmogs. They are worse than any of the gear you can get from world content.
At least then people would have alternate paths to better items that were accessible.
3 Likes
They will probably end up giving good gear from rep, but it’s probably going to be some crappy rng off of a paragon chest.
Grats on reading past the first 2 posts where we established this wasn’t the topic the OP was going for.
Rep gear used to be pretty worthwhile, too. I remember back in BC, the Cenarions gave druids their first really serviceable tanking weapon above, what, level 43?
Right now though, they’re literally just 500g transmog. Except you also have to keep them in your bag for two hours before vendoring them too.
1 Like
Yep. Literally worthless.
They were valuable for pretty much a week until M+, raids, and warfronts were released.
Most people would not have earned the rep quick enough to use them before outgearing them.
The re-sell thing is so annoying in that case as well. Especially since it’s game time.
This is exactly the point I was trying to get at in my original post.
It isn’t that casual players don’t deserve gear. But what’s happening is that they’re getting all this gear from trivial content. Then they’re trying heroic dungeons, then LFR and M0 dungeons, then normal raids. And at each step what they’re finding is that the gear they’re getting from that content is either lower or only on par with what they’ve already got. So they don’t stick around in that content.
They move up to the next tier. Not because they’re super-hungry for better gear, but because the fact that the gear they’re getting is not an upgrade is kinda telling them they’re in the wrong tier.
But, in fact, in terms of skill cap they might actually be in the right tier already. So they’re skipping through to mid-to-high M+ dungeons and heroic raids, even though this probably wouldn’t have been the natural end point for these players under a more even gear progression system.
Some players might have stopped at heroic dungeons, or M0. Others, like Mystified’s guild friends, might have stopped at normal raids. And IMO this is as it should be. We should be finding the right tier of play for ourselves, and having fun there. But I feel like a lot of players are ending up in tiers above their natural comfort level, and struggling and not having a lot of fun, and only really succeeding once they significantly outgear that content.
1 Like
Option 1: DE it
Option 2: Delete it
Option 3: Transmog it onto gear and you can sell it right away.
You don’t raid, but do you do dungeons?
If you do, then I think you should be able to get your gear upgrades from dungeons. I don’t have any problem with that. My only issue is that the gearing system is propelling a lot of players past that mid-tier content into high-level content that might not be a natural fit for them.
And frankly, the difficulty you’re experiencing with open world mobs is probably because of ilvl scaling, which in my eyes is an abomination of a system. (Essentially, as your ilvl goes up, so does the toughness of the mobs, canceling out much of the benefit of getting better gear.)
Because of ilvl scaling, it’s not unusual for even the better players to find killing mobs in the open world a real chore until about ilvl 350. So the fact that you’re finding it difficult until about ilvl 370 is not massively outside the norm.
So, just to summarise… I don’t think the answer to your problems is to give you massively better gear. I think the better answer is to either get rid of ilvl scaling or at least flatten the curve a lot more than it is at the moment.
2 Likes
Eh, I’d rather get something back off it than delete, give me that “not gonna use it diacount”. Away transmogging usually works, but I have had issues with it not working in the past, its also an additional cost so might as well delete at that stage.
There needs to be a gap between people that do heroic dungeons and WQ’s, people that do M+ and raids, and people that do High M+ and Mythic raids. The problem is that that gap doesn’t exist. There is barely any difference gear wise between the three groups. “I am a filthy casual with a Ilvl 390” I am a heroic raider with ilvl400" or “I raid mythic and I am 415.”
I feel the gear you get should be a reflection of what content you are doing. No one says any one person has to do this or that, do what you want but if your not raiding you shouldn’t be wearing right at raid quality gear, just like someone who is raiding shouldn’t be like “Oh sweet a ilvl385 emissary quest!”
2 Likes
Thank you for your comments, they make me feel no so incompetent. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I don’t do dungeons. I just don’t have that much faith in myself as a healer in the face of the gogogo attitude that seems prevalent.
Based on world bosses and watching Recount, my dps is very much on the low end but that’s primarily due to less than optimized gear and being a clicker (Yeah, boo hiss!) as, according to Icy Veins, my rotation on the affliction lock and demon hunter are about right.
For now I restrict my participation to large groups where I still contribute positively without being a major player and am good about avoiding the shiny and lethal mechanics thanks to DBM.
For now, I’m satisfied with my gearing to get me through the content I enjoy but it means really working all the emissaries, world bosses and war fronts along with any invasions that pop-up. I just worry when people start clamoring about lower gearing for people like me without addressing, as you say, ilvl scaling and/or the curve.
Thanks again for your thoughtful reply.
I would imagine most reasonable people would be in favor of the removal of mob scaling to make doing open world content for more casual players less tedious if the dev team actually scaled down easier content rewards by some margin. Tbh I can’t think of anyone who likes ilevel scaling on mobs outside of some sadists on the development team.
2 Likes
They have gone out of control with the ilvl scaling, and I won’t be surprised when we get the new zones that we suffer from the same fate. I would however like if we had a button to turn on/off scaling like they do in ff14 to make it so you can lvl anywhere in the game.
1 Like
Realistically everyone who enjoys a system where they can get rewarded higher than the content they do should enjoy ilvl scaling, as scaling rewards from WQ/embassies and guaranteed quest rewards like those from warfronts are the exact reason Blizzard felt it was required to implement ilvl scaling in the first place.
If content is going to be constantly rewarding, then it must also be constantly relevant.
Level scaling people may leave on, but if people had the option to turn off ilvl scaling I don’t think anyone would leave it on.
If you can kill 12 mobs for a 370 piece and each mob only takes 4 hits great, but if you could change that so that you only required 1 hit? People in droves would be turning it off for the efficiency.
Personally I would like to see level scaling able to be turned off though. I liked having those difficult zones you may of had to walk through to quest in another zone. It felt dangerous and fun. You had to watch out for roaming crocodiles that came too close to the path and tried to murder you.
The Night Elf wetlands runs are one of my favourite past times from WoW.
1 Like
Pretty much this. I’m wearing a 425 glove. Did I do it by killing something really awesome in Mythic? No, it was a +25 titanforge off a puggable loot pinata.
1 Like