With Shadowlands removing Azerite it means we will go back to legion style gearing where we can easily gear to a high ilvl by spamming m+ non stop ON DAY ONE.
That is imo an extremely quality of life improvement compared to the current system because as it stands if you decide to change mains or make an alt, you may farm gear from m+ but your azerite is stuck at 445 unless you get lucky in your first heroic raid for it to drop, plus the fact that newer characters have a harder time getting into raids due to low ilvl. Plus many specs need 3x trait to be rly good resulting in that armor being even more stupidly impatful.
And the worse part is that the amount of stats azerite gear gives are ridiculous, you can go from 420k health to 500k health once you get 3 470/475 pieces.
So thankfully we are once again going to be able to gear our selves efficiently through M+ on the first few days/weeks instead of being at the mercy of RNG from raids or waiting 3 weeks for a piece from m+ vendor
I like it, and I think the game has evolved to where gear matters less and less with easy of acquisition with more focus on external powers.
Which I think was my biggest gripe with the external power systems we’re had. It made preparing a character both gearing, and character progression.
Gear up in 1 day and than working towards external powers I hope will feel like there’s less busywork, but also enough that we don’t see another WoD where players would raidlog and than go play other games.
I mean, I don’t think Azerite Gear was a good system.
But I also think M+ is totally broken and that the ability to farm an entire set of greater than Heroic Raid quality gear over a free weekend is incredibly unhealthy for the game.
M+ needs very large gearing efficiency nerfs. Don’t really care how they do it, but it’s needed. Unfortunately, it seems they’re doing the opposite.
And I mean, like, specifically targeted gearing efficiency nerfs. If M+ is nerfed in the exact same way ALL gear drops are being reduced in Shadowlands, it means nothing and will still be the go-to dominating gearing solution for literally all players willing to join non-queued content.
They are reducing loot drops in Shadowlands, and I believe I saw that M+ caps at Heroic, so the best gear will come from Mythic Raids? Don’t quote me on that.
I see this comment a lot and just want to say this:
Very few people even -touch- Mythic. Even if you only look at RAIDERS (and only raiders who have logs, which generally means slightly higher end raiders), the completion rate for the first boss tends to be like 15% - 30%, dropping down to sub 10% partway through any given raid.
Just because “Oh, Mythic rewards better” doesn’t make invalidating everything before that okay. For most people, Mythic Raiding is NOT going to be their BiS. Because they won’t be touching it. Many people don’t even have the OPTION of touching it without server transferring or rerolling to another server.
I guess this might be more annoying for groups that want to raid, but don’t do Mythic (maybe due to lack of interest in their servers/etc) but want their raid loots to matter more than M+. I don’t have a good answer other than staggering M+ Ilvls every week on a new patch, upto Heroic ilvl?
I don’t know what the solution would be. And it’s not even about Raid Loot being automatically better. It’s about being equivilant.
The obvious issue is that M+ rewards slightly higher than Heroic Loot (currently) with absolutely 0 diminishing returns or lockout of any kind. You continue gearing as long as you have time to spam dungeons.
I would also argue that the equivalent level of M+ vs Raiding isn’t equal in difficulty, but I know that varies a lot based on multiple things so I won’t push that right now.
Raids have weekly lockouts.
Emissary Quests are once daily, usually with only a couple gear options per week.
Warfronts are once every 3ish weeks.
Timewalking and M0 Weekend Events are once every 5ish weeks.
Even Mythic ZERO dungeons have weekly lockouts, and Heroic dungeons have daily lockouts if you want to spam a specific one (as you can do with M+).
M+ is a weird outlier with no restrictions, and as long as that remains the case, it’s automatically better for gearing. I don’t think the solution after FOUR whole years is to slap on a lockout, it’s too late for that, but it needs SOMETHING.
Decide to change main 2 months after a major patch release.
Need to spend weeks to get to a good gear level and then also many more weeks to get the stuff you are definitely looking for which is what you grind for after you have a good ilvl so you actually get invited in groups.
Sorry but i want to get good gear fast on my new main instead of having to wait weeks to get a good gear piece.
Went from hunter to rogue last week, this is my 2nd week and I am stuck with trash 445 azerite because raid didnt drop any and i need 3 weeks to get a good gear piece and hope it has a good trait too.
That is my issue, there’s more progress to be made once you have a high ilvl such as getting the trinkets you rly want, good parses, best combinations of gear etc
The current system leads to people who change mains to feel useless for weeks due to lack of gear
Pretty sure blizzard said they ll be continuing the current design of getting mythic gear from weekly chest while max run will award by above heroic
This is the nature of literally abandoning the character you’ve spent 2 months working on. If you want to instantly be a competitive main after swapping to a new character, they might as well just give us template characters like the MDI.
Sounds gross and like raids will once again not matter like they do this expansion. Without tier gear, M+ is just the best way to go. It’s the most lucrative path and the difficulty doesn’t equate to the reward. +15 for Heroic or better loot is a step in the right direction, at least, but if it’s infinitely spammable than failing doesn’t matter, you can just redo the dungeon forever until you have the whole thing down pat.
M+ as a system is way too lucrative for gearing, and I’ve been critical of it especially this expansion with no tier gear. I’m fine with equivalent gearing, but when one method is leaps and bounds superior, there’s a glaring issue that needs to be addressed. I can only hope that them reducing gear drops extends especially to M+ so it won’t feel like the go to source of loot.
Honestly? This goes directly against the idea of an RPG. You’re meant to take pride in crafting your character; it shouldn’t be so easy to just decide to one day main something else. There’s no connection and allows even easier FOTM. I don’t know, it really removes the idea of your character’s growth as a being in this world. I understand needing alt catch up mechanics or a way to help people who haven’t been playing for a while, I have 20 alts and am aiming for more. But to just be able to change without consequence just feels like the RPG part of this game has been diminished.
Meh, who knows? I’ll continue hoping that M+ will be slammed with some kind of restrictions at some point, but if not I guess I’m stuck running them to remain relevant.
There are three equal progression paths. M+, Raids, PvP. You don’t need to do all three. Why should those people that do not enjoy raids, be hamstrung on progress, because you do?
You thought gearing in Legion was better? It was the same. It was freaking hard to upgrade your weapon just like the Azerites. And you need to have your BiS legendary and you dont know when it would drop. And the there were tons of loot traps with very high ilevel that looks like an upgrade but they are garbage to your specs.
To me, BFA is almost the same. But BFA’s Horrific Vision gear drops seems way better. You can get ilevel 450 on 1 Mask, 455 on 2 Mask, 460 on 3 Mask, 465 on 4 Mask and 470 on 5 Mask with guaranteed Corruption. We had no guaranteed titanforge procs on Legion.
That is just false, there is a difference between RNG and not dropping.
I will happily spam 20 m+ dungeons in a raw and have a a very good chance of getting that weapon.
Meanwhile no matter how much m+ I do, I need 2-3 week before being able to afford a single rng piece of azerite that might not even have good traits.
That is the problem with the current system, azerite either becomes a lucky drop from your weekly raid clear or you have to wait weeks to get it with residium
In shadowlands all gear pieces will be again in the m+ tables letting us get what we need by just spamming the specific dungeon
Source: me being stuck with 445 trash azerite gear and having nothing else to do to upgrade it so I have to sit on my butt for a week or more when raid refuse to drop azerite pieces.
That is my problem, when I have time to do things to get gear but the game limits me till next week so I have nothing to do gear wise other than wait
Look I am weird, I was playing my rogue just fine and suddenly the thought of mm hunter penetrated my brain and I couldn’t stop thinking about it until I changed :l
I don’t think it’s about wanting people who don’t enjoy raiding be hamstrung, but more about not wanting to be hamstrung by not wanting to do M+. Raiding needs a loot chest like M+ at the least.