Crest cap, upgrade paths, and gear walls

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

So this week started and like mqny others i giddily went to the vault, got some goodies, earned my half spark and did ny weeklies.

Then i noticed something dark, insidious, and evil lurking in my gear path.

I was capped on runed crests.

Suddenly there was a great wall in upgrading my gear, many pieces of gear still requiring runed crests to get them to the point where i could spend guilded.

I thought this was a little odd so i asked my guildmates if they had a similar issue, turns out many others also started the week capped on runed crests.

Now ill pose the question here, are any of you running into the crest cap wall this week?

2

No, but I try to not waste crests. If you upgrade 1/6 hero pieces, that’s entirely on you.

3

Better off just making 675 gear with your gilded crests, tbh. Guaranteed near BIS slot filled every 2 weeks (not counting the 2 we already can have) plus vault. Then start using gilded to finish upgrading hero/myth pieces 1/2 through the season once you’re already high 660’s-low 670’s.

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4

I didn’t start the week capped on runed crests. Like everyone else, I had to do content to get 90 more of them.

Upgrading champion items to 649 is the real waste.

5

Should have X/270 runed crests X/270 gilded crests and X/360 carved and weathered crests.

6

The cap will go up. This is why I play alts so I can keep playing

7

The real stupidly pointless and B.S. gating mechanic going on is Crest caps. LET ME PLAY THE GAME HOW I WANT TO. if people wanna grind crests, LET THEM. The cap is an asinine attempt at time gating that screws over people who are trying to be or remain competitive in PVE. Especially people who have horrendous luck with rolls and gear drops i.e. me in almost every season. Catalyst caps on a bi-weekly basis is also just the silliest nonsense. Just make it weekly.

Whatever notion presented for time gating upgrading gear, it’s not sensible from a player power and player experience perspective, and it’s wild Blizzard just hasn’t caught on or doesn’t care to after this long.

If you keep someone from gaining progressive by some arbitrary stop gap that has nothing to do with the player’s skill, they’re just gonna walk away from the game. If this is some kind of weird notion to get them to play alts in some convoluted scheme to keep them playing, that doesn’t work either. Eventually they’ll get capped on their alt. And most people will just put down the game and play something else.

I’m annoyed and venting because this thread touched exactly on what my frustration is with focusing on one character so I can stay competitive in the PVE space and be effective during progression raiding. Just sick of the arbitrary artificial walls.

2 Likes
8

No, crest caps are good.

Rather not feel the pressure of maximizing gear at such an unreasonable level.

Plus, crest caps incentivize people to improve.

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9

Caps are what help keep people with more/less time to play in a given week competitive with each other, not the opposite.

Uncapped power grinds just lead to a fast, massive disparity in power between players right out of the gate. Cant play for a few days? Now you’re sitting at 645 competing for spots with players 670+ who did grind early.

Caps/time gated help the average player, not hurt.

I’m also not opposed to just deleting the entire upgrade system all together but that is a different topic.

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10

There has to be a better way to do this. With the Dungeon scoring system, the bloat of upgrade currency types, the bloat of dungeon difficulties and the restrictions around selecting gear from Vault tracks. This is insanity, and gating gameplay just feels awful.

Uncap the upgrade materials, get rid of the extra currency types or cut them in half, get rid of the Dungeon Scoring, get rid of the death time penalties, the timers. Keep the difficulties, and tie the rewards to those difficulties, but prune the number of difficulties. Let people do the dungeons and let the ability to finish them or not due to skill and gear be the deal.

Sick and tired of playing game systems designed around E-Sports competitive garbage. I didn’t sign up for the game to become a second job or to play it like an E-sport. I’ve been doing raid progression gameplay since day one, took many breaks. Maybe I’m just tired of the stress of showing up and trying to have fun and every aspect of the game turning into a damn sweat festival and peen measuring contest.

And this isn’t an argument to “dumb down” the game play experience. But some serious consideration in design adjustments to the state of the game play should really need to be looked at. I’ve managed to put in the work to try and get my gear up to snuff but bad luck rolls and drops plague me, regardless of the work I put in and I get the impression I’m not alone in this experience.

I have to be able to make the most out of every single piece I get just to keep up. This can’t be how the game continues to be for people. I don’t see how that is fun on the whole for the bulk of the player base. Again I can’t be the only person feeling this way.

Let us pick gear from every track in the damn vault. Like what’re we doing here? Raid, M+, and Delves and you’re telling me I can only pick ONE item from all that work I put in AND you’re gating my ability to upgrade the ONE thing I could get? GTFOH.

Maybe it sounds counter intuitive to argue for less sweaty play but also be interested in grinding to upgrade any morsel of improvement gear I get. I used to multi-alt. I decided to focus on one character pretty much the whole season.

I just want to be able to work on that one thing and not pay attention to anything else. It feels frustrating to have any amount of that effort get stop gated by weird little time gates. Again, I’m annoyed and venting.

11

The upgrqde system is a convoluted opaque mess.

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12

I crafted an extra 675 piece and also converted down 15 gilded to runed (can do this when capped on runed FYI) … this allowed me to only spend valor stones on the crafted slot, and the 15 i traded down got me the Harbinger of the Runed achievement, so i only need gilded crests moving forward.

Big tip though - At the START of the week, convert UP all weathered/carved/runed crests before doing weekly content. You can’t convert up crests when already capped from weekly activity!

13

why would you convert down? That’s shooting yourself in the foot.

You’re ignorant to how crest discounts work.

14

I had 655 legs and nothing worth spending 15 gilded on, so i converted them to runed, upgraded legs to 658, got the achievement and 100 free valorstones. Why wouldn’t I convert?

15

hero track is easy to come by, and gilded is in short supply.