Greetings!
With the release of Embers of Neltharion, we have introduced a new way to upgrade your gear.
What has your experience been like so far? Let us know in this thread, and we greatly appreciate all of your feedback!
1 Like
I think in general itâs nice that the upgrading system now supports raiding, M+, and outdoor content, I canât help but feel itâs confusing on first look. Iâve been trying to explain to my guildies how to upgrade gear and often I donât even know where to start. Especially taking crafting upgrading into the mix.
8 Likes
My only complaints with the system is the fact that it puts more stuff into our already stressed bag space.
and I wish there was more detail on what is what, and what does what. I donât know what the different levels are, if you can even upgrade an item to the next tier of upgrades, or what the individual pieces of stuff youâve thrown into my bags upgrade what, when, or how.
Players should NEVER have to go to the official forums, or website, or another outside game source to figure out how to do things within the game.
18 Likes
Thatâs the big hurdle in my circle of friends also. Itâs just a bit daunting to learn, and gives people flashbacks to the complex systems of the past. âGet X currency to upgrade Y items, and get A currency to upgrade B items, and so on.â
Perhaps it would have been better to just have the same currency to upgrade the different tiers of items, and just have the larger upgrades cost more of the same currency? That is if we actually need the system to begin with.
4 Likes
I just found out you cant just upgrade season 1 crafted items either, you need to make it into a season 2 crafted item (which needs a shadowflame spark) AND then you can recraft it to upgrade to a higher ilvl, so you need to worker order it twiceâŠ
1 Like
The system has so far been a welcome addition, at least for me; itâs useful for getting alts up to speed, itâs put raiding, M+ and outdoor content in the same currency, and the discounted prices when upgrading slots that you already have higher item levels for is extremely welcome. Now if only this could apply across alts too then weâd be really in business. 
I agree with previous concerns that it is yet another set of multiple items that could have maybe been currencies instead, as Crest shards+the crests themselves+the reagents weâre gathering throughout the expansion have weighed down heavily on reagent bag space. These âgather 10 of an item, then click it to make 1x whole itemâ items could maybe do with an overhaul of some kind to prevent bloating bags further, but at the same time Iâm not sure what the solution could be.
Iâve personally not found the upgrade path all that confusing. Itâs maybe a controversial opinion, but I believe the many charts and explanations that were given out prior to the release may have muddied the waters far more and it made it appear far more complex than it really is. It doesnât require much to see how it works through simply using it, as it the costs and items required for the upgrades are spelled out in the upgrade window.
4 Likes
I guess this may have been more appropriate here.
Overall the new system is fine. Itâs confusing at the start, but once weâre well and truly into it it will make more sense.
Let me start by saying I think this upgrade system is such a huge leap forward. Iâve loved the ease of farming the materials required and being able to get some sort of discount for alts is a welcome change.
There are a couple things that I feel could use another look, though.
- Inventory space - In a world where bags are flooded with profession materials and ranks 1-3 of all sorts of items, having to use 8 more inventory spaces for crests and fragments feels bad. Perhaps another unique bag slot like a coin purse for these materials in the future?
- Farming lower-tiers - Having to go back and farm lower-tier content when youâre farming Aspect Crests feels pretty bad. Once youâre capped on Aspect Crests, I think Wyrm Crests should begin to drop instead, and so on and so forth throughout the tiers.
One more extremely minor note that I just noticed before I hit the post button, but is it too much of an economy-buster to make the crests vendor for different prices? Feels weird that my Aspect Crests are worth the same as Whelplings.
Great new system, though!
11 Likes
The Crest system has some pros and cons
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(+)You can get the currency to upgrade items from any type of content. Finally it isnât only M+ with Valor. Being able to still find upgrades after youâve beaten a difficulty of raid but not quite there for progressing through higher difficulties is so nice.
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(+)Crest discount for having a high ilvl item of that slot already. Sometimes from M+ secondary stats or special effects make another item strong but you canât justify spending resources on it to beat our your higher ilvl piece. No that doesnât matter.
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(-)Limited crests. Just uncap this stuff from the start. The previous point kind of alleviates some of this in the crest system vs M+ valor but it is still annoying. Let people grind if they want to. It doesnât hurt anyone. If I have a whole day of game playing, which I donât usually have, let me grind it out if I want to. The seasons always felt better once valor was uncapped.
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(-)Bag bloat. I donât know why every expansion needs more and more junk that goes in our bags. This is compounded but the strange decision that was made to have qualities for materials. Just as another game got rid of that for a lot of materials, Blizzard brings it to us in WoW to torment us. Crests should really be a currency. You used the Currency tab for Flightstones, why not crests too? Just make every upgrade take 15 crests to upgrade instead of making us turn 15 fragments into a crest itself. Save us from the bag bloat!
5 Likes
Bag bloat has been weird. Even if we didnât have full crests, and just fragments wouldâve cut down the inventory space by half, which wouldâve felt good. I also think the amount of currencies across and the amount of tiers feel bad. Current thoughts on the system:
Pros:
- Similar to M+ S1 valor upgrades, I donât feel like Iâm losing out on items I get in raid OR most dungeons. I can âupgrade anythingâ. Usually, normal items from raid are invalidated because of the previous mythic tier in terms of an item level comparison. Knowing I can upgrade normal loot to be still better than the previous tier mythic we clear feels really good, and bridges the gap between getting it in heroic vs normal. So that just feels wonderful.
- For the average joe, upgrading even regular gear in the world has felt good - This is feedback from two friends of mine. I donât have a huge grasp on this yet, havenât started my alts.
Cons:
- Unlike Season 1 M+, I have no reason to run lower m+ on my main with friends other than to carry them. I donât get crests that Iâll logically use, and any special/key items I get if I wanna min-max canât really be upgraded to the item level I want, so I have to farm the keys on the higher end still.
- The upgrade system is still just so confusing with how many currencies there are, but itâs a decent start since everything is malleable
I think to address the first con my original thought was âWhat if there was a reagent that can upgrade an item from tier to tier, something that we can only do once a week like with a catalyst system on a really good itemâ, but that just keeps muddying the waters with how complex the entire crafting system is. Then I thought, âWhat if we just used the flightstones to upgrade item level to a certain range/rank, then only used the crests to upgrade that to another range/rankâ. I think this would work out far better, and gives us some incentive to still farm lower end keys - realistically, you can get a key from a +5 and upgrade it to the highest item level, instead of âwelp, I still gotta farm a high-end key to upgrade thisâ.
What Iâm getting at is: I had a guildie who got a Fragment from halls in a +11 at the start of the season, and he was happy - but he still knew he had to keep grinding halls to eventually replace it with the same thing. It feels counter-productive to have a system encouraging us to upgrade our gear, but being required to re-farm the same item if you want it at the highest item level that weâre being encouraged to obtain.
1 Like
The existing crest and fragment arrangement certainly contributes to inventory management concerns. While I canât promise anything at this early stage, moving crests to the Currency tab is under serious consideration and I think itâs more likely to happen than not for next season. Additionally, having players capped on a given tier of crest getting the next tier down as fallback rewards is under discussion.
And yes, I did implicitly reveal that our current tentative plans are that this system will be iterated on for Season Three.
38 Likes
Thank you for the feedback, Team : - )
2 Likes
Really glad to hear this is being talked about.
I can understand incentivizing players to do lower keys so other players arenât finding it so difficult to get groups for 2-15 level keys, but players who max out their Aspect crests can just as easily choose to do easier dungeons for the same currency rewards if they want to.
Just feels bad to do content that awards worse gear to keep up with the currencies.
6 Likes
Wasnât one of the reasons this system got implemented to prevent people from farming easier content for rewards? Because this is exactly what is happening. The conversion rate should be 1 Aspect Shadowflameâs Crest for 2 Wyrmâs Shadowflame Crest.
It starts to become a chore if we need to do mythic key 11-15s (ofc youâll pick an 11 for speed) just to upgrade our heroic raid gear.
Yes. It should be in the currency tab. Shards should just automatically convert to a full crest, but even having just the shards in the bag which the crests getting put into currency tab when complete would help.
Yeah, I feel like with the 3rd party resources and stuff people post in discord, it makes it really easy. For someone who is more casual and doesnât use anything like that, I can see it being rather convoluted.
100% biggest gripe is that if Iâm doing 16+ and get capped on one currency, I have to go do 11-15 instead for the other currency once I run out, despite needing the higher ilvl gear I am targetting in 16+ keys.
I have found absolutely 0 use for whelp rank crests on my main past week 1, and canât even send them to alts. We should be able to trade upward and not just downward for these.
1 Like
What they are saying here is that if you are capped on rewards you would receive for doing say a +15 that the next time you do a +15 you get the next tier crest fragment down. So youâd be doing harder content than the crest you are receiving.
That will still cause people to go the easier route and farm +11s, just make an +18-+20 drop both of them at the same time imo
1 Like
I donât think you understand. I will try to rephrase it. If you do understand, I apologize.
Say you were doing +15 keystones. +15s drop Wyrm crests. Youâve capped out on Wyrm crests already. You cannot get anymore for the week. Instead of no crest dropping after completing another +15, people want the 15 to drop the next lower tier crest. In this case you would get a Drake crest for completing a +15 since you are capped on Wyrm crests.
General Feedback
The new System feels overall very great and is a welcome addition. You can upgrade a non-BiS replacement without woring about losing out ressources while you farming your BiS. For my personal experience it felt a bit to fast in terms of gearing, which is general great if you enjoy having twinks but also cost longterm motivation on the main. The best part of a season is getting new gear (atleast for me).
Possible Solutions
10 crests for the higher tier (Wyrm/Aspect) seems like too much per week. Iâd really like to see this halved going on to make gearing a bit slower and still allow heroic gear to be an upgrade through raid week 4.
This also prevents the equipment curve between people with lots of time and people with little time from being as wide as it is now (423 - 440 atm. from my observation in m+). If you pursue getting all crests per week you in for alot of M+ and Raiding, which I personally donât have an issue with but I can imagine some might have.
I personally liked the old system a little better because of a single currency. This system also when you first start out can be kind of confusing to understand with how many different tokens there are. If I just came back to WoW after taking a long break this system would confuse me and might overwhelm me at first. However after doing the proper reading mind you outside of the game, I rather like this new system and so do a few of my friends and guild mates.
Maybe if there was a way to simplify it a little bit perhaps by getting rid of the part where you have to gather 15 of the little tokens to turn it into the main component it would free up some bag space and make it easier for people to understand without having to exit the game and go to a guide.