It has come to my attention that Blizzard has implemented changes that disproportionately affect casual and alternate character players. These changes, including the removal of daily world quests and the time-gating of the Looking for Raid system, as well as the decision not to make Renown and Reputation account-wide, have made it harder for these players to access gear upgrades. The Great Vault system, which provides weekly high level loot only to players who have completed mythic plus or raid content, has further exacerbated this issue. As a result, casual and alternate character players are now effectively required to engage in mythic plus or raid content in order to access gear upgrades, contrary to Blizzard’s previous promises to make the game more accessible to these players in Dragonflight. The low level of gear available through world quests and the Primal Storm event, as well as the time-gated nature of the Storm Sigils needed to purchase level 385 items, further disadvantage these players. In order to increase one’s ilevel in the current state of the game, it seems one must either be part of a hardcore guild with the necessary resources and addons, or have a high ilevel, logs, and DPS meters. These changes have resulted in a widening of the gap between casual & world content players and mythic plus & raid players, leading some players to cancel their WoW subscriptions and look for alternative MMOs. This gear discrepancies has now persuaded me to do the same.
I agree with your assessment. Unfortunately, this game has never really supported casual players, and probably never will. You see, in their zeal to appeal to “hard core players”, and e-sport enthusiasts, they have miss a golden opportunity to make a game that appeals to ALL play-styles. In my opinion, a more inclusive game would appeal to a larger market and ensure a healthy longevity for the game.
Except that…it always has? Most content is causal and/or solo.
Yep, this is very very bad design. It all comes down to coddling mythic keys players. Artificially limiting pug raid access is one of the most blatant illustrations of this.
But imagine me saying that I thought doing keys was too chorish. And then Blizzard eliminated them, so I didn’t feel FOMO while completing my world content. It’s grand entitlement.
Blizzard is going to need to figure this out. The expansion is showing a lot of signs of being on a great trajectory. But these issues are a major problem and need to be addressed sooner than later.
Are you aware of the WM/Trial/Elemental gear you can get? All entirely open world gear with two having tier sets.
I noticed you mentioned elemental there and you can get full 385 pretty reasonably through those and casual PvP.
None of it compares to key gear. What they should be doing is open up difficult solo routes to key level gear. And most certainly shouldn’t artificially cap LFR to three normal bosses.
The invasions are more geared towards gearing alts. If such a thing is sufficient then you would be satisfied with having keys be a mechanism to gear alts then correct? While the more advanced gearing is done with other activities?
I’m
I’m a casual and mythic level raider. Casual just means time invested and has zero to do with level of play.
It’s simple. This game rewards based on difficulty and group content. If you choose to limit yourself you only have yourself to blame.
This isn’t new. LFR has always been time gated and staggered into wings. It’s the trade off you get for choosing to do the entry level solo content.
I disagree. I’ve found that this is easily one of the best expansions for world content. There’s a veritable plethora of well rewarding world content. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. 
How far should open world gear get up to?
Cause idk man a raid tier above m0 is fair enough in my opinion.
I think open world should grant the best gear in the game. But of course open world content would need to have an increased difficulty to impart this.
They could even add partially controlled NPC parties. You would have more variables to work with to make the content even more difficult than keys – though taking it in such a direction would be a bad idea.
A question none of you clowns ever seem to be able to answer is what will you even do with the gear once you have it? World Quests? I know you want to progress your characters or whatever but what do YOU intend to do with mythic level gear?
I’ve answered that question every time it’s been asked me but I’ll answer it again. Better gear helps you do pretty much anything in this game. Killing mobs faster can help you gather materials for professions with more efficiency, for instance.
Not only that, but you could use your gear for more solo content to push higher keys or whatever scaling they have for their design.
Furthermore, if I want to jump into group keys, I will already be geared for whatever level my gear is at.
Pretty much the same reason people want gear from keys.
Mate I am like 375 and I explode elites in the open world. No. What are you really after?
Did you read the rest of that post? I gave several other reasons. And no you’re not one shotting every enemy, especially elites.
I kill elites quickly enough that they are no longer a threat to me. My gear is barely better than the stuff you can farm from primal storm events. Do not start with me. I am always right.
I think this would make doing higher difficulty content less satisfying. I want to feel like I’m working my way up to strong gear.
For this reason I believe they scaled rewards to +20:
However even as a casual player let’s say you stuck to the weekly quest, conquest gear and maybe +2/+3 keys. You would still eventually end up in the high 390’s because valor upgrades go up to 392 for no rank and 395 for a rating of 600 (something you’d get anyway for doing all dungeons at +2/3). That plus the occasional heroic piece from the 4 m0 dungeon quest that comes rarely and the free primal infusion when Razageth comes to LFR means there’s a lot of sweet easy gear progression to come.
Yeah, zones of elite mobs with empowered abilities is sure solo friendly.
I keep wondering why this is an issue for world content players. You don’t need a lot of gear to do well in the world content. The progression is renown, achievements, pet collection, professions… things like this are also a form of player progression. Not just gear upgrades. Plus it’s more fun to do it with others, some of the outside content encourages group play. If you want more gear then you do harder content that gives better gear so you can keep progressing it to do more harder content.
This expansion so far actually feels friendly for alts. You can jump into anything you were doing on them right away when you reach max level. There is no legendaries or covenants or conduits or torghast there to keep you from jumping in.
Well since you’re always right I guess this is a futile effort but, if you got better gear, you would kill them faster. If you are not one-shotting things, then there is always room for faster killing. Thus more efficiency, thus more materials collected per hour.