Hi everyone, I wanted to explore some ideas to revamp how M+ works. I love the current idea of how crests scale with level of difficulty. What about a redesign of the current system to scale directly with gear as well?
All Gear Drops are Scaled with the Difficulty of Content
End of dungeon mythic + gear drop can be strictly rewarded based on the level of key you are doing rather than a grouping of hero or mythic track item gear. For example, Mythic dungeon level 8s can drop level 8 gear item level (let’s say -item level 624 gear) and 10s can drop 626. This can scale up in item level gear based on key level.
Respectively, raids will similarly drop a set item level gear that is directly based on the advancement of raid content. Earlier bosses will drop lower item level gear and later bosses will scale up (similar to higher keys). Additionally, easier content such as normal raid will drop lower item level gear than heroic raid. Therefore, LFR first boss will drop the lowest item level gear and Mythic raid final boss will drop the highest item level gear and the rest of the gear will scale from difficulty and advancement of raid. Each raid kill will also drop relevant crests - see below.
Crests Will Now Improve the Quality of a Gear
Collected crests can be used to increase the quality of gear (not item level). Quality of gear can be between 0 to 3 star quality. Weathered crests can increase the quality of a gear from baseline to 1 star quality. Runed will increase to 2 stars. Gilded crests can increase gear to 3 star quality item -which is the max quality. However, using crests only gives us a chance to an upgrade. Weathered crests have a 75% chance to successfully increase. Runed crests have a 35% chance to increase. And gilded crests have a 15% chance to increase. This makes gearing up more rewarding and thrilling to some degree. The benefit of a 1 vs 3 start quality can be only a small difference but slightly improved. Therefore, it is not mandatory to always try to get a 3-star quality item. But if you wish to - you will need to do the highest level of content.
Crest Exchange and Rates
LFR can drop valorstones only. Normal raid will drop weathered crests. Heroic raid will drop runed crests, and mythic raid will drop gilded crests. Remember, all item that is dropped are 0-star quality at baseline. Each crest drop amount can vary. But possibly about 15-20 per boss or per dungeon. And potentially 40 can be used at a time for the chance to upgrade gear. Additionally, weekly vaults will always drop gear from your highest difficulty completed dungeon or raid. Leftover crests can be used to purchase a gem slot or a high chance to refresh vault to fish for a specific gear.
Conclusion
Not everyone needs mythic gear or highest quality gear and this is reflected by minimal scaling upgrades between one difficulty to the next. For example, someone doing a level 10 is only a few item level gear off from a 12. However, there is no reason why someone will want to farm 10s only since there is no track item and vault gives highest item gear always. They still need to complete a certain number of dungeons or bosses to unlock the vault slot but it will always reward highest content done. That being said, the dungeons need to scale as well. There can’t be a heavy wall from 11-12s keys as it is now.
Ultimately, this system will push higher rated players to only push highest content and avoiding taking up lower rated slots. While they may farm lower-level crests initially along with everyone else, this will quickly be offset in only doing harder content to push the highest quality gears.