There are a number of issues with Heirloom gear that I think should be addressed :
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The number of upgrade levels have become too unwieldy. There are 5 boosts for each item.
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The cost to upgrade is exorbitant. A full upgrade for one item costs 13,500g per armor item and 20,250g per weapon item for EACH item to upgrade fully. Items are Head, Neck, Shoulder, Cloak, Chest, Legs, Ring, Trinketx2, Main-hand Weapon, Off-hand Weapon - Thats 121,500g for armor and 40,500g for weapons (yes, some classes only need one) for a total of 162,000g just to fit one armor class. Assuming that Neck, Cloak, Rings and Trinkets are reusable for other armor types and classes and one new weapon per armor type is required that’s another 162,000g for armor and 60,750g for weapons. A grand total of 384,750g to level up 4 armor types worth of heirlooms. Keep in mind, this is just for the minimum number of required Heirlooms, not all that are available!
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Players who stopped playing in older expansions prior to the level squishes and were well geared when they left, log back on and pick up at the same content level but the gear they are wearing is now half the ilvl that that same content is now tuned for. These players need to completely regear ALL of their characters just to get started.
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The set bonus structure is essentially worthless now. The bonus used to grant experience bonuses to a player while leveling. This encouraged players to play. The set bonus now increases the rate of gain of rested experience. This encourages players to stop playing when they run out of rested experience, which mostly leads to not coming back if they are returning players. Choosing to play after the rested experience quickly runs out provides no bonus other than the ilvl keeps up with the content.
Recommendations:
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Convert the upgrade token system to a single pair of tokens (armor and weapon) that upgrades any existing heirloom regardless of level to max level for the most recent non-current expansion. Once upgraded it never needs to be upgraded again.
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Make sure there are plenty of heirloom options so people obtain and upgrade Heirlooms beyond the bare minimum I have listed. People will never do this if they have to upgrade the minimum number each expansion.
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Price each of these individual tokes to a reasonable level. There are a total of 21 armor items and 5 weapon items in my calculation above. If armor items were 2,000g and weapon items were 4,000g the total cost for all 4 armor types would be 42,000g for armor and 20,000g for weapons totaling 62,000g a reduction of a little over a factor of 6 or about 83%.
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If the ilvl issues with the level squishes are too much time and effort on the development end to correct, in the near term Heirlooms need to be made much more accessible for players to obtain. Think of creative ways to get Heirlooms into the hands of players. The “Unstable Elemental Confluence” is a great example! (although the drops for it now compared to the pre-patch are far too infrequent)
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Go back to the old experience as you level set bonus. At the very least make the set bonus something that incentivizes players to play and to have the heirlooms. Currently the only incentive to use Heirlooms is to compensate for the broken ilvl scaling in leveling dungeons and open world.