Help me understand the gear complaints

Community General Discussion
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Before I pose my question, have a sec to see the game through my lens.

I am a mythic raider. I’m not anywhere near the top 1%, I’m not anywhere near on Limit’s level, I’m just a normal mythic raider in a 2 day weekend raiding guild.

From where I’m sitting, this is the fastest I’ve geared to “Mythic gear level” in the history of WoW. The gear profile is different, yes. You don’t get a bunch of trash gear that rains from the boss every time you kill one. But you do get at least one upgrade to mythic level gear per week - and that’s minimum.

I was 225 (bag ilvl - dumb trinket I can’t use ) as of last week, and from a “mythic raiding” standard, that’s from doing the bare minimum. I did 1-4 14s per week, past 5 weeks I’ve only done 1 per week. I have 2 pieces at 220 from PvP, and we do our (currently) 6 bosses in mythic per week.

This gear system is by far the most consistent way to get gear they’ve ever made. Its consistent, targeted, quality gear. Its 1000x better than just filling your bags with trash you’ll never use. Or being forced to farm hours and hours of the same dungeon for that titanforge chance.

If you do heroic content, you’ll get heroic geared through the vault at least. Its impossible to get behind if you just play the game. Gear complaints have got to be perception. This is by far the best gear system they’ve ever made. Objectively people are gearing faster than ever before in the past. So the complaints around gear must just be the perception that if gear isn’t falling from the sky in raids then they aren’t getting anything.

So if you’re among those complaining about gear… why? I really don’t get it.

I’ll end this with an anecdote. My friend is ultra casual. Like… he plays a max of maybe 3 hours a week. He’s ilvl 207, mostly from vault. Just because the boss isn’t raining gear doesn’t mean you’re not getting upgrades. You’re getting geared, its just consistent, targeted, quality gear that you’re getting, and its tailored around the level of content that you do…

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Unpopular opinion: Warfronts were great for gearing up.

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When boring content gives good gear its not healthy for the game.
Non-Casuals will always take any chance they see for easy good loot, and they will usually do it faster than the casuals the loot is targeted at.

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I think the gear complaints are two main groups of players:

People who do M+ exclusively, and don’t heroic raid. They get less gear, and worse gear.

And casuals who don’t do much/any M+ and raiding. They used to have Visions, now they don’t.

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It’s harder for mid-level players who pug because they need to do better than players in coordinated groups to make up for all the trash players that they’re going to encounter while pugging. And since they don’t significantly outgear the content anymore, they have a hard time doing that.

Because the trash players go into m+ expecting free carries, they get angry when they can’t get carried, and leave, so everyone else wastes their time for no reward.

In short: Pugs suck and many feel stuck in Pugatory.

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That item level seems kinda high for “ultra” casual.
But casual has a thousand different meanings to a thousand different players.

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Haha well sure, but the level that I play at doesn’t matter. The amount of gear that I get will be the same for anyone, and it will drop at the level that they’re at.

so, I’m a mythic raider so right now, with the content that I played I’ve gotten to mythic gear level right??

A heroic raider will have gotten to heroic gear level.

A normal raider will have gotten to normal gear level.

Everyone should be getting gear at the level they’re at, which makes complete sense. Is it an issue where people in normal think they should be getting mythic gear?

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Imagine Op all the loot you got never dropped because luck didn’t favor you ? If that doesn’t make you understand nothing will

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You’re raiding Mythic. Mythic loot is actually good.

People below that level only get good loot from the M+ vault reward. Heroic Raid loot is awful in comparison. You only have to do +7s to get weekly Heroic Raid quality loot.

And before the recent changes, smaller raid sizes got half the loot per person vs a FAILED M+ run. 10 man raids could get 1 drop. 1. a Failed dungeon also got 1. A successful dungeon got 2. For 5 people. Vs a 10 man group getting 1 for not failing. That bit is mostly fixed now though.

And many PvE-minded players are not willing to grind PvP for gear, so let’s just scratch that one out for now.

Keep in mind that M+ base drops were also nerfed. While the weekly chest rewards were always best, you could gear to higher than Heroic Raid ilvl by spamming M+ dungeons all day in BfA. People got spoiled by that, so now that EoD rewards are basically useless in the long-term, we’re essentially limited to -1- major upgrade per week from pve content.

Unless, of course, you’re actively raiding Mythic.

Of course, this would all feel like much less of an issue if Blizzard would stop inflating M+ ilvl with weekly rewards. If it just dropped what it dropped and Raids just dropped what they dropped with the weekly rewards just matching what you already did, Heroic Raiders getting 213s would be perfectly happy. But +10s are not any harder than Heroic Raids, and offer significantly better rewards, so the Raid loot feels bad.

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Yeah, there’s a lot of truth in there. I can see that being difficult. Is that something that gear solves though? There seems to be this perception that gear is skill or that you need a certain level of gear to down a certain level of content.

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IMO I define a “casual” as anyone who doesn’t do m+, rated pvp and occasionally does LFR and M0. So basically me :wink:. Which also means your ilvl caps out at about 205ish depending on luck with world bosses (lol) and the rare mythic weekly event.

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Imagine Op all the loot you got never dropped because luck didn’t favor you ? If that doesn’t make you understand nothing will

Almost all of my loot came from the vault. I rarely get loot drops.

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what if the vault had dupes, badly itemized gear resulting you to get 750 stygia al ll the time , then what ?

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Him being competent doesn’t invalidate what he said.

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Can you please define what you mean by ULTRA casual when talking about your friend who has higher than normal raid gear item level?

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It’s not even the gear, it’s just how little effort people are willing to put in nowadays. You can join a few 15 pugs and see for yourself how many trash players get to that level and fail spectacularly.

No matter how many sims you run or how much you practice, you can’t make up for the trash players who expect free carries in the pug world. These dungeons just won’t allow it.

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If you only do mythic it’s rough . How can you say targeting gear ? When I get the same cloak or hands 2 weeks in a row . Is targeting just a raid thing ? And for the casual that only has time for mythic plus the gearing is awful .

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That’s why I’m asking the OP.
Everyone has a different idea of what a “casual” player is.

Please elaborate on what you mean by this?
Breaking 200 as a casual, in my mind, is incredibly hard.

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Literally the next sentence

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His three hours a week involves being carried through a +14, maybe.

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