That part I get, it’s nothing new. Blizzard has done it before.
However, in the past when they did that they also bumped normal dungeons up to match so you could meet the entry requirements for heroic by completing normal difficulty. This time they missed that step and now gear from normal does not meet the requirements for heroic dungeons.
The expected progression of normal to heroic to mythic 0 to mythic+ is not there. And it was there a day ago. Why suddenly change it during an expansion? If it had been that way from the start of the expansion then I would have just said: “Oh that’s the new way they’re doing things”. But the regular system was in place, until it suddenly wasn’t.
The whole thing is so abrupt I can’t help but wonder if someone at Blizzard forgot to push the normal-now-drops-571-gear button.
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Is it? I honestly don’t remember. You may be right, I figured it was Explorer track but that might’ve been outdoor stuff.
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Best guess is that they want to force people into delves. My guess is that they saw people had hoarded a lot of keys (they can see how many keys are going out vs being used) and were avoiding bountiful delves at the levels impacted here (which are 1-3 if they are bountiful … baseline delves at those tiers are 554).
Based on what we’ve seen in prior expacs, Blizzard has a habit of kind of strongly encouraging players to play content it has created specifically for the expac (eg Torghast), and so my guess is that they were not thrilled that so many people were simply not running any bountiful delves, even though they had keys, until the higher levels opened. The “fix” for that was to create a need for some players to do so by creating a gear gap between normals and heroics that you need low level bountiful delves (or crafting) to bridge.
Is this a sensible thing to do? No, it isn’t. But I would guess that this is the “reason”.
I think this is a bug or something and I don’t know why are so many people defending this bug by saying casuals finally get what they deserve gear that is finally bad. And no longer giving them access to heroic where all the better gear is at and making the path to mythic even more unachievable.
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If Blizzard wanted to force us into delves then they could have just started the expansion with the item level gap in place and told us that we were expected to use delves to bridge it.
But they had the standard progression line in place then broke it.
Again, like I said, I think it’s a reaction to the fact that nobody was running bountiful delves prior to yesterday – virtually everyone was hoarding their keys because there was no reason to “waste” them on a T3 delve. Well … they didn’t like that, I think, so they created a reason.
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But that wouldn’t actually fix the issue. The people hoarding keys likely already got the 571 gear previously dropped by heroic and already meet the new heroic requirements.
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It doesn’t do anything to the people who already hoarded their keys, no, but it “fixes” the issue going forward, from their perspective. They can’t do anything about the people who already hoarded keys, but they can create a reason for people, going forward, coming through those iLvls to not hoard them and to use them.
If it isn’t simply a mistake (and it could be that), this is the only “reason” I can think of, and it is the kind of thing Blizzard has done in the past in similar contexts.
If I had to guess it’s because heroics now drop 580 instead of 571, making the rewards more significant, but without any additional effort coming from that particular content, so the effort was offset to earlier content to compensate in order to create and maintain a more balanced, smoother progression.
If hoarding keys is the issue then why not put a cap on them? They’ve done that before for currencies they don’t want people hoarding.
This does the exact opposite of that. It makes things less balanced as people who did dungeons slightly earlier now have an huge advantage. It also makes gearing less smooth as bountiful delves are limited so if your RNG is bad you’re screwed. Enjoy your 5 belts I guess.
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The way they have capped the use of the keys is by having only a few bountiful delves available each day, so I don’t think they are that worried about the total number of keys people have, since they can’t use them all on one day.
I think what they didn’t like was that people were skipping all bountiful delves prior to S1 and the release of higher level delves, because historically they have not liked it when people opt to skip content like that in order to game it. So by creating a gear gap, they encourage players who are leveling through those iLvls in the future to burn some keys on level 3 delves to get the gear they need to run heroics. So the issue with hoarding isn’t really a concern about the total keys outstanding, but rather people not using them in the earlier delves because there is no reason to do so (and there literally wasn’t).
Only reason I can think of that they would have created a gap intentionally.
But, it could also just be a mistake, like I said. If enough people complain, maybe they will change it, or maybe they just won’t respond, who knows?
they upped the item level for god knows what reason. Yes, you can upgrade it using stones, but seriously, they’ve done now 2-3 item level “passes” of this stuff since launch and it’s not made much sense.
The original 554 gear from normals wasn’t even upgradeable for a hot minute.
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This change is absolutely asinine.
the gear is still unupgradeable.
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Hanlon’s Razor.
It most likely isn’t due to some sort of ‘Blizzard hates casuals’ or ‘Blizzard wants to force you to run a delve at a low level and burn a key’ but rather Blizzard’s incompetence (as in greedy management pushing content out the door with minimal to no QA) that just totally missed this issue.
Except you cannot upgrade gear from normal dungeons.
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the gear ive gotten from normals is not upgradable either
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Just upgrade normal dungeon gear you tell us
But the real question is HOW to upgrade it when the gear itself doesn’t have any upgrade path.
It’s either y’all are too damn ignorant or too blinded by your elitist beliefs.
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It was an annoying change though. I’m running heroic dungeons one night, then the next night I log on to run some more and my gear is suddenly not good enough, what a weird change.