All my stuff is account bound because I only play one toon per expansion 
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reputation would matter if repuation actually mattered beyond being required for pathfinder and a couple of rank 3 essences. there aren’t any actual “rewards” from reputations. the gear you can buy from exalted with any given faction caps out at 350, when heroic dungones give 385s. the only way reputation gear would be worth anything would be if you turned off your xp at 119 and jsut did questing and rep until you got exalted and then got that gear, and then turned xp back on to go to 120. and then you’d replace every piece in a single day of heroic dungeons and LFR/Normal raids.
blizzard’s entire design philosophy behind rewards is so bass-ackwards it makes my head spin to think about it.
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Imagine if every alt with a 300 ilevel could do 200,000 damage to 20 mobs in under 2 seconds. Thats what you’re asking for with account wide essences.
Game would be busted.
I am just really curious as to where they are going to slot those essences without being max level and unlocking the slots / grinding their neck without leveling…
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Fixed by edit. Ty.
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But you do touch on a big part of the reason for folks requesting them to be account bound. A large portion of your characters power and progression is tied up in the essences. They change rotations and playstyle substantially.
IF characters had a full toolset and abilities scaled without drip fed grinds attached to them, you would see a lot less clamoring on this subject.
As it sits now though? Your characters are incredibly gimped unless you commit to multiple time-gated trickle grinds for each and every one of them.
I can see both sides of it, I just think that forcing folks to do their chores again is bad design and transparently manipulative.
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I kind of agree but after testing 8.3 on ptr i can see me playing wow as my main game again all the way until shadowlands im not to sure if ill be playing it love wow but i really want a new mmorpg or game to try out in general.
I hate Naj and Mechagon. After doing pathfinder I rarely go back. I hate the grind as much as you, and I’ve only done it twice. However, in a RPG you have to put in the time if you want to progress. A person with only one character should be more powerful than your 49 alts.
It’s the game we play.
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I agree with you there, but that power should come from genuine progress, not running the same content over and over again to fill up that rep bar. Raids/Dungeons/Mythic + or crafted gear should be all you need to progress outside of skill. IMO of course.
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Would focused eye beam really break alts though? Sounds like it’ll make islands a little more palatable at lower ilvls, and then nothing else. 20 target cleave is kinda rare. In that case its also a matter where a alt could conscript some buddies and get a 10 done or pay for one and get the same effect without being able to cast while moving. Sorry I tried to imagine it and it didn’t seem that bad since damage is a cumulative gain from many sources including essences.
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Definitely more fun for the players. However this game has a “difficulty” level, and it would totally be busted with rank 3 essences on all characters.
Also before the thread gets too big from back and forth, as these threads are wont to do. If “account bound essences” were to happen how would you prefer it to happen? I think a lot of the arguing about the subject is because people foam at the mouth at the idea that the words account bound. Because there is a world of difference between hit X level and your furthest azerite essence progression on any character becomes available and something like essences still drop from relevant content after attaining it and completed essences are literal boa items that you can mail to alts.
I’m not sure what you mean by difficulty level. There are a lot of things that contribute to a player characters power this expansion, more then most and more then enough of them make the player pay dearly in time investments. If you are talking about the player power to do content, that sort of shifts every patch since the base ilvl of the most hardcore mythic raider and the most casual of casuals get a new set of ilvl to work with and with that all the content that is “current patch” tends to be scaled up a bit anyway.
For example in legion after boa boxes were imlpemented a fresh 100 could have one bis legiondary, and at 110 have their entire relevant tree of ap on their artifact weapon opened up after an emissary, but I didn’t see outcry as to this being a problem, and most casual and higher content was still scaled for this level of power.
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I do not hear people asking for rank3 BoA essences. I would love for them to be either rank1 or rank2 BoA.
I would be totally fine with rank1,s as BoA. But since they are cutting the cost of the rank1 essences in the patch DRASTICALLY, Rank2 BoA essences would be a god send, keep the level3 essences as they are now, and it also gives you something to strive for.
Just my .02 cents
Ok, say they made r2 BoA. The people who are whining about it will still whine, because they would STILL have to grind the rep / honor to meet the requirements for r3. Nothing is good enough for these people other than let me raid log for the next year. These are the same people who would be whining in 3 months saying they have nothing to do for the next year because all of their characters are geared and they have no reason to do any content.
As was said before, you think you know what you want, but you don’t.
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There is a downside.
Its just not a downside for players.
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That’s the downside for me too : Character power progression should not be account bound, outside of at most catch-up gear tokens for alts. Like Benthic : the base token being BoA was fine. Manapearls and upgrades up to 425 being BoA would have been way too much.
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This is also called a slippery slope.
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Honestly, I would be fine with any rank 1 essences you have earned on a previous character unlocked account wide. Again only rank 1 and only ones you have unlocked on previous characters. And since it’s the final big patch of the expansion, why not.
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Grinding rep and honor for character progression should be nuked from orbit to start with. Cosmetics, recipes and mounts should be the only items ever locked behind a rep grind. I can see honor vendors for PVP gear being the only exception that is not a blatant retention mechanism that comes at the cost of player experience.
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