Basically title. I know the lack of essence catch up and other necklace based stuff has been brought up countless amounts of times, but it just makes no sense that we are required to have to grind the same essences for our neck on every single character. I haven’t touched my priest since Uldir, and I am really in the mood to start playing it again, but the fact that I will have to regrind my essences and neck all while trying to do things I actually LIKE within the game is really disheartening.
It almost feels like Blizzard is punishing people for wanting to play more than one character. I’m not saying I should log in and be 430 ilvl with BiS rank 3 essences and a level 67 neck, but jesus, is there anything they can do to make the grind any less abysmal for people who want alts? And the fact that they haven’t announced a system to combat this issue in 8.3 that has been going on for a while now makes me consider hanging it up until 9.0. Rant over.
TLDR: I am baffled by the fact that there is absolutely no essence catch up mechanic whatsoever in the game. Regrinding VoP and Memory of Lucid Dreams on an ALT is not fun and engaging content.
47 Likes
I think it comes down to the idea of are your characters individuals or extensions of your account. I’m pretty sure Blizzard wants you to feel each character is their own person and not an extension of your account.
I have not really decided on which is actually better.
4 Likes
Which is fine until you include AP and time gated essenses.
6 Likes
Timegating essences is so garbage. Their excuse for timegating is we chew through content but essences aren’t content…
7 Likes
That’s why I’m not really decided. On one hand doing everything one time would be great for the short term. Imagine for a moment only having to do something one time and it’s done on all your characters. Over the long haul that might not be good.
edit: But on the other hand it would open up people being able to do what they want with their time. Instead of rehashing stuff.
Just do what I do and do nothing on your main.
That way you won’t feel punished for playing an Alt.
Because your Alt won’t be too far behind 
13 Likes
AP at this point is no longer “difficult to get”. The amounts required for any level before 65 are easily achieved in a matter of days, and 65 is the final big boost necessary for most players (tanks would want 67 for the sta boost).
The essences – yep, still a bad run to get those done again. Then again, not every essence is required, just work on the most necessary ones. I don’t play alts, but if I did I wouldn’t work on every single essence like I did on this DH, because I rarely if ever use half of them.
Agreed. But, for my case, I would need to Naz all over again because Lucid Dreams is BiS for Spriest. That’s the issue I have with this system. I’ve already done Naz, why do I have to do the same exact thing to get the same exact essence? Because they care about the time played statistic not the content.
6 Likes
This is a reason why I stopped playing the end game-- Once I get through the quest, I call it done and move on.
I liked when characters were individual pieces when you didn’t have to do chores every day in order to keep them raid viable. With all the grinds they have released over the past 2 expacs I feel they need to address that difference you are talking about.
8 Likes
The worst part of alts is catching up on faction rep (and honor) to level up your Azerite Essences. They should be bought with medals/currency rather than rep.
I just like playing more than 1 character, but not in the sense Blizzard wants me to. When I wanted to heal on my druid, I spent all my time getting that character gear and BiS essences and the proper AP, and eventually I got bored and wanted to switch to the priest. Wellp, Blizzard is forcing me to do all of Naz again to get the same essence I already got on a different character because content. I don’t want to have to upkeep multiple characters every day and every week, I just want to play the ones I want to play and not get penalized for not logging in.
1 Like
I do too-- If I’m honest. But after Mist… Which was honestly pretty alt friendly, I haven’t really been able to do it. The investment on End game is too high and I would rather just level and move on which allows me the time to get to my alts.
Yeah that makes sense. Either a currency system of maybe like a catchup mechanic? My druid has rank 3 lucid dreams, maybe on my priest I only need to get to honored this time to get rank 3 instead of having to go all the way through it again. I’m not sure what the answer is, all I know is the current one is not.
The answer is rather simple, if you reach Exalted on one character you don’t need to farm rep on your alts, just have the items to purchase them.
But I guess Blizz would rather have their players burning out 
2 Likes
Simple for us, but that would mean Blizzard would have to make meaningful and engaging content outside of raiding in order for us to log in, when they’d rather just focus on getting ways to force people to log in. 
1 Like
Do what I do…just dont do it.
Blizzard pulled this crap to give us busy work for the least amount of their investment.
Im not doing it. My characters will sit and rot for all I care.
They did this crap to force me to play MORE…and the actual result is Im playing LESS of BFA than I would have had they not pulled this cheap, lazy trash stunt AP grind.
wont be buying any future expansions that have any AP grind in them…and you can bet your last yen that they were already working on the next expansion before BFA was even released, so its pretty much guaranteed there will be some mindless joke AP grind yet again.
I’ll stick with MoP content, thanks.
10 Likes
My main’s neck is at 67, and somehow now my alt’s neck just got to 67. I play my main at least 4 times as much as my alt, so there must be some kind of catch-up mechanism going on there.
No one cares about AP, that’s not what people are complaining about.
3 Likes
Yes, I hate the neck grind in general, but the catch up mechanic is fine for that. I’m talking specifically about the essence grind. I have a heroic raid geared resto druid, but I’m bored and want to play my priest. Blizzard wants to make me regrind all my rank 3 essences (lucid dreams to be specific) in order to get the priest raid viable. I like Naz but not enough to do it 3 full times to get lucid dreams on each character I like. It’s BS.