If the end of run cap was set at 23, I wouldn’t have a single 475/485 item. You can have scarcity in drop rates or you can have scarcity in difficulty. Right now raid loot is scarce based on how quickly your guild gets a boss on farm. The idea being that you’ll eventually get that item if your group can do it.
M+ is scarce based on a loot limit of 1 per week. Speaking only of top end, since I hate balancing around mid level. Any level of mythic plus chosen as loot cap arbitrary, so just take the number of players who get CE in 60 days and put the cap where the players line up. In most seasons, 22 is a real achievement, completed by fewer players than CE. Make timing the key a part of it. If you fail the timer, the loot is - 5.
Even with spammable dungeons, it can take weeks to get a specific drop.
I understand what you’re saying now, I apologize if I misinterpreted where you were going with this.
Trading duplicates helps someone else in the raid, but not the person who won the gear in the first place. Part of their 20% loot ratio just went to someone else, meaning they are no longer at 20% for purposes of gearing up.
You might say that someone else will simply trade a duplicate to them later, which is obviously possible, but can’t necessarily be counted on, especially if the person is missing universal items that everyone in the raid can equip as opposed to armor type items.
It also doesn’t take into account items that have limited value, like a tanking trinket. Once both tanks have that item, further duplicates are useless beyond off spec, which I hope you aren’t putting in your full mythic geared calculation. I don’t expect many dps would consider themselves in full mythic gear if they have an off spec healing and/or tank trinket.
While I understand the points you’re making, it seems like you’re still trying to use the fastest mathematically possible gearing timeline as a standard, instead of recognizing that you’re creating a far statistical outlier that doesn’t represent the experience of most players actually doing it.
This I think is the hardest part of balancing M+ loot acquisition around the end of dungeon loot. Where do you set the breakpoints for key levels so that it reflects the effort and difficulty, but also doesn’t create a tier long brick wall for the vast majority of the community.
I’m just thinking out loud, but as someone who does a high volume of M+, what would you think of an escalating end cap? Each key would drop a certain ilvl, and for every 5th key (or 4th or 6th or whatever makes sense), the ilvl would increase (to some level off point). People who consistently do higher keys would receive higher rewards, and people who only dabble a bit wouldn’t be able to mine them for fast upgrades.
I understand that, but the vast majority of people aren’t CE or pushing keys into the high 20s, so even though I’m not a heavy M+ player, I’d like to see the medium range M+ groups acquiring comparable gear at a comparable rate as medium range Mythic raiders. I know perfectly equal isn’t likely, but close shouldn’t be out of range with the right system. Same for the top end M+ with the Top end Mythic raiders and right down the line. I just don’t know what that system looks like.
On average, everyone in the raid gears up quicker.
It also doesn’t take into account items that have limited value, like a tanking trinket. Once both tanks have that item, further duplicates are useless beyond off spec
Just as well then that tanks can (and usually do) always have loot spec set to their DPS specs so that this never happens, except for the 1 fight each expansion where the tanking trinket is actually good (e.g. Opulence), and even then you can switch back to DPS loot spec after you got the trinket.
This actually never happens except by accident since trinkets are the only kind of loot that is spec-specific, and you can just change your loot spec to avoid getting the same trinket twice (or getting it at all if it’s trash, like most tank trinkets are).
Thank you for posting this potential solution. I would support something like this, and can potentially continue the conversation for us. Unfortunately, I could see top guilds requiring monstrous amounts of m+ for alternative gearing that supports raiding (a main issue that looks like these changes were meant to address in the first place).
The only issue here, with loyalty data, is that it’s retrospective. This system is relatively new, still, at least in it’s overall viability. Something like what this community is loudly signaling, is novel to the development. I’d like to see some courageous attempts at improving this, as if done right (Read: in no way punishes Raiders/Raiding), would almost certainly either A) not affect consumer loyalty/engagement, or B) increase it
Curious to your thoughts on a solution, like the below.
As long as the number of repetitions is high enough that it isn’t realistic for Mythic raiders who don’t do M+ beyond a few per week do run the ilvl high enough to change their gearing rate I wouldn’t anticipate a problem in most cases. The challenge is finding a number of reps that discourages raiders from augmenting their gear without making it so high that it’s not really a benefit for exclusive M+ groups as well.
I understand this in principle, but I also understand that in practice, this doesn’t become a reality until several weeks in, when enough people have gotten a drop that it becomes likely that one of them gets it again. You were projecting 6 weeks from raid open to fully mythic geared, and I’m telling you, that isn’t remotely realistic. There won’t be much, if any, loot trading in the first few weeks while people build ilvl, and it gradually picks up as people gain items and then start to gain duplicates.
Never? So a tank gets a tanking trinket and switches to DPS loot spec even if there is other BIS gear on that boss? Again, you’re using an idealized version of loot drops to inform you model. Ideal =/= normal.
Up until SL, this could apply to some weapons as well. The tokens should help avoid this in the future.
Not having to watch a stupid bow drop 8 times in a row for 1 or 2 hunters will be a nice change.
Hot take, screw the vast majority. What do the vast majority get from mythic raid? Not a damn thing and the same should be true for the highest levels of mythic plus. If you want it, work for it. There’s always a Freehold that is equivalent to the first 3 of a raid and there’s always a KR that’s closer to the last few.
I’d honestly prefer a system that ups the rewards after Hall of Fame like with cross realm mythic. I don’t really have any feelings toward late tier (post nerf) CD players or x-1/x. I would, however, not think that it should interfere with the top 100.
Completely disagree. Unless we adjust mid level mythic ilvl to match the 17/18 loot (assuming 21/22 loot cap) it doesn’t have to match. As stated above, FH 20 is way easier than UR 20 or Temple 20. So as you get better at the whole set of dungeons you already have a scaling difficulty of acquisition.
Edit to clarify: I did my first 20 this season. I would not have been max ilvl without the weekly chest in every single tier. I wouldn’t have made the cut multiple seasons. I’m not putting myself above others, I’m saying that I didn’t deserve to be geared like the top end of any content branch.
Edit 2: I want to go from gear being “meant to be obtained” to “meant to be earned”.
There wasn’t a single change that addressed this. Top guilds will require the weekly chest as they always have. This impacts heroic guilds and nothing else.
Much of the explanation back to individuals like you and I, though, around this topic / change is “let’s raiders raid, and not m+” - which is what I was making triple clear is 10,000% avoidable, and should not be held over our heads here.
I think I wasn’t clear earlier. I meant the vast majority of the set of mythic raiders and the vast majority of dedicated, key pushing M+ players. I wasn’t speaking about the WoW community at large. I think the majority of mythic raiders shouldn’t feel obligated to also hit M+ hard in order to be successful, and I think the majority of M+ players shouldn’t feel obligated to push mythic raiding in order to be successful. I think the majorities in both communities should be able to gear at a comparable rate. Players that choose not to do mythic raiding or M+ at high levels shouldn’t have access to mythic quality gear.
Maybe you still disagree with me, but I think that clarifies my position better.
But they’ll get a weekly chest anyway from killing mythic bosses, something that wasn’t true in BFA. So the only reason they’d want to run M+ was if there was some M+ loot that was better than raid loot, which while not impossible because of stat priorities, is also not particularly likely, and the difference would be small at best.
It’s incredibly likely. Have you looked at any of the raid loot tables throughout BFA? Stat priorities are king in this game, that’s why Sims are so important and now with DR on Stat stacking, it’ll be even less likely that someone can focus exclusively on raid and build an optimal set. For some, Gettiku was the strongest weapon the entire expansion. The only items that were always better in BFA were raid trinkets.
It does, and I disagree less. I think it wouldn’t be worth the investments for the less intense crowd. There’s nothing that can be done about the WF/HoF players and what they’ll do, but I think scaling the m+ loot after those are decided (which for horde is a couple months at most) balances out that concern. Imo, it’ll be better than m+ 475 equivs being an absolute joke. I’m not ignorant to the knock on effect of adding higher ilvls past the easily done keys in that some will feel more compelled to push themselves, but I think this is outweighed by the extension of the content and may actually make it feel like less of a chore for some.
I mean, knocking out a piece of mind-numbing content for that extra mythic quality item is like doing islands to unlock an essence slot. It’s boring, but necessary.
I still see mythic raiders running 4-10 keys for the extra chance at gear they could use. 5-6 rolls is a bit better than 2-3, even if the gear is from m+. Heroic raiders are definitely running m+ because the gear will trump the gear they have access to.
If your platform is to create Heroic Raiding as the only gearing choice for players that cannot mythic raid, how would you feel about scaling up the M+ rewards to be out of their talent window (M 20s+)? As opposed to making the loot worthless to everyone (except those that disenchant)
It’s been mentioned here some, and I would assume the raiding community would be outraged, but would be interested to hear your sentiment.
My platform is to do the content that you enjoy and get the gear you’ve earned from it. I’m personally ok with the changes that were made. I’m not going to say I’m ecstatic about it like it’s the greatest change ever brought to the game, but we’ll say I’m a step above content and a step under happy.
Throughout BFA, I would have considered myself to do m+ first, heroic raid second, never set foot into mythic raid. With the changes, it will require me a minimum of 15 weeks if the stars align for me to reach close to max ilvl (or at least a competitive one), which is a vast improvement from how things are now, and more importantly requires me to invest a lot less time to get there as the end of dungeon loot is more filler and gives much less reason to really push. I feel like that gives me a lot more choice, if I want to push more dungeons, I can, if I want to spend more time trying to master these raid bosses so maybe I actually can start moving into mythic, I can, if I want to push arena rating, I can.
I wouldn’t be opposed to them increasing end of dungeon loot for higher keys, like a +20 would reward 226 and that be the cap, but I’d prefer they left the vault rewards as is.
I certainly don’t see the end of dungeon loot being worthless though. It’s still going to be an upgrade if that’s the content you’re doing unless you got a 226 piece in your vault the previous week etc. Obviously you’ll get to a point where it IS worthless a little faster than it is now, but most people doing keys are far more interested in their 475 pieces than they are the 465 from the dungeon itself, and if you’re doing +16 keys onward, the gear isn’t typically what you’re after in that key anyway, it’s just the rare bonus if you get an upgrade.
There are rarely two spec specific items on any one boss and the other class items are typically universal.
I think the growing sentiment is that in order to succeed at the top in one, you are obligated to dedicate a lot of time to both.
Even if they’re not going for world first raid kills, it’s imperative that mythic raid teams maintain steady progress in order to retain and attract members. This requires a considerable amount of time to achieve, especially early in the tiers.
This need is growing steadily within the mythic plus community. Staying abreast of the top teams is important to ensure that you are hitting the important break points in relation to push weeks. If your team isn’t geared, or practiced in time for the push weeks you stand the chance of falling behind.
I think players like Jdotb and others who would prefer to be mythic plus only players are starting to feel the exact burnout that raiders are complaining about. The difference is that Blizzard is saying out loud that the raider’s health is more of a concern. I think they’re picking the lesser of two evils, but I think it’s going to be a growing issue which needs to be addressed.