Improving M+ Loot Systems

Community WoW Community Council
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Note - This was originally posted as a reply, but was recommended to me to separate this into its own topic. I’ve added some edits and a new discussion point

I wanted to touch on a few points that I feel strongly about with regards to the current state of M+ Loot.

Valor Points
Larger quantities of valor points should be earned from completing higher level keystones. It would remove the need from having to farm low level keystones early on in the season. Uncapping valor earlier and introducing a larger weekly cap threshold would also be nice additions.

Valor Upgrades
The highest valor upgrade of a M+ Season 2 item is 246 once you earn Keystone Master, and the highest item level reward from the Great Vault is 252. The fact that items cannot be valor upgraded to 252 is, well confusing. Having to rely entirely on the weekly rng of the great vault for BiS gear is unacceptable at this point. It would be so easy to introduce another tier of achievements that lets you upgrade to 252, and it makes complete sense to lock it behind a score threshold obtained by doing 20+ keys or something similar. The upgrade paths to 252 exist and have been datamined. I have trouble understanding why this isn’t implemented.

On a side note, in season 1, Keystone Master would unlock the final upgrade account wide. Why was this changed in season 2? Having to earn KSM on multiple characters is not quick or simple. It deters us from playing alts!

M+ Loot Across Seasons
I’m sure there are some of you reading this thread that have run Mists of Tirna Scithe 10, 20, 50+ times for the Unbound Changeling so you can upgrade it. You get to do it again in Season 3! Are you excited to do that? Probably not. It would make complete sense for M+ Loot to get transformed between seasons. No reason to farm the item 3-4x in an expansion.

Let’s talk about Season 3 briefly. The “Mythic” item level for Season 3 should be something like 275, that is the highest to expect from the M+ Great Vault. In Season 3, the valor upgrades should start around 236 (1/12) and end at 269 (12/12). For those of us who currently have 246, or 252 items from Season 2, these would fall into the valor upgrade slots perfectly. Your 246 (12/12) item from Season 2, becomes a 246 (4/12) item in Season 3 and you just need valor and the appropriate M+ Achievement to upgrade it. If you don’t currently have a 236 item, things become tricky. One idea is for it to be converted into a (1/12) item, either automatically or by a large amount of valor.

Great Vault/Valor Cache RNG
While I know this topic is not restricted to just M+, I would love better ways to target items from the Great Vault. Doing 10 dungeons weekly requires a large time investment, and to not get anything of value from the Great Vault because of it is a massive disappointment. I would love for the Great Vault to introduce some sort of “reroll” system, or allow you to choose the dungeons you’d like to target loot for.

Another idea that I’ve desired is to add a way to add duplicate/bad luck protection to the Great Vault, potentially by ignoring an armor slot.

In 9.1.5 the M+ Item Cache was introduced, which lets you spend 500 valor for a COMPLETELY random M+ item. I honestly don’t understand why the M+ items aren’t just put on a vendor for a larger chunk of valor to purchase. Sure, make the cache cheaper. But don’t eliminate the player agency to target specific loot.

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Absolutely. The M+ loot table is way to big for a random chance box.

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On the matter of M+ looting in particular, and even looting in general, I’ve felt that the system for PVP is generally better: my PVP stuff is deterministic, and if I want to improve it I’ve got to do more PVP in general. I think a part of random is still enjoyable, but we should avoid too much randomness in the long run.

One suggestion could be to be able to buy/upgrade the items, the same way PVP does currently, with the additional twist that you need to loot one such item first: if I want an Unbound Changelin in whatever level, I start off by buying it from a vendor, then upgrade it to whatever level I want it using the M+ currency. To avoid everyone gearing in M+, apply the same limitation than PVP already does by capping to a certain level outside of M+.

This solves the issue of cross-season gearing: each season you’ve got to unlock the upgrade tiers and farm the currency by playing the game, which is what you want to do anyway, but doesn’t forces you to do a particular instance again and again, you can just do whatever and enjoy your time.
This also makes the great vault itself less frustrating: I don’t need the GV to get my max-level weapon/trinket, it’s just a way to unlock it faster. And if I don’t get something nice in it, maybe I can take a heap of currency instead to upgrade something?

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I think this still has the same issue; especially early on in the expansions.

Look at my situation. IQD is the best trinket outside of the raid, and still top 2 with OWS (DK)
In the year and a bit that SL has been out; I have played my DK every week, run M+ most weeks, and always looted my vault. I have seen a grand total of 1 IQD. 226 Ilvl about a month before 9.1 dropped and a 252 was available.

So with how long 9.0 was I’m still waiting until the end of the patch to be able to buy one? I disagree with this. I think another potential solution goes back to the same “do the work, get rewarded structure”

What about a system where M+ loot (at base M0 level, upgradable to 246 with valor) was tied behind total keystone levels completed on a dungeon? Lets say I need to do 50 levels of DoS to be able to buy anything from that loot table. Could be 2 25’s, 5 10’s, 10 5’s. Rewarded for higher progression, more play, and a reasonable target to work towards.
Now, with that said, I also don’t think you should have to run DoS on m+0 50 times to buy it’s loot. There should be a maximum number of runs, maybe thats 10 runs and level 6 or higher keys start to accelerate the process.

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As I wrote in an other topic, just let us upgrade old pieces when a new season comes out. Valor resets and caps out very fast early in the season. Upgrade tiers are also tied to score right now so at the very least you would need to run all dungeons twice to get max ilvl on it, but you won’t have the valor anyway.

I don’t think if it works like that would be hurtful in any way because of how low the cap on valor is anyway but also how much valor you would need to upgrade from the old ilvl cap compared to getting a fresh item from a 15. At best you’re just going to upgrade a super rare trinket, maybe a finger/neck if they have a socket.

Basically what you also wrote here :partying_face:

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Whatever the system, the question is: do we want randomness in the gearing system or not? I think a small part is enjoyable, even if it means that some people will be unlucky for some things.

One of the good things about looting is that you get to share: I’ve had pleasure running keys with a full-plate group to help our newest guildmate build his ilvl before raiding for example. I’ve spent evenings and met people just because I traded them some loot I didn’t need but they wanted.

On the other hand, it shouldn’t matter that much if you can’t get “this specific trinket that is BiS”, because the other options should be relevant too. BiS will probably never go away, but if there are more than one viable option, it’s way less important if you don’t get the very best one.

And even then, you finally got your IQD, you would be good for the rest of the expansion. It also means that GV options (or M+ loot tables) could be twisted to increase the chances of gear you don’t have yet.

A fully-deterministic system would probably be simpler, but I fear it would also remove a part of the pleasure of the game. We can probably keep a part of the randomness and mitigate the frustrating factors.

Finally, if the system was deterministic, I don’t think forcing a grind to unlock the pieces would be beneficial: there is already the currency and the score to grind.

Edit: also, upgrading from one tier to the next would be good, whatever the system.

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I think it’s fine keeping randomness as long as there is some sort of an alternative to getting unlucky for a long time. Valor kinda fills the gap right now but you still need the item to drop before upgrading it. The valor token I think is a good addition if we could either target a slot or just buy the item itsself eventually.

I agree that there should be slightly better balancing of trinkets because many of them do the same things, but a select few do it a lot better and it’s not even close. Also having alternatives to on use trinkets such as the pvp on use mainstat badge or quantum would be nice.

Maybe even let us target slots or leave it random as an option (the GV)? If I remember right, that was even 1 of the early concepts for it.

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