Some where in that interview Ion said that people didnt reject or bench players because they got the wrong legendary or put AP into a sub par spec in Legion. I just wanted to provide some feedback and say this is simply untrue. I know this because I did this as a raid leader. My guild wasn’t even that hardcore, something around top 50-90 in the US depending on the tier.
If you wanted to kill Krosus, or meet a damage check on Cenarius. You had to bench players because of their choice / their rng with legos. I remember a boomkin whose name I won’t mention on my raid team. Best dude, super nice. I benched him for Ursoc and Cenarius because he just couldn’t do ST damage without the emerald dreamcatcher. He was super upset, I sat with him for hours on warcraftlogs trying to figure out anything other boomkins were doing better. All we found was people with his combination of legendaries didn’t even have a parse yet because they were probably benched also.
I remember farming AP for nighthold release and we brought one mage over the other because he had Marquee’s and DB helm while the other mage got prydaz and the blink chest. You had to do hundreds of maw of soul runs and I could get them done much faster with that mage. I ended up helping him on my alt afterwards but he still missed the mark of 54 AP level on his toon before nighthold. And guess what, he was benched for Krosus because he still didn’t have good legendaries.
Long story short, blizzard, I love your game. It is great, but don’t think for a second you are gonna be able to balance this well. You didn’t with corruption, you didn’t with azerite armor, you didn’t with legendaries, you haven’t for classes for the entire history of the game pretty much. Outside race and class, don’t lock us into other stuff. You cannot balance it and its not even your fault you can’t balance it. Its too complex to balance before we get to set the meta, but just give us the option to adapt once the community figures it out.
I don’t understand how Blizzard doesn’t realize that you can’t create a game where you want to incentivize RPG elements, choices and incentivization for those choices… and at the same time, create content that requires minmaxing and locking gear behind it. That’s not what you do in an RPG.
We are all friends, I’m still friends with him. But we are friends with a mindset that puts the groups progress above our own. To insinuate we’re not friends because we both adhere to a different social contract that you do is somewhat insulting and pompous.
I would concede that the top 100 guilds might have been doing this. But overall, most guilds did not. Of all the players I knew doing mythic raiding, their guilds welcomed raiders with 2 legendaries, even if they were less than ideal.
That’s fair, perfectly valid way to play. I’d hate it though, I’d much rather figure out how to make weird stuff work than stick into boring cookie cutter.
That’s fair too, I’m cranky today. I apologize for that shot.
The guilds/groups I’ve run with have always aimed to get better gear as opposed to benching people or forcing people into a certain build. Not saying you do the latter, but I prefer that attitude to “You must have this [build, item, whatever] or you don’t get to play”. It’s going to happen regardless, but jeeze. Idk how that’s fun for people.
It all good. I appreciate your apology. Hope your day gets better! But yeah, he’s such a good dude too but when 20+ other friends know this decision is necessary to push, I can’t let them down either. It’s not easy either way. Being a raid leader really sucks on those decisions
Ion’s point was about pugs and the “99%”, not about top 100 raid guilds. His point was also that the intent is that Covenants have less of an impact that legiondaries did.
It’s still a pretty awful design decision to link abilities to covenants and discourage us from trying out different builds, though. Like, I’d really like to try out a Soul Rot + Inevitable Demise build on my warlock, but I’m not because Soul Rot is going to be awful for every warlock spec that doesn’t take that talent. It’s a huge shame.
I understand that. Most guild groups will not bench someone cause of their gear and that is completely cool, I respect that! You guys play the way you want to play. If killing that boss this week vs next week or the week after doesn’t matter, more power to ya.
However, in m+, pvp, or raiding, there does exist competitive communities and trying to go into one of the communities without a proper build will certainly result in rejection and an overall feeling of helplessness. It really sucks when games are a main avenue for your competitive spirit and you simply cannot compete because RNG, a nerf, a buff, or simply one mistake hinders it.
While this will affect competitive players a lot, it will still prevent casual or semi-competitive players to try out new things they saw. It’s just overall a bad system to lock people into. Unforch =(
My guild is less hardcore but we were still pushing mythic at the time. And as a WW monk main previously, I benched myself in favor of DHs and ranged DPS.
Usually, the players who say classes / specs don’t matter are not pushing challenging content or are doing so at a point in time in the patch when throughput can be cheesed by gear and / or other progression systems.
Hahaha yeah, shhh don’t spill the dreams of theirs that they are somehow not ‘‘hardcore’’ even though its top 50-90. lol.
And OP. Preach has a tendency of being that guy at a party that claims to know the facts but is pretty oblivious to how it really is.
