Can someone explain why the final 2 ranks of Korthia gear upgrades - which is basically all filler you would use when you literally have no other raid/M+/vault options are gated by both Renown 61/75 and AC Tier 6 rep?
Seems a tad overkill to gate it this much, unless I’m missing out on something. I hope someone can enlighten me as to why it’s so
This gear is made your alts.
You level an alt. Get 200 out of it. Half of which will be duplicates. Then Blizzard wants you to go back to Korthia and spend 3h/day to farm up rep needed to upgrade the gear.
By the time you get enough rep to actually upgrade, 90% of it is replaced by SoD normal and M+. GG
I just got an alt to 60. Just used boxes for ilvl for starter gear to get access to LFR.
Ultimately done for casuals like me.
Gated to keep players, doing the rounds on Korthia’s boring rare-hunt.
At a minimum, they should have gear upgrade rank 5 unlock at research rank 5…instead of both 5 and 6 at rank 6
Not to mention at that point if there’s a good M+ or vault piece your priority would shift to something like buying sockets and/or conduit upgrades vs gear upgrades. I really don’t get it. IMO all Korthia gear for the majority of players who do grind rep in Korthia = transmog or placeholder. I don’t know why the upgrade option is so guarded.
Considering we only unlock rank 5 tomorrowTuesday and rank 6 in another 8 weeks, I think they did exactly what they wanted to do.
edit: Jesus thinking it’s Monday already, oof.
I’d agree with this but reaching rank 6 on an alt is a TON of effort. Korthria rank 6 gear is more work than just doing M+
That’s not a catch up mechanic.
To make sure I’m sufficiently behind raiders? (since this is basically my endgame gear)
Wrong it should be for our mains. I don’t play Alts because I’m never geared enough on my main to actually play an Alt.
You aren’t missing anything it’s bad design. The final Rank is only 233 item level too. If they are going to gate it this much it should be 246.
Well since Hardmode Taz gives you a full set of 233 gear, wouldn’t one be just as geared just doing that once a week instead of grinding research every day till the week renown 75 unlocks? Looks like there are enough weeks left to do so.
People complained all of 9.0 that there wasn’t a long slow grind for gear upgrades, that didn’t require needing to raid, PvP, or m+. They got their wish.
I think it’s an error that was missed by their QA department.
Probably because they know 9.2 is gonna take forever so they slowed us down.
In the most annoying way possible of course.
Totally. I got exalted with DA and I’m barely half way thru R5.
Well, I am not wrong. It is, however, wrong the fact that is not gear for our mains. It is same 
as we had with Benthic gear.
Currently, 200ilvl tokens only serve bare minimum of use for alts. Just a start up gear to get enough ilvl to queue for heroics and LFR, hence also granting you access to single digit M+.
Wouldn’t people be happier if gear for alts was less gated so they could enjoy this patch more? Like why make it so frustrating, are they trying to make us stay miserable longer while they work on a patch? o.o
Taz? As in the dungeon? Ah, I should clarify: I don’t don’t do any group content (unless you count jumping in on world bosses)
(also, I’m not complaining)
Most likely there is a buff to research acquisition in one if the renown levels. Either that or they might possibly drop the requirements in a later patch, like usual.
Basically it’s not a catch-up mechanic yet, but one day (when it’s completely obsoletete) it will be.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong in choosing to not do group content. I still don’t think players like you (or anyone for that matter) should be made to wait an eternity just for 233 gear with 2 methods of gating the upgrades.
I dont know, man. Blizz has become very anti fun/player these past few years.
Yeah idk why they implement QoL changes months after players already suggest them. The conduit upgrades prioritizing main spec was suggested like 6 months ago and is only coming in next week.
It’s like, they have people telling them logical things that make perfect sense that they choose to ignore only to implement eons later to give the impression of “hey look we care come back and play!” Quite annoying…