I personally appreciate gear being a significant aspect of the game, as I believe gear progression in WoW has been one of the most satisfying systems. Although it has also likely caused the most drama, it’s something I would never want to see gone. In short, I’m a simple man that likes to defeat dragons and get loot.
1. Gear progression and story
Gear tells a story for me, it reveals what you did and where you went. It’s not simply a tool for power but a representation of your character’s efforts. I think because of that it’s important for gear from different content to look distinct; simply having recolors doesn’t feel great. Wondering where that recolor comes from seems underwhelming. PvP gear should look more savage, like you went through a battlefield, and the catalyst gear should be a more neutral transmog if it didn’t come from the raid. The journey is really important to me and I think your gear should be able to reflect it better.
In the past, WoW had different items for varying difficulties of the same content. I believe this made gear more interesting as you didn’t get the same stuff just at higher ilvl. We don’t necessarily need entirely new loot tables, but having some loot unique to difficulties can make gear more recognizable, unique, interesting, and diverse. We also used to have last bosses dropping more distinctive and higher item level gear, which captured a lot more my attention and made me care more about them. Having harder last bosses drop gear that you might not even need is really underwhelming given the effort required.
2. Gear longevity and purpose
Completely resetting gear like the last two patches of Dragonflight makes my character’s time investment and progression totally irrelevant. Completely replacing gear you acquired in the first two weeks of a new patch, after spending months grinding for that gear and progressing your character, feels very underwhelming.
It’s fair and sensible to not want players to have to do previous raids/content to access new raids/content. However, with M+ existing, you can still easily gear up and catch up to the new raid/content. I personally would find it much more fun, interesting, and worthwhile not to have to spam much easier content each patch just to get into mythic raiding each tier, something that has been referred to before as the “mythic tax”.
I think it would be interesting and remove a lot of uninteresting progression to have the previous raid gear overlap at one raid difficulty lower, so previous mythic gear would be comparable to the new heroic raid gear. This would remove much of the rush and grind that new seasons bring for characters that have completed a lot of the previous content. But what if some piece of gear from a previous raid is still strong for the new one? I would suggest simply buffing loot drops from previous raids by a meaningful amount so people have the option to go back and acquire that loot much more easily if they want to.
3. Gearing speed
For me, it’s obvious that a video game is more fun when you have something to do daily that can progress your character, and I think many people would agree. But how much of this is sustainable in the long term? With M+ and crafting being as strong as they are, you can gear a character to near-max ilvl very quickly.
In season 3 I mostly focused on M+ and crafting early and you can get near max ilvl gear in 4-5 weeks. Then, over multiple months of a patch I slowly got the last 4-5 ilvls I was missing from the cap, depending on my Great Vault rng. I don’t find that experience very fun or fulfilling, as after the first few weeks, there isn’t much motivation to continue unless, like me, you have the goal of joining a mythic raid team later in the season (as I was busy in the early season and couldn’t raid during that time) or have your own goal to pursue.
I don’t know what the best solution is for this, as any nerf to content rewards will understandably be met with player frustration. Maybe we’re too far to turn back, but I still feel it’s worth mentioning. I think borrowed power scratched that itch of being able to get stronger during a patch when gear became less important, but many people no longer want as much borrowed power. I personally liked to get some borrowed powers but the grinds or locks associated to them didn’t feel great and I will enjoy getting new powers with hero talents even if they are not the same.
There’s also the question of whether nerfing gearing speed will necessitate more catch-up mechanics. I think it would make sense for the gear acquisition/upgrade process to become faster for everyone once a .5 patch is released.
4. Upgrade system: Crests/Flightstones
I enjoy harder content so when the most efficient way to acquire something is to do lower-level content, it doesn’t feel great or fun. Crests dropping in the same quantity from m+6 or m+15 doesn’t make sense to me. Similarly, I would expect later raid bosses to drop more crests as they become harder. In many ways, the change from valor to the new upgrade system was great as it incentive harder content, but some fine-tuning could be made to make it more enjoyable for me.
5. Tank and Healer gear (in premade raid content)
As someone that plays a tank often, I think it’s logical to prioritize dps players, but this isn’t really fun. If my role scales less with gear or doesn’t have specific gear targeted at my role it won’t get much gear from raiding. It’s not as enjoyable to progress slower than most people doing the same content and to have to rely mainly on the Great Vault for gear. I think having more role-specific gear could benefit those roles like having more trinkets locked to tanks or healers, or even cantrip items specifically locked for tanks or healers.
6. Gearing alts, a repetitive task
I think gearing and playing alts is something fun to do. But like many things, doing the same grind at the same speed is not really fun. Gearing alts should be faster.
6.1 Gearing alts, crests
We’ve had a similar suggestions before like this post: [Retail] [Feedback] - The amount of Crest/Flightstones you gain should increase on alts
and many other threads being made also about this.
I think a really good way would be once your main has reached certain point that you unlock a crest discount on your alts. For instance, once your character has outgrown the need for a crest type, your alts could get a discount on the amount of that crest needed to upgrade gear.
6.2 Gearing alts, the great vault
The great vault is really intimidating to unlock on many alts, it takes a lot of time to do 8m+ weekly, and even more for each alt. As someone who likes to play many alts, this is just too much time to invest weekly just to keep my alts up to date. I can play a lot and still feel somewhat hard-capped to only be able to maintain 3 characters. This could be much faster if the great vault had a feature that would help alts fill it faster. It could be something like if your main did 8m+10 then your alt would only need 4 to get the same amount of great vault slots.
7. Legendary gear, the orange gear
I enjoy unique loot and legendary gear. I think they can spice up gameplay and add to the longevity of gearing a lot. But a legendary item is more than just an orange piece of gear. I enjoy the story a lot and I think legendary items should be used to add more of it to the game. I think it’s way more fun and relevant when a legendary item has a rich backstory. It’s not just because the big evil guy got an item that it becomes legendary. Was it forged in a volcano by elves, or imbued with spirits or elemental kings? How did that item become so great that it became a legendary item? It’s not something that should feel like you sprinkled some orange dust on it and it became legendary.
This also means that the journey and acquisition process need to be meaningful. I felt the level of rng with legendary items in Dragonflights was not a fun or a meaningful journey, as were crafted legendary in Shadowlands or Legion ones. I think legendary items feeling like a lottery is not a great design as then the feeling of earning it is meaningless “you just got lucky”. The same as was titanforging, getting lucky didn’t mean much and getting unlucky weeks after weeks is not a great feeling.
P.S. Feel free to add your own takes on gearing and feelings about it. Gearing is not a simple subject and I believe diverse point of views can be helpful. I’m also grateful to anyone that spent time to read this.