I believe the obvious answer, from a PVE perspective, is that this was why the Titan Residuum system was introduced in 8.1, so you could scrap your Azerite gea, and also get these from the weekly caches, so you could start building up currency and picking and targeting the gear you specifically want if RNG is fickle. I don’t believe gear that drops after 8.1 even has a vendor option anymore either. You can get residuum from disenchanting gear as well if you have enchanting.
Of course I am not sure if you are looking for a PVP specific vendor, but since you directly address dungeons and raids that is the answer I am sticking with.
Not to mention you didn’t have to worry about getting that one item slot not dropping, I had the same two trinkets myself this expansion for nearly three months, a 340 and the BoE.
No one said it should, give you everything you want, you just have to open your mind… for example, if someone does a +14 key or whatever, let them then choose the item they want to upgrade, and how much you can upgrade it, say warforge / titan / add socket, depends on the quality key and time you did or avg of all weekly dungeons, etc… see, there’s a lot of ways to break out of the RNG grind fest.
So you get another chamce at rng for not liking what you got from rng is a solution to a near majority that dislikes the system? That seems logical. /s
Except you couldn’t buy a piece a week with valor, and it was limited to a specific 2-3 slots for a normal (heroic now) item. If you already had stuff in those slots too bad.
Weapons were never included in the valor gear.
If they brought back the wrath style valor it would work like this.
no gear outside of raiding. Everything else is bad.
you can buy 2-3 slots of 370 gear with valor. If you already have those slots too bad.
you can downgrade your valor to buy 2-3 slots of 355 gear.
ICC was 256/264/272 for 10, 25/10H, and 25H. Valor got you 2-3 264 items and that’s it.
Now we’re buying BiS targeted for the 3 most important slots, in what would have been 272 gear in ICC. Along with farmabke 264 gear with no lockout and once per week cache of 272.
Sadly I feel very negatively about why Blizzard does this. They know, with absolute certainty, that players want a currency system. They have done it in the past - the conquest and valor systems - to great success. They even had to retro into it for their Legiondary items and even in this xpac the Azerite stuff.
Yet we still get RNG-at-all-costs shoveled into our face. To demonstrate how frustrating this is, just look at this character’s profile. I have DE’d over 60 items from incursions/warfronts/other sources and don’t have a 1h weapon… and I’m a tank. I’m ilevel 370 with a 345 weapon. I have “played ball” with the game - I run incursions everytime they are up, I schedule my day around it, I run all the warfront quests and world bosses, emissaries and I even do M+ every week…
And my prot warrior is 369 ilevel, with a 340 main hand. AND - the kicker - I have FIVE level 370 2handeders on the prot pal and FOUR level 370 2handers on the warrior. C’mon.
It’s ABSURD and DUMB. I’ve played more than enough to earn that gear, many times over, on both toons and I can’t get it.
And earlier in this xpac I mained a brewmaster monk - after months of no weapons, I broke down and spent 200,000 on the AH for a 350 2hander so I could stop trying to tank +7s with a 325.
It does not make the game more fun to constantly be frustrated. Players want to earn their gear, but they want TO BE ABLE TO GET the gear. And next week M+ gets 30% harder, but I have to start with -30 ilevel main hand from what I am supposed to have with this kind of time put in.
Is there a consequence? yes, yes there is. I have stopped working on any alts and all that time I used to put into WoW I now put into Rift. Over time that’s a bad thing for Blizzard to be encouraging. Today alone that is 4 hours so far in Rift instead of tanking M+. Fail.
Second, maybe focus on killing raid bosses or clearing dungeons that drop a 1h?
Incursions/warfronts/emissaries is bonus stuff for people that don’t really participate in group content. To an extent same with the weekly cache, which is just a carrot to get people to do 1 per week for the outrageously high item level it rewards relative to content cleared and being weekly.
For what it’s worth next week you can set loot spec for warfront/incursion/emissaries.
If this was wrath and you wanted a weapon what would you be doing to get it knowing they aren’t buyable with valor?
Pretty sure I could get weapons with conquest - I remember planning around when to get it. In MoP, pretty sure since I only did PvP and never did any RNG gear drop crap. That was boss. (And yes, I checked, I said valor+conquest which allowed a robust way to earn the gear you needed).
I don’t raid, won’t raid, and weapons being locked behind raids is probably the worst idea in WoW. If you want more M+ tanks, give M+ tanks more options to get gear. (Yes rolled tons of dungeons dropping the weapon I need - I didn’t get any this entire xpac on any toon, not 1). I could care less if raiding were to shrivel up and die in a fire.
Loot spec should have always worked - that would have solved this problem as I’ve gotten 9 straight wrong-spec weapons and I would already be tanking +7 and higher on my new alts.
It is interesting that in this RNG-instead-of-earning-gear system Bliz has to keep firehose throwing us gear in the 0.5% chance it will be the piece we need. The Residuum system only solves 3 slots, we are still going to be subject to a very long process to actually complete any set. On my six level 120s, every single one has a piece of gear that just will not complete… every one.
My new Rift toon is level 34 and counting… so that’s working so far. And I can flat out buy gear if I need to or feel like it.
The only way a raider will be able to use residue is if their RNG sucks even more than it already does. And if that happens, I think you’ll see more people quit instead.
