I’ll write it out again and just bookmark it for the future so I don’t have to dig:
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Dungeon loot pool drastically reduced (2, absolute max 3 options per slot) but items are shared between dungeons. This way you can vary up the dungeons you run a bit (so you don’t have to drag a tank to a dungeon whose only notable drop is a caster trinket), and it’s easier to hit a specific item from the weekly vault
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Key level required for vault rewards shifted up across the board (by 5-10 levels easily), the required levels are too low and have been since day 1 of Legion. Very few people should be able to max it out week 1 of the season.
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End of dungeon farmable loot is gone. You choose 1 run per week per “upgrade track bracket” (Hero, Myth etc) that drops a guaranteed item from that dungeon’s loot pool at vault ilevel, using the bonus roll UI. Later in the season or with a (high relative to the reward) rating requirement this can go to 2)
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Raid bosses drop 1/3rd of weekly crest cap each (up from 1/9th or so). Not being able to cap from raid until farm (if even on farm) is just dumb.
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Raid vault unlocks are 1/2/4 bosses at most, so you can actually fill vaults during progress like M+ can. Still has the restriction of needing to unlock drops, so likely still worse than M+ vault.
The result for M+ is that you get more high quality loot (good for M+ players), less low quality loot (good for healthy gear progression), better odds of hitting the thing you want from M+ vault (good for everybody) and need to put in more effort to reach high ilevel (good for closer reward:effort between raid and M+)
The result for raid is that you can actually fill your weekly crest cap and vault slots with the difficulty you’re progressing, instead of being over half way through progress and still having vault slots from the difficulty below yours (or entirely blank). You still realistically need to do M+ for the weekly “bonus roll” runs and vault, but at least no mindless grinding. Depending on how high the key levels are set, this could be eliminated as well, similar to how PvP is not worth the effort anymore because the (PvE) ilevel is just not high enough unless you’re dedicated to and very good at the content.
I think that covers all the points I usually try to hit.
And you shouldn’t even have that option. That’s the entire issue. You get a “head start” which snowballs into nobody being able to outgear bosses anymore after the first 100 or so guilds because there’s simply no more gear to get.
Raiders generally speaking don’t, certainly not at the higher end where it actually matters/gets enforced. The vast majority of people I play with and talk to would love to just never enter a key again ideally, and certainly don’t want to farm them for full heroic gear early in the season. The ones that do want to do keys want to push keys, not farm easy ones.