First, wanna address that while I haven’t gotten a CE in ages, I’m a player like you where the hardest part of mythic raiding is the roster boss. For me, I’ve always been the kind of player that can snooze fest the first half of such raids by the time others are even understanding the first boss or so consistently. In M+, consistently been hitting that 1-3% range on my main, and play a wide enough berth or classes that I could do it on other specs if given the time.
That is to say, I am definitely one of those “606 item level is more than sufficient for completing a 10” type, and I will also caveat with the point you’re wanting to make, about how the MMO cycle expects more players to access that reward tier over time.
That said, let’s consider what the reward tier represents. In mythic raiding, mythic level gear serves to nerf the content over time. That is, we observe that the content can be beaten, largely pre nerf, where the average item level of groups at high end play are barely at the Myth 1/6 track. Thus, one should expect that a player at full 626 ilvl should HAVE TO be doing mythic level content to get mythic level loot at that point, and by proxy, they’re STARTING the grind that others FINISHED at the same ilvl. This means we should reasonably expect that a full heroic ilvl player 619 who’s TRYING mythic level content can inevitably get to Myth 2/6 item level without a single mythic item dropped, so long as they are IN the content and have done the content prior.
With M+, we hadn’t had that, but this season had started swapped closer to that. In M+, the +10 line curves out swimmingly well for the same reward structure we see in ENTRY mythic raiding, where you can effectively convert enough time with a smattering of skill levels into a chance at mythic loot. Only in the case of M+, we don’t also have “but you need to be trying 10s to get mythic crests”, either. Content to content, even when Mythic crests were sitting at +9s, it was more forgiving to be gearing in M+ than mythic raid. You would effectively be in content UNDER a mythic level of difficulty, but getting the ability to gravitate and reach a Myth 2/6 reward. And now that’s at a +8, which is fine BECAUSE it plays into your point
We haven’t moved the goal post for +7 sitting at the mid/heroic range, either, so a player who’s capable of playing in hero raid in the one hour clear as you’re describing is going to be overgeared for 7s. In fact, even those at 603+ are overgeared for 7s as the mid casual space!
Why does this matter? Let’s paint a picture for a moment. If one does purely Delve 8s, one can hit full 603 Champion gear in every slot eventually from raw drops, and usually enough crests and stones on a main to bump to 605-606 along the way unless they’re really lucky with getting non-duplicate drops.
Now, for a solo effort, this is much easier/faster for an experienced player, but we KNOW that Delve 8s are still not yet completed by many players who have been in that 4/5/6 delve range early on, as well. That’s more of a side note to say “the distribution here is NOT top weighted, but curved down”. For MOST people in the delve game, they NEEDED to get close to full veteran before they felt comfortable enough to reliably clear Delve 8s, whether players such as you or I can do it in 580 gear on an alt or not.
On any character that is NOT sitting on multiple weeks’ worth of coffer keys already, it takes around 4-5 weeks for a main to see enough keys to get full champion fitted from delves.
Give or take the hero level loot. The hero level loot appears to behave like the legion legendary BLP, and we tend to see players who play weekly averaging close to 2 per week, and players starting later getting a bit of an accelerated track on them. But even if you got FOUR such piece in unique slots each week, the average player in that case would still be sitting on veteran slots. You’re still talking about a period of four weeks, as well.
Lamplighter takes around 3-5 minutes to get enough shards for a weekly, but a good 20-30 minutes can set you up for weeks
The raw HARD downtime of the 20 waves, between waves and between 5 sets, makes this take around 10 minutes fast for speed clears. We’re up to around an hour of prep time for the four weeks, not bad for 2 keys per week. For cache three, you have options, but the best time value is to find a special assignment that also overlaps with one of the other weeklies, such that youre only spending around 10-15 minutes on keys 3/4 that week. All in all, you can commit about 2 hours of actual playtime, if done efficiently, to have enough keys to see enough delves each week for the full champion and a hefty heroic gear in delves.
Most classes who are delve favorable are able to speed clear Delve 8s in 5-7 minutes solo, and solo is almost always faster if you’re gunning for efficiency. Many specs sit at 10-15 minutes for a speed clear! Most groups can barely do delves that quickly even with experienced players, for reference
But taking a lower bounded average, let’s assume one spends 8 minutes per delve. Zero travel time, zero deaths, zero waste. That’s around 128 minutes of delves, minimum, for full champion and/or most of a heroic set.
Such a player, with zero waste and operating at speed clear levels on a 40+ Brann, is still spending around 4-5 hours to get full champion and a large amount of heroic pieces, assuming zero duplicates. If you even assume a 10% or higher chance to hit a duplicate, you’re immediately looking at closer to 8 hours of time spent on content for around a 606-608 ilvl
For reference, the same comparison in M+ at say, just doing +3 keys, would translate into around 26 keys with a 40% rate of loot assuming no trading, assuming groups at that level are struggling in the content. But even one halfway experienced player in that key level, on an alt, dropping a key to JUST the +2 line is enough to get an extra +10 keys.
For the same time commitment, you can see 26 to 36 keys, and still hit 606 item level with basically nothing traded to you.
And if at any point one weaves in some +4 keys to that mix, one can hit the same average item level as a player who’s got a few heroic pieces from Delves
That said, if we look at the NEXT 8 such hours, a player in delves is going to end up around 610-611 ilvl if lucky, whereas the same player spamming 4s is going to lock in on 619.
We haven’t changed the content time on content
We haven’t changed the content difficulty
We haven’t even considered the Great Vault
And yet, we have parity of a character from basically any random fresh ding able to reach these heights the week they do, versus any character that needed weeks of coffer keys to do
And without hanging difficulty, any two mains will come out ahead by JUST doing keys versus the optimum delve scenarios, assuming zero feeding at all.
But beyond that, between these two characters, the one who didn’t do delves is also going to stomp 7s for full hero gear faster than that 611 player is going to get enough crests from the lower keys to catch up.
And that first player is jumping right back to 619, with gear that can go up higher, and a wider stat spread.
Now, if you have done a TON of delves, your alts can skirt the buyin much faster which then leads to the situation you’re talking about, but most casual players aren’t anywhere NEAR that point
And even then, that’s not an unlimited resource, and there exists a threshold where running enough alts will run the well dry and force you to eventually eat the time cost again (although that sits closer to 6+ alts)
In other words, the situation you’re describing DOES happen, but only if…you’re a fairly strong player who’s active often and in many alts. That target is niche
For anyone not in that camp, the rate of parity where Delve time breaks even versus M+ time is around a week or two’s worth of delves
That is, if a character is leveling in one week and gets 4 caches along the way, and then they ding that week, and get four caches the following week, then two days of bountiful 8s into lower M+ is WAY WAY WAY more efficient than just either…and then it falls off to where M+ is vastly more efficient even at the low key ranges
If one can full clear normal raid in an hour, under the same criteria, then one can expect an average of around 1.6 champion drops per time spent. On average, you’ll see about the same rate in that condition as you do struggling keys under comparable conditions!
All of this is to say, your perspective is skewed as to how efficient delves are BECAUSE of where you sit in the hierarchy. If we gravitate towards more realistic values for lower skilled players, delves basically gain more value the worse you are as a player or if you’re a strong player; the in betweens are better off in raw M+ after a handful of champ pieces!
But that point aside, the 606 for 10s topic is important to discuss. People are forgetting that getting Mythic level loot is intended for a rough % slice of the population, and that slice is closer in line to mythic raiding as of shifting to +10s. Comparable gear needs for early access to it, comparable gear needs for consistency, and technically less gear rewards but easier crests rewards.
But the lower players won’t stay that low forever. We’ve seen more casual players clearing 10s as that average item level has climbed
Week 1 7s had some bite, but week four 7s are basically free to the wider audience.
A player who never goes beyond a +4 key can attain an item level that is STILL higher than what more casual players have been completing 10s in
And 10s are a good jump over 9s, and 9s are a decent jump over 8s. IE, a player who cannot do anything more than a 4 until running out of upgrades will be able to reach an item level that’s just under 1/6 Myth, by one upgrade tier
As in, if those players never get a single piece of hero gear (a +7) and never get a single crest to upgrade myth levels (a +8), those players WILL get geared to a point JUST below that Myth 1/6 reward, inevitably
And THAT is where the conversation NEEDS frames. Assume this player cannot do a +10 key to completion at 619 item level. The jump to 623 is very VERY unlikely to shift a non-completion into a completion at that level, IE, the gear jump isn’t strong enough that such a player can BENEFIT from having Myth track gear in practice.
Okay, so they can probably still go lower to farm for crests. Dropping back from a 10 to an 8, a full 619 player who farmed JUST the mythic crests would eventually passively get full hero gear AND be able to farm up to 626 item level from JUST the raw upgrade tracks
The same players, given enough time, can ALSO get around 4-5 sparks of crafted 636 gear. That’s close to an extra +3 or +4 item levels!
And if THAT player is not able to COMPLETE a +10 in what is effectively 3/6 Myth, or with enough time, 4/6 Myth?
And THAT is what we are talking about here. If a player cannot EVER get a key completed above a +8 key, EVER…such a player will still attain an item level of around 629-632 with JUST raw TIME.
And thus, we have to ask ourselves, whether getting access to 623 gear at that point matters. Even if they could get Myth 1/6 gear, they would be demonstrating that they STILL cannot play at a point where 4/6 Myth gear could get them to pass content that players are more casually doing at a good -10 to -20 item level.
And THAT means we DO have the system you’re describing. Over time, a +8 ilvl bump for a key under 10 is worth more scaling than the key itself.
A 606 player who can barely complete a 7, despite being overgeared, could reasonably time that key. And getting a +24 item level jump means …they should be struggling in 10s, at worst, from raw gear alone
People are forgetting that the point in the season where those players TYPICALLY get into such content without a carry or paying for a carry is usually… about 2-3 weeks out from where we currently are!
And in 2-3 weeks time, I cannot imagine even potato level players won’t be completing 10s. They may not be timing them, but they are capable of hitting close to peak ilvls, they should absolutely be able to complete them