No Ion, Not Everyone Who Delves Wants to do M+

[Nanite-area-52]

My main is a chammy, my poison totem with modified cd because… the M+ affixs.

[Fauxstrasza-stormrage]

The problem is other content didn’t exist, not that raid can’t have the best gear.

[Trustlvlfour-zuljin]

@Nocturñe-black-dragonflight

If that means Delves needs to get insanely difficult then make it so.

Kind of defeats the whole point of why delves exist but ok. If they wanna turn delves into just another m+ situation and all the problems therein, that’s fine. The people who were what delves were aimed at will just go back to ignoring yet another “end game pillar” and the vault.

I have to admit, I enjoyed how occasionally people would rage about their terrible vault rewards were and I could sit back and laugh at them because I was immune to its rng.

[Yeastyholes-moon-guard]

@Trustlvlfour-zuljin

I’ve said this before: Wasn’t the whole point of integrating raiderio score into the base UI supposed to address this?

Base UI only shows their rating, best for dungeon, and their best dungeon. It doesn’t provide information regarding the number of keys at each bracket they’ve timed, the makeup of their score, information on if they have other specs. Base UI only provides so much information.

@Trustlvlfour-zuljin

When I played bfa, I could get heroic raid geared through the rng of warfronts. Which means I could have jumped straight into +10’s at the time. But did I do that? No. Why? 1. Because I’m not stupid and 2. Because I knew since I had 0 io score, I wouldn’t get invited anyway.

You are a gem because there are a good number of people who do think like that. And I don’t think the large part of the issue is a bunch of 610-615 players who never stepped into a key getting invited into a +7 or +8 so much but rather players at the 600 level jumping into +3 an +4s. Additionally, players seemed to have wised up that ilvl isn’t the be-all-end-all and that having some io indicates that said person might know how to play their spec.

@Dwelknarr-lothar

The coordination is easier, 100%. But no mythic raid fight has ever been mathematically impossible to defeat with perfect gear and execution. Keys do reach that point every season. That’s not where rewards stop, and I’ve said for years Blizzard should move the top M+ rewards up. But no matter what difficulty kicker you apply to the effort of coordinating raid, that still will not be as difficult as the point key becomes impossible.

You’re kind of comparing apples to oranges because with raids, it’s not just about if you can get CE; it’s also about how fast you can get CE. For example, you wouldn’t say a guild getting CE in week 3 is the same level of achievement as a guild who gets CE in the literal last week of tier. Keys are different in their achievement because they’re measured in terms of how high you can go before you hit the wall of the infinite scaling system.

Addressing the bold, them sticking the myth track vault gear breakpoint higher than it already is would be literally one of the worst thing they could ever do to this game. I’m happy that they did up the bar a bit compared to DF Season 2 and 3 (albiet the bar was a bit steep for the).

[Menzies-moon-guard]

@Warthinator-earthfury

For a lot of players hitting level 8 Delves, you’re getting very powerful rewards at that point. When you look across from there to Mythic+, it can feel like there’s no point doing anything below a Mythic+7, and 7 and up is actually quite hard. If you’re someone without experience of dungeons to begin with, +7 is not the best point of entry, and it certainly wasn’t designed to be a point of entry, so we think some players are hitting a cliff wall.

@Menzies-moon-guard

The effort to reward scale is astronomical in comparison from delve to M+ and that hasn’t changed since launch. Delves are useful for gearing alts so we can jump into higher keys. It makes sense why people say delves are too rewarding, its because they are. But they do plateau, like you are NEVER going to get enough gilded to upgrade or craft 636 gear. it would takes years.

I can’t even remember if delve gives gilded but if they do its only like a couple… I don’t notice such small rewards when you need 90 to craft a 636 lol even 12 is like a spit in the face when you manage a pug +8 and time it which is like winning the lottery. I do have friends and a guild that makes this easier but not everyone does. M+ also takes a lot of time , expensive pots, food n flasks etc just as all serious endgame does.

I see what Blizzard did, they essentially made hero gear wellfare gear and said ok, if you want to upgrade it, now you have to do M+. And even raiders have to M+. There is no other option if you want gilded crests. But I feel like this has ruined natural M+ progression, where people are jumping into keys that they don’t belong in, don’t know mechanics or how to even play the class properly. Progression is out of whack in terms of difficulty curve.

M+ has felt like crap all season, and doesn’t seem to be improving in pugs as I have seen it previously. I don’t think its the best idea to give people some of the best gear in the game for no effort, then expect them to do harder content and it not be a total cluster… but this is just a simple observation I don’t really care about delve rewards as I said they hit a point where you must go to the other content anyway or just stay at 620.

It makes me so happy I was on point for once and I am glad they are listening/eyeing the obvious issues we have in the difficulty curve right now

[Trustlvlfour-zuljin]

@Yeastyholes-moon-guard

Base UI only shows their rating, best for dungeon, and their best dungeon. It doesn’t provide information regarding the number of keys at each bracket they’ve timed, the makeup of their score, information on if they have other specs. Base UI only provides so much information.

Wait. I’m confused. Shouldn’t that mean that someone who’s never touched an m+ dungeon all season should still be showing a 0 score regardless?

[Yeastyholes-moon-guard]

@Trustlvlfour-zuljin

Shouldn’t that mean that someone who’s never touched an m+ dungeon all season should still be showing a 0 score regardless?

Correct…but theres not the most informed people who play this game…

[Ivoryjustice-area-52]

@Warthinator-earthfury

I don’t feel that there’s no point in doing anything below +7.

You “dont” feel theres “no” point in doing anything below +7. I love double negatives. I’m sure someone that can put such in depth thought into their first sentence certainly has a well thought out point. Oh, wait no. That doesn’t appear to be the case.

[Coraxus-jubeithos]

@Warthinator-earthfury

When you look across from there to Mythic+, it can feel like there’s no point doing anything below a Mythic+7,

@Warthinator-earthfury

I don’t feel that there’s no point in doing anything below +7.

I will grant you it is a bit awkward, but the double negative seems like a deliberate choice because the op wanted to include as much of a direct quote from the interview as they could in their opening remark. There were definitely better was to go about it, but the point was valid and technically correct.

[Ivoryjustice-area-52]

Nah, even choosing to not to use quotes as they should have to properly quote ion’s part of their reply there’s still better structuring that could have been used. I don’t think everyone needs completely proper sentence structure with perfect punctuation and stuff like that but it seems worthwhile to scrutinize something so poorly put together.

Even so their point is flimsy. People keep trying to rationalize delves as something that should be isolated from the rest of the game but the reality is the devs have always developed PVE progression as a whole considering and accounting for all forms of PVE together. Only seemingly separating PVP into it’s own category. It’s very obvious that the devs here want PVE activities to coexist and not necessarily undermine each other. Ion is clearly making a statement based on delves and M+ as a collective that coexist underneath the same PVE umbrella.

The devs are building PVE in a way that makes the most sense for someone that wants to participate in everything as a whole. So then the question is “does it make sense for an easier activity to be more rewarding than a more difficult one?”. If all facets of PVE are designed to be played as a whole then the answer should be no.

So the solution is to bring them both to equivalency whether that being to change the rewards or change the difficulty.

[Hornwinkle-caelestrasz]

I mostly play PVE, because I play slow and probably won’t make it to M+ before the next patch anyway.
It has taken me some time, to get my three tanks to T-5 delves, but I am not interested in speeding up PVE, it is fine how it is.

[Drdread-atiesh]

the thread shows Delves are very popular, maybe Blizz should take notice.

[Gundai-malganis (Gundai)]

It’s not a delve issue. Ion and his raid log brain is the problem. Ion NUKED WQ into the ground in DF. This is no more titan-forging or AP grind because raid loggers felt “force” into doing every WQ and spamming Maw of Souls.

A lot of people have short spurts of free time nowadays. They can’t waste 30 minute waiting to join a key and then get in the dungeon and have the tank leave.

[Athcaelas-cairne]

They have, and they’re super happy with them.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it passes both raiding and M+ in participation.

[Sanguinaire-garithos (Sanguinaire)]

You are not the only one in this position

[Sanguinaire-garithos (Sanguinaire)]

Ion hates players

[Tiekfu-dragonmaw]

id be ok if they rolled delve loot back to even like m+4 level, so long as they increase the crests in delves so you can actually uprade gear more than once a month.

[Yeastyholes-moon-guard]

@Trustlvlfour-zuljin

Shouldn’t that mean that someone who’s never touched an m+ dungeon all season should still be showing a 0 score regardless?

Thats correct. Granted I haven’t seen alot of this pugging keys on my alt warlock. But more often is what I see is higher geared players (say like 615) doing +4 and +5 and missing alot of the important gameplay fundamentals. But again, I think people have wised up to not invite a 610 toon with no keys done.

I think this whole hubub about delves being too rewarding is blow out of proportion but I think Ion is right in that M+ needs a better on ramp to learn the dungeons and delves played a role in that. It used to be that you’d use M0 as an into during heroic week or right before the season started and the +2/+3s keys to get familiarity with mechanics, but if you’re way overgeared (imagine being like 605) then you don’t learn some of those important things like defensive usage or CD management since you’re just blowing through the dungeon at lightspeed. But again, that can be remedied by outside research and stuff. I also think M+ and Mythic raiders will not be running delves in mass at the start of season 2 since heroic week is going away so you can jump into key off the bat.

@Faezwrystsyn-rexxar

You’d think players would gravitate to a difficulty of content they’d enjoy… but more often than not, they don’t. Especially when their ideal difficulty is widely regarded as a “stepping stone” to harder content they often don’t enjoy.

It is exceedingly rare to see players find the “happy medium” unless it’s one of these:

• Heroic Raiding
• Mythic Raiding
• Higher Mythic+ Dungeons with a steady group

There’s always a few transient players trying to move up through these groups, but they seem to be the only logical end-points for WoW as a whole. Never mind that players may simply not enjoy that TYPE of content.

So for everyone else, what’s left is just unsatisfying.

I think another part of it is that people try to push those different areas of content at a level/intensity they aren’t comfortable/capable of doing. The happy medium is found at how hard you go into those groups. I have a few friends in a a guild where they push for AotC as fast as their group can handle with their schedule and down it in a month. For me I normally just do the bare minimum for M+ and that works for me normally but during season 3 a decided to push a little harder for fun, only getting up to like to 3.18k with a handful of +25s. Another group of my friends are in a 2 night mythic guild and just have fun with the boys getting bosses with the mentality “we go as far as we go”. I think in those 3 areas theres alot of levels of intensity that you can align yourself to fit your comfort.

@Gundai-malganis

Ion NUKED WQ into the ground in DF. This is no more titan-forging or AP grind because raid loggers felt “force” into doing every WQ and spamming Maw of Souls.

This is why I hope they will expand delves and have delve specific gear thats more powerful in delves for those to want delves to be their end game to seperate themselves from group PvE plays and to prevent Mythic Raiders just steam rolling it because of gear. Basically like Pvp gear. It should still be somewhat good gear like is now should delve players want to go dip their toes into other content. But Ion in the interview is more wanting to mess with M+ rather than mess with delve rewards. Delve gear “invalidating” keys lower than +7 isn’t a flaw related to delves, its a flaw related to M+ and M0.

[Dwelknarr-lothar]

@Yeastyholes-moon-guard

You’re kind of comparing apples to oranges because with raids, it’s not just about if you can get CE; it’s also about how fast you can get CE. For example, you wouldn’t say a guild getting CE in week 3 is the same level of achievement as a guild who gets CE in the literal last week of tier. Keys are different in their achievement because they’re measured in terms of how high you can go before you hit the wall of the infinite scaling system.

How am I comparing apples to oranges? My comment is strictly in reference to the level of difficulty required to get CE versus the level of difficulty required to reach the top possible keys in a season and the gear rewards for each. Yes, it’s more of an accomplishment to get CE in week 3 of a season than week 23, yet both receive the same gear rewards for doing so. I wasn’t referring to which achievement was worth more, just the raw difficulty each will face; raid has an upper bound, M+ does not.

And just to be clear, I am not trying to argue that M+ rewards should be infinite or cap out at a higher point than mythic raid. I’m perfectly fine with the point where keys overtake mythic raid to not offer better tangible reward than mythic raid. I am just highlighting how the people that insist the opposite, that mythic raid deserves better loot than M+, don’t have an objective leg to stand on. It’s purely their personal preference that they think raids are more important than M+.

@Yeastyholes-moon-guard

Addressing the bold, them sticking the myth track vault gear breakpoint higher than it already is would be literally one of the worst thing they could ever do to this game. I’m happy that they did up the bar a bit compared to DF Season 2 and 3 (albiet the bar was a bit steep for the).

We can agree to disagree here. Again, if the goal is difficulty = reward, the point where M+ players get myth quality loot hasn’t aligned with the difficulty to kill mythic raid bosses in most season. Yes, M+ has access to fewer pieces due to needing to get it out of vault, but over the course of a season it’s still possible for M+ players to be just as geared, at least upgrade track wise, as mythic raiders.

Perhaps an alternative solution would be allowing raiders to get myth track loot in their vault for killing heroic bosses. Raid doesn’t allow players to get an item level bump from vault in the way M+ and delves do. It doesn’t matter if a guild can get AOTC 2 hours into the season, they will never get access to myth track gear via raid unless they kill mythic raid bosses.

You’re probably right about overall game health, at least measured by engagement and popularity. I’m certain there are a lot more players happy about being able to get myth track gear at a more achievable level of difficulty than there are players upset about the imbalance between the difficulty required to get myth track gear comparing raid and M+. But it’s still an inconsistency with the general philosophy of difficulty = reward.

[Nazarion-silvermoon]

@Dwelknarr-lothar

Funneling people into raid again when there is significantly more to do seems like an even worse idea.

Meh, I would start raiding again before I went into M+. Might just be me though.