It’s not just bad, it’s the worst, if I were to make any content other than Delves it would be Raid pugs. I HATE M+ since BfA, I haven’t touched that content since and I don’t plan on giving it a chance until they at least remove the key breaking system.
What is really needed is to be able to get decent crests on the Delves.
Correct word is invalidate early levels…
Because we can still do low M+, LFR/Normal… but why would we when Delves are much easier and gives better rewards?
Gear is gear, and most high-end M+ players and Mythic raiders engage in both gear avenues. I could care less so long as I can get some gear each week to see the number go up and use said gear towards the content I want to do. I’d say you’re right when talking about the average non-mythic raider and mythic guilds that extended early in the season and are not doing reclears since it’s the only source of gear which is rewards and the progression paths must be handled with care. Which the +9 keys and below were not.
I don’t think its just difficult = reward. It’s more success = reward. There should be some level of challenge but at a level where it’s feasible for most of the play base. You surmount that challenge and that achievement is rewarded (provided good rng). The progression path also plays into it as well. The tuning of the first 4 mythic bosses is a weird one since their design has fairly reasonable mechanics to execute and gear helps with making said mechanics less threatening until you hit the last 4 where, sure gear helps, but fight design and mechanics aren’t significantly overcome by gear.
But they can get it from M+ via vault rewards. Like I get the idea that people should be able to do the content you prefer without touching the other, but unless they make it so you can’t use gear from one content source in another, this would lead to too much gear inflation and further widens the gulf between players. You then get the issues we had in DF where guilds were locking out on bosses like Smoulderon, Tindral, Fyrakk, and Sarkareth week after week with no power gain during prog because they’re already 2-3 ilvls away from cap. You might say, “Oh well, they’re technically over-geared for the fights then, so they just need to skill their way through it,” but that same argument applies to AOTC guilds since pre nerf Heroic Queen was reasonably killable at like 605 to 612 ilvl, which raiding heroic week after week plus another gearing avenue (M+ or Delves) will put you well over that. I do think that heroic should offer something akin what Aberrus had with Nelth and Sark loot being 3 ilvls higher (or maybe in this case even 6 ilvls higher) along side the last two bosses offering crests.
I dare say they designed the Delves with a shortage of crest for fear of killing the M+ if the Delves were completely self-sufficient.
Oh for sure, when you look at the crest currency and how you obtain them they don’t even mention delves at all lol.
This is not true in the slightest. Plenty of top-end players are against how rewarding Delves are for the relative difficulty. There’s just less of them so you see less of them.
Because the best way to gear is to do a variety of content, preferably content that you enjoy. Anyone who thinks that delves “invalidate” low keys and Normal raids is shortsighted and doesn’t understand how to properly gear a character.
Delves and raid complement each other nicely. Raids have poor drops and can only be run once a week but give access to unique vault items and a good number of crests per time spent. If you think I’m going to choose another 616 cape out of the vault when I could get a Champion Spymaster’s, you’d be mistaken.
Delves give as many drops as you have keys and you can run them when you want but are crest poor. The primary barrier to pugging raids is ilvl. You can’t usually get groups reliably until you half outgear the content. Delves provide the needed gear to get the process started.
Delves and low keys don’t complement each other as well but doing both is still superior to doing either one alone. Delves get you to 606 quickly but, for most classes, half your gear will be straight up bad. Because of upgrade discounts, there isn’t any difference between Champion 1 and Champion 4 at that point. If I have two mediocre 616 delve trinkets that I got from the vault and I get a 597 Sacbrood while doing a +2 Ara-Kara for io, do you expect me to be sad because it’s low ilvl? Of course not. I’ll skip over to my good buddy Cuzolth and upgrade that sucker crest-free. Once you get to +4s and start bringing in runed crests, you’ll shoot up far faster than someone who stayed in delves.
The fact that people are lingering in delves instead of switching over or incorporating m+ into their routine is due to the fact that m+ is uninviting and inconvenient. That’s an m+ problem and tinkering with the rewards isn’t going to change that.
Two reasons for that:
I don’t think there are actually many people like this but definitely a few on this very forum, here with us…right now.
You see how your entire argument is an attack on the person?
and this.
That’s because it’s true. Top end players have LONG past the need for anything from delves and it’s beneath them. Why care about something that doesn’t affect you in the slightest? Pettiness. Well and ego.
Again, you are too focused on the individual. It’s not about that and I have explained it in great detail.
Except it’s not. It’s just how you cope because you are unable to actually defend your position from an objective standpoint and argue about the topic. You go straight to personal.
It’s always been about that.
It is. Here’s a prime example of what I’m talking about:
How has it always been about that, when I have spoken about it from a systemic level the entire time?
By quoting someone else? LOL. Then argue with them. I am not that person and I have explained my own opinions and discussed it by trying to look at it from the larger perspective. The fact you had to quote someone else is telling.
I’ve made my point very clear and you continue to come at me with strawman arguments that aren’t even true. I’ve disproven your arguments multiple times when you try to accuse me of having certain view points with direct quotes of me saying the opposite.
If you don’t like what someone else is saying then take it up with them, I’m not their daddy.
What exactly would the point of “bringing delves in line” (as you people like to call it)? It would ultimately end with players having less gear. Why is that a good thing?
I just proved my point. It’s not about “game balance” it’s not about “the health of the game”, it’s about how the fragile egos can’t stand seeing other players with decent gear.
No, you proved nothing by quoting an individual, again. They don’t speak for all of us and I already told you that they don’t speak for me. Using that example as definitive data is intellectually dishonest.
If you can control yourself and actually have a discussion then I’ll explain it to you again, but I’m not going to repeat myself if you continue to take out one line just to attack me and not address the topic. It’s just not worth the effort. You let me know what you want. Your behavior thus far has only shown me that you are not willing to have an honest discussion. I have not attacked you even though you have come after me persistently.
You need to separate discussions and stop generalizing.
Lucrend’s position on gear is summed up as: Number go up.
Doesn’t matter what it was before, just it must never go down.
If world quests somehow rewarded mythic raid gear, they have to keep doing that. (And yes, delves would drop inferior loot.)
On anything, more is always better.
It’s not about progression paths either, because bigger is always better.
Ion is doing the best he can
That’s fine, my point is I don’t think it’s healthy for the game to funnel people into any given game mode. People should be able to choose the game mode they want to play and have progression by doing so. Delves, M+, and raids shouldn’t be structured as merely stepping stones for one another.
What does more success mean to you in this context? The idea that completing the hardest content rewarded the best gear has been fundamental to WoW since the beginning. Nearly all (if not all) exceptions to this have been expansion-defining systems where a BIS item was available to all players eventually, but most of the gear players wore still followed the more difficult = better gear formula.
While it’s true that gear won’t trivialize the mechanics for those final bosses, it still makes the fights more achievable for more groups. My having better gear may not save me from dying if I screw up, but assuming it wasn’t a raid-wipe mechanic, my teammates having better gear may allow for them to still kill the boss with me dead compared to when we had worse gear.
Eh, I just threw that out as an example, it wouldn’t have to be necessarily a 1-to-1. What if killing the last X bosses on heroic raid gave an upgrade token that allowed players to raise a heroic item to a myth track item? We can even make those upgrade tokens come from the vault so it’s on a weekly timegate. How many tokens drop, how many are required, and so on can be tweaked if a straight 1-to-1 is too powerful.
My point is that one of the best things about vault IMO is the fact that it allows players to become more powerful week over week in order to help overcome the higher difficulties of the modes they’re playing. For both the M+ and world/delves row, the rewards are higher than the content you completed. But for raid, it’s the same; yeah it can be nice to have another shot at that heroic trinket that didn’t drop this week from heroic raid, but after a number of weeks the useful items out of those slots dwindle as players get them through raid or the vault. I think there’s a place for raid to also get this natural power boost even once they’ve fully geared out in the track of the raid they’re doing.
You may have proved that for that person, it’s about ego. But finding a single example of someone “on our side” of this argument doesn’t mean you can dismiss everyone on that side as feeling that way.
Alright. Let’s hear why having less gear and less solo progression is a good thing.