What makes higher keys more fun than lower keys?
A big difference for me is active vs passive waiting. For content with an actual queue, I can usually find something else to do to keep me occupied. I’ll frequently forget that I’m queued until it pops. For m+, you are acutely aware of the passage of time because you need to babysit it. Even if the time waiting is shorter, it feels longer.
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Very good point.
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Isn’t it human nature to take the path of least resistance?
Blame Blizzard, not the players.
Yeah I can definitely understand that. Getting in PUG keys has definitely gotten tougher over the past couple expansions; I don’t know how easy I would be able to PUG my way to KSH as a non-meta spec due to the waiting would go, compared to what I was able to do through shadowlands.
Scaling. Keys scale faster than player power due to gear. A fresh toon in a +2 is unlikely to be one-shot by much of anything, even the things that are highly telegraphed and are supposed to be avoided. Meanwhile even a highly geared character in a +10 will bite the dust if they ignore the avoidable damage. This same ideal holds true when considering damage and healing checks as well; there is a certain level of performance that can’t come solely from gear that you need to muster in higher keys that gear alone will power you through in lower keys.
As you move up in key level, more of your success has to come from how well you play versus how geared your character is. This makes for a much more engaging environment for me than a key level where just passive health and pressing any buttons in any order will allow me to survive and perform well enough to meet damage/healing checks.
That sounds like a problem with low level M+ not dropping enough gear. Delves you get 4 bountifuls a day and a limited number of keys each week. For people who are just running delves the acquisition rate feels pretty good.
If you have stored up a ton of keys and want to no life your way through delves you can get a bunch of gear in a week till you run out of keys, sure. But that is a player problem not an issue with the game. This idea though that you just run a handful of delves and are suddenly wearing a full set of Champ gear with a few pieces of Hero isn’t reality though.
If lower tier M+ needs more gear drops for people that want to gear up that way then great, hope Blizz increases loot drops there. Delves seem fine though.
It is, and why I have repeatedly suggested Blizzard make changes to bring low level m+ closer to the difficulty and time commitment of a T8 bountiful delve. I have not once suggested delve loot be nerfed or changed in any way. Just highlighting the aspects of the loot environment for M+ that have an impact, which does include delves.
My evoker actually did have this experience. Between crafting, getting 2 maps, and only seeing 3 duplicate pieces across 14 bountiful delves in a 2 week period, he was nearly fully champion gear in 2 weeks of just delves (and crafting).
Yes, this is just a case of RNG being RNG, and my evoker was an outlier. But the people who bring anecdotal accounts of their toon getting decked out in gear very quickly aren’t necessarily lying.
I actually don’t think the problem is the drop rate of items in M+; don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t turn down more gear out of M+. But even if every player got an item at the end of a key, a +6 for players that would benefit from champion level gear will take 2-3 times longer than each T8 bountiful delve while being significantly harder (by design).
The solution I would prefer is to bring back some of the lower level keys that were removed in the squish in DF S4. Those lower keys would allow for a difficulty more in line with a T8 delve which could then offer similar gear rewards for completion and vault. And then the rewards for the existing key levels we have could be rebalanced to account for the extra time and risk they entail compared to delves.
Me being social in WoW:
Joins M+ key
“Hey team.”
25 minutes of silence later:
“GG thx.”
People should stop pretending WoW stayed a social game after like 2006.
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/shrug That is quite an outlier. Half your delve drops are going to be that stupid Shadow Binding Ritual Knife trinket. I must have gotten 50 of them by now. 
Half of the rest of your drops are the stupid candle themed trinkets. Getting a run of RNG where you fill up every slot in short order is not going to be anywhere near typical.
I don’t run M+ so I’ll take your word for it but it sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
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I blame Blizzard 100%. But yes you are correct. Except when people do that and try to enter keys they havent practiced the lower keys, that certainly is an issue.
But the answer is not to screw us delvers over, fix M+. It is crap.
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Won’t do anything. It’ll give inferior rewards.
And if you give away free loot, then that changes the gameplay for people who enjoy it.
The game’s loot system doesn’t work in isolation… so by nerfing delves, it’s fixing m+.
m+ and delves are tethered to raids, that’s why m+ and delves both stop giving better rewards after a point.
I am aware, but that still doesn’t mean Blizzard doesn’t need to FIX m+.
This is absolutely asinine and you should be embarrassed that you posted it.
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M+ works fine. The only issue is some people hate the game mode… and the solution to that isn’t to completely redesign m+, but give people alternatives.
(Like Dawn of the Infinite, or segregate them to m+0 by skill gap.)
I wasn’t implying a redesign of M+, just make the lower keys give better reward or UNsquish the key levels. I enjoyed them the way they were in DF S3 and earlier.
I have 0 interest in stepping into what amounts to a 10 immediately. I am not a good player, I need to EASE into them. But the jumo into a 10 right away, not good for players like me.
Sure people can say get gud… It doesn’t come easy to everyone and people need to realize that.
I would also be OK with letting delve rewards scale up to 11. 11s can certainly be more of a challenge. T8 delves do seem easy for the gear they give, I will concede that as well.
But don’t just flat out remove the current rewards, rescale if need be but they need to do something to fix this mess. I see no reason as to why a M+2 key should not give out at LEAST 600 iLevel.
That makes the game unappealing because the reward chain breaks after 10.
They could certainly fix that was well.
Nobody is remotely asking for that. Just another disingenuous comment from the troll gallery.
The alternative is delves. I’m very glad they exist and glad they actually reward decent gear.
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But it’s all bound by raids.
So unless if you invent a new track, it’s limited to what the game can give.
Easiest solution is to nerf delves.
Then you don’t actually enjoy the game mode. You just want your own number to go up.
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