Sanctified/Seal system is the death of Alts

I started SoD a few months ago when they made all runes free, and I found it really refreshing how alt-friendly it was to level up multiple classes and easily get them raid-ready with gear from undermine reals.

I had multiple toons raid ZG/AQruins/MC/BWL within hours of reaching 60 and quickly get basically full T1/T2 epic gear. I recall my Warlock specifically was killing C’thun in hardmode with only like 6 hours /played at 60. This is good game design, accessible for multiple alts, and enables players both casual and grinders to participate in raids with very little friction. As a result, I have basically one of each class near an AQ40-gear level.

The Problem: This alt-friendly, accessible/inclusive gear progression runs straight into a brick wall the moment that you try to take a character into Naxx. :brick:

Before highlighting the main culprit, it’s worth mentioning: Naxx already has a relatively steep, reputation-dependent attunement quest per character! Each character either needs lots of Argent Dawn rep (time-gate), or else lots of arcane crystals/nexus/righteous orbs (gold-gate).

If the above requirement were the only barrier to entry into raiding Naxx (as it is in most other versions of the game), then any character would naturally be able to go from Raiding AQ40 and having T2.5 gear into raiding Naxx and starting to get some T3 gear.

But instead we have this elephant in the room: the Sanctified gear and Seal of the Dawn progession grinds.

Imposed more strictly than gearscore for your BFD raids, most groups are effectively requiring that a character have their seal fully upgraded with a weekly time-gated currency, on top of needing to have a full set of “sanctified” gear, most of which comes from Naxx itself.

The Result: Characters that are basically in full 'Timeworn" gear from AQ40 are considered effectively useless in Naxx and won’t get invites unless they have grinded the NON-RAID content of Invasions and wandered around aimlessly in the darkness of Kara Crypts (also NON-RAID content).

So you go from steadily ramping up your character’s power level through raiding, to being told that all of the gear you acquired from previous raids might as well be a full set of grey Twill armor; because now you have to re-grind a completely new (non-raid) grind just to even get in to the next raid.

Again let me remind you that this is PER CHARACTER, and each alt must scramble up this broken ladder individually. Because the currency to upgrade the seal is Bind-on-account, it comes with the expectation that players must choose 1 main character to funnel all their currency/time to get the upgrades on. It’s no longer possible to just “jump in a Naxx raid” with your C’thun-geared character and start getting upgrades.

The Sanctified system is telling players “Pick a main, or don’t bother”.

For people that actually enjoy raiding multiple classes evenly and don’t have a set/designated singular “main” character, the Sanctified/Seal system is simply the death of alts having a reasonable progression. The Naxx attunement quest was enough, we didn’t need this gatekeepy “borrowed power” system that shuts out people who don’t want to waste their time wandering around Kara’s darkness mechanic.

Let alts raid if they are attuned.

I’m currently just skipping Naxx entirely due to this sanctified/seal b/s, and if we can’t join the new Scarlet Crusade raid with Tier-2.5 gear then personally I’ll just be quitting SoD. I’ve found it super fun over the past few months to level up and play with the class runes and hone in on which specs are working well, but if the intended gear progression for every character is that after raiding up through BWL/AQ40 we’re then supposed to grind invasions and Kara… I’ll just go back to Era again where any character can jump into any raid as long as their item-level is decent.

Not expecting anyone to miss me, and no you can’t have my stuff. But I write all this just to share where I’m at, and it’s explicitly due to the sanctified/seal path shutting out alts from raiding.

I got my alt to rank 7 seal in under 2 hours of doing invasions.

You don’t even need rank 7 seal unless you’re doing HM4, which you definitely are not doing on an alt. HM0 and HM1 are capped at rank 2 seal which you get pretty much for free.

Should try playing the game before typing a giant textwall about how bad it is.

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Getting the seal upgraded does not get you Sanctified gear.

And I’m glad you had lucky RNG on drops but that’s not the case universally.

Here’s how my attempt went at trying to even just get the 2-piece set bonus of the undead set.

  1. Purchased the BoE bracers in AH, okay great… just need 1 more piece for a set bonus…
  2. Grinded invasions for 5 hours and proceeded to witness only four of the cloth spellcaster chests drop, which kept being won by other casters who had just joined the group, and they promptly left and were replaced by new people that needed to roll on it still.

So having Remnants of Valor does nothing to ensure you win a roll on Sanctified gear. I basically walked away from 5 hours of invasions empty-handed… countless times saw Horde ninja shadow of doom tags where we didn’t even get the chance at a roll to see if the cloth chest would drop, much less a chance to even attempt winning the roll on it against a raid of other fresh 60s all spamming for it… So yea, I just walked away empty-handed for all my efforts, still without a sanctified bonus.

And I’m supposed to play this RNG roulette on EVERY alt? Before even being able to join the raid I’m trying to go to? like WTF, that’s not rational or feasible.

30 Necrotic Runes gets you the gloves. Not hard at all to farm. You can buy cloak from AH and depending on what class you are there are other crafted sanc pieces in the AH for cheap I might add. Here is a protip: If ur a leather user use sanc cloth gear that will be 20% damage upgrade just by wearing a sanc piece.

Any, look for those HM0. I have 2 alts I run Naxx on with no problem and I just got a resto druid on alliance that hit 60 and im starting to gear him out with no issues.

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Thank you for sharing this, I will look into that.

Yet still I do stand by the point that AQ40 gear should be enough to go to Naxx.

If it isn’t, then wtf did we raid AQ40 for?

Is the intended gear path for a fresh 60 now to ONLY grind invasions and Kara crypts and ignore all the previous raid tiers? I seriously don’t get it

and it is for HM0. its just that using sanc gear will make you do a ton more damage. =(.

so sanc gear is better in hm0? am new too, wondering.

Yes, it is even if its say ur a plate wearer and you use cloth or leather. Each piece is like 20% increase damage, something like that.

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AQ 40 geared people can easily clear nax zero with no sanc gear.

Will it be as brainlessly easy as a full raid with 8/8 sanc? No but its still easy.

Will entilited pug leaders who want you to carry their fresh alt whos still using emerald gear invite you if you dont have sanc gear?
Probably not.

-my alt stepped in with r7 with revs to spare.

2 set gloves gives the bonus, get the back piece and most pugs will take you.

If you run your alt thru crypts for a week you will be pumping.

Sanctified actually gets new folks in naxx sooner. Can’t make everyone happy

This really cuts to the core of the issue. The seal/sanct ‘requirement’ is purely player-imposed by people who are insecure that no one cared about their BFD parse.

I guess I can see your point here if you’re suggesting that there’s now zero point for any character to raid MC/BWL/AQ other than for idols/reals.

If it’s possible to just ONLY do invasions/Kara and go to Naxx then you are technically skipping all of the other raid tiers… but then doesn’t that render all of the other raid tiers entirely meaningless/negligible? If there truly is no benefit to having raid gear from there because you’ll have to replace it all with sanctified stuff, then… no one really needs pre-naxx content in SoD?

Is this really the intended gear path?

This system is BAD.

First, its confusing. I’ve been explaining this gearing system to people for the last few weeks. If people are confused or ambivalent to gear 8 weeks into a phase, it is a failed system imo.

Second, if you absolutely want to do this type of system…you should have provided more places to farm sanctified gear AND the seal should just be a zone-wide buff. Has anyone actually enjoyed farming remnants? Does this add anything to the game?

Because the remnant farming demands…they buffed the invasions to a crazy level. Now they are being used by Pally boosters to quickly launder hundreds of thousands of gold and leveling people way too fast.

SoD in general has a transient player base, but rewarding people max level characters in 5 hours of AFKing is very…retail lol.

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You should be able to get groups while wearing:

Scourge Invasion set (5/8) toward Seal Power [3 physical + 2 phantoms from set bonus]
Glacial Cloak (6/8)

As for Seal Power rank, I ended up with 1785 Remnants that I can funnel into an alt.


That being said, maybe they could add a 2hr ‘sigil’ that you can buy from the AD Rep vendor after you complete the Naxx trinket quest that allows you to buy an item you can send to alts that can be “shattered” to imbue you with max Sanctified Gear Status (8/8?).

((Or maybe a “hidden” quest that gets flagged as ‘completed’ if you’re preset for a Kelth kill.))

This way alts can roll not Naxx with T1/T2 but have the Sanctified status of 8/8 (pretty sure that’s the cap).

Maybe make it cost Frozen Runes and Righteous Orbs; one of each.

Let us buy Sanctified with reals and be done with it.

Death of alts was when they forced all of our achievements to be no longer trackable toon by toon and they did that long after they released the warband stuff. No 0 reason to play on an alt cuz 100% of everything is the same everywhere now and now my armory glitches to be 404d almost 99% of the time now days too.

I don’t even play this stupid rogue anymore and i tried switching posting toons, just logs you out and cannot get back in for a super long while and then I logged into this toon in game just to shift click copy the name back in for searching it out because no toons showed up on drop down list and would not let me type the name in to search for it…

So yea think they know how to program well at all anymore? So ofc my alts now glitch sometimes for tracking quests. And now can no longer see what each of my toons has done all by itself. Everything with running alts is now more glitchy and not even fun.

Sorry but I stopped reading this right here.

You grind Strat/Scholo for reals while gearing up and you’ll hit Honored in no time.

Yea I mostly just meant ‘steep’ as compared to something like the “Attunement to the Core” quest, or the BWL attunement where it’s pretty much just a freebie for running UBRS once.

I’m not saying that Naxx attunement is incredibly difficult, I’m just saying that it’s enough of an attunement on it’s own without any additional hurdles.

I haven’t had any problem on my alts doing the attunement quest itself.

The issue is that your character can be in full T2.5 and the raid leader only sees 0/8 Sanct gear.

My guess is yes, the shovel in kara is better than most weapons for melee…

I’d farm C’thun for Dark Edge of Insanity and use it until Might of Menethil long before I would even remotely consider derping around in Kara crypts for the shovel.

I just got an alt up this past Monday and with the exception of AQ (because it has no attunement), Naxx was actually the easiest thing for me to get ready for.

All I had to do was pay the iron price of attunement then mail my account bound remnants from my main (bam rank 7 seal) and I was ready.

Molten Core attunement even took me longer…