First of all, the only place heroic raid gear comes from is the weekly quest (Turtle dude) that I have seen. The residuum gear and the M+ gear is dungeon/quest gear and does not have the same traits or appearances. WQ gear does not drop at 400. Emissaries occasionally pop up that offer something that high, and you get one at the beginning of the Darkshore cycle, but it’s not Dazor’Alor gear.
So…you don’t get Heroic raid gear from WQs, and the only way you get ilvl-equivalent gear from WQs is if it TF’s.
As to AotC, you either care about achieving that or you don’t. I ran heroic Daz with my guild every week while we cleared that. I didn’t get much loot from it. I just wasn’t lucky with drops, I guess. So…am I supposed to be upset that I got AoTC, but I didn’t get the chest off Jaina or the mirror trinket off Rastakhan?
Because according to the logic used in all of these posts lamenting that dirty casuals can reach 400 ilvl without raiding…I should not be happy about my guild downing Jaina together.
I shouldn’t be excited about that because what REALLY matters is the trinket that never dropped for me and the chest BiS I never received. Those are what matters, and the fact that other shaman have those items and I don’t should ruin the AotC achievement and the raid experience for me.
Imagine misrepresenting someone to try to make your point. (hot tip: I don’t even do WQ’s anymore). Nobody in this entire thread is saying WQ’s are hard. What’s hard is seeing some random dude with a titanforge, that’s just heartbreaking I’m sure.
Why is “raiding shouldn’t be about the gear amirite” even an argument? If I’m raiding, at least part of the reason I’m doing it is because I want awesome gear. WoW used to be an mmorpg after all. Seems now it’s some weird single player game with optional group content, coasting on player nostalgia.
You still haven’t given a reason why WQ loot needs to be on par with heroic raids, they can give a lower ilvl and you will still have fun doing them because you don’t do it for gear but the actual content.
The thing is, their gear is higher. I know TF/WF are a terrible system but Mythic raiding gear that has TF up will always be the highest ilvl over a piece of WQ gear that has TF up.
Like I don’t get their argument at all. They still have the higher ilvl, their gear is still unique and the better looking pieces. It’s literally no different than it was in Vanilla, BC or Wrath.
One issue that comes with this is that there isn’t a difficulty curve. Rather, it’s pretty simple gameplay that then takes a significant jump up in difficulty; there isn’t a steady climb in content.
Typically, you’d do something easy that will give gear to help set you on the path of doing something a little more difficult. That, in turn, rewards you with gear that will set you on the path of something even more difficult. The leap from mere WQ’s and LFR into even Normal raiding and +8/9 keys is pretty significant, if you look at it from an inexperienced player’s point of view.
It actually hurts them more than it helps them in the long terms; gives them no test to improve their skills to the point where more difficult content will be too daunting for them.
Like it or not, in any game with loot as the primary reward, the main reason to play is for the sake of the sense of power progression and character growth. If it’s too easy to obtain, then there’s no reason to stick around after its received. If it’s too hard to obtain, it doesn’t feel worth bothering.
MMO’s have always been about character progression through gear that allow you to be superior to other players, enemies, and bosses. Having content reward gear based on difficulty is entirely why this game exists… unless all you do is pet battles I guess.
This is what I was saying before. This whole thing is a mountain out of a molehill. Benthic gear will never actually compete with heroic gear. It’s really just catch up gear.
Why not? Why not even higher? They could reward 450ilv and it would still not eliminate your avenues of play. Someone who acquires their gear merely from World Quests will never have the satisfaction of raiding with a guild and achieving that last kill. Nor will they have the comradeship or memories from doing so.
Start looking macroscopically, and realize there is a very broad range of players that like different things that you like, and play at a wide gamut of levels.
End-game content for less than a quarter of players? That seems rather counter-intuitive.
I’m actually not saying that harder end content should go away, but pretending the game doesn’t have a problem when it comes to end-game is silly. Most players have never raided much if at all beyond LFR. Most players don’t do mythic dungeons (or at least not higher mythics…). If Blizz wants to keep subs then they HAVE to keep people who don’t enjoy the hardest content playing.
So what would YOU do if you were Blizzard? How do you keep casual players playing so that the game makes money? What should the motivation be for a schmuck like me who does LFR and that’s it to keep on forking over $15?
Blizzard has painted themselves into this corner in a lot of ways. They made progression about gear. All players like to progress.
Because then when you go to join someone’s group for harder content they are going to assume you’re a competent player because you have the same 430 ilvl as a heroic raider, when in fact all you do is log in and kill 10 mobs a day, and probably stumble to even perform a proper dps rotation.