Something I wanted to bring up was the accessibility of over-leveled dungeon pieces from the great vault.
In general, the great vault is such a great feature from its original inception as an RNG box in BFA to how it is now. However, when your spec favors one specific dungeon trinket (ie unholy and Puzzle box in 10.0) and the only way to get it max item level is from the vault it is out of kilter from the rest of the vault.
I can clear the mythic difficulty to get items from the raid and the vault will fill in the gaps with items I am missing, however, to get this trinket at the best level I need to do the highest rewarding keys possible and aim for 8 of them and then RNG getting the correct trinket out of the 100 items that are possible to get. There is no other way to get it, it also happens with off pieces for tier etc but this is much less impactful more times than not.
An example for this season would be an Irideus Fragment, I can get it from a 20+ at 431 upgrade it to 441, and then just pray I get one out of the vault for 447. Admittedly it’s a small increase (about 0.6%) but it makes my character feel incomplete
My solution would be to have a way to either tailor your vault for a slot or a dungeon to increase chances or add a similar item to Puzzling Cartel Dinars to upgrade a set number of items to this level
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I think they should add an option to the coins you can get to buy sockets to allow you to upgrade a 441 item to 447. I agree the RNG feels bad. I was using a 415 puzzle box all last season (though I certainly did not fill my vault with +20 slots every week to maximize my chances at a 421 puzzle box) it still felt bad that I was just weaker due to RNG in that way.
I think adding a deterministic way to reach these 447 levels from M+ items would be very beneficial, and it makes total sense to me to have to forgo another reward to attain it.
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I know it’s not much to say, but I personally thought the Dinar system was one of the best things I’ve seen Blizzard do in regards to “Bad Luck Protection”. You couldn’t just buy everything. But you could fill a gap that the RNG was missing.
It was very satisfying.
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While this is good, it would require also separately addressing the issue of people doing the same key 50+ times to get the base item they want to upgrade also. Determinism needs to be fixed there too. Statistically it is certain that with no bad luck protection, this situation happens to many people each season and it simply adds no benefit to the game, only frustration.
Deterministically getting 1 item from a dungeon after running it 20~ times is certainly reasonable and not gamebreaking considering it already applies to 95% of people statistically already, this only eliminates the massive frustration for the unluckiest 5% of players.
The other issue with the vault is the new Rare raid items, which further makes your vault less likely to contain the item you want, while simultaneously making it less likely that you acquire it within the raid too. And when raid and M+ items share opportunity cost of only being able to pick 1 in the vault, this also becomes an unfortunate unlucky overlap of goals. I think locking 1 item seen each week similar to the trading post which would guarantee show in that row next week, able to be locked multiple weeks if needed, would be a good solution. The ilvl would update to the new ilvl that you qualified for, so locking a rare heroic raid item in early weeks could eventually become a mythic version etc.
Alternatively, perhaps being able to “Veto” lock 1-2 bosses or 1-2 dungeons of loot which no longer have any items you need late in the season would also potentially be a good solution, on a weekly basis, maybe again using the tokens of merit instead of sockets.
In my opinion, farming a specific item is frustrating but is a natural part of MMO. Being unlucky sucks but when you get the item it’s the best you can get (also if you have friends who can also loot the item you can stack a group for it). However right now that is not the case, and its pure luck if it comes at the highest ilvl in the vault which is not true for any raid item