There’s a lot of negativity on the forums most of the time. A lot of it is deserved, but sometimes praise is deserved as well.
I just want to say how much I have been enjoying the essence system that was introduced in 8.2. I feel like this is how the Azerite system should have always been, active abilities that change what your character is and isn’t good at. Minor powers that grant power boosts in tangible ways.
The move from the Legion system of the Artifacts and Legendaries and replacing it the Azerite system didn’t feel great. It felt like we got weaker. Like we took a step backward from Legion. And no matter what type of game you’re playing that feels bad.
But this system fixes a lot of that. I feel like I have different choices for how I want to play depending on the type of content I’m doing. Each essence has it’s own niche to fill. I have control of the strengths of my character instead of hoping to get decent traits on a boss drop or chance it with the Azerite vendor. Deterministic gearing systems are great, put more of them in.
And then there’s how you get these essences, the game straight out tells you what you need to do in order to get better ones. They’re not random. You work towards them. Some of them are extremely difficult to get, and this is a very good thing. It gives players something to work towards that doesn’t rely on a drop chance or bad luck protection like the Legion Legendary system did. This is good, as I stated above, deterministic power scaling systems are a positive and your community reacts well to it. Notice how there’s not a new post every other hour about how terrible essences are?
Please continue this development mindset. Almost all of us here love WoW and know this dev team is capable of making something truly special. Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see what you all do in 8.3 and beyond.
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The essence system completely killed my desire to play any Alts this patch.
Well, that and Shadowbringers, but the Essence system is still a part of it.
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Yep, love, love, love using a rent-a-power system to actually have a resemblance of a finished class.
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Counterpoint, I feel like essences are basically irrelevant unless you’re a hardcore player (or an extremely committed casual that is willing to limit themselves to only one character).
I have played since 8.2 dropped, and the highest I have gotten on my “main” if there is such a thing, is level 55 neck. Which has done precisely diddly squat for me.
Across six level 120 characters, each of them has the Hadoken thing you get for free, and… that’s it.
So yeah, the system basically doesn’t exist in my eyes.
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I can play my holy priest as an DPS now, not the most effective DPS, but one that doesn’t relay on dots. It is kind of fun.
The Essence System would be good if it were account-wide.
Without account-wide, the essence system is, pardon my language, complete and utter crap.
It has killed alts, and for me, it’s killed the game, because to me the game is about playing more than one character and doing as well as I can on them.
But the fact they expect us to grind Exalted with Rustbolt/Ankoan on multiple toons, Grind 50,000 Honor on multiple toons, grind months of Eternal Palace on multiple toons, etc. is just ridiculous.
The Essence System is just Ion pushing his agenda of “You have to play one character and one character alone” on everyone.
The grind from neck 62 to 65 is taking too damn long >.<
I’ve only just started to get into it, after flying and stuff. It seems like it had kind of a learning curve to me.
Also, I’m not getting the BIS ones, or whatever, like the one from Island expeditions. I researched that, knowing that it was content I don’t like to do anyway.
So I’m going with kind of the second grade ones, like minor power from the mechagon Blood DK friendly one (nullifier.) Boy, that takes LOTS of scraps; I’m on the second level of it which needs 20 scrap crates (have 4 so far!)
I don’t think of the essence thing as THAT hard; But I’ve also not really got out my alts that much. My BM Hunter/other “main” is 120, has benthic this character mailed her, but that is as far as I’ve gone with her so far.
Yes, I’m still at neck 56, or something… heh. That is a grind. I’m just not as into that grind as I am with the stuff I find easy, like rep.
I miss the ONE THING artifact weapon, of Legion. It was also better because it filled the weapon slot, which normally lags behind in ilevel. So it was win/win. People got into it to the point that a MAJOR THING TO DO, was just getting a transmog for it! That was all the mage tower was!