The SOLUTION to re-farming the same M+ gear every new patch: increase upgrade limits

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

THE PROBLEM

Throughout the course of BFA the devs were asked about the issue that has been a serious problem ever since M+ was introduced, where you ran 20-30 times the same dungeon to get a BiS trinket in the first tier, and then in the second tier you had to do it all over again.

The devs even responded to this question saying they agreed it was an issue, but there was no solution in sight then.

In Shadowlands many people have done that twice now for the same item, once in the launch patch and once again in 9.0.5 because of the upgrade system.

So, even if a Valor Vendor is introduced, people will have to re-acquire that item again (this time from the vendor) which is bothersome.

THE SOLUTION

The solution is very simple. Increase the upgrade ilvl cap for all items when the new patch drops.

Example, an item right now would be Ilvl 184 0/12 upgrades. The current maximum Ilevel is 220.

Patch drops. That item now is Ilvl 184 0/15 upgrades. The new maximum Ilevel is 230.

(230 is just a ballpark number, I don’t know what the new cap is going to be)

Another item, an IQD Jimmy spent 30 DoS runs farming to get. His IQD is Ilvl 220 12/12 upgrades. Patch drops, it becomes Ilvl 220 12/15 upgrades.

Done. It’s a simple solution, it’s in Blizzard’s hands and people don’t have to stress over re-acquiring those items, just running M+ and doing Callings to get Valor and upgrade the item.

TL;DR

Increase the upgrade ilvl cap for all items when the new patch drops e.g. 12/12 upgrades becomes 12/15 upgrades.

2

It’s a nice solution on paper but I don’t see it working out because that would give the M+ system a big gearing advantage at the start of a patch for all end game content over raiding and PvP.

If they followed your suggestion, you would have anyone and everyone spamming M+ the first few weeks of the patch to upgrade their gear to 230 which would be better then most raid, PvP and Vault gear from the previous patch.

Essentially, something of the same upgrade value would have to be available for patch 9.0.5 raid and PvP gear.

I agree there is an issue. When a new patch drops, we get a new raid with new gear at higher ilvl. The PvP season is also reset which gives access to higher ilvl gear. The thing with those two is that they take a while to farm and earn up the gear. Your proposed solution would allow the M+ items to be upgraded to 230 the first week. Blizz could maybe slow it down by resetting valor and time gating it when a new patch drops but it would still give a clear advantage and all players playing endgame content would rely on this to upgrade any of their M+ items to 230. People would also likely bank a bunch of 210 gear with BIS stats so they can upgrade it to 230 right away.

It’s a difficult problem for them to solve. Since all 3 forms of endgame content (raid, PvP, M+) are tied to gearing. You can’t touch one without affecting the others.

3

I mean they could just gate it. Like one week is 230 next couple of weeks is 235 etc. Release the valor cap. You still gotta grind the valor at 135 a pop anyways. To upgrade one two-hander is about 7.4 dungeons worth of valor for one level. Thats just for a single upgrade. I freaking leveled my Hakkar trinket from level 1 because I didn’t want to grind high asf DOS in hopes of getting the trinket again. Just like I did I dunno TOPs and Mists to upgrade my 197 pvp weapon. 2 weeks and nothing. Finally I got blessed in the vault this week but only as a 220 as opposed to a 226 because I didn’t spam enough 14s on my last box.

Like the valor grind is there and it should be uncapped. Make it so people can go at their own pace. For some of my guys i don’t even bother cuz they reached a level where valor means nothing to 223/226 gear.

4

Easier than that. There’s guaranteed to be a weekly Valor cap like there is now, and starting much lower than 5k. Since they tied upgrades to seasonal achievements, they’ll also almost certainly require Season 2 achievements for 5/10/15 (if they buff the instances, if they don’t, maybe 10/15/20 or something). That’s plenty of gating already.

5

The valor cap they already said will start at 750 and increase by 750 each week next season. We only got that 5k start since we where so far into the season.

As such the change would already be gated.

Also it’s been datamined that blizzard already has additional ranks hidden for items we are getting it’s just a matter of them flipping the swich to show them and let us use them. Now will they do that retroactively is debatable won’t know till the ptr but so far the datamining shows they plan to.

Nothing been said about needing season 2 achivments but it’s a safe bet your going to need them as new season.

While you won’t have to refarm for some items If they do add retroactive it will take a long time before you can max any item least a week or two even if you get ksm week 1. Even than you won’t want to spend that valor till your other slots are done in case said item drops at a higher ilvl making that valor spent wasted. So people will do there farming first and only upgrade with valor the best bang items (trinkets) if they dint drop a few weeks in when there basic grinding is done.

6

Where on earth did they say that so definitely? Their original announcement didn’t even include “750” at all. It simply stated that:

In the most specific post I can find on it, they simply asserted that:

It’s rather certain the cap will be lower, but I don’t think they’ve ever asserted that it’ll specifically be 750 the first week of the next season.