My alts are finally to the point of taking advantage of all the valor I’ve amassed. Just took a while, so I shot from doing low keys, like 5-8’s to being able to push my keys to 15+ without much struggle. Getting the gear is definitely harder than getting the valor at first, even without a cap. Grats on KSH, that was my goal this season too and when I got to 2600 or so my will to play that character has diminished rapidly lol. I still do 8-10 keys a week on it but I haven’t pushed for score in weeks now it seems.
Gotta keep at it, it’s not so bad. 20s are pretty lenient with decent routing and no major fails.
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Thanks! 
Yea it’s a nice goal to have. The past couple of weeks were crappy to meh affixes, but this week has been decent depending on comp. Next week is good too… grevious isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. I think, anyway lol.
I wouldn’t wanna pug it though… mostly because I don’t excel well when I can’t communicate 
I’m kinda looking forward to grievous. As a resto druid it just feels kinda like a nonaffix.
It’s definitely a lot easier since they made HoT application take a stack off. It was super frustrating in BfA though
yeah, there’s a fair case that I’m conflating the two here,
Honestly, the whole experience was far far better when raid was designed for raid-level-loot. It dropped in raid and as a raid group (of the same people playing) geared up the loot trading helped everyone patch holes. This was how things helped progression as you played. It built guild cohesion, ties to the game, and was more fun.
Whatever this constant convoluted fluffing up of the vault is by endless m+ runs, raid, and pvp — combined with creation catalyst handing out mythic raid loot … yeah, honestly, from this players perspective, it’s not as fun. It breaks the first rule from the “wall off fun”, anything you do too much of too frequently isn’t (or loses) fun.
As raids, the first two seem to have been more compelling and have better staying power than this one, the loot structure may be a part of that … or to many 1-shot mechanics … it’s too painsmity? duno. … probably doesn’t help that many specs are ultra bursty now, and in some cases burst-only damage and the raid fights (on heroic and mythic level) are seem to be specifically designed as anti-burst.
EDIT: and there’s this net-negative pressure on guild cohesion from m+, and elevated-loot-reward M+ (m+ vault straight drops mythic raid loot now, on top of creation catalyst) has made it worse. The history of m+ is definitely rough on guilds. I’ve seen it steadily unmake three guilds now. The most resilient guild (from vanilla) … took about two and a half expansions but it finally got them.
If I’m not being clear → m+ is a high draw activity and at a guild-level no matter how I’ve seen people try it people are always left out and the people that aren’t get over cooked by the activity. I’ve actually found people forming side-groups in discord or using this communities thing to try an alleviate this drama source, keeping their m+ and guild separate.
This was the case in BFA as well. I think the overall thing you’re describing is a lack of “chase items” in raid. Almost every trinket in raid blows, no one’s doing Mythic for a chance at 7 ilvls on 3 items, the big items are a 2h mace and (?).
Previous tiers had a good bit of items at the end of the raid people couldn’t wait to get. I don’t really hear anything about specific drops this tier.
from my experience (vault) loot from m+ was exclusively dungeon loot
It does not hand out mythic raid loot. . . .all it does is transform a piece of gear into a set piece. It retains whatever ilvl it has, so it won’t be mythic raid loot unless the personal already has it. . . .
Yeah, I played a lot of hpal in BFA and there was a lot of grievous weeks I just sat out, especially sanguine / grievous. It’s fortunate they’ve nerfed both of those to the ground.
I agree with this for sure. I liked when raid loot came effectively from raids, but not as RNG drops alone. Going back to Cata, it was nice you could get loot from bosses, but also badge gear to pad out your bad luck, all with master loot so you could effectively trade with your guildies. I think there’s been some good changes lately… I think the concept of the catalyst is actually good, I just have a few issues with its execution, and I think some of the changes in Season 4 are really good also. However, Blizzard still always feels compelled to put a lot of barriers between players and their loot. I don’t mind working for my upgrades but I sure hate being at the mercy of RNJesus to get what I need.
I dunno, I think this is personal. I really liked Nathria but I hated Sanctum. I’m quite enjoying Sepulcher though. I’m not a fan of one-shot mechanics, but I haven’t noticed too many that are hard to avoid. I stay in the Heroic realm though so this may impact me less.
I dunno, I really like M+ actually. It’s become something that’s kept me engaged in the game since BfA and I discovered that Keystone Master was a thing, extending on to Keystone Hero for me this season. What I don’t like is how snitty people get here. I suspect your guild is no different than mine… you have a group of people who love M+ and a group of people who aren’t a fan but want to do it for vault progress. The latter group fully expects carries from the former group, and gets really upset when they don’t.
Being in the former group, this is really upsetting because I make myself available to people when they ask or set up runs, but they don’t. They just log in and expect a run and when they don’t get one (because we’re busy trying to push rating), they get mad.
The sad truth is, it’s so easy to pug keys… especially right now. Grab whoever, list your key and go. You don’t even have to time it for vault progress. I even pug runs now and then when I have a busy week. It’s no big deal.
It shouldn’t be this much of a drama source but it is, and it’s frustrating. I definitely agree that the vault (and BfA BS Box) don’t really make sense as things, but in the end you will always feel some pressure to go and get gear from other sources of the game for the content you’re doing. For example, if you raid, you also need to M+ and/or PvP. If you don’t want to do this, that’s completely fine, but don’t suck at your class I guess. Skill and class/spec can offset gear in meaningful ways, but if you suck or wanna play a meme class, you’re gonna have to get yourself gear. At the end of the day, that’s a personal responsibility.
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This is ALWAYS the rub. I’ve had extensive conversations with Deevax about this when we were in the same guild. It’s not just the people who want to pop in when you’re pushing, it’s the people who want their 3 or 4 vaults filled. No effort for themselves, they just want to piggy back and often bring the group synergy down.
Their 15 is my 20 or 23 (20 if it’s a cake walk, 23 if it feels just out of reach) and if we do their 15, it feels like a 4. It’s frustrating.
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Great job! No easy feat. Working on that on shaman then druid.
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One thing to keep in mind is back in the day, there was also a lot more content to do with raids. Right now, aside from killing bosses and getting loot (whichever motivates the player), the extent of content starts and ends with a quest to go kill the end-boss. Often locked behind world content that’s supposed to be “optional”.
Back then, even Legendaries usually involved questlines on which even if one player was progressing, the entire raid was involved and benefiting. Pandaria tried the expansion-wide content for each individual player that involved some raid stuff (although the “Collect X part was the weakest”). Bosses from the raid were often features of world content, or even preceding 5-man content, e.g. Staghelm, Cho’gall, Valiona, most of the bosses in Heart of Fear, etc. There was often even non-Legendary questlines or content thrown in, even something as simple as HOW Nefarian activates Heroic mode on the bosses in Blackwing Lair is more compelling.
The end-result is that one could argue it felt more like there was a focus on things other than loot, and that itself affects how people perceive loot (and loot RNG).
This is also purely my opinion, but I kinda feel like while the overall QUALITY of art has improved, some of the art choices don’t feel as attractive to some people. That’s a subjective call, but given the wider variations in unique styles between classes and stuff like that, there seemed to be a lot more excitement in cosmetics and stuff like that which you’d get through raiding. The switch to Mail/Plate/Leather/Cloth has diminshed that a lot, particular with tiers like Uldir, Eternal Palance, Ny’alotha, or Sanctum where either you’re super excited about the very narrow art style they’ve chosen, or you just don’t care. Even with the re-introduction of class sets, a lot of them are very samey-samey, or because they’re bound to another theme (ZM/Cosmic) just don’t work for those classes. That’s not the same as loot in terms of power, but it’s still part of what makes loot fun to get, and for some people a form of goals/progression.
I don’t think I ever had to deal with that, but that may have been part of being a raiding-focused guild. People banded in their own 5-man (or even 10-man) groups for things outside of raid all the time, and no one expected anything.
Those types of people would be exhausting to work with even in PvP, or in raid, since every raiding guild has to manage rosters/swapping people in and out. I don’t even think it’s the rewards from the Vault that contribute to that, it’s the actual criterion for how the Vault works. Especially with raids, since it’s anti-synergistic during progression.
I’m just aggravated that they removed the cap 3 days after I had to leave the game for a month lol. By the time I’m able to play again my 270ish ilvl won’t even get me into a +2 lol.
I just hope the next season doesn’t start before June 3rd or I won’t even get to cap my M+ gear before the reset.
yeah, I got 278+ raid loot in my dungeon slots in the vault. Multiple times. We are still clearing heroic right now. Never seen mythic raid.
That’s weird. Stuff like that is similar to the game breaking mechanics of the draenor mission table. Handing out the next tiers raid loot.
Seems like a very bad thing.
I got a Hpal from 48k HP to like 268 PVE ilvl in 4 days Via arena, then just started doing 15’s to farm 278 gear. I don’t think uncapping valor affects anything at all. Lol
Your vault is not the same as what your said earlier, you said that the creation catalyst hands out mythic raid loot. Looking back looks like you edited that to correct it after you realized.
Also, that’s not raid loot, that’s mythic dungeon loot. Us 5 man end-gamers still can’t get that mythic raid loot ilvl, so you raiders still have an edge on us, don’t worry!
They don’t play at a level that exceeds m+ gearing and therefore anyone who is tired of raiding (and it’s supremacy) have to wait until OP moves on to mythic, if they ever do.
Dude, I am 1000% getting mythic raid loot, like items that drop in mythic raid and ONLY in mythic raid in my dungeon slots. As far as I can tell, it’s happened twice now. No, not only tier, last week on the spriest I got a mythic raid dagger. No, it wasn’t a 278 dagger that drops in dungeons.
As for you lobbying for something saying something about raiders having an edge? Look, just abandon that. Blizz has run hard and fast with M+, raid has steadily become less and less important. I see people chatting about it now saying stuff like “what is raid even for?” ingame.
It’s a simple fact that’s been around the whole time → As the game changes so does the population of people playing. And in the course of two three expansions of elevated star-in-the-spotlight M+ content they have steadily weeded out guild-centric people and raid-centric people. People that have been unable or less-willing to adapt to current reality have either quit or gone classic.
Spouting something about “don’t worry, raiders still have the edge!” is misdirecting retcon. It’s just not where Blizzard is at or has been for recent history. Until it changes again, because if history is any teacher, they will do whatever.