War Within Delvs seem like a miss (on loot and your intention)

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Warwithin Delvs are supposed to be (according to the dev team) the meaningful end game solo player gear progression track.

This is a worthwhile goal - especially those of us in casual guilds where players are bonded but common interests/real life and player skill levels vary wildly.

For example - my very casual mid tier AoTC guild has a couple cutting edge caliber players and a couple people who don’t belong in the heroic raids we do, but it works out. And currently the higher end of people can do +20s fairly early in the season and get all the M+ rewards.

But we can’t complete at the high end of M+ (even if we wanted to and had the time to) because we don’t have access to Mythic Raid gear. The same way Mythic raiders don’t like being forced to do keys or arena - M+s don’t like the pressure to raid to compete.

Delvs are exactly this problem all over again. I watched the dev interview with Naguura and the devs are adamant that raiders not feel obligated to do delvs, so the gear is worst.

But then they bolted on this level 13 delv/mage tower replacement content to it - and guess what? At the high end of pushing that, and getting it done early in a season - you will need access to Mythic Raid gear.

So now Delv players and M+ players feel some need to do some content they don’t like to get gear they need for their goals - which is the opposite of your stated goals.

All end game reward tracks need to reward the best gear for doing that content.

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2

but why would you want to compete at that level? you’re a solo player. that’s not your endgame content.

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Read the whole post - I know you’re trying to get to 28K posts by morning and everything, but read the whole post.

And if you still don’t understand the point I’m making maybe this topic isn’t for you.

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it doesn’t explain what “their goals” are.
your post is incomplete.

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Players get the 0.1% title in mythic+ without doing mythic raids.

Having 6 extra item levels on 2-3 slots isn’t the difference in doing low 20s vs high 20s.

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Well that’s just not true. We managed mage tower fine without it.

Did you really think before typing this? Or are you happily saying world quests and TW should award mythic level?

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Neither world quests nor time walking are end game. You can find sub max level players doing both. Currently there are 3 pillars and delves are intended to be the 4th.

I think OP is being ridiculous, but no need to be disingenuous about it.

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You can do raids without being max level too so that arguement falls flat. And as TW fits into the Vault alongside the other end game pillars would that not make it one?

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The weird part with this is the lockout system.

In order to achieve this, either raids need to be farmable, or m+ and delve would need to be hard gated.

Hard gating is unfun, but farming raids would dramatically change a gameplay pillar.

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Its a huge problem that they have to solve

Either the gear is going to be not that great and that content is going to be abandoned in favor of just spamming M+ and raids or it’s going to be a source of that desirable gear and people will feel like they have to do it

The game is sorely missing meaningful open world/outdoor things to do with other players. Dragonflight has put out a lot of activities like this that were enjoyable for the first week or so but then they got abandoned after players got to the point that any gear you could drop out of it wouldn’t be an upgrade anymore. So now the only people that show up want rep still or they’re gearing alts.

This is partly the result of wow brain and not entirely blizzards fault. I don’t think the sun is going to collapse by an activity existing that gives out good rewards despite not being considered pinnacle. I’m not very upset at the idea. Its ok to just wanna play a video game and chill out and still progress your character.

There will be days where I wanna hop into M+ and get some score. I’ll do a raid or two early into the patch for more chances at the tier set. Not every day though. Delves might fill that niche for when I wanna just play wow but not worry about finding a capable pug or trying to scrape together a buddy or two for a key.

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11

Okay.

I understand the forums consensus is that raiding is king, and you don’t “need” to raid to do the other content.

But the development team doesn’t share your perspective in their statements, they only share it in their actions.

They have said several times that they would prefer it if M+ers and Raiders didn’t feel required to do Raid (for the M+ers) or M+ (for the Raiders) if they don’t want to.

And then they implement, over and over, scenarios where gear is scaled the same in both content mediums, M+ gearing is faster, but the high end of Raiding is better gear - so people do feel required to do both.

And their solution to avoid this problem (which is a problem according to the dev team, not me (although clearly I agree)) with Delvs was to simply make the rewards bad enough that neither Raiders or M+ers would want the gear.

Well, I think it very logically follows that Delvs are not an end game pillar then, if the rewards are deliberately significantly worse.

But they say it is an end game pillar - and this is where I think they miss the mark.

By all accounts, an end game pillar is an area of the game where you should be able to be successful at any level (only gatekeepers are time and skill level) by only focusing on that content.

And this isn’t true for M+ and Raid, which are very parasitic with each other - and the dev team acknowledges that formally 2-3 times a year. And they acknowledge they want to fix it.

There are other options for making Delvs a pillar on their own. Scaling all ilvls down to the top delv ilvl while in a delv and making it so there is access to all the M+ and Raid Trinkets at this ilvl (or disabling their effects) - is a solution. But the dev team doesn’t like this because they want you to feel like your character does the same amount of damage in all situations (so they’re against scaling you down arbitrarily) - but this is exactly how PvP escaped the Raid requirement at the high end (sometimes there are still trinket issues - and PvP is a dying segment of the game, but the gear is its own thing and that is because of scaling)

Personally - I think all rewards for content harder than Heroic Raid should be cosmetic only and all content should be scaled to that. With that ilvl of gear coming from every end game pillar, and cosmetic rewards beyond that. This isn’t a perfect solution and opinions can vary, but if the cosmetics were appealing enough, I would certainly look to earn the M+ and Delv ones, and I wouldn’t really get any FOMO from the Raid stuff I didn’t get.

But Raiders don’t like that, and Blizzard doesn’t like that because it kills raiding, because a large % of the Mythic Raid community is literally only in it for the item level and it kills the high end Raiding community.

And they moved away from that system in M+, where you used to get the best rewards at +15 and cosmetics (teleports) at 20, but now it’s just 20s all the way down for gear.

So repeatedly, the development team does things that work against the things they say they’re trying to do. With Delvs it looks like they’ve done the same thing:

“This is an end game pillar, but the pillar is shorter, broken, and the easiest way to get on the top of this pillar is by jumping from the top of a different pillar”

Now some, albeit petty, responses to some of these replies:

You quoted me out of context on purpose? In order to do the top end delve content and be among the first people to complete it - you will need access to mythic raid gear. A statement that was also true of Mage tower. Time, practice, and slower more deterministic gearing methods will eventually get you there, but raiding is the fastest path.

Go to Raiderio and parse through the top Mythic+ groups with 2 sheets of paper. Take the top runs in sets of 20 (100 toons). On 1 sheet write the names of characters who are wearing at least 1 piece from the Mythic Raid from this tier, on the other sheet write the names of people who aren’t. Throw out duplicate characters (a lot of dups on the top runs obviously)

You will be several thousand characters deep on both lists before the “Not wearing raid gear” list is as long as the “Wearing raid gear” list.

The argument that “this is fine because it’s possible to be close to the top without Raid gear” when 80% of the players at the top have raid gear is a bad faith argument.

I agree the framework of Raids vs M+ and Delvs make this a strange problem

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where was the out of context? You said early.

Now its among the first. These are two vastly different things. Again I will refer you to mage tower where people were completing it at a below Heroic raid ilvl when it was first implemented.

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You cannot do any DF raid below max level. That was a thing in classic, it is not a thing anymore.

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If you were to transpose it to current ilvls delves max at 476, delve vault maxes at 483.

Eh, I can say as a mythic raider the ilvl I get from raiding is negligible compared to what I get from mythic+. The reason gear extends into Mythic is so the fights can be overgeared and made easier over time for people who can’t initially do them, bliz have pushed that a bit far the other way with the state of Tindral and arguably Fyrakk pre nerf but given how fast you earn heroic ilvl source gear currently you’d have to drastically slow down ilvl progression in every other aspect of the game in order to be able to outgear mythic the same way we have done since the difficulty was first added.

Raid loot at this point is pretty much just cantrip items and trinkets, we kill bosses for the first time ever and half of the drops go to disenchant because Mythic+ already gave better stuff.

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Good players tend to be great at all forms of content.

Title is 3685.

That’s thousand of people.

Looked at the number 80 key. First person I clicked on was a DH wearing zero gear not obtainable from mythic+ or heroic raiding.

The priest healer is 9/9 mythic and again, using 1 single item from the mythic raid (489 Pips).

The mage is the same, 1 489 Pips.

The main thing is the gear gap between raiding mythic and not is crazy small. You’re looking at 6 item levels on maybe 1-2 items.

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This is true

Gear doesn’t make you a good player, because gear means quite literally nothing.

By far the most common misconception with unskilled or newer players - thinking gear means anything.

I wouldn’t bring a 440 alt to a +20 key, not because they wouldn’t be capable of doing it, but because they wouldn’t have the HP to survive mechanics due to the missing stamina.

You can easily do 20-24 range keys at 460+ if you know what’s going on. Your io score and your gear have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to do that key.

So if you’re looking at Mythic raid and saying “I can’t compete in M+ without doing this”, you’re very mistaken. Will it make early season pushing easier? Absolutely, if you get the drops, but chances are if you’re capable of doing 4-5 bosses of Mythic by week 2 or 3, you’re probably someone who agrees with the above statement that gear and io score mean absolutely nothing compared to player ability.

The crazy thing with this is there’s two states - fact and not fact. Doing +20’s on a 460 alt is entirely viable, and your io score has absolutely zero impact on your ability to do that level of key. That is a fact.

Thinking you need a 485, A tier or higher class, 3k io player to sign-up to your key in order to complete it is not a fact, and is in fact a delusion made-up by unskilled players and consumed by the greater casual masses.

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Depends, some tanks I could absolutely see doing keys like that at 440.

The funny thing is just how little gear for raiding comes from raids at this point. Tier comes from catalyst + vault more often than not, off pieces are crafted for embellishments, rings are crafted for free sockets, and you’re extending by the time you get to the later bosses so you’re not even getting rekills until the tier is over. The amount of loot we get for the first time from a boss kill and just roll for transmog or offspec is ridiculous.

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Oh absolutely, tanks are an exception. Didn’t one of the title pushing tanks do some progression keys on a completely naked prot warrior (sword and shield only or something)?

I think the only time I got hard locked out of a key due to tanking it was an 18 Tyrannical DHT on my 422 Prot Warrior, I couldn’t survive the grip from the tree without an external, but everything else in the dungeon was a cake walk.

This, absolutely this. This, repeated, a billion times over.

The only thing I get from raid is trinkets and early tier, which is quickly replaced by vault tier or catalyst pieces, in which case it’s just the trinkets and weapons with unique effects that you farm for in raid.

Everything else is either crafted or comes from another source.

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Mythic+ and heroic raid is for gearing.

Mythic raid is for the achievement.

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Where did I say you could?