A Jake of all trades and a master of none.
weird because thatâs the reason I raid 
I havenât pick up a gear upgrade from raid for months now. Yet Iâm still raiding every week w/ my guild and friends
yet, based on all the visible markers, either better at or at minimum puts more time and effort into all forms of high end content than your profile has evidence of doing.
What the âcasualsâ who want the catchup gear to be better donât get about why I donât want it to be too good, Is that I donât want there to be a combat advantage to grinding Korthia or the open world in zerith mortis for gear on a main that is already partway done clearing the mythic raid. Sockets are a thing, but infinity farmable heroic raid quality gear from the open world early in a patch is too much at the high end.
Different people argue this either way. If this is true, what IS the reason casuals are not allowed an avenue to continuously progress their characterâs performance in their chosen content? If you play your character with exceptional skill and steamroll content in 200 ilevel gear, thatâs great. Others might still struggle with 233, but thatâs the best they can get.
If we all just raid and do 15+ keys for fun (which many do), whatâs the issue? If oneâs measure of character progression is just relative to what casuals or non Mythic players are functionally capped to, then that seems like a toxic mentality; those same players are not likely to actually down exceptionally challenging content nor steamroll players in PvP even with the best gear so it doesnât seem like such a big issue to me to allow further progression.
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Yeah they should bring back titanforging and warforging!
I am a Bryan of all trades. 
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That safe place, is called friends and leveling guilds. Guild im in now for example, we have 3 mythic raid teams, but still do open normal raid nights and are happy to help people get content down, get keys for their vaults, we have class mentors etc.
Everyone is a noob at a new class, but theres so much information out there, guilds on wowhead and icyveins are a good start, youtube has alot of class info , rotation guides and walkthroughs for raids from your class and spec POV etc.
Only way to get better at something is to learn and practice.
This is actually another problem that just handing out higher level gear than youve âearnedâ will do. It means people will have the expectation you know the route, your class and the mechanics in a fight. So you go, I have the gear lets apply to that KSM 15, right you get in, but bungle it which means the key will be untimed. So youâl get flamed and trolled. Where if you actually worked your way through the game systems and content, learned the baseline of your class and spec and the content you want to do. Then people can see the difference between someone making a mistake and someone essentially trolling the group because they dont know whats going on.
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The problem i see isnât the catch up gear itself but more on the timing of the leveling of the transitional gear. When you enter another content level to start grinding the area you are at a uncomfortable level sometime too low for that area . You do three things at this point ,do the raids to up the gear or pvp ,do your covenant for better level easy to work the area,this is the design sl is providing at this moment. No you canât do the elites or bosses alone it all in the design. Even today with the denision in maldaxxis those elites you can have a hard time at my level of 233 but at a lower levels not possible to solo.
Here we are heading to Zerith Mortis the new area would be higher level content than korthia so with that being the reason those rushing to gear they would have a rough time if they werenât doing the leveling in Korthia of so that is the reason i see so many die there from these npcâs.
So if you have an alt you are heading to this new area ,mythic it or level in Korthia and make sure you send the alts token gear to start there.
This is true, but also what raider io score is meant to capture. I donât think we can deny there is a significant amount of elitism when it comes to pugging. Having a friends and leveling guild is the best way to go, but for a solo casual player looking to pug more challenging content to experience more of the game, I suspect they will simply be passed over in favor of players that already outgear the content. Obviously itâs important to be aware of your own capabilities, but if they are 246 and parsing like 230 in a normal raid, that would show up in wow logs for any leader interested in screening players for heroic / mythic, but otherwise be suitable for normal.
Elitism is always going to be around in higher end content.
For keys alot of it comes down to, high keys are not the keys to be learning the routes or your class in. its a challenge mode system, need to take personal initiative and come prepared otherwise your wasting the other 4 peoples time.
Thats why you have dungeons, heroic dungeons, mythic 0âs then the key system. Raider Io can give you a glance over someones progress but not everyone uses it, not everyone links their toons data to it, and for raids unless you go into raider Io to check (for pugs this is annoying to do for 20+ ppl your bringing into a group) it wont show what bosses ppl have downed, just a kill count out of the tier list.
LFR is next to useless for learning the fights so really normal will be players first real taste of actual raiding. But again, sure some groups will kick you for having low numbers, but many wont, but if your messing up mechanics thats generally where people will start getting poopy because it comes back to the time of everyone involved. Theres plenty of tdlr raid guides, for example, hazelnutty does some great simple ones. And right now guilds are hard recruiting because they want to do content but dont have the bodies. You might need to guild hop for a while till you find one suitable but theres hundreds out there wanting to give a chance to a keen new player.
I agree, apply the pvp ilvl nerf to the other two gear paths: all item ilvl is scaled down in content except in the content the gear was acquired from
well IO score is effectively integrated in the WoW interface now. Nothing like that exists for raiding however. People looking for experienced players to make a run smooth would just have to recognize a combination of 246 ilevel and 0 io score means that player probably spent the last 3 months grinding daily quests and auto-decline. Probably for the best for both parties in such cases given the assumed expectations. The point regarding this thread though is that that person can still progress their character even if they are using gear as a crutch for some content while learning new mechanics.
If they didnât have to do M+ (that theyâre bad at) for gear, they wouldnât be in the M+ group to bungle the run to begin with. That and, as I mentioned previously, keystones decrementing is a system that encourages player conflict, so I would offer instead that the system itself is the problem moreso than any players involved. If your systems encourage or reward helpful behavior, perceived toxicity will decline.
We donât. We donât want amount of time spent in the world to majorly impact our power in the raid.
You dont have to do Mythic + for gear. At all. But if you want that gear and are going into that content, then do yourself a favor and make some minute bit of effort. If your not confident, dont do 15âs, do 5âs and just farm the valor to upgrade your pieces to 246. Anything 10 and under no one cares what your performance is, just throw an interrupt or two out and your fine.
Just a technicality, but relevant to the topic, doing 5s will not get you the IO score to upgrade past 233 I think. This is basically the same as Korithia gear, but probably a lot faster. I think the main issue is that some people do want to see character power progression, but are not really capable of clearing the gap set by the current systems (i.e. 10+ for 1400 rating for the next upgrade level I think). Weekly vault rewards are a thing, but itâs often getting your foot in the door to speak that is the major issue in game and leads to either discrimination or player aversion of such content.
So then youâd agree with your raid gear being nerfed by a baseline 13 ilvl in all content and then brought up to itâs current ilvl when you zone into a raid?
If you want competitive gear, you have to do M+, even as a raider. Removing the need to do M+ to acquire that gear would be removing people who otherwise have no interest in running them for a chance at loot from a chest/vault every week, including Mythic raiding guilds for whom that sort of grinding is borderline mandatory. If gear drops from related content was targeted at performance in that same sort of content, it would be a more rewarding system for those people who specifically enjoy that style of content.
Current WoW systems are deliberately set up to encourage this (multiple sources of gear or currency grinds, but primarily M+ and Raiding) to drive player engagement metrics, and it is a design philosophy that should go away.
mmm thats true, but you gotta start somewhere.
Like mythic raiders didnt log in and get all this gear instantly. When the xpack dropped they farmed dungeons, norm then heroic then farmed mythic 0âs, then started working thru the keystone levels once that opened up to be as ready as they could for when the raid dropped.
A less skilled player still has that same gear progression, its just slower, but its still completely doable. Do 5âs then 7âs then 9âs. slowly increase your skill and io rating. It then leads to more and better gear. Its not like ppl doing end game content have been handed great gear, they have slogged, grinded and worked for it.
Depending on the guild and level of prog there is some handing out of great gear, like guilds spending their carry gold on farmed BoEs to gear their raiders, alt runs and funneling of gear to core members, buying 2100/2400 carries from multi glads in the early season to get a head start on gear for their raiders (which are all things that are financially out of reach of most players)
So i agree the gear didnât fall from the sky, but the higher up you are the more support youâll also get