Why the gear treadmill is broken. One returning players opinion

Community General Discussion
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Since Preach asked for this feedback. Here is my current impression of the game as someone who just came back and leveled from scratch. You have walls that Blizzard puts up, the community puts up and wall created by difficulty.

After TBC when they removed attunements and effectively nerfed raids to be casual friendly the community started to step in where they felt Blizzard was failing. It started with achievements and then morphed into gear score.

The response to raiders who wanted hard content was the Mythic difficulty wall. Preach has complained about this but fails to mention this wall was specifically put there for guys like him. Not all guilds were supposed to see it but this is poorly communicated by Blizzard. I specifically remember patch notes that were pages and page long of nerfs that I no longer see. It was normal to see Heroic raids beat with a nerf bat.

This was normal. All seasons are is moving the below curve. That is all Blizzard does nothing more and nothing less. They decide where they want a majority of the community to be and move the curve there. The community on the other hand responded with Raider IO where the curve does not move. It is a set score that last an entire season and is based on time.

All I see is the same gear treadmill but with more people intervening to either make it easier like Blizzard or harder such as the community. In Vanilla and TBC the one wall was the raid itself with Attunements, resist, gold requirements to respec and raid size. The raid level gear itself was on the other side of that wall and I think this is where we have gone wrong.

Things like Titanforge and Warforge throw a wrench into the below system. It takes someone who is unguilded and throws them a piece of 415 loot and sets the expectation that this is normal. In reality that 415 gear would come from you joining a guild and doing Mythic raiding.

Get rid of Warforge or Titanforge that wall is hard and you do not get over it unless you run with a guild. This system has killed more guilds then it has helped in a very backwards way. It has led people to think they no longer need guilds to get over these walls.

Preach the reason you will see noone say anything positive about this system is because of the below walls. You can be wearing all 400 ilvl from Titanforges but if you do not have the correct Raider IO then you are rarely going to pug a +10. You can be wearing all 425 lvl Titanforged gear somehow but if you do not execute mechanics you are not Mythic raiding. Skill is the current gauge used by the community while Blizzard still thinks gear is the cookie. It is but not NEARLY to the extent it has been used as a carrot.

Link below to an image I create to summarize where I think the community is gear level whise and different places I think walls have been placed by the community.

http:// i66.tinypic. com/29gli0l.jpg

Slight Edit since Titanforging came up:
Titanforging and Warforging were introduced according to Ion as a bridge for guilds stuck during Cata. In my opinion this is an outdated system that should have been retired once Mythic + was introduced to the game.

If you are confused why we have such severe gear inflation it is for this reason. In theory you could farm Season 1 Mythic content get titanforges that take you well into Season 2 so Blizzard is currently forced to increase the ilvl between a season by very extreme measures.

It has nothing to do with elitism but retiring system that no longer serve a purpose and are hurting the game.

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I’d remove his name since you know GD is going to see that name and quit reading anything else.

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Except with forced personal loot, gear CAN’T be used as a cookie anymore. Forcing personal loot made guild runs literally NO different from a pug. If you don’t already have an established guild and good relationships with those people good luck getting a new one since it’s all me me me nowadays.

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Returning player? When did you ever leave? You’ve posted here almost every day for months.

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In my opinion as someone who has run guildless on this Belf and with a guild on my Human Puremallice you get to see both worlds.

Think I am more pointing there is an EXTREMELY clear wall you hit at certain points. Those walls honestly do not exist with a guild outside of Mythic which is a straight up skill check (plus higher level Mythic keys).

Left prior to ICC and came back on December 15th. Pretty sure that still qualifies me as a returning player. I saw how the game worked on very specific way in TBC and Wrath but now works very differently.

A lot of Wrath is still fresh to me as it was the last thing I played so I look at it without these rose colored glasses you see around here.

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This is simple. We’ve gotten to the point in WoW that when it comes to gear, less is more. High level gear is not only thrown at us from every angle, the RNG behind it makes so much gear that’s great for others useless for many, and with personal loot and no tier that brings it down further.

I could care less about walls and theory and all that garbage. Gear needs to be risk vs. reward. Getting 400 ilvl gear from the afk-fest that warfronts are, or the titanforges anyone can get, is just a joke. It takes away the from the enjoyment of someone finally getting that fourth mythic tier piece, or that first mythic weapon, shield or OP trinket.

And nothing, NOTHING, is worse than having to DE a 415 weapon because of some broken personal loot rule.

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Except depending on your skill level this is not the case. I had AOTC on my DH alt week 1, from a pug. Heck if it weren’t for the last REAL bastion of guilds, “the Mythic restrictions on cross realm pugging.” Mythic wouldn’t be a wall either.

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Another wall I left out because I am not sure how to quantify it is the faction imbalance. On Horde side you see groups pugging Champions on Mythic as a very normal thing server only.

On my Alliance character I honestly cannot tell you when I have seen this. I also fully agree that Titanforging and Warforging is making Mythic almost pointless.

You used to go into something like a high end raid for that exclusive gear and the challenge. Now you can walk in with no name gear equivalent in ilvl with better stats then what might drop in a Mythic.

I honestly could not imagine walking into something like Ulduar at the time with gear that Titanforged from Naxx and thinking that would have been fun. You would have smashed the content.

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First Mythic boss pugging has been a thing for years. The first boss in Mythic is generally easier than the latter half of the Heroic bosses.

I will say it’s MUCH worse in BFA since both raids first bosses had AWESOME weapons on the first boss.

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True story. Stopped reading as soon as I saw Preach.

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Not sure why as the guy puts out incredibly positive content. Also if Blizzard had listened to Preach this entire “Beta for Azerite” meme would not have been accurate.

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The problem is that people seem to be doing content they don’t like just for gear upgrades that will be rendered useless by the next “season” or xpac. The biggest problem is that gear is the only for of progression Blizzard has left in this game and actually leans towards regression for everything else instead.

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It isn’t any more accurate then any other xpac and seems far less buggy then some of the earlier ones (and vanilla).

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Fair enough; I’ll concede.

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Because I am able to think for myself and go out of my way to avoid anything streamer cult related.

If preach wanted your feedback I’m sure you could have found a better venue than the GD forums.

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Show me someone that is mythic level geared without killing a single mythic boss.
Go ahead, I’ll wait

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You think I did a Mythic Raid to get that 415 trinket I have JUST AS AN EXAMPLE? Got that from a +6

Just a minor example of a broken system that noone thinks is fair. Something that should make me excited bothers me because it is ONE LESS reason for me to want to bother with Mythic.

It is a small example but it is cumulative.

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Lost interest as soon as I saw the name Preach.

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Behold the 410 rogue with no mythic kills.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/us/stormreaver/Morningwind

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Once again, show me someone that is mythic ilevel geared that hasn’t set foot in mythic content.

1 Like