While I like the current system for mains or alts that are played from the very start of the season, I feel that this is one of the most alt unfriendly gearing systems in the game. Have been playing for all expansions and cannot remember (even during legion) a time where I wanted to play an alt and was so unmotivated because of gearing.
Here are the main problems I find with the system:
While 8-10 dungeons/raid bosses to farm your weekly crests are no problem for the start of the season, if you start an alt after 2-3 months it is a daunting task.
The farm becomes even worse since it asks for you to repeat the same thing. Again, if you do this each week, you complete your vault and feel satisfied. On the other hand with an alt you find yourself with all the items you want and full vault, to just farm dungeons for crests.
Getting less crests for an out of time dungeon is just overkill. There are enough penalties for that already, no need to also lower the crests.
I really think this hurts the game, since it is a pretty big barrier to playing an alt, especially how demotivating it is.
I would like to see a catchup introduced, where the less crests you have (meaning how far away you are from your season maximum), the more crests you receive.
It could work like a buff that kicks in after being 2 weeks behind in crests (meaning if you are more than 180 crests below the seasonal maximum), you get a scaling buff that increases received.
This buff could be enabled just for alts, since I respect people that start a season late and want to progress normally through that seasonal content.
For example:
A character (main) is 180/270 in the 3rd week, no buff is given.
A character (main) is 0/270 in the 3rd week, again no buff is given (since he is no alt).
A character (alt) is 0/270 in the 3rd week, is given a 50% buff to crests received (until it reaches 90/270).
A character (alt) is 0/450 in the 5th week, is given a 150% buff to crests received (until it reaches 90/450, where it reduces to 100%).
I believe this would give a nice incentive and help for people that want to play alts. It will not trivialize gearing since people would still need the item drops, and would come online late enough that it would not impact mains that much.
That is just an idea, but mainly I feel that SOMETHING needs to be done for how alt unfriendly gearing is right now.
P.S: I excluded players starting late in the season but I have no strong feelings toward that. If people feel that this would be nice for returning players, I am all up for it.
My alts are stuck at 515 and they were near max ilvl the previous patch.
To get past that barrier means spamming low m+ for wyrm crests when i am doing 6+ for vault and only getting aspects.
There is a bottleneck for alts and it’s unreasonable to ask to repeat the same grind we have to do in the main half way through the season.
Tbh even on the main, it was annoying to have to go and run low level keys so i can get my gear to aspect range.
Yeah getting to 500ilvl is pretty easy, maybe even 510.
The problem is that after that what you are asked to do after getting the items you need from dungeons/raids, is to spend time doing 50-100 m+ runs just to upgrade those items.
Gearing has catchup for crafting, bullions, and getting items from raids/m+ is easier later in the season. As those things become way easier, the time needed to farm the crests to upgrade remains the same, which makes the grind feel really bad.
This is a given problem to the already problem of WoW .
The upgrades … While is a sink of time especially for the players it becomes a pain if you wanna play an alt .
The alt is probably going to end with World=Quest quality of 502-4 ilvl .
For me is kind of Stupid .
You were doing the content =Reward =Item = Benefict in increase dmg/healr/dr etc
Right now
You are doing the content =Reward=Item = Item must be upgraded=Spend more time = Benefit .
At this someone must burn out with the main in order to do the content …increase the ilvl …
Can you do this with an alt? Unless you are unemployed or Rich i doubt .
What is worse ??
Each end of tier the hard-working gear from the Mythic-raid or + becomes useless since Lfr-WQ drop better quality gear.
This is just a ape-monkey endless design with seasons for people that believe that they achiev something …growth of the character …but is zero…
Friend is rerolling for TWW and we have been doing some gearing, running M+ and the odd raid. For him the biggest issue is the lower tokens. Where as things have improved if you are always up to date, if you cap the crests being dropped that it drops lower ones. On an alt/reroll that isn’t the case because you aren’t anywhere near cap. The exchange rate on crests with the vendor seems pretty poor.
The increased rate is an interesting idea especially with the cut offs. That would stop people levelling an alt first then swapping to their main or any other silly shenanighans.
I’m not looking forward to the increased number of upgrade tracks in TWW either.
I think it’s probably a blessing and a curse. Extending the upgrade system used for M plus into all areas of wow made it more fair. And meant raid gear wasn’t left behind as much. It also means no matter what level you play at you have an upgrade track and range suited to your gameplay. It is obviously also meant to entice players into the next bracket if they feel so inclined.
When we just had raid gear it was obviously simpler and a lot easier to have static item levels.
It’s not about needing the max i-level, it is about having a good progression curve.
While for a main at the start of the season the game is designed pretty well (you get items at a good pace, you increase your throughput at a good rate, and so on), it does not work so well for your 3rd or 4th char that season.
And that is not my opinion only. Blizzard by themselves subscribed to this idea by introducing catchup to any system they added.
The reason we now have catchup for bullions, tier sets (the catalyst), crafting gear, is exactly because they know that it feels way better for alts to be able to progress faster than mains.
Crests are just an exception that they forgot in that system and it creates a really unpleasant bottleneck.
I´m legitimately curious as to how you can get to a 515 iLvl and still need drake crests, because that´s full wyrm-upgraded itemlevel…
Or are you farming aspect crests in 6+s and just not upgrading specific items “for reasons”?
Also, you can trade aspects and wyrm´s crests down 1:1, and the caps are currently so high that that shouldn´t really be a factor unlike the first few weeks (“Can´t trade down because then I cant upgrade”)… So there is at least currently zero reason other than percieved convenience to go down to M0 to farm drakes…
I admittedly would also like to spend less time gearing my alts and more time raiding with them, so I wouldn´t be averse to a higher crest droprate later in the season /once 1 char has achieved milestone X… But I also don´t really see the problem as all that significant, because the alts either joined the fray early and were subjected to the same progression path as the main, or they joined later, benefited from catch-up mechanics, and tradeable currencies, and previous experience running the same content, and just blast through and swap their crests either up or down to whatever is needed…
Flightstones on the other hand, those regularly become a bottleneck on alts while the mains can´t get far enough away from 2k to actually earn more than 20 /day
The upgrade system is a badly hidden chore. To get us used to the system it was not so obvious at the start and actually felt like a bonus and a fun thing.
It has the full signature of our beloved Ion the Convoluted under it, who never falls short of giving with one hand and taking with another.
Yes, you can trade them down, but you shouldn’t unless you are swimming on them. I did do sometimes. It feels terrible and they are better used to just craft a piece instead. There is also the issue that you can downgrade the aspects to wyrms, but then you will need the aspects again once you hit the threshold. It’s a lose/lose situation. It doesn’t feel good to farm the wyrms or downgrade the aspects.
Pvp its currently the most easyest gearing system there has been in 20 years. It takes roughly 10min to gear alt into bis with just sending boxes from main and craft few item with embellishments you need and convert the conq pieces into tiers and youre done. Shame if its not for pve but in pvp I atleast quite enjoy the current gearing for it, it honestly takes 10min from freshly dinged alt to bis geared alt and its pretty fast for mmo, atleast Ive never experienced anything like it. It were so effective that this expansion had everyone with abundance of alts in moments of notice if even slightly something were tuned in their favor, the only downside being that it made fotm rolling even more of a thing than before
Yea gearing is kinda big part of mmo I agree on this. I wouldnt honestly even mind if it took more effort in pvp than currently. It would reduce fotm rolling just little bit aswell.
Yes, part of why I usually only get to 515 with my characters is because of how tedious it is afterwards. It feels like a job xD
For PvP you just need to do arenas up to a certain rating and then just send conquest boxes to your alts, even though the loot is random you save a lot of time as compared to spamming m+.
