They’ve added more and more raid difficulties. Then they’ve added M+.
And now crafting orders. And 3 levels of quality for mats. And you must get Essences, too.
And you can upgrade your PvP gear, but the upgrades only work in PvE.
We’re all used to it by now, but what a headache, especially for new players.
If your video game requires even veterans to open a Chrome tab and search for guides, then you have failed as a game designer.
But I’m here thankfully, and I always come up with great ideas on how to fix the game and make it better for everyone.
Here’s how the game would work under my leadership:
- Only two different gear levels per season for competitive gameplay : Normal, and Heroic
- PvP gear is 10 ilvl lower than PvE gear of the same tier, but it scales 10 ilvl higher in PvP combat.
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Normal gear is granted by doing LFR and Normal raids (higher loot chances in Normal), Mythic+ up until M+15 difficulty, and PvP until 1650 rating.
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Heroic gear is granted by doing Heroic and Mythic raids (higher loot chances in Mythic), M+ above M+15 difficulty, and PvP above 1650 rating.
- PvE gear can be purchased with Justice/Valor points, just like PvP gear can be purchased with Honor/Conquest points. Higher levels of PvE difficulties grant more Justice/Valor.
- Obtaining the “Cutting Edge” and “Keystone Hero” achievements will grant the player the current Mythic raid appearances for their class.
- Reforging is back, and works exactly as it did in Mists of Pandaria.
Fantastic. The game is much better now.
Truly, they should hire me. I’m amazing.
7 Likes
They have finally evened the playing field making raid gear as useful as Mythic plus gear. It’s upgradeable and it’s fab. If you have to make do with a normal piece for longer it’s not as terrible because the maximum upgrade level from normal is 437 vs those 4 extra ilvls from the heroic piece at 441.
PvP gear has a higher ilvl value in PvP content than it does in PvE which is fantastic because it stops forcing players to go and do PvP in order to get gear for PvE.
Whilst I realise some found it a bit confusing at the start. It has been really easy to get to grips with. I am someone who learns by doing/experiencing it myself and seeing the system explained on paper was confusing. However, getting items, going to the vendor and seeing what I could and couldn’t upgrade and what crests were needed was pretty easy to get to grips with.
I do not welcome going back to static gear ilvls and removing that gear progression we have gained.
3 Likes
the problem is it’s not harder to get a gear, it just became a boring process , m+ has way too many levels , first few basically the same and gives nothing. i agree with most of what you said . gearing in wotlk classic is more fun than it is in retail because you don’t have many unnecessary steps(i’m not talking about gdkps and stuff i’m talking about the game) i also don’t like how gear become irrelevant next season i mean if it can’t be a horizontal progression at least give us an option to use some stuff throughout the expansion, every progress feels meaningless now. in wotlk you get a trinket from ToC that you can use untill cata.
edit: also, even tho we can get better gear from open world right now , it still doesn’t matter , it helps with starting on a higher level on m+ or raid and makes the lower levels irrelevant and unnecessary but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you have 400ilvl or 420 ilvl if you don’t do m+ or raids so it’s not as positive as people make it sound as. (this doesn’t mean i expect mythic raid items from this open world content)
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I think gearing is gotten very good over the years. This season is soo nice to gear i love it tbh, never was so easy to get good gear and i say this with my vault sucked last 3 weeks but idc cause i have plenty ways of getting good gear.
I don’t want to go into too many details. But in general, in principle, Yes, I agree with you, the gearing is too complex now.
Even for wow veteran who started from vanilla like me, the multiple tiers ( 5 of them, explorer, adventurer, veteran, champion, hero), ranks (8 ranks each) and currencies (at least 3 different currencies) are already too much sometimes. Just imagine how overwhelming it can be for new players.
It needs to streamline and simplify the unnecessarily complicated parts.
6 Likes
Having only two difficulty levels would mean that the gap between Normal and Heroic would not need to be this big.
The problem you’re describing is caused by the current design that you are trying to defend.
Besides, do not forget that my list of suggestions includes the return of PvE currencies and PvE vendors.
This allows you to target specific items and avoid the whole “being stuck with a weak item for too long” situation.
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I think the gear itself has too many ranks / levels. It could be simplified a little.
Explorer gear is a good starting point for fresh dinged alts.
Veteran Gear (with a few Champion pieces) is a reasonable goal for my low intensity open world play.
I’m not sure what the point of Adventurer’s gear is, it’s neither fish nor fowl and seems to be there only to expend time and effort pointlessly. I already regret all the crests and flightstones I’ve poured into Adventurer’s gear before I understood the levels.
I don’t really know the levels above this as they are beyond me.
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Honestly for casual players I’d just give them a token to buy a full set of gear 10 ilvl lower than M+0 for completing the current parch’s campaign.
Then if they want higher level stuff, they can proceed with everything I described in the original post.
They’re making everything way too convoluted and confusing.
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If a casual player ever needs to watch a youtube video or read a Wowhead article just to understand how to UPGRADE their gear. Then the gear system is too complex. We are not even talking about determining BiS gear, we are talking about just understanding what is going on.
Like there are people who play this game at such a high level that they watch M+ steamers, and they need to ASK their fav streamer what they should upgrade just not to waste currency.
People cry about titanforging. But at least the gear system was intuitive, and it allows for the same positives as the current currency allows.
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If this gear was good enough for open world content than I’d probably be ok with this.
It’s not far off how Covenant gear worked in early SL but that gear wasn’t very good (even after being upgraded with a shed load of anima) it felt terrible in the Maw (I assume this was tuned for M+ geared players or something). Korthia wasn’t great either, alot of work to get to rank 4 (where I ran out of steam) and that gear wasn’t great there either (not in rifts in any case). Zerith Mortis was fine, Console Cypher gear felt good in ZM unless I tried to solo a rare or something.
I don’t need BIS, I just want gear that is good enough for the content I play.
Titanforging was bad too, though.
The current system isn’t fantastic, but if we’re going to bring back an old system, might as will bring back a good one.
A small number of difficulties and deterministic gearing system with PvE vendors is the way to go.
10 ilvl below M+0 ilvl would be good enough for you to clear the first few levels of M+ difficulties.
It would absolutely be enough for open world content.
People dislike deterministic gearing. There is a massive gambling epidemic? Why? Because people love RnG. (I hate gambling IRL, which is kinda ironic given my stance on titanforging).
Like you think Vanilla would ever work if all bosses dropped tokens you could then hand in for whatever gear you wanted?
Deterministic gearing is fair, but incredibly boring.
I wouldn’t say its complex, but there are way to many steps on the proverbial loot ladder.
4 different tiers of gearing atm each with their own 8 sub levels?
We could condense that down a bit I feel like without actually harming the generally good idea; which is items upgradeable by repeating the content you earned the item in (or doing that content on a higher level)
They’ve been asking for it to be back in PvP for years, and when they brought it back, people celebrated - and still do.
People love all kinds of unhealthy things.
I’m not sure providing those things is the best course of action here.
I prefer the current system to that you suggested. I can’t really make it plainer than that 
I would dislike for Mythic to be removed. I would dislike going to static gear levels. I think it’s going backwards not forwards. I would hate to force casual players to be stuck with no possible gear progression to be gained from open world. Currently they can upgrade just like the rest of us.
We don’t know if this system will remain and they will certainly be assessing how well it’s been received, and what did and didn’t work. It’s a vast improvement over upgrading only M+ gear with valor and having to rely on the catalyst to get higher tier. I did not like having to sit in +11s to farm the Wyrm Shadowflame Crests. Admittedly it was as short term problem.
They could have had bigger chunks of ilvl gains for sure, it would probably also mean an increase in cost, knowing blizzard.
The beauty with this system is that it’s not wasted. Like I had tier normal pants, and they were upgraded fully to 437. This week when I used a pair of legs from m plus, converted them to tier and upgraded them fully it didn’t cost me any crest to get back to 437. Just flightstones, and only half of what it cost me the first time. So all the tier cost me was one crest and some flightstones to get my 441 pants.
I mean that is a fair argument. I do however think there is no doubt that RnG gearing is more popular than deterministic gearing. I mean, why did D4 go RnG crazy when it comes to loot? And not opt for a deterministic approach?
PvP and PvE are two completely different things. WoW pvp is in such an awful state that I honestly have no idea what Blizzard should even do to fix it. Although having zero people work on it probably isn´t the best idea, or treating healers as second class citizens with lower MMR and thus lower chance at rewards that actually matter.
Yes, this is definitely a good feature and mitigates the issue somewhat.
And perhaps if this system is retained and we know the gear levels and sources the issue won’t be so bad.
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Cap dampening at 50% in solo shuffle, buff all healers by a solid 15% and fix the deflated MMR.
That’s it. That’s all they need to do.
I would say it is more addictive rather than more popular, RNG loot is a great way to cause a dopamine rush at the thought of potentially gaining great items sooner (whether you get them or not) rather than having a much longer grind to earn a type of currency.
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Well yeah obviously.
People love ice cream and candy too for the same reason. Would you rather eat broccoli or ice cream?
The good thing about WoW though, is that it is a video game enjoyed for fun, which is why the candy option is better than the broccoli option in this case. Because you can´t get diabetes in WoW.