Huge problem with loot / gearing

Community General Discussion
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I might get crucified for saying this but not touching retail for a while and playing other versions of wow basically made me realize how superior the gearing system they have compared to retail. There are couple points i like to make

  • First of all , loot is boring in retail. Mostly stat sticks which you dont even see immediate effects. On other versions of this game when you get a loot you immediately realize how strong you become , your numbers grow dramatically bigger and on top of that you actually feel your character getting the upgrade. I’m pretty much full bis on retail and item upgrades didn’t really felt like a reward unless its a stupidly high ilvl jump which rarely happens.
    There were couple items in previous xpacs that effected your gameplay for example gavel from jailer , 2h legendary axe from fyrak , kt blade but they are made so poorly. Every one of those patches always had your class tuned around them which sucked really badly.
    Legion legendaries , artifacts , bfa corruption and azerite traits , decent tier sets etc are no longer being made. Devs are so afraid to try something exciting. Don’t get me wrong i’m not trying to advocate for azerite traits or corruptions but i do really think they were fun to play around but was really poorly done especially getting them part.
    When you get a special weapon or trinket in classic you actually feel like you got something special. Retail currently missing that.

  • My second point is getting gear is completely meaningless and free atm. Participation rewards are everywhere. People getting rewarded epics and sometimes legendaries for doing nothing. Loot feels unrewarding. 3/4 th of the raid difficulties are irrelevant for gearing outside of 1 or 2 items. Logging in for 5 minutes and you get bombarded with epic gear. Gear lost its meaning , it doesn’t excite anyone anymore.

  • My third point is ( crucify me if you want) there are lots of ‘’ different ‘’ gearing paths which is useless in other part of the game. This is a mmorpg. I always played whole game instead of focusing a part of minigame of the game. Pvp gearing , open world gearing , raid gearing ( too much f’in gearing). From my pov which i always tried to do everything most fun i had was while combining everything. Pvp was fun with pve items and pve was fun with high rank pvp items. Removing this completely seperated 2 game modes and removed some crucial mmorpg element.

  • My last point is stats are being boring. Only some kinda fun stats left in game are haste and crit because you can actually see the difference and even they are also kinda boring stats. I’m not here trying to defend or advocate why 1% crit or 1% hit is better or worse ( which i think they arent good either) but clearly current stat system is too simplified and boring. This needs a rework.

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Cruxifiction incoming :wink:

I actually love getting gear and I only do open world and delves (and not that much delving tbh). Upgrading it bit by bit, not so much.

I agree that in ye olde days gearing up felt a lot better and more important but games change and WoW is seasonal now and doesn’t really focus on open world stuff beyond telling a story.

I have to absolutely disagree with this point because I believe PvE and PvP should be entirely separate.

I agree with that. I would rather the numbers be smaller, I’m not going to do maths to figure out the best gear or use a third party site, I just go with “I’m slow and need more haste, here’s a piece of armour with green numbers for haste let’s put it on”

Maybe not what you had in mind though :dracthyr_hehe:

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Hi I recommend to remove the swear in paragraph 3!

As for the easier gearing, I do agree. It has become easier from Classic to Retail because players would often complain (like really often) that they don’t get (any) gear at all. I believe it changed from when Personal Loot or so got introduced into the game.

That said, gearing became faster as well, as a result Blizzard needed a counterweight to keep players engaged. Think about all those myriad of currencies and other stuff we have now.

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The only problem I have with the current gearing system is that you can’t upgrade Veteran gear to Mythic track gear; all gear should work like Doubloon gear in DF S4 and have 12 (or by now more) levels to upgrade; that way items you get stay at least relevant for the whole season.

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So much blabla but you fail to propose alternatives. This is a KEY thing because the way it used to be for all 4 points is WAY, WAY worse than today.

Lets go through them:

Now imagine you get 14 items like that. What then ? You start 1-shotting bosses ?

In the past, you had ONE item that was OP. And the rest was just there to cover “hit cap” and “crit cap” and things like that. And its still the case today. There are some VERY coveted raid/M+ items.

And then you have to consider that there are many raids, many bosses and dungeons. You want ALL items to be OP BiS? Because what you describe that happened in the past was basically that. Totally useless items EXCEPT for that 1 BiS item.

Then there is the acquisition of said items. You spent months with nothing at all untill you got THE item. But I will address this on a seperate point.

Basically, the alternative of “what used to be” is absolutely horrible.

Think of the alternatives: Months and months with NOTHING. And then, when you actually DO get something its not what you want. Or someone else wins the roll for that BiS item.

For example. Let me remind you what happened with Fyraks Leggo. Just to mention 1 thing : There were people that farmed Fyrak for 15 weeks and did not see it. By the time they got it, there were 3 weeks left of the patch and the Leggo became useless.

Basically. Items are only really useful at the beginning of the patch. Later on in the patch they become trash. And the more OP the item is, the truer the statement.

And that is why you have participation “trophies” and “crests” to upgrade the gear. Because the alternative is absolutely horrendous.

The alternative is to merge everything. As it used to be.

And then what happens ? The OP BiS item for PvE turns out its a PvP item. And the OP PvP item turns out to be a PvE item.

So basically you end up in a situation where you have to do arenas up to gladiator level in order to gear up for raiding. And that is ABSURD.

And now, with M+ and Delves… you have even MORE justification to take that Divorce further. Because it is creating many more problems gameplay wise than anything else at the moment.

You prefer what it used to be ? “Hit Rating” ? Or… “Spirit” or whatever ?

What do you propose that is different ? And dont forget. The more stats you add, the more gear permutations you will have, and the bigger the chances of looting something absolutely useless and never see an actually useful thing.

Or you forgot already being a warrior and looting a cool strength plate with Parry and Spirit?

And that is why we got the stats we do. Because with the current system you can be 100% certain that ANY piece of gear is an upgrade. Not an OP upgrade, but an upgrade none the less. Something with did not happen in the past.

On top, you can do ANY content and get the currency to upgrade it. So you get an upgrade after every dungeon/raid. Unlike the past where you could literally spend weeks with nothing at all. Or be showered by useless epics and never see the one that actually improves your power.

Basically. TLDR is what I said in the beginning :

Lack of understanding of WHY the gearing system is as it is. And why it is better than anything we had in the past.

1 Like
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Someone asked for proposals? Let’s go!

  • Item color codification (grey, white, green, blue, purple, orange) redesigned according to actual rarity and not on source.
    – Grey and White quality items only have Armor or Weapon damage
    – Green quality items will have Armor/Weapon damage and only primary stats.
    – Blue quality items will have Armor/Weapon damage, primary stats and then only 1 secondary stat or a special effect
    – Purple quality items will have Armor/Weapon damage, primary stats, only 1 secondary stat, and then either 1 gem slot or a special effect
    – Legendary quality items will have Armor/Weapon damage, primary stats, 2 secondary stats, and either 1 gem slot or a special effect
  • All 3 tertiary stats upgraded to secondary. Indestructability removed. New secondary stats:
    – Preparedness: Reduces cooldown of all abilities with a base cooldown longer than 59sec by x%
    – Expenditure: Increase the effect of all your abilities by x% while increasing their resource cost by (x%/2) [or some other appropriate amount to bring it in line]. Of course this doesn’t apply to crowd control and movement abilities.
  • Equipment slots will now only drop/crafted with specific secondary stats:
    – Helmets can only have Critical strike, Avoidance or Expenditure
    – Shoulders can only have Versatility, Avoidance or Preparedness
    – Chests can only have Critical strike, Versatility or Expenditure
    – Boots can only have Haste, Speed or Avoidance
    – etc to achieve equal coverage of all secondary stats.
    – Trinkets redesigned:
    — 1st trinket slot renamed to Relic. This will basically be trinkets with a “Equip” effect.
    — 2nd trinket slot remains as Trinket. All trinkets must have a “Use” effect.
    — The above mean that every character will have exactly 1 “Use” trinket and exactly 1 “Equip” trinket (named Relic).
    — Neither Relics nor trinkets will have any primary or secondary stat. They will all start from green quality which will have the Equip/Use effect, and each increase in rarity adds a gem slot up to 3 gem slots at Legendary quality.

What is the effect of the above:

  • Introduce more ways that affect how players see their output increase. Outside of more critical strikes, faster casts/gcds and the bland versatility, we would also have faster cooldowns and stronger abilities for higher cost (which could change ability priority for energy-resource type of specializations).
  • Due to there being more secondary stats that increase performance, stat inflation can be fought; instead of having for example 40% at 3 stats at the end of the expansion, we can have ~22.5% at 5 stats (1.4^3 ~= 1.225^5)
  • The combination of most items having only 1 secondary stat and secondary stats not being available everywhere will also allow for larger jumps in their effect when upgrading a piece of equipment. For example, upgrading your Helmet would potentially see your Critical Strike increase by a whole percent point instead of 0.3%. This means that changing a piece of equipment will have a more noticeable effect on the character’s performance.
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