Just some suggestions to make pve content feel more rewarding

[Aquilegia-dragonmaw]

first things first, the good, the pvp system/vendor is a massive success, if a player is good at PvP then they already have a great gearing path in game, to either focus on or to supplement their gearing if PvE focused, PvP players can just focus on pvp to gear, but they can also dip into raids/m+ to supplement gearing if they feel the need to, as doing multiple forms of higher level content is and should be more rewarding.

secondly, the bad, the raids and m+, the limited drops from bosses/end chests is absolutely fine, except that this lower amount of loot exacerbates the problem of streaks of not getting any loot at all, and when you do finally get a drop it’s not usable due to wrong stats/legendary slot/better ilvl in slot, all of which makes all the time spent raiding or doing M+ feels wasted and completely unrewarding.

the fix would be a valor points like system, a pve parallel to the pvp conquest system, and although pvpers might complain about such a system they could potentially benefit from it as well, the problems come from balancing the system so gearing doesn’t suddenly become several times faster
but more so that as you get towards the end of a tier/season/patch your not still hunting for your last 2-3+ slots of gear.

quickly the ugly, the weekly vault, specifically the back up reward if none of your options are good, which has happened several times already to me, no good option, even worse back up (really just some stygia) so ended up taking
items with high ilvls that might become useful if the other dps spec ever becomes good enough to play again or if the secondary stat meta drastically changes.

personally I’d have a points system with conquest like catch up and weekly cap
but have players only able to afford a piece of gear every ~2-3 weeks, as the system is only for extra bad luck protection.
an example system would be earning pts from dungeons/raid bosses at fixed
and scaling with difficulty amounts, probably so you can fill weekly cap on a full hc raid clear and 2-3 M+ in the 10-12 range,
you can have 1st random hc a day give a small fixed amount
weekly lfr sections give a small fixed amount.
raid bosses, give like 10 per boss on normal, hc give 15+10 from normal,
mythic give 25+25 from hc and normal.
if weekly cap is 550 same as conquest, a full mythic clear gives 500 nearly cap
full hc gives 250, full normal 100,
M0’s give a small amount, M+ will scale this amount up, based on guess work
the base M0 amount should be around 10 give or take, so a m10 gives 100
m15 gives 150, so a normal or hc raider only has to do 2-3 M+ a week if doing
no other content to fill the weekly cap, but a pure m+ player will only need to
do 1-2 more at a similar level to cap purely by doing m+,
extra sources of this currency should be available from things like the weekly world boss 1 time small amount ~20-25? a week.

the currency to items part of the system should have varied prices of different slots like conquest does, with the cheapest items such as rings/neck/cloak coming in at a cost ~ around 2 weekly caps somewhere between slightly under to slightly over, and the expensive items like weapons/head/chest coming in
at around 3 weekly caps worth slight under or over once again.

all this gear should be base ilvl 200 same as conquest, but higher ilvls upgradable by spending anima? should be gated behind achievements/max content reached,
so for 207 something like a full clear of raid on lfr/normal/ M+4-7
for 213 partial hc clear 3-7 bosses/M+10
for 220 full hc clear/M+12
for 226 partial mythic clear 3-7 bosses/M+14
for 233 weapons full mythic clear/M+20

extra bad luck protection would be a token(s) on weekly vault for back up option that can be saved and used to buy a piece of base pve/pvp gear from vendors, once every 2 weeks (half the rate of vault loot but can target slots, nice as a back up).

[Magiola-darksorrow]

Idk, it all feels like a decent system, but still like sticking a band-aid on an open wound (even besides the fact that it’s weird to get 200-207 from LFR?).

@Aquilegia-dragonmaw

all this gear should be base ilvl 200 same as conquest, but higher ilvls upgradable by spending anima?

Imo all these gear-upgrade systems and 15 different ilvls/sets/sources (4 raid sets, 7 unrated, 5 rated pvp ilvls, hc-m0-m+2-15 dungeons …) per season is a great part of the whole issue.

You can gear via multiple sources, and obviously the acquisition-rate has to be somewhat slim to not let average-joe outgear the whole season within a week so they can complain that they have squat to do.

Split the gearing systems so that gearing up rapidly in source 1 (so just increase the drop rates again, slightly) does not affect source 2-content, make those bloody sets again (at the very least for raiding and PvP, but why not a M+ one too?) and reduce the amount of ilvls/gaps.

[Drangrybot-ravencrest]

Another topic about this Loot in Raid and Mythic + - #2 by Evilinchen-blackmoore

[Timaani-earthen-ring]

You do realize that no matter how much or how good loot they give us, it will never be “rewarding enough”.

Or well, when it is, we’ll all just complain about “having nothing to do”.

[Aquilegia-dragonmaw]

the simple solution is increasing raid loot drops, it’s a weekly lockout so it’s limited on how many upgrades people can get anyway, but I’d rather keep the lower drop rate but add a further back up to gearing/getting loot, in the form of system for all of pve content(like the valor points of old), provided the vendor and ilvl for upgrades are set at the correct values to prevent people overgearing before they have done content related to that difficultly, and vice versa so you can get rewarded appropriately based on the content difficultly you’ve gotten too, it would at worst alleviate or more likely at best fix what most players perceive to be the problems with how pve gearing and loot currently works.

firstly the increase drop rate solution doesn’t work for M+ as it is repeatable content, personally i think M+ is perfect the way it is currently except for anima drops needing scaling with key levels, the 210 ilvl end of dungeon cap is perfect, the 226 ilvl weekly vault cap is perfect, the extra drop chance above 15’s is great, the only caveat I’d like to see if a currency isn’t introduced, is an extra loot chance if you +2 or +3 time a key.

secondly the randomness isn’t and never will be gone with pve loot, it can only ever be lessened without a back up vendor, so you can target gear like pvper’s do, bosses dropping 2-3 of the same item each week in raids, weekly vault giving you options for the same slots you already have equal or better gear in,

don’t get it twisted the randomness of loot in pve is a good thing, if everyone got everything handed to them X amount of times a week so they are done with gearing after X weeks, then be geared then have nothing to do it would be boring, but having to go 3-4+ weeks even now this early into a tier and not getting upgrades is wrong, going 1 week maybe 2, would be acceptable to most, going 3-4 maybe more weeks without getting a single upgrade to your gear when your stuck at one of the several gearing break points that can occur depending on your individual situation in game in regards to the level of content your currently doing, will only suck and cause players to want to stop playing.

thirdly the vendor I’d like to see as a back up for doing pve content, wouldn’t have bis gear in any slots ideally, maybe near bis in 1 or 2 slots at most, the whole point would be, to be able to get a piece of gear every 2-3 weeks that is an upgrade for the level of content you are doing, which will serve as a general buffer against bad luck in gearing and drops from the content you do, which will only get more prevalent as a tier goes on.

lastly the back up option from the weekly vault just to reiterate, although stygia has some value in that you can buy sockets/upgrade conduits with it, it really isn’t an acceptable alternative to the only piece of gear a player is getting as an upgrade each week, having bad options so you feel like you have to take the back up option, that back up option should lead to a piece of gear, either at a 1 piece a week rate if it’s somewhat random like a 100% chance of a drop from a boss bonus roll, or at a 1 piece every 2-3 weeks if you can target the piece of gear from the pve vendor via some sort of token to buy a piece of gear.

P.S. I like that gear/loot feels more rare and scarce, and hence more valuable now, and I’m more than happy to have gearing for pve players be slower in general and for tiers/patches to last a bit longer because of it, what i don’t like is the feeling that i must do high level pvp to keep up with gearing, and the unlucky weeks with no loot that is an upgrade for yourself.

TL:DR
changes and/or tweaks are needed for pve loot, be it slightly higher amount of raid drops, and a back up (100% a loot)bonus roll on weekly vault instead of stygia(as the minimum), or a whole valor/conquest points like system and vendor, that will allow pve players to fill gaps in gear at a rate of 1 item every 2-3 weeks(quicker and it’s op, slower and what’s the point), with a vendor token currency from weekly vault as back up to buy 1 vendor piece extra every 2-3 weeks also as back up if weekly vault options are bad.