The other day blizzard announced that, coming season 4 Shadowlands, there will in-fact, not be any more upgradeable gear, within crafting and legendaries!
The crafting part I am saddened about but I expected it, the legendary gear not having any further ranks was, in all honesty a shock!
As the news saddened me, I thought of ways, that they could implement a further upgrade to these items, without it having a negative effect, such as with the legendary market. The legendary market has been troublesome and caused a lot of people to not play alts, and even staying in a single spec on their 1 main character, but that’s a different topic!
Solution 1: - Legendary Rank 8
My suggestion, which could lore-wise be implemented, would be that, now DoS(De Other Side), is no longer part of the mythic+ rotation;
Put Millhouse, and Millificent Manastorm at the legendary chateau where the guy that crafts/upgrades legendary gear resides.
They’ll have a quick welcome text when you approach 1 of them, about them now helping out, after their misdeeds in DoS, as they had the choice of doing that, or facing consequences, and as such they’re now helping with upgrading your legendary to Rank 8, which I assume would be 315-320 Ilvl or around there!
It could even be implemented as them, of course, having their competition still going on, and the 1 you approach of the 2, will give you a little choice for conversation, that’ll lead to legendary upgrading.
Millhouse would be something like;
“Hey, you should let me upgrade it, My, par… my wife, doesn’t include as much magic for, and we all know, engineering can explode in your face!
Oh yea, it’s only, 2000 Cosmic Flux!
It’s an uhm… eh… cough necessary tribute, to upgrade it, yeah! That’s it!”
You give 2000 Cosmic Flux and he takes your Rank 7 legendary, to Rank 8, not base item needed, just 2000 Cosmic Flux and your chosen Rank 7 Legendary.
Millificent would be something like;
“Oh btw, let me upgrade it, it needs a woman’s touch, my… other half, heh, lesser half, might screw it up!
Just uh… give me… 2000gold, it’s uh, necessary, yeah, for the materials, yes, to be able to do so!
He thinks that a bit of magic on it will do wonder, we all know good old-fashioned gnomish engineering is the trick!”
You give 2000 gold and she takes your Rank 7 legendary, to Rank 8, not base item needed, just 2000 gold and your chosen Rank 7 Legendary.
Doing it like this would mean no more crafting involved than what is, and people can actually upgrade their legendary further, as to not have it be the, ilvl-wise, least impactful item!
You can even put in a daily/weekly/monthly/total counter, for how many people chooses what and let people compete through the Manastorm couple!
Solution 2: - Legendary Rank 8
Put in a goblin mage, who also has goblin engineering, and let him have a funny name, that refers to legendary, somehow, maybe even let it be his name.
Gniblo/Blingo “The Legendary”
First name suggested is just for fun, as it’s the word Goblin re-arranged!
But this character would basically be like the Manastorm couple, and could have a little RP where every half hour or so he’d mumble to himself how he’s getting filthy rich and realize you’re there, to then respond with how he didn’t notice and everything’s going along fine!
I’d suggest the upgrading works the same as with Manstorm couple, you put in which rank 7 you want upgraded, and he’ll do it for the low, low price of 2000 Gold/2000 Cosmic Flux/2000 Gold+2000 Cosmic Flux
Solution 3: - Legendary Rank 8
Simply put in all 3 characters, make the Manastorm compete as a couple against the goblin with similar payments and maybe even more dialogue!
Reason Why
The reason for this suggestion is threefold.
1: You can continue upgrading your legendary, and they won’t feel like a weak item, Ilvl wise(I am aware that almost whatever Ilvl you have a legendary at, it’ll be an output increase), as it’s legendary items, and them being more powerful, in all aspects feel good!
2: Having the legendaries stay at Ilvl 291, means that a lot of people will be wanting to re-craft them in the lowest stat slot possible; Wrist>Boots/Belt/Cape>Shoulders/Gloves(These are tier)
And so forth, I didn’t put rings/neck in there, because with the re-introduction of old dungeons for m+, some of those pieces will actually have int/str/agi, and highly likely be worth having at highest ilvl as possible, this is assumption though!
But people wanting to do that means more money wasted on legendaries, and not even to upgrade, but to re-craft, and yes, I am aware you can just not, but don’t we all like to be as powerful as possible!(?)
3: It’d overall just be a huge quality of life improvement from the current future, of there being nothing more!
It’d be cheap to upgrade, it’d be easy and require no real investment of time-consuming grind to get it from 7->8, you’d avoid a lot of issues, and it’d mean avoiding interacting more with the already very disliked legendary market(it’s been too expensive and restricting for casuals, people that just wants to play occasionally or people with a lot of different specs/classes).