The change is fantastic for someone like me that would love to learn the routes and gain confidence in tanking before I face a timer in a meaningful environment.
You even say:
" The only truly endgame dungeon mode (M+) currently revolves around a timer. This means that other than new mega-dungeons, there isn’t really a place for endgame players who enjoy a more methodical dungeon pacing and gameplay."
But players who this relates to are still punished because its on a weekly lockout?
What possible reason is there for the lockout to be in place, what have I missed, I can’t think of a reason to lockout after a single run?
nobody knows why it had a lockout since the introduction of M+ anyways considering M+2 was always freeloot and you always could downgrade your key.
It kinda made sense in legion when you key could really deplete so you could not just downgrade and farm.
Weekly lockout just means that you wont get loot after the 1st time. You can still go and do it, practice bosses or whatever. But you will only get loot once.
Because think about it: With out a timer there is no “fail condition”.
Which means that you can safely assume that anyone doing an M0 will eventually finish it and get the loot.
If you dont put some form of limitation you could spam them and get geared in 1 day. Not just with gear drops, but with the currencies needed to upgrade them.
M+ has this limitation: If you dont time it, you get less loot. 50% of the time you get NO loot. And 5 flightstones instead of 12. And no Crests.
Raids are in the same boat.
So yeah. If you dont like weekly lockouts then you have to come up with some form of limitation in gear aquisition.
All blizzard has done is: They could not think of anything better. So help them come up with something better.
These changes will change nothing at all. People will flock to low-level M+ because its spamable. And +8% more damage of an M2 is not noticeable enough to justify not doing it over M0.
Which in on itself is disappointing. Because M+ has other issues/potential improvements that can be addressed and are not.
Actually, m0 always gave MORE rewards than m+. M0 gives loot by bosses. Dungeons have 3-5 bosses, so M0 gives from +50% to +150% more loot per run.
Do them on a Mythic dungeon week and that is +100% to +200% extra loot per run per dungeon.
This will slingshot alt gearing in my opinion. Add the safety of speed running with hybrid chars (do most of the dungeon with 4 DD 1 Tank) and swap a guy to healer on the sticky parts and you can kit an alt out in 1-2 weeks.
