Up until recently I have only played one character in TWW but then I got a little bored and wanted to play an alt but then got a little bored again and wanted to try a different alt.
The issue though, is gear. My main is only ilvl613, so that should show how much I play (or don’t play I guess you could argue). But then to go all the way back to poor gear and have to grind that again makes we just want to give up. Given how long it’s taken me and the content I play to get gear and upgrade it.
I think the best ‘catch-up’ gear I can get now would be from Sir Finley Mrrgglton (Delve vendor) and that is just ilvl 580. So that is going from a character with a, rather basic in the grand scheme of things, ilvl of 613 to one with ilvl 580.
Granted, I could also then get four pieces of ilvl 584 gear and four pieces of ilvl 597 gear from the rep vendors but even then my ilvl would only be 585. And lets not even talk about if I wanted to PvP on an alt.
People will say I want stuff for no effort but I have put in effort with one character and I don’t have the luxury of time to farm out everything for every alt I want to have a bit of a play around with.
So my suggestions would be this:
Add a Warband vendor that sells gear for gold (no new currency please) which scales to your highest ilvl character’s lowest ilvl item
i.e. Your character with the highest overall ilvl has a mix of gear, with the two lowest ilvl items being 8/8 Veteran item at ilvl 606 and 4/8 Champion item at ilvl 606. In this case, the vendor will sell Vet 8/8 gear. If your main then upgrades those pieces and now your lowest is 5/8 Champion gear, the vendor changes its items to that.
Allow Crests and Valorstones to be Warband transferrable.
This should already be in game.
Allow Bloody Tokens and Conquest to be Warband transferrable.
This should already be in game.
For the gear, to make it more palatable for people who would oppose this, the gear could:
Be unrepairable which will mean once it turns red, you have to buy it again
Be non-track items i.e. unable to be upgraded.
At least then you have a more representative starting point but have to still work a bit to push further.
584 1/8 veteran catchup gear is coming in the upcoming patch on December 18th. Keep in mind, catchup gear is ment to give you a head start, not fully deck you out.
I see that catch-up gear for new people who join the expansion later on with no rep, no delve undercoins or Delver’s Journey progress, not for those who have been playing throughout.
584 ilvl “catch-up” gear is pretty poor compared to the current attainable ilvl and also the delve stuff gives 580 now too. Granted that gear is only Adventurer track, so can only go up to ilvl 593 and the new “catch-up” gear will be upgradable to 606, but it’s still pretty bad and being unable to transfer the crests/valorstones means you’ll need to be farming months to get all gear up to their max anyway.
Even if they added Champion 1/8 for the new gear coming, that’d be something.
And what comes then, 11.1 in Feb with a new farm and higher obtainable ilvl, so why make it so challenging to gear alts?
Where in my post did I say that? OK, if you have a character that has its lowest ilvl item as 620, then so be it. They’ve put the effort in on one character to obtain that, why restrict them if they just want to play an alt?
Remember what Blizzard said about Warband…
Goals of the Warband System
Before getting into the details of each change that players will experience with Warbands, we want to share the main goals we are aiming to accomplish with the system’s introduction:
Make playing alternate (alt) characters easier and more enjoyable – Data shows that many players already have an alt or two (or ten) and enjoy playing them, so we want to make playing them even better.
Switch between characters without falling behind – There will always be a lot of character-specific progression in World of Warcraft, such as high-end gearing, but wherever it’s appropriate, moving progression onto your Warband should allow you to freely play multiple characters without losing efficiency or long-term progress.
Acknowledge the player behind the screen – In other words, wherever possible, we want to celebrate your accomplishments within your Warband, not only on your character, so you can carry those accomplishments with you to whichever character you choose to play.
Granted, they made a point about “high-level” gearing but for that they could put an upper limit on the catch-up gear, say Champion 8/8 or Hero 4/6 i.e. ilvl619. To go from that to max ilvl will still be a very lengthy process for 90%+ of the WoW community.
And in response to Blizzards Warband goals:
Make playing alternate (alt) characters easier and more enjoyable – I do already have an alt or two (or ten) but don’t enjoy playing them because I have to go back to older content that I farmed for months on my main.
Switch between characters without falling behind – I don’t feel the progression of my main when I log onto my alt, it is like starting fresh with a couple of options available for me that are marginally better than if I didn’t have that main and I can’t play multiples at once as then I’d lose efficiency and long-term progress on my main.
Acknowledge the player behind the screen – My accomplishments are gear and gold. Gold is fine but having an alt in blue, low ilvl gear does not feel like my accomplishments are being celebrated within my Warband.
Ok you get high level catchup gear, go into 8s or a heroic raid and you get splatted cos you don’t know the class what then? You skip important parts of progression sure but it’s there for a reason. 600 ilvl catchup gear would be good. It would put you in m0s and maybe normal raids and allow you to experience stuff as it should be done
Anything is better than what the system is currently, so it’s nice to see your comment reflect that.
If someone does well on an alt and gets high enough gear to go straight into a +8 then I would imagine the result would be one of the following:
They play with guildies or friends, so they will be more understanding and forgiving
They’ll have a score of 0, so if they are pugging. they’ll be hard pushed to get an invite into a +8 without putting in some work in lower keys first.
On a side note, if they’ve done the work to get gear so good that results in them being able to get catch-up gear that would put them into +8’s, I’d be pretty confident that they’d looked into the class, want to play well and have at least a good understanding of how to play it.
The gear catch-up is really not a problem, if you play a bit your main. You should have plenty of warbound gear to give away. And anyway with delves, it’s fast to catch up 606ish.
The problem is the crest gain for alts, and Valorstones once you have spent the whole 2k that you receive with a new character via the different reputation gain.
Once you are 610, then the character has to become your main if you want to go higher. There is no issue to run any content at 606 if you play mostly delves and wq.
I have 4 alts around 610, I could do 6s or more with them. But people are not that crazy, they have no RIO and even if your main is 3k+. A lot of people have trust issues nowadays (for good reason)
