Is The Treadmill Broken?

[@awaken6760]

Wows gotten to the point where it's not worth playing until it's on the final patch of the expansion since all the bugs have been ironed out and all systems are in place

[@naejimba]

... just so they can screw everything up with the next expansion. XD

[@PaulRizzo504]

Psttt this logic applies to Vanilla and TBC also

[@jakewright1932]

@@PaulRizzo504 It was less obvious then. Now a trend is set. Hasn't it always been the case that the next tier makes the previous obsolete? Sure, you should need to progress some before advancing to the next tier, but if the end goal is top tier loot then why bother maxing yourself out now? I guess enjoy the ride and get satisfaction from the fact that your loot is relevant for the moment. Any game is too easy for anyone who burns through it. "Tip: Take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft". Being a casual seems to be the best way to digest content - sad.

[@McfcxEz]

Jake Wright you cant clear Naxx like you could clear let’s say SoO in 5.4. You hit 90, you do timeless, you do all your lfr, you are ready for SoO 10m N in about 24 hours. I’m using SoO as it’s the last time I raided seriously

[@ogzombie6963]

Ive been doing just that since pandaland

[@reeven1721]

1) The 30 ilvl gap between tiers, compounded with TF and catch up, is too big. 2) There are too many "participation trophy" sources of Normal and even Heroic tier rewards. 3) There are no "long term" rewards like assembling sets or even legendaries anymore. 4) Playing into #3 there are very few "difference in kind" rewards anymore without sets or legendaries. This makes for a boring "ilvl is king" gearing loop that gets overwritten every patch.

[@Traumglanz]

Even worse, the distribution of items is so bad, that you can basically skip most of the regular gearing process with farming world quests, which gives you the gear for mythic +10, but not the skill. If you want to acquire the skills needed afterwards, you will not get loot for a quite a while.

[@LrdZanny]

@@Traumglanz The fact that Mythic 0-6 are effectively useless because they reward such low ilevel loot is very indicative of how broken gear progression is.

[@Tailstraw_xD]

1. Some people do more than just raid, they update the 5man and conquest gear to fill in the gaps. 2. What? Grinding for something on your own to get something that drops for doing a single activity is far from being a participation trophy. 3. Reps. 4. I agree.

[@jakewright1932]

@@Tailstraw_xD How is rep a long term reward? I've been exalted with every faction for months and the paragon stuff is basically a passive loot gain. Only long term reward I can think of in terms of character progression are the 7k TR 415 Azerite Pieces - but those are obsolete to mythic raiders and only give you the same traits you've already been farming.

[@s0515033]

"Too big" is subjective. There's no reason to believe the ilevel gap between tiers is too big, because the entire concept is artificial. It doesn't matter how big the gap is. THe numbers are imaginary. Doesn't matter if it is 15 or 30. If you didn't give participation normal/heroic gear for non-raid/dungeon content, no one would ever do that content, since most people only seem to care about gear. Try to make world content appealing without attaching gear to it. Won't work.

[@TheAshleybruno]

Describing the current iteration of wow as Season is perfect.

[@madzzzey]

Diablo?

[@Enlyss]

They focus on making the game "winnable" for busy grown-ups, who barely have the time to play as much as before (I play just several hours a week, still suibbed as it's cheap for me). Quite a few 2-day mythic raiding guild members play that much, actually. I personally despise it and would rather have the Classic WoW gameplay exactly as it was or close, without this "ACCESSIBILITY, EVERYBODY WINS" bs of a game design. Busy IRL players will have to lower expectations from the game and will probably not be able to raid mythic or even heroic content. At least there will be that ever-hanging carrot on a stick like back before WotLK. P.S. Thinking of it. I'd be so happy if Preach or any other famous youtuber inspired people to use in-game feedback form. Was always told it was the best way to make your discontent heard. I am pretty sure all these videos are supported by the playerbase minority in Blizzard's opinion.

[@albert2006xp]

You people don't get it. Seasons exist to foster the competitive side of M+. You push in a season as hard as you can, you get to a score. Then next season everyone starts from 0 again and everyone has to gear again. It's more competitive this way. And if you're bored you can do it on 12 classes like I do. Similarly for the raid world first race and world rankings, gear should be reset even more than it is so guilds can't pre-prepare 3000 residuum like BoD. Give it a competitive fresh start, that's how you keep players coming back to your game.

[@vitsavicky]

Seasons aren't inherently bad... it's just the implementation that is half-assed... They should either commit to seasons 100% or they should abandon it.

[@LightupX]

I mean they literally called the new raid season 2 soooo

[@animosis]

I've been saying for months that this new "seasons" approach to BfA is bad for the game. Wow patches have never been (and should never be) treated as a season. An expansion is a collection of patches that tell a cohesive story and iterate on the systems of that specific expansion. Quarterly resets to gear make obtaining gear pointless until the last patch and accelerates the apathy of the people who play.

[@CornbreadPops]

yeah but in a world where mythic + is a thing, how do you fix it? They don't reset gear or increase item level of everything then mythic+ becomes irrelevant unless they decrease how much damage mythic 1-10 do and make a +20 the new benchmark with gear scaling up according

[@ispear6337]

@@CornbreadPops you definitely just answered your own question. However with every answer comes a new problem, when you scale up the m+ benchmark all of the sudden you spread the playerbase too thinly. People gearing alts or new players gearing through mythic+ will find it increasingly difficult to find groups because there are 15+ levels of the dungeon they are trying to do and only so many players doing them. An answer to this would be to scale up world quests and add welfare systems for catchup and all of the sudden we're back at the original problem of gear not mattering anymore and the whole point of adding 5 new numbers has become completely invalidated. For my response to the original post. Personally i feel the only reasonable solution to the problem specifically of the fact that your BiS items are the exact same from the exact same dungeons for the entirety of the expansion, which is on average 2 whole years, is to make dungeons themselves seasonal. Only add in 3-4 dungeons per raid tier, theme them around that raid tier and retire them when the next season is released, adding 3-4 more dungeons. This will keep things fresh and interesting from a m+ standpoint but it does come with its own problems obviously.

[@LrdZanny]

Wow has been largely seasonal since mid Wrath. By refining the process of tier releases Blizzard has eliminated any of the variance between each content tier and streamlined people into the new "season" so linearly that you can resub the week of release and be on par with players who have been around since the xpac came out in a week. Even the concept of reset-the-whole-game expansions is anthesis to progression and meaningful character investment, and to many players having one happen every two years is too often to get meaningfully invested in the game for long.

[@arthurschopenhauer292]

What about pvp seasons?

[@starfreek101]

I think they have lost some reputability with how they have made the tiered change. I preferred it when loot had static rolls and you could "finish" your main and then move onto an alt. Then that alt would go through the treadmill(kara>grull>SSC> then to BT) It kept the heroic dungeons and older raids relevant throughout the whole expansion. We were still making raid runs for the earlier raids towards the end of BC for alt characters and we would pull in other players from the community as well. It kept us from playing just the one raid every week for months on end. That and the item power was very different back then. I remember there was a trinket from Gruul that our mele dps still wanted in BT and the gun from kara was BIS for BM hunters going into BT. With the new tiering system, there is no reason to play earlier raid content so it is dead content unless you want transmog.

[@warhammerguy]

I truly miss when raids were progressive and the first raids of the expansion was still relevant at the end of the expansion. It did not make content obsolete when the new patch came out.

[@aerozub]

yeah but going back to mc and bwl/ony just to gear ppl for aq and naxx was meh... There's always going to be a downside.

[@warhammerguy]

True but there were catch up mechanics to prevent that but didn't break the game. Like Dire Maul and ZG for vanilla and the blood elf island (don't remember the name) at the end of BC. There was also the badge system in BC and Wotlk. These catch ups helped but it didn't make raid content completely obsolete

[@diamondstor2]

@@warhammerguy Isle of Quel'dalas was the first real "catch up" system that later versions like Timeless Isle were modeled after. Mike has talked about this before - the way that you could buy "a belt" or "a chestpiece" as your catchup rather than the entirety of your gear being catch up. What are you catching up to if you're not going to use the gear to clear meaningful content? Blizz needs to stop thinking about quarterly gear.

[@starfreek101]

I literally just made a comment like this in another thread lol. Not only this, but when the gear had static stats, you could finish your main and then move on to moving an alt through the gearing process without feeling like you were missing out on something with your main. In BC we were still going back to Kara/Gruul etc even towards the end of the expansion when we were farming BT/Hyjal on our mains. It kept it less monotonous when you had more places relevant.

[@s0515033]

I don't miss that. I neither want to go through months and months of old content to get to new content, nor do I want to carry people through old content to catch them up.

[@reg0942]

Should go back to making raid tiers the progression, not welfare loot drops at the start of each raid tier to invalidate the previous raid, while im asking for things that will never happen stop watering down the value of epic gear, it means nothing because its the standard.

[@ShiyoKozuki]

Raid or die is shit but it's better than this. Vanilla WoW and FFXI have the best gear progression/character progression systems of any MMO I've played.

[@albert2006xp]

How would that work into M+? Would we just end up with +40 keys? It's utterly pointless to do that, like utterly so. I don't want to see Uldir ever again, and I wouldn't have to but still. I have 12 classes over 400 ilvl, I wouldn't have to go to Uldir but all you're doing is forcing a new player to go to a place none of the currently playing players want to be in. So who will they be going there with? I for one don't want to boost people through Uldir.

[@stonechad_squirtle]

@@albert2006xp thats another issue that comes with blizz making us play the patch not the game.

[@manasseth4991]

I agree with you. Even back in Cataclysm you would go back to T11 raids during Firelands in order to gear yourself.

[@Jaigarful]

Its a good thing they moved away from progression tiers. Many people just don't remember how miserable TBC was because of this. Depending on your server, your guild could just members constantly poached and the regearing process for new players is so long that you end up stagnant. It was particularly bad with tanks who often took a month to get a full nature resist set for SSC for example.

[@devinharrisu]

Ever since Ion said the WoW playerbase is cyclical, they seem to have done everything in their power to ensure the playerbase is cyclical. And the way the game is so sharply divided into the new "seasons" just reinforces my opinion that the devs don't want to be creating a persistent, ongoing game. They want to be creating stand-alone games, each with its own isolated progression and "cool marquee new feature" that they dump when the next game comes out.

[@EdyGlockenspiel]

I haven't used a treadmill in years. I'm too busy watching videos about how shit wow is.

[@jzmmm]

I feel like this game has just run its course. After many bad decisions, I don't feel like anything can really save it or bring it back to its former glory

[@naejimba]

It is possible but not probable. They can rip off the band aid, and piss off much of the community, to make drastic changes that will benefit the game long term. They have done this before, but usually back down to demands. Look at things like flying or making heroic dungeons difficult again at the start of Cata. It takes a clear vision of what the game should be, what makes a game like this work, and then sticking to that vision even if you (and your players) have to admit the game is not for everyone. Hell, you could make the argument that they do something similar with RNG.... even though it was never a huge part of the game from the start (we had more deterministic systems for loot), players don't like it, and Blizz won't back down. Imagine if they took this attitude with the right things... getting rid of LFR, making the leveling process difficult and meaningful, removing heirloom gear and making it a purchasable xp boost you spend on a character (so gear while leveling is a means of progression). We could argue all day about what changes should or should not be made, but the interesting thing is most of it is going back to what existed previously... there is no mystery in how to solve many of the issues they themselves have created. From that point they could innovate further, like giving players reasons to be out in and explore the world. The question is, do they have the vision and the balls to do it? It seems at this point Activision keeps Blizzard's balls in their purse. One thing I think we agree on though... the game is dying. If they continue down this path, or make no changes, it is doomed to fail.

[@repkar5828]

Pristine servers would fix everything imo. Gear doesnt matter at that point.. its your name and skill level that matters. If, for example, like preach was saying, there is a healer who doesnt dispel vs a lower geared healer on a pristine server. People would take the lower dude based off how much he does vs how much he heals. Lfr could still work on pristine it would simply be like raiding in mists where you choose the easy difficulty with a pug raid team. Pristine could work for anyone, even casuals.

[@grim86]

not even remotely true

[@grim86]

@@repkar5828 pristine servers and classic are trash ideas for people who cant stop living in the past like the fools they are remembering only the good and forgetting all the garbage

[@repkar5828]

@@grim86 classic is trash, i still think non sharded servers are a great idea, blizzard's problem is server bloat so simple delete the lower pop servers and stop the sharding. Right now we are just a class not a name, deleting sharding would fix this

[@johndoe6737]

Endgame gear is just too easy to get. I'm at a point where I need several titanforges on a gear to get an upgrade

[@MrJayza89]

Right now unfortunately I can't raid at a mythic level during BoD. I've cleared heroic and got many 15,s done. I have no gear outside of azerite slots to upgrade. It will all need to be titanforge from mythic plus or heroic raiding. And since there is no repeatable way of farming az gear I'm stuck waiting on Titan residuum so I can purchase 415 gear. It's very unrewarding right now and honestly I don't like the idea that my character can only get stronger from titanforges or waiting a few weeks for enough Titan residuum to build up. This is including all three specs on my monk.

[@Traumglanz]

So you are already 420+? ^_^ Impressive. I am just at about 395, without playing any endgame content. Though I play more or less just assaults for fun. No raids and basically no m+ out side of one chest to check out a +4 or something. So I am super behind compared to current content, but doing just fine in my own content.

[@bratwurst7308]

@@MrJayza89 got the same "problem" tbh. ive got about 405 ilvl with several gem-slots all over the gear and i am always trying to give my mythic-raid-loot to guild-members cuz anything below 420 or 405/410+socket is not an upgrade anymore. luckily i still have fun playing in mythic+ with some friends and progressing, getting better there (mythic 16-17 is the highest, we do right now). i dont even feel it being fun doing the weekly 1-2 times mythic-raiding, due to the fact, that i have to always prepare shitloads of stuff for that (4/9 mythic right now).

[@Robin...222]

John doe. I bet you just 407. And only cleared heroic/normal and. Some time pug Champion of the light. So you aint in mythic gear. So you can still upgrade

[@Tauroi]

@@MrJayza89 in the past (vanilla, bc) raids failed because people got their gear and said this raid is finished, i have Everything bye bye see ya Next patch.

[@Fiery891]

They should save Catch Up mechanics for when the expansion has been out for a full year. Until then I believe Old Raids should be viable content.

[@Junior-ok4xh]

No.

[@jakewright1932]

Yes.

[@Junior-ok4xh]

Nope.

[@philip0544]

Yeah.

[@Phoenixfire767]

I mean, its how it was Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath

[@flak1939]

1. Make all progression in your MMO gear based 2. Make all gear meaningless and easily replaceable 3. ??? 4. Profit!

[@naejimba]

*3. Make all of your money through the store, selling mounts and vanity pets

[@bombademar4711]

Tbh it is ridiculous how easy it is to gear up without any effort whatsoever. I stopped raiding three weeks into uldir and haven´t entered a raid since, i barely even play the game anymore yet i still have 3 characters at 400+ (with lv 34ish necks lol) only doing exactly one +10 a week on each, which takes maybe 3 hours playtime. A friend of mine raids mythic 8/9 and does everything he possibly can to gear up and he is only 411, while my hunter is 405 with just one +10 done each week and nothing else. It´s stupid, that should not be possible.

[@tim3062]

can you link the names of the characters? i want to see how you have 400+ilvl without current season azerite which does not drop from M+

[@sixish]

@@tim3062 mate you get 625 residuum out of the weekly if you do a 10, 3 weeks worth is enough for a random 415 ilvl piece from the vendor, or 2 weeks worth is enough for a 400 piece, so he could easily have that available to him the way he plays.

[@bombademar4711]

@@tim3062 Sure. Bombademar-Eredar , Tyraetar-Eredar , Lasko-Eredar. All on EU. You get azerite from m+ weekly cache (residuum) and from the warfront chest and the darkshore worldboss. (oh and technically, my hunter does have a raid boss kill now since i didnt want to miss out on curve so i killed only jaina hc once, but yeah got no gear from that (also didnt need anything from her lol) so that doesnt really take away from my point)

[@Quel_droma]

I'm a mythic raider since beginning of legion. I've constantly been doing mythic raid farm and progression, mythic+ dungeons, every thing that could have a chance to upgrade my gear. In the meantime, a friend of mine logs in once or twice per week, does maybe 3-4 bosses on heroic twice a MONTH, does one low lvl mythic+ and still he was always on the same gear lvl that I was, with a minuscule diference. It has been going on in Legion, still going on and accentuated now in bfa.

[@drass1283]

This is astronomically unlikely as you describe it. Assuming average warforging outcomes and enough luck to always get upgrades you would barely achieve this from a character that was fully geared at around 389 in 8.0. I don't think you're that lucky that you had no duplicates drop and you were probably not 389 when the raid was released. This is bullshit.

[@CalestoBella]

I don't do Mythic + or raiding, however, when I do group content I do whatever I can to be a useful member of the group. I just got out of a Timewalking dungeon and our healer who is also a druid wasn't removing poison and kept almost getting speared to death. So in between using every stun and interrupt in my arsenal to keep us from getting runedshaper'd to death, I was also popping out of cat form to remove poison and throwing free heals whenever possible. People would use this scenario to say "See I do my best, so I deserve the best." However, my best isn't even in the realm of a mythic raider having a bad day and wiping the whole raid. I don't deserve gear from a world quest or cache that is that close in power level to someone who has wiped on Heroic Jaina 100 times. It's ludicrous to think I just have to bide my time and hop into an old raid to get as cool of looking gear as someone who put the time an effort to do it right. Hell, I think the sets from warfronts look cooler than some of the raid sets and that is sad. Visible progression used to mean something. Now progression barely means anything to 90% of the player base. When I get an epic now it doesn't feel epic, it literally feels like just another piece of gear. I hopped onto a private server recently to see what I wanted to play in Classic and literally getting a white piece of gear that had a few more armor on it was a visible power gain that had an actual impact. Blizzard, if you want to reward people who don't want to raid then give them interesting items to craft and upgrade like in TBC and if they wanna prove that they can do the work and put in the time give us back a Mage Tower experience where we can go in do the thing and unlock a final "mythic" tier reward. Make the content that all players do be reflected in the rewards that are given. Make epics, epic again. Preach always says, don't just complain offer a solution. So my solution is even if you aren't raiding, you should be challenged in some way on an equivalent level to raiders to get epic gear.

[@Fyrlink]

TL;DR: Because every piece of gear is replaced with each new raid tier there is really no point in grinding out the very best gear available at any given time. In classic and tbc, there were items from raids in every raid which were good throughout the expansion. There were no shortcuts to skip raid tiers. If you want to raid, you have to progress through each level. Content remained relevant for that very reason, even if your only goal was to jump back in with friends after a break and gear didn't matter to you. Sure, the argument can be made that if you're only grinding to catch up then what's the point in making players catch up. Well, simply because if you don't make players progress through content and PLAY the game to get gear, then you hit the end of the "gearing" process early and run out of content, knowing good and well that there is no point in going higher than normal or heroic because at the end of the day all of that shit is going to be replaced. Also add pvp vendors back for fucks sake.

[@samward1317]

"In classic and tbc, there were items from raids in every raid which were good throughout the expansion. There were no shortcuts to skip raid tiers. If you want to raid, you have to progress through each level. Content remained relevant for that very reason" Except it didn't. I played in Classic and TBC. Content didn't remain relevant after the new tier came out. If you needed to gear up through old content, you were just shit out of luck because nobody else was interested. So you either quit, or you farmed Karazhan for a year. It was awful and there's no way Blizzard is going back to that system. Mythic raiders will just have to cry more.

[@Adam202]

As a WoW vet that started playing all the way back in the original Vanilla beta, I think there needs to be a far larger delta between end-game gear and the more casually earned gear. I hardly participate in any end-game content and yet the gear that I earn in spite of that is much better than it has any business being. I personally find that this is a contributing factor that discourages me from participating in end-game content for the simple fact that end-game gear is not nearly as enticing as it should be. Once I reach the point of being respectfully geared for Heroic raiding and other equivalent content, I suddenly find myself feeling content with that progress when I should be as motivated as ever. It's like the desire for further progression just completely disappears. Although I am advocating for changes that would likely result in my own personal character being of a much lower item level and power, I believe I would have a significantly better gaming experience available to me. This kind of hearkens back to the saying that "Exclusivity breeds desire". Now I don't pretend to speak for everyone else, and I don't think my opinion is any more important than any other player. I just think the current circumstances that are a result of the way that gear is currently rewarded has ended up becoming severely detrimental to the quality of the gaming experience.

[@sundertooth1666]

This isn’t going to change, and it is why I finally quit about a month ago.

[@adzie3229]

Very true. I Played Vanilla->Cata release then took a huge break. I came back in 7.35 and had no idea what was going on, I hit level cap and then started farming hc's and trying to get in EN groups, I couldn't understand why people were just saying to go quest in Argus. I know there is a reason for catch up mechanics but we no longer progress through an expansion, we literally reset each patch which fosters an attitude of "Well there's a new patch I'll play for a few weeks again and then sit it out until 8.2..". Edit: Grammar

[@ZikisDeadge]

Great video Preach, thanks for the hard work you put into these!

[@Brekner]

Played for over 10 years, BFA killed it for me. Sad thing is that Blizz likes the way gearing works, so i don't think i'll ever return to playing more than a few months per expansion.

[@Beefster99]

This is what happens when your prioritize excitement over fulfillment.

[@johnmckelly6263]

Grahf different neural pathways. pleasure vs happiness. dopamine vs serotonin.

[@yayotone3252]

What you describe is spot on. It’s also the same feeling I had after a few quests in Hellfire Peninsula during the launch of BC. I’ve always felt demotivated by the “complete reset” aspect of WoW whether it happened at the start of every expansion and shifting to the every patch model.

[@ThorDog81]

i can't wait till they figure out that linear progression is a much better system than the current and move back to that. If i return to the game now there is no reason i should be jumping into BfD and skip the prior raid. It's dumb that i can.

[@albert2006xp]

It's just not. Linear progression doesn't affect those of us that have been playing, it only affects those that come back now or start now. And who the fuck is gonna want to do Uldir with these people? I sure as hell don't want to do Uldir or other easy content for me. I never want to do any trivial content. So the only thing you're doing is making it more difficult to start the game up mid expac, like TBC, while providing NOTHING for active players. Except those dumb dumbs that don't get gear is only a tool to achieve the real goal: your CEs, Curve and M+ score. That's it. It's a tool. New season of achievement should need you to work from the start with everyone, that's how it is most competitive.

[@fare-5174]

For someone who never raided in Vanilla, I still remember the attunement requirements which mean you literally can't go to the next tier raid until you've cleared the previous one. In WotLK, even after ICC came out, you still raided Coliseum for trinkets, Ulduar for hardmodes, and Naxx for titles and fun. Uldir now lays forgotten, for it has none of the above. Now that Blizzard found that "normalizing" gear is not working, I hope they do the second squish (what was the point of the first one anyway?), and finally put out gear that is one or two ilvl higher in next tier raid than in the previous one. This will make all raids of the expansion viable and a lot more guilds will see their raid time edging to what content they like, not the only content they can progress on.

For someone who really enjoys character progression the current amount of catch up mechanics just makes me play on alts. Not because I don't enjoy class X but because you can gear a character so incredibly fast and then there's little to no incentive to keep playing. I have 3 alts at 405 ilvl who barely have been inside bod hc (mby 15 boss kills combined) while my main who has cleared hc almost every week and is 6/9m is at 414. Within hours on a newly dinged alt I can out gear the character I mained from bfa release through mythic ghuun (25+ days /played). And this was the case since only a few weeks after bod release.

[@ilovepancake3518]

for me the main reason i didnt do bod more than one on normal full clear is because there is not teir set, my main motivation to farm the same raid multiple time was to collect the 4 piece of the gear to have my rotation be altered and more powerful, without the 4piece teir set there is absolutely no reason to do the bod more than once . since the trait of azerite armor in the raid is that covenant thing which if you actually read the tooltip it gives you intellect, oh wow blizzard jeez you did outdone yourself this time lets remove something cool and rotation changing mechanic from the game and lets give them basic intellect , mind blown .....

[@AwesomeArgonanth]

Honestly, the game died for me when they added titan forging. Instead of removing it they keep making it worse to the point where I'm honestly not even considering coming back to the game until it's gone. They inflate the ilvls way too much between tiers, there is no reason that there has to be such a huge difference between normal/mythic and then another giant leap when the next tier comes out. Gear is literally useless unless you get the super lucky titanforge. It makes going into that mythic raid feel awful when you finally kill a boss after 50+ wipes, and it drops shit worse than what was required to even kill it in the first place... They could easily just make the next tier drop +1 difficulty worth of ilvl over the previous tier and it would be amazing. There would be an obvious reason to keep doing the older raids over the entire expansion. New tier comes out and if you are a heroic raider you can jump into the new heroic, and also the previous mythic for upgrades. You can even do normal to get the same quality gear as what you had in case your guild didn't get everything you need. Why do they feel the need to funnel everyone into the new content when there is plenty of stuff that people aren't finished with or haven't done yet. This was never an issue in older expansions. Do people really need those huge ilvl gaps between tiers/difficulties to feel rewarded for doing it? Well yeah, when your RNG titanforge can break everything they need a way to get people who got lucky interested in the newer stuff. Just remove it already, the shit broke the game and it's been broken since you added it. People are just now finally getting completely fed up with it.

[@NeflewitzInc]

I think Blizz needs to take a look at Classic EQ and WoW raid gearing. In EQ you acquire things throughout your career as a high level character with the average best gear at the last Raid but with a lot of circumstantial or long lasting pieces of gear along the way, as well as Epics that you have to work towards throughout that time. They could take that view and their current "seasonal" mentality and as long as they marry that season to an expansion with the same mindset of older MMO gearing they'll go back to being more successful with creating satisfying loot.

[@stevenbov]

I'll pass on Classic EQ raid itemization. They straight up split gear between raids based upon your class. Cleric in Plane of Fear? 0% chance you will get your armor drops.

[@NeflewitzInc]

@@stevenbov I didn't mean they need to literally copy it. But to look at the overall Classic to Velious gearing scheme. Also it must suck to not be able to get your gear. I was able to get most of my gear as a ranger just by popping in to the zone and checking out what was rotting. If the zone's broke it's not that scary.

[@ThatRealGamerGuy]

When the first item level reset happened in BFA I started wondering as to ‘Why the hell I’m still trying to be competitive and put it the time and effort only to see my gear made obsolete in less then a week’. In BoD I really wanted to raid mythic again after a short break but I quickly realized that I was just constantly asking myself is mythic raiding still worth it. It’s an MMORPG and I have to admit that I do raid for the Best Gear! I have a friend who’s not even in a raiding guild and he has better gear only because he got lucky with bonus rolls, weekly m+ cache and with the Azerite Vendor. Short answer WoW isn’t worth my time anymore and for now I will just be checking out the PTR and patch 8.2. Maybe they do finally get something going in terms of gameplay but I think the gearing system will stay as it is up until the next expansion……

[@seanfitzy2256]

Really good video preach . Very well thought out and presented.

[@picklechin3061]

WF/TF needs to be removed and every tier needs to only go up by 5 ilvls. LFR drops only blue items that stay consistent throughout the expansion and are of a lower ilvl than Mythic dungeons.

[@jethrodark2372]

And put gem sockets on tier gear/azerite gear again not this rng bullcrap, also its to many secondary stats back in the day u had hit, crit and haste. Now we have mastery, haste, crit and vers, i say one of them needs to go.

[@LrdZanny]

LFR should just not drop items at all. If Blizzard insists on cannot-fail tourist mode make it a tourist mode.

[@jethrodark2372]

@@LrdZanny at that point they might as well remove it cause if it didnt give gear no1 would run it anyway.

[@gapplebees9295]

@@jethrodark2372 good, it needs to be removed from the game.

[@EnergizingBane]

Jethro Dark im sure people would run it to “see the content.”

[@Vandel96]

well imo, they should go back to what it was originally, when it was just +5/10 ilvls higher, essentially just remove titanforging but keep warforging, then u can still get the excitement of getting an item of higher ilvl than u were expecting, but not have it go ridiculously high

[@Flamestormq]

For me my biggest thing coming from classic, was always coached on "break points". Because honestly even in bc the overall complexity of most classes and rotations were down to a couple buttons or a macro, and the biggest thing was hitting a "break point" so a magical interaction happens. I think this still exists in a minor way today, just in legion frost dk's had soft break points with haste, which would make the spec "feel better". That's my personal way of guaging myself. And I see the results based on how my overall logs go. I'm not looking for a perfect log for every encounter, but a handful that shows I'm understanding my spec and class enough to create the numbers required in that position. I think class communities or at leas the discord communities around the classes really help dispel the notion of gear being the metric, because there is always a handful of people that if you ask them if you have a gear problem and you are under performing, they are likely to point out rotational or even general choices you have made that created the under performance (bad stat distribution, wrong talents, openers, and so on).

[@Ecrious]

I recently went from mythic raiding to monster hunter world. I’m enjoying myself way more than participating in the WoW grind, WoW drama and dealing with the WoW gear illusion of progession. Monster hunter got everything right that WoW gets wrong. It’s very sad, WoW was a good game, now it’s a fumbling awkward addiction. Looking forward to MHW Iceborne. Oh and btw, I’m saving $15 a month, it’s like I’m getting paid to have fun by getting out of Blizzards web. It’s so hard to support a company that is treating their employees so poorly. Stocks first, HR fired? No thanks.

[@Justagamerl]

Monster Hunter? what do you do in that game?

[@LawrenceDerp]

@@Justagamerl it's a hack n slash / rpg where you fight various monsters and loot their parts to craft weapons and armor. Has extreme depth and can easily clock in hundreds of hours due to all the content. It's not for everyone but definitely check it out

[@Ecrious]

@@Justagamerl You pick a weapon (class/spec), and you go on a hunt (raid boss) collect/craft/carve the monster you kill for loot. Each monster (raid boss) is harder than the last with new mechanics. The mech. get more interesting as the game goes on. Endgame every monster get 10x more difficult but keeps the same health value you mix and match gear/ grind for gear to best handle the boss. No gear goes out of date, some improve your playstyle while some add resistances. It's a blast. already 111hours in and it still feels like I've just started.

[@Krysdavar]

My warrior, who has yet to step foot into a 5-man or LFR this expansion, is ilvl 389. My mage, who I have "normal" raided with since day 1 (and a few heroic raid bosses), is 391. Boggles my fucking mind. Guess will just say that while only 56 seconds into the video.

[@Krysdavar]

Oh yeah, plus, started playing the warrior In late December. Sparingly. Still play him sparingly. FFS.

[@Krysdavar]

Snap, this video is just about that. Also, lol, I don't know what it is, but when I do world quests with my warrior, I do 12-14kish dps, however, when I do the same with my mage, it's around 18 - 22k. Yep, no research on the warrior, but a little on the mage, but still am a casual because I mess up my rotation out of instinct.

[@gastonmannlicher8077]

Ghost @BauerPrime · Mar 2 A year of huge highs and lowest lows. ****Friends lost****, friends made and a bigger family. Thank you all for the birthday wishes. Hope to see you all tonight around 8:00. 😘🤙🏼

[@Pompen]

Creating a game that demands you keep playing makes you not play, old WoW you could get geared fast and still you wouldnt quit because the GAME was fun.

[@TheKuharski]

Thanks for putting this out dude. Completely agree. After 15 years this might be the turning point for me.

[@CrystalblueMage]

The effect of going over a certain amount of gear in the raid is that you can kill faster and avoid certain mechanics and overlaps all together, so they won't be there for people to screw up on. That's one of the way that this weeks hard boss becomes next weeks farm. Most fights are designed as "tipping point" fights, though we stil have stuff like Zul.

[@brkus1668]

I don't know if getting much gear is the problem. How I play BFA is I take a class I like this patch get it geared and chase 1k rating on it, I did this on my mage, now its 407ilvl and 1070 raider.io that is my goal. Now I started playing rogue I'm 393ilvl and 700 raider.io when I get to to where the mage is I'll probably level Zandalari paladin and try to tank in M+ and get it to 1k rating. Game has content and what to do, but its no longer you have your main char and if you want to try something else it will take you months to do that. I don't know about you devoted to one char guys, but I enjoy this style of game.

[@nerdslapper9361]

I'd agree... If this was The Old Republic and not World of Warcraft.

[@Nagassh]

For the first time in years I felt like playing an alt this expansion, I planned to join a friends alt runs on my warrior. My warrior had done about 2-3 M+ runs, no higher than 10s, had never stepped foot into a raid or a heroic dungeon, had otherwise just gotten gear from world quests and warfronts etc, the welfare stuff that kept him ticking over. I'd gotten so much gear for so little effort that I found out I had completely obsoleted LFR, Normal and practically heroic - I'm in around 395, 400+ items in every slot besides my azerite pieces and weapons. Before this I'd been a pretty staunch defender of warforging - I didn't care that LFR players got the occasional huge item, I liked that you could sometimes get a Mythic quality item from heroic content - I hated things like Nighthold where you had MANY BIS items from Gul'dan as a caster so you were stuck in heroic gear until progression was over, because the earlier mythic items couldn't compete with it, but my mind has changed sharply in BFA. Warforging and scaling item rewards are completely out of hand when they're able to obsolete everything outside of Mythic raids on a character that has done NOTHING of note bar world quests. I'm in my mythic raiding bubble, but I can't understand how anyone raiding content below Mythic is having any fun when the treadmill has been killed by WQs and titanforging.

[@harold926]

Absolutely agree that gearing right now is completely busted especially since bod released. As reference i'm currently just in the everyday regular hc raiding guild currently working on gnomeboy. When the raid released i just did a ton of m+ and was able to replace pretty much all my gear i worked on for months prior, the week after when we started HC BOD progression i already had an avarage ilvl of 400+, before i even went into the raid on hc i already overgeared it by doing non raiding content like m+ warfronts etc. Currently sitting on around 407 ilvl and and quite literally doing anything feels absolutely useless and a waste of time in terms of gear progression. Wq: there is no way in hell that any gear will titanforge up to a point where it could even get close to an upgrade, AP is useless aswell i currently have all azerite slots filled with 415 gear where i have everything unlocked besides the small 5ilvl trait so farming AP absolutely feels like a waste of time considering the effort vs reward. Raiding: i love raiding its the main reason i play the game but i still have yet to kill the 3 final bosses on hc yeti don't need any drops from there besides either very specific sidegrades or big ass titanforges. M+: after the first week or 2 of this season and i pretty much replaced all my gear again besides getting the weekly cache doing m+ feels like a waste of time unless you have a set team with similar armor types for effecient farming. Most of my guild barely does any m+ (i usually offer my key at the end of the reset to help them get the weekly chest so doing any 10 key with them is pretty much a depleted key ) that will take 40 minutes with only 1 item to show for it. And pugging can be hit or miss it can go smooth and fast or you can search for groups possibly taking 30 minutes only to have the group fall apart in the first 10 minutes of the run resulting in an absolute waste of time. Islands: again with the current AK level its insanely easy to catch up to the point where you either stop doing islands or you keep doing them but the impact in terms of progression is barely noticable. On another note a week ago i started gearing my enhance shaman i abandoned early bfa with no gear/ap. In a single week of simply doing m+, islands, warfronts, wq's etc i already reached ilvl 395 with a neck lvl of currently 38 (which unlocks the vast majority of traits). In a single week i caught up with other guildmembers on their MAINS which they have worked on for months in a single week. And to further reinforce that gear just means nothing anymore when i was pushing my own key on my shaman i had people in there 20+ ilvl's higher than me yet i was able to out-dps then while still doing mechanics and being at the top of interrupts/cc/dispells etc. In conclusion, YES gearing is fucking busted right now the first 10% of your gametime you get 90% of the rewards and the next 90% of gametime you have to grind and pray to rngesus for the last 10% of the rewards. Personally i don't even primarily play for the rewards like gear i play the game to raid with friends but things like wq's islands warfronts etc just aren't that fun and once the reward isn't good enough motivation will drop FAST. I still remember back in uldir after the incursions were introduced giving hc uldir quality loot twice every single day there was literally 0 reason to do uldir outside of doing it just for the sake of it and to keep a bit of activity in the guild because besides drama nothing kills a guild quicker and making people leave is an inactive guild. This is awesomebeard btw if you are reading this mike :)

[@albert2006xp]

The first day or so of the new season is where you gear the character to an "acceptable" level, then you work on refining. My classes, all 12 of them, are sitting between 410 (equipped) and 403. Without the new magni shit done for HoA. I still get upgrades from M+ and it never feels like a waste. Your problem is you're expecting Heroic to give drops when that's just first week content. I pugged it week 1, whole thing, to expect it to give upgrades at this stage is just silly. I still do it sometimes for parses and fun, gear isn't everything. Gear is just a tool that you use to achieve what you want. If you're geared enough to not get upgrades anymore, well that's the dream, you will like that's probably the strongest you'll be and can really go all out trying to get those parses, those M+ scores, etc.

[@harold926]

I think we have a difference of perspective or mentality on how the game should be and thats fine my guess is that you are either a mythic raider or just someone that knows to get shit done quick, my thoughts on the matter. I agree that the first couple days of a new season/raid you get your gear up to an acceptable lvl but personally i don't think that should be the case even if you have really high titanforges from the previous raid you replace it so quickly that it feels like all the raid/m+ farming you did to prepare for the next tier was for nothing. You said that hc is week 1 content and that you cleared it in the first week through pugs. either you had a really good group or was very lucky either way this is not the case for the vast vast majority of the playerbase if they are even raiding at all most of them are still working on clearing hc. And is it silly that i still expect being able to get an upgrade for bosses that i haven't even killed yet personally i don't think so i understand that now in the world of titanforging its very easy to achieve the position where you don't even need gear anymore from bosses you have yet to kill but imo that shouldn't happen or at least not this easily. And in terms of being geared to where you might have to wait over a month to get any piece worthwile being the dream, i personally don't agree pre-titanforging i liked being gearcapped and having my BIS list completely done because i knew in terms of character progression i was done i finished the game in a way. Now with titanforging you'll never get to that point there is always that thought in the back of your head (or at least mine) that i can keep farming AP or do m+ at the small chance of getting a titanforge to me its feeling like you are just inches away from the finish line but never being able to cross it. And in terms of parsing with all that fancy high end gear tryin to one up yourself in terms of preformance well this is personal but i am a tank, i don't really parse, just by playing my character well and not die its very easy to get 90%+ parses on dmg and healing on farm without even trying for preformance and high parses. And for m+/rio score personally i don't really care about it i'm 1k+ i can easily get into groups for the weekly i used to push a bit in season 1 and work on my score trying to do higher and higher dungeons but eventually i got a bit bored of doing the same dungeons over and over again. Yes i understand that the affixes can have drastic changes on the way the dungeon works, the way you do pulls or routes, what talents you pick etc but in the end the dungeons the core dungeons are still the very same and eventually i was starting to feel the burnout/boredom to the point where i currently only do it on alts if i am gearing them or doing them on my main to help out guildies since i am a tank and those can be hard to find through pugging (at least decent ones) I agree that gear isn't everything as i said i don't play for gear but its still nice to see your character progress and get stronger. To me it just feels like the gearing treadmill has gone too fast to the point where its insanely easy and fast to catch up compared to those who have been playing the same character since launch. Yes once you're near the end of the treadmill you can still get upgrades but to me the chance of getting any meaningfull upgrade that you actually notice are either very low or take a long time including the neck lvl. Yes there are plenty of other goals you can set for yourself and push yourself in different ways that just getting gear but gear is the tool of doing most content like raiding for me. If you are playing wow and just wow that works fine i guess but for me personally i would rather just play a different game like i played dmc5 this week than to keep logging in every day doing emmisaries, islands, warfronts, m+ etc for a small chance at upgrading my tool to make raiding easier.

[@albert2006xp]

@@harold926 I guess it's a perspective. You say all that M+/raiding you did to "prepare". For a tier that hasn't started yet. You should not be able to pre-prepare, honestly I think the whole residuum thing was a major oversight as well this tier. All the work you put in a tier should be for that tier. And there's nothing wrong to take it easy towards the end of a tier, especially if it's not a push week, you've done all the raiding you want, etc. You shouldn't start the next race before the gun goes off. Heroic is pugged. Week 1 there were several pugs doing progress on it and clearing it. Always happens. Later weeks, tons of people have the thing cleared and tons of pugs exist solely with people who cleared it. Now, you can tell me that sure, LFR players exist or Normal players exist, because we all start somewhere and I'm not gonna pretend I started this game and was any good instantly either. But that's not a matter of gear, gear helps these players but the help they need isn't more gear. You don't clear your current heroic last 3 bosses by getting more gear, you clear it by throwing failure at it until people learn. And maybe slowly over time, people learn a more general knowledge of how to play and handle things. And yeah you probably won't get upgrades from the last 3 bosses. Because the first 6 probably already gave you most if not all of your slots already. You should look at raiding as clearing the boss, not getting the loot. Curve in your case is the goal and you already have the gear for it, you just need to get it done. As for M+, it's a space where you can push yourself endlessly without a fixed difficulty setting. It allows you to constantly improve and more up. The dungeons require learning and re-learning, so what if they're the same? It's about working towards a goal, doing repetitive things is what MMOs are about. You work on the treadmill to get good and show off your achievements. Then next time get even better, and even better. I'm not gonna get into titanforging, as I don't feel it relates that much. I do think that you can get to a state where the odds of upgrades are so small you pretty much consider the character done. Like I said, I sim very closely to the highest windwalker on raider.io, more gear isn't gonna make me equal, but practice will get me closer. I do think as an aside that titanforging should be replaced with a system that more reliably progresses but that's not super related with the fact gear SHOULD reset between seasons because that's what keeps the game competitive and the only thing removing it would achieve is create more of a barrier to entry in the competition for the current season. When a new season of football starts you don't just carry over points for the winning team of last year just because they did work last season.

[@shizo66]

when i first started hardcore raiding back in BC to go into hyjal and BT i had like all pvp gear and i was picked up off a recommendation and i got gear over time and proved i was worth the investment. If you think its gear youre bad you are more likely than not very very wrong. If youre good good players will see the dps youre putting out in the gear you are wearing if the dps youre capable of in your gear is 5k and you put out 4.5-4.8 theyll be able to see that but if its capable of 10k and youre putting out 4k youre just bad and it isnt your gear it's you

[@Colty95]

This video is so on point. I mean I have already reached my gear cap for my main character, i'm 4/9 mythic currently and i'm at 415 ilvl. I do not need a single piece of gear from any part of the game unless it titanforges to the ilvl cap and gets a socket. So yeah i agree completely, this system does not help casual players at all and it makes it so that more skilled players finish everything way too fast.

[@s0515033]

So you want to spend even more time grinding gear to do the same content? That doesn't make sense. I'd rather have the gear come faster so I can do the content instead of going "oh well, no gear drops week 4 lol."

[@Colty95]

@@s0515033 I want the gear to be a bit more staggered. The last few patches it took me 2 to 3 weeks to get my main to 99% of his power, and after that I only got minor improvements. There used to be a time when if an item you wanted dropped from heroic and later on mythic you would be happy for a few days. Now you just some random stuff get a 420 socket titabforged and you are like "huh, about time".

[@karolismazys7287]

They had everything right in the beggining : Epics are for the best , gear is hard , quests are hard, money getting is hard , Classes are different , unique, communication is a must , realm community is there. They had it all right and they fucked it. But its not too late. Learn from classic... stop babycaring for the casuals..

[@benshalev878]

Dude I hate myself for starting to play WoW on the end on MoP, MoP was amazing for me, I literally did everything from raiding (got heroic garrosh and gold tmog on my dk)to pvp to gold challenge mode to lvling to farming gold, after that WoD died out for me in a couple months and same with legion and bfa, I miss MoP times and wished I started sooner so I would of had a better time for longer with the game, my prime time with the game lasted 6months prolly which ppl that played vanilla it lasts a couple years, I want vanilla but I know it will not last as long as OG vanilla did . I hope vanilla will bring that spark that I felt with the game in MoP and the spark that disappeared and never returned on any other game since.

[@kalleanka2796]

Yeah high points where Vanilla-MoP. Actually I consider MoP the best expansion in a lot of ways.

[@dolphchu8482]

Try tauri wow it's a mop server.

[@benshalev878]

@@dolphchu8482 i don't like private servers, i don't see a point in trying and progress there when they can get closed at any time, also gear progression means barely nothing, if i can show my gold tmog to a wholee server there i can show to 200 people :P

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: *YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.*

[@cEighteen]

I think the biggest problem is that there's 4 difficulties, that's wayy too much. In older expansions, if you capped a character on the final patch of the expansion you would still work your way through every or mostly every raid to gear up. In Legion, if you cap during Antorus you run Antorus. If you cap during Battle for Dazar'alor you run Dazar'alor. They kill off content & basically reset your gear every time a new raid launches. Each difficulty increase is 15 ilvls, there's 4 difficulties, that's a massive 60 item level difference between the lowest level of raids & the highest level, add Warforging & Titanforging in the mix & the numbers get ubsurdly inflated. I never played at all during Mop & Cata, & I don't know how in MoP they managed to make everything somewhat relevent even after adding the 4th difficulty in Siege, while still having thunderforging. I think the best solution to this would be to cut amount of raid difficulties in half, remove LFR, remove mythic, increase the difficulty scaling of raids the further you go, as well as the rewards you get from fighting the harder bosses, & remove or minimize Titanforging, making Warforged +5 ilvls & Titanforged +10 ilvls.

[@GhostOfTazio]

Blizz created a Jonestown and people dont want to drink the koolaid

[@Finicky9]

It's more like ddr than a tread mill, but yes I completely agree with you I can't really add anything.

[@halldorkify]

Double Data Rate ?

[@tRapdontRap]

What can you miss that you cant get later? Hows it more like ddr?

[@brothir]

@@halldorkify Dance Dance Revolution I'm guessing.

[@TimoFisher]

What's the background music? Specifically around 18:44

[@Sagittakaze]

Most the fun for me used to be gearing my characters. Now gearing feels like the prerequisite to even do the content, which completely ruins it for me. That and the gap in gear between raid tiers is so massive now. I remember back in WotLK, Naxx 25 dropped 213, with 226 off of KT, Malygos, and Sarth 3D. Ulduar came out and dropped 226, with 239 off hardmode bosses. The raid tiers melded together a lot better, because the items from one were a lead up to the next. The gap in power between BiS Naxx and BiS Ulduar was small compared to the gaps in power between raid tiers now.

[@cwilliams6884]

wow, imagine if instead of focusing the game on how you progress your character, they just made a fun game

[@alexander1055]

a fun game? who do you think they are? Nintendo? Activision is all about $$$

[@PhilFantastico87]

I'm in a PVP guild, and even we've noticed the massive spikes in active players at the start of a tier, followed by a massive drop-off within a few weeks. The only positive is that the ease of getting gear means there are probably more people sticking around to play on alts. If you hit 120 during TW week, with a warfront up, you can get to 370-380 in a couple of hours.

[@iAnnanass]

im now 410 ilvl avg and my guild dosnt do much in mythic raiding right now but pushing my r.io score is what makes me keep playing pretty much

[@styled322]

agree that raiding in order to get stronger for the NEXT tier was the main motivation for raiders

[@JanJanNik]

how would that be any motivation? it's just objecting yourself to chase the carrot on a stick for eternity, realizing you'll never get anything meaningful out of it in the end.

[@mitsakos23able]

Mike I completely agree with what you said but the way you say it Blizzard will answer with removing the bonus loot tokens and we'll be in personal loot hell at that point cause that's how blizzard works. You tell em I want less free gear in the game and they remove something that will upset people just to make people not ask for anything again...

[@KrakenGameReviews]

One of the real issues is the obsoletion of the previous tier. There's literally no point doing uldir mythic now since easy m+ and heroic BoD are faster and more effective methods of gearing. The lack of a decently farmable resource like titan residuum also means that your emissary dailies and world quests are meaningless for most raiders.

[@LrdZanny]

To be fair previous raid tiers have been made obsolete since ToC obsoleted Ulduar so bad they had to buff Val'anyr to keep guilds running it just for the hammer, which then just ended up getting dumpstered in ICC anyway. You have to go all the way back to TBC to find raids at release that lasted all expansion, unless you count farming old raids for legendaries and AP in Legion. The difference is that in the eras of WoD and earlier if you didn't play the previous tier to max out your gear progression in the new tier required farming multiple difficulties until you were caught up. Now there is so much loot outside of raids that goes to raid ilvl you can get full 400 in a week and clear heroic BoD.

[@sirkoltas4087]

Pls Dont excuse them with the "it's difficult to remove an old system" After what they did with ML. I completely agree on pretty much everything. Been saying this things since WOTLK. I have to admit i thought the downfall of the WOTLK mentality would come faster, but in the end 4 expansion later everything that was set in place in WOTLK as come to be and the results are obvious even to the worst white knight out there. I still love this game (not entirely it's merit alone, there is no real competition in the pve side) and i still want to see this game succeed, and before someone ask.... NO CLASSIC IS NOT WHAT WE WANT. Ty mike for caring

[@Relbl]

Remember when there was only one difficulty level for each raid tier... and you probably didn't get all the pieces from one tier before the next one opened... and nobody complained about it (except rogues lol)...??

[@Jaigarful]

7:15 talking about blaming gear, I did this in Antorus. My parses on ST fights looked awful because my azerite traits were just bad for ST. When a decent DPS was doing around 2 mil DPS, I was down 150k DPS with the same ilvl gear having perfect relics+ Netherlight crucible. It was nuts. Even a couple of average ST relics would have added ~ 60k, but it makes your parses just look awful.

[@defenestrationstation5771]

This reminds me of syndromes speech in the incredibles In the end he says "when everyones special no one will be." Blizzard took it as a guide apparently

[@s0515033]

No one should be special because of gear, though. They should be special because of accomplishment. That is like saying you won't give people tools because it makes the tradesmen equal. It doesn't. It just frees people from the shackles of not having the tools to do the job. It is still up to you to use those tools to make a fine product. Give a noob 420 gear and he will still be a noob. Give me 420 gear and I will just do harder content the same as I do now.

[@Judiacator]

Eliminate the idea of giving out free loot Heroic loot from warfronts and emissaries - limit it to Normal item level. Then introduce a single player challenge like the mage tower - with a tier progression for cosmetic stuff - with maybe a mount or something for clearing the hardest difficulty. This important as it gives players a judgment free space to improve their ability to play their character - People that don't read guides either can't be bothered, or have no reason to care - So give them a reason to care with a form off Solo Progression that has benefits for everyone they play with.

[@MrInsanecicci]

Hey, I've been missing doing the mage tower challenges so much that I started rewatching your videos on them. But, I couldn't find each spec, do you have them all uploaded or no?

[@Zenavesta]

I hate it when the good has to suffer for the bad! A return to back in the day is my suggestion. Dungeon Blues, raid Purples an PvP gear. This will just lower the bar for when you "zero" the game. Currently, you can "zero" the game at a high iLvl ( which is not satisfactory ), they need to lower it back. Maybe just make M+ drop Blues instead of Purples. Same high iLvl but we all know that Blue gear and Purple gear have different stat margins. That way they will feel strong in the open world and raiders will feel powerful. Hence giving them something to aspire to, but if thats not what they want then the don't have to do it. Typing all that it sounds exactly like what the game was, idk why we changed. Oh wait, thats why we are here now. The babies started crying for change. Now they've seen the other side and they want to go back. I hate it when the good has to suffer for the bad!

[@axvle]

Hmm, I ran into this problem personally many expansions ago already. That's why I mostly value cosmetic rewards now, as well as enjoy the world, plot, and community in itself.

[@bigburci]

I always had breaks from the game between patches or just simple I had to spend more time with wife. But... ALWAYS thought about it and planned my next move, checked patches, news, talents and just cant w8 to reload my account and play. Now... Its just become flat and I don't care anymore, not mentioning that non of my friends, family members play anymore. Its over I guess....

[@jlmccabe]

I know what is keeping me from being a better player, I am physically disabled and it slows my ability to react to things in the game but I have managed to kill all the bosses on normal and up to conclave heroic. I've done a few mythic dungeons and 2+ on an 8. I'm not the best player but I feel like I'm far from the worst

[@nicogreco6926]

Honestly, this may be my last expansion. I have a tight group of friends that I play with. We aren't top 100 world, no. I run M+ with some of them and work towards Keystone Master achievement, and raid Heroic BoD with the guild. Mythic raiding is just out of the question because by now we've run so many M+ that we are equally geared as the 6/9 M raiders on our server, and we'd rather put our time into enjoying ourselves than stressing ourselves out over forming a solid Mythic raiding team. With the amount of bugs, and lack of features BoD has had it couldn't be more obvious that the Warcraft team staff was cut. Even despite that Blizzard says that developer jobs are "safe" and all their restructuring is in random PR and paper pushing work, it seems like that's all PR fluff to hide what's really going on. Blizzard sucks at making World of Warcraft. Flat and simple. Blizzard is just sucking right now, which is odd because they normally kill it at nearly everything they do. Hopefully they get their act together and make something worthwhile to stay subbed to, but with the way the game is going. It's going to be hard for me as someone in their late twenties now to continue playing into the next expansion. It hurts to say that too, as I've been playing this game since TBC.

[@durbem]

"You think you do, but you don't". It was a good quote used at the wrong time back then, but perfectly reasonable in the case of gear. People thought they wanted gear to mean nothing, but they actually didn't. "They thought they wanted it...". Also, on your last part, about how hard it must be for Blizzard to make these decisions. I totally agree that it isn't easy, but it is their job and responsibility to make these hard decisions. They get paid handful because of it. Gear has mattered little for a while now, and I've seen friends go due to that, I've seen people lose interest in raiding due to it, I've seen guilds stop because there isn't enough raiders out there due to lot of them not having incentives to raid. I literally can't see who this benefits outside of people that log in once or twice a week and then play other games for a week. It isn't healthy for the game.

[@BSwitchGTG]

Much of this is why I’m so excited for Classic, and have basically quit BfA while waiting. The motivation that was so strong in Classic it made me seek out a raid team and spend countless hours raiding has slowly degraded over the years. When LFR came out, I had nearly no motivation to find a real raid team, and every expansion has gotten worse. No motivation, no meaningful reason to do the treadmill, and just feels like a waste of time to keep going back right now. I hope next expac is awesome, but if not, I’ll have Classic which will scratch all the itches.

[@plainlyJaren]

This resonated with me a lot. As a player who loves m+ and does heroic raids, I quit the week bod came out. I hate world content even when its good and the idea of having to do it again because my heroic uldir gear was out of date for heroic bod made the game feel like a chore instead of something fun. One other reason that isnt gear related but is "seasonal" related. The way they increase the difficulty of m+. I hit my goals of hitting certain levels of keystone's. Now it resets and I set the exact same goals... That I just achieved.

[@Highway-Hobo]

So reworking gearing around TF is leading to a broken system. If only the players could have predicted this during beta so the Devs could make adjustments before it was to late

[@s0515033]

A system of TF is the only thing that makes older content appealing to run repeatedly (which is ironically something preach and other want) without making it feel like a punishment (the old system). Before, you ran old content because you needed to carry loads of people through to get them to current content so you could progress as a guild. No one wanted to do that shit; that's why we no longer have that system. Now people do older content because there is actual real value to it, not artificial value manufactured by a need to carry.

[@Highway-Hobo]

@@s0515033 No. Power creep is what makes old content obsolete, adding a Powerball on the end of your loot loto ticket doesn't change that. The power creep jumps in Legion from tier to tier was absolutely absurd. BFA seems to be following suit. It the same reason tier set bonuses were typically nerfed hard on the release of new content. TF is a horrible system that is designed to specifically foster a desire to keep grinding for loot drops. Its Psych manipulation 101

[@Highway-Hobo]

@UC1ijnVv2XybTAgAsR8fob6w No. Broken itemization and pointless secondary stats inflate ilvl to the end all be all stat. Min maxing secondary stats is pretty much pointless in BFA. That, coupled with huge power creep between raid tiers is what makes "old" content obsolete. TF was put in place to keep casual players grinding longer throughout the xpack to try and boost the active user metrics. Also, don't put words in my mouth and attribute "positions" for me. The original comment is mocking the gearing system in BFA and the fact that numerous issues (TF for example) were brought up in beta yet Blizz chose to disregard practically all feedback and push out this lulzy system. If you think huge ramps in power creep from tier to tier is a good thing, and TF keeps old content relevant, then have fun with BFA. Personally, I think its a shit product. Gearing, especially TF, is a joke and not worth my time.

[@kalathi1898]

There was a sinking feeling I had when my guild killed Normal Jaina and I was looking through the loot in the dungeon, to find that there wasn't even anything I needed despite having gotten maybe three pieces of loot out of the dungeon in the time it took us to clear it. I was looking at Heroic gear, as we were going to take a stab at that, and none of the gear there got me excited either. Raiding for our guild is on hiatus because nobody wants to do it, and practically everyone I know feels the same way. It's not a good situation.

[@Inshokuten69]

It'd be nice if they did turn a corner and fix the expansion, but really what's the point? I mean lets say they "fix" BFA, what about the next expansion? If history tells us anything is that they make the same mistakes over and over again, so no doubt they'll lose the bandaid fixes for classes that azerite traits are and they'll need to redo most specs and we'll be in the same problem just again. At this point I just can't expect Blizzard to get it right anymore.

[@MrChuckCosta]

Just to state a personal experience: Just leveled my rogue to 120 and got some WQ's going, got some gear and got a +2 Tol Dagor run. We had a super duper geared hunter that couldnt evade ANY damage from last boss whatsoever, i asked "do you have lust pet hommie?"he said "what kind of hunter would i be if not ?" and he didnt lust ONCE in the entire run, and when the time on a +2 (i must remember it was a SIMPLE +2) was already like 8 minutes past already the group disbanded. The problem i also see is that some content is being sold as "too easy to care", and some players justify their lack of skill (i couldnt complete a a+2 like, wth man?!). Blizz somehow should give new players a simple "tutorial" with some basics skill: evade dmg, interrupt, spell interactions. To be honest i dont know how they would do this, but the game needs it. New players have access to a world of loot but lack on character knowledge to take the maxim of it. But i dont know, thats just my ideas about it. Keep up mike mate preacher.

[@Euphorischeente]

I think making leveling phase harder, not just giving mobs more health, but where you need to do all these things like evading damage, dispell, interrupt etc. or you couldn't complete the content could be a great tutorial, maybe also with a little description why exactly you died if you failed

[@Captain.AmericaV1]

Transparency is not something they go for and would seemingly loose money than admit their failings!! The only issue they seem to be attempting at is over eight months into this xpac in 8.2 patch with the Azerite 'rework' which at best is a temporary thing and still won't solve the problem of how bad the traits and whole system is and the fact they don't feel worth all the effort. The GCD has not been properly coded and is so blatantly incompatible with this xpac but they don't seem to want to fix the clunky, slow and mundane feeling of it which regularly clashes with the class design rotations. The "new" ideas they rolled out are too long boring unimaginative and unnecessarily drawn out, the time spent on being bored to death does not reflect the reward we should get for time served per event!! Timegating needs proper management!! The dungeons with increased mobs is just so needlessly stupid, it's just increasing the time spent in dungeons and has vexed so many!! We don't need increased mobs for standard heroic and mythic +0 dungeons!! World quests are more boring and feel laboured compared to Legion!! Levelling quests lack depth, meaning and any sense of achievement, for example the generic quests where you pick up a few flowers ten feet away from quest givens kill a few mobs then get throw some silver/gold is literally the same in hundreds of the generic quests in the zones!! Even in ESO the side quests have meaning and you get to make moral choices which actually make you ponder....: That is why wow needs to breath new life into the mundane quest grind!! The Azerite traits have such minimal impact that it does not even feel worthwhile!! The Azerite armour is so underpowered and feels much less powerful than its usual standard quality equivalent which is bad!! Since the secondary stats have a higher value than the main stats then they should make the Azerite armour truly worth its weight and have DOUBLE the secondary stats instead of zero secondary stats!! The only thing good about this xpac is the Art Design which has never failed, it's just a shame content development does not!! The class design itself is broken and there is no intention of them fixing it!! These are just the biggest issues their not even started on which tells me they don't care about the state of the xpac, so why should we support this xpac when even Blizzard Activision don't!! This xpac deserves to be suffering as it is.

[@monzela]

The way I see it, it’s actually more rewarding to not play the game. You get more content when you come back, don’t have to deal with repetitive grinds, and you don’t miss anything. You’re actually putting yourself at a disadvantage if you actively play the game. You have to push yourself harder for less rewards. The amount of HoA levels you got by grinding islands every week I can get in a day if I wait a couple months because of artifact knowledge. The gear you got from farming mythic raids for two months I can get in a 30 minute AFK in a warfront once the new tier drops. Your BIS azerite piece that took 6 weeks to farm titan residuum for I can get from a world quest once the ilvl increases. What’s the point?

[@tysonbrown9437]

I'm a talented player (my mythic clearing GM said so it means something right?) but I'm not interested in running mythics myself. I took a break from the game because it felt too much like legion. However, I kind of want to get back into the game but with me having neither a good ilvl OR any data on raider.io I'm not sure where to begin. So what steps should I take to make both look good enough to be considered for heroic raiding guilds and mythic dungeon invites?

[@dalore02]

Great insight into what is really going on. As usual. Thank you for this analysis.

[@ariholm]

@preachgaming how donyou get the role icons to show on your bars. Can't get it to work on mine. Thanks for the vid. You and your channel are the biggest reasons that I got back into wow in legion after having been out since mid tbc

[@CornbreadPops]

People are not given incentives to do higher content b/c gear is thrown in their face. I got alts and guild members who have not done raids or rarely any mythics and 390+.... barely two months into the raid tier. It's so easy to get high gear and alot of players don't need high gear for how they are playing their characters. There's no point in you being 390 on your hunter if all you do are warfronts and world content. You can still smash through it all at 370 item level. You notice people didn't complain as much about not having high gear in Legion b/c its was a borderline good xpac all around. If I recall, the weekly quest in Legion that gave you a heroic piece of gear now for doing four mythic would only give you heroic gear if you killed a certain amount of bosses on heroic and the same for normal. Otherwise it was LFR level by default.

[@greenfox3010]

So in regrds to gear getting out dated by the time the next tier comes, and keep in mind im by no means a wow expert only played some heroic raids and M+. What if each tier of raiding offered around the same level of gear with the exception of like 2 slots. Like, the first raid that is released offers the best boots in the whole exp. the next raid the best chest etc. etc. etc. Would this make progression more meaningfull?

[@sickboy703]

They've catered to a group of people that really had no business playing an MMORPG. Now that the fair weather fans are abandoning ship, the die hard MMORPG fans are left disgruntled with a watered down mess of a game they never asked for in the first place.

[@sickboy703]

@Ma Lin I'm one of them, but the only reason I haven't left is I still have a core group I've played with over the years, but I'm even beginning to see that slowly dissolve. They log on less and less the longer this expansion continues. It didn't even get this bad in WoD. I'm one of the idiots that is still holding on to Classics release for hope.

[@goatyachty1762]

Yes I would definitely agree, this is a great video and I couldn't agree more. Right now I'm maining a demon hunter and he is ilvl 410. I have BoD AOTC and farming the raid on heroic, I run high keystones very frequently, and honestly I feel like I hit all my goals and now I can't find a reason honestly to log on my Demon hunter. I could get my Heart of Azeroth level up by doing islands, but honestly that isn't that important. it levels it self up pretty much throughout the expansion well enough. Lately leveling alts I feel like has been the thing for me to do, which I don't mind too much cause I do have a lot of characters. There are so many dumb BFA videos that overly criticize on things that need last resort, I have talked with close to hundreds of random people throughout the game and many of them don't even know why they hate BFA, and tend to copy WHATEVER their have streamer or content creator says even if it doesn't make sense and completely contradictory.

[@lihisluikku]

It's the same for PvP too. "next season will just get me way better gear in 2 days, with updated WQ and warfront gear" Plus there is some shady numbers tuning to make high gear less meaningful in PvP... So you don't even feel that "crushing noobs with full PvP gear" action anymore. It doesn't help that they made "elite sets" 1800 rating (so like really easy, kinda like giving curve for clearing normal mode). And they made the ELITE sets really ugly recolors of welfare warfront gear??? So not only have they lost their prestige, they are also ugly recolors, and not even class specific. Basically I just play enough to get the season's mount in a couple of weeks, hit my (non)elite set for collector reasons, and quit the game for a few months.

[@lihisluikku]

Also I enjoyed the occasional normal/hc pug raid, or the M+ dungeon in legion. You could somewhat measure the players by their gear, even though it was possible through immense luck and grinding to get titanforged gear that would surpass your actual skill level by a whole tier. I just don't care enough about raiding or dungeons to get into this whole Raider.IO scene. I just liked looking up a quick video guide for a raid, going in and clearing it. Kinda sad that you can no longer just take a glance at someone's character and tell if they're any good. Everyone has an ironman suit with nuclear warheads on it, but only 10% even know how to fire them, and 3% know how to aim them.

[@dmbrent]

I find it interesting that this problem started to develop when Ion became a senior lead, I don't hate the guy but I do think some of his philosophies have been detrimental to the game. After all we are talking about the man who takes credit regularly for warforging/titanforging. I think they need some new blood at the top that understands a game like this is a two way street.

[@JusticeRS]

I understand the point around people having easier access to higher ilvls. There are people with c410 ilvl who don’t mythic raid. Stacked up via weekly chests or Titan residuum. The negative to this is that as you say they are overgeared for the content they are doing and it makes mythic loot less rewarding. The plus side, you’ll have people who don’t want to mythic raid but instead want to push high keys in M+, and so it allows them to get gear over time to push higher (with mythic raids just being a quicker more effective way to get gear within the first month or so).

[@gefinity]

Great video dude, your season analogy is spot on, hadn't thought of it that way before. As a bit of a casual/noob myself that doesn't make the time to push the endgame anymore I can say this is also a issue for me. These insanely fast catch-ups / resets feel like they turn the whole expansion into the final months before a new one, with all the futility of looming quest greens. What reason do I have to slowly work on my character when it will get reset before I even get to see any payoff? What incentive do I have to try to finish a raid tier when that gear has such a short shelf life? I WANT to get the feeling from the game that I need to be playing the current content if I want to be ready for the next patch.

[@wyrmtung8700]

Haven't got past holler ballers yet but had to comment on how awesome that thumbnail is. Well good Ghosty.

[@djin81]

Ghosty doesn't work with him anymore.

[@fourjhin_cookies]

This has been the issue for me for a long time and like Asmongold said "it's like you're playing the patch and not the expansion" This also pushed me away because yeah I can go and kill mythic for the challenge, but for what else? Amazing gear? Gear to get me ready for the upcoming raid? I can hit max the day the raid comes out and equip myself in catch up gear within a week and be on par with someone who has been farming heroic of the previous raid for months. It's comparable to when TBC first came out and everyone replaced their raid gear with greens, except instead of every xpack it happens every raid tier. This makes gear pretty meaningless if you're just going to immediately replace it, it's like a diablo season idk those are my thoughts

[@jersh9024]

I really hope Blizzard is listening to all of the great feedback from their passionate content creators. It's frustrating watching a game I love change for the worse, when I feel like the changes are so easy to see. I genuinely believe that if I had full control of WoW's future, that I could make a better game. It's weird to think that.

[@efstathiospoulistsichritzi9728]

just wanted to post smth I notice like a trend in mid to low tier guilds the ones I get into (wow reddit is to censory to post thing like that there :P ).... They are all dying guilds up top 800 are losing ppl all the time and guilds without a CE on Uldir are just flat out dying and its a pity all those ppl giving up on wow but I understand them because outside of raiding there is nothing else to do other than do your daily/weekly grind ,farm old content and try to communicate with pugs so your raiderIO is high enough to get to a high key so you can do all those shit again until yo find some1 to play with because your mid tier guild just died and the new one is full of cliques and the vicious cycle goes on and on until you give up so i now get it why mid tier guilds are dying you either too casual so you dont even bother or too good too good so everyone wants to play with you .... oooh i am in deep shit.

[@bendib2003]

I started raiding in late MoP, around the time or just before ToT released, although I was a very bad player at the time, I distinctly remember rarely doing current tier. First in SoO did I do current content. That worked exceptionally well for keeping my interest in the game, the world was large and there was always something to do. Gear progression is one reason this doesn't happen anymore, but we also lost the legendary questline which was constantly a red thread to follow no matter what you were doing. Learning about the cape was one of the most exciting moments of that time. It didn't matter that everyone had one, I had earned it and it was bad ass with unique animations etc. I'd love to see that return in some way.

[@85jic]

100% agree with your points. I never thought there would come a day when I didn't care to progress my characters. The last time I cared about gear was in WotLK. Sitting in Org with my 25m ICC red gear like a boss. It was the best feeling cuz almost noone had that gear. It felt like I'd actually achieved something.

[@Zonjo-]

I just want to say, i came back to the game 45 days ago, and my druid that i leveled from 110 to 120 when i came back hit 400 ilvl yesterday with a bit less than 4 days of play time at max level doing a +10 key every week, a few other m+ runs, warfronts, and wqs. It is so insanely easy to hit that wall where i can get better gear but its a titanforge slot machine

[@Mr.Newlove]

I totally agree, but I think this should be addressed by creating a more fixed gearing path and make it more linear to make people step back and look at it. Then realize that in order to progress they need to start doing harder content and also get better at playing the game at the same time

[@ryans3795]

So a question would be would it be better to have a big ilvl dependence between difficulty. Or have ilvl be less important and more skill based

[@wutever8167]

I just can't be bothered with the gear treadmill anymore. I'm exactly like Preach said - I did the fights, got my curve and my motivation to even log in took a nose-dive. My guild is dabbling into mythic, but I've fallen behind in gear enough to get benched despite being one of the better players, and I honestly don't care. Getting benched sucks, but what sucks more is having to grind irrelevant, boring garbage gear that isn't fun and won't matter in a few months. I'd rather go grind stuff in Path of Exile than in WoW. Your character effectively gets deleted every season in that game, but at least the gear is fun, there is proper progression and the content is fresh. Sticking with WoW just feels like an abusive relationship right now - you know it's bad for you, but you still love it and can't bring yourself to move on.

[@yurika12]

Our guild did H-Jaina once, then did it again the next week.and we were left wondering why we are doing it. The drops from her are not great. So Our guild decided to not do her anymore (After 2 kills). On another note, anecdotally i have noticed a sever drop in the rate of Titan/war forging, at least ilvl wise, it may get a socket of speed but same ilvl.