Didn't listen to his reasoning but I think I mentioned it earlier, the top groups do these big multi pack pulls or they pull packs and particular mobs pretty far and explosive throws a wrench in that. If you pull normally then explosive is a bit of a dps loss but other than that I think it doesn't slow you down much. For the top groups doing big pulls, it's a massive dps loss.
For me explosive has just been an artificial annoyance. It's just kind of a thing that's there, but it's not really hard to deal with unless you're literally the only person hitting them (even then it's doable). With that being said there's like 2-3 bosses where it's actually hard to deal with. A good example is the first boss on TD. Adds spawn a bunch of orbs and it can be a bitch for melee to deal with during sandstorm while also trying to get around sand traps
One of the top Rogues I watch (Vspeed) was talking about a similar thing last week with Sanguine. It doesn't really require skill to get around, but it's just kind of there and you have to deal with it. It makes you go slower, but not really because it's hard.
I feel like particularly the learning curve has been an issue for a long time. It's either you acknowledge that the learning curve from free lot into relatively high M+ (8+ and onwards) is steep and you do whatever you can to prepare (read up, watch guides, watch runs on twitch/youtube) or you just que up and expect a faceroll and fail miserably. Most people seem to go with option number two.
One issue not mentioned in the video which is a big contributing factor to the clusterfuck that is M+ right now, which also relates to free loot, is that the iLvl requirement for even lower keys is ridiculous. Even if I wanted to get into M+ as soon as possible to get a proper feel for how my alts class and spec plays out, I'm not allowed to. Because people are asking for 365+ ilvl in +5 keys. Meaning we get players with like 365+ gear who doesn't know fuck all about how to play the dungeons or their class in lower keys. They faceroll these lower keys because they vastly overgear them and then they hit the wall even harder when faced with a third affix and it's not even funny how clueless they are in 10+s with the seasonal affix.
I tried giving up free loot at 350 on my second alt because I wanted to tank as much M+ content as possible while gearing it up. Turns out it is freaking impossible because the only keys im allowed into is +3 or +4 at best. Yet with a 350+ ilvl I should be doing +5s and 6+ to get any proper value out of the dungeons.
So the system actually does two things. It gives people who doesn't care to learn how to play their class/specc a freebie to high keys while it locks out players who actually wants to learn but they are unable to because they are capped by the ridiculously high item level requirements in place due to all the free loot being passed out. Which is just overall bad. Because even the players whom are willing to learn will be thrown into 8+ keys possibly without ever having had the oppertunity to tank, dps or heal any M+ dungeon on that character up until that point. And they are expected to know the correct pull order, all the tips and tricks while playing their class and spec to their fullest potential. Yep. Good luck with that.
I think that's part of what he talked about, an implication of the best ways to get gear not being to do progressively harder content.
Like ideally, getting to e.g. 330 would be doable for anyone. 340 would be a bit harder, 350 a bit harder, 360 a bit harder etc and people would split up across their ilevel ranges - a higher gear number would strongly correlate to experience and/or skill.
In the current game you do most of your gear advancement without building really any skill or experience - it's mostly done via time played - and then get thrown into the deep end and expected to swim, it doesn't work out well. Those people fail without knowing what is going wrong, how to improve etc.
Right now, people with a huge range of experience and skill in the game end up sat in a queue with the same label on them, that correlation isn't there until maybe 370-385.. that makes it much harder to sort the people that have experience and skill from the people that don't.
The worst of the crowding out part also happens when people have "too much" gear. Again, many people misrepresent this as the "omg elitist why does it matter if other people have gear nearly as good as you" type of argument when it's not that at all.
If an enormous amount of people have item level 360 gear and they're queuing into content that drops 350 because that's the appropriate difficulty for them, how is a skilled and experienced i340 player supposed to get in to that content to earn their appropriate gear? They won't ever get invited and they will have to get the gear from alternate sources instead of the content that they actually want to do and should be doing to develop their skills and experience within the game. That's a huge part of the reason why content of appropriate difficulty should generally drop gear equal or better to what you have earned from other sources.
a friend hit 120 tonight on an alt. was 276. We wanted to get him a chest before tomorrow. I had a low key on one of my alts and my brother tanked on his main. I listed this +2 and took the first plate dps that applied. He was 360. He then got outdamaged by the 276ilvl and knew nothing about the dungeon.
None of this is news and was certainly true in legion, my one problem with the reddit/forum ragers about the problem is the following. You don't really run into it that much as even a semi-serious player. So it is hard for me not to think that the people complaining about it are just bad mostly themselves.
Also, I can see that the system is objectively flawed, and not have it ruin my own enjoyment of the game. I mostly play m+ and arena with friends and enjoy the game fine. I hate raiding atm and am pretty doneish for this tier. Unsurprisingly it is because I don't have 20 people I like to raid with. Moral of the story being the same as always, you can't really play this game seriously truly solo and I wouldn't even try. Now I pug a lot of 10+ M+ keys from lfg, its not unplayable. But if that was the only access to key groups I had it probably would be because even there you can only comfortably pug a couple levels below your current progression level, so mostly I am pushing score etc and learning higher keys with at least partial friends groups.
I will say again that if you are someone with a 800-1000 io score who want to m+ semi-srsly I highly recommend just applying to +9s all day. (this also gets you a 900+ score if you dont have it) If you are actually good you will get into more 10s doing this then applying to 10s with a low score, and you can meet people to run with some. Sadly you have to be pretty outgoing and make the effort yourself to get btags, which if you were willing to do that you probably wouldnt be a solo player in the first place. So back to the whole, can't really solo play the game but then again.... should you be able to?
Edit: The one thing that is 100% undeniably better than legion btw is arena. again it objectively has its problems but people are actually playing it and there is literally no substitute for that. It was completely dead in legion.
Edit 2: I also differ from most people apparently in that I will do m+ for weeks for no gear. Ive literally got one good titanforge+socket this xpac and it was only upgrade in the last 20-25 dungeons. I don't even take potential drops into consideration when doing a key. I do get some satisfaction from slowly working up my score.
I do take that into account heavily when running keys, the chance of loot isn't all that good even if you're in the right dungeons. I have some where i can get an upgrade from a +5 WF and others where it would take a +20 (basically impossible since warforge nerf) to be useful
On October 30 2018 17:04 Cyro wrote: I think that's part of what he talked about, an implication of the best ways to get gear not being to do progressively harder content.
Like ideally, getting to e.g. 330 would be doable for anyone. 340 would be a bit harder, 350 a bit harder, 360 a bit harder etc and people would split up across their ilevel ranges - a higher gear number would strongly correlate to experience and/or skill.
In the current game you do most of your gear advancement without building really any skill or experience - it's mostly done via time played - and then get thrown into the deep end and expected to swim, it doesn't work out well. Those people fail without knowing what is going wrong, how to improve etc.
Right now, people with a huge range of experience and skill in the game end up sat in a queue with the same label on them, that correlation isn't there until maybe 370-385.. that makes it much harder to sort the people that have experience and skill from the people that don't.
The worst of the crowding out part also happens when people have "too much" gear. Again, many people misrepresent this as the "omg elitist why does it matter if other people have gear nearly as good as you" type of argument when it's not that at all.
If an enormous amount of people have item level 360 gear and they're queuing into content that drops 350 because that's the appropriate difficulty for them, how is a skilled and experienced i340 player supposed to get in to that content to earn their appropriate gear? They won't ever get invited and they will have to get the gear from alternate sources instead of the content that they actually want to do and should be doing to develop their skills and experience within the game. That's a huge part of the reason why content of appropriate difficulty should generally drop gear equal or better to what you have earned from other sources.
Ya definitely a huge chunk of what he talked about I just felt he coulda elaborated even further on that discussion. Overall I pretty much agree with everything he said in the video. I also like the idea of giving some sort of incentive to higher end players to actually do lower keys. Like in Legion (not sure if that changed later on but I stopped a couple of weeks after Nighthold) where at least you could actually make sensible AP from running lower:ish keys.
Also something I totally missed out on, but why did they remove the +2 and +3 chest from M+? Was it removed in Legion already?
Yeah, the system was reworked in Legion. You can still upgrade by 2 or 3 levels if you make the timer!
The old way was like, 1.5 pieces of loot per chest? Something like that.
The old system had no incentive to do level 11-15 keys if the max reward was on 10, the new dungeon would just be harder for no reason. It also incentivized players to run levels where they'd get at least +2 on every run since 2 chest gave twice as much loot as 1 chest.
3 chest was a lot harder and only gave 1.5x more loot than 2, so it wasn't nearly as big of an issue.
Back in those days if you wanted to run level 7's a bunch of times then you had to make a 4 man group and PUG a different guy as your 5'th each time - there was the whole idea of keystones being limited and only being able to do a set amount of dungeon runs per week. Of course it was circumvented by rotating in new people but this was really awkward for a long time.
Post-rework you get 2 pieces of loot starting out. You get extras from a couple of conditions:
+1 if you don't fail the timer
+0.4 per level that your key is above the max ilvl reward
So if you fail timer on a level 10 key, you'd get 2 items since neither of the conditions are met. If you did a 13 key you would get either 3.2 or 4.2 items depending on if you beat timer or not. They're the same quality, but you get improved loot per hour for being able to clear more effectively and more loot means more warforges as well.
With this rework you also can't deplete keys. If you make the timer then your key is upgraded by +1, +2 or +3 levels; if you fail it then your key drops 1 level but it isn't depleted which allows for you to keep running it as many times as you want for the whole week and to selectively drop keys to the levels that you want. This + the other reward reworks incentivizes gameplay where you can keep attempting your highest level keys over and over and get good rewards even though you have a mixture of success (+1, +2) and failure (missed timers) which is engaging for the players and good practice.
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I also like the idea of giving some sort of incentive to higher end players to actually do lower keys. Like in Legion (not sure if that changed later on but I stopped a couple of weeks after Nighthold) where at least you could actually make sensible AP from running lower:ish keys.
The artifact and legendary systems of Legion drove a lot of key traffic.
BFA equivalents do not - Azerite stuff doesn't drop from m+ at all. That leaves only Heart of Azeroth power; it comes in tiny chunks from dungeons/raids and even if it didn't, most people don't pay it much attention any more because the gameplay and power unlocks are of little relevance compared to the Legion artifacts.
This is particularly tricky because several other systems e.g. emissaries, island expeditions are struggling to stay relevant via controlling large azerite power rewards. If dungeons were to become relevant sources then they would displace those other systems.
In the past we did Emissaries for a bunch of reasons: They were a dominant source of legendary BLP which provided BIS items for newbies up to world first mythic raiders, that doesn't exist any more. Mission table resources do very little now. Reputation does nothing since paragon reps don't exist.
Islands are in need of some reworks/polish to really be relevant but even then i'd expect them to be for a niche of the population rather than a daily kind of activity for most people.
This is absolute madness. People actually give a shit about individuals making undeserved progress in Mythic+. Insane how something as simply as: >Run dungeons, get items, repeat< deserves a new complain video every day. Those player clearing G'huun 1 1/2 month ago must have been incredible lucky. How did they make it without all those videos about unfair loot?
On October 31 2018 00:20 Tappo wrote: This is absolute madness. People actually give a shit about individuals making undeserved progress in Mythic+. Insane how something as simply as: >Run dungeons, get items, repeat< deserves a new complain video every day. Those player clearing G'huun 1 1/2 month ago must have been incredible lucky. How did they make it without all those videos about unfair loot?
The problem is players being overgeared and not learning how to play the game then hitting big walls of difficulties that isn't fun for them or the people who group with them. If you watched the video Preach isn't even complaining. He does not care about other people's gear and often is ignorant of what is going on outside the mythic raiding scene until he investigates.
On October 31 2018 00:20 Tappo wrote: This is absolute madness. People actually give a shit about individuals making undeserved progress in Mythic+. Insane how something as simply as: >Run dungeons, get items, repeat< deserves a new complain video every day. Those player clearing G'huun 1 1/2 month ago must have been incredible lucky. How did they make it without all those videos about unfair loot?
The problem is players being overgeared and not learning how to play the game then hitting big walls of difficulties that isn't fun for them or the people who group with them. If you watched the video Preach isn't even complaining. He does not care about other people's gear and often is ignorant of what is going on outside the mythic raiding scene until he investigates.
You are better off not bothering with breaking down or summarizing the issue here tbh, im convinced at this point that these posts are a bot that skims the posts for keywords and generates an auto complaint about complaints.
On October 31 2018 00:20 Tappo wrote: This is absolute madness. People actually give a shit about individuals making undeserved progress in Mythic+. Insane how something as simply as: >Run dungeons, get items, repeat< deserves a new complain video every day. Those player clearing G'huun 1 1/2 month ago must have been incredible lucky. How did they make it without all those videos about unfair loot?
The problem is players being overgeared and not learning how to play the game then hitting big walls of difficulties that isn't fun for them or the people who group with them. If you watched the video Preach isn't even complaining. He does not care about other people's gear and often is ignorant of what is going on outside the mythic raiding scene until he investigates.
How can people group up with people who dont know how to play? Shouldnt they check Holygrail.io, the absolute waterproof skillcheck? >hitting big walls of difficulties< Why are people doing that kind of content with people they cant trust? Maybe there is a problem with grouping up with random people. Just ask the moba community. Checking numbers is actually not the entire game. I know people want it to be, its just so easy to do the 1k 370+
On October 31 2018 02:50 Spicy_Curry wrote: what did i just read
Sorry, lets keep the quality of posts high: I dont like affix X because it prevents me from doing X. FUCK MY BONUSROLL FAILED AGAIN. Loot shouldnt be randomized! I hate titanforged! Its so gating!
On October 31 2018 00:20 Tappo wrote: This is absolute madness. People actually give a shit about individuals making undeserved progress in Mythic+. Insane how something as simply as: >Run dungeons, get items, repeat< deserves a new complain video every day. Those player clearing G'huun 1 1/2 month ago must have been incredible lucky. How did they make it without all those videos about unfair loot?
The problem is players being overgeared and not learning how to play the game then hitting big walls of difficulties that isn't fun for them or the people who group with them. If you watched the video Preach isn't even complaining. He does not care about other people's gear and often is ignorant of what is going on outside the mythic raiding scene until he investigates.
How can people group up with people who dont know how to play? Shouldnt they check Holygrail.io, the absolute waterproof skillcheck? >hitting big walls of difficulties< Why are people doing that kind of content with people they cant trust? Maybe there is a problem with grouping up with random people. Just ask the moba community. Checking numbers is actually not the entire game. I know people want it to be, its just so easy to do the 1k 370+
People do try to group with people they can trust but it doesn't mean every time you log in there are 4 people ready to play the roles you need to fill out a group. So you pug what you need to fill. If one of the pugs plays well, you add him to your friend's list. Next time you log on, that's one more possible person to form a group with before you resort to pugging again.
But yeah of course you will want to pug people with similar experience as your own, using raider.io to check that experience. The closer in experience you are with a person, the more likely you are to get along.
EPT
