Too Much Gear...

I might be in a small minority here, apart from the elitist Vanilla crew, but I think there is far too much gear in the game right now.


It's everywhere!


And it just flows in with virtually no effort needed on the player's part at all, you can conceivably run the exact same content over and over again for ever-increasing rewards.


Now this isn't such a big deal, is it?
So what if you can gear up infinitely from World Quests or whatever?
It doesn't hurt anyone, does it?


Of course it doesn't, it is completely fine.


The issue is the massive disparity in difficulty across the different gearing paths, particularly Mythic plus.


I have a couple of characters at 120 now who have never entered a dungeon or raid but are sitting in the high 370s on ilvl, which would be even higher if I bothered to do the Darkshore Warfront every time it comes around.


But what do you do next?
Say you have reached the heady heights of 380ilvl by picking up incremental gains on WQs with a couple of pieces from Warfronts plus the higher level rewards of the emissary quests.
Easily achievable without relying on the RNG gods for a lucky warforge or anything.


Where do you go to further progress your character?


1.  Just carry on.
The WQs system hasn't let you down so far so why change?  Well, it slows drastically as you get nearer to 385ilvl.  Only the Emissary rewards offer anything over 370ilvl so you are waiting for those and praying they give you the right slots or waiting for that Darkshore Warfront to roll around again (and hoping it isn't a fecking cloak for the 3rd time in a row! Not bitter... )


2.  Raiding!
Already out-gearing LFR by some distance, it would have to be Normal mode to offer any sort of upgrades.  Preferably Heroic for a nice juicy 400ilvl piece or two.
Probably start on Normal mode though.


3.  Mythic Plus.
The endless content cycle of the same dungeons marginally more difficult each time you run them.


This is where I think the problem lies.
Raiding Normal mode and any kind of M+ that would offer an ilvl upgrade are an order of magnitude more difficult than the gearing up to that point.


How are you supposed to proceed?
You outgear the most natural next step in difficulty and the curve rises incredibly steeply from that point onwards.
In reality, you are looking at +6 or +7 at that gear level to offer a reasonable chance of upgrade but going straight there from Darkshore Warfront would be brutal!


Normal mode raids aren't quite as severe but they are also nowhere near as accessible, obviously requiring a bigger team and greater time commitment.


My Shaman needs +10 dungeons for any kind of upgrade and they are still very difficult but that is at the top end of gearing and you expect it to be difficult, a step between Heroic and Mythic raiding.


I can't work out where the real problem is...
Does the easy WQ gear scale too high? 
Does the difficulty of M+ scale too quickly?


The 'curve' seems wrong to me, to gain experience in M+ it feels like you have to run content you outgear.  Or not necessarily outgear the content, but outgear the rewards from that content.
(I think I said Outgear too many times in that sentence, the word is losing all meaning.)


So do you go from WQs to +7 Shrine of the Storm Hell or do you spend time learning the dungeons with little to no hope of any gear rewards?


The time and effort required for WQs seems massively disproportionate to the rewards, especially when compared with Mythic plus.


How to fix it?
Maybe the lower end of M+ should offer higher rewards and it just scales more slowly, possibly a jump in gear rewards with each affix added?


A narrower gear curve across M+ would definitely help... People would still want +10 at the top end for the max reward and weekly chest but if it started at 385ilvl for +2, I think it would make for much smoother progression from WQs.


Any ideas?

Quick Catch Up...

Hello,


Been a while... again...


Much has changed since I last posted.


We killed Mythic G'Huun, it took far longer than it should have done but we got there in the end.
It was a constant stream of individual errors and poor, blinkered play that dragged it out for us.  Each error is punished to the max and two early in an attempt meant a wipe, as did any error by the orb-runners.


This meant progress was always stop-start.  It didn't flow like it normally does where, once you have mastered a phase, you rarely fail there again so our attempts in P3 were disjointed and rarely consecutive.


This was trotted out as an excuse for failure in P3 but I disagreed.
P3 on Mythic is very similar to P3 on Heroic, there is a little dance that flows nicely and repeats over and over through the phase.
It had been quite a while since we did it on Heroic (and the loot was crap so it wasn't one of those bosses you went back to over and over again) but, to me, it was Raiding 101: Don't Stand in the Fire!


Anyway, the errors in P1 and P2 never really went away and it took me a long time to get through to everyone that P3 was about survival rather than dps but we eventually got there and G'Huun died with a couple of weeks to spare.


Any enthusiasm I had for the game had completely gone by this point and I stepped down as both Raider and Raid Leader. 
I attempted to step down as Officer too but was convinced to stay on, even though I wouldn't be particularly active in the guild.


I moved my Shaman back to join some old friends who I was raiding with back when I started this blog.  The pace would be slower, more relaxed, and the requirement to do everything outside raiding wouldn't be there either.
I could go back to playing at my own pace, particularly important at this time when I wasn't enjoying the non-raid content.


It's not really working out as well as I had hoped, the grass isn't always greener...
I'm frustrated playing at the lower level, not by people playing poorly or anything, but by the almost complete lack of direction, organisation and planning.


On the plus side (no pun intended), I've really enjoyed doing Mythic+ dungeons with people on a similar level to me. 
I always felt behind the curve in the other guild, with people who are in specialist key-pushing teams essentially 'carrying' me through my weekly.  I didn't like that feeling at all!


Now I am actually learning the dungeons, the routes, the dangerous packs etc. for the first time since our foray into Challenge Modes back in WoD... same guild, same people... coincidence?


Haven't thought about those C-Mode runs in a while, looking back it was so much fun trying to work them out (with Darkmech's help) then execute our pulls perfectly. 
Restarting and practicing over and over, the challenge was perfectly balanced in my opinion and no gear rewards in sight (and all the better for it)!


Is it possible to have the best of both worlds?
The raiding experience of one guild and the dungeon experience of another?
I'm not sure. 
The Mythic guild runs plenty of M+ but they are pretty much a requirement to obtain the appropriate gear for the raids... it's not the lack of runs that is the issue, it is my own place in them. 
The fault lies with me for being behind the necessary experience level to complete these runs without feeling out of place.


I'm now gaining that experience but I needed to go through this process at the start of the expansion.


The thoughts that have been swirling round my mind are beginning to make more sense now I have put them down on 'paper', the path forward is becoming clearer...