Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Unlocking World of Warcraft: Navigating Gear Systems, RNG, and Player Grievances

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 59

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Unlock the secrets of World of Warcraft's intricate gameplay and gear systems as we dissect the latest buzz from the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind. This episode promises to shed light on the complexities of the current player grievances, from the challenges of managing item level disparities across expansions to the evolving mechanics of dungeon difficulties. We'll explore whether these issues stem from misunderstandings or skill gaps, offering a fresh perspective on how to better navigate these game elements. Plus, we tackle specific in-game quirks like vault rewards not registering and enchantment level issues, encouraging players to adapt to WoW's ever-evolving landscape.

Gear up for a heated debate on the Mythic Plus rewards system versus PvP progression, where we challenge the common frustrations surrounding RNG loot. Are players overlooking the more structured, yet sometimes restrictive, world of PvP gearing? We argue that understanding the nuances of both PvE and PvP gearing can help players appreciate the delicate balance Blizzard aims to strike. With a provocative stance on entitlement and loot distribution, this episode is a must-listen for anyone ready to expand their understanding of World of Warcraft's vast and complex world. Don't forget to check out our latest insights and updates on social media and our Etsy shop for more WoW content.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. A cup of bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy. This episode will be going over a few things on the forums, mainly to do with retail, world of Warcraft and a lot of people that are complaining, and some of these I don't think are necessarily complaints that are warranted. So we're going to be shutting them down. Going from my opinions on the matter and just generally, you know, giving it back to people who like to complain a lot is the best way that we'll put this. So we'll start off with the weekly news, as always. That is uh, uh, the world boss. So aggregation of horrors is your world boss. He is located within the ringing deeps. You have wrath time walking this week. This means that you can do old war time walking as well as wrath of the lich king dungeons. This means that you can get other pieces from the wrath of the lich king expansion, such as rep mounts, pets, etc.

Speaker 1:

Classic ashran is your brawl for the week. This is essentially ashran, but there is no reinforcement there. There is just no reinforcement. So this can go on for technically days, weeks, hours. You know, whenever the server shuts down, essentially, and your mythic fixes for the week are fortified and devour fortified, the boss or the non-boss, enemies and any minions that they spawn have increased health and damage. And devour, essentially tears a rift open, devouring players. Essence is the description it gives. What this means is it gives a giant healing absorb. So anything that can off, maybe help out every now and again when you can do so.

Speaker 1:

But let's start off with a simple one, and this one is the usual that you always hear fix your game, okay. So what do you think they want fixed? You know, maybe it's a game-breaking bug where it just stops you from progressing a delve. Or maybe you just get kicked out of an arena because you dc and then you get, you know, kind of penalized for it, for losing your rating. You know, maybe it's a certain ability that's doing that. I've never seen so many bugs as I do in the war within. Okay, let's see how many bugs he lists.

Speaker 1:

Heirlooms lag behind quests, yeah, lag behind quest. Greens in item levels since the release, item levels in general are all over the place for old content, especially WOD. It is hilarious, since there's a 150 item level gap between world drops and dungeon drops. Okay, if he's comparing warlords of draenor to the dragon. No, not dragonflight, the war within gear. Yes, that is a lower item level because these are lower level expansions. The best place that you're going to get decent item level is currently in dragonflight. So if you are to progress dragonflight content, you will get decent item level. If you are to progress any sort of other content through classic all the way through to shadowlands, you'll get a lot lower level item content. And this includes when you get to level 60, that item level that you get from any of them sort of quests, or 70, I should say. Then you will get a severe upgrade when you go into the war within. This is because these expansions are two expansions behind now or more. Okay, so that's how it works because, let's face it, you're gonna have lower level gear. You're not gonna have molten core gear on the same item level as last year's raid gear, like last expansion's raid gear, are you? It's just not making any sense. The gear that is for the very first pieces of content is going to be very much lower level in comparison to the latest expansion or the expansion before that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, um, pounds in tbc dungeons one shot everything for over a month. Imps fireballs two shot you. Okay, firstly, this is a skill issue. Yes, stuff does hit hard in there. Okay, I've did ton. Uh, I did time walking dungeons as a tank. I leveled a druid from level 70 all the way up to level 80 as a tank doing time walking dungeons. Some of them are a breeze. Nothing really hits you that hard, such as slave pens, stuff like that. But in the um, not shadow labyrinth, the shattered halls, shattered halls kind of does, but mainly the blood furnace dungeon. Um, there is stuff that hits really hard, but you can get around this. You can obviously kite, you can use different forms of cc. Um, this isn't really a problem. Once I found out that they hit really hard, you just sort of adapt and you change up your play style based on, uh, how hard they're hitting you. So I kind of think this is a skill issue.

Speaker 1:

Um, finishing a delve sometimes doesn't count towards the vault Happened three times to me already. I'm going to disagree with that one. Well, actually I'm not going to disagree with that. I'm going to say no comment because I can't comment on that. I've not seen any problems with it. I don't believe I've seen anything with it. Now, if you're taking this into account, the Zekvir delve that you were allowed to do previously that gave you some gear towards the vault, that no longer gives you a sort of slot, a tier eight slot, for the delve in your vault anymore. Okay, so the zekvir uh delve does not give you any sort of uh accomplishment towards the vault at all. Okay, so please, like, take that into account. And this was after that had come in, like that was after that um announcement or change went out, essentially. So, yeah, make sure that you know that now Dragonfly intellect leg enchant works only from level 61, while Aji and strength work from level 10. Okay, that's not really a game-breaking bug.

Speaker 1:

And another billion bugs that you introduced with the War Within release because you do zero beta testing. I'm sorry, but did I miss the part where they did two beta tests? Did I miss that part? So, my brain, these are not game-breaking bugs, okay. None of these are not game breaking bugs, okay, none of these are game breaking bugs. They are irritating, they are annoying. Sometimes they're funny.

Speaker 1:

I love a good bug in a game, but as long as it gets fixed, it isn't going to make the world worse. You know it isn't going to really make it any less easier or harder or worse or anything like that. Um, again, one of them is just a skill issue, which is the tbc one. Yes, you can nerf that and I think that they do need to kind of go back on the uh time walking stuff and maybe just have a look at normalizing all the damage. But I'm always up for a different type of challenge. One type of challenge is how much can I pull in like two seconds? And the other is do not die to this like imp that's trying to one shot you. You know there's multiple ways of doing it, but essentially it is a bit annoying. Yes, there's always going to be bugs in games. As long as they are not affecting your progress at the end game of world of warcraft or stopping you from leveling entirely, you will be fine.

Speaker 1:

You will out gear the gear that you get in warlords of draenor. Okay, if you want gear, buy it off the auction house. Okay, it's cheap. There's level 70 gear from dragonflight that you can buy off the auction house. Very simple, you can go do dragonflight questing and that will give you normal item level gear.

Speaker 1:

You know there's many different things that you can do to get around these bugs. You don't have to slam your head into them and be like, yep, game's ruined. That's it for me. Go next like it. It makes no sense. It makes no logical sense. I don't know some people really need to. Yes, bugs are annoying, but at the same time they aren't. If they aren't game breaking, they're not worth worrying over. That's my honest take on the matter.

Speaker 1:

Now, this one is very intriguing. This is a very simple, very simple post. Leveling is actually slow and boring. The title takes like five dungeons per level and they take quite a bit of time. End of dungeon. Xp should be multiplied by three.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this person is a death knight, I'm not too sure if they are a tank, but essentially, the dungeons in Dragonflight I keep saying Dragonflight, the dungeons in the War of Vim, before time, walking was the fastest way to level. You could just hop into dungeons and spam them and you would get a lot of XP. You would get around, I would say three to four dungeons and then, essentially, you are up a level. Okay, maybe even faster, but these dungeons are not slow, maybe even faster, but these dungeons are not slow. The only reason dungeons are slow is based on the group that you're with. Ok, now there is something called scaling and the scaling is pretty messed up right now. So the scaling in the war within the lower level you are. I'm not sure if they've changed this yet yet, but essentially you're going to be doing more damage in the dungeons and you're going to be doing a lot more done damage. But this very much is gear dependent, because if you have a character coming from, uh, dragon flight that was very geared, you are going to steamroll everything. But they are not slow.

Speaker 1:

I think the longest dungeon that I had when I was power leveling my second character, I think was around probably 10 minutes. If that, 10 minutes is like a decent time. Now if you're taking anywhere between like 30 minutes, a dungeon like 20 to 30, you are on the slower end. Now I get these are. These are just normal dungeons, by the way. These aren't like heroics or mythics. This is normal leveling dungeons in the war within, and the only thing that is taking this slow or that like is taking a bit of time is the group itself. If you're taking that amount of time, it's the group as a whole and not the dungeons that are taking so long to level. This has been the quickest leveling experience from level 70 to 80 or from the like 10 levels that you get each expansion that I've ever experienced on alts anyway, because on mains I obviously did the campaign and vibed and chilled out and read all the quests and stuff like that, but on alts this is the quickest leveling I've ever done. I am, I remember, back in shadowlands.

Speaker 1:

After I leveled my first character I started working on my second and there was no skip. You couldn't do the world quest. The skip didn't come in until like the next patch or two where you could just do world quests and pick which zone you wanted to go to. It was ridiculous. You had to do the entire storyline and after just finishing the storyline you were kind of like I don't really want to do this again because you obviously have your more favourite or your favourite or not so favourite zones and if your zones at the start are your least favourite, you're going to be a bit hesitant to start that. Oh, if that makes sense. But if you look at dragonflight, as soon as you dinged you got to do world quest, you got to go to wherever you wanted to and that was a decent experience. But at the same time it was still a slow-ish experience because the dungeons that were in dragonflight didn't offer anywhere near as like much xp that the war within does, and especially weren't as short as the war within dungeons.

Speaker 1:

So you cannot sit there and say that the dungeons are boring and take so much time boring. Yes, if you sit there and spam dungeons, they will get boring. It's the natural thing. It's like what everyone understands. It will get boring. If you just spam the same thing, eventually it will, but slow. That's on you and the group that you are getting in with, okay. And if you're the tank, that's especially the reason why it's slow, because you're pulling one mob and not doing much else. That's kind of it. It's as simple as that and I don't know what to tell you guys. I'm afraid I really, really don't.

Speaker 1:

Now the last one. I wanted to spend a bit of time on this, so, um, this is going to be interesting. This is a bit of a long one. Mythic plus rewards are non-existent and, uh, no respect for your time. Time to unsub okay. So this guy's got a problem with mythic plus rewards and are non-existent. Okay, now I already know I haven't read this fully but after a mythic plus, people are guaranteed not everyone in the group, but there's guaranteed to be one one thing in that chest for someone. Two, if you timed the key.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you have a 40 chance, something like that of getting a piece of gear. Yeah, very simple, and then you can just go straight back into it. You know do you can do how many mythics in a week, realistically, how many mythics in a week? Let's say you don't have a lot of time so you have a couple hours. Let's say you can do three mythics a day. Yeah, for seven days a week, 21 dungeons. What are the chances that you get zero pieces of loot? Pretty low, right. What are the chances that you get one piece? Pretty low again. You know, know, two pieces low. Three, four, five. You'd, on average, get about one piece a day. That, maybe even two. If you're looking at three dungeons at 40 drop rate each day, you're looking at 1.2 sort of drops per day. You're looking at that.

Speaker 1:

Now compare this to pvp. I haven't even started this forum post, but I'm. I'm giving you an idea of this on how much not no shit I'm going to take with this post. Compare that to pvp. You get 700 conquest. Okay, 700 conquest a week to upgrade your gear. Yeah, to a conquest piece of gear. In the first week of pvp you can only buy a select few pieces ring belt, hands, neck piece, the sort of off pieces. You cannot buy a weapon head piece, chest piece, legs, the main pieces okay, go into week two. It's 1.3k now or something you know. However much it is, it goes up by 700 um, but like you don't get nearly as much chance to gear in pvp as you do PvE. I've seen PvEers in 230 item level gear already fully decked out. Now PvPers, we're at 635 item level. I think that's in PvP.

Speaker 1:

I still have half of my gear is on a gear, okay, and that's because I'm you, you know doing two specs at once. But no one in pvp is fully geared yet. With conquest gear, okay, with all of their embellishments that they want, with all of their gems that they want, no one. Okay, you would have to be playing so much in order to do that and have a good idea of the gearing beforehand, like so that you don't mess up. You've got to do like a spreadsheet for your gear. All right, it's that complex when it comes to pvp. But my point is you get starved in pvp when it comes to gear, but not pve. Okay, especially with delves now, especially with delves. So let's get into this.

Speaker 1:

So I've been playing WoW solely to enjoy Mythic Plus since BFA, and this season is the worst season of Mythic Plus I've ever played. I'm curious to see why I'm playing a healer and I can comfortably do eights. I haven't tried anything above that yet. So I usually get instant invite. I also play a lot with my guild, but when it comes to the aspect of finding a mythic plus group, I am fine. No problems there for me. However, the problem starts when the grind and non-existent rewards in mythic plus. It takes a lot of effort to complete mythic plus at seven or eight and 95% of the time all I get is 54 gold. I am capped on crests and valastones. Next week I will also be capped on my upgrades, because to upgrade my gear further I will need to do mythic nines and higher, which I will be doing. I will not be doing because it is simply unfun and not worth the effort.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you're telling me that upgrading your gear is not worth the effort, considering that's what you're complaining about, which is gear. Do you see how entitled this is, or ridiculous this is? Also, I want to make a point. The vault where you got PvP gear isn't a thing anymore. We got shoved out of the vault of getting a piece of pvp gear each week but delves another pve aspect. You have mythic plus, you have ray raiding and you have delves in your vault pvps. We have nothing, okay. So you cannot sit there and complain about gearing in mythic plus because you still get gear.

Speaker 1:

I have been farming necrotic wake for wrists, ara kara for trinket and grim batal for another trinket for like two weeks now and I've been doing like five mythic plus dungeons every day, so that's 70 runs over two weeks. All I got was like two to three items. I didn't need. If he got I, I, oh my god, please, someone do the maths. He he did 70 runs, okay, and he got two to three items. We'll say three okay. So he is getting an item almost every. What would that? 23 runs? You're telling me he's getting one item every 23 runs. I'm calling bullshit on that. That is bullshit. There is no way he has done that and I want to see the probability and the maths behind that, because that is not a thing. It is straight up not a thing.

Speaker 1:

Also, I got no upgrades in the last week's great vault and had no and had to take tokens. Okay, tokens still give you an upgrade because they give you a like a gem slot. Um, it just feels super bad as you get nothing for playing the game, there is no way to progress your gear and there is no bad luck protection because great vault is also 100 rng. Okay, the catch-up gear and stuff like that can come in later patches where you can buy these certain pieces of gear. The bullions for dragonflight were also for raiders and pve, as they were certainly not for.

Speaker 1:

Pvp is back at the end of dragonflight and if he really wants to experience no progression for gearing, do pvp. Get as much pvp gear as you can right now and then do pvp straight up, because he will like, absolutely go ballistic about the you know gear progression for pvps. It's ridiculous. Um, I've been doing normal and heroic every week since season one launch and got like two items from it. Oh, hold up, uh, it's the same. Oh, it is the same story with raid loot. I've been doing normal and heroic every week since season one launch and got like two items from it. That's the usual.

Speaker 1:

I think raiding is kind of rng. I think ratings more rng than mythic plus. Uh, so I'll kind of give him that. But that's the way ratings always been, ever since classic. You know 40 players and there's four pieces of loot. You know there's a 10 chance that you might get it. If that you know it's. It's crazy. I actually gave up today. Hadn't logged to what logged to. Wow, as it just makes me mad when I think about running another mythic plus or heroic raid and getting nothing from it. My sub runs out in one month and I guess I won't be resubbing. I just can't be asked to play this rng hot mess.

Speaker 1:

The game respected your time. Respecting your time is an illusion. Unless you are super lucky with all the rng systems, at least make the bloody gold in the chest scale with the key. So level two gives 200 gold and another 200 gold per level key. So when you do a seven key you get 1200 gold. This, uh, this way, doing mythic plus can at least accumulate some decent amount of gold. This guy has no concept of how pvp players do it. Essentially, we have not seen gold in PvP since forever, forever, forever. The only time we have seen it is in Dragonflight. That was when it was first released.

Speaker 1:

In Mythic Plus, you have multiple things that give you gold. You have the items that you just sell straight up. You have obviously the Disenchantables. You have multiple other like benefits to mythic plus, not just gold. Okay, if it's a choice between gold or gear, then you have to pick one. You cannot have both. You can't be like oh, I got a piece of gear this run, uh, so I won't get a gear from next run, but I'll get 10k gold. You know how is that fair? Okay, let me do the same. I didn't get a gear from next run, but I'll get 10K gold. You know how is that fair? Okay, let me do the same. I didn't get a piece of gear from my arena, from my last 100 arenas. I didn't get a piece of gear. I should be compensated 100,000 gold. You know that only makes sense. It doesn't does it. It makes no sense because the inflation is going to go through the roof even more.

Speaker 1:

And the thing is he's complaining whilst doing pve, which is a more lucrative thing to do, for gold. Pvp is yes, we need the gold as well. We need the best in chance to try and compete at the like best to our ability, and these enchants are not cheap at the moment. So it's ridiculous. You cannot complain about gearing as a pver if you've never experienced like pvp I. I get that it's rng based sometimes, but that's the way wow has always been. It's always been that way from its inception back in 2003 going into 2004,.

Speaker 1:

In the early alphas and the betas you go into a dungeon. You don't have a set amount of items that drop always. You won't have a like this is guaranteed to drop every single run. Some items you do, yes, like oh God, what would be a set item? Probably a timed event, like the amani bear from zulaman. If you rescue everyone within a certain time limit, you get a mount, you know them sort of things. But you have a loot table so you have five items on the boss. Two of them will drop. Is that not rng? And then, out of them two things that drop, let's say you wanted one of them will drop. Is that not rng? And then, out of them two things that drop, let's say you wanted one of them but someone else wants it. Is that not rng as well, because that's another 50 50, so it's always been rng.

Speaker 1:

World of warcraft has always been rng. It's crazy that people don't understand that they really don't, and it's infuriating that they like to think that they always have been getting geared just every time, like everything they want they've always gotten and this is the first hardship that they've had or something because suddenly rng is not on their favor. It's absolutely ludicrous and I just don't understand it. I really, really Okay, I do have to end it there because I do feel my voice going, but thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there as well as on the Etsy shop constant stuff being put up on there as well. But thank you all very much once again and go. Eval a friend, goodbye all, goodbye-o, thank you.