Had a nice lengthy chat with our ex-raid leader (Sanctum) on Discord last night, WoW was not a major part of the discussion, but as we was also back ingame I checked his Armory and well…
We needed 6 weeks to clear Sepulcher on normal, that’s when he stopped playing. He was mostly doing M+ that season and just occasionally popping in for raids. His toon is still at iLevel 272. This is noteworthy insofar, as he’s basically wearing a single piece of gear from the normal raid (iLevel 252/259). Heroic was 265, Mythic was 278. So all his pieces are already higher item level than Normal drops and 7 are above Heroic Level, 5 are at 262/265.
I’ve lost track how many weeks Season 3 lasted (we killed the Jailer on Heroic in week 22 and I think it was the last one), but after 6 weeks he was already at 272 and I only managed to get to 277ish when S4 dropped – that’s 16 weeks.
If gear was any major motivation for me this would make zero sense. M+ drops are simply too strong and it’s kinda ridiculous. Yeah, I’m not checking out and just leaving the gear on the table – I’m not good enough to just ace the content, I kinda need the appropriate gear… or even a smidge higher than that. But we killed the boss that dropped 265(+4?) loot when a third of the raid already had 278 gear and everything we needed was a special weapon or trinket.
It’s not really taking away a lot of my enjoyment for the game – I just find it a little pointless that I can’t get any nice upgrades in raids.
This is Blaugust 2022 – post #13.
Very much agree about the raid gear problem – we’re still raiding and it’s still fun, but it would be even more fun if the drops weren’t guaranteed to be worse than what we can get from Zereth Mortis questing, World Bosses, and Mythic+. It’s a design flaw that running Mythics becomes expected even if you’re a raider first and foremost.