The Terrible Trivium: Hello, little boy. Welcome to you, your faithful dog, and that handsome gentleman. I’m so terribly happy to see all of you. But before you travel on, I wonder if you could spare me a little time and assist me with a few trivial tasks?
Humbug: Why of course, we’re in no hurry.
The Terrible Trivium: Now young man, if you will take these exquisite tweezers, and move this pile of sand from here, to here.
The Phantom Tollbooth
Grind Me To The Ground
Raiding in Legion demands, I think, too much time to “get there” if that makes any sense. Grinding Artifact Power is painful now. Even with new things like Argus World Bosses there is not enough of them to feel like you can focus for a while on the task. It gets spread out over the weeks and weeks like a long road with many potholes.
We also have to grind to upgrade our Legendary pieces, the same way for every raid. Dungeon running and LFRs and such. You don’t want to be the guy holding the team back with wimpy gear, so you add this task on top of the others.
And … we have an idea of the final raid in Legion. How is it possible that we don’t like it before we’ve even seen it? Even a Mail Order Bride gets a better break than this final raid; we want to love her, that is why we paid for her.
Our final raid of Legion has us looking at the final boss to gift us with the necessary group-proc trinket. It kind of sickens me that our team will have to run and run and run this raid until we have enough of these things to be successful. Our typical step from Normal to Heroic will be gone as we’ll have to loop back to Normal over and over for the wishful drop of the trinket. Again, it is the final boss that grants the needed raid piece.
Misdirections has a very good article on Non-legendary legendaries. Go take a look. Join us in our grumpiness!
I wonder if the raid-lock mechanics are the same as before and if we can stick one guy to pull the group up to the final boss every week? Saving raid lockouts sucks as a weekly strategy. Can we get this trinket on a bonus roll? Should we be joining massive pug groups for the final boss over and over? Would that be a fun thing to do?
Questionably Epic writes on his terrific article on Antorus Healing Trinkets that “The system is confusing and problematic. Small raids will suffer and several specs will be locked into using a trinket for the good of the raid regardless of how strong it is for them personally.”
That trinket that we have to have from the final boss sits there like a diamond in a pile of elephant poo; you really want it but it is one helluva price to pay to get it in your hands.
This week, our Artifact Knowledge is 49. We know that it will cap at 55, so that is six weeks from today. That would be a fine time to see this new raid arrive because the progressive payoff of Artifact Power will be gone, stifled and stymied.
I’m very used to playing the final raid of an expansion over and over. It is fun to be powerful with your four-piece set and strong gear. I don’t think that they needed to add a very important gear drop from the final boss to encourage us to keep running the raids: I think that it will add to our frustration rather than to our satisfaction.
Coffee Cakes and Crits 
Great quote for this post. This is yet another thing in Legion that makes me relieved I do not raid. And that is just sad! Why must things be so complicated? I wonder what this means for the World’s Firsts too.
Just like that Crucible thing, the same applies here. Complicated for no good reason. But Blizzard always have their reasons.
I agree. There is so much to do to keep up today as a raider. I would burn out I’m afraid.
Remember back in Wrath of the Lich King, the people gathered around the pond in Dalaran, having a good time, fishing for coins, spending a little time before their raid?
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Oops! Enter button and no edit function!
Anyway. Today there are no raiders catching a needed break, while fishing just for good fun anymore. They are all kept busy, far too busy.
It’s sad.
Press on, Heroes.
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Press on indeed. While I might worry or complain sometimes, I do love this game!
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It’s interesting, in that I’ve really taken to heart the idea that casually raiding this expansion has meant, to me “don’t farm all the AP.” My main spec weapon is currently at 66 traits, so I’ve got the full second tier boosts from the Netherlight Crucible and I feel pretty alright with that. I get the AP I can from missions, doing my emissaries once every 2-3 days, and whatever I can from raiding and mission table farming. Back in Nighthold, I felt like I should definitely grind out more, but now – it just feels unnecessary.
If I was a Mythic raider, I’m sure I’d feel differently, but the pattern with Legion since 7.2 has been to just do what I want to do at a semi-regular frequency and accept what comes with that. I’m slow to upgrade legendaries, because I don’t enjoy running random dungeons as much on my main. My AP isn’t as high as the raid leader, but I am in a good spot and my performance is parsing up high enough to feel satisfied with the work I do put in. I guess I am the embodiment of diminishing returns – I play enough on my main to have fun and feel strong in raids, but then run around on alts and things like that. If I was pushing World Quests on my main more aggressively, I feel like I’d be super burned out, especially this tier with Tomb of Sargeras, so I’m glad that my model works (for me).
And I do have some concerns about the (last boss) trinkets, but me and the rest of the officers in my guild have come to this conclusion – it’s really, for us, a soft-nerf for the raid and less of a necessity. It’ll be great to have the normal ones once we start our push into Heroic, and it’ll be nice to start using the procs in Normal to shave time off our clear, but for us, it’s not gonna be a hard grind or anything. We’ll just aim to get the procs we need and want, and keep moving forward!
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Yeah, I think our raid leader is not in the least concerned — we’ll do it and play it and have fun. Our team is a bunch of grown-ups who have perspective on games and life to keep me from skittering off into … terror!
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Trust me when I said I have raided and lead a raid and entire guild on my own since pre-bc and it’s never easy especially before we have to fight /roll a piece of gear. These days its random drop given to a random player be lucky enough to get a freaking gold whenever there is a world boss, or yea a lucky legendary item (yet it only limits you to wear 2 legendary items per character, sucks!).
In regards to legendary items or even just trying to upgrade my gears I have done so much Argus quests every time I log in game i finish all argues world quests to get enough veiled shards to upgrade my gears to 910-920 items gear levels. And I have not been able to actually raid normal only LFR.
I am just casually raiding now with my friend in game. It’s just hard to get in normal groups these days bec of gear item level requirements etc. it sucks and even if you start your own and lead the players who join, its never gonna be an easy run because you have to have consistency with players you will be hoping to raid with every single time, not to mention not all players who like to join are in same time zone.
Anyway, Even if I did join a raiding guild now just to raid I don’t think I would enjoy the expansion though I learned this because I used to raid a lot, I was more a raider than just a casual player who will enjoy whenever and whatever I want to start my dailies or no pressure on time when to raid. Raiding there’s so much dedication to that and commitment. The raiding time and hours sitting in front of your pc killing 1 boss with no progression is hurtful and that will really make you grind to the ground.
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