“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
Lao Tzu
Legion AK and AP: Genius
The synergy between Artifact Knowledge and Artifact Power is genius. It keeps the herd together on the long cattle drive. Designed around the one thing that we all have, an Artifact weapon, Blizzard can keep everyone evenly and relatively powerful with ease.
The word is over-used, artifact, artifact, artifact. It kind of loses it’s meaning.
Prior to patch 7.3, wise players took one look at the slow crawl and tiny steps up the Artifact Power bar and did not grind at all but simply played the game and gathered what ever came along. This is what Blizzard wants: play the game, don’t grind. By freezing Knowledge at 40, everyone stalled at the ford in the river.
To see World Quest rewards along the lines of between seven and twenty million, it was easy to skip the stuff that was no fun to do. Well done!
With patch 7.3 out five days ago, the Knowledge freeze is gone. And the Power rewards are much higher, now between 80 and 100 million typically. And Knowledge is universal, stepping up week by week. Feel free to take a month off from WoW.
One carrot for us to chase is the bonus from the Netherlight Crucible. Getting to 60 traits invested (9 points in Concordance?) is much easier for those who are at, say, 57. But even at 52, with the increased Knowledge, most players will each play about the same as each other and still arrive close to the same amount.
You can’t zoom ahead. As the points go in to the weapon, the value of power slows down. Slower and slower and slower.
And, even so, that carrot is mostly flavor with little substance. Our second tier offers spells with the best being equal to adding 750 Intellect. If you don’t get the RNG on the best spell, then it is less. So, don’t sweat it. 750 Intellect isn’t very much when your base is 53,000 and even less as you gear up higher.
The difference between 60 trait points and 67 won’t mean a lot of player power. By the time we get the Crucible’s full potential, most players will be somewhere along the way. The difference then between all or nothing could be pretty big but that player would have higher gear anyways. And a brand new player would be catching up quickly with the higher Knowledge potential.
This is genius!
I look at the Tomb of Sargeras as a middle raid. For me, the tier bonus is crap. The fights seem to be wholly mechanics (the moon phase one has 17 unique mechanics, I believe). I think that it is in the design that 7.3 is unleashed now and casual groups like myself will shift up to the Heroic version of raiding and expect good results.
I look at the next raid as “the one” to play. The loot table is much better with my best relics dropping off the first two bosses, the tier is reportedly powerful and I can only hope that the fights are well designed. I should feel powerful and strong.
If the next raid is two months away, our grand herd of cattle (all the players) will collectively have filled the potential of the Crucible and be geared for when that new raid drops for us in 7.3.5. And … the marvelous 100 million Artifact Power rewards of today will seem pitiful tomorrow and small because by then, everyone has caught up. Those who might be new will be racing up the hill right behind us.
Think about that new Alt who dings 110 in about six weeks from doing pet battles. With AK up around 48, a single one million AP boss reward will probably get you to one point in Concordance if not several points. Ready to rock and roll, ready to start catching up with the herd.
It is pure genius and a brilliant way to keep players together to enjoy new content without blowing it out of the water on the first day. I hope!
Coffee Cakes and Crits 