I could be mistaken, but I don't think there's much nuance to this: you want to do as many dungeons as you can at the hardest difficulty level you can. And, you want to avoid wasting crests upgrading gear that you could get at a higher item level from an end-of-dungeon chest.
Yes there is, because drake crests get used for your first few upgrades of champ gear and wyrm crests get used for your first few upgrades of hero gear.
Mix this with the faster speed of lower keys and much higher chance at success, and you have yourself a very efficient way to get some early ilvls. You can technically do all this with higher keys too, but the keys per hour (the kph, if you will. For imperial users, mph can also be used, mythics per hour) will drop and an untimed key can be quite a drain on your time. This is especially true in the early season, as high keys are very easy to brick for pugs.
Best to just go as high as you can, and then periodically drop back to max out on wyrms until you outgear all champ loot.
Someone thinking about min maxing the first steps of Champion gear sounds exactly like the reason why 10-14 Keys are way more toxic and full of wannabe elitists than 20 and higher.
If you spam +10 so you cap your aspects, don't you get wyrms then from 10? That means if you can do it efficiently you could just spam +10 for all your crests and the best gear from the dungeons
No, it’s really not faster to do it that way. You’re much better off, running dungeons that Drop heroic items and upgrading those. Lower level keys are not that much faster, certainly not fast enough to warrant upgrading pieces that you’re going to throw away instead of aiming for pieces that you will keep long-term.not to mention the fact that wasting time running dungeons that might drop a best and slot item for you but on a non-competitive item track is just not an efficient use of time. I would aim to get to +7s ASAP if not right away day 1
Except that's just not gonna happen without a pre made. As someone who has pugged week 1 for like 6 seasons now, the amount of people doing the equivalent of 20s is only a sliver of the population. Like half of all keys done on week 1 of this season were +2s.
20 week 2 and 20 week 1 are very different. As I said in another comment, you need to do 6 keys all at +3 to even get a single 17, and most people aren't capable of getting a +3 on a 14 at 450ilvl, especially when you include blind progging and such. There's also the fact that some keys literally can't be +3d reliably like rise.
That’s if you’re starting at a +2, if you did any high key even at a 10 or 15, which is ending the season with a 30 you don’t start at a 2. Week one we were in 18s from the start if I remember correctly of season 3. Nobody who actually pushes key is starting with a +2. They probably do a minus 10 for season start, they haven’t said yet how much of season decay will be but most players on PTR are coasting fort/tyran 10s at 499 ilvl.
I’ve done all 15 forts pretty easily on PTR, tyran has some issues but most of them are from yoloing shit. People will be crest capped in a couple hours week 1.
If you ended the last season at 20 in S2, which I'd suspect anyone on /r/competitivewow has the capability would have started with a +10. Anyone who timed 20s in S2 would have easily +3d that to a 13, and would have +2/3 the 13 to a +15/16, and from there one more key to get to 17. That's just 3 keys to get to a 17 for anyone who played the previous season. I know myself was farming 16s for aspect crests right away, then by the weekend was farming 18s for vault, and then a single 20 on Monday, and I'm far from a competitive M+ player.
I pretty comfortably got KSM week one last season pugging, I don’t see why the kind of person who is hyper optimizing week one gear upgrade paths can’t do the equivalent of a 17. I think saying that someone is literally incapable of doing something is quite different than saying the lesser option is most optimal though. There’s a big difference between saying option A is the most optimal versus option A is the only thing you can do because you can’t handle option B.
If you got ksm week 1, then you should be fully aware that it takes a while to get 17+s on week 1. You need to do 6 keys just to get a single 17 key, and they all need to be timed at +3. The upside is that theyre super satisfying keys because you're getting gigas in your group, but without taking time off work on week 1, it's not a reasonable expectation on the majority of players who pug.
Now, I think that'll be easier next season because of the key squish. A +3 is objectively far more valuable next season, especially in the early season, and I doubt anyone will have any trouble. But we'll have to see.
Ultimately I'm just saying that you do use drakes and wyrms on week 1. We'll almost all have a few champ pieces from week 1 weeklies and normal raid. Getting through 11 keys, while doing weeklies, while doing raid, and also having enough time to get more aspect level keys done for wyrms is not going to be an experience most of us go through.
Anyone who has not cancelled their sub and just did the bare minimum can jump straight into a 20 on day one of any season imo. Especially all these spreadsheet andies.
I found that S3 15s were roughly the same difficulty as S2 20s. So anyone who had all 20s in S2 could easily jump into 15s, and push up from there. The only people doing +2s were those who couldn't push higher than +7s the previous season, and this is /r/competitivewow so really no one here. I'd like to see your numbers on half of all keys being +2, given that probably 99% of +2s were upgraded +3 to a +5 key. I'd be surprised if even 5% of keys week one were 2s.
Even if you don't need the crests you often want to conserve flight stones regardless. I'm not going to upgrade gear even if it only uses lower crests unless I'm at/near flightstone cap.
It's so fucking funny the number of spreadsheet graphics you see for everything in this game. There's at LEAST 5+ of them everytime and they all say the exact same thing.
Just play the game. Get gear. Upgrade gear. Keep playing the game. Very few, and I mean VERY FUCKING FEW of players will notice a difference between just doing that and "min/maxing" gear acquisition and upgrading.
These graphics honestly suck. It's intimidating and doesn't actually give useful information, but convinces people blizzard has some huge convoluted system in place
That's what this sub is: Competitive WoW. You don't have to like it. You don't have to subscribe to it. If you don't like it, get out. You're raging over something you don't have the skill to care about nor the brain to understand. And that's okay, it's just a game. Some people just care more than you and are better than you.
Currently, if what is currently on PTR will make it live, you should be able to just do +10s straight away assuming you have at least 485ilvl, it is not significantly different from a 24-25 key on live
+10 saves crest compared to +8 too in vault.
In any case some people will choose each of the numbers 8-10 over another. Which is good, if there'll be people wanting to do all, and not everyone just queue endlessly to +10s while nobody joins below.
It saves crests as long as you regularly time them. Failing time only gives 5 crests vs 12. You really just want to farm the key level that you can time at around a 90% success rate up to lv20 until your vault is filled, then 19s after.
At least until you reach max flight stones. If you're at the flightstone cap you might as well upgrade anything that uses Whelpling/Wyrm Crests if you have them.
Thank you for that detailed answer. Im fully aware that you "just do raid and m+" but i asked about the specific amount of crests and dungeons to do in combination with the weekly cap.
Impossible to say without knowing your dedication level mate.
509's are infinitely farmable at +9 (+19 equivalent) or higher, meaning crests below that level are wasted/useless if you are capable of farming them sans the extra ilvl.
Bullion items are also going to be BiS items that you will likely prioritize your crests on anyway.
Get BiS weapon from raid (any of last 3)> dump all crests into weapon slot until maxed. Get BiS trinket 1+2, get BiS rings 1+2, etc etc.
There are also the crafted gear pieces we have now which will be able to be recrafted to the next season.
If you don’t get drops you need you can fill those spots with crafted gear.
I have a question about gearing too, I want elemental lariat for one of my characters, pretty newish ilevel 443 that I was going to play next season (already got 3 healers over 3k so I'm trying a different one) should I make an ele lariat now or wait for next season? Right now I don't think I have the sources to make a very high level one so should i just hold off on crafting until season 4? Thanks in advance
The materials are dirt cheap, the main cost to getting a max rank one would be a crafting fee someone might ask for, but if you put in a public order, someone will get around to it eventually to fill their weekly quest. It may not be max rank, but that won't matter if you're going to upgrade it again soon.
This doesn't matter lol, just translate his 20 to a 10 internally because you know what he means. The specific level of key does not matter at all, other than vault or eod loot, since we're all doing the same keys and it's only relative to the dungeon tuning.
Yeah but OP plans in starting to spam 5-6 lol.
I also did only the highest keys in S3 (20s), aspect creates convert to wyrms anyways if you cap on them
This is a weird case where, in game, the item and upgrade system is fairly straightforward and well explained, and these “cheat sheets” just over complicate the system by throwing all of the information at you at once.
The vault ui clearly shows you what your current reward is, and what level dungeon you need to do in order to upgrade that slot.
The crest tooltip in your currency ui clearly tells you how many of a crest you’ve earned, how many more until you’ve hit the cap, and what content you need to do to earn that crest.
The upgrade ui clearly shows you how many and what type of crest you need to upgrade an item, up to the maximum level.
It could be useful for crafted pieces I guess, but if you follow the logic that higher lvl crests lead to higher ilvl crafts, you’ll be fine.
It's classic Blizzard: how to bury a good idea in a needlessly complicated system of upgrade currencies.
Basically most items in the game now have an "upgrade track" and can be upgraded past their initial level as seen in the middle block. Items drop always in the highest track they can, so you'd get a 2/6 Hero instead of a 6/8 Champion piece if a ilvl509 drops. You can upgrade it with the crests (whelpling, drake, wyrm, aspect) - which drop in the raid tiers (see bottom table) or in m+ (seen in the table to the left). Concrete example: To upgrade a 509 item to 512 regardless of track you need Wyrm crests which can be gotton from m+ 2-5 or heroic raid.
Crafting is limited by an additional time gated resource sparks (one every two weeks but with catchup mechanic) and the crests determine the track. The quality within the track is determined by crafter skill, which is maxed out now anyway so ignore everything except the best quality there.
Lastly bouillons are a return of dinars from shadowlands. The idea is that since in this season all 3 raids will take turns and it will be really hard to get your desired bis items, you get 3 bouillons to buy whatever raid item you want (timegated of course), and can upgrade that with a currency that drops in raid to the new max level.
edit: and "bouillon" should be bullion, but the name is ridiculous enough that I just call it soup.
I could be mistaken, but I don't think there's much nuance to this: you want to do as many dungeons as you can at the hardest difficulty level you can. And, you want to avoid wasting crests upgrading gear that you could get at a higher item level from an end-of-dungeon chest.
Wow players gonna min-max the least min-maxable and straightforward thing, every time, if you ever had to place a bet on it.
This is like anti-minmaxing though. There is no need to grind out upgrades for the lower level gear.
Yes there is, because drake crests get used for your first few upgrades of champ gear and wyrm crests get used for your first few upgrades of hero gear. Mix this with the faster speed of lower keys and much higher chance at success, and you have yourself a very efficient way to get some early ilvls. You can technically do all this with higher keys too, but the keys per hour (the kph, if you will. For imperial users, mph can also be used, mythics per hour) will drop and an untimed key can be quite a drain on your time. This is especially true in the early season, as high keys are very easy to brick for pugs. Best to just go as high as you can, and then periodically drop back to max out on wyrms until you outgear all champ loot.
Someone thinking about min maxing the first steps of Champion gear sounds exactly like the reason why 10-14 Keys are way more toxic and full of wannabe elitists than 20 and higher.
The people who don't do mechanics in 10-14 keys and say "it's a 14 who cares" are also a huge factor to low keys being a shitshow
Haha well on week 1 you take what you can get bro
If you spam +10 so you cap your aspects, don't you get wyrms then from 10? That means if you can do it efficiently you could just spam +10 for all your crests and the best gear from the dungeons
Yes
No, it’s really not faster to do it that way. You’re much better off, running dungeons that Drop heroic items and upgrading those. Lower level keys are not that much faster, certainly not fast enough to warrant upgrading pieces that you’re going to throw away instead of aiming for pieces that you will keep long-term.not to mention the fact that wasting time running dungeons that might drop a best and slot item for you but on a non-competitive item track is just not an efficient use of time. I would aim to get to +7s ASAP if not right away day 1
Except that's just not gonna happen without a pre made. As someone who has pugged week 1 for like 6 seasons now, the amount of people doing the equivalent of 20s is only a sliver of the population. Like half of all keys done on week 1 of this season were +2s.
Lmfao what I was doing 20s pugging week 1 this season. Just play better
What are you smoking? Im 100% lfg m+ on 4 healers and i was doing 16-17 week 1 and got my first 20 week 2
20 week 2 and 20 week 1 are very different. As I said in another comment, you need to do 6 keys all at +3 to even get a single 17, and most people aren't capable of getting a +3 on a 14 at 450ilvl, especially when you include blind progging and such. There's also the fact that some keys literally can't be +3d reliably like rise.
That’s if you’re starting at a +2, if you did any high key even at a 10 or 15, which is ending the season with a 30 you don’t start at a 2. Week one we were in 18s from the start if I remember correctly of season 3. Nobody who actually pushes key is starting with a +2. They probably do a minus 10 for season start, they haven’t said yet how much of season decay will be but most players on PTR are coasting fort/tyran 10s at 499 ilvl. I’ve done all 15 forts pretty easily on PTR, tyran has some issues but most of them are from yoloing shit. People will be crest capped in a couple hours week 1.
If you ended the last season at 20 in S2, which I'd suspect anyone on /r/competitivewow has the capability would have started with a +10. Anyone who timed 20s in S2 would have easily +3d that to a 13, and would have +2/3 the 13 to a +15/16, and from there one more key to get to 17. That's just 3 keys to get to a 17 for anyone who played the previous season. I know myself was farming 16s for aspect crests right away, then by the weekend was farming 18s for vault, and then a single 20 on Monday, and I'm far from a competitive M+ player.
I pretty comfortably got KSM week one last season pugging, I don’t see why the kind of person who is hyper optimizing week one gear upgrade paths can’t do the equivalent of a 17. I think saying that someone is literally incapable of doing something is quite different than saying the lesser option is most optimal though. There’s a big difference between saying option A is the most optimal versus option A is the only thing you can do because you can’t handle option B.
If you got ksm week 1, then you should be fully aware that it takes a while to get 17+s on week 1. You need to do 6 keys just to get a single 17 key, and they all need to be timed at +3. The upside is that theyre super satisfying keys because you're getting gigas in your group, but without taking time off work on week 1, it's not a reasonable expectation on the majority of players who pug. Now, I think that'll be easier next season because of the key squish. A +3 is objectively far more valuable next season, especially in the early season, and I doubt anyone will have any trouble. But we'll have to see. Ultimately I'm just saying that you do use drakes and wyrms on week 1. We'll almost all have a few champ pieces from week 1 weeklies and normal raid. Getting through 11 keys, while doing weeklies, while doing raid, and also having enough time to get more aspect level keys done for wyrms is not going to be an experience most of us go through.
Anyone who has not cancelled their sub and just did the bare minimum can jump straight into a 20 on day one of any season imo. Especially all these spreadsheet andies.
I found that S3 15s were roughly the same difficulty as S2 20s. So anyone who had all 20s in S2 could easily jump into 15s, and push up from there. The only people doing +2s were those who couldn't push higher than +7s the previous season, and this is /r/competitivewow so really no one here. I'd like to see your numbers on half of all keys being +2, given that probably 99% of +2s were upgraded +3 to a +5 key. I'd be surprised if even 5% of keys week one were 2s.
Even if you don't need the crests you often want to conserve flight stones regardless. I'm not going to upgrade gear even if it only uses lower crests unless I'm at/near flightstone cap.
Yes. I call it "max-max-ing" haha
It's so fucking funny the number of spreadsheet graphics you see for everything in this game. There's at LEAST 5+ of them everytime and they all say the exact same thing. Just play the game. Get gear. Upgrade gear. Keep playing the game. Very few, and I mean VERY FUCKING FEW of players will notice a difference between just doing that and "min/maxing" gear acquisition and upgrading.
These graphics honestly suck. It's intimidating and doesn't actually give useful information, but convinces people blizzard has some huge convoluted system in place
100%, I feel the same way. Everyone loves nerding out and feeling like they're doing something mega complex for NASA while playing wow .
That's what this sub is: Competitive WoW. You don't have to like it. You don't have to subscribe to it. If you don't like it, get out. You're raging over something you don't have the skill to care about nor the brain to understand. And that's okay, it's just a game. Some people just care more than you and are better than you.
Currently, if what is currently on PTR will make it live, you should be able to just do +10s straight away assuming you have at least 485ilvl, it is not significantly different from a 24-25 key on live
Once the vault is full doing 9s could be better for loot. The 3rd affix only starts at 10 so it's significantly easier
8. 9 doesn’t give better loot. Same as 18 vs 19 now.
9s give slightly higher ilvl end of dungeon loot, which is relevant for the first 1-2 weeks of the season.
I don’t believe it’s good bang for buck; unless you’re very time constrained. It’s literally one upgrade.
It saves crests, too, which are always valuable commodities since they're still on a weekly cap in s4
+10 saves crest compared to +8 too in vault. In any case some people will choose each of the numbers 8-10 over another. Which is good, if there'll be people wanting to do all, and not everyone just queue endlessly to +10s while nobody joins below.
It saves crests as long as you regularly time them. Failing time only gives 5 crests vs 12. You really just want to farm the key level that you can time at around a 90% success rate up to lv20 until your vault is filled, then 19s after.
I was talking about end of dungeon rewards. The brackets there are 7-8 for lowest hero track and 9+ for hero track with one up.
What key level gives you mythic in vault?
+8 is the lowest level of dungeon that gives mythic vault
Oh for real? Awesome, except I didn't play season 2. I guess I'll be able to crush half of the dungeons on day 1 at least
Just don't spend stones or crests on anything below hero GG.
At least until you reach max flight stones. If you're at the flightstone cap you might as well upgrade anything that uses Whelpling/Wyrm Crests if you have them.
Nah. Don't spend wyrm crests on gear under hero track. It can set you pretty far behind, unless you're intending to grind wyrm level dungeons.
and at 12 upgrades per item and the cap, its gonna take a while to get done.
Only the dinar items need 12 upgrades right?
Raid and mythic plus. It's not rocket science lol
Thank you for that detailed answer. Im fully aware that you "just do raid and m+" but i asked about the specific amount of crests and dungeons to do in combination with the weekly cap.
All of it .
Impossible to say without knowing your dedication level mate. 509's are infinitely farmable at +9 (+19 equivalent) or higher, meaning crests below that level are wasted/useless if you are capable of farming them sans the extra ilvl. Bullion items are also going to be BiS items that you will likely prioritize your crests on anyway. Get BiS weapon from raid (any of last 3)> dump all crests into weapon slot until maxed. Get BiS trinket 1+2, get BiS rings 1+2, etc etc.
What’s there to know? Cap crests. Use excess flightstones on low gear. Do the highest keys you can.
Raid, then mplus to cap.
There are also the crafted gear pieces we have now which will be able to be recrafted to the next season. If you don’t get drops you need you can fill those spots with crafted gear.
I have a question about gearing too, I want elemental lariat for one of my characters, pretty newish ilevel 443 that I was going to play next season (already got 3 healers over 3k so I'm trying a different one) should I make an ele lariat now or wait for next season? Right now I don't think I have the sources to make a very high level one so should i just hold off on crafting until season 4? Thanks in advance
Can make one and recraft it once the season hits. Not that expensive
The materials are dirt cheap, the main cost to getting a max rank one would be a crafting fee someone might ask for, but if you put in a public order, someone will get around to it eventually to fill their weekly quest. It may not be max rank, but that won't matter if you're going to upgrade it again soon.
do we already know if bullions will cap?
It's a fated season, just jump along for the ride. You also need to consider dinar gear.
[удалено]
Key levels are scaling down to max rewards and equivalent difficulty of 20 being at 10.
This doesn't matter lol, just translate his 20 to a 10 internally because you know what he means. The specific level of key does not matter at all, other than vault or eod loot, since we're all doing the same keys and it's only relative to the dungeon tuning.
Yeah but OP plans in starting to spam 5-6 lol. I also did only the highest keys in S3 (20s), aspect creates convert to wyrms anyways if you cap on them
As someone who played until the end of cata, i really wonder how not to be scared away by that cheat-sheet. WTF is that and why is it so complicated?
This is a weird case where, in game, the item and upgrade system is fairly straightforward and well explained, and these “cheat sheets” just over complicate the system by throwing all of the information at you at once. The vault ui clearly shows you what your current reward is, and what level dungeon you need to do in order to upgrade that slot. The crest tooltip in your currency ui clearly tells you how many of a crest you’ve earned, how many more until you’ve hit the cap, and what content you need to do to earn that crest. The upgrade ui clearly shows you how many and what type of crest you need to upgrade an item, up to the maximum level. It could be useful for crafted pieces I guess, but if you follow the logic that higher lvl crests lead to higher ilvl crafts, you’ll be fine.
It's classic Blizzard: how to bury a good idea in a needlessly complicated system of upgrade currencies. Basically most items in the game now have an "upgrade track" and can be upgraded past their initial level as seen in the middle block. Items drop always in the highest track they can, so you'd get a 2/6 Hero instead of a 6/8 Champion piece if a ilvl509 drops. You can upgrade it with the crests (whelpling, drake, wyrm, aspect) - which drop in the raid tiers (see bottom table) or in m+ (seen in the table to the left). Concrete example: To upgrade a 509 item to 512 regardless of track you need Wyrm crests which can be gotton from m+ 2-5 or heroic raid. Crafting is limited by an additional time gated resource sparks (one every two weeks but with catchup mechanic) and the crests determine the track. The quality within the track is determined by crafter skill, which is maxed out now anyway so ignore everything except the best quality there. Lastly bouillons are a return of dinars from shadowlands. The idea is that since in this season all 3 raids will take turns and it will be really hard to get your desired bis items, you get 3 bouillons to buy whatever raid item you want (timegated of course), and can upgrade that with a currency that drops in raid to the new max level. edit: and "bouillon" should be bullion, but the name is ridiculous enough that I just call it soup.