Basically, I play games of this genre to disengage (turn off brain, slay demons mindlessly, and hopefully get decent loot that allows general character progression). Right now, my legendary drop rate (quantity wise), isn’t an issue. It’s the quality of what is dropping, that is a problem. It’s not like my character is even decently geared. I have rares in a few key slots:
I’m homing in on almost 100 hours on my main (at level 70), and I’m down to maxing out on rares in most key slots (because I’m seeing mostly the bad legendaries). The above can do Torment II, but nowhere near the efficiency level that I want it to be. Other players are complaining about seeing only Blackthornes; not even those are dropping for me (a chest and pants would be an upgrade; especially the 10% damage to elite bonus for a 2-set). Meanwhile, there were many players who were able to gear up multiple characters with fairly decent items in a fraction of the time. That’s the way things roll in games like this. It is what it is. Thus some players will have a really fun experience, others will have an experience more in the center, and others will just have a terrible overall experience.
Mind you, my luck was just as bad during vanilla; I only began using the auction house 2 months after launch. But even then, I kept track of when items that were considered good, did drop. It took 600+ hours of game play, for a Chantodo’s Will and Force to drop (that was around patch 1.0.7). A non-crit Mempo didn’t drop until 1.0.8. A Witching Hour never did drop until the day before the expansion launched (the new neutered one).
Compared to the ones I got off the auction house, their rolls were bad. The point I’m making is this is how long it took for those types of items to drop for me. And I’m experiencing this exact same thing in the expansion. Is it unrewarding? Yes. Am I advocating for the return of something like the auction house again? Hell no. Am I advocating for relaxed trading/easing up on soul binding? Not really, as I don’t want to have to rely on others for what will amount to hand outs. I’d rather just stop playing if that stuff isn’t going to drop for me from actually playing the game. And that is where I’m at.
There is no incentive when you do run after run, and everything ends up being salvaged, and then those souls are used to try and maximize one single stat (like crit chance or getting the right skill damage increase to roll – like I’ve burned 15+ souls so far trying to get crit chance or Disintegrate damage on my Mempo because this is the “fastest” way right now for me to see some progress). Was my experience this bad during beta? Nope. But part of that I attribute to more relaxed RNG for testing purposes asa well as playing on what was a fresh account (not my main one).
Pre-level cap, the RNG isn’t that wild – smart drops/targeting work well pre-level cap. At level cap though, the drops are a bit wilder; and luck plays a big part in what item does eventually roll. Some folks end up have fairly better luck with their rolls (able to gear up multiple characters with the better itemswithin the same time frame), while others are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Myself, I’m towards the bad end of the spectrum.
During vanilla, I (like many others), ended up resorting to using the auction house to gear up. Why? Because crap items would drop, and when the more desirable items did drop, their rolls were bad. The negative side effect of using the auction house was that it short circuited the entire reward/upgrade loop. With patch 2.x/expansion, soul binding and limited trading basically means playing self-found. But even with smart drops, there is still luck involved in terms of the quality of items that do drop.
Stuff like a Thunderfury or Shard of Hate are items that will take someone with my kind of luck, several hundred hours to eventually drop. It’s not about grinding efficiently either; all that does is roll the dice more; the fact is that some people have really good luck, and others not so much. This is why a group can be playing together, doing basically the exact same thing, but there will be at least one, having poorer quality drops. Thus no matter how fast I kill stuff, bad luck won’t change what drops. So even if I grind out a couple of hundred hours in the first three months, the probability is that it will still be mostly salvage, and not from the desirable pool.
For example, I’ve run close to 400 Act I bounties at level 70, and not even one act specific legendary item from the caches. I just popped open 30 caches today, and zilch once again. I already went into the expansion with far lowered expectations (with regards to longevity and being an overall rewarding experience), and it is proving to not even being able to meet this for even the first month. Thus I’m now only playing to get at least a months worth of “entertainment” such that I don’t feel like I threw my money down the drain. There is generally no dopamine fix.
I’ve never been one to want to see a loot pinata either; all I expect is a better balance. The only reason I didn’t outright just stop playing vanilla (the longest stretch was around 6 months), was to wait to see if they would really fix/address the problems with patch 2.0/the expansion. Now I know. And all their actions to date, has shown they are incapable of doing that. I’m also not going to grind out another couple of hundred hours, just to get that next usable legendary item.
I would do legendary crafting, but I need those plans to drop first. Then I’ll have to farm for the specific legendary crafting material. When your overall drops are bad, progression ends up grinding to a halt. And basically, my rares (in terms of enchanting) are nearly maxed out. So now I’m trying to max out what legendary items I do have (no level 70 wizard set items); but I end up burning through what I salvaged fairly quickly. Normally, I wouldn’t waste this much on what are mediocre items (my Slorak’s isn’t the best roll, and it took me at least 15 tries to get a socket; this is where I’m at on my Mempo which is no longer the best helmet in the game – but it’s better than nothing).
In a nutshell, Reaper of Souls has turned out to be a huge disappointment for myself. It’s essentially reaped whatever remaining goodwill that I had left for the franchise. Right now, I’m just playing, collecting my salvage legendaries, burning those souls with the mystic, and then logging off from the game (though I’m stay logged in in some fashion to Battle.net, to consume their bandwidth, server memory).
Going forward, I’m effectively no longer a guaranteed customer of this franchise (let alone other Blizzard products). It’s called, voting with my wallet.
