wow Updated: 370 Item Level Emissary Azerite Live

[Starym 3,779]

 

Update: A couple of tweets from the devs clarify exactly how the scaling of the rewards works related to your equipped/bagged item levels.

Azerite Armor caches scale based on the highest item level soulbound gear you've picked up for each slot (even if you don't have the item any more). It doesn't have to be equipped or kept in your bags. https://t.co/T9w4cppaLV

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) October 9, 2018

No, rings and trinkets count for both slots. https://t.co/hPWWFBd95r

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) October 9, 2018

______________________________________________________________

The previously mentioned increased item level hotfix for Azerite armor emissary rewards has gone live today for both factions:

The change to Emissary rewards mentioned in this tweet is now live. Azerite Armor caches can scale up to item level 370, based on your overall average item level. https://t.co/q79EoYv5Aj

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) October 8, 2018

Here's the original blue post as a reminder and you can check out all the announced improvements and clarifications for them here:

Azerite Armor in Emissary Rewards (source)

We need to make Azerite Armor more available, for all types of players, through a method everyone can utilize. So we’re actually looking at Emissary rewards for that. The plan is to make Azerite Armor rewards from Emissary quests scale all the way up to 370 (based on your item level), which gives everyone a new, reliable source for appropriate gear. Further on, we’re looking at making some further improvements to the ways Emissaries reward gear, but getting more Azerite Armor in your hands is the higher priority for the immediate future.

[Ancalagon 35]

Goodbye 340 shoulders... you will not be missed!  ?

[Kurosu 58]

Warfronts : free 370

Arathi world boss  : free 370

WQ : free 370

At this rate you can just make the raid lfr and mythic only since apparently the other 2 difficulties are for show only and can get their IL from casual play

[Gilby79 10]

20 minutes ago, Kurosu said:

Warfronts : free 370

Arathi world boss  : free 370

WQ : free 370

At this rate you can just make the raid lfr and mythic only since apparently the other 2 difficulties are for show only and can get their IL from casual play

Warfront - yep, once a month, you get a free random 370 piece of gear.  Likely not an Azerite piece

Arathi WB - Small chance to drop 370+ loot.  I had 5 toons kill this last cycle on got 2 pieces with rerolling on all 5.  And again, a once a month chance.

WQ.  Azerite piece that can SCALE up to 370.  Meaning you need to grind up a higher base iLevel, probably around 351, since you need 321 for it to scale to 340.  You aren't getting 351 in "just" casual play.  Likely it will be 355 when you are doing Normal raid, and 370 once you are attempting Heroic raid.

Raiding is also only one source for gear.  Mythic+ is the more popular end game content and doesn't drop Azerite pieces, except for a chance in the weekly.  Again small chance.  I haven't seen an Azerite piece yet on any of the 5 max level toons from the weekly cache.  And most likely none of my alts will be raiding much, the pain of most pugs isn't worth it.  So yes, another source for higher iLevel "Azerite Armor" after grinding up other pieces from M+ is welcome.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Gilby79

[Gilby79 10]

5 minutes ago, Gilby79 said:

Warfront - yep, once a month, you get a free random 370 piece of gear.  Likely not an Azerite piece

Arathi WB - Small chance to drop 370+ loot.  I had 5 toons kill this last cycle on got 2 pieces with rerolling on all 5.  And again, a once a month chance.

WQ.  Azerite piece that can SCALE up to 370.  Meaning you need to grind up a higher base iLevel, probably around 351, since you need 321 for it to scale to 340.  You aren't getting 351 in "just" casual play.  Likely it will be 355 when you are doing Normal raid, and 370 once you are attempting Heroic raid.

Raiding is also only one source for gear.  Mythic+ is the more popular end game content and doesn't drop Azerite pieces, except for a chance in the weekly.  Again small chance.  I haven't seen an Azerite piece yet on any of the 5 max level toons from the weekly cache.  And most likely none of my alts will be raiding much, the pain of most pugs isn't worth it.  So yes, another source for higher iLevel "Azerite Armor" after grinding up other pieces from M+ is welcome.

So just checked, My main is 360 iLevel and the current available Emissary cache scales up to 355.  So is far from free and easy 370 gear.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Gilby79

[Kurosu 58]

9 minutes ago, Gilby79 said:

Warfront - yep, once a month, you get a free random 370 piece of gear.  Likely not an Azerite piece

Arathi WB - Small chance to drop 370+ loot.  I had 5 toons kill this last cycle on got 2 pieces with rerolling on all 5.  And again, a once a month chance.

WQ.  Azerite piece that can SCALE up to 370.  Meaning you need to grind up a higher base iLevel, probably around 351, since you need 321 for it to scale to 340.  You aren't getting 351 in "just" casual play.  Likely it will be 355 when you are doing Normal raid, and 370 once you are attempting Heroic raid.

Raiding is also only one source for gear.  Mythic+ is the more popular end game content and doesn't drop Azerite pieces, except for a chance in the weekly.  Again small chance.  I haven't seen an Azerite piece yet on any of the 5 max level toons from the weekly cache.  And most likely none of my alts will be raiding much, the pain of most pugs isn't worth it.  So yes, another source for higher iLevel "Azerite Armor" after grinding up other pieces from M+ is welcome.

You dont want warfront 370.You want Uldir traits.

Arathi its not once per month but 2 chances every 25 days.And if they even get warfrorged they are almost mythic IL.

And as far as scaling goes, with all the free 340 and 370 ALREADY in existence. its not hard at all to scale the cache either

Looks like people want mythic purples for free in order to be happy.

[Demonpuke 48]

19 minutes ago, Kurosu said:

You dont want warfront 370.You want Uldir traits.

Arathi its not once per month but 2 chances every 25 days.And if they even get warfrorged they are almost mythic IL.

And as far as scaling goes, with all the free 340 and 370 ALREADY in existence. its not hard at all to scale the cache either

Looks like people want mythic purples for free in order to be happy.

no, what people want is a working system where they are rewarded properly for the time and skill invested. wq azerite is useless, its either pvp or the gonk outrunner garbage. arathi world boss azerite is useless, its pvp gear. normal world boss gear is useless, its 355 and again, the traits are garbage. 

 

people want to be able to say "hey, i need shoulders so im going to spam "x dungeon" this week and try to fill that slot" and that is an entirely acceptable way to think and not at all unreasonable. i dont agree with free loot for whiny millennials, but this "fix" is nothing more than artificial ilvl boosting with two major problems: you ilvl goes up, but you still have to use lower ilvl gear b/c of traits, and 2) the skill cap has been lowered once again so every form of group content in this game is toxic. you cant even separate yourself from bad players by doing the hardest content because now everyone has the gear to do that content, but not the skill. this entire game has been turned into a toxic nightmare over the past two expansions, and bfa really hit it home. 

[Kurosu 58]

44 minutes ago, Demonpuke said:

no, what people want is a working system where they are rewarded properly for the time and skill invested.

 

Arathi and world quest require minimal time (hell you can even afk in warfront and nobody cares anymore) and literally no skill.And they give IL of mythic dungeons and heroic raids.Yeah that makes total sense.I think you deserver mythic raid gear mate.In fact I will support you if you ask bliz to give you siege of zuldazar items because you are special and deserve it.

[Hypersonic 113]

It's not even a half-solution. Only helps to increase ilvl for casual players and if you still need dungeon traits your are f... Most of the WQ traits are useless and even if someone need a trait from there just one more RNG (again). This whole problem is around traits and not ilvl, so I don't understand Blizz how can be so stupid to think an ilvl increase like this will fix anything.

At least where I play in M+ there score>ilvl so easy to filter incompetent players, but this make it harder in overall groups like pugs and etc, if casual players can be 370.. it's just ridiculous. The gear should show the skill rating of the player in raiding and in dungeons too. So bad to see in past yeasr the game became so casual-friendly that's already have bad influence on the game if you are not a casual.

[Demonpuke 48]

40 minutes ago, Kurosu said:

Arathi and world quest require minimal time (hell you can even afk in warfront and nobody cares anymore) and literally no skill.And they give IL of mythic dungeons and heroic raids.Yeah that makes total sense.I think you deserver mythic raid gear mate.In fact I will support you if you ask bliz to give you siege of zuldazar items because you are special and deserve it.

that is literally what i said, you must be one of those morons i was talking about seeing as how you cant even read and understand clearly written english. 

[Sholto 32]

2 hours ago, Gilby79 said:

You aren't getting 351 in "just" casual play.  Likely it will be 355 when you are doing Normal raid, and 370 once you are attempting Heroic raid.

That's not true.   Unless you're just very unlucky.  And emissary and WQ rewards are related to your Heart of Azeroth ilvl, not your overall ilvl (edit: Blizz's info says I'm wrong here about emissary rewards, my bad).  Or at least that's how WQs work.  I know because they've spontaneously changed to increased ilvl the moment I jumped to the next level of faction with Champions of Azeroth, without needing to wait for them to be completed or expire.

I have a DH that's 352 composite ilvl with a Heart of Azeroth at 367 and I'm about 2/3 through Revered and working on Exalted for the next big bump.  I've not done a single Mythic.  All gear is from WQ, Emissary, Warfront, World Boss and Arathi named Rare.  I play as a way to pass time and stay occupied and decompress and don't have a whole lot of patience for dealing with my rewards being dependent on groups of other people knowing what they're doing so I favor solo play or what can be accomplished ad hoc like the world bosses, etc. so far.  It's still what I'd consider casual play.  One of the AZ pieces is already 370 a few weeks now and I have two of the highest DPS traits for the Havoc class.

I have a hunter that's 344, is one piece shy of being full epic (still have a blue 320 trinket) and I wasn't quite as lucky on the rolls up to warforge, titanforge, etc. so there are more 340 pieces on it with fewer 370 and 350+ pieces so far but my neck is at 350 and will, after tonight's round of Champions WQs be at least 365.

It might happen slower than if I'd been grinding out Mythics but I'm actually within a few ilvl of guildies that seem to do Mythics all the time and have started working up to +2 or +5 but I'm not that worried about it because I routinely outperform them, if not outright demolish them in groups because they don't sim, don't know what stats are important or what traits are important or best on any individual piece or in concert with their spec and other pieces.  

Edited October 9, 2018 by Sholto

[Kurosu 58]

3 minutes ago, Demonpuke said:

that is literally what i said, you must be one of those morons i was talking about seeing as how you cant even read and understand clearly written english. 

No,what you said was that you want the better traits because you dont like the WQ ones.But you dont want to go in raid and get em,oh no.You want em as WQ rewards.And its ironic that you cry about the toxicity of the game when you yourself call someone else a moron because he doesnt agree to the way you want the game to be.

[Demonpuke 48]

5 minutes ago, Kurosu said:

No,what you said was that you want the better traits because you dont like the WQ ones.But you dont want to go in raid and get em,oh no.You want em as WQ rewards.And its ironic that you cry about the toxicity of the game when you yourself call someone else a moron because he doesnt agree to the way you want the game to be.

thats not even close to what i said. not even remotely. i called you a moron because you are having such a hard time understanding written words. you havent disagreed with anything that i actually said, you are literally trying to put words in my mouth just to start an argument. from what you are saying it is clear you read the first few words of my comment, got all antsy and immediately set into posting your toxic comment instead of taking a minute to read my entire post, analyze it, and then move on. obviously you are too stupid for that. stop talking kurosu, you're too stupid to talk.

[Sholto 32]

1 hour ago, Hypersonic said:

The gear should show the skill rating of the player in raiding and in dungeons too. So bad to see in past yeasr the game became so casual-friendly that's already have bad influence on the game if you are not a casual.

Gear has literally never been an indicator of skill in this game, and it was even easier for unskilled players to be carried for gear when there were 40mans.  The effort required to grind out HWL/GM in early PvP didn't even guarantee that player knew how to actually PvP, else there wouldn't be so many Vanilla PvP videos with HWL/GM/BWL/AQ geared players getting killed by better skilled players in dungeon sets and MC gear.  They couldn't even depend on the baseline differential in power to defeat certain classes if played better.

Similarly, ilvl has never been an absolute indicator of a better piece of gear or equivalent to the point of being interchangeable with another piece of gear of the same quality.  Ever.

edit: not only that, the fact that lower ilvl AZ pieces with preferred traits will outperform higher ilvl pieces with unfortunate traits is a direct parallel to needing to sometimes still wear lower tier pieces in one or even two raid tier's progression content to retain certain set bonuses that offered synergy with specific specs and stats (and the occasional ridiculous synergy of a much lower tier item being BIS until the class itself gets altered...see T7 HAT-spec Sub rogue required to DW blue dungeon daggers in direct and ironic opposition to all conventional rogue mechanics in the game up to that point, with 25man KT daggers languishing in their bags or bank).  It happens, pretty much always has, because Blizz doesn't really know how classes interact with gear and stats and exists in a constant state of reaction to data coming back from players in game, on live, and then deciding if they like or don't like how things are working.

 

Edited October 9, 2018 by Sholto

[Kurosu 58]

4 minutes ago, Demonpuke said:

thats not even close to what i said. not even remotely. i called you a moron because you are having such a hard time understanding written words. you havent disagreed with anything that i actually said, you are literally trying to put words in my mouth just to start an argument. from what you are saying it is clear you read the first few words of my comment, got all antsy and immediately set into posting your toxic comment instead of taking a minute to read my entire post, analyze it, and then move on. obviously you are too stupid for that. stop talking kurosu, you're too stupid to talk.

Cries that community is toxic--->calls people moron and stupid because they dont agree with his views.

I sincerely hope you are not like that in your real life as well.Goobye, enjoy insulting people online.

[VictorVakaras 80]

5 hours ago, Kurosu said:

Warfronts : free 370

Arathi world boss  : free 370

WQ : free 370

At this rate you can just make the raid lfr and mythic only since apparently the other 2 difficulties are for show only and can get their IL from casual play

People with your mentality are the main problem WoW has always had. 

[IHateRaiding 3]

4 hours ago, Demonpuke said:

no, what people want is a working system where they are rewarded properly for the time and skill invested. wq azerite is useless, its either pvp or the gonk outrunner garbage. arathi world boss azerite is useless, its pvp gear. normal world boss gear is useless, its 355 and again, the traits are garbage. 

 

people want to be able to say "hey, i need shoulders so im going to spam "x dungeon" this week and try to fill that slot" and that is an entirely acceptable way to think and not at all unreasonable. i dont agree with free loot for whiny millennials, but this "fix" is nothing more than artificial ilvl boosting with two major problems: you ilvl goes up, but you still have to use lower ilvl gear b/c of traits, and 2) the skill cap has been lowered once again so every form of group content in this game is toxic. you cant even separate yourself from bad players by doing the hardest content because now everyone has the gear to do that content, but not the skill. this entire game has been turned into a toxic nightmare over the past two expansions, and bfa really hit it home. 

Funny that you should say this and have the most toxic posts (plural) here by far. Maybe others aren't the problem? People like you are the reason people like me don't raid. And I'm no millennial, I promise you that.

[Lawrenz 105]

So i havent seen any 370s. They are not as easy to come by, after all. I have had 363 yesterday and the AZ piece was still 355. So i thought my theory that you will need 365 for it to scale up to 370 was true. But then a friend of mine has had 355s as well, with 367gear! ... So i guess, you have to have 370 already to get them? :'/

Would be a real shame, because everything else in emmisary rewards scales up earlier, like 5 or even 10 ILs over over your average. Weird that those are now an exception. Or 355s are available, but 370s a bit later? i am clueless

Has anyone got a 370 piece?

[Hypersonic 113]

 

6 hours ago, Sholto said:

Gear has literally never been an indicator of skill in this game, and it was even easier for unskilled players to be carried for gear when there were 40mans.  The effort required to grind out HWL/GM in early PvP didn't even guarantee that player knew how to actually PvP, else there wouldn't be so many Vanilla PvP videos with HWL/GM/BWL/AQ geared players getting killed by better skilled players in dungeon sets and MC gear.  They couldn't even depend on the baseline differential in power to defeat certain classes if played better.

Similarly, ilvl has never been an absolute indicator of a better piece of gear or equivalent to the point of being interchangeable with another piece of gear of the same quality.  Ever.

edit: not only that, the fact that lower ilvl AZ pieces with preferred traits will outperform higher ilvl pieces with unfortunate traits is a direct parallel to needing to sometimes still wear lower tier pieces in one or even two raid tier's progression content to retain certain set bonuses that offered synergy with specific specs and stats (and the occasional ridiculous synergy of a much lower tier item being BIS until the class itself gets altered...see T7 HAT-spec Sub rogue required to DW blue dungeon daggers in direct and ironic opposition to all conventional rogue mechanics in the game up to that point, with 25man KT daggers languishing in their bags or bank).  It happens, pretty much always has, because Blizz doesn't really know how classes interact with gear and stats and exists in a constant state of reaction to data coming back from players in game, on live, and then deciding if they like or don't like how things are working.

 

Yeah I know, but it's simple weird that you can get this gear for absolutely nothing effort same like free warfront pieces (ah sorry you need to grind reputation for that due system still calculate your neck as well) and just not in balance what you need to clear for example HC Uldir or doing M+ 10 runs to get this ilvl gear. I think this is serious problem because just like Demonpuke said:

 

8 hours ago, Demonpuke said:

what people want is a working system where they are rewarded properly for the time and skill invested

I totally agree with this. Already zero gap between casual and semi-hardcore players in gear what make the game feeling just "meh" and it should't be so. I play that +12 M+ to get better gear than who can't even finish 5 or 3. This is the same problem with the idiot level TF forging as well. 

[Allseye 96]

5 hours ago, Lawrenz said:

So i havent seen any 370s. They are not as easy to come by, after all. I have had 363 yesterday and the AZ piece was still 355. So i thought my theory that you will need 365 for it to scale up to 370 was true. But then a friend of mine has had 355s as well, with 367gear! ... So i guess, you have to have 370 already to get them? :'/

Would be a real shame, because everything else in emmisary rewards scales up earlier, like 5 or even 10 ILs over over your average. Weird that those are now an exception. Or 355s are available, but 370s a bit later? i am clueless

Has anyone got a 370 piece?

Well, it depends what Blizzard wants to achiev with this. Probably they just want to adress the amount of different pieces we can get within same ilvl. This means: if we got a 370 piece with bad traits, then we have another source to get one with good traits. But to say: i don't know what kind of gear can be looted out of an emissary chest.

I have another view on that whole thing. I think it's just a bad way and next thing Blizzard does in their way. Well it's okay, it's their game and i'll play it whether they do it or not. But it's a bad approach to bring things back on track. It's like swallowing medicine over medicine instead takling the root. The cause are the imbalanced traites and nothing else. Some traits are awesome while others are not helpfull at all. This big scissors is why i need to wear an ilvl 840 instead ilvl 885! This is just ridiculous bad design and is still not adressed by this "fix". Wanna know my opinon? This whole azerit-gear is not well-thought-out and this has already been mentioned during beta. I don't know who exactly has the lead by Blizzard through this expansion, but in terms of class- and reward-design these guys do and did an aweful job.

[Kurosu 58]

7 hours ago, VictorVakaras said:

People with your mentality are the main problem WoW has always had. 

Casual  people like you ( which I do not consider a bad thing) that want the same IL and in game rewards with people that work for them is the actual problem wow has.But saddly you are the majority of the subscribers so..

[Seksi 208]

TL:DR you can get 370 pieces if your gear is around 370 already making this a useful way to catch up on Azerite if your other gear is already at that level.

Its not meant to give large gear upgrades like emissaries up to 340.

[LeGoret 6]

2 hours ago, Allseye said:

This big scissors is why i need to wear an ilvl 840 instead ilvl 885! 

As far as I know about ilvl/Azerith traits performances, i don't see any situations in which you want to do that...

I'm not even convinced by not taking a +15 ilvl for a better azerith trait.. (The only exeption might be if you loose your last reorigination array trait and you are raiding in uldir)... So +45 ilvl...

Also this emissary system doesn't realy look like a atch up system, you need to be stuffed to get your 370 azerith piece... Which seems ok (at least fore me ^^).

 

PS: where do you loot 840 stuff? i'm stuck with 390 at most... :)

Edited October 9, 2018 by LeGoret

[Satanique 1]

The only way this is helpful is to get more azerite items and hope for better azerite powers.

The ilvl is completely garbage.

Oh, it's also helpful if you were VERY unlucky and have 340 shoulders with total ilvl 355.

[Sholto 32]

7 hours ago, Hypersonic said:

 

Yeah I know, but it's simple weird that you can get this gear for absolutely nothing effort same like free warfront pieces (ah sorry you need to grind reputation for that due system still calculate your neck as well)...

Oh I agree with this.  Never before has so good a gear been so easy to get so early in the game.  Normally this is like mid expansion stuff, like Timeless Isle with the whole "catch up" idea.  I remember coming back to the game after leveling one or two toons to cap almost coincidentally with the release of Timeless Isle and was amazed that, on my paladin, I caught a lucky farming group and went from boosted greens on that character to nearly full epic in a single night, and strong enough that taking on multiple elite mobs on the island wasn't a sure death sentence.  

This is better gear than that almost immediately out of the gate.  It's so easy I'm just jaw on the floor at guildies who seem to be online as much or more than me, aren't at least 300 within moments of hitting 120 and at or passed 325 within hours of being 120.   Because I literally wore the 300/310 crafted pieces for less than a few hours because I was able to prioritize Champions and hitting Azerite reward quests, opening up WQs, etc.   Except to familiarize yourself with the fights there's almost no reason to do Heroics for gear, 'cept maybe trinkets or if you've just been unlucky with drops and rewards for AZ pieces.

What worries me is getting so close to 400 this fast, what's going to be the cap before the next expansion in two years?  Stat creep has been such a problem and already this expansion is no exception.  Mione basically quit because of it, and now we have a mid level Mythic+ dungeon solo cleared by not a DK or Paladin but a DH, and he was "only" 374.   I'm not sure if it's truly Blizz just doesn't get character scaling and stats and specs or are they just doing it to give even the most casual player more of a feeling of power with at least some effort.

And it does take some, and it does take actually knowing how to get the game to help you out and offer you these rewards.  I still consider myself casual based on my play but even doing the most basic research on class, spec, stats and traits still seems to be beyond what the, I dunno, "true casual" is capable of putting forth?   I think I get what you're saying though and though I haven't cared about raiding since Wrath I both enjoy the benefits of this while recognizing it as a potential problem, I'm just not sure of the why.