I would like to see the Umbral Shard system changed to be awarded and usable on gear from 500-625.
Currently the system works like this. A fresh 60 starts at 500 GS expertise. They begin to engage in end game activities. Let’s say they do a daily dungeon, arena, opr, corrupted breaches, and maybe a chest run here and there. They are likely to acquire anywhere between 4-6 gypsum orbs. The player then uses those orbs on let’s say some jewelry, their weapons and a piece of armor. The player then has no real incentive (outside of RNG) to continue playing the game that day. Could they go for the missing gypsum? Sure, but that content may not be what they want to do.
I’d like to see umbral shards be usable on gear right away at 500 GS. Change the daily gypsum casts to just reward umbral shards (make this a large amount because it’s daily). This would allow the player to take the shards they acquire and upgrade their gear from 500-625 at their own pace. Once the player has acquired the shards from the daily gypsum activities, they can continue to farm umbral shards and progress their expertise by engaging in their favorite content.
By using umbral shards to increase expertise you create a farmable route for players to expediently increase their gear score on the slot that they want to focus on. If a player wants to sit in OPR and collect 200 umbral shards a game and slam it into blunderbuss, the game should let them do that.
This change would accomplish a few things.
1.) Prevents items from being worthless because they are sub 590.
2.) Allows the player to spam their favorite content to upgrade their ilevel.
3.) By introducing umbral shards immediately the player is less likely to be confused as to what to do when hitting 600 expertise.
With just the listed activities you posted that would be 7 gypsum. You can get 2 more from topaz and 1 from obsidian which takes about 30 minutes. You also get 2 free from the medley fair and another 2 from faction.
What you have to keep in mind is the dungeon mutations are NW’s endgame. If AGS made it too easy to hit 625 then there would be no reason to participate in the endgame.
Okay so let’s say the player gets 7 orbs, that’s 5 armor pieces and 2 weapons daily. What I’m saying is the player should be able to continue to farm their gear score once those dailies are completed.
Mutations would still maintain their relevancy because of the sheer quantity of shards they reward. I’m not suggesting a change to make end game less relevant, simply providing a way for players to get there faster and with a less frustrating approach.
Add to this that you can basically buy or farm gyspum in the form of the legendary fragments. So you can grind out, essentially, another 7 or so Infused gypsum per day by grinding gold or by crafting armor or through the drops/caches from any other content. These can also be applied as a second bump to any category you wish. The expertise “grind” really isnt such any more.
With all the ones listed above and 2 PvE arenas, you are looking at like 5 hours worth of daily content to get your dailies done. After that, any content that gives you drops that you can salvage or gold essentially gives you gypsum with the Infused Gypsum. So after your dailies, just go do whatever. These also give you a second bump on whatever you choose. OPR gives you gold and salvageable drops, as do Expeditions. You can go chop wood or mine stone for an hour to buy all 7. Really, the gypsum stuff is not hard, it just encourages people to try all the different types of game mechanics.
I hear you man, it’s not that bad to go through it, but it is a complete waste of time. You spend 30 hours or so collecting useless gear while going from 500 to 590 on all slots.
Just because it’s currently not that bad, doesn’t mean it’s fun.
True. In reality, no one does that. People just buy gear thats 590 - 600 when they turn 60 and just grow into it. Then upgrade it when they get to 600 Expertise. Decent gear is stupid cheap now. Its really just a mechanism to slow people down and encourage people to engage in a variety of content, so that people can’t just power level to 625.