I’m pretty sure it was a hidden mechanic found by data miners. People need to stop pretending it was always intended progression.
Ya sure, can’t wait to quit the game because all my friend are low GS and can’t PvP anymore. They won’t do the same dungeon 80 times in a row… and won’t do dailies for 50 days either.
They paid over 20K+ for their gear, I don’t see why they would need to grind 40H+ to use it.
Of course. Data mining is big on Reddit. Nobody here would have known without those people.
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Yeah you could do it way faster now. Genesis bosses guarantee an expertise drop on the ptr. Just spam genesis and you win. Takes 20-30m with a speed clear for gobs of expertise. Ez pz. Faster than anything ever before.
You couldn’t get 600 gs in all slots in 1-2 weeks without abusing a bug or an unintended mechanic. It might be possible now though.
I’ll say it again for those in the back. The majority of players have 400+ hours into wm grind and are not 600 on all slots. Maybe just getting close.
This is way faster.
I don’t know anyone who can “spam” genesis. Orbs are limited heavily and gated so I don’t understand what you mean by that can you explain?
The PvP honor grind in vanilla was insane. I can attest to that…seriously was 10+ hours a day just to get to Lt General Horde side. For months…that was brutal. Fun, but brutal.
Ashkandi was a random drop end boss in BWL. Roll of the dice on that one. Was a phenomenal reckoning bomb weapon until that got put to rest. God I loved that in PVP. 
I think you meant Thunderfury which was a grind…gated at that.
And rep grind, guild farming for elite mats for food buffs, etc etc.
Painful memories.
Unfortunately lots of rose colored glasses. Or, more likely, didn’t experience it. I stopped playing seriously right after Sunwell and before WotLK… Funny thing is we all that WotLK blew because it was easy mode. And it was seriously ez mode.
To be fair, gamers have changed (not saying that’s good or bad). Blizzard made it so you spend a few hours you get great loot. That’s fine…no big deal. IMHO, AGS is messing up a bit trying to fit a square peg in a round hole (even though to me the grind isn’t that bad…I’ve seen way worse). Gamers are different than when MMO’s were popular. Again, not good nor bad. Just different.
It’s just perspective I suppose.
If you treat it as a grind, it will feel like a grind. If you just play and enjoy it…then it won’t. No sense (in my opinion, gotta make sure there’s a disclaimer these days) in getting all worked up about something until it actually happens.
If you don’t enjoy it, well, there’s your answer. I really don’t understand how it’s more complex than that to be blunt.
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I get 4 good players together. I judge them on their GS and experience and ask some questions. If they end ip being good I friend them. A healer/tank/me/1 dps.
We all chip in 1k. We advertise to buy and carry them through their orb and pay them 4. Everyone wins!
Sometimes they just sell the orb and we boot them and bring a 5th good player who also pays 1k.
After the gold from bosses and drops, it’s a very large net gain. Then we do it several more times. It’s very common.
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I think I meant atiesh. But tfury works. I like your attitude and talking points.
Surely you are a person without a social life, who does not work or study, your life is sad, friend.
Did you see any of the data mines? They literally time gated it so hard it will take months. Literally that bad.
Its not even humanely possible right now to reach 200 level crafting after they nerfed that twice.
Damn worse nerfs than I thought.
Watermark stuff
See the following graph. The simple version is this: The odds of increasing your watermark were reduced from 10% to 1%. Minimum GS increase is nerfed at higher watermarks (2 to 1). Odds of a 600 GS item dropping were reduced significantly, but odds of a 591+ is up on average. Overall, HWM progression is significantly nerfed.
(Thanks Fluff in the NWDB Discord for this)
Old:
HWM : ExceedMax : ChanceToExceed : ChanceBump
500 : +5 : 3% : +0.25%
510 : +5 : 2% : +0.225%
525 : +4 : 1.75% : +0.1875%
550 : +3 : 1.5% : +0.125%
575 : +2 : 1% : +0.06%
590 : +10 : 1% : +0.025%
RollupChance: 10% on all
New:
500 : +5 : 1% : +0.1%
520 : +4 : 1% : +0.1%
545 : +3 : 1% : +0.1%
575 : +2 : 1% : +0.1%
585 : +1 : 1% : +0.1%
590 : +10 : 1% : +0.1%
RollupChance: 1% on all
Note there is a bunch of other stuff that also modifies this. It remains to be seen how bad the nerf is, but it will be significant. For example, HWMMult (a multiplier for raising HWM) was reduced from 30 on elite chests down to 15. For elite mobs, it was reduced from 2 to 1.5. For named mobs, it was reduced from 15 to 4. These HWMMult changes are on top of the drop chance being reduced from 10% to 1%, so there are multiple areas of nerfs.
Gypsum (edit with testing in NWDB discord)
An OPR cast gave +3 expertise. It is unclear if this is always +3 or if it follows the rules of regular HWM increases (i.e. up to +5 until level 520, then +4 until 545, etc.). Crafting an orb has a tax of 100g. Crafting a cast has a tax of 500g.
The gypsum, combined with the HWM changes, are the opposite of what the dev diary said. The dev diary stated :
But we have increased up the amount your Expertise increases with each bump to make Gypsum Casts and the random bumps feel more valuable.
However, this datamined info shows the opposite: The potential gear score increase is reduced on each step. There is even a new step at 585 where you can only go up +1, rather than the current +2.
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Ok then lets see it your way…
Dungeos are time-gated behind keys so farming dungeons is a no go for gold.
(ofc you will need good/experienced players to even make some gold in end game dungeons).
Farming mats for keys consume lots of time.
6-7 OPR runs in a low pop servers is around 6-9h if you are lucky. High pop servers around 3-4h.
Great if most crafters gets tipped 600g for potential 600gs never got that many usually 100-200g and sometimes its days before someone even ask for some crafts.
3 daily for that amout of gold again dungeons or high elite area GC.
So let’s see gold/time spent for a day grind to get some of cache.
- Dungeon 35min-1h = lets say no deaths(no gold spent for repairs) 1k
(not included time for mats needed for key) - 6 OPR rounds low pop servers 6-9h
- 6 OPR rounds high pop servers 3-4h
Average 1100g - 3 daily around 1000g if you ofc have a group for dungeons and high elite zones around 1h
So time needed:
1 dungeon average 45min - 1000g
6 OPR average 4h - 1100g
3 daily average 1h - lets say 1000g
Not counting crafts since that is not reliable source of income on daily basis.
So time spent around 6-7h daily
Gold earned around 3100
7 cache per day is 4200g
So we need to spend close to 7h doing same thing every day to be able to get 5 caches + hours to even get mats for them freely add few hours there.
At the end 5 caches a day repetitive content for 6-10h.
And there are always other factors where you need to spend gold (house taxes are cheap now but wont stay for much long/repairs/crafts etc)…
Thanks but NO thanks… if you like and have time to do same things every day for 5-7 caches for average 7-10h play time then yea COOL hope you will enjoy it long enough.
all hardcore crafters forget that crafting is now made hard,. meanwhile watermark farm is made easy xD who is the real victim here?
So the HWM system being bad means taking away peoples progress and making them regrind it is your preferred solution. 
You can do that on most mmorpgs and hypothetical issues and “what ifs” can go on forever. You’ll never get ahead of it and all it’s going to do is stress and annoy the regular players
So basically buying runs is better than buying the gear off the trade post how?
making only 3k gold in 7h should be worrying not that u can spend 4k gold to get 100% increase of wm tbh 
This should be rephrased as you are making it appear a bit better than it is as you can only get 6 a day six days a week and 1 extra weekly and no, this will not be pretty quick.
A dev comment suggested up to 60 minutes per orb and your streamer Sethpirs indicated that drops are not guaranteed, some of the bosses that should drop materials are not, the chance of drop is looking to be around 25% and some of the orbs take up to 10 gypsum to create. One of the quotes in the video you want everyone to watch is that it will ‘take a while’.
Also pay attention to the fees in this video. So in addition to the 6 or so hours it might take each day to obtain these orbs (those not gated behind the participation of others on dead servers or crafting skill), each orb will be around $100 gold to craft and each cast, around $500 gold depending on taxes/fees. So if someone is qualified to use all 6 paths a day and spends the 6+ hours a day to obtain all the materials, they will also be spending around $3600 gold daily just to craft the items.
Myrk didn’t go that fast? Nothing is fast about this, it will be a grind with each path likely taking an hour or more for those actually able to use the path. Some orbs will need 10 gypsum so if you are doing rifts/portals with a 25% chance to drop (if it is even that high) and need 10 drops, even this will take some time. (predicting nerf on portal level for this)
Yes, let’s not forget them as now they will be severely nerfed and everyone will still be required to endlessly spam this crap to try to play catchup with those that were given the free conversion handout for leveling a mechanic that previously had NOTHING to do with how gear performed.
lol, As a PVP player, I laughed out loud when I read this.
Yes, I can now use OPR every 22 hours to advance ONE piece of gear approximately 3-5 points a DAY in this PVP game.
For a PVP player to take their gear from 500 to 600 via PVP alone with what appears to be the the rng on advancement (3-5pts), it will take approximately 6.1 to 10.2 MONTHS. This is all IF they can find 31 other people that are willing to do the event and the majority of servers are so dead that they have not seen OPR for weeks so this will not be a viable path for many.
Ah crafting… Only those that leveled crafting to 200 will have this option so this will leave a significant portion of the player base without this path. Keep in mind that the grind to level a profession was slow and after nerfs, is much slower now so this will not be a viable option for many unless they want to start focusing on gathering skills.
?? I struggle to even find words, I can only assume this is a troll.
The mechanic you are demanding compensation on grinding had NOTHING to do with gear performance and most players feel none of you that did the grind should be given the conversion handout and unfair advantage over others for expertise but this is what AGS is proposing and the main straw that is breaking the camel’s back for many.
Are you sure you even understand the topic you created a thread on as someone that leveled watermarks (a mechanic that had NOTHING to do with gear performance) will be sitting unfairly above crafters who will likely be sitting with little or no expertise when this rolls out who simply have the ability to craft ONE orb every 22 hours for an approximate 3-5 point advancement of ONE item to try to catch up with those being given the unfair conversion reward on gear effectiveness on a mechanic that had NOTHING to do with gear performance.
Again, more PVE being forced down the throats of pvp players in a PVP game just to keep players busy with the same stale current content. The dungeons the orb materials drop from are not fast and again, ONE orb a day can be made which will advance ONE item just 3-5 points. Big deal when those that did not grind chests or exploit bosses to get a high watermark may need close to 100 points on 10-11 items.
This is a little like the used car salesman that states they will sell you the car for $10000 with a $2000 trade-in and after some bargaining, the salesperson agrees to drop the price of the car to $9000 but now will give you $1000 on your trade-in.
Don’t be fooled by pigs dressed up with lipstick as everything we have seen so far is that this ‘bump’ is averaging just 3-5 pts every 22 hours and this is ONLY on the extremely slow and expensive orb route- all other previous means will be nerfed on drop rate so this looks more like a $500 trade in on that car.
Again, either you are a troll or you are very confused on the primary complaint with the expertise rollout. It is that players that did the grind on a mechanic that had NOTHING to do with gear performance will be given an unfair advantage in gear performance when they hand out those free conversion points.
You really are clueless on this entire topic. lol
Hate to derail you here…
Old way to raise WM took about 40 hours of grinding Reekwater and was free.
New way will take 200+ hours and will be wildly expensive
And before you retort with… you can still grind the old way.
That was nerfed Per AGS
Hrmmm I did grind sirens 5 man on the brute pre nerf. You’re just lying. The loot tables wouldn’t even cover all slots not even close. Unless you’re referring to just farming the monsters? Never been better than farming brute who wouldn’t even hit all that many slots on his table.
And pretty much nobody has maxed out trinkets of jewelry or anywhere close.
As to the guy above me, go watch the videos and you can tell sethpir he doesnt know shit.
i am certianly not raging, as the new system does look to add some flavor to the grind, for HWM, the issue is the downscaling of gear that was legit earned and gained thru other methods that were always available from day 1. If this change grandfathers in all existing gear, then I have zero issue going forward, if they reset everyone to 500 and we all have to take part in the new system, thats fine as well, but im assuming the rage would be on the other side of the coin if EVERYONE had to grind this system. those that have HWM now would go balistic, and that would indeed be a fun day reading these forums.