No?... Alexander Savage is currently balanced around i200ish gear.
Thats not correct. One big motivation ouf our raidgroup was to see "whats happening next" and we tried as good as we could to keep every kind of spoiler away from us before we set our own virtual foots into it.
Alex completely destroyed that. We did know the whole story and we did know all the bosses and most of whats happening 2 weeks before savage got released.
We could not keep away from normal mode, as it is part of the gear progression and finishing A4 normal is a direct requirement for unlocking savage (beside Ultima HM).
No. Its not. The reason is called Best In Slot stats.
You can't start over into savage with pieces of one single item set, because not every piece has usefull stats for that class and there are important stats, like accuracy, of which you have to meet a specific cap.
It has always been and will ever be mandatory to mix up gearsets for best possible stats.
I would like the idea of Alexander NM being only a story Mode like the Primae fights during MSQ. Put in vanity loot like pets and cards to make it still appealing to farm, that new gamer won't have an issue joining Alex NM or include it into the trail roulette.
Alexander Savage should then be around Gearing and give it an additional Endboss only aviable on Savage. Gearing would then be around 180 to start and Drops could have been 190. (20 ilvl saved from the current perspective)
In my opinion crafted gear will never be a good investment. Because you can't resell it and it will get outdated 2 big patches from now.
Also I find the whole gear thing in normal mode ridiculous if it's purpose is so people can see the story without stressing on a difficult raid then there's no reason to put gear in it.The only reason I see gear was put into it was so people who did want to do savage wer forced to do normal so as to help first time clearers in duty finder. Dose it really need to be said how annoying this is? To be forced to help others? If they wanted this then they should have just made a Alexander story roulette.
And before people start anything else about gear. Keep in mind we jumped about 50 item levels the moment we hit 60 in gear progression in 2.0 it was 20.
Or you can make Alex(Normal) harder and make it more than just another face roll content. Right now, only Savage is considered hardcore. EX primals is the closest thing to somewhat midcore, even then you can be carried no problem.
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I really want to see a raise of hands from people who actually believe story mode Alexander is a good idea. I look it as the proof that developers will even listen to people who believe they are entitled and have things handed to them on a silver platter. It is content set up like this is what will turn people away. Good job SE, you made content that made people not willing to put the work in happy for 5 minutes, now they complain they are bored.