Nantes Gamewatch interview summary

[Velox]

It will be one step below, and the upgrade items prob be in alex savage. So basically in heavensward, raiders get the same gear as their LFR counterparts on both alexander and esoterics. The only difference is that raiders will get the augmented versions that they can dye different colors. I know pretty exciting huh? Doesn't that just make you want to just go out there and setup a static and raid? Unfortunately for me it does not.

Well gear is just a means to an end anyway, so vanity becomes the key reason to make dye-able versions desirable. For a good number of people, vanity is one of the most important aspects of the game. To each his own though if you don't really care about it. Everyone has a different goal that makes them happiest.

I hope esoteric gear is below the hard mode i level for alexander raids. You should not be able to log in one hour a day and be as people who plug 12 hour progression sessions to plow through alexander hard modes. People who just play to grind tome gear do not need the higher item level since they technically do not need it. Allow Esoteric gear to let you be of the gear item level required to do the first 25% of the initial raids in alexander but after that you need a few hard mode pieces in order to be able to overcome the gear gap in later raids.

The whole point of tome gear is to solve the "loot drought" problem where you can beat X boss 1957 times and never see your item from the chest. The system works as it is now. In order to do what you're suggesting, SE would have to remove the RNG-coffers and replace each win with a token system. Then the player would have to beat X boss Y number of times to build special raid tokens to buy the raid gear. This doesn't change the end result though. If the current system works, you're proposal only exists to further complicate loot distribution for no real benefit to the playerbase.