Heat gain is now awful.
As the subject says. Wow is heat gain awful now.
I can clear an entire level around depth 14/15 and have a huge burning heat whirl and maybe a pixel will be added to my gear.
Which isn't to say I want easy mode. But at the rate it is at now it feels like mega ultra grind MMO mode, which is a whole lotta blah.
Also I'm soloing so I don't know if other players are getting a heat bonus in parties or not. If not I can only imagine how little heat people are getting after yesterdays update.
Agreed, there needs to be a bit o' fixin when it comes to the heat system, they did a good job delivering the nerf quickly after we asked, but now they need to lessen the nerf a bit.
I think it's fine?
Today I cleared a depth 16/17 flor with a level 1 ( 2 stars) sword and it gained 4 levels. The floor had some really strong enemies though.
Maybe stronger equipment requires more heat or something? I don't know.
Yeah the problem is with 3 and 4 star items. Previously the heat gain was a little faster than you expect.
But I've now done 4 runs to the core, alone, and my Khorovord has been on level 8 and hasn't hit 9.
Lower star and lower level items do level MUCH faster, but once you get to the higher levels you now hit a huge wall now, even when hitting the lower depths.

I think that's intended.
Because 4-star items start out much better than 1 and 2-star items, it only makes sense it takes longer for them to level up.
I feel like the reason it seems so slow for me now is that I have better items, which take longer anyway, but I also have like 5 of them that are each sucking up heat. I think if I was only leveling one of those items at once it wouldn't seem bad at all. So, given that I'm leveling so many high end items at once. I think the slowness is justified.
I actually wonder if the progress bars would be better hidden. I don't want to feel like I should grind out the levels, or like I'm watching a slow clock. Like experience in Y!PP it would be nice to not be thinking about it, but after doing a dungeon find out that my sword went up a level.

I'm a little used to the heat gain now. I didn't notice the first time, but it is skewed to the higher levels. My new level 1 4 star piece of equipment instantly gained level 2, gained 3 slower, and started crawling by 4. With this is should take a bit of work to get to 5 for fusion, but take a considerable time to max. I think I'm ok with that :)
I'm not opposed to leveling on advanced weapons being slower than it was in last week's build, but watching your heat increase by a mere pixel over several seconds is agonizing.

Just to chime in from the Dev side, heat gain and character progression are exactly the kind of major things we're trying to fine-tune during the Preview Event. We definitely didn't set out to create a grindy math-fighting MMO, so we'll endeavor to find a happy medium.
It must be said though that last week, players were receiving WAY more heat from their gate/mineral dividends than they should have been. If your equipment is leveling up more slowly, it's probably because of that.
Hey Cory,
OH yeah, during the first week or two it was a little ridiculous. I completeed a number of items and knew it shouldn't be that way.
Right now though it seems balanced more? Did you adjust it with this recent patch? Cause if so it feels about right. My Khorovord is level 9 and I did a run to the core from Emberlight and it gained about 1/4th of the level. Since its a 4 star sword and I had 4 other items leveling too that felt about right?
Rest assured I'm not whining because I want thing to be faster, I want you guys to know how I as a player am perceiving the gain in comparison to the work and whether or not I think it is at a level I think people will flip over.

I think heat gain should be reduced, but let people decide what items get the heat allocated to them.
this way if you have an item you want to catch up in heat with other items, you can exclusively level that item for a dungeon or two.
Especially since you could potentially have NINE items sucking up heat, you'd be lucky to get a single level in a full run to the core with 4-5 star gear.
Does heat actually divide between items like that? I assumed all the items got all the heat, but I've never checked.

Heat does divide between all equipped items (that can use heat). So if you want to level up a weapon faster, equip fewer weapons. Also, a cost of equipping max leveled items is that they still take part of the heat share, but can't use it.
That seems kind of messed up, honestly. Using your 250 energy upgrade to the fullest gets you diminishing returns on everything else, even if you've got all but one max level piece of equipment?

Having more gear in a dungeon increases your options in the thick of things. If you want to speed up the rate of an item's ascension, focus your heat on fewer items and ready yourself for the challenges this choice brings.
Heat is only lost by having slots with max level gear in them, not by having more occupied slots.
Ew. Having maxed items still eat up your heat is very counter-intuitive, and seems very not awesome. I don't have the option to take off my helm or armor, so that's 2 slots of heat constantly down the drain? That's a bit of a disincentive to buy the 2 slot upgrades again, if the items I put there are going to keep eating up heat.
Edit: And is the heat really just lost? Or does the weapon's total heat continue to go up? Or does it not matter because there are no plans to ever have weapons that are able to go above level 10?
Well, I do want to speed up my items' leveling, so I'll bring fewer items instead of buying upgrades.
Which is all right with me, but doesn't seem optimal for Three Rings.

Looks like I'm wrong about Max level gear, in that it does not eat a slice of the pie at the end a of a floor after all. So fear not and don your level ten armor if you wish.
Perhaps the heat gain in the deeper levels could simply just be tuned to a greater amount? More incentive to dive deeper that way anyway, rather than just stay near the surface and pillage your way to maximum heat levels there.
Yes, the levels before this update needed to be taken down a peg, but now it is a little ridiculous.
I made a dungeon trip from Haven all the way to core. My 3star armor gained about 3 or 4 levels. That is a ton of dungeoning, including high level dungeoning, for very little gain.
Somewhere in between the two extremes would be nice :)