While typing this, I am only at 280. While this may be too early to have a "full grasp" on the situation as I believe the current cap is 450, I think it's enough to form enough of an opinion about it. I have the following points to say: 1. While I used some of the pre-nerf Encore (the end rewards, not the chest you could loot spam with) to go from ~140 to 210, most of the rest of my progression has been "natural" (playing various activities, making a point to do activities that reward an armor piece I'm low on or that have multiple bonus rewards). I am already tired of this and can't see myself feasibly pushing past 300 without a long break from the game - probably sooner rather than later. 2. Some "big voices" in the community that have little actual experience with the game seem to think grinding Power Progression (through Encore pre-nerf) would have hurt player retention. I would argue the system in its current state will hurt retention and continue to hurt retention more than people trying to look for ways to circumvent a bad system. 3. If you have to continuously have to nerf an activity (Encore) and even stop including certain activity modifiers (3x perma-Grapple) because people keep looking for workarounds, please consider what this says about the current system rather than the playerbase. It's not a matter of "people are doing this and it's not what we intended" - it's a matter of "This is mind-numbing to begin with but if I can get to the good part faster, so be it.. at least it speeds up the bad part." No one thought grinding pre-nerf Encore was fun but they still did it in hopes for a light at the end of the tunnel. 4. I don't want to play at -50 in Mythic missions to get t3 rewards at best until I'm at 450. It feels awful to begin with, t3 for suffering makes it worse. This further disincentivizes the loot chase in some areas. 5. The current system makes it very difficult to feel rewarded or to want to help players outside of your current "bracket" of progression. If I'm in the 100s but a buddy of mine wants to run Master (300+) content. Sure, I'll get brought up to -5 parity from him but I'll receive tier 1s for completing the hard activity. Why would I want to jump in with him when I can earn similar rewards at a lower effort required? If I'm 250, why would I want to help a buddy of mine run Normal (10) or Advanced (100) activities when I won't get anything for it? The idea that your Power Level almost fully dictates your rewards received is genuinely crazy and segments the community more than the Portal brings them "together" (using together very loosely here as any non-Portal activity is dead). 6. I am told by multiple sources (one who is 300+, another who is 400+) that it does not get quicker. I have been doing this for a majority of the time since the expansion released and am being told it gets [b][i][u]SLOWER[/u][/i][/b] than what I'm currently experiencing??? 7. Raid and Dungeon activities do not feel rad (pun intended). Desert Perpetual is arguably "simple" mechanics (I think the HLC stretches their definitions sometimes, personally I think they confuse intuitive with simple as the mechanics are "simple" in the sense they are quick to figure out but the execution has to be very tight) with wanting near-perfectionist gameplay (a lot of the encounters like Hydra or Wyvern feel like all-or-nothing where if you have a person with a mechanic as a role go down or if you even slightly stumble your pace, it's a definitive wipe). Not only is there no chance for a "hero moment" but you get Tier 1 loot when I would argue the base version of the raid (with no feats enabled) is on-par with Salvation's Edge. I have lower-skilled friends who I would never dream of attempting to take them through either raid despite managing to get through things like Vow. Most raids and dungeons, if not all of them (I didn't keep track of my single completion of DP and the Power Level of the rewards I received), do not provide a power boost meaning there's almost no interest in running that content right now (I also would not be surprised if they still give armor in the legacy system as you can still get legacy armor in the 50s from other sources that aren't tower vendors).