An idea about item slots, items overall and weapon visuals.

[Shinrael]

1. As you stated yourself this offers absolutely no improvement stat/balance wise and is purely cosmetic. And I personally think that something like that is best solved by upgrading the current possibilities of transmog and adding a bit more purely cosmetic gear for transmog purposes only.

2,3,4:Removing offhand frills and leaving shields and destroying dual wield in favor of one handed weapons again don't make me any sense besides purely cosmetic reasons. Transmog upgrades again.


4+:
First of all saying satisfy a lot of players isn't a good argument. I personally don't know that much people being sad about them gone for good.
Second, why offer upgrades to skills to single wielders(More like 2 handed wielders which seem to be your pet peeve) and deny the option that to dual wielding classes?
Third, how do you imagine to make an equipped spell upgrades actually offer choice and not be a cookie cutter. Not giving direct damage boosts but giving indirect damage boosts still gives a damage boost. Faster cast time means less time spent casting and more DPS.


I support the visual idea. I also want to wear fist weapon as Paladin for example or Dual Wield. Or at least look like it. And as long as it's purely cosmetic it should be fine. However I disagree about major slot/gear/stat changes without serious explanation why is that necessary.

Nobody understands -_-"

Atleast don't involve me in arguements and topics that I didn't start. Who is talking about removing off-hand frills? I'll explain it like this. Off-hand frills remain. They are renamed to librams/relics/totems/idols/and so on for all classes. They are USUALLY class specific but can also affect multiple classes or types of abilities. They no longer give pure stats as that is poor design. Blizzard tends to remove stat-sticks ( hunter melee wep ) so my idea is supported by them. Not only will you get rid of a stat-stick but also you will gain a unique and actually fun item that doesn't have a cookie cutter.

I login here 20+ times a day, I read these forums a lot, and same with other forums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBHL_-biMrQ
Look here. TBC cinematic. I've seen thousands of players making threads about this draenei at the start. They want to "use" their librams/off-hand frills like that. Paladins actually want to wield a 2H Hammer and hold a book and so on. Mages want to cast spells through their staff and also "use" their libram/off-hand frill.
I made the mistake of calling them librams and people ignored everything else I said. Blizzard indeed had librams in the past, but they are not what I want back.
Also, if a change isn't gamebreaking and will satisfy a lot of people = Not adding it is stupid.

If I have the choice "Reduces Fireball cast time by 10%" and "Reduces cooldown of Inferno Strike by 1 second" and "Increases slow effectiveness/duration of your frost spells" I as a PvE player would choose the second one, but my friend, as a PvP player, will go for the third one. Some other PvEr might want to pick first one for a fight where you dont move that much.

These give situational bonuses. "Increases damage by 5%" is not situational. No matter what you are doing, its a bonus. And strong one at that. It would be a cookie cutter.

Destroying 1H weapons in favour of 2H weapons is some arguement you involved me in that I have nothing to do with. It is a favour in 1H weapon users. It just sucks having to farm 2x weapons. Takes more time and is harder to find proper upgrade.

I'm perfectly fine with more slots being added, but these that I've listed as merged provide no benefits aside from being stat-sticks. However they can be merged in order to share the spotlight of the slot they are being merged. The only other way to have visible bracers is to make gloves invisible via an option in transmog UI or interface. Sometimes you have gloves, sometimes you have bracers.

[ComputerNerd]

What you are suggesting though with 2H weapons will have an impact on the behaviour of those slots however you try to work it.
The only one that isn't screwing around with the behaviour of existing slots is the glove/bracer merger since they aren't themselves functional.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Removing what was in most cases either a gimmick or a boring stat stick.
Arguable certainly how interesting a neck or ring slot is, but at least that is consistent across any character.
Unlike a melee weapon on a hunter which is simply a stat stick but hugely important on a warrior.
Let an item slot be consistent between classes/specs, let it have a functional job or not.
Do not mix and match, and make things worse than they are already with druid forms as a good example.

And we can agree on that; but considering Blizzard's perspective, wouldn't it be better to have players contending an additional piece of loot, and make it overall longer to gear a character?

[Lodreh]

None of the changes I've listed restricts customization. Merging wrists and gloves into one slot allows us to have visible wrists. Some people prefer wrists over gloves.

Merging one-handers into one slot doesnt restrict their visual customization.
you dont need 2 slots for shoulders. An option to hide one or both of your shoulders can be added in interface menu or transmog UI. or some of the shoulder models can be made to just have one side. having a sleeve of mithril instead of a shield is just a visual change, so your shield item will just look like a sleeve of mithril...

Granted a lot of this could be handled by the transmog ui... like the option for displaying or hiding gloves and/or wrist. Likewise, I feel the community would be better served by having the option to show or not show every piece of gear... even better if you could choose to show left or right or both. That would add more unique looks. As for the old relics... why not make those into trinkets and allow them to be displayed or not? Seems like a more elegant solution.

As for the weapons, I can see you haven't played a rogue. Although it's less prevalent now... there still are some instances when you want a slower weapon in one hand. You would be ill equipped to have mirror stats in all situations. Besides if you can still change the looks of each weapon it would be less confusing to actually see each weapon.

Overall, every scenario you described could be handled but allowing more flexibility on what is shown on the character... and by bringing class specific relics back as displayable trinkets.

[kaikoraimi]

Humanoids have two hands for a reason.
I play an elem shaman. Don't take my shield away.

Also, why merge wrists/gloves to add a new slot for the what would be effectively equivalent to a major glyph? If wrists & gloves were merged, I would shed no tears, but I fail to see why there is a strong argument for removing wrists, especially if they are going to be replaced by another type of item. A third trinket slot might be nice, but I have never had good luck with getting two decent trinkets to drop.

There might be an argument for adding something like a single prime glyph slot for a toggle that would change playstyle significantly -- such as enabling enh sham & demo locks to be (true) tanks, blood dks to be "smite" healers, melee hunters, ranged rogues, etc. -- but that is a different proposal entirely.

[lunchbox2042]

The only good idea is merging the gloves/wrists. This could give allow for all 5 main pieces to have the same item budget as opposed to helm/chest/pants being higher than shoulder/gloves.

[laplacedemon]

If I have the choice "Reduces Fireball cast time by 10%" and "Reduces cooldown of Inferno Strike by 1 second" and "Increases slow effectiveness/duration of your frost spells" I as a PvE player would choose the second one, but my friend, as a PvP player, will go for the third one. Some other PvEr might want to pick first one for a fight where you dont move that much.

These give situational bonuses. "Increases damage by 5%" is not situational. No matter what you are doing, its a bonus. And strong one at that. It would be a cookie cutter.

(First two choices are damage boosts by the way, someone would do the math which is better for which fight)

I think those kind of choices are in form of glyphs and talents nowadays though (and the examples you gave are kind of the glyphs Blizzard removes). I'm not sure if we need yet another way to have a minor impact on our gameplay.

Casting animations based on 1h&oh/2h could be nice though...

[Shinrael]

(First two choices are damage boosts by the way, someone would do the math which is better for which fight)

I think those kind of choices are in form of glyphs and talents nowadays though (and the examples you gave are kind of the glyphs Blizzard removes). I'm not sure if we need yet another way to have a minor impact on our gameplay.

Casting animations based on 1h&oh/2h could be nice though...

And the moment the "best" one varies for each fight, that's when they are good. Just like current talents. The idea is to kill cookie cutters but instead of reducing choice like MoP talents did ( only 6 talent rows ) it will vastly increase it.