Developer Q&A - Matt Goss: Legion Itemization

Developer Q&A - Matt Goss: Legion Itemization
Lead Game Designer Matt Goss answered Legion itemization questions today.




Upcoming Q&A
  • Next week the Q&A has the Content Lead for Patch 7.2, talking about all of the content coming in Patch 7.2.

Secondary Stats
  • At Legion launch, players weren't feeling rewarded by doing more challenging content. Secondary stat priority has been brought closer together in most cases now.
  • The team is happier than they were, things are generally better and higher item level items are usually better than lower item level items.
  • The team did all that they could do without making drastic changes in a patch.

Reforging
  • Reforging lets players make items more optimal, but it isn't a great solution to the current problem of some higher item level items not being as good as lower item level items.
  • Reforging made every upgrade more difficult to figure out, as you had to consider the base item and all of the variations you could make.
  • Reforging also meant an interruption to your raid, as you had to go and reforge an item.

Itemization
  • There is gear that is usable across all classes and gear like set pieces and legendary items that are usable on one class or spec.
  • When selecting stats for things like tier sets, the team is aware that there are now six pieces, so you can mix and match a little more than you could in the past.

Tertiary Stats
  • The role of these stats is to be a bonus. If you are looking at two similar pieces, this could be a deciding factor.
  • The team doesn't want tertiary stats to be a huge factor, just a bonus.
  • Avoidance is something like 8-10% damage reduction with just one piece, so these stats are powerful.
  • Leech and speed are also pretty useful stats. Sneaky good.

Legendary Items
  • The team would have made the drop rate of legendary items a little higher if they could go back and do things again.
  • The legendary system was brand new, the team wasn't sure how they needed to tune the drop rate with legendary items coming from everything in the game.
  • They initially went a little low on the drop rate, because it is easier to increase it than to decrease it later.
  • The gap between utility and power legendary items was too high, but the team brought them closer together.
  • Patch 7.2 attempts to narrow the gap further. You shouldn't feel like you need a specific legendary item to do content. If you have multiple legendary items, you should feel like you have a choice.
  • Legendary items that encourage you to try new things with the different items is cool.

Balancing Situational and Universal Legendary Items
  • Situational legendary items should be good in specific situations, better than the universal legendary items.
  • The team continues to make adjustments to legendary items, but things are in a decent place right now.

Personal Loot Trading Rules
  • The team agrees that the current rules are confusing.
  • If you are a player that is doing a lot of PuG raiding, the personal loot rules were designed to protect you. The team didn't want you to feel pressured to trade away things to someone else.
  • Trading personal loot should be a bonus, not a social pressure.
  • You can't trade loot from bonus rolls right now because the team wants you to spend that token on yourself.
  • In Patch 7.2, loot from bonus rolls will tell you why you can't trade it away.
  • Allowing you to trade bonus roll loot would create the opportunity for the group to tell everyone to bonus roll on a certain boss because someone in the group needs an item.
  • If you are in a guild group and want to trade loot around it is a very confusing system right now.
  • The team is looking at how they can loosen up the rules without violating the ideas behind the initial set of rules.
  • The two set pieces in Arcway and Court of Stars weren't be able to traded because they were technically part of a set.

Item Effects
  • If it makes sense for an item to have an effect, the team will add an effect to it.
  • The Spike Collar Chain in Karazhan did damage when people hit you, the effect makes sense.
  • The team doesn't want to do too many effects because it makes it harder to compare items, but the current rate is probably fine.

Dungeon Trinkets
  • The team looks at trinkets a lot.
  • With Legion and the Mythic+ and item upgrade system there are more items than there ever have been before.
  • The team likes dungeon trinkets being useful.

Dungeon Sets
  • The small two set pieces like the one in Arcway and Court of Stars are cool.
  • The sets give you a reason to run different content to complete the set.
  • This is something that has to be done with a light touch, but is pretty cool.
  • The team has talked about adding small sets in raids, they don't have to come from dungeons.
  • Maybe if an item has a cool story it would be worth making into a small set.
  • The team talks about bringing back dungeon sets every expansion.
  • The Order Hall set includes a piece that requires you to complete dungeons.
  • At what point is a dungeon set item too powerful compared to a raid set item? This is even more of a problem with Mythic+ items.

Tier Sets
  • Your first experience in Legion is leveling your artifact. Unlocking all of these powers, getting legendary items, and collecting tier set bonuses was too much to do all at once.
  • Even with Nighthold, set bonuses were a little simpler to avoid overloading you with information.
  • In the future the team could look at adding tier sets to every raid, or maybe adding upgraded versions in a later raid.
  • The team wants to give players choice. If the Tier 19 two piece bonus becomes dominant, the team make changes, but currently you will be able to wear the Tier 19 two piece and Tier 20 four piece. This is an experiment.

Tier 20 Set Bonuses
  • When patch 7.2 goes live, Tomb of Sargeras won't be open.
  • Tier 20 set bonuses aren't placeholders, the team does want feedback on them.
  • There will be a small patch before or around the time that Tomb opens, something like Patch 7.1.5 with tuning changes.

Active Trinkets
  • Looking at current trinkets, it is hard for the active trinkets to compete with the passive Tank and Healer trinkets.
  • The upcoming trinkets should be better in the past, using the trinket should feel like it has an impact.
  • For tanks, the team hasn't hit the mark where they are excited about active trinkets.
  • For DPS, the team needs be a little cautious with active effects, as they can be stacked with other cooldowns.

Enchants and Gems
  • The tuned against what they thought secondary stats would be like now. At release they were probably too powerful, so with the secondary stat rebalancing they were brought more in line with where they need to be.
  • Feasts were a primary stat, with other food being secondary stats. The other food would dominate because of how powerful secondary stats were.
  • Over the course of the expansion, enchants and gems will diminish in power. Epic gems have been used in the past to offset this, so it could be a solution in another patch.

Secondary Stats and Depth of Gameplay
  • The community is better at evaluating stats now than they were in Mists of Pandaria.
  • There used to be a stat priority list, now we have precisely calculated stat weights.
  • The feeling that there could be different builds based on what stat you are stacking is gone because the community is better at determining which stat is better.
  • The team likes the idea of you speccing your character different ways based on the stat you are stacking, but it doesn't fit with the current reality. The team is working on it, but it is hard to justify using a build that is even slightly weaker than another.
  • Healers live in a great world, where they have the choice between faster heals, more crit or mastery, or other choices.

Solo Challenges
  • The challenges are in Patch 7.2 and are very difficult. Very difficult.
  • When you unlock the building on the Broken Shore you are able to attempt the challenges.
  • The challenges aren't normalized, so your gear matters. It will probably be rough early on.

Relics and Second Traits
  • Only allowing one utility and one throughput trait on relics is a decent suggestion.
  • Giving players more choice in what they get was the goal, but the system as described felt too random.
  • There were also a lot of system things that made it not a great system.
  • The team is still looking at how they can bring back another trait on relics, while giving players more choice and control.
  • The team felt that there is a lot more that can be done with relics in the future, so adding a second trait in Patch 7.2 could interfere with the system in the future.

Changing Relics
  • When the team made Artifacts, they wanted the Artifact to feel like it was infused with power by things from the world.
  • There are systems that let you customize your character already, gear, talents, and other things. The team didn't want to add yet another customization.
  • Wanting to be able to swap Relics to try different things is fine, but feeling like you had to swap relics for every boss would be a burden.

Item Appearances
  • The team realized just how many set pieces they were missing when building the transmog set UI for Patch 7.2.
  • There is a backlog of appearances that the team wants to put back into the game, but they have to find the right place to do that.
  • It could be a new system, or just giving out new items with the old appearance.
  • It would be weird if you go to Patch 7.2 and get all of the new items with new art and then one random item with a recolor of a Vanilla item.

Heirloom Items
  • Heirlooms will scale to 110 in a patch shortly after Patch 7.2, but not with Patch 7.2.
  • More information about this is coming in the future.
  • Artifacts have extended the amount of time players are playing their main characters.

Unstable Arcanocrystal
  • This trinket was over budget and nerfed once already.
  • The team is very cautious about taking an item that people think is really good and making it so bad that people don't want to use it anymore. Doing so punishes people that have the trinket already.
  • Someone who wanted the trinket, gets it, and it gets nerfed the next day would also be sad.

Titanforged and Warforged RNG
  • Warforged and Titanforged was intended to make the upgrade feel like a bonus.
  • If you are a Heroic raider and want to help out a friend in Normal, there is no chance of getting an upgrade. This system gives you a chance to get something that is an upgrade.
  • The team is still looking at the tuning, maybe it is happening more than it should.
  • You don't need Warforged or Titanforged, you can move to a higher difficulty or mythic dungeons.

NPC Armor
  • The team would love to offer some of the armor from NPCs, especially bosses to players.
  • This is usually offered to players by adding one or two of the armor set items from a boss to their drop table.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Developer Q&A - Matt Goss: Legion Itemization started by chaud View original post
Published on 2017-03-16 05:47 PM
110 Comments
Comments 110 Comments
  1. nyy21nd24brwn32's Avatar
    I wonder of instead of putting two traits on relics maybe adding a 4th relic slot for our weapons would give another place to help our weapons.
  1. mmoc4282a3f415's Avatar
    I just am tired of the new president doing absolutely nothing about a company that is based on US that keeps on increasing RNG in their game that I used to love.
  1. Rivin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joebob42 View Post
    What hostility are you talking about? I mean no offense when I ask this, but are you autistic? I just need to know how to interact with you.

    You said I should have said that the reforging system could be made to work on the fly when quoting me where I said exactly that.

    The token change you refer to was made AFTER reforging was removed from the game. The point was that they removed reforging while leaving another broken system in the game instead of fixing reforging. Later, instead of removing tokens from the game, they fixed tokens. Now they talk about reforging using the exact same arguments against it that I used against tokens, but completely ignore the fact that they could have made the same changes to reforging that they did to tokens to fix reforging.

    Your hostility is unnecessary. I'm not sure why you're arguing about this. If you don't like reforging, then that's your right. Lots of us liked it. Their continuing arguments against it are stupid.
    Nope, this is exactly what you said:
    Quote Originally Posted by joebob42 View Post
    I call BS on that dev's entire statement because of the tokens from raid bosses. You can't equip a TOKEN at all. You have to go turn it in to get usable gear.

    The dev team is either just completely oblivious or purposefully deceitful in trying to justify something they want to do that doesn't make logical sense. They can't support it with logic, so they really should just honestly say that's the way they want it to be so deal with it. That's really what they're doing, but they're hoping they can trick players into believing it's better when it really isn't.
    You're adding a ton of context now, after I posted the correction, which didn't exist in the original post. Again, if you meant it, fine, my bad, but you absolutely did not say it, and there was no way to know from the original post if you actually knew about the change to tokens or not.
  1. Zyrosis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Wretchedmist View Post
    I'm fine with the randomness of legendaries and that some are much better than others, just as long as they don't tune raids, mythic+, or any content around the expectation that people have x-legendaries. The same goes for maxing out artifact weapons. Love the system, just as long as raids aren't tuned around it. Unfortunately they haven't done this, and it's creating problems as we move deeper into the expansion. Nighthold (mainly mythic) has created problems for raiding guilds due (in part) to this issue. We have great reliable raiders who have a wealth of experience, but not all of them have the time to max out 1-2 artifact weapon specs, nor the time to farm up legendaries. Alts are out of the equation entirely this time around if you're trying to maintain decent raid progression and manage all of the things that go with that, such as retention, motivation, etc. Mythic Emerald Nightmare had a nice natural progression. Mythic Nighthold does not.
    I totally get where you're coming from, and it would be nice if it could work that way, but it really can't. They have to tune around that stuff or the raids become far too easy. And if the content becomes too easy, people clear the raids faster and quit faster to wait for the next tier, or not come back at all.
  1. Rivin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joebob42 View Post
    The context was there. It was there since MoP. If you had any idea how MoP tokens, reforging, etc. have worked since the beginning of the game, I wouldn't have needed to spell it out to you. I'm not going to write a ten page proof for every post. If you don't understand what someone else is saying, then ask. I make my posts based on the assumption that people in these forums understand the history of WoW.
    I knew about the change to tokens. Obviously. It was not clear if YOU did based on your post, however. Thus, I replied with the current information, in case you didn't know about it. If you want to argue against something effectively, you need to have up-to-date information, and it sounded like you were arguing with outdated information. But it seems like you just want to be angry and rant at someone, and my foolish attempt to help simply opened myself up as a target, so I'm not going to continue humoring you with replies.
  1. Thelxi's Avatar
    This should be 20 minutes of discussing RNG. This is dribble.
  1. Redroniksre's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by joebob42 View Post
    If you right-click on an item, it opens the reforge menu to allow you to swap the stats around. You don't have to go anywhere.

    See? I can make it work just fine too.

    Hell, remember when we had points we could allocate to talents? Remember DnD type character creation where you get a certain number of stat points to allocate as you please? There is no reason an item couldn't drop with a default stat allocation, but the ability for you to shift stat points around. They could implement restrictions of how many other stats you could shift points to, but that's neither here nor there.

    They could even make it a starting quest with each expansion to acquire and upgrade your "statmogrificator" item that allows you to adjust item stats. By the time the first raid opens up, you'd have your ability to reforge on the fly. They could even make it a gold sink if they wanted by putting a certain charge limit on the reforgerthingy where you had to recharge it back in town (like durability).

    There are any number of ways they could fix itemization where a higher ilvl item is ALWAYS more powerful.
    Problem with that is that people will then start to reforge on a boss to boss basis, and im pretty sure they don't want to add more stuff to do pre-boss pulls.
  1. Kellorion's Avatar
    Im so over legendary's, they really need to go away in WoW v8.0

    - - - Updated - - -

    And what of Naisha's gear, her 7.2 look is a banshee more or less, did they mean Maiev?
    And Im still wanting to tell us why we arent ever going to get Nightborne gear models.
  1. yetgdhfgh's Avatar
    Heirlooms are coming back SWEET!!!
  1. DesoPL's Avatar
    Important for me is classic timewalking, i even asked question and no respond.

    *Middle finger to blizzard*
  1. mmocd6ad878d9b's Avatar
    Ok this is without watching the video because its 1 am over here.

    Warforged and Titanforged was intended to make the upgrade feel like a bonus.
    Got 880 wrist from WQ when ToV was launched.
    That was with me until warforged heroic NH wrist, even then it was just 5 stat upgrade. Even tho I ran multiple +10 or +12 mythic dungeons during weekdays.
    Bonus is bonus but losing feel of getting something for harder content than cracking few nuts, gets boring fast =P

    The team is still looking at the tuning, maybe it is happening more than it should.
    TF is happening more than it should? If they nerf it I would actually be happy in a way. Less need to run M+ for that lucky BiS TF because "it aint droppin anyway since nerf"

    You don't need Warforged or Titanforged, you can move to a higher difficulty or mythic dungeons.
    No, but getting 900 titanforged items for your BiS trinkets and relics sure bloody helps.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by DesoPL View Post
    Important for me is classic timewalking, i even asked question and no respond.

    *Middle finger to blizzard*
    This, and timewalkin raids, was answered last QA btw. They are not doing it anytime soon because "old mechanics". They mentioned they might "look into" classic dungeons they revamped like DM, SFK, Scholomance, Scarlet stuff etc. But as we know. Look into = Not on our list for few years

    As for Timewalk raids, never going to happen because "they are balanced on old mechanics". You know, stuff like like threat mattering, mindcontrolling adds (oh wait BRF mythic), loads of trash, old abilities like remove enrage etc
  1. Sencha's Avatar
    The team would have made the drop rate of legendary items a little higher if they could go back and do things again.
    They should just have done the exact opposite... This dev team really can't do anything right.
  1. Europe's Avatar
    This is not encouraging. It's like they're ignoring the community.
  1. Gemeril's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Krovicz View Post
    This was such a waste. Like over 70% of those questions have already been answered in Blue-Posts or earlier Q&As.
    Gosh.
    It really was, the most pointless Q&A yet.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by nyy21nd24brwn32 View Post
    I wonder of instead of putting two traits on relics maybe adding a 4th relic slot for our weapons would give another place to help our weapons.
    You mean getting a fourth 'weapon' drop? No thanks. We've already went from needing 1/2 weapon drops to 3. Relics=weapons in previous expansions. Adding even more rng to weapons is an awful idea.
  1. TriHard's Avatar
    "The team would love to offer some of the armor from NPCs, especially bosses to players.
    This is usually offered to players by adding one or two of the armor set items from a boss to their drop table."


    They've said this every single year but they never keep their promises. We've yet to receive the most interesting armor pieces from both Sentinels and Sunreavers as well as other gear such as Warden armor.

    And I bet the new sentinel armor from the council boss in ToS is not going to be obtainable either.
  1. effs's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Krovicz View Post
    This was such a waste. Like over 70% of those questions have already been answered in Blue-Posts or earlier Q&As.
    Gosh.
    This happens in every Q&A. Except for the ones that reveal some release date.
  1. PowerGamez's Avatar
    "Tier 20 set bonuses aren't placeholders, the team does want feedback on them."
    Ignorance is bliss right?
  1. mmocfd1b0ab5a3's Avatar
    "The team wants to give players choice. If the Tier 19 two piece bonus becomes dominant, the team make changes, but currently you will be able to wear the Tier 19 two piece and Tier 20 four piece. This is an experiment."

    Experiment? There have been 3 tiers already that made this possible (T2, T3 and T6).
  1. morph4037's Avatar
    Artifacts have extended the amount of time players are playing their main characters.
    Well no fucking shit... Maybe that's because for some time it was a pain in the ass to even consider trying to level an alts artifact weapon on top of trying to max out a mains weapon.

    Some of these "answers" are more like "Well let's just state the obvious and not think about why things are the way they are!"
  1. quez's Avatar
    You can't trade loot from bonus rolls right now because the team wants you to spend that token on yourself.
    The current system hurts people way more than it could possibly do if you could trade loot from bonus rolls.

    I've bonus rolled several items which are BiS for others but complete garbage for me(or something i already had). The first member in our guild who got Whispers in the dark on HC managed to bonus roll it twice the following weeks..

    If you are playing with a group of people who would even think to force others to spend coins to trade loot you should stop playing with them. Blizzard should not have to design the game around this.
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