Patch 8.0.1 Hotfixes - Sept 26, Blizzard Responds to Azerite Armor Concerns

I like the response about reforging, not because of the content but because of the stand they take.
Wish they had the balls to do that on all of their decisions, instead of the usual backpedaling they play, like the little snowflakes they usually are.

It's almost like they could have avoided all these issues if beta testing was actually testing and not just some hype bullshit machine. A lot of people knew about these issues months before release and Blizzard subbonly knew best as always. So here we are... shit system for the rest of an expansion..

this is worst deflection and non addressing in any responsible matter then the 2016 elections o.o

That's right. If all Azerite traits are equally powerful, what's the point in the system then?

Just let us farm M+ for Azerite pieces. Why is that such a horrible thing?

Originally Posted by Fillerbunny

I like the response about reforging, not because of the content but because of the stand they take.
Wish they had the balls to do that on all of their decisions, instead of the usual backpedaling they play, like the little snowflakes they usually are.

Right? Who cares that the system is hugely punishing for no reason and no benefit? At least they're sticking to their guns about a fucking stupid design decision.

Translated:
We acknowledge that our complete inability to balance the azerite traits is killing the feature.
Since the traits have different power levels, they must be useful and interesting, and live up to our promise that they would alter gameplay in fun ways.
We agree that refarming traits is super not fun at all but we need to have you grinding as much as possible.
We believe that tuning the traits to the point they should have been at before launch makes them useful and interesting.
We intentionally made a high reforge cost to make you keep piece of azerite armor and need to farm every single one. Have fun with that.
Because new traits will only be added to all new gear we think the forced grinding and hoarding is fine.

This response legit makes me want to quit the game.

Originally Posted by Mushkins

That's right. If all Azerite traits are equally powerful, what's the point in the system then?

Well what people assumed and what was communicated about the system was this:

There would be traits for different situations and playstyles.

Meaning some best suited for PvP, Mythic+ and Raids.

The problem with this is that the cost of reforging the traits AND the fact that the gear isnt farmable means it directly contradicts that. Now instead of people looking for traits and armor for different situations it encourages you to only use the ones that work in all situations.

A lot of the issues with Azerite traits could be resolved by allowing you to farm them in Mythic+

Originally Posted by Malix Farwin

Well what people assumed and what was communicated about the system was this:

There would be traits for different situations and playstyles.

Meaning some best suited for PvP, Mythic+ and Raids.

The problem with this is that the cost of reforging the traits AND the fact that the gear isnt farmable means it directly contradicts that. Now instead of people looking for traits and armor for different situations it encourages you to only use the ones that work in all situations.

So I’m slightly confused about something. Why are people saying azerite gear isn’t farmable? As far as I know each piece has specific traits so I’m not seeing why you couldn’t just get multiple of the same piece or whatever and lock in diff traits? Am I missing something?

Originally Posted by Monkeymoo

So I’m slightly confused about something. Why are people saying azerite gear isn’t farmable? As far as I know each piece has specific traits so I’m not seeing why you couldn’t just get multiple of the same piece or whatever and lock in diff traits? Am I missing something?

you are not missing anything. its only people complaining about not being able to have their way and only their way.

as usual.

Originally Posted by Monkeymoo

So I’m slightly confused about something. Why are people saying azerite gear isn’t farmable? As far as I know each piece has specific traits so I’m not seeing why you couldn’t just get multiple of the same piece or whatever and lock in diff traits? Am I missing something?

Because the only way to get Azerite items in PvE above ilvl 340, is in the weekly m+ chest which picks a single item from every possible dungeon loot table, and from raids which reset weekly.

Originally Posted by Monkeymoo

Why are people saying azerite gear isn’t farmable?

because once you want to go above 340 ilvl, you are dependant on your rng weekly caches to acquire the vast majority of traits - so not really farmable unless you consider crossing your fingers and toes every wednesday morning farming

Originally Posted by Mushkins

That's right. If all Azerite traits are equally powerful, what's the point in the system then?

The point of the system is to have equally strong traits that (supposedly) change your game play, pending on which trait you choose, for whatever play style you like to pursue.

Idk about anyone else but as someone who has been enjoying bfa so far, also has gripes with the game but has so far not complained, the reforging comment seriously pissed me off. Imo it might as well be a giant ‘f@#k you’ from whoever wrote it to the players.

"The point about traits being "useless and uninteresting" is interesting considering that you also make the point of "every gear change requires simming." These two points are kind of at odds with each other. The way to solve the simming issue would be to make the traits more simplistic in nature. Similarly, making traits with more outside-the-box designs leads to more complicated questions of "is this better or not," which in turn encourages more simming. Either way, it's an interesting challenge, and one we're taking to mind as we move forward with traits in future updates."

This is possibly the worst argument i have ever heard, and the fact that it comes directly from blizzard themselves is the worst red flag. I mean this dude, this mentality is exactly why we have the problems we have ingame. I would bet u the dude writing here, talking to us, barely even plays wow.

like legit. How does having to sim gear indicate any sort of gameplay complexity? when we fucking have 0 info about the effect, at all. How do we value an arbituary 500 haste vs 120 agility vs 1200 dmg on a X PPM? Simming is how we value it.
How are the points of traits being passive number increases come at odds with traits being useless and uninteresting.
How?
Legit, how the fuck?

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

We added the reforging system to help ease cases like, for example, a DPS who suddenly finds themselves needing to transition to being their guild's main tank, not as a means for constantly re-adjusting traits like a second set of talent points. Maybe the current system isn't achieving that, but if it isn't, we're likely to become MORE restrictive on reforging, not less.

Noice.

Originally Posted by Dizzeeyooo

because once you want to go above 340 ilvl, you are dependant on your rng weekly caches to acquire the vast majority of traits - so not really farmable unless you consider crossing your fingers and toes every wednesday morning farming

Oh ok I see. So azerite gear won’t drop from a completed M+ but it CAN drop from the weekly cache? I thought there was no azerite gear in M+ period, completed runs or weekly chest. Yeah, that is annoying.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

And finally, regarding the tuning passes: like I mentioned, we think we've got most of the major outliers dialed in to an acceptable level at this point.

As is becoming increasingly common, what they "think" about game balance is far from reality. Or, the definition of "acceptable level" is analogous to Greg Street's definition of "soon."

Originally Posted by Monkeymoo

So I’m slightly confused about something. Why are people saying azerite gear isn’t farmable? As far as I know each piece has specific traits so I’m not seeing why you couldn’t just get multiple of the same piece or whatever and lock in diff traits? Am I missing something?

Its not farmable because the entirety of m+ azerite gear is knly obtainable by a once a week rng roll

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

First off, thanks for putting this thread together. Even if phrases like "Worst Itemization in WoW's History" are a bit hyperbolic (seriously, I can't be the only one who remembers farming level 30 dungeons for AQ40 resistance gear), you've summarized a lot of the discussions we've been seeing around the community very well. It really helps us clarify exactly what we need to be focusing on.

The vanilla analogy makes the current system look even worse. In vanilla you knew what to farm and where to farm it. Simple. In BFA you can't even target items which is such a fundamental feature that it's making it clear, in my opinion, that BFA actually does have the worst itemization systems in WoW's history. Or are you saying that head, chest and shoulders should be as rare as legendaries were in Legion? That's the only system that comes close, and it was solved by the end of Legion; wakening essences. You have solved this exact problem before!

Like, what even is the reasoning behind the scarcity above 340 item level? Is there some fucked up roleplaying aspect I´m missing here?

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Regarding targeting specific traits: I think we've said this a few times now, but just to reiterate, we believe that's merely a symptom of the imbalance between traits. Ideally, the gap between them isn't so large that you feel it would be hugely beneficial to grind out the perfect set.

This goes against one of the core aspects of loot-driven RPG games; Actually getting sought after loot. If your solution to the issue of not being able to get desired items is to make them undesirable, then you are in fact missing the very essence of loot-driven games. You are also telling people how their subjective enjoyment of the game is wrong which is complete folly.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

The point about traits being "useless and uninteresting" is interesting considering that you also make the point of "every gear change requires simming." These two points are kind of at odds with each other. The way to solve the simming issue would be to make the traits more simplistic in nature. Similarly, making traits with more outside-the-box designs leads to more complicated questions of "is this better or not," which in turn encourages more simming. Either way, it's an interesting challenge, and one we're taking to mind as we move forward with traits in future updates.

Jesus christ, no those points are not at odds with each other, and this is not even an answer to the core issue of actually being able to get the traits in the first place. A trait can be uninteresting and require simming at the same time. You accomplish this by 1) wording the tooltips so vaguely that players have no way of knowing what is going on and 2) you make all traits similar and passive with zero player input interaction. You have successfully achieved this with Azerite traits.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

I think we agree that re-farming traits doesn't feel great. I don't have a solve for that issue to share today, and to be completely transparent it may be something we simply have to accept as a downside to the system for other reasons. But we agree it can be a bit of a downer.

Well now I feel much more secure in my trust in BFA, thanks

Honestly though, throwing your hands up in the air saying "deal with it, we don't believe we can fix it" is possibly the worst response I have ever seen. It's far worse than not saying anything at all. YOU created this system, are you saying you don't know how to program a better system, or are you saying that the system is so heavily intertwined with other systems that no changes for the better can actually be made? I don't know which is worse.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

I mentioned the imbalance between traits before, but just to expand on that: that's why we've focused so much effort into tuning Azerite traits over the past few weeks. With this most recent round of tuning, we think we've gotten most of the really egregious outliers dialed in, but please let us know if there are any you still feel are so good that they're worth huge sacrifices in terms of item level.

See above, the issue is not solely the balancing of the traits, it is also the acquisition of the gear with the traits in them as well as the traits themselves being boring and passive with zero interaction with what I, the player, actually does in the game. That aside, you're actually missing the mark with the balancing, so thats a triple failure.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

As to the point about reforging costs: these costs get so high because we want the behavior you're describing -- reforging constantly depending on what you're doing -- to be unsustainable. Our intention is that you either build out multiple sets of gear for different situations, or you lean towards traits that work in a variety of roles (even if they're maybe not the absolute best for each in particular). We added the reforging system to help ease cases like, for example, a DPS who suddenly finds themselves needing to transition to being their guild's main tank, not as a means for constantly re-adjusting traits like a second set of talent points. Maybe the current system isn't achieving that, but if it isn't, we're likely to become MORE restrictive on reforging, not less.

Another contradictory system put in place here. Azerite traits are rare above 340 item level. There are also HUNDREDS of them in various combinations, so getting a trait is hard, and you might not be lucky and get the "right" trait for your playstyle. On top of that you add arbitrary restrictions to HINDER players from using that rare trait combination for more than one situation. The tank into dps into healer example is the go-to, but dps also have traits that work differently based on spec and talents and situation. Making it hard to adapt your gear to your character and gameplay, or as you do threaten to make it nigh impossible, is an arbitrary restriction on top of an uneccessarily cumbersome system. You worked for so long to get rid of these kinds of system, only to add them back. It is not FUN.

Here's an interesting exercise. Change the word "reforging" to "respec" and "traits" to "talents" in the above paragraph, and see how well it would sit with Blizzard's current system of talents and respeccing.