Battle for azeroth will end tier sets.

[Nospmas]

While I won't mourn the loss of the bonuses themselves. I will miss that start of a raid tier looking though all the sets and seeing which class has the best looking sets. Hopefully their will be enough different sets per armor type in a tier that it won't just be 1 plate set look, 1 leather set look, etc...

[Aaronioslo]

Is it so hard to make the next tier set bonuses better to the prior tier?

they are taking the lazy option every chance they get, and getting away with it

[Alextros]

except m+ will be the only viable gearing option since its spamable. everyone just log on to do 5 hours of the same 10 dungeons over and over and pushes to m+100 hahahaha. how exciting this expansion is going to be.

But how do we know that yet? What if the raid gear has some more lucrative traits than the m+ ones? Tiersets has been more and less a chore design wise, since all 5 (now 6 pieces) has to match all 3 specs in terms of stats, usually you would end up with 2-3 pieces of gear with suboptimal stats. On the same time they had to come up with new set boni every single raid tier. Now they can atleast reuse some of the traits, just stronger than beforehand.

[Deleted]

1-2 years ago: "in order for tiers sets to be fun they have to be like a 10-15% dps boost"
now: "tiers sets are too mandatory, they lock down player choice too much"

feels like your typical blizz 180 to me, shame they affect very traditional wow things like tier sets and glory achievements now.

[Aaronioslo]

But how do we know that yet? What if the raid gear has some more lucrative traits than the m+ ones? Tiersets has been more and less a chore design wise, since all 5 (now 6 pieces) has to match all 3 specs in terms of stats, usually you would end up with 2-3 pieces of gear with suboptimal stats. On the same time they had to come up with new set boni every single raid tier. Now they can atleast reuse some of the traits, just stronger than beforehand.

do you honestly believe this is not another round of push for m+??

[Onikaroshi]

But how do we know that yet? What if the raid gear has some more lucrative traits than the m+ ones? Tiersets has been more and less a chore design wise, since all 5 (now 6 pieces) has to match all 3 specs in terms of stats, usually you would end up with 2-3 pieces of gear with suboptimal stats. On the same time they had to come up with new set boni every single raid tier. Now they can atleast reuse some of the traits, just stronger than beforehand.

Now it's just "lets get the highest ilvl of the BiS traits!" instead of fun set bonus's and a reason to raid. May as well just do M+ like the guy you quoted said. It's a stupid idea, 13 years we've had set bonus's, and 13 years it's worked, YOU DON'T FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKEN.

[Alextros]

do you honestly believe this is not another round of push for m+??

Maybe, maybe not. We dont know how the gear is yet. For all we know, the raids might just give ilvl 1 transmog gear, although I doubt it.

Now it's just "lets get the highest ilvl of the BiS traits!" instead of fun set bonus's and a reason to raid. May as well just do M+ like the guy you quoted said. It's a stupid idea, 13 years we've had set bonus's, and 13 years it's worked, YOU DON'T FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKEN.

But what if the M+ gear has trash traits. Then there is no incentive to go farm for the Azerite gear pieces in there. And tbh, most tiersets aint that exciting anymore "10% chance to refund Combo Points", "10% more crit damage when using Colossus Smash", "10% more damage to Starsurge, -fall" "When Poison crits, you get 4 energy", "10% increased block chance"

I dont see the excitement in that.

[Keltas]

But they can do some crazy things with the traits on the Azerite gear tho. That can be something to look forward too. Obviously the flat % are boring but there could be different procs to choose between.

The problem with saying "they can do awesome stuff with the neck" is the same problem as when they said "20 size means bosses can have unique class mechanics".
they never did that. I bet all the azurite upgrades end up being garbage like 10% more X skill damage, or Y skill has a 20% increased crit chance.

I can't expect them to make it actually interesting until I see it, because they use that excuse on a lot of systems that end up being not at all more interesting.


Edit: This actually reminds me of an argument I see a lot as well. Art assets are the largest problem with new classes, and they already removed the "work" of new classes by releasing a 2 spec class. So they have literally nothing but dev time (which they obviously have excess of because art is the only thing they say bottlenecks) yet even with no art assets blocking the path we aren't getting all those "one off" classes they said they could start doing because they weren't restricted to 3 specs and tons of extra art?

I want new classes/specs. Those are by far the biggest hook for an expansion, yet they apparently aren't making any class changes OR adding a new class, they have art freed up, so where the fuck is all that class dev time going?

[Aaronioslo]

Maybe, maybe not. We dont know how the gear is yet. For all we know, the raids might just give ilvl 1 transmog gear, although I doubt it.

for it to worth 600+ wipes, blizz don't have a good enough art department

[A dot Ham]

Additionally set bonuses have always proven to be difficult for blizzard to balance.

[GreenJesus]

While I won't mourn the loss of the bonuses themselves. I will miss that start of a raid tier looking though all the sets and seeing which class has the best looking sets. Hopefully their will be enough different sets per armor type in a tier that it won't just be 1 plate set look, 1 leather set look, etc...

There will still be tier sets, but there won't be bonuses anymore if I heard what he said correctly.

[Ningjinq]

I have a feeling people who are saying “this will kill my desire to raid” did not have to be one of a number of specs that preferred T19 gear over T20 despite ilvl differences. Those specs had nothing to look forward to and some I believe don’t have anything to look forward to in T21.

[Theoris]

I'm confused. Are they removing class-specific armor models and replacing them with a themed set like we saw in LFR in WoD?

If so, not a fan.

edit: Bonuses are being removed, and it's one (themed) set model per armor type. 'Neat' to the first, 'not a fan for the moment, but we'll see' to the second.

[Mekkle]

Are they at least keeping class set appearances?

[Ningjinq]

Unless they radically change M+ rewards (which they might), in general it’s far too rng to get what you are after compared to being in a top end guild.

[Jastall]

I think there's several reasons for this;

-Head, shoulders and chest (IIRC) slots are going to be taken up by the special armor pieces affected by the Heart of Azeroth, creating too much overlap.

-Tier sets did not mesh with Titanforging at all. Anyone who still wanted T19 in T20 will attest to that, I think.

-M+ is now a viable endgame progression path, yet tier sets give a big advantage to raiders.

-This lowers the incentive to split run and do other silly things like funnel gear so that important players have their tier sets.

-Makes balancing easier for Blizzard because let's be frank, some set bonuses were broken OP.

All that said I'm still not certain it's a perfect solution, but it does make sense. I assume that doesn't meant the transmog sets themselves go away.

[A Chozo]

Since the endgame is the Transmog Set, this removal is mostly irrelevant to the main goal.

[Alextros]

Are they at least keeping class set appearances?

As I understood it, they are keeping gear sets, but not the tier bonus. So you would still have gear that is heavily class themed

[Onikaroshi]

Maybe, maybe not. We dont know how the gear is yet. For all we know, the raids might just give ilvl 1 transmog gear, although I doubt it.



But what if the M+ gear has trash traits. Then there is no incentive to go farm for the Azerite gear pieces in there. And tbh, most tiersets aint that exciting anymore "10% chance to refund Combo Points", "10% more crit damage when using Colossus Smash", "10% more damage to Starsurge, -fall" "When Poison crits, you get 4 energy", "10% increased block chance"

I dont see the excitement in that.

Statistically you're more likely to get better itemized gear from dungeons because they're just a broader variety of loot overall. Armor slots may have 1-3 options in a Raid while there could be 5+ in dungeons overall.

And some of those "boring tiersets" can full on change rotations, like lower cooldowns and resets, they might seem boring, but it's a reason to raid and much more fun then not having them.

[Ningjinq]

I'm confused. Are they removing class-specific armor models and replacing them with a themed set like we saw in LFR in WoD?

If so, not a fan.

My guess is they are going to go the route of ToV sets. Where it was unique to the zone despite not having bonuses. Hopefully though they have more than just 1 appearance for each armor set, or make up for the deficiency in diversity in other matters