Battle for azeroth will end tier sets.

[Nyel]

Sad to see another 13 year old feature "go" because it doesn't fit the recent design of BfA. I'm absolutely sure it will return in the expansion after BfA though because... it's Blizzard. They don't have a consistent design purpose.

[maccajoe]

Basically, kind of kills my desire, tier is one of the things i definitely look forward to raid to raid... now what? Trinkets? nothing separates raids from M+ now.

Apart from the fact that the gear from raiding is still raid gear.... derp. And as they said will have bonuses for the azertite system AKA the abilities in the raid gear will be different.

[Deleted]

A step in the right direction. No more being forced into items with crap stats or lower ilvl because of the set bonuses.

One thing they should consider is keeping class identity into appearances. Since we have transmog they could still add class sets (only appearance) that are unlocked through boss kills or even some other way. I.E. Kill all bosses of the raid you get a set appearance for your class.

[Deleted]

Reasoning behind this change is good I think, the parts about expanding choice will only work if the loot tables are opened up nicely.

In practice we will see if this works or not - the feeling of reward and satisfaction for completing a set cannot be understated

Separating raiding from the rest of the content I suppose is a good argument FOR tier sets, but that's not been Blizzards design goal for quite some time now, at least since the inception of Legion and Mythic + - Blizzard do not want Raids to be the only place to gear and be considered 'prestigious etc'.

After all is said however, until we have a detailed overview of the new Artifact system, we can't say whether this is truly a good or bad change.

[Keltas]

Here is a mindblowing idea, how about you raid because it's the game mode you enjoy? I mean you're acting like getting gear is your damn job.

I go into raids because I like the larger scale fights and the lore heavy instances. I also do M+, but for different reasons.

I play this game because it is fun, shiny loot is just a bonus, there will still be sets, but with apperance instead of tier bonuses.


This post just fully embraces what is wrong with gaming today "Why should I do this thing if this other thing gives the same reward?"... Oh I dunno Why does pvp players keep playing long after their benefit from it has passed, or why does CSGO players keep going match after match, or heroes of the storm?


The raid set or tier wont ruin raiding, people who only raid to get tier sets already seems to have. I do it because its fun, not because there is a tier set in there. A tier set with a bonus that only has the purpose to make further raiding easier... I mean what? Get out with that shitty ass mentality.

You can enjoy it as much as you want, other games have proven that raids without tangible rewards end up with mediocre participation rates and end up getting little to no dev time. It's bad for everyone who likes raiding, no matter what they raid for. Finding 19 other people who want to raid solely for the fun is a lot harder than finding ones who want the reward. Same with hard bosses like kil'jaeden, it's already hard enough to rekill, try getting 20 people to do that without rewards.

[Lynkeus]

You can enjoy it as much as you want, other games have proven that raids without tangible rewards end up with mediocre participation rates and end up getting little to no dev time. It's bad for everyone who likes raiding, no matter what they raid for. Finding 19 other people who want to raid solely for the fun is a lot harder than finding ones who want the reward. Same with hard bosses like kil'jaeden, it's already hard enough to rekill, try getting 20 people to do that without rewards.

Good point. Most people wants to be rewarded for things they do. So, other than set bonuses, Blizz needs to give incentive to players re-do the raids.

One thing can be done is to add kill requirements for some bonuses the Heart gives, but then they need to find a way to increase this bonus with re-kills. I dunno. Just a tought.

[Zephre]

I don't agree with this decision, I feel it just helps push raiding aside, for me personally I always saw tier sets as part of the progression both in terms of raid teams and personal progression. I'm very disappointed it's being phased out after all these years. I'm also extremely worried we'll be staring TOGC 2.0 in the face, that raid had a total of 4 sets each being almost identical to the last except for some small colour changes.

I can't help but feel this is them trying to shift attention to M+ and diminish raiding, tin foil hat to some no doubt, but I can't shake that feeling. I'd like to hear what they plan to do to compensate this as it's removing a significant reward away from raiding, without the reward, where is the incentive? For fun? People I know raid for the reward.

[thilicen]

Tier sets are going away in their traditional manner, but they also said they'll do crazy things with the neck 'traits' so they'll essentially move them there but instead of having fixed ones, you might be able to pick from multiple ones.

Which is fine, it's actually better if that's the case. A lot of people think this means these "Bonuses" are going away completely, but moving raid bonuses to selectable traits both adds customization (If you can choose from several) and removes the whole problem with choosing bonuses over itemlevel upgrades. Win/Win.

Hell there's even potential for adding unlockable traits for each tier that you can still choose from later on, which could really up the significance of raiding in order to unlock these.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't agree with this decision, I feel it just helps push raiding aside, for me personally I always saw tier sets as part of the progression both in terms of raid teams and personal progression. I'm very disappointed it's being phased out after all these years. I'm also extremely worried we'll be staring TOGC 2.0 in the face, that raid had a total of 4 sets each being almost identical to the last except for some small colour changes.

I can't help but feel this is them trying to shift attention to M+ and diminish raiding, tin foil hat to some no doubt, but I can't shake that feeling.

But they aren't going away, just being moved to the neck/azerite thing. Moving bonuses out of the gear and into another system frees you from having to pick gear based on bonuses over itemlevels.

[Deleted]

Basically this sound more like "we want non-raiders to have stuff as good as raiders"

Up until now - no, before Legion - the top gear was a reward for getting off your arse and forming a raid group and doing the content. The only way you could get that significant boost froma tier set was to getit from a raid. You could walk in public and everyone could see yeah, you'd done that raid. It was kind of like having a trophy on display or wearing a medal.

Legion already degraded that - the fuckign stupid system of having the most powerful items in the whole game drop at random from any level of content, meaning some boob who never did anything other than LFG normal dungeons or even just emissary quests could have them.

And then we got the stupidity of having mythic dungeons actually dropping better gear than Heroic (and something Mythic thanks to that other godawful thing called titanforging) raids.

Sure, you do the raids because you enjoy the content, but also because they rewarded you with stuff that was better than anything anywhere else.

If you were a raider, you got better stuff than non-raiders.

Effort=reward

But not in the next expac. You'll get a cosmetic.

It sounds tobe much more like balancing bonuses between classes got too much work, and they got too many complaints from people without tier armour about people who had them and did more dps.


As ever, the following applies:

"The dumber something is, the more likely you are to get it, and pointing out how dumb it is just makes the devs dig their heels in over it"

Remember all the complaints about the legendary system? The massive power level differences between good and bad ones, the way that the random drop nature meant that you'd end up with haves and have-nots that was largely unrelated to the difficulty of content they did?

Nothing changed. Not for months and months, and then the devs suddenly announce that hey those things sucked and tried to bandaid them.

[Qwetz]

Tier has been in the game since Vanilla, it's a part of raiding... Removing it is just sad and I hope they reverse their stance on this, non-tier raids just feel... empty and useless.(

Let me think what this reminds me... Oh, right.

Flying has been in the game since TBC. Removing it is just sad etc. etc.

Now, it is always sad to see old and established parts of the game being removed just like that, but I could not help myself with this - "Wanna bet they will bring sets back later into the expansion? With something similar to Pathfinder. And what could be an appropriate achievement name? Hmmmm... how about... Raidfinder? Hue hue hue."

[Aqua]

so they wanna kill raiding scene. truly truly brilliant

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can you link the source please?

...Kill the raiding scene because we don't have tier bonuses. Heh, yeah okay.

I see his point, It does not feel good having some ilevel 940 (example) piece of gear go unused because my 925 set bonus item is too important and my legendaries take up the other slots I could use.

[Deleted]

I think this is, overall, a good thing. It means devs have to spend no time balancing tier set bonuses, people don't have to gimp ilevel for the set bonuses etc, it's sad since some flavour will be gone from the game, but if they do this Heart of Azeroth thing such that we have what are essentially tier set bonuses in a different form and over a longer time, for ease of balancing.

If pulled off right, Blizz will have to do less work and players will find life easier, so I'm hesitantly optimistic about this change. But I guess we'll see after BfA launches.

[Nyel]

Let me think what this reminds me... Oh, right.

Flying has been in the game since TBC. Removing it is just sad etc. etc.

Now, it is always sad to see old and established parts of the game being removed just like that, but I could not help myself with this - "Wanna bet they will bring sets back later into the expansion? With something similar to Pathfinder. And what could be an appropriate achievement name? Hmmmm... how about... Raidfinder? Hue hue hue."

They will not bring it back with achievements during BfA but they'll bring it back in xpac 8 after BfA because Heart of Azeroth is gone and they realize how bad of a choice it was to remove tier set boni.

[Zephre]

But they aren't going away, just being moved to the neck/azerite thing. Moving bonuses out of the gear and into another system frees you from having to pick gear based on bonuses over itemlevels.

It also frees them up to completely neglect design and bring us back to TOGC with one set of armour fits all. I seriously don't want to end up back there with 4 sets of armour all different colours depending on classes, it was lazy and shoddy design.

Guess they got bored of coming up with tier set bonuses and having to balance/change them all the time. Easy solution...remove them. GG.

Typical Blizzard solution though " Oh this isn't working, better delete it " they've been doing this for years.

[Deleted]

You can enjoy it as much as you want, other games have proven that raids without tangible rewards end up with mediocre participation rates and end up getting little to no dev time. It's bad for everyone who likes raiding, no matter what they raid for. Finding 19 other people who want to raid solely for the fun is a lot harder than finding ones who want the reward. Same with hard bosses like kil'jaeden, it's already hard enough to rekill, try getting 20 people to do that without rewards.

THIS. Some people work cos they find the work rewarding and enjoy what they do.

But they are vastly outnumbered by peopel who work because they get paid.

The point is worth repeating: it is vastly more difficult to find a raid sized group who do it purely for fun than it is to find a raid sized group of people who want the reward for the effort.

Tier armour was always a great idea.It was unique to raids. Itmeant you got a big incentive to get people to turn up several times a week, to go through the wipes, because there was that carrot of a unique set of armour you could show off in the game, an dlet's be honest, a whole lot of the reason for playing Wow is to pose around in public lol.

I can;t imagine people doing that just because the Emerald Nightmare was fun. I can still less imagine them doing Xavius more than once.

It means killing the boss is the end of the reward cycle. It will certainly reduce the 'operational life' of a raid.

[Nyel]

Typical Blizzard solution though " Oh this isn't working, better delete it " they've been doing this for years.

One of the marketed features of the expansion after BfA:

"Enjoy a brand new gameplay experience with all unique tier set boni that make your class even more exciting!"

[xxcloud417xx]

Blizzard has proved themselves incapable of balancing class abilities, artifact weapons, tier sets, relics/crucible, and legendary gear simultaneously. Since the start of Legion it's been a balancing shit-show and I figured they had too much crap to balance out and some of them needed to go. I didn't think it would be tier sets, but the less they need to manage the better for overall class balancing.

I only hope that even if tier bonuses are out, there will still be class sets at least in terms of appearance. I play a Paladin for the cool flashy glowing plate.

[bmjclark]

Currently i have to drop about 6 overall ilvl to wear my tier. Honestly not really gonna miss tier as long as the heart of azeroth gives fun/impactful bonuses.

[Deleted]

...Kill the raiding scene because we don't have tier bonuses. Heh, yeah okay.

I see his point, It does not feel good having some ilevel 940 (example) piece of gear go unused because my 925 set bonus item is too important and my legendaries take up the other slots I could use.

Likewise it won;t feel good wearing a piece of dungeon gear because it's better than raid gear.

The whole point about tier bonuses was that it made raid gear the best gear. They stuffed that up with notmaking raid gear high enough ilevel compared to M+ content anyone can do, and even more with titanforging, which is nothing other than a hamster-wheel mechanism toencourage people to grind the same content over and over chasing a carrot.

[xxcloud417xx]

One of the marketed features of the expansion after BfA:

"Enjoy a brand new gameplay experience with all unique tier set boni that make your class even more exciting!"

Because being 942 equipped when I got 947 sitting in my bags is so exciting...