The lies and misrepresenttions of Titanforging

[impending doom]

Let me explain, I'm not saying that the majority of the gear drops titanforged, but it happens often enough that non-titanforged items become worthless on the later part of progress. I'm not talking about hardcore split runs, whatever difficulty you run, after two or three months of farming it and moving to the next difficulty, the only upgrades you get are titanforged. This happened to me on every raid since Nighthold. My gear has more pieces of 960+ heroic titanforged than 960 mythic, because my guilds farms more heroic bosses than mythic bosses. It's obvious that's not the intended effect of titanforging.

I'm not sure how it was on previous tiers, but now after 11 weeks of Antorus the majority of heroic/mythic raiders have just 1-3 actual titanforged gear pieces equipped (not counting the 960 gear from weekly chest because that's a different system). Having 5 or more is still very rare even in the top guilds.

Yeah some people are more lucky than others, but for majority the titanforging doesn't make higher level raid loot useless. More often the problem is wrong stats or having a legendary/tier in the same slot. Sure if you farm only heroic for 5 months you may have few more, but this is intented catch-up mechanic and a mythic raider would still have much higher gear.

The main problem with titanforging is the perception and people vastly overestimating the overall effect. But the same is true for all the gearing. For example if you upgrade 910 arcanocrystal into 960, which is extremely rare, the overall dps gain is only about 2%.

[Risale]

Perfectly statted 985 Chest... that breaks a very powerful 4set.

Or is slotted where your BIS lego is atm.
Had 2 titanforges drop for me as Frost dk belt and bracers 1 with leech other normal.

[Ealyssa]

Perfectly statted 985 Chest... that breaks a very powerful 4set.

Which isn't important if at least one of your BIS legendary is outside tier slot. Like most healers.

[Deleted]

One of the most depressing things about titanforge and warforge especially in wod was getting that bis item and being genuinely disappointed because it did not roll wf or socket.

Valor was a pretty decent way to incorporate how warforging should have worked but it was very poorly done, i think it was something like i did the first 2 weeks to upgrade all slots twice then i barely ever touched it again until i got another item but by then it had zero cost as i was capped all the time. I think titanforging could have worked if it used the valor system, if valor was more expensive but allowed you to constantly upgrade one or two items by 5 item levels per week to the cap it would have gave people something they could genuinely work towards. If you got an item that never rolled warforged or socket thats no problem, over time you could work towards making it be, if it did drop warforged or socket etc thats great, you can upgrade something else instead. Or because they insist on having titanforging be a thing alongside warforging, just have titanforging be the limit an item can warforge to, not some random super inflated ilvl jump.

ie, Items drop normally, can roll warforged, can roll with a socket, valor is earned via doing content, you spend that valor on upgrading an items ilvl or inserting a socket, when an item reaches ilvl cap it is titanforged. Item lvl cap would be dictated by difficulty it dropped in and that ilvl cap would increase as tiers increased similar to the legiondaries ilvl cap.

A system like that would have been way better in my opinion, especially when you consider the viability of builds in pve, some specs just do not compete in the next tier because of set bonuses being better for 1 spec, imagine if you could have upgraded the tier set you wanted to use so you could keep using that tier for the next tier, no longer would you be pigeon holed into whatever spec was best, you picked the tier you enjoy and you could play that next tier set for however long you chose.

Take hunters for example in wod, Beast mastery was great in brf but mm was far superior in hfc, hunters who wanted to be bm were forced to be mm in raiding due to mm set, the brf style just could not compete because of ilvl and hfc fights generally favouring mm set bonus, the gap would have been way smaller had you been able to have both sets at the same ilvl, obviously not identical as some raids or bosses just favor certain specs more than others but for the majority of players having the choice of tier sets would have been far better.
Spriests and demon hunters in legion, most prefer t20 over t21, but are forced into the t21 playstyles because of ilvl. If you could manually warforge your gear over time this would not be an issue for many. Yes mythic progress will always still go for the best spec but surely this system would bring more to the mythic race aswell by offering new variety and lower the need to split farm raids as much (it wouldn't really change much for mythic at all i concede but every little helps), would actually make split raids more fun if i could actually play the specs i enjoyed rather than having to learn every alt spec just to min max split raiding alts.

And it would have removed a big issue of why tier sets have been scrapped in my opinion, no longer would you have the issues of i cant use this massively inflated ilvl item because it would break my set, you would just have a warforged item being slightly better than your tier piece but you can warforge your tier or other pieces to eventually be titan forged, no longer would you have issues of your favourite spec is now considered trash tier because of a new set bonus that makes another spec superior, no longer would it be a pretty stale meta of every dps warlock is affli or every warrior is fury, you would have much more choice and diversity.

If you're not sold on that already, i give you the arcanocrystal situation, ignoring the fact it should never have actually been such a powerful item in the first place, praying for a high rolled arcanocrystal from tokens is soul destroying, it would have no where near been as big an issue if you could actually take a base one and just upgrade it over time.

At the very least, it would give people more things to work on outside of their main specs, a bit like transmog, done with your main specs tier? now work on a tier set that favours your offspecs more if you like, this gives more replayability and an actual goal to work towards for the people that titanforging is actually aimed at, rather than just grinding anything in the hopes that rng gives you a titanforged upgrade.
Also it would slow down and arguably remove the issues people have with titanforging in higher tiers of difficulty, while also removing the issues people have of completely outgearing new content on release due to titanforging.

But instead we got azerite which will hopefully allow something similar to this for the tier set issues, but we are still stuck with this stupid rng on overinflated ilvl items randomly popping up totally screwing with people to the point you're now taking items purely for the ilvl instead of the secondary stats it provides.

[ID811717]

@HuxNeva. I think you underestimate the capacity of TF in M+ You get 5 pieces of 940 stuff for 5 people per run. It's easy to outgear HM raid. My holypriest plays with more pieces from m+ than raid since T21 is crap. Then again, maybe the problem is M+ loot and not TF

When ToS HC was new content, my M+ pushing char got hardly any upgrades there... because I usually had better pieces from M+.

When Antorus HC was released, most of the characters doing (just) ToS HC and (lots of) high M+ keys were around 945 equipped. The moment of "I cannot get any upgrades from Antorus HC unless they titanforge" came pretty quickly. Right now, characters doing Antorus HC and pushing high M+ keys are usually around 970 equipped (965 if really unlucky, 975 if very lucky).

If you consistently do M+ keys, you eventually get a lot of titanforged gear that competes with mythic raiding gear. And this is good, because this allows anyone to push high M+ keys without necessarily doing mythic raids on the same character.

[msdos]

Usually when you complain about something, you complain about a problem or an issue, something that is negatively affecting your life.

That's what weird to me about the TF complaints.

To me, it looks like a bunch of picky nitpickers complaining about control. Is that what this is? Does everyone in here just want to control the game? You should create your own games, then you can make the rules and give design ideas.

[Deleted]

I like Titanforging, makes those relaxing runs in lower difficulties exciting and overall makes guildchat lively and whatnot.

I do understand the ELITE of WOW i.e. mythic raiders selling those boost runs to collect enough money to pay rent might dislike it.

[Critical92]

I can see the arguments from both sides. I was until the second half of nh an hc pug only guy. My itemlvl was a good amount over the mythic base itemlvl purely from m+,wf,tf and legys. Now i raid mythic with good results, 10/11.

The question that i have in my mind is, why does someone who only does nhc or hc need very high itemlvls?
Player skill aside, but even with nhc base itemlvl, antorus hc is not really challenging.
Why do someone need to kill the bosses even faster that he already farms after 1-3 full clears?
Atleast in mythic mode you have some very challenging bosses.

The first wf concepts (mop and wod) were how it should be.
I know that we play this game to become stronger while the addon is current.
But why do you want high itemlvl loot when you do easy content?
The effort vs reward in legion is off. Just go into an hc pug, be it rush, semi guild or whatever. Do it and count every wf and tf items you see in chat window.
Is the effort for that loot reasonable?
I don't think so. And don't come with the argument "tf is very rare". No, tf is not very rare. The +30 itemlvls are but 10-20 happen too often.

A good thing is that weapons in bfa can probably only warforge. Since some classes heavily rely on their weapon, i can see how terrible it would be, going into lfr and leaving it with an near tf cap one.
Now what happens if tf cap would be removed, because we will have no legendarys anymore?

Ask yourself this question.

TF is a system that should, in this legionform, not exist.

[Valette]

I really dont understand everyone using "It happens too often" as an argument against wf/tf - its not. Its an argument about the frequency. Which, by the way, blizzard agrees with you on. They have already stated they don't like people actively fishing for wf/tf upgrades, and will reduce the upgrade rate significantly come bfa.

[darklogrus]

I had a raid member during Tomb who managed to outgear Heroic and part of MYthic just with what TF/WF in normal progression. As for me personally, the highest I ever got was +15 on a trinket.. Otherwise its +5 or has a socket or leech

[alexchaos]

Imo TF is only an added layer of RNG over what we had before. Since Raids are designed around it, it just adds a difficulty to get better gear than the old system. In other words, more frustration because unless you get a TF on that new tier to replace the old one, it's garbage vendor.

Usually when you complain about something, you complain about a problem or an issue, something that is negatively affecting your life.

That's what weird to me about the TF complaints.

To me, it looks like a bunch of picky nitpickers complaining about control. Is that what this is? Does everyone in here just want to control the game? You should create your own games, then you can make the rules and give design ideas.

You have to understand that not everyone gets lucky with TF. If you are one of those people that barely gets any TF and when you do it's on a crappy item then you see your friend gets a 970 Arcano, then there's something negative to be found here.

[GreenJesus]

The problem is normal and heroic raiders getting mythic raid gear or better.

[Azelas]

the problem is for people who raid at a high level, who gotta go do shit difficulty raids on the offchance that you'll get a +75 titanforge for some fucking reason, or you gotta keep farming argunite to hopefully pray to god get a +85 Arcanocrystal because the system is so stupidly broken that trinkets from previous tiers ahve to be nerfed to the ground otherwise you see BiS lists for classes being full of gear from 2 tiers back, titanfogred.

Aside from that, I think people that do the hardest content have to ALWAYS be rewarded with the best gear possible. You have to show up every day, gather 20 people, have them show up every day, deal with loot distribution, get a guild, resolve drama, etc etc just to get a piece of gear that only slightly better than a heroic piece which you can pug from week 1? Hell it may be even worse. No it doesn't happen all the time, but when you put in a shitton more effort and time than other people, it's normal to expect to get the best out there, and not be outdone and get a worse trinket than some fucker who pugged his way to a +45 ilvl CoF.

[Deleted]

titanforging is fine as it is now, i have one character, that ive played since launch, i dont raid mythic (any more), and i have exactly 0 985 titanforged items and im 945 ilvl equipped..

I'm 970 without raiding mythic, what does mythic drop again, 960? When it doesn't even feel like I would be rewarded for doing the highest difficulty in a raid, then something is seriously wrong.

[Volardelis]

I keep seeing people use that word and they don't know the definition of it. Please tell me your progression. My guild has just started working on mythic antorus currently, and so far a lot of gear, despite it being higher item level than heroic, is being disenchanted, or people are just taking stuff for offspec. A 970 Terminus Signaling Beacon dropped. While my Raid Lead was saying "Wow that's a cool trinket." Nobody fucking rolled on it because everyone already had better gear.

The issue with Warforge/titanforge is that it can easily make running harder content pointless unless its for the challenge. Blizzard has the right idea removing Titanforging from weapons from BFA. They should remove it from all gear.

I do not think gear titanforging in LFR is an issue. It rarely happens. It's not going to help the person doing 200k dps suddenly git gud at the game. And if you're doing top tier dps already, that piece isn't going to help you that much if it's the same piece you already have just 10 item levels higher. It's nice but, mostly pointless.

Gear that is enhanced by the neck can't titanforge as well. Think chest piece was one of them.

[judgementofantonidas]

Fortunately, the game is not about morally justified reward systems. It's about entertainment and retaining subs. The point you are making there is irrelevant to anything real.

your rebuttal is irrelevant to anything real. see how opininon works now?

[Aggrophobic]

If you believe the forums you'd think that the average LFR or even WQ exclusive player is running around in full Anthorus Mythic if not close to 980+ ilvl. The 'culprit' of this epic max expansion loot fiesta is the 'hideous' undeserved Titanforging system.

Problem is: it is simply not true.

I've been playing on my main since near start expansion. On that character I have killed over 1.000 Raid bosses on N or higher, done over 2.500 WQ's, most related to Emissaries, ran 700 M+ instances on record.

The highest TF I have ever seen in all that looting is a +35 (once, on a useless trinket form a M+). Looking at guildies and the pugs I ran with, I'm most certainly not an outlier on the RNG spectrum.

Does that mean there has never been a +50 or even higher TF in the history of Legion? Of course not. There are 4 million players, and due to the network effect I'm sure everyone has heard from a friend who's friend told him that a friend of theirs was in an LFR where some guy was dropped 970 boots with a socket.

But that is not a 'common' occurrence. It has odds like winning the lottery. The chances are abysmally low, and basing your gearing 'strategy' on running content in the hopes of things forging beyond a +15 can be considered a pure waste of time. Even hard min/max'ers should learn this simple rule.

That girl in your guild that was running high M+ keys 24x7 will probably not have much if any of an equipped ilvl gain over the others that just did the weekly HC Anthorus clear and the single +15.

TF is a great system in that it gives the promise of getting a potential progression reward, albeit with diminishing probabilities. It is the foundation on which 'lasting' content is built. Without it, WQ's would be done after leveling, dungeons would be 'done' soon after hitting level cap, and raids would be done after checkboxiing 95% of your 'BiS' list. You'ld spend the rest of your days waiting for the next raid tier to drop, complaining in trade and on the forums about how the xpac is devoid of content.

TF keeps it fresh, and I hope it stays as is in BfA.

Well as an example then - The same week my guild killed mythic Gul'dan, my brother who playes the same class and spec as I did then, had only killed the two first mythic bosses but had just 2 ilvl less than I but with better stat distribution, stronger trinkets and both his BiS legendaries while I did not have thoes.

That should never happen. People that do not put in the extra effort should not be rewarded. LFR, WQs or anything as easy as that should never, ever reward gear that can be as good as mythic or high rated PvP. That is simply poor design.

You do not randomly reward people an olympic gold medal in swimming for going to the toilet. Same thing there.

That it doesn't happen that often does not make it any less of a crappy system. TF and WF has no place in the game.

- - - Updated - - -

I really dont understand everyone using "It happens too often" as an argument against wf/tf - its not. Its an argument about the frequency. Which, by the way, blizzard agrees with you on. They have already stated they don't like people actively fishing for wf/tf upgrades, and will reduce the upgrade rate significantly come bfa.

That only means you need to run the crappy parts of the games more often.

[Allenseiei]

If you believe the forums you'd think that the average LFR or even WQ exclusive player is running around in full Anthorus Mythic if not close to 980+ ilvl. The 'culprit' of this epic max expansion loot fiesta is the 'hideous' undeserved Titanforging system.

Problem is: it is simply not true.

I've been playing on my main since near start expansion. On that character I have killed over 1.000 Raid bosses on N or higher, done over 2.500 WQ's, most related to Emissaries, ran 700 M+ instances on record.

The highest TF I have ever seen in all that looting is a +35 (once, on a useless trinket form a M+). Looking at guildies and the pugs I ran with, I'm most certainly not an outlier on the RNG spectrum.

Does that mean there has never been a +50 or even higher TF in the history of Legion? Of course not. There are 4 million players, and due to the network effect I'm sure everyone has heard from a friend who's friend told him that a friend of theirs was in an LFR where some guy was dropped 970 boots with a socket.

But that is not a 'common' occurrence. It has odds like winning the lottery. The chances are abysmally low, and basing your gearing 'strategy' on running content in the hopes of things forging beyond a +15 can be considered a pure waste of time. Even hard min/max'ers should learn this simple rule.

That girl in your guild that was running high M+ keys 24x7 will probably not have much if any of an equipped ilvl gain over the others that just did the weekly HC Anthorus clear and the single +15.

TF is a great system in that it gives the promise of getting a potential progression reward, albeit with diminishing probabilities. It is the foundation on which 'lasting' content is built. Without it, WQ's would be done after leveling, dungeons would be 'done' soon after hitting level cap, and raids would be done after checkboxiing 95% of your 'BiS' list. You'ld spend the rest of your days waiting for the next raid tier to drop, complaining in trade and on the forums about how the xpac is devoid of content.

TF keeps it fresh, and I hope it stays as is in BfA.

Titanforging is simply a way to keep the carrot in a unhealthy way.
Titanforging simply has become the actual sought out loot for many people, and base gear ends in disappointment. The joy of actually getting an item is negated by getting it base line while the guy beside you gets it 10+ilvls higher than you.
Now imagine this scenario, which has happened by my experience several times in each raid tier: You are progressing on mythic Kil'Jaeden for more than 300 wipes and you finally kill him, after all the resources spent in killing him, you get the trinket you needed, but its base ilvl. The next week, you introduce new players to the encounter so they can kill it themselves, and the trinket drops again, but with 15~ more ilvl. The new guy (in the encounter not the guild) gets the trinket because you already have it. Do you think that's engaging?

In terms of the tunning process, titanforging trivializes difficulties to some extent, mainly the "easier" bosses in mythic raiding, which are usually just a small gear check with standard mechanics. However, this becomes more apparent the lower you go down in difficulties, since there're more and more chances of completely outgearing content of normal and heroic difficulties.
From my personal experience during the tiers of this expansion there has been no looking foward to loot anymore besides key items, such as tier sets and some trinkets. Bosses like Kil'Jaeden not even bothered to rekill because the investment was still big in the farming process than the actual loot dropped. People dropping out because "gearing is just bad right now, not worth it" from raiding. While I'm sure what Ion says about the actual % of significant titanforging is on point, the psychological impact on players is there.

Now imagine BFA, where weapons can warforge up to +10 ilvls. I'm sure that will be fun and engaging having your performance being trumped by RNG once again.

[Deleted]

The new guy (in the encounter not the guild) gets the trinket because you already have it. Do you think that's engaging?

Go whine to your raid management and don't blame this on Blizzard. And yes, that was probably a very exciting moment for that new guy

[Sinitar]

There is so much envy and self-imposed grinding in this thread that I don't even... Apparently, no matter how often you say to people that farming raids below your current level is optional, they are still compelled to do it due to the chance of a TF item, so wouldn't you say that this mentality is exactly the reason blizzard likes TF? It breathes life into the game, gives min-maxers something to do while keeping every raid difficulty relevant. Without TF in place, the PuG scene would be scarce at best, as everybody who does 2-3 full normal or heroic clears will have enough gear to say "ehhh screw it" and the whiners will once again whine that "OMG there is nothing to do! I've already gotten the best gear available for my spec so all I do is afk in dala!"

Let me tell you something. There will always be a player who has better gear and luck than you do, and a player who has worse gear and luck than you do. So why the hell would you be sore that the random mage who joined your daily dungeon HC run has a 940 ilvl arcanocrystal? Yeah, they got lucky, but if TF is the reason you consider the game unfair or unbalanced, then take a hard look at real life. Yeah, that's not quite fair either, is it?

You are progressing on mythic Kil'Jaeden for more than 300 wipes and you finally kill him, after all the resources spent in killing him, you get the trinket you needed, but its base ilvl. The next week, you introduce new players to the encounter so they can kill it themselves, and the trinket drops again, but with 15~ more ilvl. The new guy (in the encounter not the guild) gets the trinket because you already have it. Do you think that's engaging?

I laughed like, soooo hard. Before TF, you would wipe 300 times on heroic Sha of Fear and complain your trinket never drops Q_Q . If you want to whine, you will find any reason to whine, TF or no TF involved. Remember the times when you farm tier bosses and the boss that drops your tier chest never seems to drop it? Yeah, I bet that felt more frustrating than getting your damn trinket and then whining it's not as good as the one that dropped for another player.

Sheesh people, you keep finding reasons to justify how spoiled WoW has turned you. Now it's no longer enough to get your BiS items to drop. They have to be perfect, because real life is perfect as well, amirite?

Now imagine BFA, where weapons can warforge up to +10 ilvls. I'm sure that will be fun and engaging having your performance being trumped by RNG once again.

But your performance is already trumped by RNG. Or does every boss always drops the items YOU need because you are oh so special? I am sure you have never waited for more than a month for an item because it just wouldn't drop. /sarcasm