The lies and misrepresenttions of Titanforging

[Flurryfang]

For the Arcanocrystal, the problem lies with this specific item in a first place, which titanforging exacerbate.
For the second part, however, I agree with you. Harder content should be higher rewards, and not "higher probability of potential reward".

That's why, as I mentionned before, the discussion should be taken in direction of the NEW titanforging system which is coming in BFA.

Will the limitation of warforging on the weapon and the inability of azerite gear (helm, shoulder & torso) to proc at all will be enough to :
- Ensure a more rewarding experience in harder content ?
- Ensure a continuous upgrade through the other slots ?

I agree, that the arcanocrystal was mainly a problem with making a too powerful item, but it also showed that in a world with TF, Blizz can no longer really make super powerful items designed for a single tier, since the rest of the expansion might be affected its pressence. It is not a big minus in the book for the overall gameplay experience, but it leaves a big trap hole in the design process, where any good item might create the arcanocrystal problem again.

When it comes to the TF system in BFA, i will say this:
- Yes, the changes to the system in BFA will nearly without a doubt create a more rewarding experience for going into harder content. I don't know how much it will be better, but since we don't have legendaries anymore and since azerite gear are not affected by TF, we will without a doubt see a more people enter into a harder content tier with gear, that can be upgraded by the boss drop from those tiers.
- For this, i am not quite sure. Even with the removal of legendaries and the smaller pool of upgradable items, TF is still gonna have some form of effect. Watcher said at Blizzcon, that they are looking at tweaking the chance for TF to be even lower and maybe they can make it so low, that you can't really count on it happening over a reasonable X amount of boss kills. If that is the case, i would say that the continuous upgrade structure can be returned to a healthy level. If that is not the case, i fear that we will still see people, especially going from heroic to mythic, find that the reward for going up in difficulty is simply too small and that repeating the already beaten content is suffecient enough, even with not getting upgrades for azerite gear.

But yeah, overall i think you are right. We should really be looking towards the new system in BFA more. There are still many factors still unkown about the system in BFA, the game is still in Alpha so much can change, but there are still things like Azerite armor, weapons and the removal of legendaries to talk about

[SirBeef]

Titanforging has been one of the best parts of Legion for me, as it has allowed constant upgrades on basis of Luck nearly the entire Expansion.

Most people that cry about it think of not getting a TF as a punishment instead of getting a TF as a nice Bonus. That or they are just elitist fuckwads that get butthurt when an LFR raider has 1-2 pieces of 16 slots that may be as good as theirs if they were lucky enough.

Exactly. Too many people with too much of this negative attitude towards the game. I love TF, I love when something upgrades. I never cry foul when something deosn't. Similar to the bonus roll tokens. I just love when people bitch about getting gold(now AP) as if the bonus roll was a guarantee to get loot. It's just a fucking game. Relax and have fun.

BTW, love your name.

[Gaidax]

Of the core team of our mythic raiding guild, I have the third lowest item level weapon (989 at the moment, 960, 960, 955 relics). Some people have up to 14 item levels over me.

There's no lying or misrepresentation of what titanforging is doing right there.

Sounds like your guild's problem with loot distribution, not with the system itself.

[Flurryfang]

I still dont get were is the problem if you cap titan forging at base level of mhytic. Seems simple to me and still provides that getting better gear then expected.

Setting the Titanforge cap at base level of mythic is first of all not gonna solve the problem, as the problem centers around getting rewards for jumping up in difficulty. If you cap it at base mythic item lvl, heroic raiders are still able to get mythic gear and might find themselfs with some gear already better then the mythic gear, that drops from the first tier of bosses. Capping it at 5 item lvl below the mythic base lvl would be a good start, but not a complete solution in my opinion. If they want to put caps on TF, they might aswell set caps on both normal and heroic gear to -5 of the base lvl of the diffulty above them.

Then again, i just believe that TF does not have a home in a multiple difficulty raiding enviroment, where the primary reward is gear upgrades.

[HuxNeva]

I can to some extent come to your side on the idea of WoD being very void of real content. Everything was centered around raiding as the only content and it was pretty bad from a objective point of view.

But things have changed. We now have mythic+, which si actually a thing that is on the same lvl as raiding, so meaningfull content have on that alone been improved. I also think that overall, if you see meaningful content as content that gives gear upgrades, you are setting yourself up to lose, since we can only have so much of different gear content, before competion steps in and finds the easiests/best income of gear and funnel the playerbase into that. I think Legion have been quite succesful with creating meaningful content, which does not give a gear upgrade, either through rewarding AP or giving cosmetic items.

I do believe that WoD didn't actually have less content, but that since no meaningful rewards were tied to it the player base of a character progression game did not consider it lasting content. WoD had dungeons, and even 'challenge mode' attempting to give them a place beyond early leveling, but since any reward from that was merely cosmetic it was ignored as content by the vast majority of the player base. It did have dailies, just like previous expansions, but without rewards and emisaries of Legion those were considered 'done' pretty much the moment you hit exalted or sooner if you didn't deem the profession reward worth it. Just 'AP' as a reward is extremely lackluster, and due to the purpose it serves, a smooth gradual nerf through empowerment, which you can run a bit ahead on with exponential effort but not very far, in essence very unmeaningfull.
I do believe that without TF, the whole 'new content' of Legion, including M+, would collapse like a pudding and be a very, very niche activity just like before.

You say, that TF is elegant and effective, but does that mean you don't see the problems other people see, like the problem of having mythic raiders go back into older content(the stat trinket from jim) or the problem i specified in that people find less rewards in doing harder content, when the reward of raid difficulties overflow each other?

The farming for the trinket had nothing to do with TF, and everything to do with it being an unbalanced outlier. The 860 Arcano from Withered Jim, the 880 from Broken Shore and the 910 from Argus patchs were all 'broken' if you want in terms of how good they were, titanfoged or not.
Not having reward difficulties 'overflow' means effectively shutting down 'lesser' content for the intended audience. The spacing in terms of probabilities between the tiers is such that farming a lower difficulty when you are capable of doing a higher one is very unrewarding in terms of reward over effort. I gave a numerical example above showing this. If you think my numbers are wrong, pour in your own and calculate the results.

Your argument is that people misunderstand the concept, but this are problems people are being affected by right now, not something which have to do with their perception of the problem. When people can point out a system and say "this system is clearly and directly affecting the gameplay i experience", i would hardly say that misunderstanding concepts is the subject anymore.

But it is the core. Do the math and you'll see how skewed perception is. And I'm not blaming people for it, it is a confirmation bias that is innate. But that doesn't mean it is factually correct.

[Flurryfang]

I mean yeah you could more refine the idea but like i said it seems pretty obvious to me that as "easy fix".

Capping would be the easy fix, yes Blizz is just a bit touchy about TF, so it seems like such an easy fix is beyond what they dare to change.

[ohwell]

The lie here is the last sentence of the OP.

If you believe TF keeps anything "fresh" you got fooled hard into what they wanted in giving the false impression while artificially extending content.

[Doffen]

I only get Titanforged when I do WQs anyway. I got a 910 arcano from relinquished on my main though. It upgraded and I was in shock. Just to see the upgrade was adding avoidance. Whoop

[Deleted]

+5 ilvls is fine. Plus 15 or more is not.

A BiS list withing your chosen content is a good thing to have and titanforging makes that almost impossible

[andy123456]

I think many people who have problem with TF are sad because ,at some point of raiding or mythic+ run , they see an undeserving guy getting a TF and they are ranting about it though out the expansion.Does gear really make so much impact on clearing a mythic boss or higher key ??
A good raid team can clear heroic aotc with grp item well 940 even
an lfr guys getting lot of tf, will not be able to clear heroic if by luck he/she gets ilvl 950.
Ilvl does not have much impact on clearing mythic raid or higher key.
it is just rng thing

[HuxNeva]

The lie here is the last sentence of the OP.

If you believe TF keeps anything "fresh" you got fooled hard into what they wanted in giving the false impression while artificially extending content.

Ofc it is 'artificially extending content', even through exploiting for some potentially addictive innate behavior reinforcement techniques. That is the whole point. It is why Legion had potential replayability, and WoD had none.
If you argue content shouldn't be replayable, then that is a valid point. I like it, but it is certainly not to anyone's taste.

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+5 ilvls is fine. Plus 15 or more is not.

A BiS list withing your chosen content is a good thing to have and titanforging makes that almost impossible

We had that in WoD. It provided 0 incentive. It didn't solve the 'there is no content' problem. You can still make your own BiS list at every probability level you want.

[Mammoon]

My problem with titanforging:

Whether people admit it or not, Blizzard is balancing raids around titanforging.

If a raid boss drops ilvl 900 gear, it has generally been tuned around the group having ilvl 905-915 gear (for non-Method players). Why? Because with titanforging, it is a fair assumption that the group is going to have a slightly higher ilvl than what the boss drops.

This is a natural step. Players walk into the instance with ilvl 905 gear, therefore we can't balance it around ilvl 900, we have to step up the boss so every group doesn't 1 shot it.

However, you then spend hours/days perfecting your strategy and finally kill this new boss... only to have it drop a bunch of gear that gets DE'd. The boss drops all this new loot and only 1 piece of it is an actual upgrade (because that 1 piece titanforged) for someone, because everyone already has better gear due to titanforging.

What's worse, if some members of your group go into the fight with ilvl 895-900 gear (you know, the logical gear level... a level where you can actually get upgrades from the boss) then you feel gimped because the boss is considerably harder for your group (because it was tuned around ilvl 905-915 gear). Perhaps this isn't as noticeable on normal/heroic because there are generally a few people with higher ilvls who can carry the group.

Perhaps this is a Mythic-only problem (or last few bosses of the raid problem) and therefore people will disagree... but it creates an extremely discouraging system.

[Deleted]

Ofc it is 'artificially extending content', even through exploiting for some potentially addictive innate behavior reinforcement techniques. That is the whole point. It is why Legion had potential replayability, and WoD had none.
If you argue content shouldn't be replayable, then that is a valid point. I like it, but it is certainly not to anyone's taste.

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We had that in WoD. It provided 0 incentive. It didn't solve the 'there is no content' problem. You can still make your own BiS list at every probability level you want.

Incentive for what? Running normal dungeons in mythic raiding gear? People dont do that today either.

M+ is still there providing incentive for dungeons to be relevant without TF.

Its almost impossible to make a BiS list and follow it atm because half your gear will be TF'd version of random dungeon loot who just happens to be better due to higher ilvl.

[Magnosh]

I'm not against titanforge because of how lucky players doing less content than me might get. In all honesty I don't really care if they are running on full 980 gear without raiding. What upsets me is that I have to run ToS for a Titanforged set piece or worst NH for a super Titanforged trinket when I'm raiding 2 tiers ahead. Arcano crystal is another prime example of how problematic the Titanforge system is. If this wasn't the case I genuinely think that Titanforge was a nice system for a nice surprise to happen when your doing content just to help friends and stuff alike.

I rather live in a World where the max you can get is 10 item levels of Warforge and with Blizzard actually making next tiers set bonuses and trinket effects actually better enough.

[Gaidax]

My problem with titanforging:

Whether people admit it or not, Blizzard is balancing raids around titanforging.

If a raid boss drops ilvl 900 gear, it has generally been tuned around the group having ilvl 905-915 gear (for non-Method players). Why? Because with titanforging, it is a fair assumption that the group is going to have a slightly higher ilvl than what the boss drops.

This is nonsense, you want to tell me you can't kill mythic bosses when your group has heroic gear mixed with mythic pieces? Because I can assure you, it's not true. We have all our kills up to and including Mythic Kingaroth to be of lower or equal to mythic ilvl. Imonar - raid average ilvl was 954. And I can assure you the rest of the kills Varimathras, Coven, Agrammar - were not a function of ilvl but a function of having a pull where we did not fuck up mechanics. Maybe Agrammar was the first one where you could say gear mattered somewhat with enrage, but then you already have bloody full instance cleared and on farm by then, so you better have raid at 960, which is all that is needed.

And we ain't no Method, far from it and that is a bleeding edge content... Heroic is much easier, you certainly don't need frikkin' ilvl 960 to clear Heroic that drops 945... I'll tell you what - you don't even need ilvl 940 for it, people were pugging this shit second week, for god's sake.

[HuxNeva]

M+ is still there providing incentive for dungeons to be relevant without TF.

that incentive would end at 940, probably reached after a week or less, and from the on its just raid-log once or twice a week with 'nothing to do'.

Its almost impossible to make a BiS list and follow it atm because half your gear will be TF'd version of random dungeon loot who just happens to be better due to higher ilvl.

It is easy to make a BiS list if you you absolutely have to have something to checkbox.
Go to askmrrobot, select a generic character spec, adjust the filter for whatever TF level your grinding patience can stomach, hit 'Best in Slot' and out rolls your list. When you hit all or exceed, you're 'done'.
As far as I'm concerned (warning: personal perspective, your taste may be wildly different from mine) a BiS was a severely limited concept, resulting from a linear and narrow game vision. There has never been a more rich gearing meta-game, never been more contextual and situational opportunities for varying play-styles and strategies, than in Legion.

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I'm not against titanforge because of how lucky players doing less content than me might get. In all honesty I don't really care if they are running on full 980 gear without raiding. What upsets me is that I have to run ToS for a Titanforged set piece or worst NH for a super Titanforged trinket when I'm raiding 2 tiers ahead. Arcano crystal is another prime example of how problematic the Titanforge system is. If this wasn't the case I genuinely think that Titanforge was a nice system for a nice surprise to happen when your doing content just to help friends and stuff alike.

I rather live in a World where the max you can get is 10 item levels of Warforge and with Blizzard actually making next tiers set bonuses and trinket effects actually better enough.

I agree with you on the set bonusses. Because the later tier bonusses turned mre lackluster and TF extending older tier viability that was an outlier that should have been fixed, not by changing TF, but by gradually diminishing or sunsetting set bonus of non-current tier gear. The Arcano has been discussed enough and has nothing to do with TF.

[Deleted]

Sounds like your guild's problem with loot distribution, not with the system itself.

EPGP.

I'm not a mythic raider, and only do some M+ & heroic/normal/lfr each week.

My weapon has 960 (warforged +5 on Argus), 945 and 945 relics.

There's no lying or misrepresentation of what titanforging is doing right there.

(see, each person is another case, you can't take a specific exemple...)

You didn't understand my point. I'm running the same content as them, a lot more than some (M+), bit less than others (less M+). Just because of titanforging, they have a higher/much higher item level on their weapon.

[andy123456]

I'm not against titanforge because of how lucky players doing less content than me might get. In all honesty I don't really care if they are running on full 980 gear without raiding. What upsets me is that I have to run ToS for a Titanforged set piece or worst NH for a super Titanforged trinket when I'm raiding 2 tiers ahead. Arcano crystal is another prime example of how problematic the Titanforge system is. If this wasn't the case I genuinely think that Titanforge was a nice system for a nice surprise to happen when your doing content just to help friends and stuff alike.

I rather live in a World where the max you can get is 10 item levels of Warforge and with Blizzard actually making next tiers set bonuses and trinket effects actually better enough.

problem here is not TF , but poor item release system . like nerfig t19 set so that t20 could become powerful , t21 set for most classes are bad in compare to t20. generally powerful item should be released later in expansion.
what i am trying to state is that suppose an item x released in tier 22 and a item Y released in tier 23. Item y should be better than item x at same item level
releasing powerful item like arcono crystal at starting expansion was a mistake by blizz

[Difuid]

I do not get the OP. If the chances of getting a good TFed item is practically zero, then how does TF add incentive to replay the content?

[Deleted]

that incentive would end at 940, probably reached after a week or less, and from the on its just raid-log once or twice a week with 'nothing to do'.



It is easy to make a BiS list if you you absolutely have to have something to checkbox.
Go to askmrrobot, select a generic character spec, adjust the filter for whatever TF level your grinding patience can stomach, hit 'Best in Slot' and out rolls your list. When you hit all or exceed, you're 'done'.
As far as I'm concerned (warning: personal perspective, your taste may be wildly different from mine) a BiS was a severely limited concept, resulting from a linear and narrow game vision. There has never been a more rich gearing meta-game, never been more contextual and situational opportunities for varying play-styles and strategies, than in Legion.

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I agree with you on the set bonusses. Because the later tier bonusses turned mre lackluster and TF extending older tier viability that was an outlier that should have been fixed, not by changing TF, but by gradually diminishing or sunsetting set bonus of non-current tier gear. The Arcano has been discussed enough and has nothing to do with TF.

People keep clearing raids every week same with mythic plus. Gear isnt the only incentive but when gear is as random as it is in Legion its just fucking annoying whenever you DONT get a TF item from a high level mythic plus, cus you know you will most likely have a better item from a lower level one.

It deincentivises trying to get better and doing harder content instead of just mindlessly - endlessly farming lower level content.

TF brings absolutely nothing good to the game, luckily Blizzard agrees