4 Cool Things I Noticed Regarding Azerite Gear

[Azelas]

I am cautiously optimistic. I love the premise overall. No RNG being there, AT ALL.

Will have to see how it's ultimately implemented, but before seeing it, I'm optimistic.

[xcitng]

https://blizzcon.com/en-us/watch?v=516b9cd-00d45a3afd4

Enjoy.

Particularly the part at 25:36 where he states "We want these things to be about more than just raw power. We want them to be about how you express yourself as a character or as a players. And we want them to provide things that aren't just bigger, better, more."

then went on about lightening bolt dmg or ghost wolf speed

[Krekal]

I haven't heard anything about these azurite gear items giving us talents, let alone twelve talents. Is there a link somewhere to where I can read more about these "talents"?

[Maarius]

I haven't heard anything about these azurite gear items giving us talents, let alone twelve talents. Is there a link somewhere to where I can read more about these "talents"?

It's basically this post on page 2

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post48910284

you find the source there as well, the Blizzcon transcript. This is a very early preview on the Azerite gear system which shows us the direction they want to go. They want us to have meaningful choices, which change your playstyle. The example (ghost wolf speedboost and defensive astral form) already shows us that you'd have to decide between two different playstyles.

People complain that these decisions are equal to "minor" traits (like +3% more damage) but I can't see how they come to this conclusion. To me it seems more like an addition to the talent tree, which also works like this: you chose a talent which alters your playstlye.

It's easy to see why they do this instead of giving us a new row or two in the talent tree... because they would have to take the new rows away in the expansion after this, just like they do with the artifact weapons. They chose to keep a core talent tree and add further customization through expansion specific systems which will only be active in the specific expansion.

Talent trees in our current version of the game have passives as well as active skills, so I don't see it as far fetched that Azerite gear will also have new active spells as well. There's one talent in the center of the circle - maybe that's the active ability?!

Well, we can only guess at the moment, it's simply too early to jump to conclusions. All those naysayers seem to really enjoy doing this though, so why shouldn't we also have a bit fun speculating about a good future? I'm pretty positive that Blizzard works on a fun experience, why shouldn't they?

[Taeldorian]

I hope they aren't all passives too...... But the examples they showed at Blizzcon were 100% all passives.

Even the example used earlier in this thread was literally:

"Choose between a speed boost to Ghost Wolf or Extra Damage reduction on Astral Shift"
"Do I want to get out of the fire faster or take less damage from it?"


That's what they call "interesting and exciting". If you're at Blizzcon trying to drum up excitement - when the playerbase knows they are losing their Artifact...... Then wouldn't you have used a more exciting example?

Where are the new abilities? Exciting talents?

I'm all for waiting. But they are DEAD silent on official forums and Alpha forums. The Class Design forums are up in flames about pruning and gutting again.

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From what we know. Set gear is dead.

They alluded to there only being a THEMED SET for each armour class from the appropriate raid.

So what that means is if it's a Troll Raid. Then there will be a troll set for - Cloth, Plate, Mail, Leather. If they don't want to be super lazy then hopefully differing sets for agi/int and str/int in their respective armour classes.

I'm pretty sure Class themed sets are dead.

I know, I’m on the forums complaining about the pruning as well. I absolutely hate the design direction of removing abilities and making them talents. I think they need to make the abilities from legion baseline and just create new talents.

Again though, regardless of what the abilities are, it’s still incentive that we haven’t had in a very long time to raid mythic and that’s 100% a good thing. Very excited for that.

They never showed Azerite Armor gear at blizzcon though that was the heart of azeroth (the neck) so we have no idea what the azerite abilities will be.

In BFA we get:

1. Less RNG, a lot less. No RNG legendaries, Titanforging chance reduced, 3 pieces of gear and weapons can’t titanforge.

2. Incentive to mythic raid. We haven’t had this in awhile and legion lacked it completely. Azerite Armor is huge incentive to raid mythic because the higher ilvl the better stat wise and trait wise, making mythic 100% the best.

3. Pvp gear progression returning. This is very nice since legion removed pvp gear and put it in RNG lootboxes which caused a lot of people to stop since there’s no progression. May not be enough but it’ll at least be fun.

All we need now is classes to be fixed and interesting. I’ll wait until I see the Azerite Armor to fully complain about classes but I’m talking about the current design direction of removing abilities and making them talents in the forums. Hopefully they realize that’s a terrible way to go.

[FAILoZOFF]

TBH I'd rather have better class design/customization than these "boring talents on a gear". I didn't like Artifacts and Netherlight and chances are i won't like this new crap they come up with.

[Taeldorian]

All of the points you listed are indeed massive improvements for BfA. Couldn't agree more.

The only thing I would refute is that Azerite Armor could just turn out like Legendaries. In that you can't get the good ones to drop, because RNG. Here's to hoping they have the EXACT SAME drop chance as every other item on the boss.

My main gripe is with Class Design. They had great content in Legion if you took the disgusting RNG out.

What is good content though if your classes play like absolute garbage? Combat is 90% of the game-play here. If it isn't fun, what's the point?


I just hope for once in their god damn life they listen to FEEDBACK. They didn't at all during Legion Alpha.... Let's hope its changed.

I agree. That’s why there’s a ton of people in the forums spamming about it. BfA could be very amazing if they listen to feedback about class design and stop making baseline abilities into talents and replacing them with nothing.

I do want to think that Azerite Armor will be interesting since we’ve only seen the neck so far which was mainly passives (which they said was what they wanted the neck to provide). However still won’t stop complaining about class design on alpha until it’s clear they either understand this can’t be the way they go OR we see that Azerite Armor brings in some interesting abilities.

[Wildpantz]

Pure speculation you have no idea how the arnor work no info what so ever about replacing it every tier. They have said that azwrite armor scales from how powerful necklace is.

[ItsTiddles]

I'm really hopeful for one thing. Mythic+ azerite gear having talents specifically set for 5man content. That would mean if I have alt that I really want to focus m+ with I can just play mythic+ with to get the best gear suited for it.

2. Incentive to mythic raid. We haven’t had this in awhile and legion lacked it completely. Azerite Armor is huge incentive to raid mythic because the higher ilvl the better stat wise and trait wise, making mythic 100% the best.

I'm pretty interested to see what direction they take with m+ azerite drops. Right now we have one weekly guaranteed mythic raid ilvl piece, but it's technically titanforged. They seem happy with m+ as "alternate end game content" so I wouldn't be surprised to see if they give the chance for mythic raid lvl azerite pieces. It could end up being one of those "we're forced to farm m+ again" things though, since I can't imagine all gear being perfectly suited for one content vs the other.

[Taeldorian]

I just can't fathom that currently on the Alpha it's more of a pruned mess than the beginning of Legion.

Throwing all of your chips into Rental Items to fix class design is insanely shit.

You have prominent community members playing Alpha going - "This spec doesn't function at all". A lot of them are even using Old Legendaries off Flaskataur and it still doesn't feel right.

Yeah it’s really annoying. It’s good that we have people like Slootbag going through every single class/every single spec and running them through multiple dungeons to test them out.

I just hope they actually listen because it could potentially ruin a good expansion. Removing baseline abilities and making them talents? Really? I don’t understand that. They even said they wanted to un-prune things because they took it too far. It feels like we’re not seeing the full picture but I’m not really sure.

[Corroc]

I'm pretty interested to see what direction they take with m+ azerite drops. Right now we have one weekly guaranteed mythic raid ilvl piece, but it's technically titanforged. They seem happy with m+ as "alternate end game content" so I wouldn't be surprised to see if they give the chance for mythic raid lvl azerite pieces. It could end up being one of those "we're forced to farm m+ again" things though, since I can't imagine all gear being perfectly suited for one content vs the other.

I would expect them to make it easier to get azerite gear from m+. If azerite gear is just one loot in the loot table its going to force people to do raids since its always easier to target certein pieces in raid compared to m+.

[Taeldorian]

I'm pretty interested to see what direction they take with m+ azerite drops. Right now we have one weekly guaranteed mythic raid ilvl piece, but it's technically titanforged. They seem happy with m+ as "alternate end game content" so I wouldn't be surprised to see if they give the chance for mythic raid lvl azerite pieces. It could end up being one of those "we're forced to farm m+ again" things though, since I can't imagine all gear being perfectly suited for one content vs the other.

I’m assuming the way this will work is that mythic+ will have static azerite gear (as it can’t titanforge) that’ll be set at a base ilvl lower than mythic. Meaning, you won’t be able to get a piece of Azerite Armor out of your chest as it’s automatically titanforged.

So, if the base ilvl for mythic +15 is 940, that’s what the Azerite Armor will be from mythic+ Whereas from mythic the base ilvl is 960.

[Taeldorian]

See the whole thing is insanely worrying.

Just from us talking about this right now they basically seem like Legendaries.

They can come from all content? They are 3 locked slots. They provide "tangible" bonuses. There will arguably be some better than others.

Seems like RNG legendaries to me. Here's to hoping we get some info soon.

How’s it RNG? You kill the boss with the BiS azerite shoulder and it either drops or doesn’t. However, we have bonus rolls and 4+ pieces of loot drop per boss. Much higher chance of you getting what you want. It works the same way getting a trinket you want off a boss works, it provides a tangible bonus and is a locked slot (for some classes/specs).

They might come from all content (maybe just m+ and raids, would be insane to design azerite pieces for any other types of content) but that doesn’t matter because the best will still be from mythic raiding which is where the incentive is.

Gearing in general has always had slight RNG because whether you get what you want or not depends if the boss drops it. Azerite works the same way. It’s part of the regular gearing system.

However, the big difference between Azerite Armor and legendaries is that there were tons of legendaries (some dogshit some amazing) but there’s only 1 set of traits for the armor so you can aim for a BiS shoulder piece by farming the boss that drops it. If you mythic raid, you’ll farm Mistress Dogass until the shoulders drop which would be relatively quick with 4 pieces of loot per week+bonus rolls. Whereas with legendaries you could farm as much as you wanted but you had no idea if you were going to get Judgement stun helmet or Nathrezim cloak.

[8bithamster]

Why did this need a thread?

The only thing we know about Azerite gear is that it has minor traits on it. Nothing exciting.

The system will be garbage unless we get some sort of new ACTIVE ABILITY or a new talent tier from it.

We have lost so fucking much from Artifacts.

"lawl you don't know anything", there you have a point..

"The system will be garbage".. Irony right there, does your head not hurt from that amount of irony right there?

[Soulwind]

On the one hand, it combines most of the good from legiondaries, artifact traits and tier bonuses and gets rid of some of the bad (RNG, TF, number of locked slots).

On the other, we are replacing two or three class-specific tier sets with ToC-like armor type-specific sets, so in terms of transmog it's probably a net loss.

Comparable gameplay customization with less bullshit, but at the cost of visual customization.

I can't properly judge the whole system yet, but I'm not ecstatic about it.

[Soulwind]

Actually.

Tier wasn't rare when we had tokens drop that could be shared with people.

Now it is rare unless the RNG gods shine on you. Personal loot and bonus roll tokens don't solve this.

We have Heroic on farm and one of our Warlocks still doesn't have 4 piece. Gotta love bonus rolling AP 11 times in a row.

Uh... tokens are still there, you just have to set the loot to something other than personal.

If "one of your warlocks" is getting screwed by RNG, as a guild group (I assume) you could switch the loot for the bosses that drop the pieces he needs, so that the probability of that token dropping is higher.

Personal loot wasn't made to replace all looting rules, just to get rid of ninjas in PUGs. Loot rarity per player is the same, but the group can and should use the tools available to improve the overall raid gear.

[Leodok]

I just hope the traits will be meaningful and provide actual changes to the gameplay rather than "increases damage of X spell by 10%"

[Soulwind]

Are you telling me that on group/master loot, Tier Tokens with (Warrior, DK, Paladin) still drop?

I'm baffled if that's true.

Tier Tokens have always been used once they were introduced in TBC.

[Flame6]

If Azerite gear comes out and the ring options amount to 3% crit I will eat my Orb of The Sin'dorei. Quote me on that.

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Talents are earned through leveling, so if blizzard wanted to create progression at max level they can't use talents. Azerite gear is a practical solution to that problem. You earn them even after you level your toon. You can't make a new talent row in 8.2, 8.3. You can with Azerite gear.

your artifact weapon is exactly this. 3% crit for post game grinding. I don't expect much of a difference from artifact weapons.

[Doffen]

Are you telling me that on group/master loot, Tier Tokens with (Warrior, DK, Paladin) still drop?

I'm baffled if that's true.

Tell your guildie warlock he gets his 4piece soon enough^^

My mage also miss her last piece for 4-piece, but I only pug on that so I am screwed. And she didn't get her owl-trinket before it had gone 6 months in ToS. That trinket alone is worth just the same as one of the bis-leggos(arcane).

RNG is everywhere and it sucks for sure, but luckily, as a guild we all have the options to make it less rng

It seems BfA will be alot less RNGish than in Legion, but trinkets and weapons are powerful just like legendaries(as in Legion ones) so that RNG will stay the same as it has since 2004. My hunter never got Madness in TBC or Deathbringers Will in WotLK. Feelsbadman.