No tier sets in Battle of Azeroth! :(

[Jastall]

Because Blizzard is trying to diversify their endgame, and having these bonuses be exclusive to raiding is weird when they're pushing for things like M+ to be an endgame in their own right.

Azerite armor is basically tier sets writ large; you can have raid pieces with raid-friendly traits, WQ pieces with WQ-friendly traits, PvP pieces with PvP traits, so on and so forth.

That said, dropping the class-themed aesthetic is due to saving resources and little else. I don't buy the excuse that they went through all the possible class fantasy permutations or couldn't come up with an Old God theme Paladin set or whatever. Hopefully it means we get more/better armor sets from other activities now that they need to design 4 sets/raid instead of 12, rather than have raid armor be head and shoulders above everything else in quality.

[shaunika123]

I think tier bonuses should stay. It's just there should be 5 tier bonuses, not 6, so people wouldn't abuse things like 4pc+2pc and wouldn't have to farm old raids hoping for huge titanforgeds.

being locked into one less item isnt exactly much of an improvement

the azierite system still gives setbonuses, that YOU choose and it only takes away 3 item slots not 6

it's one of the few changes in BFA that actually works

[crusadernero]

Guess they got tierd of making new tier armor sets for each class. Now they just make one for cloth, leather, mail and plate. Much easier, less work.

[Jastall]

And then there's DHs who have only 3 class sets >_> I guess I'll be using T19 till kingdom come.

That's my problem in terms of visual design as well. Yeah, some classes have a bevy of solid sets to choose from (Warriors, Death Knights, Warlocks). Others are far more starved for quality mogs, and now the well dries up. The Uldir armor sets for instance aren't too great IMO. They could fit a Priest or Paladin and... not much else to be honest.

In terms of visuals I think they could have gone with the base idea of the armor looking like it came from the raid, but with a class-based finishing touch where needed. For example, the plate set is golden looking which fits Paladins so no change there. But the Death Knight skin would have spikes and/or a skull faceplate added to it, while the Warrior skin would be battle-scarred, maybe along with a sword belt or a missing and replaced gauntlet to show that it is worn out and customized. The cloth set is the same for Priests, has glowing orbs for Mages, and fel fire coursing through for Warlocks. Just food for thought.

[KingKaom]

I was under the impression that most people hated the netherlite crucible

[capri sunset]

I think this could actually play a part in burnout this expansion. If we pretend that azerite powers in their final state will match the gameplay legendaries provided in legion, then we're strictly losing the kind of gameplay via set bonuses which changes tier to tier and keeps things a bit fresher. Add in the lack of class changes and loss of artifacts then it's going to get stagnant quite fast with little sign of change, they'd need to add more azerite powers and more slots as the patches go on so it's a little puzzling.

On the other hand, my m+ only alts are gonna be happy so pick your poison I guess.

[korijenkins]

Two reasons.

The first and most important, the devteam is too lazy to design new sets for each class. They essentially gave up, and decided that people would just have to be okay with the tier 9 TOGC model for gear. Blizzard didn't admit this was a reason until after they announced no more, but any sensible person knew it was.

The second, people don't like the set bonuses, and don't like being forced to pass on certain items to get a piece of a set. The simple solution is obvious, make better set bonuses, or even better, add different secondary variants for each item.

Essentially they're being removed because the multi-billion dollar company doesn't want to spend time or money on it anymore, but its being framed as being beneficial to the players, who are now receiving less.

[Vampyr78]

Well, technicly there will be more different looking sets at launch of BfA than there were at launch of Legion.

Legion had 4 leveling sets, 4 dungeon sets, 12 raid sets used in both Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold, mythic variants were just slight modifications, 11 modified Mists of Pandaria challenge mode sets and 3 sets for DH, starting, leveling and order hall. This gives 23 new and 11 reused.

BfA will have 8 leveling sets(4 for horde and 4 for alliance), it also seems the same will be with dungeon sets, so again 8, there will be 2 raids, one opens later so another 8 sets. Warfronts have another 8 sets with 3 variants each and there are another 8 heritage sets for allied races, 4 of them were added in Legion so we might not count them.
This gives us 36 sets + 4 if you count preorder ones and none of them are using older models.

[ceall]

Well, let's face it. Let's do some maths:
Before legion, we were locked in 4 slots for Tier.
In Legion, we have 4-6 for tier (depending on spec), 2 legendaries and the artifact. That's up to 9 slots, half of what we have in total. And we also only had 6 pieces of tier because of legendaries.
In bfa we're locked in 4 slots again, the necklace and 3 azerite pieces.

There Argument, Tier uses up too many slots is BS. Sure, azerite gear is can be swapped with other azerite gear, but it doesn't change the fact that we're locked into using it.

Oh and BTW, azerite gear seems to go online with ZERO secondary stats which further reduces our customisation possibilities. On tier gear, you had stats.

Just going back to 5 pieces of tier items would have been enough to restore the world to what it has been before legion (bad wording, I know, English is not my first language).

[Deleted]

Good riddance. No more 2p 4p bs, being locked down to like 5 peaces of loots sucks hard. Frost mage here. QQ

[nazrakin]

Well, let's face it. Let's do some maths:
Before legion, we were locked in 4 slots for Tier.
In Legion, we have 4-6 for tier (depending on spec), 2 legendaries and the artifact. That's up to 9 slots, half of what we have in total. And we also only had 6 pieces of tier because of legendaries.
In bfa we're locked in 4 slots again, the necklace and 3 azerite pieces.

There Argument, Tier uses up too many slots is BS. Sure, azerite gear is can be swapped with other azerite gear, but it doesn't change the fact that we're locked into using it.

Oh and BTW, azerite gear seems to go online with ZERO secondary stats which further reduces our customisation possibilities. On tier gear, you had stats.

Just going back to 5 pieces of tier items would have been enough to restore the world to what it has been before legion (bad wording, I know, English is not my first language).

The argument is not simply that "tier uses too many slots", its that having to wear x number of tier pieces to activate set bonuses limits gearing options.

In BFA there are no limitations except for the neck. Helm/Shoulders/Chest are not "locked", they're as free as any other gear slot since you'll have multiple options for each. So if you get a really nice chest piece in your m+ cache you can put it on without a second thought. If that happens to me tomorrow I'll toss it in the bank because I'm relying on my tier chest to maintain the set bonus. That is what people mean when they say they are "locked" with tier gear.

The only difference between azerite and non-azerite gear is that instead of choosing to what to use based on secondaries, you'll choose based on Azerite traits.

[ls-]

Well, technicly there will be more different looking sets at launch of BfA than there were at launch of Legion.

Legion had 4 leveling sets, 4 dungeon sets, 12 raid sets used in both Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold, mythic variants were just slight modifications, 11 modified Mists of Pandaria challenge mode sets and 3 sets for DH, starting, leveling and order hall. This gives 23 new and 11 reused.

BfA will have 8 leveling sets(4 for horde and 4 for alliance), it also seems the same will be with dungeon sets, so again 8, there will be 2 raids, one opens later so another 8 sets. Warfronts have another 8 sets with 3 variants each and there are another 8 heritage sets for allied races, 4 of them were added in Legion so we might not count them.
This gives us 36 sets + 4 if you count preorder ones and none of them are using older models.

Sure, but that's quantity instead of quality. Do we really need a buttload of sets that reuse decade old models for every slot, but head and shoulders, while properly done sets w/ additional 3D geometry and fx are fewer now?

It's 2018, Blizz showed that can make gear that looks like something done today, and not in 2006. But instead of making all newer sets look up-to-date, they decided to make more 2006 gear. I assume that their current tools make proper sets w/ 3D geometry and stuff too time- and resource-consuming to make.

I think at this point many WoW players are conditioned to accept mediocrity because that what we've been getting for ages now. Allied races w/ few customisation options, same face syndrome and various bugs? Yes, please! No new customisation options for older races? Yes, please! More "cheap" 2006-style gear in 2018? Yes, please!

[Deleted]

Probably because Legion was the class centered expansion, with your class hall, class storylines and cool class tier sets.

Battle for Azeroth is the faction centered expasion. Which means it's focusing on the faction war, faction storyline and faction gear like the Warfront stuff. It's looking very iconic.

[Neviriah]

I don't mind if BfA's focus is not on each class if it means that in the future they will have something interesting happen to us again.

Probably BfA is really just an expansion to guide us into a direction of much bigger things to come in the future. :3 who knows~

[SirBeef]

Now you're locked into 4 pieces ALWAYS.

3 of those pieces also don't have any secondary stats on them. Enjoy.

Oh no, less secondaries. Helps reduce power creep. It's a welcome change IMO. I don't have a problem with power creep but I understand the issues with in a constantly growing and aging game. Same with ability creep, which is why pruning is needed. We can discuss if it was done right or wrong, but it was sorely needed.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't mind if BfA's focus is not on each class if it means that in the future they will have something interesting happen to us again.

Probably BfA is really just an expansion to guide us into a direction of much bigger things to come in the future. :3 who knows~

Ion alluded to it in that these changes were made for the long term health of the game. Next expansion I expect to see a new talent per class/spec by level cap.

[nacixems]

Why there is no tier sets in Battle for Azeroth ???

This is Great news! bout time.

[Nefarious Tea]

The thing to note is that EN didnt actually have a unique set. EN and Nighthold shared the exact same model, they didnt even bother to recolor it for most of the difficulties. In this case Uldir and whatever the first "real" raid are should have completely different models.

Well with no tier sets there’s no real “intro” raid anymore.

[Hyral]

Why there is no tier sets in Battle for Azeroth ???

Easier to recycle old legiondaries/artifact traits/removed talents into azerite gear than work on new set bonuses every time.

[munkeyinorbit]

*refuses to make changes to huge class flaws because of class identity and lore*

*makes every class wear the same armor*

I'd mock Blizzard's logic as being flawed, but coming from a "do the minimum amount of work possible in order to cash in" angle, it makes perfect sense.

*mocks Blizzard's logic*
*Claims not mocking Blizzard's Logic*

This is the reason why we cannot have nice things.

[iamthedevil]

Because getting set and then not being able to break it has always been a bummer. I'm happy with the change. Put set bonuses elsewhere, not on gear you get stuck with.