Does Ion understand how the azerite system works?

[kamuimac]

I always was a big Ion supporter and was in favor of many design decisions that were widely regarded as hated by the players (e.g. AP farming, legendary system, no flying...). I however do not agree with many decisions made in BfA but I think I am able to differentiate between each topic and have a separate opinion about what I like and what I do not like. I am saying this because hating on Ion seems to be a trend and I do not want to jump on that train, he was responsible for an expansion that I very much enjoyed and I usually give him the benefit of the doubt, but todays interview was something else.

After todays Q/A i am not sure if he really knows how the azerite system currently works.
E.g. it seems like he believes that multiple items with the same trait stack all their effects when they in fact only stack some (damage most of the time)
Then he says things like "There are a lot of traits that heavily modify the playstyle of a class" when in reality they are a really big minority and as far as I know none of them has nearly the same impact as a legendary or showet bonus did.
I know a lot of people hate Preacher here (a WoW youtuber), but in one of his videos he made a very interesting spreadsheet with all azerite traits and they modify your character and how to play it. After seeing that I checked for myself and it really is true: There are only very few traits that actually modify gameplay in a relevant way, not even close to what Ion tells us.
To make this clear because so many people hate on Preacher: I am not sharing his opinions about everything, but that spreadsheet is nothing else than facts. No opinions, no hype, just plain facts.

I am not really sure why Ion things the system works in ways in which it clearly does not work. Perhaps the current implementation in the game is wrong and he just forgot to mention it? I really hope so.

the answear to your text is - not everyone plays this game to chase absolute bis .

so those who dont will have ton of choices.

the only ones who dont are people for whom bis=sacred.

and those are meaningless.

[Shakou]

FYI op, Azerite traits that are not full on stacking is a bug. Plenty of them do. And you're out of your mind if you're seriously trying to tell me that Azerite traits that turn my colossus smash into a rage generator are not what we call "game changing". It is as game changing by every measure that matters as any tier set or legion legendary if not more so as a matter of fact, and ya it stacks as intended. No rage? Can't charge, no prob C smash 30 rage ur g2g.

[kamuimac]

That seems to be the sentiment of anyone defending BfA class design.

"My spec is fine so what are you complaining about?".


They can't seem to grasp that "fine" isn't a good metric and that a spec being fine in BfA is the exception. Not the rule.

and others who whine like crazy cant grasp that their opinion holds very low value as a singular customers.

people will be ok - like they have been for past 15 years

majority of playerbase really doesnt need 40 buttons to push - for them what is happening in bfa aka 4-6 button rotations + 2-3 offensive cds and 2-3 def one + 4-5 "flavour " buttons is already too much anyway to follow .

[Kaver]

I feel like all these systems (legendaries, azerite etc.) only make class balancing harder as they always favor certain talents to enhance the development of cookie cutter builds...

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In preaches own video he says some people will see traits differently and more impactful then he does, so no your not sharing facts.

Other wise I’ve gone though 5 expans with out azerite or legion legendarys so I see them as the bonus rather they are impactful or not.

Some people will always argue that a 5% damage buff modifies your playstyle. The spreadsheet contain facts not opinions.

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and others who whine like crazy cant grasp that their opinion holds very low value as a singular customers.

people will be ok - like they have been for past 15 years

majority of playerbase really doesnt need 40 buttons to push - for them what is happening in bfa aka 4-6 button rotations + 2-3 offensive cds and 2-3 def one + 4-5 "flavour " buttons is already too much anyway to follow .

I agree. I rather want an easy rotation and hard boss mechanics than a hard rotation and easy boss mechanics.

[Accendor]

the answear to your text is - not everyone plays this game to chase absolute bis .

so those who dont will have ton of choices.

the only ones who dont are people for whom bis=sacred.

and those are meaningless.

I think you do not understand the difference between BiS and Gameplay.

[Deleted]

You have replied to this thread like 14 times desperately trying to defend this system.

Desperately. That's the key word.

I'll ask again - what's the motivation? Does your Dad work at Blizzard? You can't handle having 90% of the other posters in this thread saying his work is "lacklustre" or "below par" or just plain "shit".

I could ask the same. What's your motivation for shitting on everything Blizzard does in every thread you visit? Did your middle school bully get a job there? Are your parents stakeholders at Square Enix or Bioware? Was your class nerfed? Didn't get a rare mount drop? Why can't you handle someone liking what you don't?

[SirCowdog]

I feel affected to the point of not being able to pick my main as they all feel lackluster now. Played around in Beta with all the toons I wanted to main. Looked up all possible trinkets and azerite combinations for them. It's sad and looks bad to the point of no thrill to play them. Sad times for an altoholic.

And this is something people who think things are fine should consider carefully. YOU may be fine, but if enough other people feel that their class isn't, they'll go do something else. Queues get longer. We already see constant complaints about people never seeing other players in the open world. Guilds get smaller. Raids happen less frequently. Etc, etc.

I'm not saying WoW is dying. But I AM saying that if all anyone ever does is ignore problems until its personal, then WoW dying is where that path leads, even if it is a long way off.

[Gaidax]

I always was a big Ion supporter and was in favor of many design decisions that were widely regarded as hated by the players (e.g. AP farming, legendary system, no flying...). I however do not agree with many decisions made in BfA but I think I am able to differentiate between each topic and have a separate opinion about what I like and what I do not like. I am saying this because hating on Ion seems to be a trend and I do not want to jump on that train, he was responsible for an expansion that I very much enjoyed and I usually give him the benefit of the doubt, but todays interview was something else.

After todays Q/A i am not sure if he really knows how the azerite system currently works.
E.g. it seems like he believes that multiple items with the same trait stack all their effects when they in fact only stack some (damage most of the time)
Then he says things like "There are a lot of traits that heavily modify the playstyle of a class" when in reality they are a really big minority and as far as I know none of them has nearly the same impact as a legendary or showet bonus did.
I know a lot of people hate Preacher here (a WoW youtuber), but in one of his videos he made a very interesting spreadsheet with all azerite traits and they modify your character and how to play it. After seeing that I checked for myself and it really is true: There are only very few traits that actually modify gameplay in a relevant way, not even close to what Ion tells us.
To make this clear because so many people hate on Preacher: I am not sharing his opinions about everything, but that spreadsheet is nothing else than facts. No opinions, no hype, just plain facts.

I am not really sure why Ion things the system works in ways in which it clearly does not work. Perhaps the current implementation in the game is wrong and he just forgot to mention it? I really hope so.

Honestly? I think you are just nitpicking and I am not sure why.

Other than that the whole premise of your question is laughable. I am pretty sure Ion understands more about Azerite traits than some random Billy opening random thread in MMO-C.

[FelPlague]

I always was a big Ion supporter and was in favor of many design decisions that were widely regarded as hated by the players (e.g. AP farming, legendary system, no flying...). I however do not agree with many decisions made in BfA but I think I am able to differentiate between each topic and have a separate opinion about what I like and what I do not like. I am saying this because hating on Ion seems to be a trend and I do not want to jump on that train, he was responsible for an expansion that I very much enjoyed and I usually give him the benefit of the doubt, but todays interview was something else.

After todays Q/A i am not sure if he really knows how the azerite system currently works.
E.g. it seems like he believes that multiple items with the same trait stack all their effects when they in fact only stack some (damage most of the time)
Then he says things like "There are a lot of traits that heavily modify the playstyle of a class" when in reality they are a really big minority and as far as I know none of them has nearly the same impact as a legendary or showet bonus did.
I know a lot of people hate Preacher here (a WoW youtuber), but in one of his videos he made a very interesting spreadsheet with all azerite traits and they modify your character and how to play it. After seeing that I checked for myself and it really is true: There are only very few traits that actually modify gameplay in a relevant way, not even close to what Ion tells us.
To make this clear because so many people hate on Preacher: I am not sharing his opinions about everything, but that spreadsheet is nothing else than facts. No opinions, no hype, just plain facts.

I am not really sure why Ion things the system works in ways in which it clearly does not work. Perhaps the current implementation in the game is wrong and he just forgot to mention it? I really hope so.

Alot of the people love to spread bullshit "none of them are interesting, none of them change your class" but here we go.

1. you mean how talents are two choices and how artifacts gave you 0 choice?
2. you obviously havent looked at them, for example here is some cool ones for warlock, some effect you some dont



Accelerent makes you want to try to keep this buff up constantly
CC makes you to want to snapshot your UA just before your other UA ends
CI makes you have a chance to make your next incin instant, not huge but does change things up
CC allows you to do extra damage on your next chaos bolts after summoning infernal, pair this with the "While your infernal is summoned, chaos bolt does more and more damage for each soulshard spent" boom mega damage
DM pair this with soul conduit and banm you got lots of soul shard refuding, a 5% and a 15% every soul shard spent.
DP not exactly amazing but will make drain life actually useable if your at low health
DC this is super good, if you pair this with lots of haste, you can get the cooldown of your summon darkglare super low!
FK you dont ever cast demonbolt hard cast, so this changes your rotation to make it worth while to fire it off when you get this proc!
IV this one actually makes drain life a good damaging spell every so often, so every lets say 50 seconds a 400 damage extra drain life, meaning extra healing too
lifeblood this one is really cool, it makes you want to use healthstone as an actual defensive cooldown other then just a little heal, as this will allow you to heal through some constant ticking damage by healing yourself.
MF like the other this allows you to refund soulshards, however this one is more based on aoe, allowing you to refund more soulshards as long as there is more targets
RH this has amazing cleave potential, get some good haste and just BLAM BLAM BLAM
SB This gives you the potential change to your rotation, causing you to hold your demon bolt charges until you dreadstalker then launch of all off
SO THIS IS MASSIVE start with 4 stacks, this is a massive damage increase for affliction, if you enter a battle starting with 4 that is huge
SC This allows you a longer duration burst, aswell as giving you abit of bonus soul shards after your demon drops.
UB ok this is the only one that does literally nothing other then "extra damage"
WB THis allows you to in large aoe situations to gather lots of cool int buffs!
EP makes you want to try to optimize the buff, making sure you blow up imps for the haste buff

THere is more but its hard to find them as the wowead thing is still abit buggy.



this does not even include some of the cool neutral triats like these ones here that i find super cool
(Numbers are wrong but this here is fucking amazing)(Makes aoe heal useful in single target healing situations)


3.green gear only has 3 rows, blues and purples have 4 rows and some raiding gear is said to have 5 rows.

So yes there is Azerite, there is choicers, there is cool traits that change your gameplay and rotation.
but alot of people have been "spoiled" by legiondaries, cause alot of set bonuses were really what these azerite traits are like, alot of people are feeling the rose tinted allready, go back and look at some of the most recent sets, and they really are just this, so for example.

Lets use some warlock example.

Vanilla start

Vanilla end

BC start

Bc end

Wotlk Start

Wotlk end

cata start

Cata end

Mop start

Mop end

Wod start

Wod end



It really is rose tinted glasses, teir sets only until really WoD were mostly just "this spell does 10% more" and "5% haste" it is real, and it is sad how many people try to pretend teir sets have ALWAYS been game changing, and even now teir sets dont usually change gameplay,they only are more fancy.

[OreoLover]

Yes, he understands it.

Not sure why this kept going? :P

Yes, some traits change the buttons you press.

[Deleted]

It really is rose tinted glasses, teir sets only until really WoD were mostly just "this spell does 10% more" and "5% haste" it is real, and it is sad how many people try to pretend teir sets have ALWAYS been game changing, and even now teir sets dont usually change gameplay,they only are more fancy.

So you left Legion out from your tier comparison and used the most overhauled class to make a point. Fair ... or is it?

[Deleted]

I don’t give a toss about tuning. Legendarys were a bonus you could get that changed your game play but we’re not a core part of your class. Tier sets were the same and azerite will be the same. If you take off any of them you still have your core class making them bonuses to that core.

a core class that plays like shit without the bonuses

Yeah great Design

[Zarvel]

Once again. Another post that is barely coherent.

Ignored.

The guy/gal does it on any wow thread he posts on. Either a troll or just bad at understanding things at a fundamental level and also at seeing the bigger picture.

Back on this topic though, of the 7 110's i have, the ones i play dps/tank specs on, if there's 1 gripe i have with gameplay at the moment, it would be clashing core talents and slowed down combat.

Prime example for this is Unholy DK's having Gargoyle, Unholy Frenzy and the ToS 4set bonus, all on the same row. What this leaves us with is a spec that just applies wounds, very slowly, and bursts them, very painfully slowly. No matter which talent you pick, you're missing 2 other core mechanics/talents that made the spec feel-good in previous expansions. Here lies the problem. None of the existing azerite traits can help modify the gameplay to fix core issues like the one i just mentioned.
Heck, DK's have been given mostly passive dmg modifiers as azerite traits.

As for the "raid trait" the ignorant guy/gal kept bringing up, how blind do you need to be to not understand that if you pick the raid trait, you are now denied the ability to pick the other trait that was probably bandaging your spec in the tiniest sense? There's an inherent flaw with the azerite system in that it's just the netherlight crucible, but reversed. the NC was only brought in to add slightly more flavor and a natural nerf to content AFTER people had all their artifact traits (30+ unique traits?) which had defined their class already.
One of the major mistakes made with removal of artifacts and their traits was to re-add the traits into the azerite armor or as a talent (which usually clashes with another core talent that's required for smoother gameplay), rather than adding the most standout one's as baseline passives/actives to the specs. If you're unlucky and do not get that one piece of azerite armor with that 1 trait you so badly need, tough luck. It wasn't so with artifacts, you already had them - legendaries(sometimes) and tier sets were purely bonus band-aids.

Then again, most people who contribute to threads like these aren't capable of seeing the big picture. Much better off starting a valid factual feedback thread on the official forums where obvious trolls get buried/hidden as soon as they raise their heads.

[Pancreatin]

And again wow will bleed more until it goes in to maintenece mode, even now its below 2 mill subs.I gues people like mediocrity. i.imgur.com/XRmAeAi.jpg

[FelPlague]

So you left Legion out from your tier comparison and used the most overhauled class to make a point. Fair ... or is it?

i left legion out cause as i mentioned since wod alot of them have become good, also i felt the point was good enough, but if you really want, and most overhauled class? those old sets still are the same as they were.


2A= literally just 10% damage
2De= I think this may have been differant at the time but was changed with the demo remake....
2Dr= Made just to chain chaos bolts, I guess it does change rotation abit to try sand force chaos bolts out.
4A= yeah no this is just more soul shards
4De= Same thing, just longer dreads
4Dr= this does change stuff somewhat, but not much

2A= nope niothing changed
2De= yes this does change rotation, allowing you to get out dreadstalkers.
2Dr= changes nothing
4A=doesent really change much other then the odd haste buff
4De= this also changes nothing as you cant really "keep uyp the buff"
4Dr= Changes nothing, its literally just "chaos bolt does X damage"

2A= this really doesent change much, it is so low it really never helps, and doesent change your rotation.
2De= changes nothing, all it does is increase dreadstalker damage.
2Dr= this does change your rotation, wanting you to pop a chaos bolt then incin to keep up the buff
4A= This doesent really change anything as of current cause allready we have been trying to constantly keep up 1 UA stack because of contingent, but it does help that build. So without contingent it would change it.
4De= changes nothing
4Dr= Changes really nothing other then maybe wanting to put atleast 4 seconds between your chaos bolts.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

a core class that plays like shit without the bonuses

Yeah great Design

If you think the core of the game is bad why are you playing the game?

[sam86]

i don't play with people who care more about being optimal then having fun so ya i would hinder them for my benefit and they do the same. and being competitive is all about being optimal.

so u and ur friends enjoy that if u have only 3 hours to play, spend them entirely doing half a dungeon, while other ppl run that same dungeon 3 times because they picking a class far superior to urs in everything

ya its being optimal even in your own reply you say being a paladin is sup optimal but still doable but not as good.

u still didn't answer, there are 70+ match at least in mythic 'world competition', can u spot the non dk tank in ANY of them at all? why u think a community of a game that sees literally every single match about a game use a DK tank, will ask for random non dk tank for a mythic+ dungeon ?

[Deleted]

FelPlague proves the thing : sets has always be "+X% to that ability", almost all the time. That's the feeling to complete a 4P bonus who was cool, let's be honest.

To me, any bonus that is a % increase damage/healing is a bad design and is not changing our rotation (I don't speak about numbers, even if a talent is a flat +100% damage to our DPS, i will always take the other one if it changes my rotation and helps me to deal with mono / AOE situation).
But you can't have all talents and azerite system doing that, that's just impossible :/.

So... I don't know what to expect from BfA, but i just hope there will be at least 3-4 cool azerite talents that change rotation and allow us to play the same way but with differents nuances like new procs or buff to maintain to track with WeakAura...etc.

I don't ask anything more !

[digichi]

From what I read for the Azerite effects for my class, technically yes many can be game changing, but whether they're as fun as legion's effects will be hard to say. (Note, they will likely be impactful either way, because they're still buffs to your damage/healing/survival.) From what I see, traits definitely are simpler legendary effects/ crucible buffs/set piece bonuses. But in combination you could specialise just as well with this system into m+ or raiding content, aoe or single target.

(Zauber #269498) Increases the duration of Rejuvenation by 1.0 sec and the total healing of Rejuvenation by (7 * 6).

(Zauber #278513) Ysera's Gift now heals every 4 sec, and heals for an additional 25 for each of your active Rejuvenations.

(Zauber #274432) If Rejuvenation is your only Heal over Time effect on the target, increase the healing of Rejuvenation by 46.

As a resto druid, I'd probably try to combine all the rejuv azerite pieces to turn into a powerhouse for raid content. Traits that are more situational, like the swiftmend hot, the efflo burst heal and the innervate intellect buff will probably be good for extra burst healing in m+. In fact, the ones that don't involve rejuv feel like ones I would actively be changing my gamestyle to work with, and hopefully they will be as viable as the passive increases. If pure passives will always be picked instead of game changers, then there will be a problem..

[shaunika123]

In preaches own video he says some people will see traits differently and more impactful then he does, so no your not sharing facts.

Other wise I’ve gone though 5 expans with out azerite or legion legendarys so I see them as the bonus rather they are impactful or not.

difference is back then classes werent designed with an intentional expansionwide bandaid in mind, but were designed to stand on their own.