Azerite Gear concerns.

[Kathranis]

A lot of people seem to be making the mistake of looking at the trait selection on a single piece of gear and thinking that's where all the decision-making in the system is supposed to happen, but that's really not the case.

The decision making is supposed to be happen at the gear aquisition level.

In other words, it's not a matter of which trait you want the most on a single piece of gear, but rather which piece of gear has the specific traits you want, and which three pieces of gears will synergize together the best for your playstyle.

When you start to target specific pieces of gear with traits that stack or synergize, their effects become more pronounced, and you'll see that there are actually quite a few different options.

Also keep in mind that most of what we've seen so far is only the basic stuff. As new tiers of content are released, I would expect the effects on Azerite Traits to get more pronounced and gameplay-altering.


Essentially what you have with Azerite Armor is a hybridization of the Artifact, Legendary, and Tier Bonus systems, attempting to combine the best features of each system while limiting the drawbacks.

• The combined power level of any three pieces of Azerite Gear is supposed to be roughly on par with that of a Tier Set. However, the system is more modular, meaning that you don't have to worry so much about breaking a Set Bonus if you get an upgrade, and you can tailor the Bonus more to your playstyle.
• Each individual piece of Azerite Gear is supposed to feel unique like a Legendary, with additional traits that can augment or alter your playstyle. However, unlike Legendaries, they are less powerful overall so that you aren't shoehorned into specific builds, and specific pieces can be targetted so they aren't nearly as RNG dependent.
• They Heart of Azeroth acts as a horizontal progression path that allows you to unlock new Traits over time on your Azerite Gear, giving you an avenue to consistently and linearly increase your player power, just like with Artifacts. However, it's a far less clunky system, with built in catch-up mechanics, automatic AP acquisition, and it simply occupies a single slot of your inventory for the duration of the expansion.

That's the promise of the system, anyway. I'm not going to say they perfectly hit the mark on the first iteration, and honestly I don't know because I haven';t thoroughly tested it, and because we don't really know how extreme Azerite Gear will get as we progress into 8.1 and beyond. For all we know, by the end of the expansion there will be Legendary Azerite Armor pieces that will be just as impactful as the Legendaries we had in Legion but without all the RNG.


Currently the thing I'm most concerned about is not the power level of individual traits, because that's something that can easily be adjusted. If the 8.0 traits don't feel impactful enough, they can just buff them, or make the 8.1 traits more impactful. Assuming three major content patches with dotfives between each, they have six shots to iterate on the system and get it right. That should be plenty to hone in on the right feel.

No, what I'm more worried about is how each piece of gear has traits that are spec dependent, which means that for any given class, depending on how often you want to change specs, you may need to maintain from two to four different sets of Azerite Gear, potentially more if you want to try out different Trait combinations, and unlike wih Artifacts there's no quick and simple way to automatically swap everything out when you switch your spec. Obviously a pretty minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, but I think there's probably a better solution and it feels like a step backwards.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

See what a lot of people don't understand is Blizzard really isn't "removing" things from classes what they are doing is making each expansion a modular of class abilities that then goes away each expansion and is then added with the next modular in the next. So every expansion is going to feel like a massive slashing of the classes at the start and then should feel like they build up again during the expansion and then rinse repeat each expansion. Key word is "should".

The purpose/strength of this philosophy is so bloat doesn't become a problem and they can just make everything new and different each expansion without having it compounding layer upon layer and having to make all the layers work and balance correctly. It also lets you test abilities and if they are a real home run maybe find a way to work them in and keep them and maybe drop something off that wasn't such a hit from before and a good example is with a few talents they dropped and kept between Legion and BFA.

The problem with this philosophy is if that modular you design ends up being weak or even an out right flop than the whole expansion goes right down the shitter. It happened with WoD when the whole thing was built and centered around the garrison. The modular system worked pretty well in Legion with the artifact weapon. Will it work with Azerite Gear? Honestly it isn't looking amazing thus far but we also aren't totally immersed into the system yet either. Something you cannot really judge until about mid expansion.

[Nyel]

Also, unlike with Legion, the design intent is for classes to be complete without Azerite traits and for them to be an addition.

Fantastic how Blizzard completely failed with this though from a gameplay / fun perspective.

@Yggdrasil The idea of trying to prevent bloat is nice. The way they did it in BfA isn't. Most specs are pruned to Legion pre artifact / legendaries / t bonus levels. That's neither fun nor engaging. And instead of giving us class development over the course from 110-120 they give us a set of mostly lame ass passive procs from Azerite gear. So your actual gameplay on 120 is the same as it is on 110 (if we neglect scaling issues). No new skills, no new gameplay altering mechanics, nothing. Class development is bare bones in BfA and I really don't want to wait until mid expansion until they maybe introduce interesting Azerite traits.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Fantastic how Blizzard completely failed with this though from a gameplay / fun perspective.

@Yggdrasil The idea of trying to prevent bloat is nice. The way they did it in BfA isn't. Most specs are pruned to Legion pre artifact / legendaries / t bonus levels. That's neither fun nor engaging. And instead of giving us class development over the course from 110-120 they give us a set of mostly lame ass passive procs from Azerite gear. So your actual gameplay on 120 is the same as it is on 110 (if we neglect scaling issues). No new skills, no new gameplay altering mechanics, nothing. Class development is bare bones in BfA and I really don't want to wait until mid expansion until they maybe introduce interesting Azerite traits.

I wasn't really trying to debate if it was or wasn't. Or is or isn't. Mostly because I didn't and wouldn't judge Legion raiding as good or bad in the first couple months based completely around Emerald Nightmare. Just for example. I do and did admit that it isn't feeling like its going to start off to well though and I am concerned. It feels more like a garrison level modular instead of a artifact weapon level one. Which again I also kind of said.

Do I just have to be 100% negative or something? I bet that is the problem right?

[Nyel]

I wasn't really trying to debate if it was or wasn't. Or is or isn't. Mostly because I didn't and wouldn't judge Legion raiding as good or bad in the first couple months based completely around Emerald Nightmare. Just for example. I do and did admit that it isn't feeling like its going to start off to well though and I am concerned. It feels more like a garrison level modular instead of a artifact weapon level one. Which again I also kind of said.

Do I just have to be 100% negative or something? I bet that is the problem right?

You don't. And I really wasn't up to derailing your post or what you said. I just posted my stuff on top of some of your arguments (last paragraph of your post).

[Low Hanging Fruit]

You don't. And I really wasn't up to derailing your post or what you said. I just posted my stuff on top of some of your arguments (last paragraph of your post).

I got you. Apologies. It just feels like everyone on these forums isn't really attempting to discuss things and instead just want to burn everyone that has different thoughts and thinks destroying people in the community around them is how you accomplish getting your point across to Blizzard. But I see what you were saying.

Trust me I know the artifact gave SO SO much more up front and on top of that it also let you SEE what was ahead of you for the first stretch of the expansion. It also grew at a more steady pace from the start and then settled into the grind where honestly the armor feels like its just the grind right away that may deliver on an invisible and yet unseen rewarding reward later.

The armors reward seems to be just power reward. Power reward is nice. Don't get me wrong. Everything with the armor does make you a lot more powerful. But where it falls short at so far is are the choices and options interesting. Some are here or there. But most are just raw power thus far.

[HyperJay]

I posted this over on the General forums and got no response. Maybe people will take a look here and give some thoughts or ideas.

I'm afraid the traits on the Azerite Gear, as they appear right now, aren't as good as I'd hoped.

They say that the traits give you options, letting you pick which ones you want, but it's not really designed that way at all.

Example: On my warlock, on the average bit of Azerite gear's first ring, there's 4 traits. An aff trait, a demo trait, a Destro trait and a Questing/WPVP/Open World trait. This last trait is replaced by a Raid trait on Raid gear.

The second ring is a toss up of 3 secondary traits that are a mix of DPS choices. I'm sure someone will figure out which one is most effective.

The third ring is a choice of 2 defensive traits.

The final is just a 5 lvl increase.

This is for every piece.

So, there's no real choice here outside of the two defensive choices.

When you get a piece, you take the spec trait, or in case of Raid gear, you get the Raid Trait, as I assume those Traits are far more powerful and require you to be in the Raid for them to work.

Worse still, if you plan on playing more than one spec, you're going to have to get a completely different set of Chests/Helms/Shoulders for each spec you plan on using. And if you plan on doing War Mode, open world stuff, another set for that.

I really hope there's more to it than this, because this feels very cookie-cutter and not at all exciting.

Depends on where that gear came from. As long as its not "You have 1 Legendary you never take off, 1 for ST which you swap for AOE otherwise never take them off, also heres 4 armor pieces you will never take off for 2 buffs" Also you act like a new Chest Helm and Shoulder is uncommon for offspec. In legion for example some classes had 2 entirely different legendaries, probably different tier pieces for stats and then if the stats are different requirements then both rings, head, neck, clock etc etc etc would be swapped for better stats. Optimized Gearsets exist