Thoughts to improve azerite gear?

[Musubi]

Instead of current implementation what if azerite gear was:

Baseline flavor passive always gained (not on a ring) ie-dagger in the back, Rezan's Fury, Lazer Matrix, etc.

Outer Ring - 4 in spec choices so for WW monk as an example: Pressure Point, Sunrise Kick, Meridian Strike, Swift Roundhouse. Could actually tailor gear for Aoe v ST

3rd Ring - Secondary/tertiary stat boost... maybe a proc, a static, and an on use option

2nd Ring - survivability or mobility boost perhaps

A gold dragon type for center would be nice, but would exacerbate the +20 ilvl cant use til unlocked issue... so just keep bland +5 ilvl upgrade.

Thoughts?

[Nikkaszal]

Outer, Inner and Defensive rings ALWAYS unlocked as base

Azerite levels unlock up to four bonus of +5 ilvl

Boom, gear that works right off the bat and scales up with the rest of your WF/TF kit.

[Soon-TM]

• More choices in the outer and middle rings.
  
• Outer and middle rings are always enabled, AP gives a bonus to those traits.
  
• Spec-specific traits should always be more powerful than generic ones.
  
• Better balance inside each ring. Thunderous Blast anyone?

[Rustykeyboard]

make traits that synergizes with other players. remove the worst ones. remove dagger in the back, thunderous blast, those kind of traits. make more rings.

[Malikath]

put it all into the neck and get rid of azerite gear.
have all the dps ones actually interact with the class' mechanics like the better class sets used to do rather then being boring RNG spell cast procs.

[Uselessrouge]

remove it , give us sets back ... put all traits in the neck and let us grind that retarded neck for the full addon , that way they can say they kept this amazing feature , since i dont think they wanna get rid of it :P

[freddy090909]

I posted my suggestions in this thread: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20768597188

Essentially, what I'd like to see is the removal of "breakpoints" on Azerite gear. Players should be able to select traits as soon as they get a piece of gear, and the neck can scale the traits as you get more artifact levels.

As far as how I'd like traits to work, themselves: I really would prefer if traits were more powerful and there were fewer "stacking" traits. Each trait being something that actually affected gameplay (like legendaries and tier used to be...) would be a whole lot more interesting than what we have now.

[Jastall]

Outer, Inner and Defensive rings ALWAYS unlocked as base

Azerite levels unlock up to four bonus of +5 ilvl

Boom, gear that works right off the bat and scales up with the rest of your WF/TF kit.

Good ideas. On top of that, expand the pool of traits or rework existing ones to be more balanced/interesting. Traits should have, if not an active component, then a tangible effect that may change how you play a bit.

I'll take an example; Arms warriors. Executioner's Precision is in theory a nice trait that integrates Mortal Strike to the execute rotation. But it is so grossly undertuned you're almost better off not using it at all than trying to play around it. Meanwhile the best spec-specific trait is Test of Might, which is just a flat STR bonus based on how much rage you spend during Colossus Smash. Sure, there's a bit of a neat minigame to see how far you can stack it, but the trait doesn't do anything interesting, you don't play around it apart from ensuring you have 60 rage before using CS.

That's bad. Executioner's should be buffed, while Test of Might could instead grant Haste so that it at least speeds up your gameplay, or make it reduce the Rage cost of your abilities instead, something that affects the rotation beyond "more damage". Oh, and make generic traits worse than spec-specific ones, it is madness that Thunderous Blast outmatches most traits out there while being completely passive.

Also, future (Azshara raid+) pieces should have a level that unlocks a class-based ability, make it change functionality between specs if applicable so for instance WW monks get a large AoE whirlwind damage effect, Mistweavers get a healing effect instead, and Brews get a taunting AoE that reduces dmg taken by targets and clears some Stagger. AP increases the potency of these abilities up to a possible maximum.

[Th3Scourge]

Simple solution would be to have the traits scale with your Heart of Azeroth level and allow the azerite armour to be upgradable +15 ilvl or something. +5 isnt worth the effort

e.g. Lazer matrix does x damage * (1+ HoA level) or something like that

[McFuu]

put it all into the neck and get rid of azerite gear.
have all the dps ones actually interact with the class' mechanics like the better class sets used to do rather then being boring RNG spell cast procs.

Some do already.
We are still early in BfA. The big issue I see is it seems the raid Azerite traits are homogeneous across classes, when they should be class specific. I don't mind regular Azerite gear and mythic + gear having this baseline set of boosts that come off as artifact traits.
I'll be honest, I like the system, but as with all things in Wow there will always be a best choice. I don't know how Blizz could rectify that.
I think a path they could take would be to create extremely specific traits that would be extremely effective in specific situations. Example being traits that effect your skills to be very AOE based, or very target switch priority dps based, sustained dps based, etc... And then have the middle of the road traits.
As it stands right now, there are basically best traits, that usually end up offering very strong ST and are pretty strong AOE, there are "best" AOE talents, but they tend to be weaker ST and not really worth taking. There should be best sets for encounters or best sets for dungeons. Right now it's just best traits period.

[Th3Scourge]

put all traits in the neck and let us grind that retarded neck for the full addon , that way they can say they kept this amazing feature , since i dont think they wanna get rid of it :P

1 traits tree per spec on the HoA would solve the entire system. They could've kept relic pieces too and had them as socket items for the HoA

[Termak]

Upgrades not being limited to rng weekly chest or raids would be a start.

[vsb]

I like them as it is. I don't like progressing reroll cost (or any cost for that matter) because i love experimenting and already paying thousands. I think that reroll must be free and spec-locked. Other than that, I wish exactly zero other changes.