Why isn't the heart of Azeroth like artifact weapons?

[oathy]

What I don't understand is Blizzard had a good system going. Instead of completely turning everything on it's head in each new expansion, they just added new abilities, talents, and new potential builds for classes. That (in my opinion) was enough to make everything new and fun again. With the removal of expanded talent systems and new abilities each expansion, they've been forced to come up with new and inventive ways of reinventing the wheel each time the level cap is increased.

Artifact weapons were probably the closest thing I've seen to them coming to getting something right in a long time and then they dumped Artifact Power on top of it and made it silly towards the end with getting billions of artifact power to justify the catch up mechanic. I know that a grind is required, this is an MMO after all, but some of the grinding that Blizzard puts into WoW these days is bloated and unnecessary.

Everything above is just my opinion. Please don't think that I feel you should believe this as well. If you agree with me, fine, but don't attack me for my beliefs and opinions. Thank you.

agree with every single word you posted

[Themanintobuildafire]

Getting a piece of Azerite gear 15 ilvls higher, then checking traits and seeing I would lose 60% dps with the trait it has over what I currently have isn't fun nor interesting.

Getting better gear should ALWAYS feel rewarding.

Honestly they should have kept the artifacts. Hopefully they come back in a 2.0 fashion. I am okay with different traits, but it was one of the best features of WoW in like 4 xpacs.

[Xorzor]

I also agree.

The Heart of Azeroth could have been an Artifact-like piece of gear. Like before, we earn AP in various ways to unlock more traits on the HoA. Unlike with the necklace, the traits on the weapons for the most part were relevant and highly usable. They could've even used old tier set bonuses (T17 onwards, when they started being separated by spec).

But nope, they didn't. Hey, ever get the feeling that maybe some (not all) of the employees who conceptualise and design these things don't think it all the way through?

[Thrif]

Because the artifact weapons were a boring, linear progression path. Azerite armor is in theory a lot better and more interesting.

... In theory, that is. They just failed at making the gear farmable, balanced, intuitive and actually interesting. The last part might have to do with it being early into an expansion, but considering how hard they dropped the ball on everything else I wouldn't bet on it.

[Deleted]

Artifact weapons were a cool (but bad) idea, you had to farm a lot of AP to stay competitive in PvP and PvE. There was really cool weapon talents, but I prefer azerite system a thousand times than artifact weapons.

[Noxina]

I like how some Azerite Traits actually can change your playstyle a bit (Like Executioneers Precision as Arms, where you toss in a MS every second Execute, instead of blindly execute after 35%).
I also enjoyed the Artifact 'talent tree'. Sadly they ruined it by having us grind billions of AP to unlock x% dmg at the end instead of just capping it when you'd unlocked all the traits.

So, in my humble opinion, a best of both scenario would be to have both; the artifact traits implemented into the neck, so everytime you gained an Azerite Level you unlocked a new Azerite talent point to spend. While also having the Azerite gear pieces with the different traits that can change your playstyle to your liking. HOWEVER they need to get their shit together and actually test traits before releasing it. BfA have been one huge Beta test so far, traits being nerfed/buffed left and right. "Oh look, I finally got 3 BiS, oh wait there they nerfed it to the fucking ground so it is literally useless now (looking at you Seismic Wave nerf, which I agree was way too strong, but again Blizzard overdid the nerf and made it 100% useless).


Here's to hoping they next expansion actually learn from their mistakes and instead of scrapping everything to start over, they continue what they have made and improve it.

[oathy]

You never know, much like the artifacts getting tweaked the heart could see the same. Maybe a mini-tree in the .2 update.

IMHO that would solve so many problems.
Because at the moment the neck feels like a complete waste of time

[Doffen]

Because te heart of azeroth is not as iconic as much of the artifact weapons lorewise and the implementation of such on the not last wow expansion was the biggest error blizz ever made since the people istill crying for their crazy powerful weapons and sad that they are only soldiers without them.

I think they thought they had to do something this big because WoD was such a failure. So they had to come back strong, and it seems they did with Legion. But then as you say, they made some problems for themself.

[rohoz]

sure buddy, doing the ww challenge near naked vs doing the tank challenge was definitely on the same level, especially during the first 3/4 of the expansion

None of the tank challenges were hard, though.
Once you got normal tomb gear you'd be able to do them with any issue. I will admit that I didn't get all in tomb simply because I didn't level all my characters in tomb.

It *is* unfortunate that there's no FOS for all 36, like there is for completing all 12 order hall campaigns.

[iamthedevil]

None of the tank challenges were hard, though.
Once you got normal tomb gear you'd be able to do them with any issue. I will admit that I didn't get all in tomb simply because I didn't level all my characters in tomb.

It *is* unfortunate that there's no FOS for all 36, like there is for completing all 12 order hall campaigns.

Seeing as how their was only 1 tank challenge i'm thinking here you may be bullshitting.

[rohoz]

Seeing as how their was only 1 tank challenge i'm thinking here you may be bullshitting.

6 diff tank classes, each class had differences between them. For instance, druid patch was 2x as big and some mobs were immune to physical damage (had to moonfire them)

You can believe what you want, though.

[iamthedevil]

6 diff tank classes, each class had differences between them. For instance, druid patch was 2x as big and some mobs were immune to physical damage (had to moonfire them)

You can believe what you want, though.

That was strictly to keep the fights in line with each other in terms of difficulty. It was still the same fight.

Druid would have been able to ignore the entire mechanic by taking the extended range talent.

[rohoz]

That was strictly to keep the fights in line with each other in terms of difficulty. It was still the same fight.

Okay, we're arguing semantics. The mobs were tuned differently and there were different tricks each tank could do to optimize. Point is, all 6 were doable with a little gear. Only tank challenge I completed post artifact instability is paladin, which I didn't play the entire expansion.

[Ferg]

My artifact necklace doesn't *feel* like an artifact...it's just a neck with some good stats that is a few ilvls below some of my other pieces.

It could have been purple, honestly.

[oathy]

It may have been on the roadmap for a while now considering the artifacts. If they don’t do it, I’ll be disappointed in the lack of evolution from the heart.

If they did go down that route 80% of the issues I have with BFA would vanish.

[Themanintobuildafire]

My artifact necklace doesn't *feel* like an artifact...it's just a neck with some good stats that is a few ilvls below some of my other pieces.

It could have been purple, honestly.

Feels like a stat stick like certain legion trinkets...nothing impressive about it imo.

[NotInTheFace0]

People complained, they wanted something different.

People complain, they want what they had before.

Tl;dr, people complain

[Halyon]

Tl;dr, people complain

GJ misusing a TL;DR...

[Ferg]

6 diff tank classes, each class had differences between them. For instance, druid patch was 2x as big and some mobs were immune to physical damage (had to moonfire them)

You can believe what you want, though.

this is not true, i have a druid and the tank encounter was the exact same

[TickTickTick]

If they created a new system like the artifact weapon, then people would endlessly complain that Blizz has no vision and how BfA is just Legion 2.0.

Oh I wish it was. Instead we got Legion 0.5.

OT: It's a simple case of "dont fix whats not broken", their fixating on "new features" each expansion (even though heart of azeroth is just a budget artifacts rehash) only to disable them come next expansion is ridiculous.

I think they lack imagination what else could they put in, but want to milk the cow as much as they can. They need fresh blood within their ranks. But to be honest who would invest into a game like wow anymore? With how the mmorpg genre trend is ever so dying and WoW engine / graphics are lagging behind year after year... Do you really see WoW being a successful game still in 2022?

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People complained, they wanted something different.

People complain, they want what they had before.

And how does the above conflict? HoA / azeirte is basically artifacts / ap but made worse. Like, you still level it, you still collect the power to level it, there are still traits that you choose from. Its not something different, its budget artifacts system with the same base / logic behind it.

Working towards your legendary cloak throughout MoP was something different when compared to only specific people able to do the chain quests for theirs like in Cata or Wotlk.
Working towards your traits and artifact level throughout Legion was something different to the above.
HoA is not different. Not in a sense of "new feature".

Then they were bold enough to take Legion mission table, make it the most useless, uninteresting and annoying as it could be, and implemented it in BfA.