Return to class-based tier sets, yes or no?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Now that we've had the BfA-system for quite some time, how do you feel about it vs the old system of class-based sets with bonuses for collecting x amount of pieces?

Do you want them back? Are you happy with the current system? What changes would you like to see?

As for myself, I can say 2 things;
1) I miss having different sets for each class.
2) I don't feel as if I've had more freedom of what to put in which slot in BfA than I did during the tier-sets years.

So I would like a return to the system of tier-sets and class-specific looks on them.

[Barzotti]

Considering the tier sets were, in 99% of the cases, a bland damage/healing/tanking increase, I vastly prefer the azerite system. Not perfect, but allows for more customization. Looks and trasmog don't matter to me. I honestly have a hard time understanding all the posts "give us tier sets back!" What was interesting about them, except cosmetics? They were just stat sticks like the stat sticks trinkets.

And the azerite system has a considerable advantage for me: you can get azerite pieces without raiding. I like the current system despite its flaws. I wish we could use the same azerite piece for multiple specs without needing to reforge though, the same way you change talents when you change spec. Ah, and deleting the reforging cost: that's a retarded gold sink for the sake of being a gold sink.

[Okacz]

Considering the tier sets were, in 99% of the cases, a bland damage/healing/tanking increase, I vastly prefer the azerite system. Not perfect, but allows for more customization. Looks and trasmog don't matter to me.

And the azerite system has a considerable advantage for me: you can get azerite pieces without raiding.

I don't want to throw around conspiracy theories, but I think Blizzard purposefully made Legions tier sets bland and boring as hell so people wouldn't miss them when they were gone for BfA.

Yeah, during legion the set bonuses sucked, but before that they used to be pretty damn sweet most of the time. From hunter perspective, some of the best gameplay I remember was during MoP, when Survival with right RNG could machinegun shoot Explosive Shots (thanks to set), and WoD, when MMs main long-casted focus spender Aimed Shot was made instant (again, thanks to set). Those were VASTLY larger changes than anything Azerite provides, since most of those are just passive buffs, and like 1-2 per spec make a slight impact on rotation.

The main problem Blizzard faced was that tier sets collided with their new gearing idea, you can't both have 4 set pieces, an Artifact (neck in BfA) and additional pieces for customization. In Shadowland most of the customizable additional abilities/effects seem to be tied to Covenants tho, freeing up space for sets to make a return. I hope.

[Barzotti]

I don't want to throw around conspiracy theories, but I think Blizzard purposefully made Legions tier sets bland and boring as hell so people wouldn't miss them when they were gone for BfA.

Yeah, during legion the set bonuses sucked, but before that they used to be pretty damn sweet most of the time. From hunter perspective, some of the best gameplay I remember was during MoP, when Survival with right RNG could machinegun shoot Explosive Shots (thanks to set), and WoD, when MMs main long-casted focus spender Aimed Shot was made instant (again, thanks to set). Those were VASTLY larger changes than anything Azerite provides, since most of those are just passive buffs, and like 1-2 per spec make a slight impact on rotation.

The main problem Blizzard faced was that tier sets collided with their new gearing idea, you can't both have 4 set pieces, an Artifact (neck in BfA) and additional pieces for customization. In Shadowland most of the customizable additional abilities/effects seem to be tied to Covenants tho, freeing up space for sets to make a return. I hope.

I was a MM hunter main during HFC. That was the most retardedly OP tier set I have ever seen.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Tier-sets came from single tiers, hence T11 set etc.
The issue (for me) with Azerite Armor and so on isn't the mechanics and bonuses but the fact that they're not "tier-locked". I enjoy raiding and I want to complete everything in raids, that means defeating all bosses, completing all achievements and collect all the gear for my class/role. What I don't want to do is being forced to do 5 man content for the best items to raid with, just as I don't want to PvP to get the best items for raiding.

If this "azerite system" stays but there's specific lockouts for 5 man gear, raiding gear and pvp gear then fine.
You could for example give all gear "tags" that make them weaker when used in content they weren't obtained from.
So a 250 item level item from 5 man dungeons would be dropped to 200 item level if equipped in Raids or PvP, but still remain 250 for open world content and obviously for 5 man dungeons. This way there wouldn't be required for anyone to do content they're not interested in doing and people interested in all these contents would be getting more to do.
I suppose you could name them "Dungeon xxx ilvl", "Raid xxx ilvl" and "PvP xxx ilvl".

Another option could be to make "bonuses" inactive in instanced content where they weren't obtained but keep their item level.

[Omedon]

My thoughts, from a 100% aesthetic standpoint:

We now have three classes with increasing lacks of actual visual set options, Demon hunters being hardest to dress on this front. On a different axis, mail classes only have two sets of tier sets and only whatever crossover from class-agnostic recolors to draw from for full mog concepts. Demon hunters are hard to dress within modern fidelity and conceptual cohesion, but mail classes are just annoying to dress altogether.

I say take the BFA system but maybe have two class agnostic sets per armor type per tier (with color alterations for each). Historically there have always been multiple items per slot per class, let's just nail it down to two full visual "sets" per armor type per tier.

Because let's be real, with the ridiculously broad and yet specific color palettes WoW employs, the only transmogs that really click 100% are actual intended sets. There is some VERY narrow wiggle room enabled by having breaks in the transmog where this teal and that blurple are seperated by some skin showing, but really, if you look close enough the only thing that fits together are the intended pieces.

Give us more than one intended visual set per per armor type, per tier, and make them class agnostic. People will equip the pieces they want for stat reasons, but the real long game is transmog. Design gear around having the most art value per tier.

[Sliske]

In order, imo:

- Yes, both class theme sets and tier set bonuses
- If not tier set bonuses at LEAST class theme sets
- If not class theme sets or tier set bonuses, then AT LEAST make there be 12 unique sets, not 4

Its INSANE to me that they tried to cut their art production to a third of what it was in Legion. In Legion we were getting 12 sets per tier, along with 12 upgraded variants that vastly changed each of those 12 sets, giving us essentially 24 sets per tier.

In BFA to contrast, we get 4 sets per tier, with 4 very, very slight upgrades, resulting in 8. If you are generous and include warfronts, then you get 4 warfront sets, with 4 very slight upgrades, resulting in a total of 16 sets per tier for the first two tiers. The last tier, Ny'alotha, has had only 4 new sets, plus 4 extremely small changed variants, being generous, we'll call it 8.

Now lets see what we had in the last tier of Legion. Well, 12 sets straight up, each of them unique. Then, all 12 of those had massively different upgraded mythic / elite pvp variants. We're at 24 already. On top of that, there was one armor set per armor type from rares on Argus that looked like burning legion armor. On top of this, there was 4 sets, one per armor type, for questing on Argus. Bringing us to a grand total of 32 armor sets in patch 7.3.

32 vs 8.

Where did the art team go? What have they been doing for two years? But it gets worse guys, it gets so much worse. Firstly, realise that almost all of the first tier of BFA was reshuffled assets. Uldir we had seen all of just from questing in Nazmir, with the exception being 2 bosses. Dazar'alor... is the fucking main city and every single boss in it, with the exception of Opulence, was just a reused NPC.

So they have saved up essentially 8 months worth of time, by doing nothing for all of the raids of 8.0 and 8.1 and what do we get? 8.2.... with 12 armor sets.

Guys, am i high? But it gets even worseee it always gets worse with BFA.

8.0 - 8.
8.1 - 8.
8.2 - 8.
8.3 - 8.

32. The entirety of BFAs raid armor output is equal to what we got in the Argus patch alone... and we haven't even talked about what we got. Dear oh dear help me jesus christ. Someone tell me what the fuck they were thinking with the Uldir set. Someone find me a person who thinks the Ny'alotha sets look better than anything from Legion. Someone find me a single person who ever has transmogged to a Nazjatar set. The one group of armor sets in all of BFA that even look remotely good, are the mythic dazar'alor sets... but theres only 4 of them. So your monk looks like your demon hunter, your paladin looks like your death knight, your priest looks like your warlock.

YES. Bring back Class based tier sets. Bring back the art team. Fuck me in the ass.

[Kaver]

I vastly prefer the azerite system. Not perfect, but allows for more customization.

Azerite gear adds zero customization for a lot of classes. I have been using the same traits for the whole expansion and never change them. I'm not saying that tier sets are any better but when Blizzard say that Azerite gear gives the players choices, they are full of shit.

[Omedon]

YES. Bring back Class based tier sets. Bring back the art team. Fuck me in the ass.

Well, that escalated quickly! To each their own of course!

[Ange]

Azerite gear adds zero customization for a lot of classes. I have been using the same traits for the whole expansion and never change them. I'm not saying that tier sets are any better but when Blizzard say that Azerite gear gives the players choices, they are full of shit.

(good)-Tier sets were either broken/overtuned or simply %-gains. Azerite bonuses for many specs can be min-maxed so blizzard is clearly not wrong.

Generally it did no good to the game that LEGION started the overtuning of the most simple specs and BfA's continuation of this trend surprised even the most pragmatic WoW-players, because it was a really stupid development.

# since LEGION there are no buff/nerf cycles anymore, the whole META shitshow was not only tolerated it was even continued into the following expansion (=FEATURE)
# new players are teached to choose a META class/spec for specific game content, because of the continuity of the game balance
# new players are teached to not learn a class, not deal with new features, because they can simply choose a META class/spec that does not have to deal with anything

This brought us the demand for more "alt-friendlyness" basicly more action-RPG features, because that is what the average LEGION/BfA babys see from the game.
And since MMO's are in that regard the polar opposite of action-RPGs, blizzard will never be able to satisfy this new kind of player demands, because its a stupid community development in the first place.

Its no surprise how "different" Classic feels to the LEGION/BfA babys, of course its different with the shit changes started in LEGION. What people dont get is that the game did not changed that much, what really changed was the composition of the community playing the game.

Can you still play the game like its used to be as an MMO and play your main-character like you used to?

=> of course

Will you get punished for it by the META loving community?

=> of course you will be punished

Just look at the actual hottest threads in general/mmo-c and you get the point.

Blizzard is maybe just betting on the fluctuation rate of the new type of "WoW-players" and wait till they quit and keep the actual game structure for more engaging gameplay/more time played model.

[Neklord]

Bring back the armor sets, but not the set bonus. I don't want to be forced to wear items with terrible stats just to get the 6-8 piece bonus.

[MrLachyG]

re: tier sets. these were removed because Blizzard didn't want people getting an upgrade but not being able to equip it due to losing a 4 set bonus. now that was back in the days of titanforging so yeah it was a pain if you were doing normal antorus and got a 955 chest but couldn't put it on because you lost the tier set even though you had a 915 chest from lfr. the obvious solutions to this they actually came upon in BfA: 1. remove warforging and titanforging which they already have.

so if they go back to the 6 tier slot system of Vanilla to Legion (head, shoulder, back, chest, arms and legs) you can once again figure out which is your BiS and proceed from there

[arandomuser]

no because its gonna force me to do lfr and normal just to complete a 4 set

[Fkiolaris]

That's one of the many things they would need to do to get me back to the game (you can file it under the general "gearing" systems). However, I have made peace with the idea it won't be happening so I have moved on.

[antelope591]

Yes. Lack of tier sets make raiding any difficulty besides mythic completely pointless since you get better gear in M+. I guess people like raids like Nyalotha where you have bosses that drop 1 entire piece of loot for your class though. Real exciting stuff there.

[VinceVega]

Azerite System is far better than set boni. Right now. In the beginning it was frustrating. But Set Boni are annoying as fuck.

Different Sets for transmog YES! SetBoni? Hell no. Unless you have other ways of optaining them like mythic+

[Rucati]

No thanks, I don't miss set bonuses at all. Azerite does the same job better, as it allows for more customization and you can get it from multiple sources.

The Azerite system in the beginning was definitely garbage, but they've improved it quite a bit and I'm fairly happy with where it is now. The only way I'd want to see tier sets come back is if they're like 2 piece bonus only so you can get it like the first week, nothing is more tedious than having to do LFR/Normal/Heroic every single week because the tier sets are the only way to get stronger and ilvl doesn't matter so long as you complete the bonuses.

[Wildpantz]

Tier sets is pretty shit. However azerite system is pretty bad atm what would be awesome is like essences once you unlock it youll just pick from a list of azerite and mix and match what you prefer. Also add more raid focused and m+ focused

[Skavee]

What I dislike of azerite gear is how impactful having the right combination of 6 sometimes 9 traits can be. Even if you get an ilvl upgrade with the traits you need it may still not yet be an upgrade as you would lose that 1-of trait you absolutely need.

It would be much better if they cut the amount of possible traits but make all those available on each gear piece/trait ring.

If I'd rework the system I'd do:
2 class rings, 1 pve/pvp ring, 1 utiliy ring. Gear from pve comes with the pve ring, gear from bgs/arenas pvp ring.

Class ring is truly class ring, no generic stuff. PvP ring could have stuff like PvP set gloves used to have back in the day or stun/cc reduction, etc.

Pve some fixed + seasonal/raid traits

Utility ring always same traits. Stuff like passive phy or magic shield. No damage enhancements here.

[Narzok]

i would like to have sets back.
the problem is finding the slim line between "nice upgrade" and "don't bother with a specc unless you have 4-piece set bonus".

if they (again) use class sets to "repair" broken speccs, then i'd rather miss the set bonus and make the issues more apparent.

with set bonus(or azerite) "fix": "just get the set, class is fine!"

without a set or azerite that bandaid-fixes their shit, they have no other lever to repair classes with other than true-and-tested balance patches.
which is one reason why we will most likely get another easy-to-tweak "rental power" so that they can fix classes that way instead of proper class design fixes.