Why do Hunters and Shamans have to use mail ??

[Calfredd]

C'mon man...
Look at the two images below.
If Blizzard had not told us that the the top one is mail and the one below is Leather we would never know.
Show me where the "mail" is in the first image and where the "leather" is in the second image!
Also the first one (mail) looks like leather ... and the second one (leather) looks like plate. lol
For Blizzard the mail and leather sets follow no criteria and are only named when they are ready.
I keep asking: What's the matter with simply merge mail with leather ??

[IMG]https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/938544.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/blog/images/20444-shadowlands-legendary-leather-set-now-complete-helm-and-waist-added.jpg[IMG]

Considering leather armor is usually designed for either rogues or druids (dark and/or edgy or nature-themed in some way), it tends to be pretty obvious which set is the leather set which , believe it or not, took me only a second to see the top was mail and the bottom leather. If you wanted to try questing greens or something, you'd have a better argument but dungeon and raid gear is very distinct.

[Fantazma]

believe it or not, took me only a second to see the top was mail and the bottom leather.

Well, I will take advantage of that you said "believe it or not" and I will choose "not".
Your explanation has no logic.
Blizzard can easily tell us that both hoods in the images are leather, mail or plate ... and we would never complain about that.
(Well in the case of this rogue set in the image below ... druids and monks are dissatisfied that once again the set is clearly for the rogues. And that's what I'm talking about, the mail sets can even match some shamans ... but almost none match a Hunter).

[RoKPaNda]

This is purely subjective. IMO leather is by far the worst looking armor in the game.

[Gigantique]

Mail armor is definitely the hardest one to make a good mog out of, but on the plus side my mogs are way more unique. My cloth/plate toons tend to be mostly full sets with a piece or two replaced with a better looking piece, while my mail sets are usually no more than two pieces from the same set, and loon hella unique. Can't upload it on my phone, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but I by far am more proud of my hunter/shaman mogs than I am of my plate/cloth mogs. I don't really play a lot of leather classes, so my library of appearances is rather small there.

[ymirsson]

Your explanation has no logic.

Your whole thread has no logic. It has a lot of your opinion, which you are entitled to have, but please don't confuse your view on the world with something objective.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Mail armor is a useless relic of a bygone age. It made somewhat sense at a time when warriors started out with mail armor and upgraded to plate and hunters could go form leather to mail. The issue is that even back then it was so underused and pointless as a general concept that it never found much use. Later they locked you into your highest armor grade via passive talents that increased your throughput.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of it. It barely makes sense for hunters in one tiny part of their roleplay when it comes to pretending to be a medival crossbow man, usually the fantasy of hunters among the other races than human is just leather to begin with. Shaman never made a lick of sense when it comes to wearing mail, other than to excuse spicky shit on their armor because oRc. I would absolutely welcome getting rid of it and merging it into leather. That would expand the transmog options of both hunters and shamans tremendously and with forced personal loot the distribution of armor classes is a non-issue to begin with.

[Schattenlied]

If they hadn't put mail into leatherworking, chain armour would be far more common than scale.

Scale armor can be made from metal scales too... That's what it was made out of IRL.

[LemonDemonGirl]

I think allowing Mail/Plate wearing classes to mog an armor class 'down' would possibly solve this problem. There'd have to be more categories/sections on the Appearances tab though

[Cosmic Janitor]

Too late in the games lifespan to remove an armor type, and change around classes armor types. It would be met with "oh u just wanna cut amount of tier sets u have to make". I agree with 3 armor sets in a split of 4x3 though, but I wouldnt expect it.

They could just make 2 leather sets and theme one more towards nature and one more towards civilization. The extra effort in implementation is neglectable, they'd just need to run a script over their DB to change their mail entries to leather. Making shamans plate is just nonsense, in what world does a shaman run around in plate armor, heck, even most of the ingame shamans run around in cloth/leather.

[Throwme]

Also the first one (mail) looks like leather ... and the second one (leather) looks like plate.

Which just proves my point. It's not about the graphics of WoW, it's about the design.

[God Save The King]

I'd personally just drop mail. Change the armor types to cloth, leather, heavy. Add all the existing mail gear in to the leather pool for transmog (or maybe split it a bit, since some pieces look like chainmail which would go to heavy).

Right now we have 3 cloth wearers, 4 leather, 2 mail, 3 plate.

I'd put hunters in leather and shamans in heavy. Monks really never made sense as a leather wearing class, they always felt like cloth wearers. Monks are famous in both WoW and external sources for being essentially unarmored and focusing on dodging/evasion. That'd leave 4 cloth, 4 leather, 4 heavy. With the new ability for primary stats to change around based on your role, it wouldn't be an issue to add agility to cloth now.

This would also allow more item trading, as leather stacks are much easier to gear compared to cloth or mail. With my proposed split, each armor type could build a stack to gear themselves. Cloth would have monks as tanks and priests/monks as healers. Leather would have druid/DH tanks and druid heals. Heavy would have DK/Paladin/Warrior tanks and Paladin/Shaman healers.

[gaymer77]

Now that the class sets are gone to never come back the developer team must be doing a huge job to make a set mail that matches a hunter and a Shaman. Two classes that have incredibly different "fantasy-class".

And yet they have to do the same thing for druid, monk, demon hunter, and rogue all 4 of which wear leather and all 4 of each have monumentally different "fantasy-class" feels to them. Failing to see your point you're trying to make here. Same could be said about DK & paladin wearing plate and having monumentally different "fantasy-class" feels to them.

[Icelin]

C'mon man...
Look at the two images below.

I think you have a valid point. I don't think the lower armor really screams leather. (Just do to the extra plating on it. Which is very nice but I'm just sayin') Oh and that is a nice set btw. I know the top one was suppose to be a spin off of bugs in Ardenweald from my understanding. I remember it having a different mask but can't be bothered to dig for it atm. Would be nice to see it again. Anyways Leather already got a type of bug set. Forgot where it came from but maybe why they gave it to mail this time.

[Melusine]

I've wanted to dump mail for years now. To be pedantic "mail" was heavy armour, and often heavier and more hindering than a proper suit of plate (also, categorizing armour that's been developed and used over 2 millenia is just not feasible in any meaningful way). I'd go with no armour/light armour/heavy armour, but it would probably be best to just call it cloth/leather/plate, as before.

Hunters would wear leather. Shamans would wear plate

Ok, historically, you're wrong. "Mail" armor, while heavy, maybe, was still lighter than Plate.... because most plate armor had mail under it, and the full plate and field plate armor was twice the weight of a mail set, and often, even that still had a mail internal suit with it. The only reason Plate armor didn't weigh the wearers down as if they were wearing cinder blocks on their legs is because the rigid plates helped support itself.

So, who should wear what? Well, restrictions on armor types are all superficial in this game, and as I have always said... we, the player should always want more, not less.

- - - Updated - - -

Mail armor is a useless relic of a bygone age. It made somewhat sense at a time when warriors started out with mail armor and upgraded to plate and hunters could go form leather to mail. The issue is that even back then it was so underused and pointless as a general concept that it never found much use. Later they locked you into your highest armor grade via passive talents that increased your throughput.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of it. It barely makes sense for hunters in one tiny part of their roleplay when it comes to pretending to be a medival crossbow man, usually the fantasy of hunters among the other races than human is just leather to begin with. Shaman never made a lick of sense when it comes to wearing mail, other than to excuse spicky shit on their armor because oRc. I would absolutely welcome getting rid of it and merging it into leather. That would expand the transmog options of both hunters and shamans tremendously and with forced personal loot the distribution of armor classes is a non-issue to begin with.

I hate to spoil your subjective view of armor, here, but in earlier times, archer units wore mail far more often than they wore leather armor. But much like mail armor, what do you think they wore under that mail gambeson, anyway? Leather padding. Many of them also had chest plates, buckler shields, and even tower shields from which they would mount into the ground and fire from behind.

Hunters didn't bother with armor. They wore clothing for camouflage and keeping warm in cold environments, much like modern day hunters do. Why blizzard called archers "hunters" is beyond me. Falconeers weren't armored. Dog training teams, maybe.

As for Shamans, there was no real historical basis for them, so, I cannot say what their standard tactics would be, other than superstition.

[Kehego]

Yes, monks in cloth armour, that's stupid. I mean, why would you import the fantasy concept famous for being the "unarmoured melee" and then not give them leather armour, duh.

since "unarmored" isn't synonymous with cloth armour, your point is, pointless. Clothies in WoW aren't unarmoured by any stretch of the imagination.

Monks in any fantasy archetype didn't use robes and skirts, they were usually barebacked and exposed. What armour type is generally bits and scraps of fabric and animal hide?


leather.

[Melusine]

Scale armor can be made from metal scales too... That's what it was made out of IRL.

Yeah. Most scale-mail was metal "scales" riveted to mail armor. It definitely made getting hit by an arrow more survivable than if an arrow struck chainmail. Or a mace.

[Surfacin9]

I think allowing Mail/Plate wearing classes to mog an armor class 'down' would possibly solve this problem. There'd have to be more categories/sections on the Appearances tab though

That should definitely be an option. For a person who doesn't play hunter or shaman, I don't give a damn, but there should be at least an option for those classes to mog into leather for a 'lighter' look. Would hurt 0 people and would make a number of people happy. Could throw mail xmog for plate wearers although I don't think it would suit.

- - - Updated - - -

C'mon man...
Look at the two images below.
If Blizzard had not told us that the the top one is mail and the one below is Leather we would never know.

Totally agree. Thought the top one was leather and bottom was mail. Just too much metal for a leather set, doesn't make sense, could do without the metal parts on legs and feet.

[Maljinwo]

Mail armor is probably the remains of the original system, where it was an upgrade from leather for both of them and possibly to add more variety to armor drops so not many classes had to compete for leather

[MrLachyG]

Oh, and monks should wear cloth, not leather. They originally had to use leather because otherwise they'd have to make ton of agility cloth drops, but that's not applicable anymore.

What are you talking about? They would still have to make cloth agility gear so how is that not applicable anymore??

[cocomen2]

Hunters would wear leather. Shamans would wear plate

That my words since 2010 , still wonder why it so hard for Blizz@rdo to prune "MAIL" armor into oblivion.

1) Caster = Cloth armor;
2) Agile fighter = Leather armor (Hunter that runs with bow or "spear");
3) Heavy bruiser = Plate armor (Thrall vanilla armor or any OMEGA shoulder pads for Shamans , like brothers Paladins).