Might misunderstand you, but... The Tier numbers came from Blizzard, assigned to the sets with set boni, the first Tier came from the first released raid, the second from the second released raid... aside from exceptions like AQ dropping a "non-Tier/mini-Tier" set, and recently Highmaul and EN dropping recolors, while BRF and NH dropped the actual tier, and ToV being actually non-Tier, but with complete Transmog sets...
Either way, I believe players will continue to call the Transmog sets from BfA+ raids by incrementing "Tier" numbers, even if Blizzard uses some other nomenclature, either internally (and then datamined) or officially.
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It would be nice for clarity.
With the screwy way Blizzard is releasing raids now, without clarity, people would call Emerald Nightmare, Trial of Valor, and The Nighthold three different tiers, when they were one.
This is actually a very good question. I think tiers will go a way of the past, though it may take a full expac to do so
Sylvaeres-Azkial-Pailerth @Proudmoore
As far as I understand they're just going to drop the set bonuses off of specific pieces of equipment and try to make the bonuses available on another way. We will definitely see different raid-tier-bound bonuses in the future. Furthermore it doesn't matter if a raid-tier has a tier-set or not to be called raid-tier.
Raid Tiers were never named after the Tier Sets. They'll keep being called by their number.
To me the "tier" always reffered to the raid system: You had multiple raids, some of them with small itemlvl jumps, some of them with bigger jumps. I assume BfA will still have 2 or 3 big jumps in itemlvl, but more than 3 raid instances total, so grouping them into tiers will still make sense.
Sets, in my head, were always more of a sympton of tiers not the cause for them.
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Now that it has sunk in.. I fully accept the removal of tierbonusses. In fact I'm looking forward to min-maxing the stats. I'm hoping for additional (cosmetic) drops in raids to still have that extra incentive to do raidcontent. Maybe extra mounts, pets, toys or exclusive transmog gear (like the sets we got from the original garrison in WoD)
We won't get tier bonus pieces, but tiers will still be distinguished through their appearances and higher stat gear.
Ergo, I think they'll still be called tiers of raids.