How I want gear to be in Shadowlands

[Craaazyyy]

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man good thing that you dont get to decide what system should be in the game

[goldentforce]

Personally don't think you need 3 gem slots and just a flat ilv/stat boost and 2 essence slots. Seems a little excessive if all items have this. Upgrading itemlevel also makes you the same piece of gear forever and just keep upgrading it, instead of drops. Only reason i would want that is if loot had an rng effect like corruption, where if i got the lucky best stat best "corruption like" effect, i would want to upgrade that. Also whats the point of having a gem of flat stats and an enchant of flat stats, basically the same thing. Would rather enchants have a limited number, like maybe 1 weapon and 3 others on any peace of gear outside trinkets, and have cool effects either for the world or things like, do more damage in 5 man, do more in raid, do more damage to low health/high health, stacking buff every minute in combat, movement speed on kill, etc. more interesting effects to play around with. And if there is a "corruption" like system, I would want to be able to corrupt my gear either repeatable rng, or progress towards ideal effect. You don't need to make every gear have 6 things you have to do, then people wouldn't be asked. 2 3 or 4 is well enough with multiple pieces and if you are encouraged to have different sets for different pieces of content, then that increases the depth of the system.

[Echocho]

Personally don't think you need 3 gem slots and just a flat ilv/stat boost and 2 essence slots. Seems a little excessive if all items have this.

I don't think all items should have everything, but this is an example of an item that does.

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I strongly disagree with the return of class sets. If the game had the opportunity to bring multiple "builds" (more like optimizations I guess) with BFA, it's because we didn't had item sets taht were more than 2 items.

I don't think you should have a class set unless you have multiples sets this expansion, and they all bring a different gameplay for your spec (but that's way too much work for Blizzard compared to azerite traits).

It doesn't have to be class specific sets. They can be visually but they don't have to be since you get to pick the set bonuses yourself.

[dreamdaddy]

Do people like essences? I feel like they're bandaids for specs that were pruned to have boring rotations. I'd rather the designers focus on making specs feel unique and engaging as a baseline instead of having an alt-unfriendly solution that forces you to grind for hours and hours to have a somewhat enjoyable rotation.

At least legendaries had flavor relating to your class/spec and some were very creative. Having a generic "press this button every 30 seconds" doesn't feel as good as "when you accumulate 20 stacks of this buff, you can press chains of ice for big damage" or "you can pool astral power to have reduced cost starsurges for 5 seconds". Honestly I wouldn't even be upset if they just brought back fan-favorite Legion legendaries as Shadowland legendaries (or talent rows, which is the better solution).

[Kralljin]

Do people like essences? I feel like they're bandaids for specs that were pruned to have boring rotations. I'd rather the designers focus on making specs feel unique and engaging as a baseline instead of having an alt-unfriendly solution that forces you to grind for hours and hours to have a somewhat enjoyable rotation.

I think they're fine, you have to take into consideration that basically was a quick fix for the shortcomings of the Azerite armor.

However, the basic principle should be continued, just change the essences from general effects to class / spec based ones and it would be a solid addition.

Like, having something such as the Legendary effects not tied to certain slots would have been a massive boon in Legion, it was so damn annoying to constantly hear in raids: "Yeah, i need that if i get that legendary" or constantly not only having those legendaries in your inventory but also items to replace those legendaries in case you want to equip others.

[goldentforce]

I think they're fine, you have to take into consideration that basically was a quick fix for the shortcomings of the Azerite armor.

However, the basic principle should be continued, just change the essences from general effects to class / spec based ones and it would be a solid addition.

Like, having something such as the Legendary effects not tied to certain slots would have been a massive boon in Legion, it was so damn annoying to constantly hear in raids: "Yeah, i need that if i get that legendary" or constantly not only having those legendaries in your inventory but also items to replace those legendaries in case you want to equip others.

Just out of curiosity,if the essence system was applied to only cosmetics, maybe class cosmetics/transmog, would the system be better and more enjoyable for people. If the rewards were all optional, but were cool, and motivated you to try content you wouldn't normally do, isnt that all the pros of the system without the cons. Something like a better version of the artifact weapon appereances/recolours.

[Elias01]

It doesn't need to be a big cap though. I mean, I didn't have a problem with getting valor in previous expansions. It's also a good way to make older content valid.

Than you were minority. Any type of power what can be bought for currency feels absolutly horrible becouse players will feel like Blizzard is holding them back with valor caps and you do nothing but creating check lists. Oh 2 weeks from now i will get this and 6 weeks from now this. That just isnt fun at all. Good thing about rng is that you have no idea when you will get what. Which makes boss kills exciting and more fun over vendors and currencies what are artificialy gated.

[Nerovar]

Than you were minority. Any type of power what can be bought for currency feels absolutly horrible becouse players will feel like Blizzard is holding them back with valor caps and you do nothing but creating check lists. Oh 2 weeks from now i will get this and 6 weeks from now this. That just isnt fun at all. Good thing about rng is that you have no idea when you will get what. Which makes boss kills exciting and more fun over vendors and currencies what are artificialy gated.

First of all, I sincerely doubt that you have any statistics on this so I find it a bit weird that you'd tell me I'm part of some perceived minority. Secondly, this is exactly what PvP gearing was for the majority of the game's life span and PvP players are pretty vocal about wanting their PvP gear/vendors etc. back. Lastly, you're acting like I was proposing to turn all PvE gear into vendor items when in reality I was talking about valor points for ilvl upgrades in the context of the systems OP created in his post.

[Asaliah]

I want reforging back to remove as many versatility as possible from my gear

[Blackmist]

I mean, Titanforging and sockets are a good idea, but there really has to be a way to put them on items that didn't drop with them. Luck could make you not have to upgrade them, not be more powerful than somebody who didn't get lucky.

Blizzard, it's OK for somebody to be able to get their full BiS. It's fine.

[Asaliah]

And don't lock behind mythic please, just make it much longer to get for non-mythic players

[Flurryfang]

Feel free to flame me as you see fit!

Its a really good design m8.

Cause it really promotes interacting with you gear. The gear is not just a stat stick, that you put on and leave alone, but you can do so many things with it.

If it had to be improved, i would proberly tone down the use of VP a bit and instead put in other professions.
Why not have Blacksmits/Leatherworkers/Tailors be able to do 1 of the upgrades, so you can either use VP 3 times or only 2 times with a crafter doing the last? Jewelcrafters could do the same with the sockets maybe.

I think when professions really worked well, it was because they worked in tandem with gear. Every profession had something to improve your character, so if you wanted the best character, you had to interact with ALL of them. The same could happen again. Like, have Alchemist be able to socket a special potion in your belt that can be used repeatedly and not take up bag space. Bring back belt buckles for Blacksmits, leg improvements for Leatherworkers, cloak improvements for Tailors, and so on. If each profession have a use on some form of gear, gear also becomes more interesting because of it.

[tankbug]

Please dont repeat Blizzard's excuses to make a braindead game.
That "philosophy" is used as an excuse to kill all kind of customization and freedom.

You are never supposed to understand if a piece is an upgrade just by looking at it, without studying on the internet first.
I mean...every single person on planet earth needs to open google to know stat priority at least once in their life.
So there is no reason to make itemization boring...

Boring itemization only means opening google "less times". Thats true.

With the inevitability of the cookie cutter specs, the wow oracles calculate your optimized settings, you basically copy a template form the online resources with no thought or understanding of what you're doing. It's not "oh mastery, how do you improve my damage in situation x?". It's "ok, mastery better than crit", or even worse, just install an addon that show you an arrow up or down on the item. And in that sense, the extra complexity and customization is only in the way, like reforging, it's just a barrier you have to step over to get the most out of your item.

[Aphrel]

Don't care much how gear looks like. What i want thou, is to for once in the history of wow not feel useless at the beginning of an expansion.

Its been a recurring theme ever since tbc (althou it was significantly less noticable there since haste wasnt a thing yet) that all the 2ndary stats get squished. Leaving all specs with superlow values on all their 2ndary stats... And i fucking hate it. I hate not having the haste to make the spec feel good, i hate not critting for 4-5spells.. i hate not being able to sustain resources...

So my one wish for shadowlands, is to tune everything so that specs doesnt feel worse to play on lvl 60 than they do now in nyalthoa.
The recurring theme of specs only really feeling "good" at the end of an expansion is imo one of the things that made everyone dislike bfa so much.. We went from being super juiced, wielding an artifact and with 2 rotation enhancing legendarys to nothing...
If the transition had been from argus to how bfa specs feels right now, i think alot less ppl woudlve complained.

The biggest offender is the haste i think. Haste makes everything feels so much better.

[demonhunter50]

I wish gear will be like this in Shadowlands.

[Aeula]

So basically you want us to cough up 1000’s of gold on gems, enchants and “glyphs” before we can actually use a piece of gear that we just earned? How about no.

Here’s my idea. Gear. No RNG. Primary stat weights adjusted so they’re always better than secondary. An item level upgrade is always a power upgrade. Gem sockets can be purchased cheaply with currency earned via endgame activities for rings and necklace only. Enchants available only for the slots they’re available for now. Done. Gear is simple, don’t need to use raidbots to sim everything. No need to spend untold amounts of gold to actually equip something. No need to equip lower ilvl gear because complexities make higher ilvl gear worse somehow.

[Dread13]

Feel free to flame me as you see fit!

Simply: loving it. Complex equipment, tiers, and taking advantage of many systems while trashing the RNG. Good job man!

[czarek]

Im not fan of upgrades on items. I would like to change gear from time to time. Actual system is ok except of rng on corrupted affix. Farming and grinding crap is just salt in my eyes.

[Muffin the Manslayer]

Normal gear up-gradable via valor points to mythic ilvl, yeah how about no...

A better way of having upgrades like this would be to have warforging return and have it where an item can upgrade by X ilvl and for example if you get a 1/2 warforge you can get it to 2/2 via currency. This way gear from harder content is still better (otherwise why do harder content???) and each difficulty has a system in place to make content easier. With a system like this getting unlucky just means upgrading over time and not having to rely on rng to get the best version of an item.

[Lucetia]

We've had all these things before and they were much easier to understand than the gear systems we've had post MOP.

"Not to be frank" made me LOL

Except that's why they removed all of this stuff. It was overly complicated from all the expansions and a lot of the player base didn't enjoy it. So they removed it. Yes the majority here or people you talk to are in the minority of wanting stuff like this. Though just because the minority wants it doesn't exactly mean it is great for the game or the casuals who play.

Also, people would hate your upgrade system far far more than anything. Where you can upgrade a normal piece of gear up to mythic level as it would be worse than TF since this would be through a guaranteed system. As the odds of TF are low overall.