With no titanforging we need more stats on gear

[Kehego]

the difference between gear sets and the borrowed power weve been getting is the sets are always a bonus
they are targetable
they are an extra on top of your character

it adds flavor and right now we can have dungeon sets and raid sets

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you are never the best at everything
taht is just an idiotic argument spread throughout the community because its easier to make up stuff than address the real issues

the game has been the same for over a decade and we had control over what we were able to be good at through farming gear which afaik was actually doing something. Now we no longer have the rng boost and players try using it as justification to say gear is super boring. I prefer to have my games outside of the casino

they aren't an extra drop you mongoloid, tier has always been balanced around the set bonus. Have you ever noticed that 1 piece of tier is usually vastly inferior/wrong stats?

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From what I've heard from former WoW devs who make posts and do live streams, the change from diverse stats and gear with %stat to stat ratings was because the devs wanted an easier time balancing gear and stats. Limiting the amount of stats and making them rating that scales different with each class gives them a tuning nob that can be used to adjust how well a class scales. Now... that doesn't necessarily mean it's all a good thing for the player as stats will tend to be either not intuitive (how many players know how much rating adds 1% crit/vers/etc.?) or sometimes make it bland for the player. This is where, as a dev, you have to determine what you sacrifice in terms of player experience in order to make balancing easier behind the scenes.



Even back when I was raiding whatever the top raiding content was at the timer, whether 25man heroic or the start of mythic raiding,... it was bloody nice to have time off. One of my largest complaints with the direction of WoW and how its content is designed now is that it's exhausting to attempt to achieve the same goals nowadays that were present back then.

For example, I used to get every achievement every expansion... but the increase in volume as well as absurdity of some achievements in terms of busywork and grinding instead of fun has killed that aspect of the game. Final nail in the coffin was WoD archaeology and those bloody perfect solves, I swear Insane in the Membrane is less painful than those (and I got it one month after the achievement first got into the game). Another example is pet/mount collection: it used to be a very small amount of each with maybe some additions for patches, nowadays we're adding hundreds of pets and mounts at an insane rate to where you either need to get very lucky, farm until your eyes bleed out, or just multibox. WF/TF made gear acquisition akin to the examples above, making a potentially never-ending grind in place of what used to be a clear set goal that had an end.

There can be great satisfaction when you can complete content and achieve clear goals, but never-ending and/or vague endpoints do not offer as much satisfaction at all (if any is to be had).

then don't be autistic

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It’s amazing how Blizzard has managed to convince people that spreadsheet-generated stat sticks are better than specifically designed gear that is made to provide interesting and varying gameplay.

its amazing how forum retards have convinced themselves that tier was better than azerite. Azerite has been an amalgamation of the best tier set bonuses we've been privy too since cata introduced dynamic ones that weren't just "your x does more damage/healing"
They have also been spec unique, too.

do you, for some reason, think that if all classes were given the option of using their best set bonuses in the past 15 years at current gear's level that they wouldn't all just use the one that made them do *gasp* the most damage? It's not rocket science ffs.

there's a how much ever page on "borrowed power" and not one jackass on there is articulate enough to present a convincing argument that tier isn't borrowed power.

The difference is that instead of 15 choices from 3 pieces of gear, you have 0 choices from 4. Dassit. Tier never competed with other tier either, T1>2>3>4>5 and it was linear and boring as bis lists but I guess that people who lack the self control and need to blame blizzard for their shortcomings see that not being able to google the best gear on icyveins or whatever find solace in complaining, or whatever.

BiS lists only existed because loot tables were full of useless gear. That's something that noone sensible wants back


of course mmo-c posters are anything but, oh well

Its funny how people clamor for BiS and very rarely even understand why an item is better than another.

[Scrysis]

Yeah, no.

You're arguing for complexity for the sake of itself.

Blizzard aren't going to bring back spirit because it fucks with their ability to balance healers from early to late expansion. They still need all the help they can get in this department, so I'm going to give it to them.


Blizzard isn't going to bring back tank stats because it acts like a huge gate-keeping mechanism. You think finding tanks now is hard? Wait until you require tank stats on gear! If the tank stats effectively do nothing so that anyone can still tank whatever, then they're literally pointless. If the stats are significant enough, then you're going to find a lot fewer tanks for M+. People who main dps who like to occasionally do tanking will have to have a tanking off-set that likely won't be as good. People with alts who don't have the time to juggle all of their characters at max effectiveness, etc. . . . It just sets a higher bar for entry for tanks, and a lot fewer groups will get off the ground. So no.

[Whiskeyjac]

they aren't an extra drop you mongoloid, tier has always been balanced around the set bonus. Have you ever noticed that 1 piece of tier is usually vastly inferior/wrong stats?

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then don't be autistic

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its amazing how forum retards have convinced themselves that tier was better than azerite


there's a how much ever page on "borrowed power" and not one jackass on there is articulate enough to present a convincing argument that tier isn't borrowed power.

The difference is that instead of 15 choices from 3 pieces of gear, you have 0 choices from 4. Dassit.

I would argue tier was superior to azerite. While it is true that in most cases you at a minimum had to use your 2pc with most classes electing to use all 4 the baseline ability seemed far more fair then the random dispersion of azerite traits. It was annoying to find the traits you want only exist on pvp gear for example.

Being forced to chose between a dozen options you don't want isn't as appealing as getting something you want immediately.

[Super Kami Dende]

More stats require them to be interesting enough to distinguish them against ones we already have.

For instance, Multistrike was basically the exact same mechanically as crit. Armor Penetration just increased your damage by a flat amount against targets like Versatility does but was nearly entirely useless for most classes, whereas vers also reduces damage taken and also helps healers.

You'd need a stat that did something unique, that wasn't completely deadweight for most classes.

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It’s amazing how Blizzard has managed to convince people that spreadsheet-generated stat sticks are better than specifically designed gear that is made to provide interesting and varying gameplay.

specifically designed gear that was useful for 1 or 2 specs that was then just wasted dead loot that was sharded for 90% of a tier? At least this gear can give stats useful to many People playing the content

[Baroclinic]

No, cause people need their BiS, and if there's a .01% chance of forging, their oc butt is going to feel they need to have that .01% to get that titanforged bis.

I miss the old forged gear, but then again, I learned to make best use of whatever the RNG gives and don't have to have that .01% piece of gear.

[Scrysis]

they aren't an extra drop you mongoloid, tier has always been balanced around the set bonus. Have you ever noticed that 1 piece of tier is usually vastly inferior/wrong stats?

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then don't be autistic

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its amazing how forum retards have convinced themselves that tier was better than azerite. Azerite has been an amalgamation of the best tier set bonuses we've been privy too since cata introduced dynamic ones that weren't just "your x does more damage/healing"
They have also been spec unique, too.

do you, for some reason, think that if all classes were given the option of using their best set bonuses in the past 15 years at current gear's level that they wouldn't all just use the one that made them do *gasp* the most damage? It's not rocket science ffs.

there's a how much ever page on "borrowed power" and not one jackass on there is articulate enough to present a convincing argument that tier isn't borrowed power.

The difference is that instead of 15 choices from 3 pieces of gear, you have 0 choices from 4. Dassit.

Tier is 100% borrowed power. It goes away with the next tier or expansion.

Azerite could have been amazing, but their implementation of it was lacking.

The other thing is that tier sets have an effect on gameplay that was forgotten. If you are 100% mythic plus and only want small-scale content, then sure, I could see you hating the concept of tier bonuses. But if you raid at all, then tier bonuses become additional incentive to work through harder and more limited content as with tier bonuses, the sum is greater than its parts.

As far as your comment about tier having wrong stats or weird budgeting, you are 100% correct. You are so correct that I'm not going to bother arguing with you on that. What I will do instead is mention that in an interview with Ion, I believe (now remember that this is super early and they can change it) that they were talking about bringing tier bonuses back with the second raid, and that you'll have six tier item slots, but the set bonuses will require two and three pieces respectively. If they do this implementation, it will bring much needed flexibility to the system. Also, with the ability to forge gear with targeted secondary stats, I can't see why they can't have the runecarver perhaps do the same thing for tier gear or something.

I get it about Azerite, I do. I was all for it when I heard about it prior to BFA. But seeing it in action. . . . There's not a lot of excitement going back and farming old content to get higher ilevel Azerite pieces. It sucks. It also feels really bad when you're really unlucky and you can't get the azerite pieces you need/want to drop. At least with tier, even with a great set bonus, it eventually becomes outdated and you replace it. And you KNOW that it is an upgrade. Sure, you can farm M+ for filler pieces, but now you know that the new raid/dungeon will have upgrades for you. You don't have to continuously beat your head against content you've done for ages for the next ilevel upgrade for all of your gear.

[salate]

Can't you just go to a casino if you enjoy gambling that much?

Meh, I'd say I just love D3 lootstyle

[Kehego]

Yeah, no.

You're arguing for complexity for the sake of itself.

Blizzard aren't going to bring back spirit because it fucks with their ability to balance healers from early to late expansion. They still need all the help they can get in this department, so I'm going to give it to them.


Blizzard isn't going to bring back tank stats because it acts like a huge gate-keeping mechanism. You think finding tanks now is hard? Wait until you require tank stats on gear! If the tank stats effectively do nothing so that anyone can still tank whatever, then they're literally pointless. If the stats are significant enough, then you're going to find a lot fewer tanks for M+. People who main dps who like to occasionally do tanking will have to have a tanking off-set that likely won't be as good. People with alts who don't have the time to juggle all of their characters at max effectiveness, etc. . . . It just sets a higher bar for entry for tanks, and a lot fewer groups will get off the ground. So no.

Lol people didn't remember how healers with fresh gear were limited by their mana pool and could do like 1 pull and sit and it was a shitty experience for all 5 people in the group
and how they were often coupled with tanks in similar greens who were just crunched because they didn't do the 5 hours of questing on the side to get defense capped to do dungeons
and how the dps couldn't do enough damage to stymy the income damage cus a significant portion of their attacks missed

[ReVnX]

Nope

10chars

[Kehego]

Tier is 100% borrowed power. It goes away with the next tier or expansion.

Azerite could have been amazing, but their implementation of it was lacking.

The other thing is that tier sets have an effect on gameplay that was forgotten. If you are 100% mythic plus and only want small-scale content, then sure, I could see you hating the concept of tier bonuses. But if you raid at all, then tier bonuses become additional incentive to work through harder and more limited content as with tier bonuses, the sum is greater than its parts.

As far as your comment about tier having wrong stats or weird budgeting, you are 100% correct. You are so correct that I'm not going to bother arguing with you on that. What I will do instead is mention that in an interview with Ion, I believe (now remember that this is super early and they can change it) that they were talking about bringing tier bonuses back with the second raid, and that you'll have six tier item slots, but the set bonuses will require two and three pieces respectively. If they do this implementation, it will bring much needed flexibility to the system. Also, with the ability to forge gear with targeted secondary stats, I can't see why they can't have the runecarver perhaps do the same thing for tier gear or something.

I get it about Azerite, I do. I was all for it when I heard about it prior to BFA. But seeing it in action. . . . There's not a lot of excitement going back and farming old content to get higher ilevel Azerite pieces. It sucks. It also feels really bad when you're really unlucky and you can't get the azerite pieces you need/want to drop. At least with tier, even with a great set bonus, it eventually becomes outdated and you replace it. And you KNOW that it is an upgrade. Sure, you can farm M+ for filler pieces, but now you know that the new raid/dungeon will have upgrades for you. You don't have to continuously beat your head against content you've done for ages for the next ilevel upgrade for all of your gear.

the problem with azerite was that people were stupid as fuck (no surprise) and expected a full set of gear in the first content patch. that has never fucking happened because most first tier raids don't even have a set (msv highmaul en) or had set bonuses that did nothing (looking at you T4)

Entitlement was the issue with azerite. Power acquisition in the first tier has ALWAYS been slow. First tier has traditionally been fucking heroic dungeon blues

[Scrysis]

I'd like to see some come back - hit rating was boring, but spirit and multistrike were interesting. Dodge and parry are not that useful in today's meta (which is focused on surviving big bursts of damage, they are too rng for that). I didn't play during the heyday of def rating and armor pen.

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Not quite because it hit more frequently for less. So you could potentially design around it being a lot more reliable than crit. Breath of Sindragosa build depended on consistent multistrike, for example.

Having something that procs off multistrike that you can potentially get a lot of uptime on is pretty interesting, and different from crit because crit happens 3X less than ms.

As a very long time healer, spirit hasn't ever been interesting. It only marks what is "healer gear". "Oh, that has spirit! Healer gear! Oh, that doesn't have spirit. That's not healer gear, you can't have that."

Literally the only thing mechanically that spirit does is make healers ridiculously unbalanced at the end of the expansion and ultra terrible at the beginning. At the beginning of an expansion, healers don't have shit for mana regen because the amount of total spirit you can acquire is small. And then groups scream at you for running out of mana every other group. Then, at the end of the expansion, it becomes as if mana doesn't exist because it doesn't matter. You have so much spirit on gear that mana literally becomes a non-issue. It becomes actually impossible to run out of mana, which leads to the super terrible whack-a-mole encounters in WoD.


Please, please, PLEASE. If you care about your healers at all, do not propose that we bring spirit back. Let it stay dead. Let it stay buried. Please do NOT bring spirit back.

[Kehego]

As a very long time healer, spirit hasn't ever been interesting. It only marks what is "healer gear". "Oh, that has spirit! Healer gear! Oh, that doesn't have spirit. That's not healer gear, you can't have that."

Literally the only thing mechanically that spirit does is make healers ridiculously unbalanced at the end of the expansion and ultra terrible at the beginning. At the beginning of an expansion, healers don't have shit for mana regen because the amount of total spirit you can acquire is small. And then groups scream at you for running out of mana every other group. Then, at the end of the expansion, it becomes as if mana doesn't exist because it doesn't matter. You have so much spirit on gear that mana literally becomes a non-issue. It becomes actually impossible to run out of mana, which leads to the super terrible whack-a-mole encounters in WoD.


Please, please, PLEASE. If you care about your healers at all, do not propose that we bring spirit back. Let it stay dead. Let it stay buried. Please do NOT bring spirit back.

the devs are smarter than mmo-c posters, don't worry about it

LOL REMEMBER WHEN THEY TRIED TO REPURPOSE SPIRIT AS HIT FOR SOME CLASSES? hahahaha

biggest fucking joke ever

[Blupparen]

I'm not sure what stat they can add that will benefit every class and role. Maybe some of the stats they experimented with in wod such as multistrike and cooldown reduction.

Personally I would love to see multistrike but I can see how it takes some of the shaman class fantasy away. Blizzard said it's too similar to crit but I disagree. I see what they mean but multistrike has a different "flavor". Instead of doing double damage, your attack would fire again instantly when the first attack hits.

Armorpen is also a cool stat but it only benefit physical classes.

Shadowlands is too close to release so I don't expect them adding stats now but I hope they add new stats in future expansions.

[Kehego]

As a long time healer, I disagree. I like how spirit forced your playstyle to evolve throughout an expansion. At the start you're pretty weak and you have to conserve, by the end you can spam! I find the contrast interesting and satisfying. I think being mana throttled for healing is different from being haste starved as a dps - being haste starved as a dps is just kinda boring, but being mana starved as a healer means that you have to be very thoughtful about how to conserve and when to use your limited burst.

i guess some people *do* enjoy drinking every pull and not being able to heal anything

[Scrysis]

Lol people didn't remember how healers with fresh gear were limited by their mana pool and could do like 1 pull and sit and it was a shitty experience for all 5 people in the group
and how they were often coupled with tanks in similar greens who were just crunched because they didn't do the 5 hours of questing on the side to get defense capped to do dungeons
and how the dps couldn't do enough damage to stymy the income damage cus a significant portion of their attacks missed

It's nice to see that someone else remembers this too! Although, I will confess to being one of those masochist healers that actually enjoyed Cata dungeons before they nerfed the shit out of them (admittedly, my friend tanked, so I didn't have to pug a tank). It was always rather satisfying when some dps didn't do what they were supposed to, ripped threat off the tank, and then were promptly one-shot into so much paste onto the ground.

the problem with azerite was that people were stupid as fuck (no surprise) and expected a full set of gear in the first content patch. that has never fucking happened because most first tier raids don't even have a set (msv highmaul en) or had set bonuses that did nothing (looking at you T4)

Entitlement was the issue with azerite. Power acquisition in the first tier has ALWAYS been slow. First tier has traditionally been fucking heroic dungeon blues

This is very possible. I remember being very frustrated this past expansion by the fact that my harder raids gave worse gear than the much easier M+. It's really hard to divorce azerite from this idea, but thinking about it, my frustration was probably more related to ilevel than anything. I know that they're downshifting it by 3 ilevels (and that tons of people are now crying about it), so that could help. Azerite traits probably would have worked MUCH better if they hadn't tied them to neck levels initially in the expansion. I kind of wish I could have seen a BFA where all azerite traits were unlocked right away. If you were to balance loot levels and have unlocked traits, we might have had a very different reaction during the expansion, sadly.

Maybe they'll revisit something like azerite (selectable set bonuses maybe?) next expansion. After the issues in BFA, I don't think they'll revisit the idea any time soon.

the devs are smarter than mmo-c posters, don't worry about it

LOL REMEMBER WHEN THEY TRIED TO REPURPOSE SPIRIT AS HIT FOR SOME CLASSES? hahahaha

biggest fucking joke ever

I do! It was hit for mages and warlocks. Although, to be fair, it didn't last that long, and wasn't that way back in BC? Or was it late Vanilla? I mean, I can forgive the devs for early learning mistakes.

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As a long time healer, I disagree. I like how spirit forced your playstyle to evolve throughout an expansion. At the start you're pretty weak and you have to conserve, by the end you can spam! I find the contrast interesting and satisfying. I think being mana throttled for healing is different from being haste starved as a dps - being haste starved as a dps is just kinda boring, but being mana starved as a healer means that you have to be very thoughtful about how to conserve and when to use your limited burst.

Maybe you liked the whack-a-mole fights then, but I sure as hell don't.

I like constrained mana throughout an expansion. It means that healers have to actually pay attention to what they're doing. And if the raid fucks up too much, all the healers go OOM. It means that you can introduce a wider variety of fights throughout the expansion because now you can fail through attrition, rather than outright murdering the raid. Unconstrained mana end expansion means that you can't do that.

Even level constraints also mean that your party doesn't suffer for mechanical design early in the expansion. I've always HATED being blamed for having to sit and drink in a dungeon early expansion, even though I've done literally nothing wrong.

Oh, well, different strokes, I guess.

[Kehego]

It's nice to see that someone else remembers this too! Although, I will confess to being one of those masochist healers that actually enjoyed Cata dungeons before they nerfed the shit out of them (admittedly, my friend tanked, so I didn't have to pug a tank). It was always rather satisfying when some dps didn't do what they were supposed to, ripped threat off the tank, and then were promptly one-shot into so much paste onto the ground.



This is very possible. I remember being very frustrated this past expansion by the fact that my harder raids gave worse gear than the much easier M+. It's really hard to divorce azerite from this idea, but thinking about it, my frustration was probably more related to ilevel than anything. I know that they're downshifting it by 3 ilevels (and that tons of people are now crying about it), so that could help. Azerite traits probably would have worked MUCH better if they hadn't tied them to neck levels initially in the expansion. I kind of wish I could have seen a BFA where all azerite traits were unlocked right away. If you were to balance loot levels and have unlocked traits, we might have had a very different reaction during the expansion, sadly.

Maybe they'll revisit something like azerite (selectable set bonuses maybe?) next expansion. After the issues in BFA, I don't think they'll revisit the idea any time soon.



I do! It was hit for mages and warlocks. Although, to be fair, it didn't last that long, and wasn't that way back in BC? Or was it late Vanilla? I mean, I can forgive the devs for early learning mistakes.

I had the same discussion with a friend of mine (another 15 year vet) and he said that his issue was that azerite only came from raid and that he'd have a full 370 set from M+ and 340 azerite. My response was "at no point prior have you ever been this powerful in the first tier" and that even with 340 Mythic 0 azerite you still had full control of your set. That was amazing tbqh. Better than being in MSV with bad stats and no choices.


Also, cata first tier was amazing. People were just bad and were used to END EXPANSION STATS LIKE THE BADGE GEAR THEY GRINDED IN ICC PATCH WASN'T END GAME LAST TIER GEAR LOL

[munkeyinorbit]

Or just someone else has collected tank / heal gear?
You know, how people used to do it in the past?

Like, those things have existed in the game for nearly a decade, yet people still somehow managed to put raids together, even when a Tank / Heal didn't show up.

And it was a shit show. I actually raided pre WoD and it wasn't that simple. You needed a full set to tank otherwise you were destroyed. Healer intense fight? Yeah those hybrids are out of Mana in a minute. With the lack of stats today all you need are trinkets and for most content, not even that. The simplification of gear has made it super easy for people to swap roles and do an ok job. Start adding tanking or healing stats back into gear and then Blizzard will design fights to need those stats. And there goes your part time backups. See you next week

[Ssateneth]

There needs to be "interesting" gear. I'm not talking "carrot on a stick" gear like TF/WF, or gear that is irreplaceable like a bracer with a +% damage. I liked gear ratings that had hard caps to it. Hit rating. Expertise rating. Armor penetration. Mish-mashing your gear around when a critical item dropped to make the new piece of gear work.

[Kehego]

There needs to be "interesting" gear. I'm not talking "carrot on a stick" gear like TF/WF, or gear that is irreplaceable like a bracer with a +% damage. I liked gear ratings that had hard caps to it. Hit rating. Expertise rating. Armor penetration. Mish-mashing your gear around when a critical item dropped to make the new piece of gear work.

armor pen didnt have a cap bucko

[Scrysis]

I had the same discussion with a friend of mine (another 15 year vet) and he said that his issue was that azerite only came from raid and that he'd have a full 370 set from M+ and 340 azerite. My response was "at no point prior have you ever been this powerful in the first tier" and that even with 340 Mythic 0 azerite you still had full control of your set. That was amazing tbqh. Better than being in MSV with bad stats and no choices.

Yeah. I get this. (Also, another 15 year wow player here.)

I think a fair amount of issues with azerite aren't really a problem with the azerite system, but how it interacts with M+ and raids. I do like M+, but it has caused a whole host of problems, and not just with azerite. It has been so much easier to gear up from M+ than raids, and then, on top of it, you managed to get a bonus jump from the weekly chest. Just talking about azerite traits, if the best traits were in M+, you had to continually farm M+ for it. And then, as you pointed out, the huge power jump. The ilevels from M+ allowed players to leap-frog over complete raid tiers and rendered the rewards pretty worthless.

And for others reading this, M+ is massively easier to get gear from than raid. Even if you weren't guaranteed a drop every run, you could spam run the dungeons. If each dungeon were around 20 minutes, you stood a decent chance of getting at least one piece an hour. More if you had people willing to trade you drops. You only need 5 people to run it, you get to practice endlessly, and with the key system, the difficulty is incremental, not the massive wall that is raid tiers. And at the end of the week, you got something from the chest that had an even higher ilevel than what you were running all week. It's absolutely nuts.

As much as it sucks getting less loot, I see the M+ system changes as being a healthy improvement to the game. If I were to reintroduce azerite, I'd keep a 3 ring, M+ focused pieces for M+ rewards, and I'd make raids a 5 ring, generalist rewards. But this is with the assumption that the M+ system is balanced out. I think the current hope with tier bonuses isn't so much with the bonuses themselves but with the idea that you don't need to re-farm the same rewards each new raid tier, and that the idea that raid rewards will be definitively better than M+ rewards, and that each new raid will be an improvement.