Mail armor makes no sense

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

Oh look another complaint thread. The mods ban Chicken Drummer for shit posting, but not this guy.

[Grimbold21]

If you wanted it to be like real armor, then mail armor would all basically look like chain mail vests.

Think of those vanilla head items that are basically a mail head cover. Now extended that down and you have mail armor.

[munkeyinorbit]

Old Thrall also used to be a warrior and now is a shaman.
How come Thrall can change classes while the rest of us are stuck?

Have you played SL? Thrall is clearly a warrior. Watch him skillstorm his way throw the maw intro.

TBH they should get rid of mail. Armour doesn't really mean anything anymore. Make mink into cloth because they wear robes, hunter and shaman to leather because animals. I still see shamans as leather because it sort of matches indigenous peoples and the likelyhood they would use all of the animal.

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Oh look another complaint thread. The mods ban Chicken Drummer for shit posting, but not this guy.

You know what you have to do. Make it easier for the mods.

[Whitepaw]

DH should wear mail

[Myradin]

Preach it. Having "mail" and "plate" as distinct categories is a D&Dism, which admittedly isn't a bad place to start, but light/medium/heavy (or rather unarmored/light/heavy) is a categorization that actually makes sense.

Actually unarmored, light, medium, and heavy is a D&Dism. Plate is a 'type' of heavy armor, same with the various mails being 'medium'.

This..100 times....But it`s way too logical so...nah...Blizzard and logic (or common sense)? Or just pretending to give a fuck about lore or background things? Nah...

Anything to take a dump on blizz eh?

[MrKnubbles]

4. It's a waste of resources. Mail is only represented by 2 classes (shamans and hunters) while Plate has 3, leather had 4!!! and cloth has another 3.

Would you feel better if a new class got added that utilizes Mail?

I mean, I agree that mail feels weird as an armor type because it doesn't really have any signature identifying properties but I don't think turning it into Leather is a good idea at this point. Remember when Holy Pallies were the only ones that utilized int plate?

[T-34]

Gameplay is much more important than "realism".

"Gameplay first" is first in line when Blizzard describes itself as a company.
Blizzard will never ever let lore, "make no sense" etc. trump gameplay.

[Otimus]

Class armor restrictions are stupid anyways. Like, what, a magical wizard can't suddenly go "You know, I'd really like to wear this instead." "NO. YOU WOULDN'T BE EFFECTIVE IN THAT." "But I can't even wear it just like, you know, strolling around the city?" "NO. YOU CAN'T" "Why not?" "THAT'S NOT WHAT THE LORE SAYS. SHUT UP. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW." Don't even get me started on not being able to pick up and use a weapon because you're not allowed!

[hulkgor]

snip

Gameplay first.

[Dalheim]

Old Thrall also used to be a warrior and now is a shaman.
How come Thrall can change classes while the rest of us are stuck?

Because Thrall was raised as a Gladiator (warrior-esque), and didnt learn to be a Shaman until he was an adult. He was always a mix of both.

[gaymer77]

You realize personal loot is a thing and you can already stack everything but cloth/mail wearing classes as much as you want?

I sure do know you can do that. I also know the way personal loot and boss drops work now. The items on the boss's loot table are internally rolled to see if it even drops at all (ie leather pants, vers ring, str trinket, etc etc etc). After that the player gets their internal roll to see if that item that was determined to have dropped off a boss was awarded to the player (ie if that player is awarded that vers ring or str trinket the boss dropped). That is why multiple players can be awarded the same item off of a boss.

[VinceVega]

1. It would make more sense for shamans to wear leather. Most of iconic shaman heroes, such as World Shaman Thrall, Drek'Thar, OG Rehgar and Muln, all wear leather armor. Real life shamans and shamans in most other fictional fantasy worlds also wear leather.

2. It would make more sense for hunters to wear leather. Some of iconic hunter heroes, such as OG Shandris and Rexxar, wear leather armor. You could argue that Sylvanas wears mail but she is more of a Dark Ranger or a military ranger than a hunter. It makes no sense for a hunter to stomp through the forest in clunky, noisy mail.

3. Mail, as it is designed by Blizzard, has no identity. Some mail sets are clearly leather (e.g. Gronnstalker gear). Other sets are clearly undercooked plate. There are very few sets that look like actual mail and for a good reason. Real life mail is boring as hell. It's like a piece of fabric made of linking metal.

4. It's a waste of resources. Mail is only represented by 2 classes (shamans and hunters) while Plate has 3, leather had 4!!! and cloth has another 3.

To me mail feels like a relic from vanilla WoW where Blizzard arbitrarily decided that mail classes should upgrade to plate and leather to mail at some level. For the reasons outlined above I believe that Blizzard should either move both hunters and shamans to leather armor or lift transmog restrictions and allow people to mog things one armor class below (plate to mail, mail to leather, leather to cloth).

The whole armor thing is a gameplay thing. Not 100% translatable to lore.
New sets always have some influences from others. Hell the last few addons Leather, Mail and plate looked basically like plate.

[paxen]

I think McDonald’s should get rid of breakfast burritos

Heresy!

And I haven't even eaten a breakfast burrito at mcdonalds

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Actually unarmored, light, medium, and heavy is a D&Dism. Plate is a 'type' of heavy armor, same with the various mails being 'medium'.

'Medium' is a D&Dism, but light troops and heavy troops have been a thing in warfare forever. Even light troops wore some kind of armour (but not the leather armour of D&D rogues), so having unarmoured, light armour and heavy armour would make sense.

As WoW still owes a debt to D&D, sticking with Cloth, Leather and Plate would be fine. But pretending that wearing a complete set of mail isn't "heavy armour" is a bit rich.

[Clash the DK]

would be simpler to move to a Light/Medium/Heavy armor split instead of going by "material" its made of.

This is the correct answer.

EDIT:

WoW gear is so over-the-top that armor designation becomes rather meaningless. Cosmetically, the only real difference is whether you're wearing pants or a dress. The original design worked fine for Classic and would work fine for any stand alone game. But WoW these days is a different beast. Plus the mandatory concept of having pauldron and helm slots is counter-intuitive to the concept of "Cloth" or "Leather" armor. Simplifying gear into Light/Medium/Heavy designations might offer a better framework to better differentiate the look of armor in general.

[arkanon]

I just wish they would make some better looking Leather sets - Mail has some amazing sets, that clearly look NOTHING like mail, but leather and cloth they seem really strict that it "looks" like cloth/leather.

Warlocks have some amazing sets, but personally, I dont like many / any leather sets.