Resist gear was good, why did they get rid of it?

[Tumile]

Those Resistance fights are still there in TBC though, but just like in Classic Vanilla, people have just chosen to ignore them so far, maybe some of the SSC fights will be different, but as of right now theres High King Maulgar, where the Warlock tank is meant to have Shadow Res, and the Mage tank is meant to have Fire res. there are craftable cloth sets just like the Naxx Frost Resist gear, but with arcane resist for Kara.

But on the topic of Classic vs retail, it was simply because from a gameplay perspective RNG = Bad, and Resistance = RNG. same reason hit caps and expertise was removed

the fact that Resist is inherently RNG is a little silly, if u make a fight where u need nature res, you could come with the appropiate Nature res gear, and still die due to bad RNG, if you tune down the damage so this doesnt happen, the resist gear becomes pointless, which means the only way to make resistance relevant is to have it be CC/Utility related in said fight (A sleep, a Silence, etc) but that sounds like giga toxic boss design ngl. can't really find a good way to implement it into the game in a way where it remains relevant, and I Imagine Blizzard felt the same?

[Bramickias]

I always thought that resist gears for the tank (no matter the class) added to their character value, and it was a goal that was never too hard to attain, by yourself or with a guild's help. Kinda like healers having a mana regen set, or spellcaster dps having a couple swappable pieces depending on having an elemental shaman in their group or not.

When it's the whole raid that needs resist gear it's just annoying.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It simply wasn't fun and just doesn't mesh well with the way WoW as an MMO is structured. Stuff like that works great in games that fully utilize elemental weaknesses, but in WoW this was always just a one-way street, not to mention that in WoW our characters are overly dependent on gear because it has way too many stats. It works in TTRPGs when you choose between resistance to fire and having a slightly easier time to pick a lock all by switching a cape, not when you suddenly do 10% less dps per item slot while simultaenously making your gameplay worse because of meta stats like haste.

[owbu]

Using a loadout to counter a specific enemy's abilities isn't an RPG element. It's a general game design decision, and in WoW it makes playing the game more boring for no benefit.

It's not interesting. It's a check box.

If resist gear was a checkbox like the new talents are (shadow boss coming up. Everyone click the shadow resist box) you would be right. There is no value in those kind of decisions.

What makes it interesting for some people is that you have to invest time into becoming a character that has shadow resist gear by gathering the materials, finding crafters abs enchanters and so on.

It's not something that is objectively good or bad it's just an aspect of the game that all of vanillas game play was build around and that doesn't fit into today's game because you can't make killing elementals for hours before you can kill the first boss in [raid] fit into the current game play loop.

[zorkuus]

Stuff like that works great in games that fully utilize elemental weaknesses

Yes. If frost spells for example slowed or froze players who don't have enough resistance, that would atleast be a mildly "interesting" mechanic.
However, that's not how it worked in WoW. Not enough resistance = the spell just does more damage. Yawn.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Waste of time to collect.


I'd much rather take bosses having more than 1 mechanic and those boss encounters be interesting, rather than "don't stand in the fire" and "make sure the unavoidable and consistent raid wide damage be mitigated based on the kind of gear you farmed before hand."

[Pigy2]

It's not fun though. Like bosses being immune to certain schools of magic. Lore should never get in the way of gameplay.

The world's integrity should never be compromised for the convinience of the player.

Other side of the coin.

[Ringthane]

Because we a) didn't like having to farm multiple bosses in multiple places for a piece of gear just so we could progress in the latest whatever, and b) had such limited bag space back then, that by the time you had all that gear in their, you didn't have room left over for much else. Remember, we also needed potions, and food, and flasks, and buff stuff, and ammo or soul shards, and bandages, and so on. And stuff didn't stack like it does now, so you had entire bags filled up with ammo, for example.

Nowadays it would work, since stuff stacks so much better, and there's no ammo and bandages. If they could give us something where you didn't have to carry the gear but could still equip it, then it wouldn't be so bad.

[Kralljin]

I specifically mentioned spirit on plate gear (that was a thing in vanilla, warriors had spirit on their gear, also it was pretty useless for paladins) to highlight that back then the game had all sorts of poorly thought out "rpg elements" that didn't make much gameplay sense, nor were they fun.

Spirit was actually a pretty decent stat for leveling, as it increased your health / mana regen.

Doesn't excuse it in endgame items, but that's another story.

[zorkuus]

Spirit was actually a pretty decent stat for leveling, as it increased your health / mana regen.

The hp regen was negligible. Eating or bandaging was 100 times more effective.

[Kralljin]

The hp regen was negligible. Eating or bandaging was 100 times more effective.

The point is rather that spirit reduced your downtime.

It's not like Bandaging, Eating and the additional regen via spirit are exclusive to each other.
The faster you can chain mobs, the faster you kill them overall, hence it's actually not too bad to have spirit over something like Stamina, because Stamina is only useful when you actually need the extra hp.

And especially for a class like Paladin, the additional mana regen is also a factor.

[zorkuus]

Are we actually arguing about spirit? I knew it was going to come down to this stupidity at some point.

[Kralljin]

Are we actually arguing about spirit? I knew it was going to come down to this stupidity at some point.

I am pointing out that the stat was actually not useless, even for plate classes like Paladin or Warrior for what is a sizeable portion of Classic, which is leveling.

[zorkuus]

I am pointing out that the stat was actually not useless, even for plate classes like Paladin or Warrior for what is a sizeable portion of Classic, which is leveling.

The base stat wasn't "useless" (it kinda was though). But if you get a piece of gear that has 8 spirit on it, it does practically nothing.

[Kohtra]

Resistance gear itself wasn't necessarily something they needed to keep. However, I do strongly believe they should have kept a gearing system that allowed for sideways progression. We don't have that now.

Basically, resistance gear or something like resistance gear gives us progression where we progress without having to increase our power and lead to things like ilvl bloat and extreme power differences between players.

The game would really benefit from that.

EDIT: Actually I should add that PvP gear now has kind of a sideways progression system again now that it scales in PvP combat. But it isn't as full fledged as it was when Resistance was a thing.

[Kralljin]

The base stat wasn't "useless" (it kinda was though). But if you get a piece of gear that has 8 spirit on it, it does practically nothing.

Again, it actually had a purpose.

If you have a choice between an item with 6+ Str / 6+ Sta and 6+Str / 6 Spirit, for someone who is solo leveling, the 6 Spirit option isn't actually as bad, because it actually helps you regen faster, whereas the 6 Sta does nothing outside of clutch situations.

It's simply one of those elements that actually do make sense in the context of leveling, but are completely irrelevant in the context of endgame.

[Daffan]

Resist gear is good for crafters / gathering gameplay, but Blizz don't care, they treat them as 3rd class citizens.

[mauserr]

They got rid of it because it wasn't good.

[Jastall]

Resist gear might belong in more hardcore RPGs focused on immersion and realism, and even then a lot of RPG rulesets don't have it, or at least resistances are more active and not as boring as slapping on X amount of fire resist green gear to counter Y amount of unavoidable damage. D&D for example has resistances be far more dynamic, with various buffs and spells contributing to various resistances and monsters and players alike being able to use and resist loads of damage types. It's still bullshit in places, especially in older editions, and being slightly phased out to few people's complaint that I've seen.

WoW isn't one of those RPGs, has never been, and only pretended to be one during vanilla. If we want to go down the rabbit hole of "why can my fire spell damage a Firelord lol" then I ask why can my sword even damage a giant rock monster, or why the Gnome tank whose only protection is a shield doesn't get eaten by a building-sized dragon in a single bite, how can the Hunter possibly carry a thousand arrows in a single quiver, and why I can swim in full plate armor with no penalties whatsoever. If the answer is that they're magic swords/shields/quivers/armor, then the fire is magic fire and that's the end of that. Same for why you don't need resist gear, your armor's magic and resists fire, end of.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yes. If frost spells for example slowed or froze players who don't have enough resistance, that would atleast be a mildly "interesting" mechanic.
However, that's not how it worked in WoW. Not enough resistance = the spell just does more damage. Yawn.

Wow didn't even do negative resistances outside of some vanilla stuff with CoE, which would be the first step, like tree monster being weak to fire etc. Elements in WoW are boring at the best of times and detrimental at every other.