So we've received word that Blizzard's solution to the availability of azerite armor is to make emissary cache rewards scale to 370. This is a great and badly needed change, but there's something that Blizzard hasn't considered about this change that is going to blow up in their face when it goes live.
To quote from Wowhead regarding Azerite Armor Caches:
The contents of Azerite Armor Cache aren't as random as they say! The armor you get from this depends on the zone and faction associated with the quest.
This also applies to caches obtained from emissaries, which will contain 1 out of the 3 of the possible pieces (for your armor class) associated to that zone; and World Quests that reward a non-random Azerite piece will also belong to the same "zone" subset.
With this in mind, it's possible to figure out where to look for a certain piece, whether a certain Quest is worth doing or not, and what to expect from the caches awarded from emissaries.
What this means is that your chances of getting a particular trait are very much faction dependent. Horde can't get Drustvar Traits from their emissary caches. Alliance can't get Voldun Traits.
So if your BIS trait is one of those and you are in the wrong faction then you are simply out of luck.
Here's an example. As a Boomkin, our best generic trait on both AOE and single target is Blightborne Infusion: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=273823/blightborne-infusion
This trait is only available from 2 sources. The first is on shoulders that drop from Gorak Tul in Waycrest Manor. No other Waycrest pieces have the trait.
The other source of Blightborne Infusion gear are WQ mobs and emissary caches in Drustvar.
BUT - And here's the big "But".
Order of embers Emissary caches are only available to Alliance. Horde will never have access to this trait at high level anywhere except the 1 shoulder piece from their M+ chest. The only place they can get Blightborne Infusion currently is from Drustvar World Quests which are capped at 325 ilvl.
This is just 1 example, I am sure there are dozens of examples for other classes/specs and factions.
Just in general, how does the GD forum think this is going to go down with the general population, knowing that your BIS traits are only available to 1 faction?
It’s going to fail massively, and for many more reasons besides this one. It’s a pathetic band aid to a system that is inherently broken. Blizz chose to ignore the community feedback and push through the Azerite system, and even without this issue, their “fix” does nothing to address the core problems with it.
Do you realize that as a Balance druid in legion, your BIS single target trait for 2.5 whole raid tiers only dropped in Violet hold (Scythe of the Stars).
You only got that trait in Antorus.
Not in any dungeon. Not in EN, NH, or TOS.
Warlords of Azeroth isn’t even a meme anymore. I say this constantly how did we have a great system that worked and do a complete 180 and destroy it? I played so many 110s in legion because every spec felt fun to play hell It actually reminded me of Diablo 2
Blizzards motto has to be if it ain’t broke, break it
Do you realize that as a Balance druid in legion, your BIS single target trait for 2.5 whole raid tiers only dropped in Violet hold (Scythe of the Stars).
You only got that trait in Antorus.
You could theoretically get it as either faction though right?
Not any more.
Warlords of Azeroth isn’t even a meme anymore. I say this constantly how did we have a great system that worked and do a complete 180 and destroy it? I played so many 110s in legion because every spec felt fun to play hell It actually reminded me of Diablo 2
Blizzards motto has to be if it ain’t broke, break it
The system in legion was not great at all. It was terrible in fact, especially for people who wanted to play multiple specs. As a druid I didn't come close to collecting all the legendaries available to my class for alternate roles by the end of legion. If I wanted to heal I had to do it with no legendary effects at all.
The Azerite Armor system is fine in my opinion. It's interesting and it's fun. The only issue is that you simply can't get the gear if you don't raid. A 1 in 10 chance of getting some from your M+ cache puts non-raiders significantly behind the gear curve. Blizzard needs to bite the bullet and make the gear available in M+ like they should have from the beginning.
Blizzard needs to bite the bullet and make the gear available in M+ like they should have from the beginning.
Tier gear was never available via mythic+
There has to be a downside to mythic+. If every bit of gear drops, then there has to be a weekly lock out like raids.
Pick your poison.
Pick your poison.
I'm fine with mythic+ weekly lockouts.
But handouts such as giving free 370 gear for doing the easiest and dumbest content in the game is not helping.
10/06/2018 10:14 AMPosted by
Wariya
Blizzard needs to bite the bullet and make the gear available in M+ like they should have from the beginning.
Tier gear was never available via mythic+
Not but high level gear at least was. You might not have been able to get tier shoulders in M+ but you could have got 385 non-tier shoulders.
At the moment if you don't raid then you are stuck at a lower ilvl because there are simply no upgrades for 3 of your gear slots at all.
10/06/2018 10:17 AMPosted by
Akston
There has to be a downside to mythic+.
Why does there have to be a downside to mythic+?
So we've received word that Blizzard's solution to the availability of azerite armor is to make emissary cache rewards scale to 370.
The last Emissary I did early in the week was for a 340 ax on my Demon Hunter. Neither of the other 2 rewarded Azerite gear.
The 3 rewards for both my DH and Monk last night were: 600 Azerite, a 340 ring, and a 340 wrist. Still no Azerite Emissary.
1st you need an Emissary to actually have an Azerite gear reward. Then it needs to have good traits. Then it needs to have equivalent HoA unlocks. Then it needs to have scaled higher than your current Azerite gear.
I'm really not seeing this system dramatically increasing the prevalence of Azerite gear.
Now if WQ Azerite rewards started scaling with equipped item level then yes, there would be tons of Azerite gear floating around.
Pick your poison.
I'm fine with mythic+ weekly lockouts.
But handouts such as giving free 370 gear for doing the easiest and dumbest content in the game is not helping.
Well you still have to fish for traits you need so it isn't that bad for people who don't raid I guess(people like me)
Why does there have to be a downside to mythic+?
Because if Blizzard can design 6 to 8 dungeons for a 2 year expansion with rotation affixes and scaling difficulty that also can give the highest level rewards while being endlessly farmed no one will raid. Which puts all the raid design team on part time status because you've just cut out a ton of development time and budget.
There's a reason "it'll cost a raid tier" is a thing.
[quote="207683377553"]
1st you need an Emissary to actually have an Azerite gear reward.
They come up about once a week. A guaranteed piece of 370 azerite gear once a week is a significant improvement on what we have now.
Why does there have to be a downside to mythic+?
Because if Blizzard can design 6 to 8 dungeons for a 2 year expansion with rotation affixes and scaling difficulty that also can give the highest level rewards while being endlessly farmed no one will raid.
For a start they do not have to give the highest level rewards. The highest level rewards will always come from Mythic Raiding, as they should.
But having
no gear at all drop from M+ is wrong. People should be able to progress their character in some form in M+.
It's really simple actually. M+ dungeons should have a chest with 1 piece of azerite if you make the timer. 340 gear for 2-5, 355 gear from 6-9, 370 gear for 10+
The gear rewarded is still significantly worse than the gear you get from the same difficulty of raiding, but at the same time you can actually get upgrades.
Doing a 6-9 key in time is significantly more challenging than normal mode Uldir is, there is no reason it can't reward normal raid equivalent gear.
People will still raid for gear because it's much much easier to get 370 gear from heroic Uldir than it is to get 370 gear from timing a mythic+10. Clearing Uldir each week will still be the most effective use of your time, it takes far less time to kill 1 boss in Uldir than it does to complete an entire M+ dungeon. But people will not be
forced to raid to upgrade their gear past 340, which is the situation currently.
it's the same problem with legendaries. 2-3 traits vastly outstrip all the others, but blizzard thinks that's acceptable because some casual turbonoob comes onto the forums to tell them that the feint pants really helped them do their daily quests today. in reality, those 2-3 traits are deliberately tuned to be better to make you grind them out endlessly (see arcanocrystal for another terrible example).
Well you still have to fish for traits you need so it isn't that bad for people who don't raid I guess(people like me)
Or they could just add azerite gear to mythic+ dungeons like we're asking, and you'd be fine.
Instead, Blizz decides on a bandaid fix to give grandma a 370 just for logging in
At the moment if you don't raid then you are stuck at a lower ilvl because there are simply no upgrades for 3 of your gear slots at all.
Why then, are so many people clammoring to go back to gearing paradigms where there was --no-- decent gear outside of raids?
Blizzard stopped listening to players a while back. BfA is a perfect example of this.
Why then, are so many people clammoring to go back to gearing paradigms where there was --no-- decent gear outside of raids?
That's a game *evolving*. Not going backwards.