Anything that isn’t baseline to your spec is a borrowed power. It’s given in the name.
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Tier sets I’d argue are baseline to your spec.
The name was given starting with Artifact weapons to discuss power grinds started with Artifact weapons.
Tier sets are not Borrowed power. For one thing : before Blizzard decided to disable them because fixing them was taking too much time, they weren’t even borrowed to begin with, they were permanent fixtures. Disabling of old tier sets as “legacy” started in Legion.
Borrowed power?
No thanks.
The tier sets of 9.2–that we don’t yet have, will enhance baseline abilities, and we will cease to use asap in 10.0–are borrowed power.
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Nope, they weren’t in Vanilla, they aren’t now either.
They do not fit the description of what people say when they mean “Borrowed Power”. You guys just want to muddy the water on feedback.
Borrowed Power = Paragon systems. Not gear with effects.
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You’re right. Though I may consider it that, it’s not what people are referring to.
I could see one system per expansion. Sure, that would be nice having something novel. But multiple systems (or one overbearing system)? Definitely not necessary. There are other ways around button bloat, as elucidated in prior threads.
Yes, I understand the reasons for them to exist, but I still don’t think they have mastered them yet.
I just want to point out it’s that way at the start of every expansion. The only difference, in the past it took 3 or 4 levels to replace your tier sets, you still lose them by the time you hit max level and we’re wearing dungeon blues again.
It’s the scaling of our stats as we level that needs work, that’s the reason we felt like we lost power as we hit max level this time, we lost too much of our secondary stats.
We got the stats back as we geared up and it normalized. But we should never feel weaker as we first hit max than we did at 58 & 59. That’s just broken.
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Honestly, no. We’re supposed to be the heroes of the planet and yet we have to “borrow” powers in order to become powerful enough to get the job done. We need the next expansion to be all about what we can do and not be helped along the way.
Borrowed power is fine, like trinkets, item effects or tier sets. It’s borrowed power systems that are not ok, like azerite armor, covenants, SL legendaries etc.
So what is the difference you ask ? Well easy borrowed power forces people in content they might not enjoy, like tier sets force you into raiding for example, but the key difference is once you the tier set you are done, the borrowed power systems however keep players repeating the unwanted content over and over again, you had to grind AP, you have to grind soul McGuffins from Torghast.
Another issue is that the borrowed power we get from items is minimalistic compared to the borrowed power systems. You need not look further than the current MT to see what your character actually looks like without the BP from SL, or how most specs felt ufinished at the start of BfA due to removal of artefact weapons.
So yes should have borrowed power in the game, but we should remove the all encompassing expansion features that serve as carrots on a stick to force people into content.
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I suggest adding system to the end, like “Too many borrowed power systems is harming the long term health of the game.” is much harder for them troll with stupid stuff about how every bit of gear or things like tier sets are the same thing as soulbinds or corruptions or artifact weapons.
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That is what I have been saying and if they decide to keep some of them , then start pruning talents that are never taken and see what ones players feel should be base line for classes
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Tier sets absolutely are borrowed power as they modify your character in (usually) meaningful ways to enhance your power outside of pure stats. Prior to around Legion, the idea of borrowed power wasn’t really an issue since they were often limited to tier sets and rare legendaries - Legion brought far too many borrowed power systems into the fold. Borrowed Power Systems would be a more fitting name for things like Covenant, Artifact Power, etc.
In my opinion, borrowed power in the form of legendaries or tier sets found in pre-Legion content are both beneficial and exciting - something to work towards. The complex nature of borrowed power systems we face now, like artifact power, azerite, and covenants combined with the “dumbing down” of stats in general, is boring and not engaging in any meaningful way. Upgrades are never exciting or something to consider how, or if, it would be an actual upgrade. This ties in with a larger gripe about how personal loot works and the removal of complex stat systems like spirit, resilience, and others though.
The difference between tier sets and what most call borrowed powers is. Tier sets just give a bonus to classes/specs and these borrowed power systems complete classes/specs and actually make it so they can fully play in the current xpacs content especially max level.
Tier is not a make or break thing. The systems people call borrowed powers are . They make up around half of a player’s abilities as passives.
Using tier is an apple and oranges analogy and going since they are both fruit they are exactly the same.
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Borrowed power needs to be built around classes instead of classes built around borrowed power.
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Yes but classes need to have enough inherent powers to feel “complete”, and if not the borrowed powers that complete a class should be quickly accessible. A lot of the time borrowed powers feel like things that should have been baseline to a class, for example in legion some of the worst cases were legendaries that were necessary to play a spec with the “optimal rotation” ie there was a shadow priest one that gave you an extra stack of mind blast and a hunter one that gave more stacks of a shot, both of which were super bis and drastically changed their respective rotations.
Overall borrowed powers should amplify an existing part of a class/spec’s kit rather then redefine how the spec works in such a way that makes the build limited to that patch.
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Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Class/spec abilities get buffed and nerfed based on their interactions with borrowed power in a lot of cases. When the next expansion hits and the power is removed, the class/spec becomes dysfunctional.
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OT but I love your character name.
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Imagine for a second that where people learned this from was misleading or even wrong.
I think the proper term would be “expansion specific progression systems” but in BfA certain influencers started calling “expansion specific progression systems” “borrowed power” to give it a negative “they take it away” vibe, and here we are.
But in the end, no matter what term you use, I don’t think they can go away. Take away lock outs, time gates, systems, and grinds and there’s only a couple weeks of content at most. What will we do for the other 8 months?
Expansion specific progression systems used to be daily quest hub rep grinds with a vendor that had recipes and gear. Are the current systems better or worse than that? Why or why not? Korthia for sockets and conduit upgrades is an example of this type of patch specific progression system and it’s not super popular.
The major systems like leggos, azerite are just different interfaces for the last few rows of what used to be your talent tree. Should they just put those back in the talent tree and then not change them any more? Would that be better?
And the minor systems are just different interfaces for turning on and off tier sets and trinket powers.
And that’s the problem I have with “Borrowed Power™” It most likely can’t go away and it’s a term that’s too broad and loaded to have any useful discussion with.
Borrowed power helps fight massive disparities in power from one expansion to another.
However, it also creates a reason for more systems to be developed, and our current dev team has real difficulty controlling themselves when making systems.
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