Copying from a post of mine in another thread, because I agree there is a certain “intentional” element…
[quote=“Tadpo-eldrethalas, post:64, topic:422559, full:true”]
Nerfs to Corruption bonuses, specifically Infinite Stars, aren’t even remotely a surprise. In fact, they were very reliably predicted. Don’t worry, they’ll get around to those other outliers soon as well.
I initially thought that the positive Corruption effects were intentionally too powerful to tempt players into suffering through the negative Corruption effects and dealing with more deaths in content because of them, therefore slowing down content consumption. While the devs may view that as an added bonus of the design, I no longer think that. Imagine being level 119, and someone gives you an item level 460 weapon that requires level 120… do you sell/DE it or keep it for when you can use it? You save it of course. That’s what I believe they’ve essentially done to us with Corruption gear. Long after people have cleared Ny’alotha, there will be players still pushing to upgrade their cloak so they can eventually use that tier 3 Infinite Stars item with 75 Corruption on it, if not more than one. They’ve intentionally front loaded gear acquisition ahead of when we can use it - so I believe they’re balancing NOW for that time in the future - a future date they can reliably predict since advancement on the cloak is gated with a set schedule. If I’m right, the devs didn’t need to balance them on the PTR. Sure, you could technically run a lot of Corruption now, but that time you spend moving out of range of the eye or dealing with the Thing from Beyond is lost dps… even if it doesn’t kill you, it WILL slow you down and therefore slow consumption of the content.
I’m not defending this by any means. To the contrary, it’s wretched and underhanded, and intentionally leads players into a “No Win” situation. No matter what course of action Blizzard takes at this point it will leave a bad experience for players - for those that game Corruption or hold onto the items, that effort isn’t going to be rewarded with further nerfs. For those that cleanse the item to use right away, even though the nerfs won’t effect them, they’re going to constantly worry about the positive effect they’ve given up - one they might have to hope drops later once their cloak has reached a sufficient level of Corruption resistance. If they don’t nerf, then the game is broken and people will be carrying these effects deep into Shadowlands. [/quote]
Again, it makes for a poor consumer experience and as what Blizzard calls “trying something different”, is highly indicative of the approach we will see in the future. It really isn’t different. It’s a re-skin of the Azerite gear progression system with elements of Reforging added and, at best, inherits all of the problems of both.
