Epics weapons had a more interesting alternate progression

Community General Discussion
1

Azerite armor just isn’t interesting, the choices are meh, there really isn’t anything you particularly look forward to.

With epic weapons, earning the AP points wasn’t that fun, but when you finally had the points, you traveled to your class area, looked at a talent tree for your weapon, and picked something. There were several times while earning your AP points you would think, ‘Wow, can’t wait to get such and such weapon trait’.

By comparison

When you get enough points for azerite armor, you get spammed on your screen until you open your character sheet, look at the armor that has a new upgrade, and then click the 1 obvious choice available. And that 1 obvious choice usually has so little impact on your play, you click it just to make the screen spam go away. Its about as unepic, uninspiring and uninteresting as something can be.

I’d rather just do away with azerite armor… nice idea… A for effort.

Azerite didn’t work, can we just move on please?

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2

They’ve already told us they’re changing it in 8.2 so Azerite Traits are automatically unlocked and we’ll be putting that AP progressing into the Heart of Azeroth itself instead. They mentioned having active abilities to unlock with it as well.

3

Nothing is interesting in WoW anymore, nothing can be fun or unique because of balance issues.

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4

Artifact weapons were a test to see what kind of grind system can work. The idea-concept of the artifact weapon was cool, the implementation was not thought out, and not that great.

The concordance point was the most obvious thing that just made the team go ''hmmm well you keep getting AP, lets give them something to put it in"

One thing that I would welcome is actually have a frickin’ cap. Setting goals and actually achieving them, having that carrot extend with something arbitrary doesn’t feel to me like good game design.

If the team wants to give people something to work towards… make quality, good content. Not this lazy system to keep people busy.

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5

It’s getting overhauled in 8.2. Blizz admitted it looked better on paper than in practice. Just be patient.

6

They were both pretty stupid ideas, IMO. It seems that they were created for no other purpose than the justify the time wasting contrivance of AP/azurite. The artifact weapons did a much better job covering that up, but it was still a stupid system. A stupid system that was only created because the normal progression system was taken out back and shot by the endless wave of purple gear that is being thrown at players nowadays.

7

Azerite armor is actually very interesting, the problem is it’s gated through Heart levels, which ruins the enjoyment of those items.

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8

Can you point me to this information? I missed it somewhere. If they’re actually fixing this azerite garbage, then BfA might not be such a snoozefest. Please and thank you. :sunglasses:

Semper Fi! :us:

9

There was a Q&A. My first google result is just someone copy pasting the MMO Champ bullet points here, so have that:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/azerite-changes-in-8-2/51585

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10

Thanks, much appreciated. Now, how far out is 8.2? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Semper Fi! :us:

11

The implementation of artifact weapons wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The reason people like them more than the necklace is that they made the game feel like an actual RPG. You had the return of the Burning Legion and the factions utterly failed to unite against that threat, so your character took things into his hands, founded an order for his class, got a legendary weapon, powered it up, and used it against the Burning Legion.

On paper, the Heart of Azeroth should feel like an RPG device as well. It has that Final Fantasy 7-like story where the lifeblood of the planet is getting sucked by some industry and used for war, and you’re the champion of Azeroth and must put a stop to that nonsense, but a generic necklace is nowhere as interesting as a weapon dedicated to your class and specialization. I wish I could just smash the Heart of Azeroth with a hammer and imbue my Legion artifact weapons with azerite. It could still function as an azerite focus to heal the planet, but it would be a lot cooler.

12

BINGO!

Pretty much if they had a Artifact “Item” that was at the very least class specific things would feel better, more so if it was a weapon with some fancy name to it like “Knowledge of the Archmage” instead of the Heart of Azeroth and the Neck would open up like the artifact weapon and have baseline traits which would shift depending on what spec you where. This would avoid the long grind of getting 3 artifact weapons up in AP to the same level if you like to play multiple specs.

Also you could have made azerite gear improve a gold trait like the artifact weapons had but something that changes your playstyle. Like a head piece for an arcane mage could have “when you cast arcane barrage at 4 arcane charges another barrage is casted at 50% of the damage” while another head slot could have “When you cast arcane blast at 4 arcane charges you have a X% chance to proc a 2nd arcane blast which hits a nearby enemy”. Where these unlock at the middle ring which gives 5 ilvl and a slight increase to the traits you already have.

That would make the system feel better.

13

I never thought about generic necklace vs weapon just for your class/spec. There was definitely a cool factor about getting the weapon and learning a little of its history and such.

Basically another strike against azerite armor IMO.

Azerite armor is literally the old set armor from previous raids that you just now have to grind AP to unlock.

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