i dont normqlly comment on these kinds of threads as im not savy enough as i dont do a lot of end game progession (besides enjoying high level delves) but i had to say something about the Frost Dk set bonus.
They are counter intuitive to any play style on frost while adding more aoe on top of a spec that is littered with aoe. To top it off, it relies on us to hold off on using obliterate which is one of the most important abilities, especially for obliterate builds. (i cant speak for breath builds its not my playstyle but it doesnt even do anything for that playstyle either). Frost would sacrifice a little of its ST damage for a little extra aoe damage.
An alternate solution would be to have the set do more in favor for ST damage as Frost suffers most there in my opinion (as im assuming frost or dks for the matter, are not getting any major update any time soon)
Granted this if i read the bonuses right. I cant speak for other classes and curious to see them play out before giving any opinions on those.
You’re off by like… 8 years or something. This was not for TWW specifically, it was the design goal for the reworks going into Legion (maybe BfA?), and that’s been the core spec they’ve carried forward since then. They then failed to achieve this resource management/slower paced playstyle for most of the time since then, because they kept adding extra resources to the spec.
This is always a terrible idea, because they’re incapable of tuning talents properly. Build a good resource economy and then don’t let talents mess with it, because talent choices are not something you “choose” based on gameplay. If the resource drowned playstyle does more DPS, that’s what people play even if it’s atrocious design.
I don’t think any of what you said is true about them giving up on the looks of sets. I think that’s actually insane to say given that s2 has some of the best looking tier sets coming for some classes imo. They outdid themselves with the rogue set, undead pirate is really sick. DK set will always be skull&bones but this one looks very good imo, I could keep listing them out but I don’t feel like doing them all. Some of them aren’t great design wise but that’s not new, has been the case every single tier for 20 years. Some are amazing, some are just good, some are okay, some are bad.
In terms of the flair, they all have some sort of visual effect/animation. The shaman one for instance has lightning all over the gloves, shoulders, belt and I think (but can’t confirm) the helmet. They even improved the lightning effects this expansion compared to what we had in DF. Some older sets do have cool animations though, namely a lot of the WoD sets, we haven’t seen that since or even before WoD really. I think sets now have more if not the same visual effects as past sets outside of WoD.
I think what you’ve written is pretty silly, the sets look very good overall. The set design in terms of gameplay is bad, specifically winning streak, but the looks of most of the sets are good.
to expand on that, i think rewards and gear in general is really bad. It should be the entire motivation for engaging in these end-game pillars, but I findmyself just throwing away more and more junk. The only time I really get into gearing my character now, are when I can craft/rely on bullion systems to really flesh out my character the way I want…with one or two items that aren’t just boring stat sticks…
I’ve been on classic WoW (HC), and can tell you every item i’ve had equipped mattered, and I can even name them. I’m trying to think of a single item i’ve collected this season that i’ll even remember 3 months from now.
I think that’s a big part of why their end game modes are dying.
Just empower our Legion Artifacts or HoA again or something…because these boring tier sets, and forgettable items feel like a waste of time. That’s why nobody cares about your ring this season - we’ve done it before and know it’s useless in a couple months.
Have an imagination, and create better items please, thanks…really, it’s not that hard to do.
happy new year though! 
That’s the thing though, the general shape of the sets aren’t exactly bad. Most of them look decent.
They’re just really badly coloured, you’ve got a few exceptions with better saturated colours and contrasting colours used in the Rogue set.
But then you look at something like the warrior set?
Half the colour palettes have the same bloody colour trim and some of the colour combination choices are just plain awful with the shade they’ve chosen, the base PvP set is Vomit gold for both it’s armour and trim colours for crying out loud.
Comparing it to other season’s sets which had much better colour combinations, the colour palettes are a massive let down for most classes.
I think you raise a really good point when comparing the legion Artifacts to gear in general. It’s also why I think class halls were such a massive success in terms of how people enjoyed being in them.
They tried doing this with azerite armor in bfa and covenants in SL but nothing ever hit the same as Legion artifact weapons, probably because they had way more depth behind them than either of those other two systems. And more artistic creativity.
Idk if it’s a popular take but I’d love to see artifact weapons again, they could make new skins every patch for us to get, and they can also just make cosmetic weapon drops from raid/pvp/etc so that we can still collect other weapon appearances (which was the main complaint in legion, that we couldn’t do that).
I like having something I’m attached to when it comes to gear and artifact weapons really hit that, almost better than anything else in the game imo. The looks, the lore, the questlines to get them, everything was good there. Artifact power maybe shouldn’t be an infinite grind this time around if they do it but they can figure all that out.
I’m not sure there’s even another way to go about building an attachment to gear/making it meaningful since retail is entirely seasonal now. People cry any time 1 piece of gear is good from a previous season nowadays, they don’t want to go back and do the s1 raid.
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I do agree the colors can be really odd, they have a big issue with golds too. And some colors can definitely be a bit too similar, also agree there.
I like the shaman colors and paladin colors to give an example of what I think was done relatively well color wise, but your example is definitely accurate for what wasn’t done well.
This is the first return to tier sets we’ve really had since Legion, SL S4 I’m not counting too much. Legion did tier pretty differently, for example if you look at the shaman set from Emerald nightmare/Nighthold, every single set from each difficulty was a bit different design wise, and the colors were completely different.
It was very interesting, im not sure why they didn’t go back to that. Maybe because people were always complaining that they couldn’t get the mythic set/elite pvp set and therefore couldn’t get the best ‘upgraded’ version of the set? Which is probably why they have a token now that grants the mythic/elite visuals to lower tier sets now as well and so they kept all of the sets looking the same design wise just minus the visuals that then get added later with the token whenever you get it. This wouldn’t fix the color issue though.
i was just trying to dig deep and see what really is making me not enjoy the game anymore…it’s def the story and reward system. there’s really nothing impactful, or anything that matters to my character anymore.
The ring is cool, but why is it a stat stick? why can’t it be something powerful we work on for a big part of the expansion, and have it be part of our character’s growth? ya’know? instead of just literally hard resetting every season…that’s not how the mmo experience in a game like WoW should be. Growth of your character should be a big part of it.
Borrowed power systems (when done right) are extremely fun (HoA and Artifact weapons specifically).
Just have a lore reason to re-empower them (azeroth is under attack right? so why not?), and let us earn more essences, artifact appearances, stuff that people will log in to do for funsies every week.
The hard reset every patch need to stop - and imo, just stick to traditional tier sets. Like, where’s the creativity at blizzard anymore? Why is leveling up Once in HC wow more rewarding than 2-3 weeks of M+ or Raiding in Retail?
maybe i’m not the target audience anymore, and I think that’s 100% fine, because they have the classic system…but just don’t beg for me (or players in the same boat) to come back like The overwatch team did…
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We’ve had class specific sets since DF S1 onward. Sure they were still somewhat themed after the raids, but they still embodied a core fantasy of at least one of the specialisations the class has access to and look like a set of armour that would be used by that archetype.
Also on the Mythic / Elite sets being ‘upgraded’ versions of previous tier sets and the LFR/N/H/Conq gear being ‘basic’ is a good change they’ve gone away from, giving the ‘mythic’ look to every set giving more colour variations for people who want a certain look is definitely a better thing we have now.
But we really need to introduce the art team to the colour wheel or games/media that colour in fantasy armour with better contrasting colours so we aren’t met with depressingly muted colour palettes.
Yeah by “this is the first time we’ve returned to class sets since legion” I meant DF to TWW sorry. I consider df and TWW to be pretty similar in terms of the devs changing a lot of their philosophy and outlook.
I personally think class sets have been very good, it’s just the colors sometimes for sure. I think DF sets were awesome overall, shamans got some of their best sets from df (s1 and s3/4 imo). Priests got 3 absolute bangers in DF. I also like TWW S2 as well for Shaman, it’s apparently themed after the ‘Stormbringer’ hero tree and when I heard that it made a lot of sense.
Thats why I dislike the statement made before regarding devs not trying with set design or being lazy. We’ve gotten some insane sets recently
That’s just the crux of it, while you’re lucky you’ve had some nice looking sets for the classes you enjoy. Others have the polar opposite.
There’s definitely some of the artists not putting their all or lacking inspiration when they’re finalising some of the sets be it in the initial design or through the colour palettes letting down their decent designs.
For myself S1 Warrior sets only look good in the Elite/Mythic variants which I have both of already unlocked. The remaining colour palettes are just bizarre combinations that don’t look good.
Even for S2 Warrior that we’re getting soon, the only ones I can see actually looking good are the Mythic and LFR set palettes. The Elite might be ok 3rd, but the other colour variants just look awful when comparing them to colour combinations used in previous sets (s2 DF, s3 DF, SL S1 CN plate etc).
That’s been the case for the entirety of tier sets existing though. Some classes get it good, some don’t. TWW S1 for shaman looks awful imo, one of the worst tier sets I’ve seen in a while. I understand it’s supposed to be themed after ‘Farseer’ but it’s just not good. On the flip side I look at warrior or priest and think it’s amazing in comparison. Again this has happened forever, sometimes what we want doesn’t align with their vision, and sometimes it could be possible they didn’t have enough time for a couple but I can’t say that for sure.
What I will say is their use of tube robes still is really bad. They need to upgrade that. We have open robes now and robes with cool 3D assets occasionally, and then sometimes we just get toothpaste tube robes. That really should stop by now.
These set bonuses are just terrible. The only good thing about them is that hopefully this kicks off a push to get rid of set bonuses entirely, so people can tailor their gear and stats to their play style. Removing bonuses would also remove yet another thing Blizzard needs to balance, and allow them to focus more on the classes themselves.
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You will need addons to use tier set bonuses properly.
Doesn’t anyone else see this an issue for one. And two, it goes against the mantra of BlizZard waging a war against adddons.
Take a hint BlizZard the reason why addons are so dominant in your game because your promote toxic game play and mechanics.
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Agreed. Blizz conplains about players having to use addons and they are even looking to block addons in the future but push out sets that require addons to track.
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My issue isn’t so much about the colour palette they use on the sets, but you would think after 20 years of making armour sets, they still haven’t igured out how to make them flow in a much better fashion and fix the clipping issues.
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The Druid set looks okay-ish, but I expected a more refined silhouette. The 3D elements of the thorns look good on the helm, necklace… until they become just textures on the pieces. That looks awful - checking on Wowhead’s dressing room with other races like Kul’tirans (clearly the ones this set belongs the most), the textures on the robes are awfully stretched out.
There’s one single thing that is really bad, though and it is the shoes. How, in 2025 with all we have, we’re still getting those ‘socks’ for footwear? They do look extremely unfinished, but apparently they are the final deal, judging by the icon.
That is correct and the fact we have to be explicit about this contradiction shows that BlizZard does not even play their own game!
[looking at shadowlands’ mad bombardier set] yeah.jpg
i mean it was fun for a little while, but it was definitely not good design, heh. glad it was temporary
I’m glad you think my experience with Feral is hilarious. Nice take from a community council member.
Feral has been undertuned now for at least the last three expansions, maybe more. Blizzard made a big deal about slowing the class down, and yet we are STILL a mid to lower-tier dps in M+ with no sign of that changing anytime soon. The best we can hope for right now is to be mid because Blizzard continues to prove they don’t know what to do with Feral.
I’ll also note that the current top dps spec in the game is definitely NOT a “downtime” class.
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