Gearing Up in World of Warcraft
Since WoW’s inception, Blizzard have been bouncing between how to create fun and engaging gear. Every single expansion we have had a new development with our gear but, it seems in the last 6-8 years, it has begun to scale exponentially with new systems all in the goal of making gear more “interesting”. With legendaries to augment our abilities, artifact weapons and azerite gear to add abilities and passives to round out our class, benthic items, random sockets, over powered crafted gear, Warforging and Titanforging, stat sticks that are good the entire expansion and with the new corrupted gear coming in 8.3, and classic now having time to develop and mature, I wanted to share my thoughts so that we can make gear in the shadowlands more fun and engaging.
As a bit of background I started in tbc and have raided at a semi competitive level throughout my years taking breaks intermittently between content patches with my most time logged on WoW being in Legion and BFA. However, with classic being out, it has exposed how the biggest mmo has been turned into a confusing mess for new players and an investment of hours to find the best gear at the top end.
Throughout wow we have been able to get gear through chests, mobs, rares, quests, PvP vendors (Rest in Piece), catch up currencies, dungeons, dungeon currencies like justice and valor, crafting gear and raiding. All of these types of gearing have existed in some form or another and offer unique paths to strong gear in order to compete in whatever content you want to do. If you want to raid, you get raiding gear to help you conquer the final boss in the instance. However, Mists of pandaria introduced a system that basically made a BiS list irrelavent. Legion then expanded on this where every single piece of content can “reward” you with something “worth your time” dropping items that can titan-forge as a green from a chest in azuna to the absolute best piece of gear in the game. The reason that gearing in classic is incredibly rewarding is notably three big things. You can create a Best in Slot list for what gear you want as soon as you hit level 60. You can go and grind gear that you know you want to make your charecter better, and access to gear is easy with the experience we have as players of this game for 10+ years. Let me explain.
In retail, I play a Fire Mage. Each week during 8.0, I farmed Waycrest Manor as much as I could for the Balefire Branch. A trinket that has the on use effect of giving me a high amount of intellect. I had a 3/5 chance of any item dropping at the end of the dungeon and then a 1/11 chance of it being the item I want to get. Now, not only do I need to succeed a 4/55 loot roll, I also would prefer it to Titanforge and give me a socket or else I would be doing 500 dps or more less damage than my fire mage friend who was lucky enough to get it out of his weekly chest. All of this to macro it into my combustion window and forget about it until the next tier where I need to repeat the process up to 3 more times throughout the expansion because so far, there has yet to be a better fire mage trinket.
The system Blizzard designs in retail is gauged to get me to play the game more. It’s supposed to give me the feeling of always being able to log in and have something I can meaningfully work towards. However, on top of weekly increasing artifact knowledge, a weekly chest that can give me a higher titanforged one for doing an easier dungeon and world of warcraft “seasons” restarting my item level on the exact same trinket from the exact same dungeon but at a higher level this time, I am left with a system where it would feel more rewarding for me to check off my weekly chores, raid log, or better yet come back next season when the gear will be better.
In Classic, I play a frost mage. Since I was level 53, I have been going into blackrock spire, the open world, scholomance, and blackrock depths to find my pre-Best in Slot gear for Molten Core. I have been raiding since level 58 and have a hefty amount of purples to suit my charecter and yet, when I log in to classic, I always have something to go for. But as you know, there is no titanforging or seasons in classic wow. So, how does classic keep me driven and dedicated to spending my time in the game?
There is an item in the world called the freezing ring. Just like the balefire branch, it will be my best in slot for pretty much the entire expansion. All the item does is give me a small damage increase to my frost bolt and provide a chance to freeze if I am hit in World PvP. It has an incredibly low drop rate, just like the titanforged socketed balefire branch but, this item can drop in dungeons and various zones throughout azeroth. Anything I choose to do, whether it be farm for a trinket in Blackrock Spire, look for enchanting recipes in the hinterlands or winterspring, help my guild mates farm leather in Ungoro Crater or fight off the horde on my way to MC in the burning steps has a chance to drop me this incredibly powerful item. I feel rewarded by doing any type of content no matter what I choose to pursue. Whenever that ring finally drops, I will know that the extra pack of mobs I AoE’d down before leaving winterspring will be worth it.
The reason I am so much more excited to farm the freezing ring vs the Balefire branch is that once I get this strong item, I will finally be at peak performance in a gear slot which will allow me to increase my potential as an all around raider and guildmate as I know that I have made myself as effective as I can to help out my team. It also doesn’t discourage me from logging on because now that I have this item, I can look for 13 other slots of gear, enchanting recipes and also try to get another one as I can sell it on the auction house for a hefty profit or use a second one when phase 3 and 4 roll around. Not to mention I am stronger in all other areas of the game and I also get a neat little ability on my ring that can help me mitigate a large cooldown in PvP or give me time to get a little extra space against a tough enemy in the open world. It doesn’t cause me to destroy everything or give me an unfair advantage but it allows me to change the way my character plays without removing a talent, changing my rotation, respecing my azerite gear or losing something that I typically would in BFA.
Going into patch 8.3, we have been presented with corrupted gear. A system that is supposed to replace titanforging so we can preserve the value of item level but also allow us to choose from bonuses and use the kiss curse game mechanic to adapt our played character. Better players will be able to get away with more corruption but wearing too much adds another level of difficulty people have to deal with in the content they are doing.
Since I have mostly focused on the acquisition in this extraordinarily long post, I will continue with that while giving feedback on corrupted gear. I do not understand why we have to continue with these levels of RNG on gear that do not make it more interesting but more infuriating to collect items that are good for my character. Corrupted gear has plenty of layers on top of it that will change the power of the gear, the corruption of the gear, the benefit of the gear and the overall usefulness of the gear. Also, in almost 16 years of this video game out, we learned how to change 2 % increase of intellect to 4% increase of mastery, slap a slow on it and call it interesting gear. You are Blizzard entertainment and you can make game mechanics that are more fun than increasing my damage.
As a raider, I will be expected to get the best possible gear I can get while maintaining the balance of keeping my corruption low to not harm the raids progress. However, I still have no control of how it corrupts, when it corrupts, which pieces corrupt, which stat increase my corrupted piece gives or if the other mage in my guild will just be getting better gear than me because he got lucky.
What if we expanded on the residuum system and now pieces of gear that drop in 8.3 all give corrupted residuum to fit in with the nzoth takeover. Pieces that have already corrupted would give more and gear that drops in raids or assaults also give more residuum because they have “been in the hands of the corrupted”. We could use this residuum to take our gear to the Horrorforge and either raise our past item level to below the Heroic gear, allowing us to increase the power of our gear we have been farming all expansion without implementing a catch up system that invalidates progressing through the next raid.
Or, give us an interesting gear effect that doesn’t necessarily have to be “increase your crit by 5%”. Maybe I could get an extra blink, charge, dash or roll if I corrupt my boots. Maybe I could increase the range of my blizzard, whirlwind, eye beam or Starfall if I corrupt my staff. Keep the gear with minor power gains that can be used situationally and can’t just be fed into raid bots or simcraft. The kiss curse element still remains but this allows players to get gear they are personally attached to. Gear that they enjoy because it ins’t just what is most powerful but what makes them enjoy playing their character more. Perhaps we have to find recipes in the world that we can bring to the horror forge or maybe once we have found a piece of corrupted gear, removing that effect allows us to put it onto other pieces of corrupted gear.
In the next expansion, I think many WoW players want to see a return to gear that matters. We don’t need to chase an endless stream of Epic gear to feel fulfilled by the rewards of our world quest. Give us items that exist outside of raids dungeons and pvp. Exploration and crafting haven’t mattered in WoW for a long time and pieces of gear that have augmentations on game play are a fun driver behind caring about what is on a players back. Power doesn’t have to be the only reason that players look for gear and hopefully we can find a balance between meaningful upgrades and fun and engaging gearing processes that encourage playing the game for longer periods of time.
Let me know your thoughts on gearing in Classic Vs. Retail and if you have any ideas to improve the corrupted system because I am tired of getting RNG based systems I can’t ever reach the end of due to the lack of an endpoint. In order for players to want to continue to play, there has to be a finish line they can aspire to cross. Whether that is raiding, PvP, or maxing out their gear, RNG systems that artificially prolong game time do not inspire players to continue to push for that next big thing. Gear should be the most exciting part of an RPG. Everyone loves getting a sword that they can feel kill enemies so much faster and it doesn’t need to be titan-forged with a socket to feel that way.
Shout out to Olympus and Asmongold on Farelina as well as Preach Gaming and Bellular for inspiring me to write about this and I hope you find the discussion interesting. I am looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on the subject.
