This is also the fix on heirloom chest shoulders and head - scale the heirloom ilvl to their Azerite counterparts.
Edit: and your left only having to choose between traits or bonus xp.
I mean you lose a couple hundred stamina/strength/armor when you wear the heirlooms instead of azerite armor, traits aren’t the issue. But there’s no good solution as you can’t just buff 110 heirlooms or else people without the expansion get awesome gear. So 111-116 would need a buff, but then you have a janky power difference between 110-111
They might need to increase the item level to at least come somewhat close to azerite armor. Not sure how having all 3 pieces of azerite armor as heirlooms would affect for example your item level and random dungeons. Just bumping up the item level on the pieces would go a long way imo.
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I’m pretty sure Azerite gear already stays around the 285 level while leveling regardless of your level or the source of the drop. I could be wrong. You can also already fill out your Azerite slots if you’re lucky just from a couple dungeon runs, way before you would have filled them out with questing.
There’s also WAY more disruptive things that cause 111 power spikes than what would be iLevel 285 heirloom gear. Twinks sit at 3/3 for every slot at 111 as-is.
I think just scaling the pieces to 285 once you hit 111 is a good solution. It makes up for the potential iLevel disparity and it really doesn’t contribute much to power creep. They don’t need to scale any further beyond 111, they just need to be competitive.
At the end of the day I don’t think it’s really going to make that much of a difference, especially since it can be a challenge to get an Azerite piece in every slot if you focus on certain forms of content like Expeditions to level. I do think it feels bad however, even if the net difference in time to level is trivial.
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I agree. I’ve leveled a character from 110-112(?) with only heirloom pieces. I had deleted the character earlier, sold all gear etc, then I restored it. I didn’t have any issues. BUT as a character you’re very powerful around 110-112. You only start to feel weaker once you hit 116-117.
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Simple solution is that at player level 111, the heirloom chest, shoulders, and helm go from item level 160 to item level 280 and just cap around there. This way, while true you don’t have azerite armor traits, you at least have the stats.
Can make all the other gear continue on the linear progression of item levels as they always have.
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Aren’t the heirloom pieces slightly weaker than equivalent blues these days anyway? Doesn’t that mean it’s already a weaker piece, plus not having azerite on it.
Obviously secondaries are good but it won’t be that much of a difference when wearing the full loom pieces, they don’t provide that much secondaries.
Won’t most of the players also be (expected) to be levelling from below 110? So most will be dealing with also not having Legiondaries to assist their levelling.
I think it might be considerably more difficult for them to level than the initial levelling process was.
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OP mentioned healing an azeriteless tank. Idk if you have looked at azerite gear recently, but it is where a MAJORITY of your stamina is.
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You barely get 2 rings while leveling. Also i sincerely doubt the heirlooms will be remotely competitive similar to how weapons were in legion. The IL discrepency is too much and losing out on THAT much main stat and stamina is not a good trade for actually killing mobs.
Oh. I leveled all my current 120’s until about 116 without azerite gear equipped… I kept my legendaries and my 4pc from antorus until the ilvl difference got too great between azerite and not. I didn’t feel like I struggled to keep up healing or tanking or dps during this time. I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal especially since leveling azerite has like 3 rings and they’re usually garbage traits.
I had a 335 timewalking chest on my brewmaster monk for a good while after hitting 120 because it was better than a 285 azerite chest without a meaningful trait.
Heirlooms are there to level quickly and they will serve their purpose to those who don’t mind passing up 2 rings of traits pre120
No. You are sacrificing power for convenience in terms of XP gain. Not to mention Helm, Chest, and Shoulder Heirlooms have secondary stats which Azerite pieces do not so the power gap will probably not be too noticeable while leveling.
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Ok, but again, TTK is my problem on my time. Picking XP over stats/traits is my decision for my time. Two different flavors of time efficiency, a choice for me to make, I got that.
But…
There are multiple ways we level together, and my choice to choose XP over stats/traits affects other players.
That’s 99% of why I made this topic. I choose XP, that’s my choice… what are my dungeon mates getting or not getting for my choice?
How long it takes to level is moot, a leveling character in heirlooms can’t and shouldn’t be a detriment in group content, full stop.
On someone else’s time? In this community?
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They will still be getting main stat + stam from the heirloom. OP was mainly referring to the loss of azerite traits for all players.
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Personally I kinda thing heirlooms should be changed to work more like Azerite themselves, letting us pick between stats, bonus XP or something like movement speed each significant milestone.
But as far as these go, you won’t miss the azerite while leveling in BfA. I never even bothered to use the UI until I was max level.
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Just buy a boost. You’ll be happy and Blizz will be happy. You’ll get to skip the snoozefest that leveling has become, and they’ll get your $$.
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To give credit to the rest of this post, this is a valid point, I’m not discounting it. My major point was mentioned here:
Again, my choice for my time? Fine. In islands and dungeons? In dungeon world quest normals with mixed levels?
I’m certainly not queueing to heal. But I’ll queue to DPS. Am I being carried in full heirlooms because I chose Xp? My opinion: if so, that’s wrong.
Now, Heirlooms also guarantee relatively current-ish gear in many slots, not discounting that, but those ilvl leaps between Azerite and non-Azerite pieces are no joke.
We didn’t have this problem in Legion because weapon heirlooms aren’t XP slots. All the Azerite armor slots are!
Azerite traits for tanks are meaningless since most are throughput based. You are better off as a tank having more stamina than doing like 100 extra damage with blood boil. Now if the heirlooms give as much stats as the azerite would, then it is okay, but if the stamina discrepancy is still present, then there is zero reason to rock them in dungeons. The only reason to use them at all would probably be to swap to them on quest turn ins. It isn’t going to be worth any sort of throughput/durability loss.
Yep, agreed. If they don’t have the “inflated” primary stats as azerite pieces do it could be an issue where they are significantly weaker in the stam department.
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You mean aside from the huge stat difference from Azerite Armor being 280 baseline?
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Yes, they should scale up a bit to make up for the Azerite pieces.
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