It’s laughable… I’ve heard people in trade chat on retail smack talking classic because “classes have almost no abilities compared to now”, “have fun grinding away!!”
Because BfA totally isnt a worse time gated grind rooted in much more RNg than vanilla ever was.
You’re just going to (hit cap, arpen cap, defense cap, haste cap, gem for primary stats, pick a cookie cutter build, etc etc etc) anyway so it’s not interesting gameplay! Just take this Generically Beneficial GoodGear instead.
Cool is cool, and this game used to be an RPG
I assume you mean armor and not defense.
But yeah you have no control over those three stats, you could hide them from gear and it wouldn’t make any difference.
I still wanted to include them though since they do exist even though I agree with you that there really only are 4 stats today.
Yeah armor not defense. I played BFA for a few months, started out playing everyday for a week then just didn’t care. The game didn’t bring me any feeling of progress or choice. Essentially your options come down to the 3 secondary stats. To be fare I’m somewhat of a loot shore and I love options for adjusting stats on my char. Getting gear in BFA also felt like it’s something you get not something you strive to get.
Well yeah. Diverse stats (that’s not just “more damage”), interesting enchants for multiple slots and later on gems are all things that make the game feel more like a RPG because like you said it gives you choice and options but also figuring out what works for you instead of being given a template character that you have little to no control over.
Character progression is at the core of and RPG but it’s not just gear, you need meaningful side systems like talents, skills, reputations, content unlocks and things like that.
But for gear specifically you need a lot of customization and you need a lot of options and a fair amount of complexity.
In BfA gearing almost feels like a experience bar, it’s just a number going up.
In a way it has to be this way in BFA with personal loot. Gear has to be uninteresting and all kind of okay. Otherwise personal loot would be much more painful. I’m definitely not defending it though. Bad choices just lead to more bad choices.
This is the best and most concise explanation for the gear problem in BFA I’ve seen.
OP is confusing “more stats” with “more interesting”.
Just because Vanilla had more possible stats, doesn’t automatically make it more interesting.
Many stats were so weak, they made no noticeable difference to the gameplay experience or extremely situational and felt unrewarding to get. Some examples: crit rating, MP5 and most resist gear.
Take crit for example. Back in vanilla crit rating didn’t exist. Instead you had gear that “increases crit chance by 1%”. Or in very rare cases “2%”.
Even if you went out of your way to stack such gear you probably couldn’t get more than 5% or so increased crit chance. That doesn’t compare favorably to Retail where stacking crit rating gear might get you to 40% crit or more. 5% extra crit is at most barely noticeable. But 40% crit is game-changing.
Agree, some for my disdane for BFA is the skill and talent setup. I loved having sunder armor, mocking blow, stances and simply being able to use skills from my other spec skills to perfect my game play. Did I use them often? No but it did identify the players that tried over the ones that didn’t and when used properly they made a proper difference. I’ll add that a move like mocking blow was a backup for when taunt failed and by having it in battle stance a tank had to put a bit of effort into taking advantage of it. All my stuff will be based off of a warrior since I get a proper peen from that spec.
You also got crit from agility and intellect and from talents and certain buffs so getting to 30-40% wasn’t impossible at all, just not at the start of the game.
Blizzard had no idea what they were doing when they were itemizing things in classic. They threw stats into a blunderbuss and shot it at pieces of gear, and frequently the main driving decision behind what special item did was “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you had a sword that…”
The result was, obviously, greatness.
Not really. Here is the difference.
There is a ring that gives
28 stam
14 agility
Second ring stats
1% crit
40 attack power
8 stam
Now what ring do I pick? Do I want .3% more crit and 40 attack power. Or do I want .7% more dodge and 200 more hp?
While in BFA your options crit versatility or mastery. What way do you want to do damage. I guess versatility is a defensive Stat also.
Also with stacking crit gear only getting you 5% crit is wrong.
Lionheart helm 2%
Mark of fordring 1%
Valor shoulders add I think 9 agility so .45%
DM chest 2%
Bracers from rend 1%
Devilsaur gloves/pants give 2%
Omoks belt 1%
That’s not everything either. Then there are also items that add agility instead of crit that you get to pick if you want more survivability by gaining dodge or just crit.
Id say its even worse than that. All of the stats essentially accomplish the same thing. They are intended to be balanced to such a degree you focus on Ilvl as your primary stat, although there are exceptions, most classes are within such a close % increase from Crit/Haste/Mastery/Versatility that they can all be interchangeable and considered one stat, that being Ilvl. Beyond Trinkets stats have very little meaning as a character building tool and are thus meaningless giving us really one stat.
its one of the worst systems ive ever seen in any RPG. Then again, WoW is no longer an RPG.
Bit contradictory there?
True.
Gear was more intresting for me because I was stupid back then. After that I just relied on a BiS list which made all gear but my BiS terrible.
And that’s been gone since TBC for anyone intrested in progression. The only time things get intresting is when you’re making do with a sub-par set of gear or pieces or trying to work towards your next tiers BiS.
There are no random stated pieces in BFA. Everything is pre-statted.
What actually made gear more intresting back then was putting ina heap of effort into your gear. Whether it was enchanting a heap of it,spending days gathering matts to craft it or farming it for ages that made your gear yours.Spending weeks or months farming a specific piece from a raid boss felt good, praying for it to titanforge,socket then get a tert stat doesn’t. Having that specific pay off paid off dividends.
Gear has zero longevity now.That dragonspine trophy that lasted till BT was amazing, getting a DFO was amazing,crafting skillherald was amazing, getting the sliver trinket from oppulance doesn’t cause if it doesn’t max tf and socket I’m going to be back there next week praying for it to do so.Getting a piece of gear now feels like it’s just a boost that could be replaced in days/weeks and it definitely will be replaced next tier.
Yeah Versatility and 2 stats that accomplish the same thing is super interesting. The thing is when 40% is just a norm its not really that cool. When almost every class in the game is doing things only the most powerful Rogues, Mages and Warriors could, its just another bland characteristic.
Also situational concepts are at the core of nearly every Fantasy book. Whether its a specific villain that could only be defeated with a specific sword, or having abiltiies that could only work on Undead as a Paladin or a Priest, or a monster whose Fiery breath was so strong only the sturdiest flame resistant gear could stand against it. This is literally RPG 101. If you find that unrewarding id say you have no understand of this genre or where it came from and certainly no respect for it. This makes your opinion fairly unrewarding.
Have run with your nature and fire resist green quality gear with 5 resist on it. That you get while leveling.
Resist gear is only useful for a very few specific raid boss fights. And for those you would wear epic level 60 resist gear.
All the low level resist gear is basically worthless. Getting a 100% useless stat on your gear is not fun.
Getting a 100% useful stat on your gear all the time is even worse though.
You need bad or even useless gear to make the good pieces stand out and feel exciting.
If I’m playing a tank and a piece with +healing, intellect and stamina drops it’s worthless to me but it might be good for our healer even if it’s not the BiS piece.
Ya but vanilla gear can’t titanforged so it’s already more boring than BFA. /thread
They have been systematically ‘streamlining’ the game year over year, and that pertains to gear as well.
Honestly, some amount of streamline is OK, but too much is bad (the Diablo random afflix green stuff can go get bent IMO), and so are RNG upgrades and tertiary stats. ![:-1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/-1.png?v=6" ":-1:")
I liked stats in WotLK, but that’s just me. But I liked Legions’ implementation of haste, in that it was finally applied consistently across the board so far as I’m aware (Feral finally getting their due in BfA).