How do I get heard? The Azerite trait system is horrendous for offspecs

Community General Discussion
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Hi everyone,

I’d really like to learn the best way to provide constructive feedback to the Blizzard team that is driving the Azerite trait system.

I’ve grown very disgruntled with the current trait system, especially as it pertains to off-specs. As a Paladin, I love the flexibility I have to fill any role my guild requires of me. I have become the swiss army knife for our raids. Unfortunately, I have to either 1. maintain 4 sets of gear, or 2. refactor every time they request me to change specs.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve refactored my gear to Prot and then heard “wait nvm we need you to heal”.

The problem isn’t just on hybrid classes, either. On my mage I constantly found myself struggling between my three favorite areas of the game (Fire for raiding, Fire for pvp (different trait build), and Frost for Mythic+.

It feels really bad not being optimized for different areas of the game and having to refactor to feel like you’re competitive. Even as ret, I feel like the builds are completely different for single target, multi-target, and PVP. Technically, to be optimized, I could have 6-9 sets of gear if I wanted to avoid refactoring fees. Yowza.

My recommendation is to simply make Azerite traits activate their spec-specific traits. All Azerite traits have various options for (Prot, Holy, and Ret) OR (Fire, Frost, Arcane). Why not make those paths activate when you change specs?

This system bums me out. I wish I could be more casual and care less, but running a raid as Ret with Holy traits basically guarantees I’m kicked from my terrible DPS.

What does everyone else think about this?

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At Actiblizz , no one can hear you scream !

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This late into the expansion, I highly doubt Blizzard cares. We’re getting a final filler patch and then it’s all Shadowlands all the time. Just bear with it a bit longer.

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I’m not a fan of the way Azerite traits work either. Blizzard’s position has been that we should either farm up off-sets, or pick sub-optimal traits that work for multiple specs. The former isn’t really practical since the only means of obtaining relevant ilevel Azerite gear is raiding, or saving up Titan Residuum, and the latter is… well, sub-optimal.

I too would love to see a system where you could set up your Azerite traits on a per-spec basis, but I suspect we’re probably stuck with what we’ve got until it all (blessedly) goes away in Shadowlands.

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I agree that is why I just play one spec. I am tired of Blizz’s bullshine design strategies.

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It’s essentially bull that each piece of azerite takes a day to reset, and if you swap once to a spec and swap back, that’s 6 days eaten up of switches. Ask yourself, is time gating offspecs reducing more content then it is adding/ with more offspecs, players could master and play more aspects of the game like we did back in wotlk by having the GAME be the content, not the timegates. Keep in mind that azerite IS TIMEGATED, if you overgeared on one you could use rings, but it just doesn’t add anything to the game.

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Yeah, I finally just made an entire new set for my off spec (Main resto, off balance). Even though we share roughly the same stat priorities, it got expensive reforging gear all the time.

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When did paladins get a 4th spec?

Regardless, they’re not entire sets of gear, they’re just 3 pieces that you have to swap out (well, aside from weapons and trinkets, but those aren’t new).

Doesn’t anyone remember pre-WoD hybrid gearing anymore? That was whole sets of gear you had to maintain. And you couldn’t even change an int piece to an agi/str piece for a fee, the four classes affected literally needed twice as much gear.

Sometimes your offspec might be using normal gear when your main has heroic. Combined across all three azerite slots that’ll set you back a whopping 3 overall ilvl. If your offspec can’t handle that kind of performance loss, then I kinda wonder what you are doing with it.

The concepts of “optimal” and “BIS” seriously need to go straight to the Maw. If it’s good enough for the content you’re doing, why should you or anyone else care if there is something you don’t have that is theoretically better? “I got the wrong one, it’s not optimal” ruined Legion legendaries and it’s what makes people unhappy with the Azerite they have, too. And don’t get me started on people complaining about being “forced” to do content they don’t like because one specific essence sims better than the ones that come from content they are already doing.

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Supposedly in 8.3, the pieces will always have the best trait for your spec. Just need to collect six to twelve different pieces to finish out the expansion with your best traits.

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Honestly, what’s the point?

Blizzard will just add a new stupid system next expansion.

Consistency has no meaning at Blizzard.

Just ask the 1000s of patch notes.

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It’s crazy that everyone forgets this. People always make posts complaining how this game lacks meaningful choice, how gearing is too simple, how great vanilla-> wrath were, that there is no content or nothing to do… then we get threads like this where players want the exact opposite of all of it and just want ezmode.

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Literally what Blizzard told you to do.

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I want ezmode thanks.

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I agree completely. I really miss how the tier bonuses in legion swapped when you changed specs.

I actually thought the azerite traits would do the same in bfa. Instead, we have to keep duplicate items clogging up our bag space while taking upgrades away from others.

The covenant system is already a mess, as you mentioned, when it comes to playing across various content. It’ll be worse when people also play across specs, like yourself.

FFXIV breaks down a lot of these restrictions and doesn’t have a lot of the other issues (like pathfinder/flying) that wow does.

It’s too late for them to do anything in bfa- but I’ve started leveling a character in ffxiv in case they don’t do something in shadowlands.

If it stays similar or gets worse, I’ll be converting.

Really sad too - because it ends up feeling like you’re being punished just for playing the game for the reasons you chose your class.

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I understand. A lot of people do.

But then the complete opposite feedback comes in as well. Then no one is happy.

They need to just pick a style and go.

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3 pieces of gear, vs the like 14 we had to keep around in Mists for each spec.

If anything, they need to bring back the OFF in OFF spec a bit more.

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Okay. Here’s the single most effective way we’ve found.

So what you do is you get a green post-it. It has to be green. This is important.

Then you illustrate on that post-it what you want. Stick figures are acceptable, but try for something a bit more expressionist. That seems to work best.

Then you take that post-it throw it in the trash, and pray for quantum uncertainty effects to randomly translocate it across the country into Blizzard’s office.

This method is approximately 15 times more likely to be heard and taken to heart than any verbal or textual communication via official ingame or community channels.

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I have no issue getting multiple sets. Granted you likely aren’t going to be able to get 440+ with each spec, but my Pali has a 432 prot set and a 431 holy spec. Ret is a bit lower at 429 or so.

Think you just need to lower your expectation.

Edit: Correction. Prot is 433.06, Holy is 432.75, and Ret is 429. Not necessarily the best iLvL, but considering I have only been 120 for about a month, I don’t raid, and only do Mythic+ and Conquest Cap, its not too bad.

My DK has 438.31 in Havoc and 437.06 in Vengeance.

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My stance on this whole thing is that WOTLK had the perfect balance in terms of sets.

Yes, you had to build different sets of gear for different specs. But because there were badge vendors who sold enough items to fill like half your slots, it was fairly easy to cobble together useable sets for your off specs.

Personally I think catch up mechanics for gearing and asking for blizz to make gearing up easier and easier a huge problem for the game. Certainly a big part of the game is actually killing bosses and getting the achievements. But a big part of the game is also farming up your BIS. Going into raid each week, hoping that the final boss drops that 2 hander than every Warrior and DK in your raid is drooling over. That’s part of the fun of the game. If gear is just handed to you it’s quite boring. Also, I think it’s a good function of the game to force players into having a Main Spec to a certain degree. I don’t think off specing should be as optimal. So in that light it’s ok in my eyes to make it so that gearing up your off spec takes a long time.

Again that’s why the badge system in WOTLK was nice. Cuz you could use badges to get filler gear and make sure you have SOMETHING useable, and you could target specific items you needed rather than relying fully on RNG. But on the flip side you couldn’t just build a full set from badges. WOTLK was the perfect balance up until TOC, then the badge system went rampant, allowing you to get full tier from badges. That’s just…too far in the direction of accessibility. I had 0 problem with the rate/speed of gearing up in WOTLK.

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I like how he’s pretending that we didn’t keep several sets of gear in Legion because those shifting bonuses were usually crap for off specs because you didn’t farm it for that spec to begin with.

Also I had a bag full of leggos to make my bonuses work well.

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