So the new optional crafting mats allow crafters to control what secondary stats they get without RNG, which is great! But how could you give players the same control with quest items and drops? In the past, the devs have tried reforging, or items to reroll secondaries, but I think I’ve got the ultimate solution!
Gems and enchants.
Okay, haha, that’s already something that exists. But there’s a twist. Right now, a ring with crit and mastery just has with those two stats and there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, what if the base ring just had Stamina and a gem slot or two? Okay, now you think you have to buy gems for every item. BUT, what if it also came with a random gem already IN the slot and a random enchantment? The power of the gem & enchant would be based on whether it’s green, blue, or epic.
So we still get random secondaries on items, but all of the secondaries are replaceable! Players can CHOOSE to pay extra to completely customize their secondary stats. Item stats are still RNG, but a player’s final stats are still completely deterministic. And unlike reforging, you don’t need a math degree to figure out which stats to replace (especially without hit, expertise, parry, and dodge hard caps).
For non-JC items, they can still have gem slots, like belt buckles, bracers, weapon hilts, etc. But there could also be other types of modifiers made by other professions. Belts, boots, and cloaks could have tinker slots for BoE Engineering items. Chests, Legs, Hands, and Foot items could have Armor Kit slots. Smiths, Leatherworkers, and Tailors could make various types of armor kits. Shoulders, helms, and weapons could have Rune slots for Scribes to create runes for. Cloaks could have spellthread slots that tailors make threads for. Alchemists could make permanent oils to cure weapons. Weapons could have counterweight and weapon chain slots. For ranged weapons, there could be dedicated scope and ammo slots.
For all these different permanent slots, drops and quest rewards would come with random items already in them. Many would also come with random enchantments already on them. A neat side effect would be that new players would be encouraged to see filling gem slots as normal and would be more likely to look for such items. It would also make item mods really common and excellent quest rewards.
I think this would not only greatly help professions be more viable, it would give players complete freedom to customize their secondary stats however they want. It also means you can upgrade any green or blue simply by putting better items in its various slots. And if blues can be upgraded to almost-purples, maybe we can steer the equipment ratings back down to where greens and blues were actually viable items and purples meant you were doing very high level content. Welfare epics make high-level items feel really boring. Basically, if an item doesn’t have “Heroic” or “Mythic #” tags just under the name, it probably shouldn’t be an “epic”. No profession should be able to make more than 3 or 4 “epics” in an expansion.
Hell, even give whites slots, and let’s kick everything down a level. (And make whites moggable.) After all, why shouldn’t the most common of quest items or the first gear you make at Blacksmithing (1) be “Common”? There’s really no difference between whites and greys anymore, so why not make whites the baseline gear? Then greens replace blues as dungeon boss drops or storyline-end rewards, and blues replace purples as mid-level dungeon and low-level raid loot.
