I just wanted to touch up on balance issues that I’ve been thinking about lately:
secondary vs primary stat value and said ratio balance on gear.
effect on gems values from above.
how reforging stats would effect it today.
So something blizzard aimed to achieve with BFA was to balance secondaries and primaries so that ilvl upgrades were almost always a direct throughput upgrade (more damage/healing etc). making it so that primaries were more valuable to your character and secondary stats were, well, secondary. every piece of gear you have would have primary stat and a higher ilvl would guaranty more primary stat value and be an actual upgrade regardless of the secondaries on them. so if you hate versatiliy and there some on there. its ok because the strength is very strong so the ilvl increase is still a power increase, despite having versatility.
to actually do this would require redesigning how every stat functions for every spec in relationship to each other versus primary value.
this did not happen to knowledge.
Instead what we got was a bandaid fix on stat distribution on the actual gear. They bloated primary stat gain per item level of gear increase in relationship to secondaries, so that per item level increase you are gaining a lot of primary stat value and very little secondary gain.
lets look at bracers: 430 bracers give 281 strength and 162 secondaries total. looking at 445 bracers now we have 323 strength and 171 total secondaries.
so we have gained 42 strength while only gaining 9 secondaries.
this was the bandaid fix on most gear. Rings are not granted primaries so that is an exception.
with no other factors with ilvl increase usually this does mean an upgrade for most specs regardless of secondaries. good job blizzard. (i know there are exceptions like shadow priest. im sure i missed others like some of the lock specs).
however once you factor in gems suddenly you are adding 50 secondary of your choice. Remember the 15 ilvl increase only gave 42 strength on bracers. and you did not get to choose your secondary. so on 430 socketed bracers you are trading 42 often less valuable primary for 50 more valuable secondary of your choice. as well 9 secondary not of your choice you are losing out on., all across a 15 ilvl gap. for a total net loss of 1 stat point taking the socked 430 bracers over 445 no sockets. remember you get to choose your gem which is what throws off the balance in what should be a tie for a clear winner. (the socketed 430).
benthic gear added to this balance issue, giving us a chance to reroll already BiS raiding gear into a forced socket. giving us things like the best boots currently in the game.
in case you didn’t play mop or earlier, sockets used to be predetermined and were never random. they were part of your gear budget and you always knew if gear would have sockets or not. more sockets mean more control over your character and usually a higher stat budget than less sockets or no socket gear of same slot.
the combination of the secondary vs primary stat imbalance and also random sockets on gear isn’t really an issue if you use tools like raid bots or sim craft to find your optimal gear set up. but blizzard wants us to be able to tell at a glance if it is an upgrade or not. This isn’t doable with the combination of the band aid fix to stat weights and random sockets.
this brings me to my third point: reforging stats.
reforging was as much a tool for class developers as it was for competitive players.
Stat imbalances werent nearly as big a deal with stat reforging on gear. If you prefer say all haste and then mastery but you get mastery verse. You can reforge the verse into haste as you want and its not a totally dead piece of gear. it suddenly becomes viable. this gives developers more creative licence to design classes to function in fun and interesting ways they see fit focusing less on stat balance and more on gameplay design. they don’t have to worry about as much stat weights or the stats they actually put on gear drops when every piece of gear can be reforged into your best stat.
the reason for removing reforging was because they didn’t want to feel like sights like mr robot were required to optimize your character. inputting stat weights and and finding the right reforge balance. they want you to be able to equip a piece of gear right away mid raid with maybe just needing an enchant.
my reaction to this is thus: i have been getting into DnD lately and character sheet preparation and customization outside of the game is part of the fun of the game. yes it is a ‘chore’ but for me at least customizing outside of the gameplay is a fun way to get into my character. it is a part of DnD prep and it is still apart of wow prep to a lesser degree. WoW has some roots in DnD if i’m not mistaken. Paladin lay on hands comes right from the DnD 5e spellbook for paladins.
If you look at the number of sims people are running just for essence combinations to be competitive in raids and m+ people like figuring that stuff out and customizing your power and play experience. Those who don’t enjoy it can look up generic suggestions on icyveins or your class discord and it is still fine and well.
one last unrelated comment. I wish spelllbooks would let you reforge azerite in a dugeon or perhaps give us a separate item to swap them.
I am starting to wonder why I am letting a creature of the void touch my gear to change the powers when we are allegedly fighting the void lords. You can’t put azerite gear in void storage and that makes perfect sense. its’ the life blood of our titan planet. It shouldn’t be trapped in the void. So if there is a reason a void creature is reforging our titan life blood gear I haven’t seen it yet. (but I don’t read the comics). or maybe this alludes to powers the void has over titans and titan artifacts.
anyway if you made it to the end congrats.
for the record i love playing bfa overall as a whole. these are just balance suggestions/observations I had for blizzard. I enjoy classic at my own pace as well. its just a different game.