Azerite armor was meant to replace tier sets, but why? Let’s take a look into how it affects the hamster wheel…
You used to get tier sets from killing a specific boss and the only randomness to getting that tier piece was whichever class type dropped (Vanq, Conc, or Prot). With the new system there’s no specific piece, so you have to grind and grind and grind for the right one, which can be very random.
You used to have set in stone set bonuses that completely changed your rotation in an awesome way. With later tier sets they were a single piece that changed when you changed specs. Now you have to farm multiple pieces or literally pay thousands of gold to constantly reset traits. On top of this, the system is over complicated with dozens of boring and generally non-impactful traits that you wouldn’t really notice if you didn’t have a DPS meter. VERY BORING!
You had much nicer looking class specific tier sets to look cool in. Now it’s homogenized in the name of cutting costs, because we’re not as important as an ever increasing profitability ceiling from investors.
The armors at higher iLvLs require you to grind out Azerite Power endlessly to unlock the exact same traits you already unlocked. There’s an arbitrary and senseless wall gating you from unlocking your new powerful item. A clear cut shameless mandatory grind that isn’t fun for the sake of making you feel like you can’t stop playing with out falling behind drastically.
PvE and PvP aren’t separate so in a big way you are given some choices but not really. You have clear choices for PvP and clear choices for PvE, it’s just an illusion. We used to get unique sets that changed how you’d PvP in a big way which was awesome.
Conclusion: Azerite gear sucks, and many people have left the game over it. The devs have admitted it sucks. Most people I’ve seen comment on Azerite gear think it sucks over all forms of social media, the WoW GD forums and in game. Basically Azerite armor is a plug to reinforce that “grind forever” mentality. It’s more of a retention mechanic and cost cutting implementation that it is a rewarding, satisfying or engaging form of gearing.
PS: We still have to sim, if not more with this ridiculous system. It’s gone from set obvious BIS pieces to ridiculously inflated amounts of traits we don’t care about and that aren’t fun.
It’s no more a retention mechanic than Legion’s Artifacts were tbh. And they’re literally going to unlock all of the traits by default in the next patch so I mean… okay?
It was meant to replace tier, legendary items, artifacts, netherlight crucible, and it failed in every aspect. They tried to take ALL of that and cram it into horrible pieces. On top of that, they made us grind millions of AP to continually unlock again, and again, and again the same traits we had at 110.
It’s no more a retention mechanic than Legion’s Artifacts were tbh. And they’re literally going to unlock all of the traits by default in the next patch so I mean… okay?
Legion was stupid though. I mythic raided in Legion and did the grind to start the content at optimal power, doesn’t mean it was a good system to me though. Legion’s system at least let you unlock meaningful power boosts and the paragon crap after was very low impact. Azerite traits can make a huge difference on the meters, even if they are not noticeable, fun or change your game play in a cool way like tier sets.
@Yasudra
Did they say it was meant to replace tier sets? Cause I don’t think it was meant to replace them.
I think it was meant to replace artifact weapons.
Well you thought wrong. First off, yes it replaced artifact weapons, but artifact weapons didn’t replace tier sets. Azerite pieces replaced both and suck. Thanks for helping my case.
@Ksamil
It was meant to replace tier, legendary items, artifacts, netherlight crucible, and it failed in every aspect. They tried to take ALL of that and cram it into horrible pieces. On top of that, they made us grind millions of AP to continually unlock again, and again, and again the same traits we had at 110.
Yes! Exactly, it replaced everything and sucked. The grinds to unlock stuff you already had is so stupid. At least in Legion we unlocked gold traits and other stuff that changed the game. To say Legion and BFA are the same is so ignorant. Legion was a million times better than BFA even though I didn’t care for Legion much.
Yea man, I haven’t grinded it either. I have ilvl 400 pieces from War Fronts I can’t use the traits from so they are actually worse than much lower 370 pieces.
Removing tier sets was one of the biggest mistakes Blizz made. Adding Azerite armor was another one of the biggest mistakes. So was the direction of class development, and the GCD, and the forced loot “options”…
Let’s just hope Blizz learned from BFA and does NOTHING like it in 9.0
My view’s pretty pessimistic, but I think they implemented them either to intentionally cause the /time played metric to grow, or because they are actually too lazy to actually attempt to balance this game more than once every few months, and wanted a way to make this trivial task easier for them.
I think you may be on to something. Cynical part of me would thing your first point to be able to have people remain in longer… which had people leaving instead.
Second part I can believe because watching graphs from the top players and all around then figuring out what buff or spell would be appropriate to make things more in line. The unfortunate consequence is that they did in fact take away too much and gave us way to little in return.
This Xpac really is like …“Yeah we really gave you guys way to much in legion…we need to scale back… like alot.”
…I still miss the The Emperor’s Capacitor…I am still bitter I have no use for Crackling Jade Lightning.
They should just admit defeat and drop the entire Azerite grind at this point. I’d be happier with losing this “core feature” and getting tier back. Azerite for probably another year just sounds awful. I’m going to be done with this expansion and if there’s another stupid paragon style grind next expansion I won’t come back for that either.
All the traits should have been focused into the necklace, and we should have had full control over the traits we wanted.
Farming low level content in hopes for a titanforge for a piece of azerite armor that has all the traits I want, or dumping thousands of gold on a Azerite slot machine isn’t good game design imo.