I can see how the job of producing a bis list could be contentious with reforging offering alternatives. I follow your note about trying to brute force sim, which is already an action players are willingly following by relying on simc and other addons to tell them. Using the software layer to solve that problem fundamentally doesn’t change with or without reforging.
However, to me reforging adds alternatives. (Or conversely, when reforging was removed, alternatives and options were removed too.) Getting a worst stat-worse stat combination on an ilvl upgrade, but being able to swap into a more favorable stat also smooths a sometimes obnoxious gearing curve (losing a preferred secondary, especially when it impacts rotation, eg fire and haste).
You could argue that maybe if the piece doesn’t have the stats you want, you just don’t roll on it. I’ve passed on plate pieces before that were technically small upgrades, just because I know someone else could make better use of those secondary stats.
Once we start hitting secondary stat diminishing returns, reforging would start being like hit and expertise, where you get a piece with the stats you want but after reforging to avoid soft caps, you end up with less, which feels weird.
Alas, I wish that’s how gearing worked in mythics. That’s a great policy for raid but falls apart when you get whatever the box gives at the end of a run.
I think the complexity you talked about has more bearing around soft caps. Since every piece is designed with BIG and small Secondaries, reforging a small low value would often not even hit the radar with worrying about DRs.
But this is the type of conversation I loved about WoW, and it was removed entirely with “You get what you get.” (Sort of.)
Those are two completely different things. However I loved reforging. It allowed for builds that weren’t possible with talents alone. You could min/max haste on resto Druid and gain extra ticks on hots. It was so good.
Well, the idea was that “gear should be gear”. They didn’t want players to have to jump through a dozen hoops before equipping a piece of gear. This has been lost to some degree with the upgrade system, however.
The solution is in front of their face they just don’t want to piss the top end players off by allowing casuals to grind one or two mythic pieces per season.
Eliminate crests - valor stones only
LFR 2 Valor stones per boss
Normal 4
Heroic 8
Mythic 16
I like the idea of being able to reforge secondary stats. So much so I made a post in the professions forum suggesting giving crafters the ability - Recraft/Reforge
Reforging was awesome and should come back. As long as Blizzard insists on giving us crap gear with stats we don’t want - especially when it’s non-tradeable so we can’t even give it to our friends - we need reforging back.
People in this thread who disparage reforging are nuts. Absolutely nuts. If you don’t want it, don’t use it.
Anyone that actually liked that system never interacted with it past “I like this stat more than that stat.”
You HAD to hit your caps on various stats, otherwise you were subpar, had a chance to miss attacks, etc.
Ideally, you have to reach these caps WITHOUT going over, otherwise there was no benefit to the stats over the cap.
In some cases, swapping to the wrong stat just because “you like it” would actually LOWER your DPS.
Take it from someone who was actually there, actually knew how the system worked, and was actually doing content:
It sucked and it was a PITA.
There were actually calculators and addons made for the sole purpose of looking at all of your secondary stats and calculating the best way to reforge your gear in order to hit your caps with minimal stat loss while also maximizing DPS. A single new piece of gear was enough to throw EVERYTHING off balance and forced you to once again reforge and recalculate EVERYTHING, and people would KNOW if you were suboptimal on your stats/caps. You guys constantly complaining about repair costs? Yeah, you wouldn’t have liked this at all.
In short: good idea in theory, but with everything else floating around it, it was completely terrible in practice. The fact that addons and stat calculators for reforging exist and that you would have to rebalance it all each time you got new gear should tell you that.
I hated reforging. “here’s a drop. don’t equip it. let’s take a long break to see if some items should be traded. too tired to go to the website, wait to see if I was rewarded tomorrow.”
Hated. Hated. Hated.
But I don’t raid anymore, so if enough people want to remove the reward elation of the moment and introduce more hoops to jump through to equip a piece of loot, go for it. Probably fits in better with the majority pugging community since that is the “grab anything you can, figure it out later” economy.
Pug drops are the type of loot drops that reforging can turn trash into something you can use that makes sense. You grab it, then see if you can make it work. You have no intention of trading it to someone who can use it more, you don’t know any of those people. Reforging gives you another tool to at least squeeze something out of a loot grab.
Reforging for a dedicated raiding group is just a delay in figuring things out. I’ve never had more protracted loot discussions than when reforging was a thing - and the entire group was focused on seeing that the loot goes to those who could benefit the best, so no drama there.
Just my two cents based on my experience. Yes, it was “just another website to check”; yes you would be amazed how many could not load the site properly, had issues with it, didn’t understand it, etc, etc. Hated reforging.
Sounds like your guild over complicated things to me. Thus killing any joy.
Right now I’m finding too many items to be poorly itemized and see how it could be beneficial.
Currently my gearing is coming from doing 4 bountiful delves per week & 2 slots from the vault. Most of what I’m getting is basically the same stuff I already have. No upgrades. But, I need more haste to make my spec flow & not feel clunky. I need about 33.4%. I’m at 18%. Right now my only choice other than waiting weeks & weeks is crafted gear with missives. That is what I am working on now, crafted gear to work towards balancing my stats. That is still a weekly wait depending on the vault rewards. So the reforging is all ready in the game, ie: crafted gear. My suggested is to allow crafters/inscriptionist to be able to do the same thing to all gear just like they can to crafted gear. To be able to change the stats with missives. I don’t see it as a bad thing. Only a good thing. But then again humans are human & get weird and create silly drama over needless things like you old guild did.
