Thank you! =) I was just about to comment on this very idea!
When I heard back in Legion from friends playing the BfA Beta that I wouldn’t have to worry anymore about carrying around my luggage train of 4 complete gear sets with spec-specific legendaries + filler items for legendary swapping + 4 artifact weapons + 12 trinkets to manage situational conditions, I couldn’t believe it! A potential 40(ish) empty bag slots danced before my eyes…
I thought it would be set up as you describe; pick a set of traits based on current spec, maybe hit a little checkbox to “attune” it to whichever spec, and then when you change specs, you’re allowed to lock in another set of traits. Once locked in, they would automatically switch around based on current spec, (with an option to “unlock” and change traits as needed). Something similar to how we can create and select different sets of gear on our character sheet to automatically swap based on chosen spec.
That was my dream, anyway, lol. At least the reality is I now only have half a bag filled with armor, weapons, and trinkets, but I’ve only been really collecting for 2/4 specs (tank/heal) so far. Also, haven’t focused much on chasing BiS, and kept my 3rd azerite gear set pretty generic to swap between the DPS specs.
Regarding choosing the hybrid class woes of gear-hoarding, I’d never give up the ability to fill any role needed. The versatility is worth the constantly-overburdened inventory, (when you also account for Int/Agi potions, water, mana potions, haste/crit/other foods, etc…) Still, I will always dream of more bag space. (/wistful sigh)
As a druid that plays all 4 specs, it is EXPENSIVE as heck to redo all my gear for when I do M+ or have to heal/tank raid, I’m finding myself spending literal thousands among thousands of gold weekly ><
2 Likes
I mean… in truth I’ve always managed extra gear for classes I’ve always ran as more then one spec and this is far and away not as big an issue as it was in older expansions where items, such as tier sets, were locked to specific specs for their set bonuses and you had no option other then to get a second set for an off spec set. In older expansions you not only had gear to manage but also gems and enchantments on many more slots to manage as well which required time and effort to setup to better optimize the roles you wanted to fill. Gear itself has also become far less ridged then it was in the past where items had only Agility, Strength, or Intellect on them thus if you, as a demon hunter, saw leather armor drop it was entirely possible for it to have Intellect on it and thus be a worthless item for you.
In Legion we had our artifact weapon for each spec, up to two legendaries depending on spec compatibility plus items to fill slots if they weren’t shared between specs, and up to two trinkets to manage for the same reason as legendaries. So in total that was up to 5 items, per off spec you wanted to run, for the average player to have in their bags for off spec purposes. Now it’s easy for these numbers to go up if you want to min/max the secondary stats on other pieces to better tailor your off spec set but most average players would have those 5 to 7 items in their bags for off speccing purposes.
In BfA we have azerite gear which covers Head, Shoulder, and Chest slots plus trinkets again to manage in most cases as well as our weapon(s) again to manage depending on the class. So for classes where weapons are easily interchanged, such as pure caster classes, it’s only the same up to 5 items to manage. For others finding suitable weapons for an off spec can be a sticking point since some specs within a class use completely different ones, Monk is a good example; they are expected to use an Intellect1H+off-hand/Intellect2H for healing, an Agility2H for tanking, and two Agility1H for DPS. Someone wanting to play all three specs would be absolutely required to square away their weapon slot before even considering changing their azerite gear or trinkets. So for that player they could have a bare minimum of 4 weapons (assuming they use a 2-hander for healing), 9 pieces of azerite gear, and up to 6 trinkets to manage IF they want to play all three monk specs in a reasonable fashion. This again doesn’t dive into the rabbit hole of getting optimized secondary stats on other slots of gear which could greatly increase the needed bag space for a min/max type of player.
Now with all that being said, do I think it’s a perfect system? No, in fact looking from the transition from Legion to BfA weapons alone can sometimes be a thorn in one’s side depending on your class’ spec requirements to acquire for an off spec when first starting out but I do think it’s current stat is reasonable enough. Plus the changes to azerite gear that will come with the release of the next raid should help reduce the issues people are having with the system. But it’s been in the design of the game from the beginning that if you want to fill multiple roles on a single class you’ve always had to put in extra effort.
Edit: I failed to account for replacement items for Legendaries that cover different item slots between specs in Legion and have since tweaked my numbers in that paragraph.
2 Likes
“” Hey, thats fine the system is perfect “”
TBH I couldnt complain, since I mono tank in general, and most of the people that I know that play properly dont offspec anymore, so I’m starting to get actually paid in gold to go into content with proper players due to the fact thats cheaper to hire someone for a week than keep reforging the azerites…
As I said its perfect, at least im making gold from a system design…
I get your perspective, I have a lot of dev friends, and I know a bit of the industry inside, and its clearly a design choice that is not going to go away…
One real question then if you could share to actually make me feel more imersed in that, as previosly stated on the topic, WoD systems were even worse than this, WoD was a pretty bad expansion on performance (even your financial reports say so, sugar coating some data, no need to deny it since its not just player perception), and bfa systems in general were praised since you could move away from that, with sets changing with your specs but having small gear changes and adaptability with legendaries…
My question is… what went wrong? what data tipped you off, letting players have more freedom in offspec (regarding the legion systems, and more in line with WoD) was a bad game design system? (I’m legit curious for this question)
Besides legion, bench was never a weird spot or uncommon for guardians, they just went back to where they usually were after the cataclysm changes xD
Btw, this might sound like a joke (it partially is), but I’ve been a guardian for years… and I always looked up and discussed with sejta in general about guardian state, both him and fraggi (until they “quit” the game) were very fond of their tanking specs, and the first time I’ve seen sejta reroll was on mop, where he literally stated, I can come in this fight and do it with 30 less ilvl in my monk and its undoable as a guardian (thats the world best tank at the time talking), and after that, for most content he brought the bear when he could, but it has been at least a dozen times (until he quit) where bear was unplayable, and not able to do the current content until either it got buffed or the content got nerfed (which shows how underperforming the class was)…
Legion was an exception where the bear had their spot on the sun, and was actually a very strong tank (prior to nighthold, was really overpowered) but fairly balanced in ToS and Antorus (KJ use of bear was due to one single utility where the only choice you could to fix that was bringing 2 feral druids), I had hopes for BfA when they were redesigning tanking, but they failed so much I had to reroll bear to improve my guild’s performance… and I don’t think I’m ever going back to bear again, because most of the time its underperforming and 90+% of the time is just plain boring with no rewarding playstyle…
I’d venture to guess that the reason that azerite armor is received so poorly (generates unhappiness and complaints) is because azerite armor is effectively replacing tier sets which had spec dependent set bonuses for a couple of expansions (you swapped your trinkets and kept your tier).
Azerite has a mechanism for changing the traits but isn’t intended to allow change on an ongoing basis (the exponentially increasing cost). My current attitude towards azerite is basically hostility. Shadow isn’t designed to be useful as a questing spec (shadow word: pain on anything moving in old content has the same effect in discipline, which has better aoe for that). Wands are bugged with smite, so discipline isn’t a good idea with a wand - neither is questing in a spec that requires smite for damage (oh dear, we just eliminated all three priest specs for questing). I have rather large bag half full of azerite and none of it makes me happy - and I only look at the traits for healing as holy (mythic plus and the occasional raid). You have to look at the trait, decide if you think it is actually positive for your spec (I will never pick the trait of “hit holy fire on cooldown, every time” that sucked as a talent and I will not do that… ever again), if it will actually be useful in your content (plus healing on repeated flash heals is a dungeon only trait), whether it needs tracking…
For future reference, tier sets are way more fun that azerite armor. The ongoing, continued analysis (and some traits that just make you think “dumpster fire!”) instead of a once or twice per tier isn’t fun. Being used to tier sets changing specs and then having it “removed” isn’t fun. Even the “Legion had artifact traits that are sort of like some of the azerite traits but you kept them the whole expansion” beats out “if you like your trait, you have to sim whether the ilevel difference in primary stat of the higher ilevel piece means you have to take a trait you don’t like” (compounded by all loot is personal so you can’t even pass the higher ilevel to someone in guild who likes the traits on it).
3 Likes
no offense, but I kind of hate it when someone that works at blizzard uses this as a response to how ridiculous the gold cost gets. It starts to sound like you think this community in general is lovey dovey, like people don’t have to compete to get high mythic io scores just to get accepted into anything higher than 8. Tired of it.
I’d love to meet all these hardcore players to see where they get the time of day to farm multiple high end sets of gear, but I for one don’t have that luxury. So your response insinuating that I farm another set a gear just to be effective (and accepted) as a different spec is kinda b.s. dude. How about looking at the system and analyzing the real flaws/hurdles it presents to players that don’t have the time to farm three or four sets of azerite gear? How about talking about how it turns the choice of playing a versatile class (player choice right?) into a negative experience?
Maybe blizz just wants to create as many gold sinks as possible so you keep those tokens rolling. Probably easier right?
6 Likes
It’s difficult to express how far out of the loop you are if you think the 20g of 2 or 3 reforges is what someone is talking about.
They mean hundreds or thousands of gold because generic traits will often be useless for non-dps roles.
AND it’s slated to get WORSE with the new gear from 8.1 onward where yet another ring which doesn’t even have a generic choice, only spec choices, is being added.
The worst part is, this isn’t just a Role issue.
If there are fights where a class with multiple DPS specs gets a lot more value from Spec B than Spec A, “Oh just farm extra Mythic Azerite pieces”.
This was supposed to fix the problems of Legion where you had to do a long grind PER SPEC multiple times on ONE character, and good luck if you had any alts that might be useful for progression (Spoiler: I have a Priest because poor choices in encounter design mandate Priests even on Heroic).
I don’t even see why there IS a respec cost given the time investment of having to run around to 1 guy in the entire game just to do it. But it’s part of the forced inconvenience to make people sit on a gear treadmill EVEN LONGER than they already need to for weapon and trinket slots.
It’s a lot like the problem with Legion Artifacts. Instead of 1 Staff for 3 Mage specs, I needed 9 NINE Relic drops, that was NINE TIMES AS MANY DROPS. Even for multiple specs that might use 2 different items apiece, the jump from 5 or 6 to 9 or even 12 drops JUST for your weapon slots was stupid.
So with Azerite Armor, we need to fight RNG on Personal Loot just to see drops, fight RNG on sources like M+ and WQ Emissaries, and then ALSO farm multiples of this. Somehow having to farm a dozen Helms, a dozen Chests, and a dozen Shoulders just to maybe get 2 or 3 decent items for each does not feel like a fun or engaging system so much as a frustrating one.
“Just farm multiple gear sets bro, what’s the big deal, who cares if your only 385 is terrible for your main spec, lackluster for your off spec, and you’re forced to take a spec/role-specific trait. And keep using your 370 or god forbid 355 for your other spec.”
5 Likes
Just tossing this out there, let us inscriptionists make a scroll to reset a trait on azerite armor. Just one though. I need the gold guys.
To be fair, since the early days of the game, most players have had 2-3 sets, myself included. Today I continue that trend by keeping 2 sets of armor on each of my classes with different azerite armor pieces and trinkets. Usually works out to be optimal. Perhaps you should consider doing that instead of spending so much gold each day/week, etc.
2 Likes
What are you talking about? Tier sets would auto switch to spec specific traits. You still have to carry around different weapons, trinkets, possibly rings, boots, belt, etc. The Azerite armor has actually INCREASED the amount of items I have to carry around. So much disconnect…
1 Like
You have a 338 ilvl. I don’t know how geared your mains are but you’re not making a good case for the problem with having to farm multiple 385s etc.
And that’s without the horrendous toxicity that is the M+ community, because some fool decided that forced speedrunning was the way to design that content, which results in massive class discrimination, only made worse by that io trash.
If M+ dungeons were actually designed to be challenging WITHOUT a timer, where completing them AT ALL was the challenge, like raids, that would do a lot to fix the utterly horrible toxic environment and class discrimination around M+.
Which is also ANOTHER barrier to “just farm a dozen heads, dozen chests, and dozen shoulders bro”.
2 Likes
I’ve paid 8k. When one of our raid tanks runs late, I have to switch. We raid Tuesdays & Wednesdays. If I tank an M+ on Sunday / Monday, the decay just can’t keep up with the stacking costs.
I want to be pretty clear here - the Azerite Traits don’t warrant this. They’re not THAT dynamic that people want to change them for each fight. And it’s a pain enough to port back and change them. And the race to the top is over. The reasons behind the stacking cost ring hollow at this point in the expansion.
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“but I don’t see it as a major issue.”
Respectfully, you guys need to stop answering every single feedback from players with this redundant response. You are not the 10 million (let’s say this truly is the number as provided by Blizzard for early BFA) players who play this game, you don’t get to decide for 10 million people if it’s a major issue or not.
When people tell you there is an issue, when so many people give feedback on the SAME issue with the SAME exact feedback/reasons, you should NOT throw a slap in their faces with such a dismissive response as “I don’t see it as a major issue.”
Please note this is coming from someone who actually doesn’t really care about the azerite issues/grind most people are complaining about. I personally just play and don’t get upset or excited over loot, those days are long past. However, I understand why so many are upset over these kind of issues, since for many people the enjoyment of the game comes from the constant grind of better loot, min/maxing, etc. and for them to be constantly told “it’s not an issue” on every single feedback they gave to improve this game is just unacceptable.
That’s just my two cents. You guys barely communicate on these forums, and when you do, you just shut down people’s feedback (some which are very well presented and accurate of issues in the game) and refuse to actually discuss the problem with them while trying to understand why SO MANY people are unhappy with the issue presented and how to fix it instead of brushing it under the rug with “It’s not a major issue.” Well guess what, it is an issue, since clearly despite how beautiful this expansion is in terms of art, music, design, etc, it is also marked as the worst expansion alongside WoD already before it’s first content patch…
5 Likes
Meh, not punishing me. I main Guardian, and if I don’t feel like tanking I switch to feral and leave my guardian gear on. I could probably do better dps by swapping gear, but it’s still a big improvement over guardian. If anyone is getting punished, it’s the raid group that I’m dpsing for.
EXACTLY! It needlessly punishes players for having the audacity TO HELP OTHERS BY CHANGING SPECS.
And it’s going to get WORSE in 8.1 when even MORE spec-specific traits are going to get crammed onto gear.
“Just get handed all the 385s in the world bro” is not a solution either.
Let’s look at all the problems with that:
- Personal Loot is bad enough.
- On top of which, if you do M+ for stuff, you’re fighting even more RNG on drops at all.
- On top of which, M+ is a toxic cesspool full of class discrimination and demands for ridiculous io scores, which means it’s even worse for a lot of specs because you don’t get accepted to groups to increase said score…
- Oh, by the way, I have raid days where I raid with my guild. I don’t exactly have 30 hr/week to dedicate a dozen hours to M+ grinding each week PER ONE CHARACTER. I want to be able to get gear FROM raiding with the consistency of M+, not have my raid drops shortchanged to force people into M+.
So much whining. I carry two sets of gear and sure one specs may be better than the other on my main. If whoever you do content with expects you to reforge your gear for when they need your offspec that group sucks.
Has anyone tried simming your offspec without switching gear vs switching to lower level spec specific gear?
Couldn’t the same be said for people complaining to the forums that they need a better system when others dont feel that way? Arent you speaking for the general population when you ask for these things?