I guess I don’t understand why people think that an off-spec should only require the right trinkets and (sometimes) weapons and no other work to gear up. Yes, flex tier gear was an interesting idea, but it seems to me that the motivation behind adding friction to changing specs on the fly is so that you have a group composition and you solve the problem of getting through the instance with THAT composition.
If you want to spend extra effort changing talents and gear between each trash pull so you can eke out hyper-optimal performance, and teleport back and forth to reforge your gear (whether thats secondary stat reforging or Azerite trait reforging) before each boss, maybe re-enchant and gem as well, they’re going to make it difficult - either you collect extra gear or you pay more gold.
If the traits are so important that ilvl doesn’t matter that much, then what’s wrong with the offspec tank or healer having good traits but overall ilvl is 3-6 lower? You can still help out your friends - you may not be quite as good as you could be if you go overboard, but how often would you really need that last few percentage points in damage reduction or HPS?
You have the choice, if you choose to spend ridiculous amounts of gold, that’s on you. You’ll get through that instance regardless, even if your ilvl isn’t quite as high, or your Azerite traits aren’t optimal.
I think the answer they’ve given is that they think some “friction” is valuable - as though having to grind out different trinkets/weapons/secondary stat items wasn’t enough friction.
Which is why I asked the question about what benefit this friction provides.
One of th e issues I have with present armor set up are all those stupid add on abilities that the game DOES take into effect …
I got to 113 before heading to BfA and I was dying constantly due in part to my welfare purples I had picked up while farming Rep … As soon as I had my Chest, Shoulders and helm from BfA I stopped dying …
BfA IS ALL ABOUT THE GEAR … classes are nothing since all it is is a new special effects package and 3 to 4 buttons in rotation for every fight…
I feel lke I am playing one of those arcade games from the late 70s and early 80s that only had 2 buttons these days
I think the bigger issue here isnt so much keeping extra pieces, I have nearly 4 sets of gear and I only have two specs. Back in the day my warlock had about the same without having a “tank” spec. The issue is more that the azerite pieces are basically empty slots without the traits. The difference of having a trait or not is huge. it isnt like days of old where a piece just doesnt have the perfect stats but it’s still useable to get the job done without hesitation. The current system locks new characters into that spec or forces them to go generic or spend gold that not many new players have. This isnt even going into the information aspect of it, have you ever put on a piece and not realized the trait is wrong? How would you know without going back in and checking? Iv had guildies running around with random traits bc they thought it wasnt a big difference or didn’t wanna spend the gold, then when we got into the raid I had to show them they were missing out on 3-6k dps, and for a normal/heroic run thats huge.
There are plenty of ways to fix the issue (just giving azerite pieces the secondary stats would be best imo) but I really hope blizzard doesn’t keep going with systems that lock out specs and make it even harder for people to just play their class.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dev team more prideful and stubborn. Blizz WoW team never wants to admit mistakes and will grudgingly not change stuff until it’s too late to really mater (ie Legion legendary acquisition finally quietly changed at the end of expansion to what people had been asking for all along that they refused to do). They’ll come up with a hundred different excuses and metrics and whatever else to tell us the players are wrong and they’re right. It’s silly. Just listen to your player base.
If there’s tons of outcry against something (azerite in general), then that something is wrong. Period. Games are meant to be fun. If your players aren’t having fun, then pretty much no excuse or justification is valid. The fact that this blue is trying to convince us that Azerite gear is still fine without having the proper traits for your spec is just mind boggling… sure if you’re a LFR quality player who doesn’t care at all about gimping your teammates leaving thousands of DPS/HPS/whatever on the table, I guess.
There’s reasons that WoW subs are dropping like flies and it’s because current Blizz would rather be “right” about their almighty design philosophies than make a fun game that their customers love.
I dunno man, blizz advertised azerite armor as a selling point of the xpac and this blue is saying they sold the xpac on the premise that the new gear can effectively lack even secondary stats.
Yeah maybe that’s okay for Normal or Heroic. That’s not okay for Mythic, which again, is where this problem exists. The acquisition of multiple sets of Mythic-level gear is currently nigh impossible.
I’m currently halfway through progression on Mythic and have done a 10+ key every week since it was available. I, as of now have only just acquired a full set of 385 last week with 1 duplicate (helmet). Since the only plate shoulder from raiding is from Mythrax, there’s literally no way to get 385 plate shoulders outside of M+ until you’re basically done Uldir progression.
This is just to acquire a single set. We’re not even talking the number of weeks it would take beyond this point to get optimal traits for one spec, let alone 2 or 3. Given how significant some traits are for some specs, you’re looking at a 5% loss or more on some traits, per trait. That’s enormous when progressing on harder content, especially if you’re talking about someone swapping in to Tank.
The whole system is just a huge step backwards for a reason I just don’t understand. Tier Sets swapping between specs was an enormous benefit and a change that was highly praised. I just can’t see the reason for going backwards on this unless it’s a technical limitation.
Blizzard fantasy land: We don’t want you to have to sim all the time.
Reality: traits are stupidly ambiguous so simming only real way to know what is an actual upgrade/better
Blizzard fantasy land: gold cost justified in reforging so you’re not doing it all the time and traits feel semi-permanent for specs
Reality: traits are stupidly ambiguous so simming only real way to avoid spending thousands and thousands of gold in testing traits in game
So I don’t have any issue with limited reforging of azerite if Blizzard didn’t make it so hard to get in the first place. My main content is mythic+, I don’t raid and I’m very very lucky with what I get from dungeons and my weekly and I still haven’t gotten enough drops from my weekly chest to have two sets of 385 azerite for heal and dps specs. I have one piece that I have to respec whenever I swap to dps. Like I don’t care about saving stuff forever, but I don’t even have enough gear to HAVE two sets. So I mostly just don’t dps. I’d rather have multiple sets than reforge all the time.
They literally stepped away from reforging after MOP because of the same issues and cited them almost word for word to what we experience now.
This expansion has shaken a lot of my faith in blizzards ability to remember past mistakes and improve on existing systems. Everything about BFA feels regressive and done solely for the ease of development for their staff rather than quality of game.
I find it ironic that Blizzard made a change to gear to allow for main stats on all gear so we wouldn’t have to have a large pile of items to swap to and now we are back to having a giant pile of gear to swap to again (Do you guys not remember your own changes and why you did them???). I have 30 pieces of gear that I keep in my bags for optimization right now…
I’m sure this will come off as being critical but your responses to people on this thread are rather underhanded and anecdotal. “I don’t have a big pile of items” so that means no one else does or “I don’t pay more than 20g for my respecs” so that must mean no one else pays more than that as well. You’re not actually making any kind of effort to sympathize with the people on this thread but I guess that’s the Blizzard model right: “You think you do but you don’t”. LOL
I did. I ran dungeons as disc and raids as holy so not only did I have to have two sets due to Azerite traits on each but completely different pieces due to the stat priorities not being interchangeable. And changing gems/enchants and reforging traits adds up. I was a bit relieved when my raid leader asked me to go Disc full time.
Yeah seems like a request for communication on Blizzard’s part. Sadly - even with all of the blue posts on this thread alone - there still hasn’t been a clear answer to the benefits this mentality provides the game.
People devoted to a single spec don’t really care - in fact, they’re hurt through longer queue times to find the needed roles.
People who are willing to help out the community are charged for it.
I would have liked for Azerite Traits to not be bound to gear. Just let me earn/unlock them via some similar RNG at different power levels / ilvls, and then let me choose them all from a single interface.
It would have been a much cleaner system, and the lore could fit it all into the Heart of Azeroth. Heck, you could’ve done something almost RPG-ish and let us spend AP levels on paragon points for each trait or something.
Then we don’t have this problem of what gear to keep stuffing our banks and bags full of. Customization can be done in a single interface, and if the cost of re-picking talents and points is right, it encourages experimentation.
I’m not even halfway through this diet coke and I’ve already got 2 better ideas than what we have now.