Not the same thing . Tier never completed a toon it just gave special buffs or say made a stand still cast be able to be made on the move.
Borrowed powers since legion have actually completed classes/specs because they were secondary talent trees that is you don’t have them your toon is only half complete. I would of liked to seen anyone of done Legion without artifact weapons or BfA without Azerite gear or try to do SL without Soul Binds or conduits.
Tier in no way is comparable to what we have been getting since Legion and people really need to stop using that false narrative of it being just the same.
In the Cases of LFR and Normal If you are clearing them before you have gotten the 4 piece, than your argument is mute. As you have cleared the raid before getting the 4 piece.
I have never been in, or even close to a US top 100 guild. And by you saying that the guilds you have been in, gear funnel tier you presented your evidence based on personal experience, then applied it to progression in all cases and said it holds true.
I Present evidence to the contrary where, in my experience, Even during progression, tier was not funneled. People with 3 piece got preferential rolls on 4 piece. People with 1 piece got preferential rolls on 2 piece. That was how, in my experiences it was done.
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You cut off my statement to cherry pick your argument.
I was stating that 4 piece normal and LFR is not the equivalent of getting your 4 piece heroic raid gear. You are saying that farming LFR and Normal for 4 piece. Means you have your full tier before clearing heroic. In the strictest sense, that is true. You have a tier set. But you have already cleared the raid on 2 difficulties. So you have completed the raid before you completed your tier.
In the heroic or mythic, you still are going to be upgrading those pieces with heroic tier. I will still wager, in many cases, you do not have your 4 piece in heroic gear, before you actually clear heroic.
Free swapping between specs.
Free swapping between talents.
Gear dropping from every shred of content.
Catchup currency pouring from every shred of content.
Gear having two Primary and Two secondary Stats.
Weapons having two Primary and Two Secondary Stats.
Every stat combination for every slot.
LFG.
LFR.
I could go on.
Blizzard has trivialized everything outside of instanced play to the point where they have to make these systems so people don’t get bored out of their skulls getting their ideal gear pieces with all the right stats (versatility the most convenient) and raid log for the rest of the game.
You’re playing a MMO RPG. Grinding in inherent to the genre. Get over it.
I was raid tanking in Cata and no, even for the previous tier you couldn’t get certain items off the vendor. It was a big complaint until DS LFR, and then it turned into a big brawl over who got gear and how unfair it was, blah, blah, blah. [Though honestly, I only had positive experiences regarding my own gear, I did see some fights break out for others]. I dunno if the old tiers were fully available from the vendors at that point, but they certainly weren’t before hand.
I honestly can’t remember much of Wrath gearing not including raiding outside of the fact that TOC/ICC was fully available off the vendor for badges [I had to get my T10 shoulders this way], though I honestly don’t remember people being able to get full tier before this point from vendors. I know it wasn’t the case for TBC at the tail end. Wrath during T9/10 was the only time I can think of pre-LFR one could get their full set without having ever stepping foot into a raid but as I said, it took a while. And given the raiding community at the time, many people who had any skill at all to raid did so through the vast amount of PuGs.
But, you know, facts and the like. Would have been nice to buy my helm off a VP vendor in Cata - just not possible.
Why do you keep bringing up the vendor ? What the heck does that have to do with Tier acquisition and having 4pc before you reach the final boss ?
Yes, facts like 4pc was easy to achieve before you ever reached the last baddy, and has been since TBC.
No, the conveniences have nothing to do with why WoD failed. WoD failed because it had literally nothing to do. At all. Too much effort went into the Garrison system for them to make any other kind of content.
Legion is a great example of an expansion with tons of content. The AP grind had nothing to do with what made Legion good.
Even with day 1 flying, WoD would have failed. There was no reason to even play the game at all, even after patch 6.2 and flying were put in. There was literally nothing to do in game besides raid and PvP. The few Tanaan dailies were stale week 1.
You could’ve also said the same thing about Cata and Tol Barad, or even MoP and the Timeless Isle. Subs kept dropping despite MoP because it was notorious for its dailies.
WoD was the shining example that going back just to talents wont work.
So by me stating that Farming LFR and Normal and to get 4 piece, is clearing the raid. And using it as the argument that you have cleared the raid before completing your 4 piece, is moving the goalpost when applied to low difficulty raid settings?
Or that stating that in a progression sense, having your 4 piece from previous difficulties does not mean you have your heroic tier set before you have cleared heroic.
My counter argument is that by clearing it on any difficulty before you have your 4 piece set, than you have in fact completed the raid before getting your 4 piece tier.
You have argued that both lower difficulties of a raid do not count as clearing the raid, And argued that tier from clearing lower tier raids counts as getting your tier before clearing a higher difficulty.
The difference being MoP had a massive library of dailies and reps, with a ton of different cosmetic rewards to earn. It had Heroic scenarios, VP farming for gear upgrades that wasn’t a massive grind (weekly capped), it had the fun CMs with an actual good reason to do them (full armor sets!), it had Zandalari invasions for mounts, it also still had IoT and the Dino isle.
And people were out in the world, instead of locked in their garrison.
By contrast, WoD was a barren wasteland.
If you had Legion without Artifact Power, with all its content, artifact weapons being just ilvls with Relics, and all the cosmetics Legion offered (rare mounts, pets, Artifact appearances), Legion would still be the massive success it was, minus the Maw of Soul AP grind which no one enjoyed.
This is so undeniable, that Legion’s best patch, 7.3, you would max out the Artifact in like 3 WQs worth of AP and no one thought “hey, I wish this took longer”.
So no, you’re entirely wrong. Legion is proof positive that an expansion doesn’t need to rely on a borrowed power gimmick to succeed.
That’s not clearing the raid. At best you can argue Normal pre-WoD would be, but that would give you LFR and the fact that Tier drops before the last boss to get your 4pc before you attempted the last boss still. And most guilds progressing through Normal at that point had no issues filling their raiders with 4pc before getting AotC.