Have you considered that it is very possible to both have tier sets and not lock slots?
2 and 4 set bonus. Have Helmet, Shoulders, Chest, Legs, Boots, Gloves all contribute toward it. Throw in Belt and Bracers or something if we want an extra 2 options.
There, people can chase their 4sets without being forced to give up their legendary slot.
(please note that I haven’t actually looked into 9.1 tier “sets”. Something about gems, right? Idk. I don’t know if it is possible to work around it to avoid moving Legendaries or if it’s always detrimental to keep the legendary if its in a related slot)
As for raiding becoming “mandatory”, eh, idk. I get that Raid or die is bad, but ever since M+ happened, it’s just been Dungeon or Die instead. An overtuned trinket once per patch doesn’t really change the fact that pre-Mythic Raiding has been made largely pointless from a gearing standpoint. Everything you get is interim temporary upgrades to be replaced later by M+ gear.
So with that in mind, I DO think Raiding needs some advantage to remain relevant for the amount of effort and dedicated time it takes most people.
Is what we’re getting in 9.1 a good way to handle it? I don’t know. I just know Raiding needs help.
Oh, this gets funnier. They’re adding other slots TO the same legendaries to compensate for the gear replacing those slots. You have to refarm ash for the same legendary.
Oh. I take it it’s a “there when you craft it” kinda thing and not an item you use on an existing piece? With the same sort of justification as Valor not working on gear that you got before Valor was added?
There will still be a bis combination. Players will complain about that combination. Players will complain about getting loot from M+ that is the same slot as that combination.
Then you really aren’t raiding at a very high level.
They did have a plan. That plan said no tier sets. GD has spent the last 4 years complaining about not having tier sets. Blizzard caved. This is a “you think you do” moment.
If this is the intent behind their design with the whole notion of “you think you do”, then that shows a visible malice and contempt for their player base. Not a good look. Certainly no reasonable person would shill for Blizzard over and re-direct blame, save for 1 or 3 here on GD. I can’t think of any better way to drive more people away since it’s so easily recognizable.
If it’s a short-sighted mistake that they clear up with the addition of recycling a legendary, it would be one of a long line of short-sighted mistakes they’ve made. They’re not immune to their own obvious goofs and loop-holes, as documented by just about every patch release.
As much as I really don’t like Blizzards current development team or direction, I’m leaning towards the second option being the likely scenario.
Malice and content because they didn’t want players to feel locked into or locked out of pieces for certain slots or feel forced to raid? Or to have players loot a tier helm, then the following Tuesday get a helm in their vault and feel bad? (because spoiler, the vault will still have to drop the slots covered by set pieces for those who don’t raid).
They removed tier sets for a valid list of reasons. Players complained about the removal. They are adding them back. Players are now complaining about the same list of reasons tier was removed in the first place. And GD blames blizzard. It’s comedy.
Shill? No. Believe blizzard should stop listening to players that have no idea how to design a game? Absolutely.
It would be malice & contempt if they throw tier sets back into the game with an apparent disregard and no follow up for legendary recycling, especially after it had been identified what? a year+ ago now that in order to have tier sets and crafted legendaries relegated to specific slots, for both to co-exist such a system to recycle legendaries would be necessary. This isn’t a new topic.
Ergo, if they throw tier sets back into the game with nothing to compensate for legendary wasting, that would indeed be malice & contempt under the “you think you do”. It would be spite work. This very topic has been beaten to death in reference to how legendary acquisition was to work in SL. Money is on that some sort of compensatory mechanism will be added in 9.1 tethered almost exclusively in relation to tier sets, secondary to legendary re-balancing wasting.
I’d say it’s become pretty evident to a lot of people that Blizzard don’t even know how to design their own game. Running full steam ahead with complex overlapping systems that have to be counterbalanced against each other and letting it spin out of control doesn’t instill the most confidence in a lot of people that they know what they are doing, when many of the problems we’re experiencing now were identified months before the expansion released.
do we know if the cost of crafting has gone up with an ilevel cap? i assume it has, so the boost - hopefully - will help with this, too! although I’m banking 9k+ soul ash, currently
