What is the actual point of mount equipment?

[Scruit-moon-guard]

Blizzard wanted to remove water walking from mounts, they know people won’t be happy about this.

So they made a system where it is no longer a perk, but an option.

[Xraid-frostmourne (Xraid)]

The point is it sets up the mechanism to allow them to move goalposts for the next expansion, so they can gate mount water walking behind a per expansion rep grind or something akin to pathfinder.

Just you wait, right before next xpac they will change the item description for all Mount Equipment to read “only usable in Azeroth and BFA zones”.

[Honeymoon-suramar (Honeymoon)]

Nothing like earning something for them to take away just so they can give it back to you since they’re apparently out of new ideas and the new way of doing things is to create a problem where there isn’t one so they can say they’ve fixed it.

This is literally the first step Blizzard took to get rid of glyphs, when they realised they weren’t competent enough to balance them. They increased cooldowns and reduced effectiveness of abilities, then had the relevant glyphs just restore those abilities back to their pre-nerf state, basically making them mandatory and removing them from the equation.

[Xraid-frostmourne (Xraid)]

I hate bringing up other MMOs when discussing WoWs problems but I feel I need too. GW2 has a perfect mount system. Every mount is unique, it serves a purpose to the world.

The Raptor is the fastest and dash great distances. The Bunny can jump higher than any other mount, The Skimmer, GW2s waterstrider, The Griffon lets you glide, The Jackle is a wolf that teleports to avoid fall damage and make jumps the Raptor can’t.

Now the first thought would be “WoW has too many mounts for that.” Yes and no, WoW has a lot of mounts, but a lot of those mounts are of the same family and type. Simply give mount families unique mechanics.

Waterstriders stride over water. Cats can stealth, Flying mounts can have innate glide in non flying zones, etc.

Always felt it’s completely idiotic that a mount with wings just plummets to the ground in a no fly zone.

The recent Toad mount would have been much cooler with a high/long jump, maybe not quite krag’wa jumping ability, but at least something!

[Memberberry-caelestrasz]

First, 1k gold is incredibly easy to get.

Give it to me then. I log in one night a week and raid, so 1k is more than I earn in a month.

Also, why would all the equipment be free?

Because the mount is free? Makes sense. You take an already free feature, and keep it free. Blizzard seems to feel the opposite.

To answer OP, the literal point is to give water walking to other mounts to spice up the variety of mounts we see in the world.

For the 2 people you’ll see in the open world…Seriously though, do people actually care what mounts they see the scattered few other players riding?

And they’re giving us a couple other options for the sake of having options.

Option 1: Suck it up and put up with having things taken away, again.
Option 2: Quit.

[Nobully-blackrock (Nobully)]

Except it doesn’t, at all. Escpecially the water one since you need to get to panda land, farm some rep and than buy the item at the very least for the first time you want water walking.

do you have information on the player created water walking items?
if they’re able to be sold on the auction house, they’re not going to have a rep requirement at all.

[Akaraven-thaurissan (Akaraven)]

You mean like the potion of water walking? Because no one said anything about mount equipment being craftable unless I missed something.

[Ruddypiper-sargeras (Ruddypiper)]

In the case of the water strider, you get water walking boots for free if you already have the mount. No gold spent, no change in gameplay whatsoever.

One free pair for equipment that is character specific. After than your Angler’s Rep character has to go to MoP to purchase them so you can send them to you alts. One per alt.

Currently, you buy the Strider once and have Water Walking for all characters at level 20.

Pretty big step backwards when Blizzard could have gone with: full swimming speed for turtles, full mount speed in water for hippos or crocodiles, water walking for the spider mount, gliding for every mount with wings, water walking for the boat that doesn’t float, glide over water for wingless flying mounts.

That however is more work for Blizzard checking and changing every current mount and potential new mount versus adding a restrictive gold sink via the mount pet tab.

[Ruddypiper-sargeras (Ruddypiper)]

do you have information on the player created water walking items?
if they’re able to be sold on the auction house, they’re not going to have a rep requirement at all.

The blog post specifically puts the water walking equipment on the Angler’s rep vendor. If they made them craftable then that would be a “slap to the face” of current water strider owners as their price reduction would be moot.

You mean like the potion of water walking? Because no one said anything about mount equipment being craftable unless I missed something.

The blog post mentioned one being made by blacksmiths. Not sure it specified which. The most likely outcome is the current crafted consumables get removed and replaced with the mount equipment.

[Rorninn-earthen-ring]

I don’t know, just having the ability to not get Dazed anymore sold me all by itself.

I really can not stress how irrationally angry I get when I get dazed and knocked off a mount.

[Thicctiran-stormrage]

there is no point really, it’s just another lazy and boring design choice. Should do what GW2 does with mount families, or make equipment per mount to give unique customization to your favorite mounts, instead of a blanket lazy mode,

[Âñtîpm-jubeithos]

Homogenization obviously.

[Kneeshooter-amanthul (Kneeshooter)]

One thing I want to clarify: the blue post says:

If your goal is to have waterwalking while leveling, you can just enable the waterwalking Mount Equipment (there will be one available via Anglers reputation that will be bind-on-account), and it’ll work exactly as before, with the benefit of making all of that character’s mounts walk on water.

So if you are levelling, say, 10 toons, that would seem to mean you will need to buy this item 10 times if you wish those characters to be able to use water walking. That could turn out to be very expensive.

[Chachi-thunderhorn (Chachi)]

The potential for a cool feature is there, you could create strategic mounts for situations, blah blah blah.

The implementation, of course, has been mishandled by Blizzard, a portal room 2.0.

[Nobully-blackrock (Nobully)]

The blog post specifically puts the water walking equipment on the Angler’s rep vendor. If they made them craftable then that would be a “slap to the face” of current water strider owners as their price reduction would be moot.

yes, there will be one available via Anglers.

there will be one available via Anglers reputation that will be bind-on-account

and for people who only have the Crimson Strider, they’ll allegedly be able to purchase their items from Nat in Draenor.

In addition, if you head to the vendor where you bought a Water Strider, you’ll be able to buy more of this item

and then there’s this bit…?

• Saddlechute : Equip in your mount equipment slot to install a emergency parachute that will deploy when dismounted high in the air.

• Inflatable Mount Shoes : Equip in your mount equipment slot to allow you to walk across water while mounted. Any damage will cancel the effect.

• Comfortable Rider’s Barding : Equip in your mount equipment slot to prevent you from being dazed while mounted.

These items will be made by professions …

[Nobully-blackrock (Nobully)]

@Ruddypiper-sargeras

If they made them craftable then that would be a “slap to the face” of current water strider owners as their price reduction would be moot.

craftable doesn’t have to mean they can be sold.

maybe owners can learn a pattern to make their own account-bound floaties for a small reagent cost or summin.

[Âñtîpm-jubeithos]

The potential for a cool feature is there, you could create strategic mounts for situations, blah blah blah.

They literally could just make mount equipment only affect 1 mount, then make it so you cant add equipment to Waterstriders (it equips waterwalking by default and is greyed), make it cost 30k each.

So i can have tiger that walk on water, or horse that can do herbing, essentially turn it into mount transmog system instead of mount homogenization system.

[Dreta-stormrage]

One of the items you can slot allows for mounted combat. How cool would that be if it was true?

I’d become a Mongolian horse archer immediately. What fun times

[Aetheryal-sargeras (Aetheryal)]

Well go figure. I finally get around to grinding rep to get my Water Strider…

Ah well. At least I’ll get a few months use out of it before 8.2 drops

[Chosen-korgath (Chosen)]

To be honest I like the idea, but it should be something like…

Each mount has a unique type, and with that type comes a standard slot set and within that slot a standard set of traits (e.g. gems).

Some special mounts would have special types, prismatic (all) types, and of course multiple types of slots, allowing a character to really deck out a mount after taking some time to acquire both it and the rare equipment that would make it all worthwhile.

If it ends up being one big slot for all your stuff, that’s just… silly.