wow More Azerite Talk, Missing Hotfix Notes: Sep 28th Blue Posts

[Starym 3,800]

 

We have more chatter coming from the community managers on two major topics: the now long ongoing discussion on the Azerite trait system and, perhaps even more interestingly, on how the hotfix post isn't always up to date and some hotfixes never get mentioned, as well as the fact that updates to the post itself aren't always noted on social media etc. We also get an update on some additional tuning of the Endtime dungeon.

We already covered the first blue post below in an update to the previous roundup, but we'll repost it here in case you missed it. You can also check out the previous installments of the Azerite trait saga here.

Azerite Trait System (source)

Holy hell this thread went places. Okay, couple quick things:

1) I've mentioned elsewhere that we're looking at Azerite armor availability. 3 weeks into a raid tier/mythic+ season is a bit early to make hard conclusions of how difficult it will be to acquire alternate sets over the next few months. But we're hearing that feedback and keeping a close eye on it. Availability in mythic+ particularly is a regular topic of conversation. I've talked about that before so I won't rehash everything here, but we're looking into it.

2) I noticed a few posts that seemed to believe that Azerite traits are randomized when a piece drops. They're not; each piece of gear has a preset assortment of traits to choose from. Most of y'all seem to understand that already, I just wanted to toss it out there for anyone who may not.

...

Posted by Fiascoh
If I wanted to play brewmaster or mistweaver right now, I would be significantly better off by making a 2nd monk. Is this really the design you were going for?

Not at all, and I'm curious why you feel that's the case. It isn't in my experience as someone who is currently playing a tri-spec monk.

...

As a quick aside: I understand and appreciate that many of you are frustrated about the system. That's why I'm here - to get a better understanding of what exactly is frustrating people so I can present that feedback to the development team.

Step 1 of that process is explaining what our viewpoint is so that you guys can present counter-arguments. If your response to that explanation is to roll your eyes and make snarky comments about how dumb I am, that's fine, but it's really not helping make the game any better.

I get the need to vent, but if y'all could keep the personal attacks and memes to a minimum that'd make it a hell of a lot easier for me to actually help make the video game more fun for you.

...

Thank you to everyone making the effort to discuss this in a constructive manner. Rest assured that I'm taking all of your feedback to heart. I've got a great list of discussion points and arguments to make on your behalf the next time I meet with the development team.

There's a number of good points raised in this thread that I haven't responded to yet simply because I haven't had a chance to talk to the devs about them. And, for full transparency, it's going to be a few days before I can. In the meantime, keep making good points and I'll keep taking notes.

And as for "this conversation should have happened during beta," you're right. It should have. I'm sorry it didn't.

And then we have the interesting topic of hotfixes and their prominence:

Missing Hotfix Communication, Prominence (source)

Posted by Sorelai
The Twitter post isn't even updated daily. Even the Hotfix notes are hidden. No link on the World of Warcraft front page. No updates on the forums. No link in the Launcher.

We always update the same location for hotfixes. https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news It's usually always in the News section.

As for updating on the Twitter thread with the hotfixes tweets, my personal feel is that it would becomes a little too cluttered if I did it for every hotfix update as it always just links to the same place. If you guys want me to put those in there I will start throwing those in.

...

Posted by Preferred
Personally I'd like fixes, or adjustments to be noted. One example is last week teeming Atal'Dazar had an extra pull of 2 colossi on the southern route. However when I did it later in the week that entire pull was removed. Going in I had no idea that that had changed, so it threw my mob % all out of whack.

Yeah I'm not sure why that wasn't noted to be quite honest. We did make some tuning changes with Teeming last week. It was mainly centered around removing some extra packs as some of the density was a little high.

09/27/2018 03:23 PMPosted by Shenhua
Hi, I ran end time with my friends last night with discord and can comfortably say without a doubt, it was the worst, badly designed endtime run we’ve ever done. No it is not fixed with the recent hotfixes.

We did some tuning for it a few days ago, and it received another pass again that was applied earlier today. We've now made the following changes to it:
Both Murazond and the Ghouls in the Sylvanas encounter have had their health significantly reduced.
We also went through and greatly reduced the damage and health of many creatures and spells as well in End Time.

09/27/2018 03:22 PMPosted by Sorelai
It is supposed to be a link to all Twitter communication. Even if the information is in the hotfix notes eventually, the conversations are useful.

Noted! I'll start throwing them in there as well then.

[Aernath 173]

I really feel for Lore on this, he's doing best he can as a CM. Hope his effort does not goes in vain...
Saving Azerite armor is simple, really:
- Add secondary stats.
- Lower the effect and power of traits so they feel like minor bonuses instead of a must go trait to hunt for BiS item.
- Lower and stabilize the Azerite Power cap to unlock traits so people wouldn't feel punished when they get a higher ilvl gear and feel strengthened as they should be.
- As a bonus two gem slots may be included in each Azerite gear by default, since we don't have the old stat reforge anymore, so we'd have more chance of empowering our main stats.

[tkioz 229]

Saving Azerite as it currently stands is simple but it would require work and time. Here's my armchair view on how to fix it.

First Acquisition.
Okay so other people have pointed this out and I'm just copying since it is a really good idea. Weekly sources of high level gear need to offer a choice. If it's your PvP or M+ Cache it needs to pop up with a box saying "Choose One of Three" out of a pool of five, one being Azerite, one being a trinket, one being a weapon, one being gear, one being ring/cloak.  The item you get from your choice isn't displayed, just it will be of that type. So if you've got really good Azerite from the raid but are still rocking a 340 weapon, well pick the weapon. The five types chose from three means that there will be some randomness (which Blizz loves).

Assuming they refuse to do that... Let us coin our M+ cache.

Second Functionality
I'm not going to harp on the traits being boring or anything like that. We all know they are dead boring for most specs, and I assume they are looking at it, but what they need to do is change how the rings work. Currently the outer ring is 1 generic 3(2/4 DH/DR) class traits. No. Bad Blizzard. The outer ring needs to be 1 generic 2 spec traits.
Example a pair of Shoulders for a Frost Mage could have [Archive of the Titans], [Tunnel of Ice], and [Glacial Assault] on the outer ring. That is a meaningful choice above the current "chose generic or chose spec" system. Now if you switch your Mage to Fire the generic stays the same but the two spec traits change, just like the old tier bonuses. Oh and you get to choose for each spec you have.

You can leave all the other rings alone as they aren't incredibly important, but we need to have the ability to make actual choices beyond "generic or class". It also almost completely removes the need for reforging as it would change when you change spec so it would only really require you to do it very occasionally.

You might still want to have different azerite items for different roles because one bit has better traits than another, but it would allow choice and that's what we've been saying for ages, and it would also allow flexibility. It wouldn't matter if I suddenly needed to tank on my DH instead of DPS, yeah I might not have the best traits, but I don't have worthless traits unless I go back to the reforger.

[Hypersonic 119]

I think just throw the whole Azerite system out of window and bring back Tier armors. It's much less effort to balance that gear sets and it's worked for more than a decade. 

2 hours ago, Starym said:

3 weeks into a raid tier/mythic+ season is a bit early to make hard conclusions of how difficult it will be to acquire alternate sets over the next few months.

Btw eh, this communication again... sure we can make a conclusion after 3 (and almost 4) weeks of continous dramatic changes of traits -classes- and terrible RNG in drop of Azerite pieces. If the next few months will be the same then I delete the game but before write to DVD and burn it too just for the sake of the feeling : D Our feelings about the system is real and not a too early conclusion or "rage". We love the game and want to be better as welll.

2 hours ago, Starym said:

Missing Hotfix Communication

Yeah would be really cool if you guys share every details because since Legion allways have some little-tiny changes which is not in the note. 

Edited September 28, 2018 by Hypersonic

[Zalto 2]

Farming azerite gear for multiple specs is not possible right now, its all down to "luck" there is no chance to farm it, with a small calculation you can se how long it wil take to get multiple pieces, and by then there will be new azerite gear out. As a multirole monk and druid this is a rough spot to be, im the guy that changes to tank when were missing one, same with healer and dps (and im not talking normal ive done this in mythic uptil now).... The most frustrating thing here is that there is actually a fix to make it easier ingame but you are telling us that this should not be used,,,,,, why? talk about putting a nail on hybrid classes. Take away reforging costs and this whole thing wil be a non issue. and there is no downside to it.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Zalto

[Myke 42]

All I want is an easier way to even attempt to get weapons above 325, because as it stands right now, there is no other way outside of Raiding. I have no issues raiding and I do enjoy it, but there should be an alternate way that doesn't include pvping. And doing Mythics is horrendous because 95 of the playerbase doesn't comprehend of how to do them properly.

[Hypersonic 119]

53 minutes ago, Myke said:

All I want is an easier way to even attempt to get weapons above 325, because as it stands right now, there is no other way outside of Raiding. I have no issues raiding and I do enjoy it, but there should be an alternate way that doesn't include pvping. And doing Mythics is horrendous because 95 of the playerbase doesn't comprehend of how to do them properly.

Weapon? I farmed my both daggers in +8 (365+) during ~12-13 runs of Tol Dagor what is absolutely easy and not so much even in time. I think pretty easy to get anything what is not Azerite pieces (from trinkets to weapons). Overall what you can farm that's okay. It's all about you how hard to want. But you can't do anything if need an Azerite and your character underperforming due miss something "bis" trait and you can do absolutely nothing to get it thanks to rng-based system. 

Edited September 28, 2018 by Hypersonic

[Belzebubas 0]

Why not to make these traits like slottable? So that you can choose what to slot in current trait rings. Could be available from reputation vendors for fixed price and/or from crafting. ilvl for number of rings and stats. As for randomness, add some minor effects to armor pieces for minmaxers to hunt. All is solved

[Myke 42]

14 minutes ago, Hypersonic said:

Tol Dagor

Worst 5 man instance in BfA. Any time that I've ran it (including mythic), no one knows what to do and ends up being a large waste of time. As a DH, I'm rather limited in my options as to what I can wield. I have no issues with my Azerite armour, it's my weapons that need upgrading. Azerite traits are not RNG based btw.

[Hypersonic 119]

2 minutes ago, Myke said:

Worst 5 man instance in BfA. Any time that I've ran it (including mythic), no one knows what to do and ends up being a large waste of time. As a DH, I'm rather limited in my options as to what I can wield. I have no issues with my Azerite armour, it's my weapons that need upgrading. Azerite traits are not RNG based btw.

If you reach 800-900+ raider.io score after that will be no problem like "no one knows what to do". I can recommend  you to focus to reach highest score what is possible for you and go with same skilled people. After that can be really easy to farm 8-10 for gear even if you are not a score/ranking addicted like sometimes me and can go crazy if not in server top 10 (I can not do it my only motivation in WoW since Legion is M+.)

[Myke 42]

1 hour ago, Hypersonic said:

can recommend  you to focus to reach highest score what is possible for you and go with same skilled people.

After experiencing multiple horrible groups at even just heroic BfA, I'm choosing to not deal with any of that. It honestly doesn't seem to matter at what difficulty, at least 3/5s of whatever group I'm in just goes derp and I can't be arsed to waste anymore time on 5 mans.

[Sholto 32]

2 hours ago, Myke said:

All I want is an easier way to even attempt to get weapons above 325, because as it stands right now, there is no other way outside of Raiding. I have no issues raiding and I do enjoy it, but there should be an alternate way that doesn't include pvping. And doing Mythics is horrendous because 95 of the playerbase doesn't comprehend of how to do them properly.

I've got a 370 and a 350 weapon on my main who's never raided, been in one M+0 yet.  I've also scrapped at least three 340 weapons gained from quests.  I've been too stressed and busy lately to want to deal with being dependent on other people so I've been doing my own solo thing so far.

On my other 120 I also have a 340 warforged weapon gained from a quest, and have scrapped multiple 340 weapons because they were either a duplicate or worthless (a polearm reward when I'm not playing Survival Hunter, period...likewise every weapon reward for the Darkshore event was a stinking polearm I refused to respec for).

Both of my 120s are now 340+ ilvl from WQs and Arathi alone.  The level of generosity with epics is kind of unprecedented this early in the game as this gear, if you're lucky on stats and traits, is way better than any mid or late "catch up" round of loot pinata purples I've ever seen.  It basically makes up for how worthless crafting gear is this time around, apart from trinkets.

It's trinkets and rings that don't come with regularity or usefulness, in my experience, outside of raiding.  I have a 320 ring that essentially requires a 385 raid drop to be a significant upgrade.  Likewise, you can be in a situation where a blue quest reward and DMC paired together means you don't get significant upgrades for these slots until getting mythic raid drops, forget about normal or LFR, you'd just be equipping something to cheese your ilvl in most cases.

[wr0ngdr01d 1]

2 hours ago, Belzebubas said:

Why not to make these traits like slottable? So that you can choose what to slot in current trait rings. Could be available from reputation vendors for fixed price and/or from crafting. ilvl for number of rings and stats. As for randomness, add some minor effects to armor pieces for minmaxers to hunt. All is solved

I actually hadn't thought of this idea and I think it's now my favorite, and a very good, 0% likely solution. 

Az gear could stay as rare as it is now, but the traits would be slottable like gems and drop more often than gear/not be time locked, and not super commonly. Traits could scale with level and be "unlock" items that you can apply indefinitely once you have them, or can be one time use just like gems. This solves pretty much all my main issues with az gear and works around blizzard's (ascinine) "intentions."

-az gear would still not be super easily obtained so much that it breaks the system

-getting higher gear would always feel good and be an upgrade, even if it wasn't bis or needed different traits, and would reduce the disappointment of getting new gear just to find out it's impractical

-when traits are balanced, even if you get a huge nerf, you wouldn't have to replace gear outright (in an unfarmable world). You could replace the trait with something you already have or can farm for

-reforging would be used more when it is practical than forced, i.e. in the case of a significant upgrade from a trait, trait balancing, or spec change.

-spec changing without the best gear would feel more like a tough choice because of reforging cost, instead of feeling like RNG would make it completely unviable

-completing any endgame content would be more rewarding once you've plateaued. You might not get your 385 az piece, but you could get your best trait and slot it in something lower, or save it. More, fair risk/reward choices

-adding trait recipes could add some much needed "cool factor" back to professions

Taking this a step further, the azerite system seems like it was meant to be a way to add back in customization that further talent restructuring and reducing removed. Why wouldn't the ability to slot traits be a much better solution to that problem than juggling dozens of gear? If certain gear will always be better for certain specs, what is the point of having a trait ring with 2 (probably 3) completely useless traits per gear piece? Why should I have to save a dozen pieces of gear to change between for certain circumstances, and another two dozen just in case you decide to nerf what I equip, or buff gear that was a diaper on fire? 

 

I know it goes against the "PLAY MORE" mantra (which is the only defense for the system as is IMO), but I think that if I could get one piece per spec, slot 4 good situational traits, and freely switch between them depending on what's called for, this would become not only much more like it feels like it was intended, but changes a widely disliked, failing system, into one that could add a lot of quality and depth. Doesn't hurt min maxers, doesn't make things drastically easier for casuals. Charge me 100k a reforge and keep the more desirable traits content gated, idc, at least it gives me a finite and measurable goal. 

I can dream

[Sholto 32]

I'd like the option of having the AZ reforge NPC let you re-roll traits for the option of getting a better set.  I know it's not random for any given piece but perhaps make it a rare crafted token for each armor type, like they've allowed in the past for secondaries.  Maybe this could be a use for those mostly useless Expulsom. 

When a 310 + BIS trait is better than an unlucky 370 drop something is real broken and jiggering some traits up or down isn't going to balance that.  The differential between what's legit good and what's simply best of the worst options available is too huge.  But then that means they need to do something about rings too, because they're almost as bad in terms of ilvl sometimes being worthless for anything but getting a spot in a PUG.

I think it's also a problem when multiple class + spec combos have it to where class-specific AZ traits aren't BIS or maybe even lucky to be a top 5 BIS, or you might only have *one* class specific trait in the top 10.

[PatrickHenry 293]

On 9/28/2018 at 1:24 AM, Starym said:

If your response to that explanation is to roll your eyes and make snarky comments about how dumb I am, that's fine, but it's really not helping make the game any better.

A - Frickin - Men

[PatrickHenry 293]

On 9/28/2018 at 11:59 AM, Hypersonic said:

But you can't do anything if need an Azerite and your character underperforming due miss something "bis" trait and you can do absolutely nothing to get it thanks to rng-based system. 

...every azerite piece is hard-trait coded.  Only thing that will change is Ilevel.  There is no RNG for azerite armor, save the weekly chest.

 

 

[Hypersonic 119]

1 hour ago, PatrickHenry said:

...every azerite piece is hard-trait coded.  Only thing that will change is Ilevel.  There is no RNG for azerite armor, save the weekly chest.

 

 

I thought it's pretty clear I speak about drop and not about trait. 

[PatrickHenry 293]

4 hours ago, Hypersonic said:

I thought it's pretty clear I speak about drop and not about trait. 

well then its clear there are exactly one place to get each piece of gear.  Exactly one.  Same for everyone.

Unless youre the .01 percent who get an uproll from the chest, but thats no different than any other gear youre hoping for an uproll on.

Except that you can get up to a 10 chest on it + uproll...  but everybody has that SAME ability again.