TIER SETS in 9.2: Is this really the best way to get them back?

Tier Sets are back which is great, but their current design could cause some more issues in Shadowlands!

My Socials:

00:00 Introduction
00:42 Tier Sets TLDR
02:51 Personal Loot
04:25 Bad Luck Protection
05:30 Power of Tier Sets
09:53 Solutions
13:52 Final Words

[digxx]

Right... Now we get back our long sought after tiersets and ppl start complaining again...

[afterr]

I am really curious how they will manage the balancing, and here I am talking about class balance, being able to equip 2 legendary items, and the tier sets... + if the try to rebalance de conduits and/or the soulbinds.

[mzoink]

the raider privilege is real, no need for master loot.. next you will be telling us bring back DKP points..

[erikwalton]

ML causes drama in some guilds. Personal loot is way better and you can still trade items so I don't really see the problem with that.

[spruce]

I suggested awhile back (as soon as the tier sets were removed) that they should reinvent tier bonuses, the way you wear it, and how you obtain it. What they did for the acquisition of the tier is a step in the right direction. The way I think they should do tier sets is reinvent Librams, Idols, Totem, Wands, Ammo Pouch etc. These would be the vessels that hold the tier power bonuses of the current expansion, and each new tier would allow you to empower that item with whatever bonus you earned during the current expansion. (Think of it like...LIVE talent tree meets Legion Weapon Artifact Tree - minus the endless grind, you get it and you own it.)

[torpedo]

I "really" started playing in TBC when Tier sets and set bonuses where the shizzle, and my 2 cents regarding the topic is this; Instead of dropping items, drop tokens which can be traded/used for the set/gear piece you need most.

[opmnz]

they give us what we ask for... Nagura still complains about it. classic.

[novsmith]

Just want to say that Master Loot is awful and should stay gone. Id rather let the mythic raiders complain about rng than suffer through that kind of toxicity.

[NicholasAdamsDPM]

I normally like your content but this video was basically “We finally got tier sets back! Here’s why they are bad and blizzard was right to not make them anymore.”

[Mindseas]

I appreciate these thought pieces, because they make me think more about these as well, thank you.
I do hope them devs are hearing these.

If I understand correctly what you're saying here is that you want the tier sets to be easily accessible, and be tradable, and yet be powerful enough to be worth using. And that's because you don't want to clear content for multiple weeks, or be stuck on a boss because of not having set bonuses, right?

If that's the case, then what happens to the excitement of gearing up a character, if the most powerful bonus you can get is accessible right away? I know I'd feel pretty bad about the rest of the season if I got the biggest contributing factor on the first week(s).

To me it sounds like what you're suggesting would result in each tier / season to end even sooner than currently. Okay, so I kind of get it from the POV of a top 1% raider, that with the "bring the most powerful loot" comes some annoying situations of needing to sit out etc.
But, when there's already several months of downtime between each season for even mid tier guilds, I don't quite understand why that is a thing you want to promote further. Wouldn't it be more fun and engaging if RTWF lasted more than 7 days? If you actually had to get creative to deal with challenging DPS check or HPS check bosses instead of just expecting to gear beyond that check faster. And yes of course encounters can be tuned with both scenarios in mind, but which way feels more rewarding for the majority of the player base?

I think while you're making good points, but there's perhaps a little more to consider, and you may be making some false assumptions because of that.

1) Where does this idea of "Up to 20% damage increase" come from? Is that for the 2 and 4 piece bonuses combined? And compared to what? I think some source citing, or at least providing the information or an example would be very nice for these kinds of claims. And is that taking into consideration that...
2) We'll be losing the 3-shard bonus from the get go, so the encounters can't be tuned for current performance in mind anyway. And as you said, we know the shards account for around 5-7% output difference, so even if this still theoretical "up to 20% increase" is accurate a thing for the set bonuses, we'd actually be only gaining 12-15% from the sets. At best.
3) The Shards of Domination system was bad because of two very specific things, one of which is how both the shards were RNG, and the sockets were RNG. Granted you were guaranteed to get all shards reasonably fast with the way they dropped. And the second was the lack of foresight in designing the socket pieces to overlap with legendary slots.
4) The way you represented the power curve comparison for 9.1 compared to 9.2 (again, in theory) was a little obfuscated, because the power curve for 9.1 had a clear jump with the shard bonus as well - and for some specs there was a new legendary too, AND for some reason you seemed to have completely ignored that we will still be gaining item upgrades in 9.2 just as in 9.1, in addition to the tier sets. So while the exaggerated power spike was good for illustrative purposes, it also skews your point a little as you base further arguments on that.
5) Being able to use two legendaries will also be a major damage increase, which should also be taken into consideration for this power curve argument.

I think the solution is simple: make the items be tradable, like the Dom socket items were, and have the set bonuses activate per class and spec so each armor class type can be shared with each of the classes wearing those - again, kind of how the Dom sockets work, except for the fact that the bonuses would be unique to each class.

[markoviitanen]

What they need to do, is to have a system, that each loot piece from raid bosses have specific multiplier, that determines your chance to get that item. Every time you kill that boss, the multiplier of that item gets a bit higher. This increases your chances to get that item after many tries. More tries, the better chance. Making sure you are not forever stuck without specific piece. Once you get this (personal) drop, the multiplier is reset. I do not understand how this is not part of the looting system already. This multiplier should also be for the first kill of the week, so that you can not do multiple runs all than time, just to increase chance.

[Warcraftlove]

TIER sets where fine from BC though out legion ….just bring back the original system where raids drop pve tier sets and pvp have their own tier sets obtained by valor points etc …..

[arijnr]

I don't think it will be a problem, I mean yes this is very informative for people coming back to the game but most of these "problems" will not affect the player base more than this tier's shards (PVE wise). This bigger "sweep" of DPS-Heal has always been the case for many raids now but shards of domination is a better example of how powerfull a set bonus is . The power gain from shards is way greater than any set bonuses we've had so far, Max from Limit also has stated this, yes they are not interesting but in almost every class these shards resulted in a way greater power increase that we've seen so far (Corruption not being a tier-set). I believe the most worrying thing coming into next patch is not tier-sets themselves but Tier-sets in combination with your legendary In combination with your covenant legendary and in many cases Classes have way more valuable covenant legendaries than others.The additional power coming from the covenant legendary in addition with tier-sets makes 9.2 sims go crazy it is way more reasonable to argue if covenant legendaries should be a thing rather than Tier-sets being broken.

[destro_]

its the biggest problem for people like me going in being a good player. Then getting sat because i didnt get my tier like someone else did that isnt as good. just got the tier

[merikhh]

4set in 1st week? You will be lucky if u get 2.. Also i am not sure but last 3 bosses might drop 2 pieces of the set, so u wont be able to get it anyway...

[tedsevere]

Problem with your solution is why would annoying spend all the time getting set bonus for 3% increase, it needs to be substantial but maybe more progressive. Like 2 set bonus, then 3 set, then 4.

[vidalplays]

If having no Tier bonus compared no another guild mate who has Tier bonus feels bad in terms of damage, then why would you give up your loot to funnel to anothet guild mate so he can get his Tier bonus?

[andrewshandle]

Players: "We need WoW content to last longer, right now every patch there's like a month worth of content then nothing"
Also Players: "I want to get my 4 piece set in a week by people funneling me gear so I can burn through the content ASAP"

[bobblez]

If they lower the value of the sets and weaken the power increase all chars would feel weaker, cause we lose the domination Shard set bonus

[simonnielsen]

I Say keep the power the same, but limit the amount of tier sets to drop for 1 character to 1 piece or 2 pieces a week. So everyone is on the same number of tier sets. You are right playing with someone who got lucky while you didn´t feels awful. Same situation as Legion legendaries.