"Get Better Items": Arguing for the return of reforging
[blizzardquote author="Bashiok" source="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/16285109103?page=8#151"]
Itemization and Stats
Their original reason for removing Reforging was the fact that everyone was using it solely to maintain Hit and Expertise cap. with those two stats gone, I legitimately see no reason why Reforging cannot be brought back and used in the way it was originally designed for.
That was one part, but the bigger part was that it doesn’t actually improve the game experience. There are still soft caps for some stats, but ultimately Reforging just didn’t provide any engaging gameplay to get an item and then reforge it to whatever your best stat is based on a sim or recommendation from a website. That’s not creating engaging gameplay. If the desire for Reforging is based on “I’d like to make my items better by picking the stats I want more.” the simpler answer there, and the one that does create engaging gameplay and interaction with the game world and other players, is “Get better items.”[/blizzardquote]
However, since the removal of reforging was announced with Warlords at Blizzcon 2013, I have always agreed with the original poster’s comment that with Hit & Expertise gone, Reforging was at that point freed up to serve its primary function - allow players to customise their current stats more to their own personal liking. As others in that thread later pointed out, players can go weeks, tiers, maybe even entire expansions not seeing a specific item or indeed items drop for them. Either via personal loot or the old boss drop method.
Case in point: Vial of Living Corruption, the tank cooldown trinket from Malkorok back in SoO? I raided SoO for over a full YEAR, and didn’t see this drop once, not until the final week of the expansion, prior to Warlord’s launch, did it actually drop for me.
Similarly this expansion, I’m still raiding and this coming reset heading into Heroic Blackrock Foundry, with a 645 weapon from a follower mission (no raid drops yet), but more heinously an iLevel 630 blue quality shield from heroic 5 mans, because again, no raid drops there.
Granted, reforging wouldn’t help with any of the above mentioned situations. Fair point.
But what it does do, is to re-inforce the point that sometimes it’s next to bloody impossible to “Get Better Items“. I find Bashiok’s response to the poster’s very valid question somewhat redundant and not a little bit disingenuous.
Is raiding with gimped stats because of sub-par itemisation and items what Blizzard really classifies as “engaging gameplay"? Is bashing your head against RNG, sometimes for over a year in the same bloody raid tier what Blizzard classifies as “engaging gameplay"?
I for one certainly don’t think it’s engaging in any way, shape or form. In fact it’s more likely to make me want to stop raiding if I’m constantly having to run with sub-par items because I can’t seem to get anything better. Doing so makes me feel like I’m running with gear that’s not up to the job, and that I’m potentially holding back my raid team because I’m not as optimised as I could be if Reforging were still in the game.
Not only to allow me to optimise my gear, but to actually help create the much vaunted “engaging gameplay” by optimising my gearset for the stats I find to be more fun and useful, like Haste & Crit. Certainly Mastery for Prot paladins is fine, but Multistrike and Versatility are no-one’s friends. And recently Blizzard have admitted that Versatility, one of the new stats they introduced in Warlords, is no-one’s best stat.
I wouldn’t expect it to survive the expansion’s end. Flowers to Mrs Versatility, a small family service is to be held later.
Hopefully, Blizzard will re-consider. Perhaps not within the lifetime of WoD, but will it see a return in the next expansion…?
We can but hope!