Yes, I am fucking salty about this and for good reason as you will see below!
As Bfa is fast approaching, I was excitedly waiting to be able to transmog my staff that I have on my Holy Priest to the one that you get as a Mage Tower appearance for Disc.
I thought this was beautiful and really went with the whole holy light aspect of the healing side of the class and also, playing alliance I liked the blue touches that this one had.
I currently have a mog that goes with the hidden appearance of the Holy staff which coincidentally also has feather bollocks coming out of it. So the visual aspect of the two were similar, it was just the colours that really differentiated them.
They both have the crest type thing going on near the head of the staff, wrapping/texture on the shaft and both have a colour moment going on in respect of the gem/glowing light.
I wanted to use some mog bits I had gathered from all the other past expansions and put together an Alliance based mog for BfA. Yet when I went to the transmog dude all I could see was the Holy ones, which looked all too samey and poor colour variants.
So it turns out that all the effort I had put into getting this bloody thing was locked to the spec, regardless of being the same class, regardless of both specs using holy fucking light, regardless of both classes using a staff…
It was apparently a ‘lore’ decision, entirely on the devs say so to put this lock in place. Nothing to do with too difficult to change the code for it. They just pulled this lore and ‘class fiction’ reasoning out of thin air to prevent the same class using weapons that they had gone after on that one character.
Lore and ‘Class Fiction’?
For my Priest, the Holy hidden appearance is created by screwing two bits of stick together. I don’t think there is any ‘class fiction’ there that means that as soon as I switch to Disc I suddenly don’t have any thumbs or I loose so much intellect that I don’t know what bit slots into where….
For the Disc Mage Tower appearance it’s all about being able to kill your enemies while keeping yourself alive. Is that supposed to be ‘class fiction’ that only Disc Priests can do that? I mean, I guess that DPS while healing is their thing but I don’t think you should forget what Holy Priests do when they are levelling. I don’t suddenly loose all my offensive spells out in the real world and sit there until someone comes along to do the damage for me. Same goes for dungeons, I can stun and AoE down little shitters while also keeping the team alive. It’s not my primary way of healing but I and other Holy Priests know when to weave in offensive spells to aid their team mates and switch back to defensive to heal them. Is it specific class fiction? No. The whole idea with Healing Priests is that they can use the light to heal their friends and smite down foes
I can understand the base model of the artifact being off limits, sort of… While it was possibly very loosely lore based (yeah, I’m trolling here, most of it was made up to justify why we ended up with the bastards in the first place) for the original base model at the beginning to prevent other specs from using it, we have the Darkmoon Faire Carnies making replicas of all sorts of ‘class specific’ stuff or even PvP stuff. Which kills off any class fiction that is used as an excuse to deny us the appearances.
For my Holy Priest, I have to hear some wind-chime talking about some Naaru bollocks. I have to help out some Undead Priest who actually has ties to the same god-damn people who my Disc artifact is tied up with. So my Holy and Disc weapons are connected by the same lore but apparently they are not connected at all… What? I help an Undead, who has dealings with the Silver Hand, who is part of the lore that has been bolted onto my Disc weapon.
Both specs are connected and both specs should therefore, according to lore and class fiction be able to use each others staff. This, sadly, seems to have been completely ignored by the devs in pursuit of their own fantasy no matter how much of a reach it is.
Now, I never used the base appearances as I hated them and only used the ‘upgraded’ appearances. I didn’t want a bit of a fucking wind-chime Naaru on a stick, nor did I want a bit of stained-glass window on a pole. Whats more, my staff doesn’t actually contain any of the power that I use to heal. It’s a pretty stick on my back. I call upon the Light and I can do that without a weapon. As Anduin perfectly displayed in the recent cinematic where he flung his sword into the ground and decided to stop playing Warrior. (And yes, they do keep insisting that he is still a Priest rather than a Paladin…)
But now we have trashed our weapons to save Azeroth. They are effectively good as gone. Even if you argued that in the beginning they had power in them that tied them more distinctly to the spec that got them. They are now trashed and we literally just have ‘skins’, husks of the former weapon. This leaves them as just heavy sticks or bits of metal etc. Just like the many random green drops with nothing particularly important or impressive with them apart from what they look like. They are now just things to be placed over our actual weapon to make it look prettier.
Screwed by spec imbalance as well…
Yet we can’t use them to pretty up the rather bland offerings we will be running around with for a vast portion of the time. Unless we are in that exact spec they were unlocked on, then we can’t use any of the other skins we busted our asses to get. Considering Blizzard has a poor track record of balancing specs, let alone classes and it is especially poor given all the seemingly hot air we have had about ‘it’s going to be pick what spec you want to play, not what you have to play…’.
Going by this, if I was currently MM I could be forced to swap to BM at the very least (as normally there are too many melee anyway) if I wanted to raid. Lets face it, most raid team are not going to want to be carrying the lame and the sick when it comes to DPS output. But that would mean that I was no longer able to use the bow and quiver anymore, despite I have been given a bow as a reward from doing the Lordaeron Invasion that was only released this week. So I would be able to use a gorgeous bow as MM and a shit looking one as BM. But they are both bows. And both specs are deemed fine to both use bows… (Theres more on this later)
It has meant that if only one spec is viable for your class in BfA and the rest are looking like things that it would be kinder to put down, then you are stuck with the appearances that you got on that spec. You get none of the others that you put in just as much hard work and effort to get on the specs that you now don’t want to play because they have been tuned to be horseshit.
Yes we have the small consolation you can use the appearances for that spec over any weapon that you have equipped but then it seems like the ‘lore’ and ‘class fiction’ reasoning that has been shoved down our throats to validate their disastrously poor decision is then thrown out the window. If we’re being told that for really ropey lore reasons only the spec that unlocked it can use it, our artifact weapons were ‘x’ why are we now being given ‘y’ as loot?
Weapon confusion?
An example of this would be Holy Paladins. For aeons they have been Sword and Board. In Legion they decided that they were going to have their years of game play lore rewritten and suddenly have a 2h mace. Wut? Ok. So now due to this lore and class fiction they are now designated the swingers of maces, just like Ret Pallys. However, in BfA their loot drops are going to be Sword and Board again.
So which is it? Are they mace swingers because the lore and class fiction that has been decided to be such a big thing in Legion clearly dictates that they are. If they are then surely they should be getting maces as loot in BfA, wouldn’t that then be in-keeping with the Class Fiction that was created for Holy Paladins in Legion?
But the loot drops are back to a main hand and a shield. The lore and class fiction that has been tightly grasped to as validation for the restriction in the first place falls apart at the seams.
Not only that but one of the skins was Reinharts hammer thing. Where in the class fiction or lore does he turn up to validate that it should be locked to Holy? Where is the lore that his TANK hammer can only be used by Holy Paladins? Surely the more obvious choice here would be that Ret Pallys would be the ones to have it if Tanks can’t? It is things like this that would make the obvious and sensible decision to make these appearances a Class based cosmetic so that Paladins as a whole can use the visuals of it. So that if you’re going to add in class fiction from a completely different game, you can say that at least someone who is going to be bashing the boss in the face in WoW is using the visual of another face basher in Overwatch.
Anyone else screwed?
Not only are Paladins a complete mess with their weapons being locked to specs that in actual lore and class fiction would have never used them. You also have Blizzard dictating class fiction to others that just don’t add up.
Take Arcane Mages. They get a sheep staff, echoing the polymorph spell that all mages are known for. But due to this lore/class fiction lock, it seemingly dictates that polymorph is just an Arcane Mage thing. I think the vast amount of Frost and Fire Mages would disagree….
Messing with years of actual lore to create a quest…
Hunters are also fucked. This one is a long bit as there are a few aspects at play here but the TL;DR is that it is all horseshit.
BM got a gun.
A gun given to us from a Warrior.
A warrior that is Titan-forged.
A wilderness survivor got a Titan weapon.
We were given this with the quest that he asked us for help.
Why?
What has he even got to do with Hunters?
The Titan-forged gun giver ends up being a Warrior follower, not anything to do with Hunters.
Where did Mimiron come from in Hunter lore and class fiction to be part of the BM story line?
Did I mention that it’s a gun infused with the power of storms. When did Hunters ever use storms in their class fiction? We have used bombs and poison that’s for sure, in game emulation of some of the traditional hunters in the real world who tip their arrows with poison to kill their prey.
Don’t recall any hunter in game or IRL throwing the weather around though.
Shamans do though… unless we are slipping into the realms of Warcraft RPG, which it is know to not fall in line completely with World of Warcraft the MMO and we have been told since 2011 that the RPG is not canon…
See where I’m going with this? It just doesn’t make sense and then we are told that ‘lore and class fiction reasons’ are why we can transmog them between specs.
If these random Titan gun lore reasons are why we have a rather shit looking gun in the first place, why do we then get a mechanical bow as a hidden appearance? Surely that god-awful gun should be the be all and end all of the weapons we use? Upgraded versions of that gun and that gun only should be all we are seen using as our lore and class fiction apparently dictates. The reason is because people didn’t like the idea of only having a gun…
Not only this but SV got ripped apart for Legion, their class fiction has been shredded and put together quite a few times. Are they melee are they not? Are they ranged or not? Lore and class fiction here has been rewritten quite freely here to the point that it doesn’t really matter. It’s the class that contains the lore and class fiction, not the spec.
MM hunters do actually get a bit of correct lore for theirs, their bow is actually a thing (much like Ashbringer etc…) but that’s the only bit of correct lore they have. The rest is made up to create a story line, to give us a reason for trotting all over the place to get it.
By using lore and class fiction as a reason now to prevent the specs swapping weapons they are suddenly telling us that due to lore BM hunters only use guns and MM only use bows due the base artifact weapons we were given.
Yet the actual class fiction and lore does not put us in such tiny rigid boxes:
From an early age the call of the wild draws some adventurers from the comfort of their homes into the unforgiving primal world outside. Those who endure become hunters. As masters of their environment, hunters are able to slip like ghosts through the trees and lay traps in the paths of their enemies. These expert marksmen drop foes dead in their tracks with flawless shots from a bow, crossbow or rifle. With the ability to wield two weapons simultaneously, hunters can unleash a flurry of blows against anyone unfortunate enough to stumble into close combat with them.
The art of survival is central to the isolated life of a hunter. Hunters track beasts with ease and enhance their own abilities by attuning themselves to the feral aspects of various creatures. Hunters are known for the lifelong bonds they form with animals of the wild, training great hawks, cats, bears, and many other beasts to fight alongside them.
This confuses me on two fronts.
Where does the lore and fiction of race sit against this backdrop of rigid class fiction that has been created and used to lock appearances down to specific specs?
If you take a Gnome hunter, they were introduced due to players wanting them to be an option. Race fiction was rewritten to enable it to give players what they wanted.
The Gnomes are engineers. They use guns at the beginning before being able to equip whatever the fuck ranged weapon they want. Their class and race story is they mechanically make what they use, even down to their pets.
Yet if you want to play MM as a gnome at lvl 100-110 you have to use a bow as your main artifact and its an Elf bow…
But if you want to play MM and keep to the lore that has been in game forever (and not the one that was thought up overnight) the only mechanical looking bow is a BM hidden appearance meaning you cant keep to your Gnome lore roots because of this supposed class fiction that has been applied as a justification to lock these appearances to their specs.
To keep with the race lore which is something of a sacraed thing when it comes to the essence of what makes the races unique, the BM mechanical bow should be allowed to be used by both MM and BM Hunters because of the Gnomes and Goblins.
Much as both the Elves should be able to use the bow of Alleria, it shouldn’t be spec locked at all, it should be class, so that the racial fiction can be embodied. Because that is where the lore and class fiction actually comes from. Not the individual specs that we are being told is the case. This logic being presented by the devs is that it is more important to have BM Night or Blood Elves ending up with a Gnome/Goblin bow or a random ass gun rather than the option to use the one that actually suits their race by lore.
Is there actually any justification?
They say that they are scared that people will start using Ashbringer to heal people on Pallys and such forth, breaking lore, so that’s why they locked them to specs.
Players have reminded them that why wouldnt a Holy Pally use something that is so closely linked to the light when they are healing? It makes more sense than the option to have a massive Tank mace from Overwatch.
The past inclusion of all sorts of nonsensical shite to the appearances that didn’t stick to lore also causes this reasoning to fall. They included all of this shit just because it looked cool so what does it actually matter? They are jumping from ‘lore protecting’ to ‘pfff, whatever’ whenever it suits them.
If you didn’t want Ashbringer to be used by anyone other than Rets, don’t add it in.
Not all specs or got something magical from their class history so why is it so important for one spec an the others ended up with what in some cases seemed like last minute creations just just give them something.
Each class could have had to recover the key lore based item and brought it back to their Class Hall. For everyone there to use as a pillar of inspiration for the fight against the Legion. The item would still be there to ‘squee’ over but doesn’t force the need for random rubbish to be invented up to justify it later on.
But the argument is still they don’t want to disrupt the class fiction. I’m sorry, what?
Class fiction was destroyed once shit from outside the game was brought in. As awesom as it is, we have a Robin Williams tribute in game, he is not part of the lore or part of the in-game fiction so by the devs logic shouldn’t we get rid of that so it doesn’t disrupt the fiction? How about all of the Easter eggs to the past devs? Are they part of the Warcraft story, as in the actual history as presented in game? Did they help push back the Burning Legion the first time around? Or are they just a little thing that is fun, for the current devs and those working at Blizzard, to see in game and have no actual bearing on the story whatsoever?
Truth be told, the spec lock is there for no good reason.
‘No bearing on the story whatsoever’ is the key to the matter. The very fact that they had to make shit up to justify their choices of weapons in the first place tells you that the weapons that the specs get are not a key bit of lore or class fiction that will impact on the game.
Transmogs are there to jazz up your look, set up your character and add a bit of flair to the community, as long as you are mogging the same weapon type and the same armour ‘material’ then you can be anything you want to be, and judging by the variations of staff I can use on my Priest, it is not anything to do with class fiction or lore that is keeping us from being able to use the appearances we have unlocked. I have a copy of Velen’s staff that I can transmog onto any class as long as it uses a staff, not just Priest. Where is the lore in that? I can use Tyrande’s bow while as a BM (I guess you could class Malfurion as her pet…). I can even use it on a Goblin who is wearing a Sylvanas Mog. I am 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% certain that there is no lore or class fiction that dictates that somewhere along the line I snatched her bow right out of her hands and stole the clothes off Windrunners back to enable me to do this. But I can.
There is even a mini-holiday dedicated to transmogging. Due to this, their whole class fiction and lore falls flat on its face. There is no lore or any reason why I shouldn’t be able to use my Disc staff on my Holy priest. There is no reason why a Holy Pally with a BfA sword and board shouldn’t be able to use the skin they acquired from the Prot Mage Tower.
As a Priest and using a staff I can already break the class fiction by transmogging it to resemble something only a Druid would carry, one with flowers and leaves all over it. I can transform it into a frosty scythe, something that a Frost Mage would use. Or something that looks like it belongs to a Warlock. Or even, as a user of the light I can transform it into something that looks like I plucked it from the sweaty hand of an Old God. Yes, that’s right as an upholder of the light and a user of its power to heal my friends and slay my foes I can also use something that is riddled with Void. The exact opposite of what my spec is supposed to be about, that has been dictated through lore but they decided that as an artifact appearance, a Holy Priest using a Void weapon should be a thing. This whole lore and fiction thing crumbles when you look at everything that has been presented to us in the previous expansions.
I can even dress up as a Shadow Priest as Holy. I can dress my Hunter up to look like a god-damn Shaman. There is no Lore tying us to any of this. We are being fed bullshit.
So, how do you solve it?
We have the ability for replicas to be made of other items through the Darkmoon Faire. Why can’t this be a thing for certain items that are not ‘famous’ it’s that much of a big deal to the devs?
Or just unlock the ones that aren’t ‘famous’ for use across the specs. Like the Grand Marshal stuff for PvP, where it was locked to only the one who has earned them can wear them, only the spec that was designed to have Ashbringer can use it but the rest are fair game.
You could force players who want the look and spent time doing the grind to get it, do another grind to get them. It’s an absolutely shitty way to treat the player base but at least it is something?
Or maybe just allow those bandage dudes, who have spent the better part of forever turning one thing into something else, to do their bloody job. Keeping it locked to spec, even to weapon too if you have to. Therefore if you want to keep Ret Pallys to be the only one to use Ashbringer, only give them the weapons that the mog can go on compared to Prot and Holy. IE: from now on give them the two handed swords and maces and give the other two only one handed swords and shields.
Not only has an excuse been made up to create this, but they seem intent on continuing to piss off the player base by carrying on with this charade, even when faced with the issue that their ‘lore’ logic is beyond flawed.
I’ve put over 30 posts that I found on both the US and EU forums above. I pulled them from various threads about wanting the spec lock removed. Out of all the forum threads that I read, only one maybe two had a blue post in them, none of them explaining the reasoning behind the absurd decision just regurgitating the whole “we’re doing this, so tough shit” that was presented at a Q&A.
Players have beenpleading for this to change since Alpha, all through Beta and they are still feeling like they are being ignored. Come November 2018, if nothing has changed then this will have been asked for for over a year.
There are multiple similar threads on MMO Champion, Redit, Wowhead to name a few. The calls for the spec restriction to be lifted are seemingly endless and as one player pointed it, it seems like we have been told tough shit for all the effort and time we have sunk in to doing it. Is it now a case that as long as we are paying our subs and we are given something to grind and keep us paying then it dosen’t matter if we feel that we have been mislead or cheated out of our rewards that we worked so hard for?
Here’s a selection for you to read through…
Are artifact weapons going to be spec bound next exp?
Artifact appearances spec specific
BFA Skins and Druid forms what were you thinking
Acquisition of Challenge Artifact Skin Tints
Artifact Skin Transmogs in BFA
Cross Spec Artifact Transmog for BfA
Cross-spec Artifact transmog in BfA – complete list
PSA: BFA no artifact xmog spec restriction.
BFA Artifacts can be mogged over any weapon
Artifact transmogs in Battle for Azeroth
Pls No Spec locking Artifact skins in BFA
Artifact weapon Tmog restriction
Artifact Transmog Spec Locked in BFA
Artifact Forms in BFA – Not only are the appearances locked to spec, Druids are now not able to transmog their weapons independently from the form you get with them when you could in Legion… So if you like your fire kitty, tough shit on the mess you’re going to look like if your in your humanoid form.
So much #feelsbadman going on with what they are doing right now…
Zionxi 