Consolidate Heirlooms

Community General Discussion
1

I’ll start out by apologising in advance. I’m new to the forums so my post might be all over the place in terms of how things are laid out around these parts - here goes!

I’ve been an alt fiend for years, so Heirlooms have been quite useful outside of Recruit-a-Friend. But I feel like a good move would be to consolidate all Heirlooms into a single necklace or ring, something that doesn’t affect a player’s appearance. It could even be tied in with the Heart of Azeroth when the expansion ends (I’m not great with lore so maybe that last part is a terrible idea).

For the sake of discussion, this new Heirloom would give stats and a +50% experience gain for kills/quests (obviously this would be tweaked accordingly when the level-squish is implemented) and it would have to have an upgrade system much like the one we have on Heirlooms currently. There would also have to be some sort of refund and possibly achievement/title for players who’ve collected/upgraded Heirlooms in the past.

I’ll explain my reasoning below:

Asthetics
I feel like seeing people in Heirlooms negatively impacts the immersion/fantasy aspects from 1-120. For the most part I don’t think Heirlooms look very nice. I understand there’s such a thing as Transmog, but it’s not readily available in the starting zones and looting pieces of regular gear such as boots/gloves so often from quests/dungeons just ruins your entire look anyway, forcing more and more trips to the Transmog. Furthermore some people simply cannot be bothered. I can’t un-see a level 115 male Draenei Paladin in a Tattered Dreadmist Mask and Preened Wildfeather Leggings (this raises another issue; Plate wearers or whatever, sitting in Cloth/Leather to save on upgrade costs). There’s also the Chauffeured Chopper which is a funny idea and everything but again, it looks/sounds ridiculous and you’re not even supposed to have a mount 'til 20.

Variants
There are many ‘variants’ of each type of armour (4 types of Plate shoulders for example). I believe they used to have different stats which made sense, but now the likes of Agi/Int will shift depending on your current spec. Certain pieces actually still differ with Crit/Haste/Versatility but this just means you’re paying 3 times to upgrade each piece in order to min/max your sets (I’m aware most people won’t be doing this).

Enchants
Enchanting can be a very tedious process. Once you Enchant an Heirloom you’ll need to physically keep it on a character or in a bank which can result in a lot of tracking down and sending different sets across alts. And it’s not just a case of enchanting one set of Leather for a Druid, it’s enchanting Leather for Feral, Guardian, Balance, Restoration and so forth (because of the stat shift and min/maxing mentioned above).

Upgrades
Now I know many people voice this online but I don’t see cost being an issue here. I think it’s healthy for the game/economy to have gold-sinks and having the choice to invest in Heirlooms to level up your alts offers a good sense of accomplishment. The problem is the amount of Heirlooms involved, and the rings are also locked behind Fishing/Garrison lines which doesn’t provide much consistency. There are close to 100 individual Heirloom items in the game and choosing which to upgrade can be an OCD nightmare, especially for newer players.

Conclusion
Overall I feel like the current Heirloom system is very messy and a single item that grants you some decent stats and a boost to experience would go a long way in providing not only a much more streamlined process but also bring back some form of normality whilst levelling. If I were a new player and the first thing I saw was a Chauffured Chopper bouncing around the starting zone just one-shotting everything that moved, I’d be slightly put off (not enough to warrant not playing, because WoW is amazing, but still).

Let me know if you like the idea of consolidating Heirlooms and let me know if you don’t!

Thanks.

6 Likes
3

I want it to have options, with ±10/50/100% to all experience earned. :heart_eyes:

4

I would like heirlooms to be a perk like pathfinder in your spell book, but not the actual armor pieces.

that way you can still adjust the difficulty of leveling by choosing what actual quests/dung gear to wear and what don’t, but there won’t be an army of clones all wearing the same pixels.

example:
Burning crusade veteran

  • increase all experience gains in Outland by 69%
  • while in Outland increase stamina and damage dealt by 25%

That way it encourages ppl to go into the world for fast exp but still do dungeons for good blue items.

2 Likes
5

I want XP bonuses, but I dislike having to reserve several armor slots for the heirloom pieces that give XP bonuses. Most of the armor drops I get while leveling my alts go straight to the vendor because I can’t use them because I already have an heirloom piece in its place. Getting loot should be one of the enjoyable things in WoW, but it’s not when using a fully heirloomed alt.

Having some passive spell-based heirloom bonuses sounds like a good idea. I hope Blizzard will consider this when they redesign the leveling system in the future.

1 Like
6

I like it when players come up with beter ideeas then the ones working @Blizzard.
Sadly its all in vain.

  1. This is the eu forums so no1 important from Blizzard comes here and the feedback from Eu im sure ends up in the recycle bin.
  2. They only work with bare-minimum in mind now, 0 inovation.
7

Heirlooms doesn’t really work in BfA anyways.

  • For the neck slot you’re equipping the Heart of Azeroth.
  • Helm, Chest and Shoulders will be occupied by Azerite Armor.
  • Until level 115, you will most likely have legion legendaries equipped in other slots (ring/cloak/trinkets/leggings )
1 Like
8

You answered yourself.
Transmog is available from level one - you either have to go to a major city, find someone with the mount and get the portable wardrobe (engineering-made item usable by non-engineers, not level restricted).

That some people cannot be bothered? So what.
There are people who cannot be bothered even at level 120, what are you gonna do about them?

It’s not like leveling gear is totally matching - it’s the opposite, so instead of SOME people looking however they like, you’d have people rocking the good old clown suits.

Plus wasting gold on repairs AND more gold on transmog. Or you don’t transmog, but then it kinda goes against your concern, that being people don’t looking good enough to your standards.

FYI, heirlooms no longer have some OP stats like they used to, you won’t “one shot” mobs more than the guy next to you with no heirlooms.
Their main benefit is the bonus XP and the fact that they upgrade as you level.
But now that the content is scaled - including the quest rewards, getting upgrades is not that big of a deal.
In fact, sometimes, when a quest reward upgrades (and it happens rather often), the item is actually more powerful than a heirloom one.

And then there are items that can no longer be obtained, like the weapons from Garrosh or the WoD mythic dungeon trinkets - so what?

To me it sounds like you are too much concerned about how others look like (a male draenei with mismatched gear) but your solution wouldn’t help that AT ALL.

I would very much like to keep the system as it is now.

The only change I would propose is to turn the Void Storage into an account-wide bank, so that you could store non-soulbound items across your toons - that is including your enchanted heirlooms, which I admit is a pain in the rear to backtrack.

5 Likes
9

I have nothing against having one item that would give whole heirloom xp bonus but it would have to be alternative for the current system, not replacing it.

Heirlooms are rewards we have collected over the years. Sure, some who came to game later might have got some of them easier but there is also us who have collected them over the years with lot of work when they were current (when they originally came available). We have paid gold/different tokens/done other effort to have items that scale with level and can be usable with alts. Removing these items would be taking away that reward from us and further nullify any feeling or actual mmorpg play, where you slowly work towards collecting different things useful for you. Nullifying and nerfing rewards can lead also to situation, where new content rewards (especially collectible ones for account) don’t feel rewarding enough, when you never know when those are taken away too. There is already enough throw-away rewards in this game you only use very short time and then they are no use for you anymore.

What they could do is one of the following:

  • Make is possible to click heirloom to give you xp buff from it while actually wearing something else.
  • Make ring/other item you suggested that gives the full 50% xp bonus, so if people want to wear something else they can wear that ring and not lose xp bonus. (heirloom xp bonus is max 50% anyway so any other heirloom items you wear same time wouldn’t give extra xp, but you could still use them for gear if you haven’t got upgrades for that slot)

This way people would not lose what they have gained, but it would be possible to get xp bonus without wearing all the items. It would give freedom to use quest rewards, upgrades from dungeons and other things that players would want to wear instead of heirloom. And people who want to use heirlooms could keep doing it.

1 Like
10

It’s not like leveling gear is totally matching - it’s the opposite

This isn’t my main concern, but people do equip Heirlooms and sit in them for ages because it’s easy. It takes a lot away from what WoW was/is especially when a major part was levelling. I think seeing people in actual levelling gear again would freshen things up. Yes I understand Transmog would still be available therefore what’s not to stop someone purposely going for the ‘mismatched’ look? True but atleast they’d have to visit the Transmog and make an effort as opposed to just equipping it at level 1 and looking like that for good.

FYI, heirlooms no longer have some OP stats like they used to, you won’t “one shot” mobs more than the guy next to you with no heirlooms.

You can indeed one-shot mobs at level 1 after equipping a full set of Heirlooms/weapon, and this persists 'til around level 5-10 if I remember correctly. The equivalent player wouldn’t be doing that for a while as they’re only given a few pieces of white gear to start with.

In fact, sometimes, when a quest reward upgrades (and it happens rather often), the item is actually more powerful than a heirloom one.

You’re right but I don’t know/have never seen anyone who decides to swap out their Heirlooms whilst levelling just for another few stat points as they’d lose experience in the process…

Overall my post is primarily about consolidating Heirlooms. The other things mentioned do bother me but just making things easier to manage in terms of creating/upgrading/swapping them around would be a good start I think.

11

It would be better if you could make the slot itself heirloom, rather than having to equip the actual piece in the slot, then any piece of armour you put in the heirloom slot works as an heirloom item.

There is an issue using heirlooms between 110-120 because they take the same slots as your azurite armour pieces and heirloom items are worse than the azurite items, which results in having to equip your azurite, fight mobs, do the quests and then put the heirlooms back on just to turn in the quests. If you don’t do this you end up a lot weaker while doing the levelling. If the XP buff applied to the slot not the piece it would allow you to keep your azurite gear on all the time.

12

I’s a personal choice what you equip. For example I will always prioritise heirlooms that give an xp gain over azerite for example and use my legendaries until they become useless.

13

Yes of course, I don’t disagree with that at all, but with how they currently work you need to choose between XP or Stats. - Which was what I meant by “not really working in BfA”

2 Likes
14

I totally agree :slight_smile:

15

Yeah, my main focus was more on consolidation and removal of all the different types/stages of Heirlooms just to make things more manageable. But from what you guys are saying it does sound like they seem to get in the way with choices etc later on (I’ve not tried Heirlooms past 100 so I can’t comment)! :roll_eyes:

16

I like how the Heirlooms work atm, the only thing I would like changed, is the ability to buy and upgrade heirlooms straight from the heirloom “page” instead of having to go and find the vendors every time I might want a new heirloom or upgrade an existing one.

2 Likes
17

I think the loremaster tabard should be account-bound and replace heirlooms by giving a huge experience buff (you’d have to remove the exp buff from heirlooms but maybe we can keep it in the game as stat boost gear for leveling?)
tabards don’t interfere with gear progression and don’t ruin transmogs because they can be hidden.

1 Like
18

What about my Stormwind rep that I need to purchase riding at ~20% discount?

19

All my lowbies are heirloomed the absolute best investment in game is the Transmog Yak as all I ever really do is allied races these days they can mount it immediately and mog into something.

I’m running a fair few to 120 at the moment I prioritise the XP rather than the Azerite as I don’t leave Islands until I hit 120 or really high 119.

I’m quite fine with heirlooms as it is I probably wouldn’t mind 50% rings available as an alternate but they are going to be expensive to match with full set heirlooms 10k plus.

Blizzard have been ruining the heirlooms for a couple of expansions now and probably retire them completely from 9.0

20

I started equipping my low level characters with heirlooms because I was tired of begging the group to give me the cloth robe as a healer or the shield as a tank to replace a white or grey item from the starting zone. So, I’m fine with it being armor pieces.

Also, I only upgrade one set per armor class but I avoid to buy upgrades with gold. Whenever a world event comes along that has upgrade tokens as a reward, I buy one with the event currency. If I’m done with upgrading the warrior set, the shaman set, the rogue set and the warlock (?) set, I’ll upgrade the other ones. It’s part of “my” content and I’d not like to have that taken away.

What certainly could be better though is the collection page. It’s very confusing because it just lists everything with mostly counterintuiitive filters. I know my way around it by now, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

21

I’m not sure I’d want to go back to relying on dungeon gear. I like that my heirlooms level with me.