Domination Shards and legendary Crafting

[Nynave-lightbringer]

I’m having a bit of troubles understanding the Shards of Domination system and with the few sources I have read from it sounds awfull in regard to unnecessary more complexity to ballancing and availability. But maybe someone here can shed some light on it. I have marked my own ideas and conclusions with beginning with -, to set them apart form the infos I gathered from the Vanion and Wowhead pages.

From what I understood it offers the possibility to equipp up to five equippment items with sockets for the shards. For the helmet, shoulder and chest slot plus two more slots depending on the armor type the character is wearing.
Each shard offers a specific smaler bonus. With three of the same type and at least one of those on a specific equippment on either helm, shoulders or chest and tied to said equippment slot you get a set bonus.

The sets are inactive in PvP and M+ environment, the shard bonuses are always active.
-Since the shard bonuses are always active the corresponding gear might be better than the equippment you can get in PvP and M+ environments. Possibly if they outweight the fact that not all of the shard gear might have perfect secondary stats and if PvP gear and M+ gear will be able to be upgraded to a level close to the shard gears item level.
That way players who prefered not to participate in raiding contend would be forced to join raids in the future in order to get competitive levels of gear for the content they prefer. Possibly for a lot of play time.

Since various eqippment slots will be tied to be equipped with a crafted legendary I see some conflict when wanting both of these bonus types. Some legendaries could be equipped on slots that are not on the shards list so that you could wear five shards, get a set bonus and equipp a crafted legendary.
Some of the legendaries can only be crafted for slots on the shard list so that you would have to go with a crafted legendary and three to four shard equippment items.

• In the later case you might have to skip the possibility to use a shard set bonus unless you craft the legendary two times so that you can swap them out accordingly.

-If you plan to get shard gear and want to get into PvP or M+, it looks like it will come down to the weight of shard bonuses, possibly better secondary stats and possibly equipped crafted legendaries when deciding on how many shard gear will be usefull to wear.

Unless you allready have a legendary that uses one of the equippment slots that the shard gear doesn’t you might end with a high amount of wasted soul ash and legendary base items to begin with conquering 9.1 .
-Can allready existing legedarys, that you deem not worth keeping since they are for the wrong equippment slot, be sort of salvaged for soul ash and possibly legendary crafting base items?
-Will legendarys that are currently not used by the majority of the playerbase become more appealing because they can be crafted for a slot that’s not used by shard gear, like for example Echoes of Eonar that can be crafted for a ring slot?

[Kretías-tarren-mill]

@Nynave-lightbringer

-Since the shard bonuses are always active the corresponding gear might be better than the equippment you can get in PvP and M+ environments.

M+ maybe. PvP no. PvP gear gets an increased ilvl in PvP (+13ilvl. Which puts it ahead of around 6 or 7 ilvl compared to its mythic counterparts. The shards can not compete with that)

@Nynave-lightbringer

That way players who prefered not to participate in raiding contend would be forced to join raids in the future in order to get competitive levels of gear for the content they prefer. Possibly for a lot of play time.

Even now without the shards the PvP scene has access to the same ilvl as Mythic Raiders. M+ is the one that is currently severely kicked in the butt for it “has to” either earn glad in pvp or cutting edge in pve.

@Nynave-lightbringer

Since various eqippment slots will be tied to be equipped with a crafted legendary I see some conflict when wanting both of these bonus types. Some legendaries could be equipped on slots that are not on the shards list so that you could wear five shards, get a set bonus and equipp a crafted legendary.

Set bonus is 3 pieces. So youre more than fine with having a lego on said slot. And most lego users will decide what slot they use dependent on their loot drops From Kel’Thuzad and Sylvanas just like now with Denathrius and SLG.

@Nynave-lightbringer

-If you plan to get shard gear and want to get into PvP or M+, it looks like it will come down to the weight of shard bonuses, possibly better secondary stats and possibly equipped crafted legendaries when deciding on how many shard gear will be usefull to wear.

Any piece without Versa is not really desired for PvP. And as i said PvP gear gets increased ilvl.

@Nynave-lightbringer

Unless you allready have a legendary that uses one of the equippment slots that the shard gear doesn’t you might end with a high amount of wasted soul ash and legendary base items to begin with conquering 9.1 .

The Soul ash is massively increased in 9.1 (look at BFAs titan residuum in between patches as an example). Even if what you assumed would become a reality everyone basically starts at Legendary Rank 0 again given how everyone wants the two new ranks. So you are forced to buy either rank 5 or 6 anyway. So nothing you spend before is wasted. At worst you will have to use new missives. And Rank 1-4 are going to be absolutely dirt cheap. If not during week 1 then at the max during week 2 or 3. 5 and 6 however are going to be heavily overpriced.

@Nynave-lightbringer

Will legendarys that are currently not used by the majority of the playerbase become more appealing because they can be crafted for a slot that’s not used by shard gear, like for example Echoes of Eonar that can be crafted for a ring slot?

No. Most certainly not.

[Nynave-lightbringer]

Thanks for the infos, especially on PvP !
Will there be new crafted base items for legendarys then in 9.1? I only read on said sources that there will be new matterials needed to increase to higher levels for legendarys and was about to start buying rank 4 stuff because I figured they would go up in price again.
If you are right and there will be new craftable base items for ranks past 4 it might be better to just save the money or start leveling leggo crafting for the new equippment slots.

Edit:
Just found a guide stating that 9.1 will offer optional crafting components called “Vestige of Origins”, that will increase the resulting legendary base items rank by two.
Buying rank 4 items now is therefore the worst possible option.
Saving money now for ranks 5 and 6 base items or leveling the legendary base crafting to rank 4 for the new equippment slot seem to be the viable options at the moment. Personally I will try the latter and hope I will be able to make some money.