Thoughts on the actual socket system

Community General Discussion
1

Hello everyone,

Quickly a presentation so you know from which side of the wow community I’m from and maybe why I have those thoughts. I’ve been playing Wow since Legion (did some BC and wotlk content on private servers about 10 years ago) and I’ve been doing Mythic raiding since BFA.

Now that’s off the way, I’m making this post since I watched Preach’s last video on which he explains that wow devs are apparently not 100% sure as of what to do for next expansion regarding many systems. And so we should talk, write vlog… about our concerns, feedbacks and ideas and hopefully we will be less frustrated by some aspects of the game. I’m all for positive discussions and not spending time saying “this is garbage” or “this is okay” without explaining what we like or don’t like about the game.

Anyway I would like to talk about gems and sockets.

System as of today :

Expect on professions gear, sockets are acquired through a proc, or a roll of dice If you prefer. You loot an item, a dice is then rolled: you win you get a socket slot you lose you get something else or nothing at all.
Once you get that slot you can put a gem into it and that wil give you either +120 primary stat (strength intelligence agility) or +50 secondary stat (hast, mastery, crit chance or versatility) based on what you chose. (and you can equip only one primary stat gem on you at the same time)
Okay so a bit of math now :
just did a sim and here’s the result and each of

my stat’s weight :

51,586 DPS

Critical Strike 5.86
Haste 5.74
Versatility 5.48
Mastery 4.83
Intellect 2.74

so let’s assume i now get one of my non gemmed item with a socke t and I decided to equip a crit gem.
I will then gain 50 * 5.86 = 293 dps on this item.

now let’s watch an item scaling
at ilvl 415 I gain 434 Intell, 114 crit chance and 161 versatility
at ilvl 430 I gain 500 intell, 120 crit chance and 170 versatility
so i gain (500-434)*2.74 + (120-114)*5.86 + (170-161)*5.48 = 265 dps
So gaining the same item in the higher tier of difficulty is not as interesting for me as gaining a socket slot. (that’s maybe not true for EVERY items in the game, but I believe that my example is reasonable enough for you to believe that a socket slot is at least as good as doing the same content on one level higher of difficulty)

I believe that this situation is an issue since now it means that M+10 content with socket is as interesting for my character as Mythic raiding is. So for a while I’ve been doing FH 10 and using coins on it in order to get the ring with a socket .
That’s an issue for me because in regards to M+ I have a choice: either I’ll be doing the highest keys I can possibly can (which is the goal of the M+ system I believe) Or i tag on FH +10-+12 over and over until I get the item I want and then do the same thing on boralus in order to get the other ring.
And that puts me in the same situation as many other players: I’m doing content because i’m forced to do it in order to help my guild the best way I can and not because I enjoy it. (I’m not enjoying the content because i’m doing it over and over at a difficulty which is “easy” to me and therefore boring)
There are of course ways of doing FH over again at higher keys, but I want to play with my friends and maybe they just want to go do a +17 TOS or something else)

I believe this issue comes from the fact that primary stats on dps classes are way lower than secondary stats ( and maybe the fact that secondary stats seem to be scaling with the amount of primary stat you have : the more intell i get on my boomy the more haste gains value.[i’m not sure about how stats weights change during the course of an expansion])

How could this system be fixed ?

first idea : modifying the amout of ilvl we gain during an expansion or changing the way stats scale with ilvl . This way we could have the same situation we had at the beginning of the expansion with primary stat being way above other stats. But this would remain during the entire expansion.
This ofc would have a massive impact on how powerful warforging and titantforging are. So maybe forbidding them to proc higher than the ilvl of the next level of difficulty could be a way of fixing this.

second idea : fixed socket slots on certain parts of gear. This way the amount of socket we have on our gear is the same for each players. For example: we could have gems on rings and bracers. On heads too maybe and that could be a way of bringing back meta gems and some diversity on what jewelcrafters can propose and sell.

third idea: DR on sockets depending on how many you have equipped. This way sockets are still a nice surprise if that’s what blizzard wants out of sockets but not as powerfull and not something you HAVE TO farm

Anyway it’s late here in france. Sorry for my english. I hope we can have a nice discussion in the comment section and find new ideas to help this game go forward. The important thing if we want a better game is to keep on explaining why we like or dislike things.

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Here’s a short version from me as to what i want this socket system to be.

I don’t want it to be RNG. It’s annoying. It’s ridiculous and it’s kind of becoming anti climactic, specially when you’re getting a gear with higher ilvl from a much more difficult content, only to realize that your LFR socketed gear has better stats AND a socket, so generally better.

I want them to make it earnable. They’re already planning on making the weekly chest no longer mythic+ based and mostly about what activities you do during the week. right? So why not give a currency with the weekly chest that allows you to either craft sockets with professions, Or buy them from vendors?

I mean we can go back and forth and talk about how we can make it RNG but more enjoyable all day long. But in the end, i think having an end game goal to work for, is a lot more interesting and rewarding for the majority of the playerbase.

1 Like
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50% of all items should have sockets
JC market is dead

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are you sure? They were referencing to weekly boxes as M+ weekly and PvP weekly in the interviews. They talked about choice option but not making the box for other activities. Also when the box rewards HC/Mythic level loot then any other activity of similar challenge would be HC/Mythic raiding. Weekly gear from word quests could not be really good (although Benthic gear did happen).

8.3 crafts seems to have been changed to always have a socket and just RNG secondary stat (and one of corruption bonus effects). 9.0 on Blizzcon was mentioned to be able to force specific secondary with gems - and as they noticed problems with socket power - those likely will be make fixed on or off or forced similarly to secondary.

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Maybe i misunderstood and it’s not part of their plan. But i was sure they mentioned any weekly activity and not just mythic+.

Who knows? Maybe that wasn’t what they meant and i completely got it wrong.

Crafted gear having sockets won’t solve anything in 9.0. In fact, That’ll just replace bis gear of raids into crafted gear. because now you have a socket and your desired stat. So what’s even the point of raid gear now?

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This. I want it to go back to the old system so JC has work to do again.

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Item level will be to low where as BoP patterns will require raiding first to craft and only usually for one or two slots. Also raid gear may have additional effects (like Benthic) that would make it better.

They could/should add this choice to dailies and some other boxes as well if they really want to put choice into every player hands. Not everyone will do high tier PvP or +10 M+.

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Not gonna go into the math around sockets, but I sort of wish we could go back to something very similar to the original system.

Sockets weren’t random, and there were colour slots, ad gems had two combined stats, and there were a bonus stat at the end if you followed the colour instructions on the gear.

Not saying it should be exactly the same, but I think that was better than what we have.

1 Like
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Personally i liked fix sockets and dif colors, brought some rpg elements and jc had some mean to use it.

Nowdays… just tooo meh…

2 Likes
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I’m not sure what would be the best way to fix this issue with sockets, but I think there should be far less RNG involved. I liked the old system better, when gear had fixed sockets with various bonuses.

I’m a very casual player with zero interest in raiding or mythic+ at the moment, but I still like using enchants and gems to improve my gear, even if it’s not necessary. Also, JC is my favorite profession, but it doesn’t feel that useful anymore (the same can be said of many other professions as well).

And I remember that during Legion, when I was playing much more actively, I barely ever had to craft gems for my 3 max lvl characters. And that was definitely something I was not happy about.

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You can make good money with alchemy and enchanting, atleast from my opinion. Its true that over the years, professions lost many value…

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That may be true, but making a lot of gold with professions is not the most important thing to me. I wish they were more useful in other ways as well. But sadly, the professions have been going steadily downhill since WoD.

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Even enchanting has suffered. You can just sell two ring enchants and a weapon. Some glove enchants but they are dirt cheap.

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Still better compared to jc or any other aside alchemy.

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You’re focusing too much on the socket, maybe that’s not really the problem. Sockets are only as useful as the gems you can put in them.

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Sockets should function as they did in the past.

Sockets are static slots found on raid gear, i.e chest has 3 red, shoulders 1 red 1 yellow, legs 2 blue whatever

Then imo, crafters of the certain armor types should be able to create ‘‘gem slot creating items’’ like blacksmiths could, so clothies can create gemslots for cloth gear, both crafted and looted, leatherworkes for leather and mail etc

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I honestly don’t care about the money. I like being self sufficient, and that professions feel usefull. I have all. I just haven’t maxed them in a while, because they have almost nothing to them anymore.

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