Tuesday, May 03, 2022

The Creation Catalyst

This tier, Blizzard introduced a mechanic to help with Tier gear: the Creation Catalyst.

Previously, the problem with Tier sets was that you could be unlucky and never get Tier to drop for you. Or perhaps worse, you have Tier shoulders, and a higher item-level non-Tier shoulders drop, and you have to choose between the set bonus or discarding the higher level item.

The Creation Catalyst pretty much solves all the issues with Tier. Once a week, you can transform a non-Tier item into the Tier item of the same item level. It's pretty much the equivalent of allowing you to purchase a Tier item of any slot at the rate of one per week.

So the first couple of times you use the Creation Catalyst, it's to finish off your 4-piece set bonus. Then after that, you can start transforming upgrades, always keeping your set bonus.

It even allows solo-players or non-raiders to get their Tier set bonus. You can transform the Zerith Mortis rewards into Tier, so you should get your set bonus in 4 weeks.

All in all, the Creation Catalyst was an excellent mechanic that solves many of the issues with Tier set bonuses. I hope it is carried forward for future content.

3 comments:

  1. Oof. We could have used that in Serpentshrine Cavern. I can't tell you the number of times we had drops that were not T5 gear that nobody wanted. The DKP amounts people put forward were, well, pretty miniscule. It was bad enough that we only ran one night a week, but when the gear that does drop is stuff that does nothing for the raid....

    This is a great idea, and it's something that Blizz should have done sooner.

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    1. Yes, I also think it's a great addition but I do think it's a bit of a band aid for a problem that wouldn't have to exist.

      Maybe it's been too long but I don't remember the Tier bonuses being a) expected to be completed so soon, as in "you should have these in order to progress", cf RWF and b) so powerful.

      I also don't remember ever holding out DKP to get a Tier piece, but that may be my pragmatic "if it's an upgrade, it's an upgrade" view and that's why I had to farm a lot of old content to complete the missing transmog pieces, exacerbated by the fact that I wasn't ever in a farming guild. We killed it and moved on :P

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    2. Well, to be fair to Blizzard, the playerbase really doesn't like Tier set bonuses that aren't impactful. They tried to avoid Tier sets and just have the cosmetic appearance. In the last few tiers, an upgrade is an upgrade. But everyone complained, so they brought back Tier.

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