Forever's Datamined Artisan Tier Sets: Crafted Raid Gear, One Slot At A Time
Forever's profession overhaul was already the most ambitious part of the expansion's design: more than 600 new recipes, camping-based workspaces, and crafted gear that matters past level 10. The beta client suggests Blizzard went further than that. Datamined recipe entries point to class tier sets you craft rather than loot — with bonuses that unlock as your character progresses, and an equip limit that starts at a single piece.
None of it is announced. All of it is in the files.
What is actually in the client
Community datamining, reported by Icy Veins and credited to community dataminer Stiven for the item screenshots, found recipes for class sets with a structure that does not exist in any previous version of the game:
- Each set has at least four craftable slots — shoulders, boots, leggings and gloves.
- The set tables contain bonuses extending to six pieces, which means more entries are either encrypted, unfinished, or reserved for later phases.
- Finished items are Bind on Equip, so they can move through the player economy.
- Recipe drop locations are not in the files. Max-level dungeons or raids are the likely source, but that is inference, not a find.
Blizzard has not confirmed any of it, and our own coverage of Forever's encrypted loot applies here: drop tables in this beta are empty and item data is deliberately withheld, so what dataminers can see is the shape of the system, not its live numbers.
The reagent chain is the gate
Crafting costs are unusually uniform, and the binding reagent comes from raiding:
| Slot | Cost | Reagent source |
|---|---|---|
| Shoulders | 3× Malleable Essence of Nature | Disenchanting Hyjal Summit or Barrow Deeps gear |
| Boots | 3× Malleable Essence of Nature | Same |
| Leggings | 3× Malleable Essence of Nature | Same |
| Gloves | 3× Malleable Essence of Nature | Same |
Malleable Essence of Nature is not a gathered material. It only comes out of disenchanting equipment from Forever's two new opening raids, which turns the crafting profession into the downstream half of a raid loop: raiders feed disenchanters, disenchanters feed crafters, crafters produce BoE tier pieces that can be sold on.
That is a genuinely different relationship between raiding and professions. In Classic, a raid drop nobody needs becomes an enchanter's dust or vendor gold. Here it becomes the input for somebody else's tier set — which is also how Blizzard keeps older raid content economically relevant, since an outdated Hyjal Summit item still has a buyer if it can be broken down.
The equip limit is the real design
The detail that tells you what this system is for is not the bonuses. It is this: at the start of Forever, a character may equip only one crafted tier piece, which reaches no set bonus at all.
The beta contains a progression reward tied to Guardians of Hyjal reputation that raises the cap to two, activating the two-piece bonus. It looks deliberate rather than technical, and it reframes the whole feature. The crafted sets cannot be finished on launch night by anyone with enough gold and Auction House enthusiasm. Their value grows with the character, in step with reputation, and the file structure suggests later phases will widen the limit further.
Read as a whole, the system is a progressively unlocked alternate gearing track rather than a shortcut around raid loot.
The bonuses are deliberately strange
The datamined bonuses are short on flat percentage damage and long on situational, class-flavour effects. From the entries Icy Veins pulled, with the standard warning that these are beta values:
| Class set | Example bonuses |
|---|---|
| Druid — Grovekeeper Rage | 3-set: Rebirth castable in Bear and Dire Bear Form, cast time reduced by 2.1s in form. 5-set: Berserk cooldown reduced by 15.1s |
| Druid — Grovekeeper Raiment | 2-set: +10 Spirit. 5-set: Swiftmend cooldown reduced by 3.1s |
| Druid — Grovekeeper Eclipse | 4-set: +21 spell damage against Demons. 5-set: Insect Swarm duration +3s |
| Druid — Grovekeeper Ferocity | 3-set: Hibernate castable in Cat Form, 2.1s faster, gains a 15s cooldown. 4-set: +36 Attack Power against Demons |
| Hunter — Wildstalker Armor | 3-set: Frost Trap and Freezing Trap cooldowns reduced by 3s. 5-set: Aimed Shot and Multi-Shot cooldowns reduced by 1s |
| Mage — Manaflare Regalia | 3-set: Counterspell cooldown reduced by 5s. 5-set: Frostfire Bolt gains Missile Barrage and Fingers of Frost chances, plus 10% crit while Combustion is active |
| Paladin — Justice Battlegear | 3-set: Hammer of Justice cooldown reduced by 5s. 4-set: +36 Attack Power against Demons |
| Priest — Vestments of Conviction | 2-set: +10 Spirit. 5-set: Penance and Prayer of Mending cooldowns reduced by 1s |
Note the pattern in the four-item rows. Several of the strongest bonuses are +36 Attack Power or +21 spell damage against Demons — monster-family effects that are powerful in specific raids and worthless elsewhere. That is a deliberate departure from "3% more damage for everyone, always," and it is the same design instinct behind the hidden Wailing Caverns serpent: build gear that creates situations rather than spreadsheets.
What this is not
Three things are worth being explicit about, because datamine coverage tends to blur them:
- These are not confirmed by Blizzard. No post, panel or patch note has described the crafted tier sets as a finished feature.
- The numbers will move. Beta values for set bonuses are the least stable data in any expansion.
- Nothing here is a Best-in-Slot list. The tables that exist in the client cannot tell you where recipes drop, because those records are not present.
How to plan around it
If the system survives to November 4, the pre-launch consequences are more about professions and reputation than about gear:
- Level an enchanter alongside whatever you plan to raid with. The visible bottleneck is essence supply, not recipes. Whoever can disenchant raid drops early has the material everyone else needs.
- Treat Guardians of Hyjal reputation as a gearing system from day one. The second crafted slot is the first real bonus threshold, and reputation is slow.
- Keep crafted pieces tradeable while supply is thin. Bind on Equip cuts both ways: an early piece you cannot yet benefit from is worth more in someone else's hands than in your bank.
- Do not farm toward these bonus values. Plan the profession, the reputation and the enchanter — leave the numbers alone until Blizzard publishes them.
The larger point is what the system says about Forever's gearing. Blizzard has said every tier will ship both a 10-player and a 20-player raid with tier pieces in both, and has repeatedly framed older content as something that should stay useful. A crafted tier track fed by raid disenchantment is how a "forever" game keeps a level-60 raid from becoming obsolete the moment the next phase lands.
Sources and further reading
External references used to verify or expand this article.