I’ve brought this up a couple of times on Discord, but I wanted the permanence of the forum, especially since it’s a feature I really want.
Azerite armor effects fall into two broad categories - qualitative effects which make fundamental changes to how abilities work, but don’t really stack with one another (e.g. Soaring Shield changes the number of targets hit by my Avenger’s Shield; the Mastery stacks, but we don’t care about it right now); and quantitative effects which just bump my numbers (e.g. Avenger’s Might gives me Mastery whenever Avenging Wrath is up), and those do stack. Some traits mix these effects - Soaring Shield has both, for example.
I’ve found that I enjoy the gameplay changing aspects of some qualitative effects more than I do the added raw power of other, stronger, quantitative traits. For example, when gearing for M+ as a Protection Paladin, I will try to ensure that I have one Soaring Shield and one Inspiring Vanguard before letting AMR optimize the rest of my gear - because I want the gameplay changing elements of these two traits. The problem is, juggling all my azerite armor until I find the optimal combination is… a lot of hassle. I need to lock at each slot, look what traits are available to me there (e.g. if I have Soaring Shield only on a helm, I’ll lock that helm first), and then just go over combinations, looking at other azerite traits in the process. It takes a long time.
Can BiB be enhanced with the ability to say “make sure I have these traits in my BiB results”? I see this as similar to Legion’s alternative legendary combinations, only if those had been “optimize around this legendary” (which was never necessary because legendaries had fixed slots).