TLDR - Apiarist set is clearly a heavy ‘minion’ centric set, however the only option to Reforge the weapon (a 1h mace) doesn’t allow for any minion affixes. Is this an oversight? Purposeful? Is this to forcefully pigeon-hole the ‘Bee’ set into joke status? Set Reforging should allow you to reforge an item based on it’s ‘slot’ rather than it’s original base. So a 1h Set Mace could be reforged as a 1h Sword (Dagger or even Wand). An offhand Set Catalyst could be reforged into a Shield. (/ end TLDR)
So I’ve been playing a beastmaster horde master, centering around the apiarist suit and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’m trying to push into the upper content - higher lvl corruption and the set is gasing out. I’ve been planning to reforge it for a while and I’ve finally got all the ducks lined up, but once I’ve gotten into the heart of it - I can only reforge with ‘like’ items. So the weapon can only be reforged with a 1h mace. This would be fine, except 1h maces are apparently the only weapon that can’t roll minion affixes. WTH? This frankly felt like a betrayal. Ultimately to progress I had to drop the Apiarist’s set all together and now I just feel dead inside. (I should probably mention, yes I ‘could’ equip the Legends Entwined ring and then use ‘any damn’ weapon I want, but there are two problems with this. First and most importantly, I’d have to give up my T-Rex and he’s my bestest boy. Can’t do that. Secondly, I’m still stuck with Apiarist’s Smoker).
This got me thinking about the larger Set Reforging mechanism as a whole. Everyone agrees Sets are in a quasi bad / weak spot right now. I like the idea of Set Reforging - in contrast to the Unique / Legendary upgrade path. Let’s start small - we don’t need big changes but I think consistent small changes can eventually get us to a really good spot. For starters, I think Set Reforging should be based on the item’s slot and not the item’s base subtype. So in this situation, instead of only being limited to 1h mace - I could reforge the Apiarist’s Comb into a 1h Sword, Wand or any other 1h type that had the affixes I desired. I could also reforge the Apiarist Smoker into a shield if I was desiring more personal survival. This will make the set’s slightly more powerful overall, but it’s a small enough change that I don’t think it will be game breaking or meta-shifting.
Additional Set Reforging Recommendations:
One aspect of the set reforing that I don’t like - is how the transferred affixes of the set are hard-coded. For example - for the Apiarist’s Smoker, the reforged affixes are Reduced Damage Over Time for Summoned Bee and Summon Bee Movement speed. These are literally the least desirable affixes for me, frankly trash affixes. Granted for some people / builds these are probably incredible affixes so why not offer 2 different sets of stats for Set shards? The Apiarist’s set seem to all use prefix slots - so why not also offer the ability to set it to an suffix slot for 2 different Set stats? Additionally, why not allow them to stack both?
Thank you for your time.