Has relative power between Fully Geared vs Ungeared been higher than this before?

[Bloodbath234543]

Is it just me, or has the relative power between people who are wearing high tiered gear in relation to people who are in starter gear (lets say Timeless gear or Tyrannical gear) been wider than any other previous expansion? In my experience, I have never been globaled as fast as Ive been recently when gearing up an alt. I know there is an obvious ilevel gap between pve gear and comparable tier pvp gear, but is that gap so wide that that fights are so much faster than they have been in the past? And is the power gap between fully PVE hero gear and first tier gear (pvp and pve) too wide? Am I nuts?

This is not a political thread.

[Schizoide]

No, never. The gap in MoP is much larger than ever before. Even in Cataclysm, new 85s didn't deal 1/5th the DPS of fully T13-equipped characters. A new 90 might deal 80k at best, while T16H-equipped players can top 450k.

The problem is they need to differentiate rewards within tiers, and they feel the need to separate them by at least 13 itemlvls, and 13 itemlvls is a whopping 10% stat inflation, and in MoP each raid tier has either three or four different reward tiers, plus thunderforged for another 7 itemlvl inflation for the last two tiers, plus valor upgrades across the board for another 8. That's why the gap is so huge now.

[Vvulf]

No, there's never been a time when a fully geared (taking you mean like I-level 560+ or so) toon was so much stronger than a newly dinged max level toon.
The difference is literally like 5 times more damage (PvE). A competent person will do between 60-120k dps in a raid environment on a toon with only Timeless gear.
A competent person fully geared will do 600-2million in burst before falling back down to 220-400k (or higher) depending on encounter.

Hence the incoming item squish.

[Seditian]

No, never. The gap in MoP is much larger than ever before. Even in Cataclysm, new 85s didn't deal 1/5th the DPS of fully T13-equipped characters. A new 90 might deal 80k at best, while T16H-equipped players can top 450k.

The problem is they need to differentiate rewards within tiers, and they feel the need to separate them by at least 13 itemlvls, and 13 itemlvls is a whopping 10% stat inflation, and in MoP each raid tier has either three or four different reward tiers, plus thunderforged for another 7 itemlvl inflation for the last two tiers, plus valor upgrades across the board for another 8. That's why the gap is so huge now.

90k is insanely high for a freshly leveled 90. Even if you have a full timeless isle set. 50-70k is a lot more realistic. Which makes it even more ridiculous, the power between fully geared and heroic dungeons geared people.

[Schizoide]

He did say 496-geared. My alts were doing 80k in a mix of timeless and T15 LFR (502) gear.

Now of course they're all around 535 just from doing ordos and celestials every week.

[Seditian]

He did say 496-geared. My alts were doing 80k in a mix of timeless and T15 LFR (502) gear.

Now of course they're all around 535 just from doing ordos and celestials every week.

Whoops. Sloppy reading from me. Yeah, then 60-120k dps is pretty realistic, depending on your trinkets/set-bonuses.

[Shamanberry]

No, and there's a perfectly logical reason for why.

#1) The amount of stat points required to make an upgrade seem "significant" has gone up over time. Since a new expansion is always intended as a gear reset, and you can't balance new content with the expectation that people are coming in to it with anything but leveling greens from the previous expansion, but you also want to be sure that those fully decked out with heroics from the previous one will replace their gear, you have a sudden huge jump in item level at the start of a new expansion. Every time this happens, the jump has to be proportionally bigger. 10 stat points used to be a "significant" increase - now we're looking at needing hundreds before you even notice the difference in power.

#2) We've never had as many tiers of gear. Gear from heroic has to be more powerful than gear from normal, which has to be more powerful than gear from flex, which in turn has to be more powerful than gear from LFR, which again has to be more powerful than gear you can get outside of raids in general. When a new tier of content has come out, they needed to jump the item levels such that everyone can progress, and the best progression path didn't become to ignore current content and go back and do old content.

Combined, it means that going from one tier to the next this expansion is a proportionally HUGE step in relative power, so if you compare a fresh 90 to a Heroic Warforged geared player, the gap is proportionally bigger than comparing a fresh 85 to one fully decked out from Heroic Dragonsoul. It would get even worse in WoD if nothing was done.


If you've ever wondered why they're doing the Item Squish - this is the reason.

[velghus]

Was wondering if anyone would ever bring it up. It is so silly that a good geared char can deal 5 times the damage a freshly dinged char would. Each new tier should feel rewarding, but its annoying that you are really worthless untill you get atleast some LFR SoO gear..

[Baracuda]

Try play versus fully geared on any private server, it's never fun.

[TheWindWalker]

Just to add a little footnote: The Devs have made no secret of this and have said it will continue, and will likely be seen at this level again next expansion as they've letting 85+ be the starting point instead of 70+ this time, and it is intentional. The explaination as to why it was made this was summed up as simply "100 to 110 is something people can feel happen. It's 10%. 500 to 510 isn't. It's only 2%. When the numbers get this high, larger gaps are required to keep gear progression being something you can sense while in combat."

[Daveon]

Is it just me, or has the relative power between people who are wearing high tiered gear in relation to people who are in starter gear (lets say Timeless gear or Tyrannical gear) been wider than any other previous expansion? In my experience, I have never been globaled as fast as Ive been recently when gearing up an alt. I know there is an obvious ilevel gap between pve gear and comparable tier pvp gear, but is that gap so wide that that fights are so much faster than they have been in the past? And is the power gap between fully PVE hero gear and first tier gear (pvp and pve) too wide? Am I nuts?

No, you are not imagining things, this is one of the reasons for the item squish. They know it is out of hand, and it would be even worse next expansion if they didn't do the squish.

[crunk]

Just to add a little footnote: The Devs have made no secret of this and have said it will continue, and will likely be seen at this level again next expansion as they've letting 85+ be the starting point instead of 70+ this time, and it is intentional. The explaination as to why it was made this was summed up as simply "100 to 110 is something people can feel happen. It's 10%. 500 to 510 isn't. It's only 2%. When the numbers get this high, larger gaps are required to keep gear progression being something you can sense while in combat."

they made that up instead of admitting they want to put the raid nerfs on the players (via upgrades) instead of on the bosses (debuffs). anyone who pushes their dragon slaying buttons in the right order can see power gains going up 10%

[Normie]

I think that the huge power difference between the gear that heroic (and even normal) raiders have, and the gear that the great majority of players have, is not particularly good for the game.

I feel like things would be better if flex was as high as the gear level went, and normal and heroic raiders received additional buffs/upgrades/?? through their progression, but those buffs were only active inside raid instances. Or scale normal/heroic raid gear down to flex ilevel outside of raid instances.

It really is pretty silly running MSV LFR where most people are putting out 30-70k and then there are one or two dudes doing 350k. Sure, it speeds things up, but it's out of whack.

[TheWindWalker]

they made that up instead of admitting they want to put the raid nerfs on the players (via upgrades) instead of on the bosses (debuffs). anyone who pushes their dragon slaying buttons in the right order can see power gains going up 10 ilvls.

Meh. I have to disagree. I think they overdid it by far too much but you're not terribly off about using gear as a raid nerf. (The world first race barely involves anything close to farming, so clearly doing so is intentionally making it easier than is required.)

[Giscoicus]

90k is insanely high for a freshly leveled 90. Even if you have a full timeless isle set. 50-70k is a lot more realistic. Which makes it even more ridiculous, the power between fully geared and heroic dungeons geared people.

90k is reasonable if they enchant, reforge, and find a weapon.

50k is what 463 gear gets you. 50k in Timeless is simply being bad.

[Bloodbath234543]

Is blizzard just afraid of whining players who complain about tier difference? I mean, is it too much to ask that each power tier (lfr/flex/normal/heroic/warforged) be like 10% and not 40%? Would we then run into the issue of extremely skilled LFR geared players clearing heroic raids? And is that REALLY an issue? Is blizzard too afraid of content being cleared that fast? Would the best pve players get bored an leave? Do you think more people leave due to the frustration of world PVP?

[Giscoicus]

Is blizzard just afraid of whining players who complain about tier difference? I mean, is it too much to ask that each power tier (lfr/flex/normal/heroic/warforged) be like 10% and not 40%? Would we then run into the issue of extremely skilled LFR geared players clearing heroic raids? And is that REALLY an issue? Is blizzard too afraid of content being cleared that fast? Would the best pve players get bored an leave? Do you think more people leave due to the frustration of world PVP?

Firstly, their scaling for item level vs power is not linear. Going from 450-470 would not be built to yield the same as 530-550. Because Blizzard has decided to seperate each difficulty level by like...10? item levels, going up any bit is HUGE and they continue to do this. They really cant compress it because the difficulties just arent close to each other. I could see like a 5 ilvl change from Flex to Normal, but LFR to flex would be like 20 and normal to heroic like 15.

[Ripster42]

Yes. At the end of vanilla. You could one shot people as a mage (your only save would be to trinket the sheep after the cast so you could use your flame reflector). If you let yourself get crit once as a pally you could kill anyone inside your stun. The end of vanilla, before there became other ways to get gear besides dungeon blues that were absolutely awful, was the most gear imbalanced in the game.

Literally, outside raids, there was no way to increase your damage as a spell caster besides some sub-60 gear in dm east and mara. The gear you see dropping in the lvl 60 instances now didn't exist. It was only +int+stam gear and int didn't give you spell power.

A non-raid geared 60 was doing maybe 200dps. The top warriors were doing 1k dps.

[Deleted]

Has to do with tier differentiation, and at lvl 90 item inflation is higher than ever before.
They'll fix this in WoD, when lvl 60-85 dmg will be streamlined and real power changes will be noticeable after that, but on a smaller scale since the damage isn't in ks to millions.

[-Superman-]

It seems to double (or triple) each expac. So glad we will be getting the gear/item squish.