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

[Mormolyce]

One of the many reasons why we NEED the item squish.

That actually won't change the relative power difference between fresh 100 and end-of-WoD tier fully geared toon. Only the ILVLs from 1-90.

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No it wouldn't. The double upgrades meant they had to make ToT reg gear higher than 2/2 gear in t14. ToT ilvl would've been 8 ilvls lower than it is. Then they added thunderforged which added another 6 ilvls on top of that. Then SoO came along and they had to make the gear higher than upgrade thunderforged heroic.

gg ilvl inflation

ILVL inflation is totally deliberate, at least in the context of current content. You're supposed to feel much stronger when you upgrade your gear to the next tier, otherwise it's lame.

It's just the accumulated inflation of 5 eras of WoW that's causing the numbers to be downright silly.

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In Classic wow I got 1 shot by a hunter with an aimed shot. My druid had several epics. So yes relative power has been higher.

That was more class imbalance/bad PVP design.

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Funny, I was just thinking this to myself while doing ToT LFR on my alt. Yes, the gap is the largest its ever been compared to any previous expansion.

In BC, the typical Karazhan-geared player could pull about ~700-900 DPS. The typical late Sunwell character (i.e. no Warglaives or Thoridal) hovered around ~2100-2300 DPS including Drums and Bloodlust stacking. Warglaives or Thoridal meant Rogues and Hunters could reach close to 3000 DPS, with one Hunter from SK Gaming reaching 3200 at one point, but that is not the typical player. From start to finish, DPS increased by 2-3 times over the course of TBC.

In Wrath, output went from about 2000-2500 DPS in Heroic blues to about 3500-4500 in full Naxx 25 gear. Without the ICC buff, output in T10 capped at around 9000-15000. This is due in part to the absolutely insane trinkets that were available in Heroic ICC (Deathbringer's Will, DFO). About a 4-fold DPS increase from start to finish in WotLK, but mainly due to ridiculously powerful trinkets.

In Cata, DPS went from about 10-13k in Heroic blues to about 45k on Heroic Ultraxion. DPS roughly quadrupled over the course of Cataclysm.

There is absolutely no comparison with any previous expansion as the DPS disparity currently stands in Mists of Pandaria. As others have mentioned, most classes with a 570+ iLvl are capable of putting out just shy of 10 times as much DPS as someone in 463 gear. 40-50k as a fresh 90 in 463 gear (I'm not counting TI gear) to upwards of 350k with a Heroic Warforged SoO weapon. Of course, the ilvl spectrum over the course of the expansion is also the highest its ever been (115-164 in TBC vs. 463-580). As a fresh 90, it truly is abysmal until you're mostly geared from SoO LFR.

Again, this is related to the number of "tiers" of gear. TBC only had one level of difficulty per raid, Wrath had three (10 NM -> 10HM/25NM -> 25HM). Cata only had two (NM/HM) at least until DS where LFR meant it had 3, MoP had 3 but also had ILVL upgrades and T/Warforged gear.

[Deleted]

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.

I can remember even back in Wrath seeing a very well played lev77 beat average geared lev80s... the lev77 could do enough damage to be competitive. Im pretty sure that its completely impossible for any toon below max level to be competitive against a max level toon now cos the damage numbers just wont be enough.

[TheWindWalker]

That actually won't change the relative power difference between fresh 100 and end-of-WoD tier fully geared toon. Only the ILVLs from 1-90.

Yeah it will. Warlords won't be in the current Mists level of exponential growth. Allegedly it'll be back at Cataclysm's. They aren't squishing everything pre-90 and then just "turning back on Mist formula again." And it's 85, not 90 that's the new starting point for the climb. (So far.)

[Sarthan]

I think its great, just because you hit 90 doesn't mean you should be able to take on someone who has cleared siege on heroic

[Thelxi]

Absolutely never. The gap between ilvls within the tier itself between modes has never been more enormous.

[Deleted]

I think its great, just because you hit 90 doesn't mean you should be able to take on someone who has cleared siege on heroic

Why not?

Dont u think PvP should be all about players skills?

[Baphomette]

Translation: Most of our player base is retarded and can't handle math.

Which is why they're doing the squish, NOT because of the power creep (although the power creep causes this). They're squishing because they flat out said in Cata when it first became an idea that hp/dps/crits/heals were starting to get to the point where they thought most players couldn't mentally process the numbers.

Even blizzard thinks their playerbase are all dumbshits.

Can't blame them, judging from the number of people in this very thread who think the squish is going to fix the gear gap at max level. WoD is going to have four difficulty steps for all three of its tiers. That gives us, what, something like:

heroic blues: 600
T17: 613/626/639/652 for LFR/normal/heroic/mythic
T18: 646/659/672/685
T19: 679/692/705/718

... which is already as wide as the gap in MoP without including orc-forged or 2/2 upgrades or half a tier being lower-ilvl and pushing everything else up further (like MSV).

In other words, the squish might reduce a fresh 100 to 2k DPS, but by the end of the expansion top raiders could be back up to like 30k. Good job, squish, totally worth messing everything up. -_-

[Bryanator1989]

The gear inflation is pretty much the reason I stopped playing MoP. If it wasn't for the upcoming item squish, I'd quit all together. Damage and health pools are disgusting atm.

[Airwaves]

Giving heroic modes only transmog gear would slow it down a lot. Heroics should be about the challange, not the gear.

[dashflash890]

If your Normal SoO geared to Heroic and up you are practically a god in pve and wpvp. Soloed about 3 fresh 90s in a mix between timeless and pvp gear the other day for coins. And you can pull like 20 mobs and not even think about dying.

[threads]

Giving heroic modes only transmog gear would slow it down a lot. Heroics should be about the challange, not the gear.

That would be a terrible idea. Not everyone cares about transmog.

[Sixteen18]

In Classic wow I got 1 shot by a hunter with an aimed shot. My druid had several epics. So yes relative power has been higher.

HP values back then were not nearly as balanced as they are now. The actual damage was much closer, especially in PVP. I could often keep up in 1v1s as a T1 geared hunter against people in T2.5 gear.

[Aerna]

In Vanilla the relative power between a blue-geared and T3 geared player wasn't very big. Maybe 1:2 for melee/hunters and less than that for casters. Some blue items were actually BiS until very very late in naxx for casters.

[Deja Thoris]

The cloak does not ever take 2 months. If you are very lucky with your runestones it takes 3 months.

No, it takes 2 months. Hell, I just started a new 90 last week and got 14 wisdom / power things in one week and I don't think I did all the lfr's.

[RoKPaNda]

I'd say no .. Although Vanilla was odd. It was a combination of gear difference and class balance. If you took something like a fury warrior for example (best example) and you gave it the best blues at max level and then you gave another warrior a mix of the best items from we'll say a mix of BWL and AQ40, the difference was pretty hilariously huge. I know what me and the other fury warrior in my guild would do for giggles was join pick-up UBRS runs. It was so lopsided you couldn't even see the other people's bars on the meter.

But that only really worked for certain classes. The difference between an ungeared rogue / warrior / hunter and a geared one was massive. The difference between something like say an ungeared ret paladin and a geared ret paladin was large but not nearly as large.

[Ariluz]

A priest in 496 gear (enchanted, gemmed, reforged right) sims at about 80-85k dps, this was including 502 weapon and you have to remember with simcraft there is also all raid buffs present, flask, food and potions.
So in realistic situation, doing even 75k in timeless gear is pretty good as shadow priest at least. With 463 weapon Id be surprised if you can pull over 60k.

You can even check simcraft for T14N bis, thats with set bonuses and items with nice amount of gem sockets, its at about 90k for shadow priests.

So any claims about 100k dps easily with shadow priest in 496 gear are bullshit.

So basically you either, A. have a lot higher gear than full 496, B. did this in an environment with damage buff (5man hc, lfr with determination) or C. bursted 100k in a short fight.

I did 80-100k on ST fights in raids @ around 496 ilvl. I did have a 548 BoA weapon which probably skews things, but I also did have a few blues which brought my item level down to around 496. Also, don't take simcraft numbers as gospel - its a rough estimate that is in no way an exact dps number. The use of simcraft is more for getting your stat weights and calculating the relative upgrade of an item.

According to simcraft, frost mages should be near the top of the meters on ST in BiS. Do you see this happening? It also sims Fire/Affliction/Shadow way lower than they actually are on ST in BIS.

[Zuben]

I feel the difference in raw power is greater now than ever before. My priest at ilvl 421 had to put some effort into defeating the occasional vermin at Sunsong Ranch, while doped up in Timeless gear they are no trouble at all. My warrior and hunter in their SoO LFR/Flex gear basically read a newspaper and enjoy a cup of tea in peace while in combat with them, then finally unleash a quick AoE burst that removes the pests from time and space in a nanosecond. I like the difference though, makes it a nice progression path to walk at level cap and when you're strong you feel strong.

[Seditian]

I did close to 100k in full timeless on my shadow priest - not that hard to accomplish with any spec/class.

Warriors are pretty hard to get high dps with, if you're running with a full timeless isle set. I think I did about 60k dps throughout SoO. Although in my defense, I only have a level 450 blue weapon, not the timeless isle one.

No, it takes 2 months. Hell, I just started a new 90 last week and got 14 wisdom / power things in one week and I don't think I did all the lfr's.

Wisdom/Power sigils are by far the fastest. The problem is the 3k valor, which takes at least 3 weeks, and the secrets of the empire stones.

[Ariluz]

Warriors are pretty hard to get high dps with, if you're running with a full timeless isle set. I think I did about 60k dps throughout SoO. Although in my defense, I only have a level 450 blue weapon, not the timeless isle one.



Wisdom/Power sigils are by far the fastest. The problem is the 3k valor, which takes at least 3 weeks, and the secrets of the empire stones.

If you're running as fury with bad weapons and not much crit gear, your dps is going to be fairly low. You'd probably be better served playing arms till you got slightly more geared.

There has also always been a decently large power gap at the end of every expansion, though this is obviously the largest it has been due to the ilvl spread in this expansion. Its also more noticeable because the numbers we are dealing with are also much larger numbers than the previous expansion.

[Deleted]

Warriors are pretty hard to get high dps with, if you're running with a full timeless isle set. I think I did about 60k dps throughout SoO. Although in my defense, I only have a level 450 blue weapon, not the timeless isle one.



Wisdom/Power sigils are by far the fastest. The problem is the 3k valor, which takes at least 3 weeks, and the secrets of the empire stones.

Not to mention you get the 3k valor quest AFTER you have to kill Sha of Pride. So you don't start that quest with an 'empty' valor cap -_-. What I miss most of all is this:

In wrath a good player with 251 ilvl could shit on the output of a bad player with 277 ilvl. If you are 553 ilvl right now you can auto-attack for more damage than someone 522 ilvl.

The gear is now 90% factor of the damage you dish out, instead of a healthy mix of skill and gear. What makes it even worse is that a fully PvE geared raider whoops the ass of my fully PvP geared toon.