Nighthold Balance might be a complete disaster

[FelPlague]

everyone will be 890+ by the time nighthold comes out, and most likely have 2 good legendaries, if they play enough
most top 100 raiders have got 3 legendaries on avg, which means that if you get 3 in 2 months you'll get the rest in 3-4
i guarantee you that gear will play no part in the world first guldan kill.

and what will 3 legendaries have to do with anything? you can only equip 2

- - - Updated - - -

They won't be that wildly different by the time Nighthold actually opens. It's not even as bad as you claim to begin with anyway.

- - - Updated - - -



You know that only lasts for like a week right? People responsibly bank time off work for it, etc. You people have the wildest misconceptions of top level raiding.

there is things in life you cant bank off... not everyone can bank a week off work, and some people are parents, unable to spend a week without taking care of their kid..

[Gaucho-]

Anyone who is as worried as you about mythic progression will have 54/34 weapons by the time Nighthold releases by just doing WQs alone (excluding EVERYTHING else which rewards AP). You will be AK20 (9000% AP) in early December and AK25 (24900%) in early January. So even with skipping weeks of AP grind you should be fine when NH releases.

[Cracked]

Except, the longer the expansion is out the easier it is/will be to predict player power level. Emerald Nightmare was a mess because it was difficult for Blizzard to know how geared top end guilds would be and Player Power grew exponential with things like Golden Traits. Now that things have settled down Player Power level is much more linear.

Here is the power level of current top-end players (where regular players will be when Nighthold Releases):
1) 3-4 legendaries
2) 33-34 Artifact Traits (expectation is that you have 35th trait for ToV Mythic progression in 2 weeks)
3) 880ish ilevel with good itemization.

Expected top-end player power level for Nighthold doesn't drastically shift from this:
1) All legendaries (equipped whatever 2 are BiS)
2) 42-46 Traits (Anything after 35 is only a .5% increase so you're looking at a 2-3% variance at the very top end)
3) 885-890 ilevel with perfect itemization

Nighthold should be tuned so that the first 3-4 bosses are at current top-end player power. The middle 3-4 around the expected player power level. And the last 2-3 bosses tuned slightly higher than expected player power level.

You don't know what you are talking about, do you?

As a player in the top 10, I can tell you right now that I only have 2 legendaries, none of which increase my dps any other way than stats, and I'm not exceptionally unlucky either. Some people will push for 35 before ToV, but not everyone. Before nighthold you can confortably farm 54 into 2 weapons (3 if youre sick), but no one is expecting to have 2x bis legendary unless lucky.

You basically can not have 890 with perfect itemization, because sometimes there arent even items which provide that itemization, and banking on m+ to roll 890+ is stupid, just look at the guy first on AP on wowprogress, he has done 916 m+ dungeons and has shitty itemization for the most part.

[shaunika123]

and what will 3 legendaries have to do with anything? you can only equip 2
.

yes and all of them are the exact same strength in every single situation right?

[Dangg]

Blizzard have made it abundantly clear they don't give a shit about us.

Imo the #1 main reason Mythic raids are still at a fixed 20 man size is guild competition / 'the race'.

[Orange Joe]

Why shouldn't the hardest content in the game be balanced with the best players in mind ? Obviously taking out the world first race since nothing can be balanced for those and still be reasonably doable for anyone else.

because they aren't the only ones to be doing said content.

[Deleted]

Imo the #1 main reason Mythic raids are still at a fixed 20 man size is guild competition / 'the race'.

The game requires something that is out of reach of the majority, which fuels the desire to improve. It is human nature that we always compare ourselves to our friends and peers; those people around us. We rarely set targets that are way beyond our station. Most of the time people aim to do as well, or slightly better, than their equals. That is part of the success of my guild: we don't do any of these things, we don't compare ourselves to anyone. Instead of empirical trial and error that most guilds work on, we consciously try to improve in an analytical way. We simply do the best we can without arbitrary goals holding us back. The 'race' you talk about only really exists for the three guilds taking part, noone actually cares to wins, least of all the Blizzard designers.

This doesn't mean that the top of the pyramid isn't important, it's the top that is holding everything together. It provides the inspiration. A game where finding your BiS legendary is more important than playing well is a smack in the face to those players, and I hope it is addressed soon.

[cFortyfive]

because they aren't the only ones to be doing said content.

They are the ones the content is designed to challenge in the first place. Obviously your target group can change but up until now the raids were not balanced with total dogshitters in mind who just barely scraped together their 20m and are still currently wiping on cenarius.

[DakonBlackblade]

yes and all of them are the exact same strength in every single situation right?

For raiding there is a very clear cut BIS selection of legendaries, on very reare ocasion a spec has 3 very powerfull legendaries and they choose 2 from those 3 depending on ecnounter/playstile, almost everytime tough there are 2 that simply miles ahead of every other and you'll use it 24/7 and insta gain 40k DPS.

They are the ones the content is designed to challenge in the first place. Obviously your target group can change but up until now the raids were not balanced with total dogshitters in mind who just barely scraped together their 20m and are still currently wiping on cenarius.

The game is balanced precisely to your so called "dogshitters", Blizzard has said it very clearly that if they balanced the game for the world first racers then the content would basically become impossible for 99% of the playerbase. Also there is a middle ground of players that clear content relatively fast but take longer then 10 hours, the playerbase is not divided into crap and super elite, there are nuances. And considering only about 700 guilds have killed Cenarius so far I guess the world is full of "dogshiters". And you should be thankig these players cause without them Blizzard wouldn't even bother making a mythic difficulty, or do you think if only the top 100 guilds were to raid mythic that Blizz would still put in the effort of making them?

[willemh]

what you're saying is correct. it's exactly what happened in SoO25 with thunderforge. Blizzard needed to tune assuming a base ilevel from ToT, when in reality every 25 man who'd farmed for a few months was a full 6 ilevel above it due to the prevalence of thunderforging. The result was a ridiculously undertuned first half; and more reasonable but still skewed second half.

Nothing has changed, they still need to tune ignoring the farm period. it will almost certainly be tuned around 880 ilevel.

Theres 0 downsides in overtuning the instance imo, it just means the top guilds need to farm gear an extra week and some nerfs need to happen a month in. Who cares?

[cFortyfive]

Blizzard has said it very clearly that if they balanced the game for the world first racers

I have to ask here are you genuinely dense since and repeat after me nobody claimed that was in any way possible and would still allow other players to clear the raid ? Raids that are balanced to give the top 100 though a reasonable challenge like it always have been the case will still be solvable by raiders in reasonable time and can be adjusted later on as again has always been the case to top the numbers off with a whole bunch of terribad guilds. EN wasn't that way instead it was just a terrible joke of a raid.

[DakonBlackblade]

I have to ask here are you genuinely dense since and repeat after me nobody claimed that was in any way possible and would still allow other players to clear the raid ?

What are you talking about ? Blizz team said that, and before you ask, no I don't have a link, I don't keep links of every interview I ever read in my life. It was after Lei Shen on the Throne of Thunder, where they said something about the boss beying perfectly balanced, where it still presented somewhat of a chalenge for top end guilds but not to the point it became unreacheble to everyone else, then they followed that saying that they never actualy aim to make the fights hard for top end cause that mean it'd basicaly make it impossible for everyone else, but that when they do it right they have Lei Shen like bosses that can hold top end back a couple of days and still be manageable by everyone else in due time. They were very clear tough theire aim is not making the encounters hard for the top end guilds, that comes as a byproduct of achieving perfect balance for the massive amount of mythic raiders that aren't on the top end.

So what was your point ?

[cFortyfive]

So what was your point ?

Jesus are you jtbrig's alt account or brother ? lei shen wasn't balanced at all for the rank700 clowns OrangeJoe seems to imply the content should be balanced for.

[KaPe]

Theres 0 downsides in overtuning the instance imo, it just means the top guilds need to farm gear an extra week and some nerfs need to happen a month in. Who cares?

Maybe the people who aren't top guilds and will pretty much have no business being there for a month? That's not "zero downsides". Tuning is already a problem with various "creative mechanics" people use to defeat bosses - having them intentionally "too strong" would make it a balancing nightmare for vast majority of raiders.

And you'd still get people crying about "filthy casuals getting their nerfs already" after the initial month passed - regardless of said "casuals" still being in World 100.

[Ichifails]

There are ppl with 4 legendaries all 4 crap

How is that different from BC where we had a single priest/pala/warlock Helm token drop and 0 hands tokens? Just as a joke going into WotLK, I continued to do Hyjal every week with a friend so we can get a hands token... ICC was already out by the time we ever saw it.

Did Blizzard launch Sunwell taking into account that no priest/pala/warlock in my guild had a T6 4-set?

[cFortyfive]

Did Blizzard launch Sunwell taking into account that no priest/pala/warlock in my guild had a T6 4-set?

did you clear black temple a week before sunwell was released ?

[aGit]

If you have a crafted crit only neck on lv 855 (like you should) it trumphs sephuz cause the legendary only has 790sh crit and a load of mastery. The differenc eis small and you could argue using Sephuz for the shield would make sense, still you are having to sacrifice a small amount of DPS for a shield.

sephuz is the ring with 1.5k crit or whatnot, you're thinking of prydaz.

[Ichifails]

did you clear black temple a week before sunwell was released ?

I think we finished Sunwell world 72 or 73 so I'd say I cleared it a bit before that. There were just no Conqueror hand/head tokens and it was funny at first, got depressing reaaaaaaaaaally fast.

[Deleted]

everyone will be 890+ by the time nighthold comes out, and most likely have 2 good legendaries, if they play enough
most top 100 raiders have got 3 legendaries on avg, which means that if you get 3 in 2 months you'll get the rest in 3-4
i guarantee you that gear will play no part in the world first guldan kill.

Or you'll have 3 and all 3 will be pointless.

[willemh]

Maybe the people who aren't top guilds and will pretty much have no business being there for a month? That's not "zero downsides". Tuning is already a problem with various "creative mechanics" people use to defeat bosses - having them intentionally "too strong" would make it a balancing nightmare for vast majority of raiders.

And you'd still get people crying about "filthy casuals getting their nerfs already" after the initial month passed - regardless of said "casuals" still being in World 100.

People that arn't in top guilds have no business with the last mythic bosses the first month anyway. If non-top guilds clear the mythic instance within a month the tuning is off, simple as that.