Item levels and expansions

[Deleted]

Gearing is easy if you have the contacts etc. Just ask someone who got loot and poof he/she gives you the item etc

I was looking for transmog gear in Wotlk raids. When you do dunegons/heroics (lvl 80) and first 10 man naxx the item level is 200 and expanding to 213 for 25 man naxx.

In Legion the item level growth for items it starts from 800 and we have 880 (without orange stuff). So In Wrath, the entire expansion went from item lvl 200 to 280 = 80 item levels in 3 raid tiers.
And Already we're at that point and we have not ytet completed the first set of raid tier.

This why we're having a stats squish. But Where will this end?

Item level grow to 915 with the new orange stuff. And we have still not cleared the first set of raid tier. I can't understand why we must have this ammount of gear available since it just cause people to get angry.

The point I am trying to make is. Lets say you're getting an item. You the nget another item for the same slot with worse secondary stats but is 20 item levels higher. Well you have to equip it but still might be worse.

I think Blizzard should have another look with the "warforged/Titanforged" system

[goriander]

You should use your brain a little before making a post like this.

The first "tier" in Legion is ilvl 865, not 800. How would Blizzard make the difference in raid difficulties even somewhat meaningful if EN HC dropped ilvl 830 gear and EN Mythic ilvl 835 gear? The proportionate difference between ilvl 840 and 860 gear is much smaller than ilvl 200 and ilvl 220 gear.

[Deleted]

Well ilvl 915 is probably the max ilvl for Legion... the new raids won't be rewarded 900+ gear

[Echocho]

Yes the power creep have really gotten out of hand over the years. That why we're seeing good geared characters already doing 10 times the dps of a freshly leveled one. There shouldn't be more than 100 iLvls from one end tier to another.

[primalmatter]

It is a side effect of going from linear to non linear progression systems.


Back in tbc everything went from easier to harder with one difficulty throughout (two if you count dungeons).

We now have lfr and mythic and a whole other gaggle of modes that need to be balanced. If they tried small item level increases people at the lowest and highest difficulty wouldn't really see any power difference while mid level players it would be massive. It makes for a awkward system.

[huth]

You should use your brain a little before making a post like this.

The first "tier" in Legion is ilvl 865, not 800. How would Blizzard make the difference in raid difficulties even somewhat meaningful if EN HC dropped ilvl 830 gear and EN Mythic ilvl 835 gear? The proportionate difference between ilvl 840 and 860 gear is much smaller than ilvl 200 and ilvl 220 gear.

Actually, it's almost exactly the same proportionate difference. On purpose.

Or rather, it was before the squish.

[oleander89]

Well ilvl 915 is probably the max ilvl for Legion... the new raids won't be rewarded 900+ gear

Nighthold Mythic will be base 905 and likely titanforge up to 920-925. Legendaries will also go up to 925 with that patch and it's not going to be the last raid.

[XDurionX]

Raid gear in Wrath went from 200 to 277, which is a ~40% increase. To reach the same in legion, we'd have to go to ilvl of ~1200 (if we take 855 as base).

[Svisalith]

The proportionate difference between ilvl 840 and 860 gear is much smaller than ilvl 200 and ilvl 220 gear.

Raid gear in Wrath went from 200 to 277, which is a ~40% increase.

That's not how it works. The increase is nonlinear so that +10ilvls from 600 to 610 is the same relative increase as 10ilvls from 900 to 910.

Going from i855 to i1200 would give you something like +26,000% stats, not +40% stats.

[Hisholyness]

Yes the power creep have really gotten out of hand over the years. That why we're seeing good geared characters already doing 10 times the dps of a freshly leveled one. There shouldn't be more than 100 iLvls from one end tier to another.

Although I agree with most of this, item level is not the only reason for the 10x DPS. Artifact points and talents are also non-iLVL damage boosts. Cannot ignore artifact power in the equation

[FelPlague]

Well ilvl 915 is probably the max ilvl for Legion... the new raids won't be rewarded 900+ gear

lol what are you stupid :P
our current mythic gear is 895, nighthold will be higher then that, and there is 2 more raid teirs to come after

[Sentynel]

Well ilvl 915 is probably the max ilvl for Legion... the new raids won't be rewarded 900+ gear

Wrong. Nighthold Mythic already gives 905+. And that's the first tier. We will probably reach iLvl 1000 by the end of the expansion.

The game needs an iLvl squish IMO.

[Sevarin]

That's not how it works. The increase is nonlinear so that +10ilvls from 600 to 610 is the same relative increase as 10ilvls from 900 to 910.

wouldnt that make it linear, since the increase is essentially a straight line? maybe im not thinking properly, just woke up with horrible reflux two hours after going to sleep.

[Svisalith]

wouldnt that make it linear, since the increase is essentially a straight line? maybe im not thinking properly, just woke up with horrible reflux two hours after going to sleep.

It's a multiplier of roughly +10% relative to the previous 10ilvls.

Let's take for example an item level 100 piece with 100 stamina.

If you were to give linear increase of +10% of 100 per 10ilvls (as required for an item of 2x ilvl to have 2x stats) then a 20ilvl upgrade would leave it at 120 stamina and a 150ilvl upgrade would leave it at 250 stam.



If you were to give +10% of the current item stats instead of +10% of the base, you'd get nonlinear scaling.

For a low ilvl increase like that 20ilvls, the change is barely noticable - you'd go from 100 to 121 stam instead of from 100 to 120.

For a +150 ilvl increase you would no longer go from 100 to 250 stamina, you'd go from 100 to 418.



With linear scaling, this 250 stamina item would now go to 260 on the next 10ilvls; 260 is only 4% bigger than 250! That's a pretty bad upgrade, so you'd have to dramatically inflate the rate that ilvl increased in order to provide the same relative upgrades.

With nonlinear, the 418 item would go to 460 with 10 more ilvls; that's an increase of 10% relative to 418. This was chosen by design.

[Dracullus]

Wrong. Nighthold Mythic already gives 905+. And that's the first tier. We will probably reach iLvl 1000 by the end of the expansion.

The game needs an iLvl squish IMO.

I think max iLvl 1000 is their intention. If I remember correctly I saw blue relic with ilvl 950 on blizzcon panel about 7.2, so 1000 make sense for mythic Argus stuff. Next expansion probably it will be changed to "legacy item level" or something and we will start again with item level 1.

And I don't know why many think that large power increase is bad thing. There will be catch up mechanics for sure, so alts will get relevant gear quickly. And things like Balance of Power will be trivial on alts.

[Adlian]

If they follow the same ilvl increase as EN>Nighthold it should look like this:

Tomb of Sargeras
RaidFind:---ilvl885+
Normal:----ilvl900+
Heroic:-----ilvl915+
Mythic:-----ilvl930+

Planet of Argus
RaidFind:---ilvl910+
Normal-----ilvl925+
Heroic:-----ilvl940+
Mythic:-----ilvl955+

[Deleted]

If they follow the same ilvl increase as EN>Nighthold it should look like this:

Tomb of Sargeras
RaidFind:---ilvl885
Normal:----ilvl900
Heroic:-----ilvl915
Mythic:-----ilvl930

Planet of Argus
RaidFind:---ilvl910
Normal-----ilvl925
Heroic:-----ilvl940
Mythic:-----ilvl955

What if it follows the increase in ilvl from earlier xpacs?

[Deleted]

Its not as bad as you might think.

First of all you have to understand that there is such a thing as an "item budget". This budget determines how much stats are on a given item. The budget of an item is determined by its item level and rarrity. The exact scaling has and still does change between expansions.

In Vanilla, item budget scaled linearly with item level. So an ilvl 55 item was 10% better then an ilvl 50 item, and an ilvl 66 item was 10% better then an ilvl 60 item. But the absolute power difference between 60 and 66 was ofc higher then between 50 and 55 (it an ilvl more, after all).

The scaling changed a lot over the years. Just take a look at //elitistjerks.com/f15/t44718-item_level_mechanics/ (use web archive). Back in the days, socket slots were subtracted from the item budget, resulting in less stats. With the introduction of epic gems however, gems brought more stats then were subtracted from the budget, so having as many sockets as possible resulted in having more stats (that was only one of the quirks of that system, when later gear scaling was introduced sockets were again a major winner since gems weren't scaled down).

During Wrath, the entry item level which was available in heroic dungeons was rare 200, and epic 200 items were actually quite rare (every melee DPS wanted the epic axe from HC Loken, for example). The final item level of Wrath were the weapons from HC LK, which were at ilvl 284, while the normal loot was 277.

So from 187 to 284 is 97 item level, or an increase of exactly 42% - while the item budget scaling was *exponential* with item level. That is why you went from 3-5k - 4k DPS in 187 blues to 25k+ DPS at the end of the expansion.


Sadly, you can't really look at the numbers anymore, since the "item squish" ans several changes to secondary stats (Armor pen, Expertise, spell hit, spell power existed back then, and parry and dodge were on gear, some items had both str *and* agility (e.g. cloaks)). So looking at wowhead nowadays will give you the wrong numbers for most of the gear.

But all in all, the increase in power during Wrath *was* extreme.

If you look at Legion, then we currently have an increase from 820 to 895 (i don't count legendaries here, for good reason), which is a mere 10%. Thats incidentally not much more then during the first tier of Wrath.

Furthermore, Wrath had only two raid difficulties - 10 man, and 25 man, at least in the beginning (it increased to four, where two shared the same item level: 10 man < 10 man heroic = 25 man nhc < 25 man heroic, so in essence three), while nowadays we have four: LFR, NHC, HC and Mythic.

Then, the conversion from stat ating to percent were different. Even if today the ratings are more inflated that doesn't mean the equipment is as strong. back in the days, strength got converted to parry and agility got converted to dodge. So for a tank, getting more strength resulted in having more parry, on top of their parry rating. Nowadays, parry and dodge come from other sources (cir rating gets converted into parry, for example). This means that parry % are *much* lower nowadays then back in the day. So even if we get much more crit (and thus, more parry) today, we still end up with less. And that is just one example how balancing has significantly changed in the last few years.

Although I am pretty sure that back in the day dungeons only rewarded 187 gear and only the epic items were 200. They might have patched that at some later point, probably during the squish. I suppose the squish is also responsible.


So the gist of it is: If we want to have the same increase in power then we had in Wrath, we need to get to more then ilvl ~1164.

I won't dismiss your concers, though. I think the fear that item level gets too inflated is very valid. I am also looking at item level inflation more and more concerned. If we don't get a "proper" restructuring of wow and the items - not some half-assed squish that didn#t do anything - we will indeed end up at very unreasonable levels again pretty soon.

[Adlian]

What if it follows the increase in ilvl from earlier xpacs?

They used similar ilvl increase in WOD too. And that was just an assumption, no one knows what they plan to do.

[Teri]

Stats will go up a ton during this expansion, if you go to wowhead, you can like set a legendary up to 990.

If that is correct comparing a legendary chestpiece
Breastplate of the Golden Val'kyr 910 vs 990 (generic ilevel 800 chestpiece stats):
Main stat : 2269 -> 4781 (814)
Stamina : 3403 -> 7172 (1221)
Secondary 1: 1050 -> 1417 (751)
Secondary 2: 584 -> 787 (333)

As we see health and main stat more then double from now on if they reach that theoretical point in 3 tiers. Nighthold mythic will already go to 905+ base, so it's highly possible.

Purple 910 will have the exact same stats budget as orange 910 on the 4 main stats.

At least up to 7.1.5 current scaling rules still puts main stat/stamina above secondaries and I believe the patch will adjust secondary scaling (larger numbers are easier to finetune), but they havent fully implemented those changes so can't judge that yet.