Item levels and expansions

[Deleted]

Stamina : 3403 -> 7172 (1221)

Just picking on this one. In Wrath, you started at 187 with about 14k HP. In ICC, you had about 60k HP (talking about tanks here, since thats what I played). Thats a factor of 4.28. Back in the days, Stamina used up 2/3 of one point in item budget.

If you compare an ilvl 825 generic blue chest with that, it has 1,541 Stamina. Scale up by 4.28 and you end up with 6,595. Thats not much lower then the 7,172 of your legendary. Since epics have higher stat modifier then rares, this possibly makes up the remaining difference of about 8%.

So all in all up to ilvl 990 the scaling won't be worse then it was in Wrath, at least not for stamina. It will be interesting to do this for other stats as well and investigate at which ratings one could end up. But since ratings are currently in flux on the PTR, I'm not inclined to do a lot of math on it until those changes are somewhat final.

Does anyone have the current formulas for item budget, with rare and epic modifiers? They must be known since wowhead allows choosing them, but I don't want to re-engineer them right now in the middle of the night.

[huth]

The budget of an item is determined by its item level and rarrity.

That hasn't been true since Cataclysm. All rarities above common now have the exact same budget per iLvl.

[Queen of Hamsters]

How the hell does it matter...? Talk about trying your hardest to see problems where there are none...
Stat squish is already a fact, we'll be getting them. It's entirely up to the devs however if they, in the future, want to change Ilvl in some way to move away from the numbers to clean up the interface. I highly doubt it would EVER cause any client-side issues though.

[Deleted]

Its not about the height of ilvl in general, Rorcanna, its about the inflation of ilvl during the expansion itself and the corresponding power creep.

We already saw some extreme forms of it in prior expansions (Wrath had very inflated numbers at the end) and people are concerned that with NH, Tomb and Argus the item level will scale to quite extreme and possibly very unbalanced levels in the end.

Blizzard seems to share this concern because they are reducing secondary stat scaling on the PTR. This has two goals: It makes primary stats (and thus ilvl) more valuable, but another effect that I'm pretty sure they also have in mind is that it keeps secondary stats in check during the next few tiers.


But on a side note, item levels above 1000 are becoming ridiculous as well. Going from 1000 to 1015 just doesn't feel the same as going from 200 to 213 to 226.

[Mendal]

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.

This! It is very simple - we really don't have linear progression system right now while back in the days it worked like that. And what is the problem with bigger numbers? So what?

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But on a side note, item levels above 1000 are becoming ridiculous as well. Going from 1000 to 1015 just doesn't feel the same as going from 200 to 213 to 226.

Is this really a problem? Sounds like an OCD to me (same as with people who said it will feel bad to have max lvl of 85 or 110 when it should stop at 100). These are JUST numbers.. how do you deal with such problems in real life? When you go in market and prices end with .99?

[Deleted]

Is this really a problem? Sounds like an OCD to me (same as with people who said it will feel bad to have max lvl of 85 or 110 when it should stop at 100). These are JUST numbers.. how do you deal with such problems in real life? When you go in market and prices end with .99?

The one thing has nothing to do with the other. I am not sure why you need to bring up mentl disorders or try to make ridiculous comparisions.

Do you know why products have prices like 999€? Because numbers *do* make a difference. People perceive 999€ to be substantially cheaper then something that costs 1000€. This has ben subject to scientific research and while its is on n objective level completely ridiculous it works. Thats why products have those prices.

If you have a product that costs 100€ instead of 99e people might still buy it. Its just 1€ more. if you have a product that is 1000€ instead of 999€ people might not buy it. Buts its still only 1€ and in percent even less of an increase.

These psycholigical phenomena have been explored in depth and are well understood, that is why people in marketing come up with prices of .99€ or 99€ or 999€.

But it also works the other way around. If I gift you 115€ instead of 100e you will be pleased by the extra. I i gift you 1015€ instead of 1000€ most people will be "Well, its not really more, its only a token amount". Thats because the base number is higher, and it smply doesn#t feel the same.

These are JUST numbers..

Yeah, right. So why did we get the item squish in the fist place? Look up the dev blog of the time. the item squish was supposed to happen prior to MoP originally. It didn't, and there were multiple dev blogs about some concerns regarding player reception. Number aren't just numbers, after all. Do you know why Garrosh hat so many phases and why he head to heal himself up to full health multiple times? Yeah, because blizzard couldn't store a big enough number for his health pool, and making him heal himself up from 25% to 100% again provided them with a way to give the boss enough total health.

Here is a good read, from 2011, before Pandaria:
//worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/3885585/dev-watercooler-the-great-item-squish-or-not-of-pandaria

There are multiple great dev blogs that i have yet to dig out again that describe exactly the problems in player perception with big numbers. If you want player to "feel" the same upgrade as from 200 -> 2013, you need to go from 1000 -> 1050 or so (this value is completely made up), not only to 1015, increasing the item level infaltion.

[Akka]

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

Pot, meet kettle.

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.

First, actually, the first tier is 850 (normal EN doesn't give 865).
Second, the proportionate difference is exactly the same, because the budget follow an exponential formula (that is, +X ilvl = +X %, so there is exactly the same percentage difference between 200-210 and 900-910). If you would actually "use your brain a little before posting", as someone would say, you'd notice just by looking at your items that it works like that.

Next time, get some clues before telling others they should use their brains.

BTW, WotLK was already suffering for stupid gear inflation, nearly twice as much as TBC and Vanilla (Vanilla went from 60 to 90+, TBC from 115 to 145+ ; both were about 30-35 ilvl progression, which more than doubled in WotLK and went even more retarded later).

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Is this really a problem? Sounds like an OCD to me (same as with people who said it will feel bad to have max lvl of 85 or 110 when it should stop at 100). These are JUST numbers.. how do you deal with such problems in real life? When you go in market and prices end with .99?

Thing is, not only they look ridiculous, they also break the game - power inflation is so stupid it causes all kind of problems everywhere :

- There is the constant scaling problems which need constant re-balancing (see what Blizzard is doing right now because secondary stats are out of whack ? How all spec are always tweaked ?).

- Content becomes completely trivial outside a very narrow window (why do you think they went with the level scaling shit bandaid ? And that already we're back to one-shotting mob left and right ?), which considerably reduces relevant content (one of the reason Vanilla and TBC had much much higher staying power, is that content wasn't so stupidly overgeared that quickly and that much, so nearly every content was still both somewhat relevant and still fun to play even after full tiers had passed).

- Gear takes too much importance compared to skill (it takes someone to be absolutely dreadful to be outplayed if he has a good legendary or 10+ ilvl than you).

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Does anyone have the current formulas for item budget, with rare and epic modifiers? They must be known since wowhead allows choosing them, but I don't want to re-engineer them right now in the middle of the night.

Blizzard has removed any kind of difference between items since Cataclysm. Ilvl and the slot are the only things which matter for the budget.

[Deleted]

Ilvl and the slot are the only things which matter for the budget.

Yeah, and the formula is ... ?

I mean its nice to say things like "ilvl and slot only matter" but that doesn't allow for any quantitative analysis what so ever. back in the days all big theorycrafting sites had those formulas. But honestly, good TC has gone down the drain in the last years. I really miss elitistjerks.

[Deleted]

das ist gut

[goriander]

Pot, meet kettle.

First, actually, the first tier is 850 (normal EN doesn't give 865).
Second, the proportionate difference is exactly the same, because the budget follow an exponential formula (that is, +X ilvl = +X %, so there is exactly the same percentage difference between 200-210 and 900-910). If you would actually "use your brain a little before posting", as someone would say, you'd notice just by looking at your items that it works like that.

Next time, get some clues before telling others they should use their brains.

BTW, WotLK was already suffering for stupid gear inflation, nearly twice as much as TBC and Vanilla (Vanilla went from 60 to 90+, TBC from 115 to 145+ ; both were about 30-35 ilvl progression, which more than doubled in WotLK and went even more retarded later).

Current normal is meant to be an exploration mode, not an actual raid difficulty so it should be disregarded in this context. Heroic=old normal which is ilvl 865.

It's true that stats don't scale linearly with ilvl but that's not what I was talking about; who'd put in the effort needed to raid on the hardest difficulty if the reward was 5 ilvls higher than the lower difficulty when our ilvl is in the 900s? If you had a million dollars in your bank account you wouldn't take a minimum wage job to save up $5k a year but if you had $0 to your name then you probably would consider it.

Next time, get some clues before telling others they should use their brains.

[Deleted]

Current normal is meant to be an exploration mode, not an actual raid difficulty so it should be disregarded in this context. Heroic=old normal which is ilvl 865.

thats completely bollocks. we are not talking about rading difficulties here, we are talking about gear inflation. Max level heroic dungeon gear in WotLK was 187, in Legion its 825. thats where the base for comparsion is.

highest attainable item level durin Wrath was 277, with the weapons from LK being 284. Highest currently attainable gear is 910.

for the comparison of gear inflation its completely irrelevant what you think about the difficuties and wether or not they are "exploration modes" or not. they are there, they give gear, and max level gear starts at 825 (from max level dungeons), not 865.

[goriander]

thats completely bollocks. we are not talking about rading difficulties here, we are talking about gear inflation. Max level heroic dungeon gear in WotLK was 187, in Legion its 825. thats where the base for comparsion is.

highest attainable item level durin Wrath was 277, with the weapons from LK being 284. Highest currently attainable gear is 910.

for the comparison of gear inflation its completely irrelevant what you think about the difficuties and wether or not they are "exploration modes" or not. they are there, they give gear, and max level gear starts at 825 (from max level dungeons), not 865.

Why should the gearing path in Legion be similar to an expansion that was released almost 10 years ago? The first tier of content in Legion rewards ilvl 865 gear and you don't have to complete a single dungeon to access it because ilvl 855 crafted gear is ridiculously cheap.

Also, gearscore was the shit back then and going from 2000 GS to 6000 GS gave you a greater sense of progression. If level 110 starting gear was ilvl 800 and the rewards from mythic EN was ilvl 815 I don't think there'd be many players interested in raiding because there'd be no sense of progression at all. The ilvl on your gear plays a lesser role in Legion as well, I have 30.5k strength and 33% of that is from my base strength and in Wrath something like 90-95% of your strength was from your gear.

[Deleted]

Det är nice xDDD

[Anthony3187]

Here is a screenshot (pre-stat-squish) showing just how much gear inflates over the course of an expansion today, compared to TBC. The WoD best two hand weapon is nearly 3x as powerful as a heroic rare weapon. In TBC a sunwell 2hander is only about 50% better than a heroic rare weapon, and that is THREE raid tiers later in the expansion.

TBC didn't have multiple tiers of gear for every single dungeon/raid either, AND that content stayed relevant the ENTIRE expansion. Legion is trying to have tons of tiers of difficulty while making content relevant the whole expansion.. it appears the item level inflation is going to get insane toward the end.

Sounds alot easier to me just to have 1-2 difficulties with content and slower item level inflation. This system wasn't broken in TBC/Early Wrath.

[Echo of Soul]

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+

They have a tendency to have bigger jumps between tiers because players need to feel a "meaningful power gain" so I'd probably slap on another 40 iLvls on that list.

[Deleted]

Tbh the progression on artifact should be the new way of power progression. Gear should have less impact and we should be able to gain our main source of gearing through a similar system. In that way the RNG also somewhat gets removed, and player power comes from playing the game / hours spend.

[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+

I think it will be more like:

Tomb of Sargeras
RaidFind:---ilvl890+
Normal:----ilvl905+
Heroic:-----ilvl920+
Mythic:-----ilvl935+

Planet of Argus
RaidFind:---ilvl920+
Normal-----ilvl935+
Heroic:-----ilvl950+
Mythic:-----ilvl965+

And we dont know if there will be high end pve content between Tomb and Argus. Like another megadungeon or miniraid.

[Deleted]

The first tier of content in Legion rewards ilvl 865 gear

The first raid tier is not the first content that is avialable to max level players. Max level gearing starts at heroic dungeons - which give 825. Yes, the gearing parts changed, but heroic dungeons are the entry level to max level gearing since Wrath and that hasn't changed (well, wrath actually had max level non-heroic dungeons, something that doesn#t exist anymore, not in that form at least).

855 is available crafted, but for most players its everything but cheap.

We currently have 825 available from HC dungeons, where it all starts. Then 835 from RF, 845 from M+ and finally we get to raiding where we have 855 and 865 up until 880.

WF/TF did not exist in Wrath, not did M+ or Raid Finder, or multiple difficulties (in the beginning). But that is exactly the point. All those systems contribute to item level inflation.

If we didn#t have M+, Raid Finder and Multiple difficulties, heroic dungeons would reward 825 and the raid would drop 840 or 845. Buts thats not true anymore, and we have to live with the fallout and the fact that we *do* get 910 gear right now. but, as I tried to show before, thats not that bad after all, because the relative power increase isn#t as big as some people make it to be.

To be honest a lot of things you are talking about are at mos tangentially related to the actual problem. Item level inflation and power creep.

The ilvl on your gear plays a lesser role in Legion as well, I have 30.5k strength and 33% of that is from my base strength and in Wrath something like 90-95% of your strength was from your gear.

And when we are at argus, it will be again at 90%. So whats your point?

[tikcol]

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.

And a big one I that. Believe me.

Numbers at the moment are intolerable. Blizzard should realize players don't enjoy numbers this high. People are leaving in troves because of it.

Just last week, a friend of mine that came back left because of this.

[demonyaa]

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).

You are totally clueless as to how item level works and what it signifies. /sigh