Do you think a stat squish is needed?

[Jujudrood]

Is it needed? No.
Will it happen? Most likely.
Is there a story reason for it? Yep, assuming we 'sacrifice' the power of our artifact weps to end the big bad in Argus (sap ourselves of strength, then squish).

Numbers are numbers, and the size of them are largely irrelevant so long as the percentages are still roughly the same.
If you have 10mil HP or 100k HP, it makes no difference as long as the boss hits for 5% HP (500k/5k respectively).

The only difference is aesthetic.
Some people may struggle with interpreting larger numbers quickly, so the smaller they are, the more digestible they are.
Having 100k HP and taking a 5k hit can be easier to read than 10mil HP taking 500k hits.
Also, secondaries are easier to understand when they are maybe in 100s instead of 1000s.

Either way, though, it all comes down to %.

[Icecat]

They needed the squish for 32bit reasons right? Not really needed now. Instead of 1,000,000,000 damage it could just show 1B damage or 1000M damage.
Or maybe just work with % instead of health points.

This is the best method imo. Actually, to be more specific, my ideal (well, realistically ideal anyway) scenario is a "simplify numbers" toggle which shows damage numbers as either 1000k or percentage so I can more properly gauge how much damage I'm doing in relation to my/their health pool. Even if it's just aesthetic, I like the idea that white damage is in the hundreds and a meaty crit is anywhere in the 1000-3000 range, but the simplify numbers thing still theoretically just gives you four numbers so it's just as good.

[Deleted]

Can you elaborate what parts of the game it ruined that you specifically enjoyed?
I myself think that low level content was intentionally or unintentionally overnerfed, but other than that I think it mostly brought good things with it.

I massively enjoyed level 60 & 70 twinking and pvp, the squish largelly destroyed it.

But ye that's about it.

[Lahis]

Of course. There is still gear difference, but not massive. Then there is tuning. Easy modes could be tuned to anyone, mythic could be tuned for players with optimal performance and optimal stats. Catching up would no longer mean getting higher ilevel, but being smart about choosing gear.

Freshly leveled characters don't have optimal gear. Hardcore players would have optimal gear and higher ilevel and more experience playing their classes. That's massive difference.

With such minor power differences, tuning between tiers and difficulties would be impossible. Things would be either too easy or too hard.

And for your "optimal stats" solution to work, the worth of single secondary stat point would need to be so massive that even a slight stacking of a stat will break the game and on the other end, unoptimal gear would literally be useless and character equipped with it unplayable.

[Arainie]

I massively enjoyed level 60 & 70 twinking and pvp, the squish largelly destroyed it.

But ye that's about it.

I suppose that makes sense, I was genuinely curious on the topic!

[Ribesal]

At 25x growth per expansion, the current rate of climb looks like this:

6.X: 100 thousand dps
7.X: 2.5 million dps
8.X: 62 million dps
9.X: 1.5 BILLION dps

It's going to be a problem.

Of course it's going to be a problem.
But let's assume we have 20 dps in the group and a boss fight takes 10 minutes.
And the growth per expansion is *25
It will be a problem somewhere in 13.X.
By having one expansion every two years, it will take over 10 years to reach this point. And i doubt WoW will survive this long, it's time has to end somewhere. But even if it survives, the devs have time to find a solution til this day.

As long as the health value of enemies doesn't exceed 64bit integer max value no stat squish is needed.
And if some people don't like long numbers, well, just display short numbers.

[Arainie]

Of course it's going to be a problem.
But let's assume we have 20 dps in the group and a boss fight takes 10 minutes.
And the growth per expansion is *25
It will be a problem somewhere in 13.X.
By having one expansion every two years, it will take over 10 years to reach this point. And i doubt WoW will survive this long, it's time has to end somewhere. But even if it survives, the devs have time to find a solution til this day.

As long as the health value of enemies doesn't exceed 64bit integer max value no stat squish is needed.
And if some people don't like long numbers, well, just display short numbers.

Random ring:
+125,230 Stamina
+45,550 Critical Strike
+54,600 Haste

Enchanted: +10,000 Haste
Fun times!

[Lahis]

Random ring:
+125,230 Stamina
+45,550 Critical Strike
+54,600 Haste

Enchanted: +10,000 Haste
Fun times!

And the problem is? I can easily tell it's better than the Random Ring from previous tier:

+105,230 Stamina
+39,550 Versatility
+47,500 Haste

[Ateo]

I'm hoping that they find a creative way for us to lose our artifacts and we get hit with a huge stat nerf taking us back to TBC levels of stats/health/damage. These numbers are extremely stupid and ridiculous now. Feels like I'm playing Diablo.

[Deleted]

Would be funny if they trolled people by doing a stat squish while "retaining" the same numbers by adding fractional values with 3 digits after the decimal point.
Instead of 2579447 DPS, you now do 2579.447 DPS.

[f0rb1d]

Why is this an issue? I mean, why not use the tech they use for mob scaling vs damage. Or server-side use a percentage (or lower interval numeric) system for damage. client side have the option to display numbers anyway you want. Higher numbers will only hurt your (client) performance, instead of the server.

or.. get a team to primarily work on core utilization.. and not care about stat squish much. It might be expensive, but what's the cost of building a new IP mmo from scratch? It's a big selling point that the game can run on older systems.. yet if they tech'ed it up for many-multicore systems it would reduce system build costs on a whole.

[Kanariya]

Yeah, we've now surpassed the numbers we had in MoP, so it's very necessary. They don't need to re-squish pre-WoD content though, just WoD and Legion need to be squished to be linear instead of massively exponential.

If they do it proper, and not like the last time it could work somehow.

Because now naked level 60 got like 4000+ hp, and geared 60s got potential of like 12-15k hp, way way more then any classic 60.

Also the difference between itemlevels and power is completely out of whack, on 60-90 item levels increase massively but power goes up far less in comparison.

If they do a squish, they need to redo itemlevels as well.

But since we got a system of 4 difficulties right now power creep will come back regardless.

That's mostly due to them changing Stamina to grant like 26HP per point, rather than the 10 it did pre-4.0. That was a PvP change, and it's pretty unnecessary now since we have templates (though it would make everyone one-shottable in WPvP if it went back to 10 or 14 (cata value) per point).

I'd love to see an ilvl squish as well. It's ridiculous how many wasted numbers we have and how we're already approaching 1000. They also need to scrap Titanforging and reduce the amount of iLvl between tiers. Naxx gear was only 20-30 iLvls higher than MC gear and yet people were still 3x more powerful.

[Teri]

I'd love to see an ilvl squish as well. It's ridiculous how many wasted numbers we have and how we're already approaching 1000. They also need to scrap Titanforging and reduce the amount of iLvl between tiers. Naxx gear was only 20-30 iLvls higher than MC gear and yet people were still 3x more powerful.

Just seeing ToS and Antorus(7.3.5), the power difference between 885(LFR) and the upper end Antorus (960-970, titanforge to 985) is crazy, I dunno if it's ever been this big difference between 1 tier.

885 (TOS LFR), and lots of 880 catchup gear on argus is close to that.
+1,886 Mainstat
+2,830 Stamina
+1,561 Secondary

930 Mythic ToS / Normal Antorus
+2,870 Mainstat +52,17%
+4,305 Stamina +52,12%
+1,849 secondaries +18,45%

970 Current Legendary/Mythic Antorus end boss (can titanforge 985, legendary will go to 1000)
+4,166 Mainstat +45.16%
+6,250 Stamina +45,18%
+2,147 Secondaries +16,12%

Clearly secondaries are being limited here, otherwise we'd see another rating per 1% increase.

But classes like Ele shaman are already getting tuned for 7.3 to not have like 100% Overload.

Still I am not saying the numbers are "too big", but due to the multiple difficulties and titanforging and the stamina increases from artifacts it went up a lot.

Let's take 800 as a baseline for 110 blue to a 970 (170 itemlevel)

+816 Mainstat -> 410%
+1,224 Stamina -> 410%
+1,086 Secondary -> 97,7%

Overall player/boss health and damage scaled far more then 410% for obvious reasons.

But tbh , hitting for 100k or 10million doesn't bother me, but again I'd love a proper itemlevel curve again on 60-90, cause right now if they added world scaling there would be issues for sure and everything would feel too similar and hardly significant.

If they make MoP or even WoD "legacy" you'd 1 shot raid bosses anyway with the legacy buff when higher levels, so no problem with adding a proper 1-100 power curve, even if it means reducing our overall itemlevels, and an overhaul to the titanforge system.

[Torrasque]

Numbers mean effectively nothing to me, I could care less either way.

[Vorecien]

We definitely need another stat squish, and Blizzard stated that there will be one after Legion. I'd like to see early Wrath numbers again.

[Deleted]

No it's just getting out of hand. Legion iLevel alone went from 600 something to 900 something. it went up around 300 levels in ONE expansion

WoD brought ilvls up by like 200, and Legion is looking to do so by about 250. Not such a big difference.

[Al Gorefiend]

They need to do a super squish of iLvLs in between expansions. Going from expac to expac isn't that huge a deal anymore.

[Mythabay]

I think they need to lower the damage and health... Having 1302K health and doing 145K damage is just ridiculous.

[Swalload]

What state of the game? Just because you do 1 million dps and the boss has 5 billion hp doesn't make it a bad thing, it's all relative, there's no point putting development time into fixing a problem that doesn't exist.

No I meant they had a problem with big numbers, and not we're back to biggers numbers. So either they were completely wrong the first time around, or we're in the same situation.

[Onikaroshi]

No I meant they had a problem with big numbers, and not we're back to biggers numbers. So either they were completely wrong the first time around, or we're in the same situation.

The problem before was 32 bit integers maxing out around 2 billion, so forcing all the garrosh phasing and such, they've fixed that. The technical limitations are gone for quite awhile now.