The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[gums]

I said this on the official forums...will just leave this here... I am all for the band-aid approach. Do it all at once, everyone will get used to it in 1-2 weeks.


However, you could also implement both approaches.


Mists of Pandaria could implement the first part: the "Mega Damage".


However, I would suggest something like this:


All gear from 86-90 goes like...


Intelligence = Wisdom

Agility = Dexterity

Strength = Brawn

Armor = Defense

etc, etc, etc.


What this will do is all gear you get from 86 to 90 will have the new 'stat'. With this stat you can have a conversion of say, 50 INT = 1 WIS. So when people get new gear, they know anything with Wisdom will be better than the old gear. But it also gets us used to the smaller numbers.


With the new expansion after MoP, you have 2 options:


1) Now that we are used to small numbers, change all old stats to read like the new names for stats

2) Now that we are used to small numbers, go back to the old names for stats but do the 'squish'.


Obviously you will be introducing a whole new problem for players to get used to with the implementation of 'new stat names'.


Either way, you will be introducing new things to players, whether it is the squish or mega damage. The best approach will be an all at once approach.


Players will get it, after 1-2 weeks of normal play, everything will fall in line.


**As a side note, Blizzard, you should be moving forward with a plan to 'squish' all numbers from 2 expansions ago. So with the introduction of MoP, you should 'squish' all numbers from Wrath backwards. That way players who are a little behind will get the 'epic' feel of grinding gear/killing bosses through Cata and can still have the new expansion character growth feel. So when the next next expac comes out after MoP, you would 'squish' the Cata numbers and adjust everything else accordingly.


Just my 2 cents. TLR - SQUISH!!!

[Sigil]

"The numbers grew so much primarily because we wanted rewards to be compelling. Upgrading from a chestpiece that has 50 Strength into one that has 51 Strength is undeniably a DPS increase for the appropriate user, but it’s not a very exciting reward. Such negligible increases can drive players to do some weird things, such as skipping over tiers of gear or entire levels of content."

This could be a problem, even though I agree with the squish solution. It represents a change on what some of us consider a "solid" upgrade is. I can already see tons of players saying "why the hell would I wipe for two weeks for a robe that gives me 1int more than what I got?"Also, people complaining about not being able to solo old raids and whatnot, all numbers go down, not just ours, which is why this is a massive undertaking; you'd have to somehow balance the old bosses HP so that they have the "old content" feel, not just the new bosses and player's numbers. And even then, it's clear this is the "easy" part of the problem. (We can only hope Blizzard doesn't drop the ball on this)

It's one of those changes that some will like, some will hate, and most will just get used to IF they make it work. Got to remember that heavy competition is underway, and the last thing you want to do is throw your playerbase off with too many changes. Hell, if I come back and my dots start ticking for way less i'll deal with it, because I know my enemy won't have as much HP either, but i'm not sure some of my other friends will like coming back to the game just to see they hit for 2k instead of the 20k they're used to. Shit, it's hard enough to try and get them out of the "fuk pandaz lol" phase they're in right now :P

I still think they'll go through with this (whatever option they chose) on this expansion, precisely because of the competition. They have to make BIG changes if they want to keep their customers interested in their product.

[Recid]

I'm in favor of the squish 100%. Don't think I could deal with mega damage.

[Ershiin]

I really dont see the problem with the stat squishing.. By now i'm fairly used to seeing my dmg getting cut almost by half every time I enter a BG, so the transition thing wont really be anything new.
In PvE I usually view everything in % tbh.. Nobody cares if a 129m boss has lost 400 or 600k, but every 1% counts. Besides its easier to predict phase changes that way.
And all healers heal in little boxes anyway.. They dont care if you're at 80k or 800k, only that the Tanks are Green and nobody is Red.

Most importantly.. After the fixation of gear resets every patch, the only thing that matters is that a t12 rogue does the amount of dmg a t12 rogue should do. What that amount is, is completely irrelevant outside of personal epeen and flashy youtube movies.
And even then you can argue that what the numbers are is still irrelevant as long as they're HIGHER than the other guy's!

I'll close by saying that I feel way more awesome when I 2shot a mob on my lvl 9 alt with a couple crits doing around 50dmg each than I do when I chug a 11k Shadowbolt at a mob and i'm still nowhere near killing it off.

[greg098]

i think blizzard nerfing the numbers will make players leave because it will feel like they have been nerfed. if you remember back in wotlk when they changed the stats on all our gear to fit in with the cataclysm, everyone complained because they were nerfed and we was but we also gained more health because of it.

[Deadanon]

The real issue here is because BLizzard did not solve the problem long time ago. Its not that hard to fix and its related to itemlvls and mob levels. The item level gives X% of stats depending on lvl of the boss you are fighting.

We will go back to many other issues with flat nerf of stats. Including stamina and mana issues that dont scale correctly with flat %. Not to mention things like base mana.

This is ofc the biggest issue that Blizzard have. It has been there for the past 3 expansions and they did not adress it at all. Any "fix" they make now will be very negative.

[Hoticehunter]

I don't want them to compress the item level back down to TBC or Wrath amounts. It's so perfect as of right now imo.

No. It's really not. The numbers right now are rather absurd.

I'm all for squishing the item levels, and for doing it for MoP.

[Araella]

It might have been said already somewhere in these 29 pages, but while stats certainly ARE inflated, it should also be rather obvious that you can't scale item level linearly.

20 agi + 1 = 5% increase
200 agi +1 = 0.5% increase
In order to keep the %increase the same, the gap between ilevels needs to be greater at higher levels.

(assuming that ilevel is a proportional reflection of gear stats - don't know how it is now but the vendor stuff mid cata seemed rather arbitrary, in which case it doesn't matter what the ilevel number is because in the world of Blizzard the stats could be anything)

[Deleted]

Bringing the stats in a "reasonable" increasing line without the massive stat inflation we have had in the last x-pacs sounds great.
But - I don't think it can be implemented properly. And, what's more important - if it will be done properly, then the old content will die out.

So, I will never get the Ashes of Al'ar. With my drop luck, even if I'm alone, I have still not seen Anzu; and if I'm not alone, than I'm losing every single roll on mounts. This happend once with the Ashes, this happend more than once with the old Zul Gurub tiger and the Karazhan mount. The Deathcharger, I could farm solo, and after quite a time, I got one. The one and only exception to the rule, that luck is not on my side.

In the future, not even the numbers will be on my side. F*** that.

Sorry, but I think that we should have the right to experience old content on our own. Because there are only few people left, who truly can appreciate the beauty of it.

[Isilbêth]

I am in favour of the squish, but if Blizzard decides to squish the item level, and to avoid making it more difficult for higher level characters to solo old raids, they should introduce at the same time a mechanism that: 1. Makes it more difficult for lower level bosses to hit the higher level characters (avoidance/parry which is not linked to the gear but to the level of the character); 2. Diminishes the damage made by these bosses on higher level characters; 3. And finally multiplies the damage made by higher level characters on lower level bosses/characters. As it has been said, squish will have a negative effect on players, who will immediately notice a huge difference in the gameplay. Furthermore, any solution that would also cause more difficulties than before to high level characters to handle lower level characters in game could create serious side effects. A lot of players would probably leave massively the game. I seriously doubt that Blizzard, which is a profit making company, will take such a risk. But, isn’t inflation of items going to kill WoW in the future? The conception of the progress in game would be the cause of its own dead…

[ForrestAnthony]

I am fully, 100% in favour of this 'Item Squish' funnily enough I actually suggested this to my friend a couple months ago, since I played in vanilla, I thought it was retarded how a well geared tank had about 6k hp, and now, a well geared tank has over 200k.What people don't understand is not that Blizz will be making all our toons weaker, it'll literally be a global numerical 'nerf' of EVERYTHING, to make the numbers go down, but damage, boss HP, stats will ALL be in the same ratio as it was prior.I love the idea! and I really hope they do it.

[Menedude]

pff 12 mega damage is weak I can do 14 MEGA DAMAGE

[Deleted]

That 12 mega damage picture made me giggle. ;p

I use it now as a wallpaper.

(._. )... (._. )... (._o )... (0_o )...( ._.)

[ultima9]

Quite frankly, who cares if you're doing 100k dps or 100 dps? If the others in your group are doing 75 dps to your 100, then you're on top. Plain and simple. Does having the letter "k" after your dps meter really mean that much to people? If the fights are balanced (or rebalanced) to be feasible, the number you're doing with each hit is negligible. I would welcome a change to go back to numbers that are more manageable. I can remember when i could track gear stats in my head... Then i had to have a piece of paper on hand to keep track... now it's more like requiring a graphics calculator with a spreadsheet - will the next patch require me to hire a math professor to help manage all the decimal places? The key to such a change would be in re-scaling the older content to make the older raids/instances trivial. As others have mentioned, it would be a shame to see all the older content no longer be soloable, and thus no longer touched. Many of us enjoy running through Khara just to see it again, and although several old school raid bosses aren't exactly trivial due to mechanics (a few AQ40 bosses pop to mind, hehe) a group of 5 can easily do what a group of 40 used to do. There are many ways blizz could address this tho, so as long as an effort is put into it it shouldn't be a major issue. As far as those saying that it would "imbalance older leveling gear" who really cares? If you're overpowered at level 20, does it matter? You'll be level 20 for all of 25 minutes, tops. As long as you can get through the content (gear isn't under-balanced) then it does not matter in the grand scheme of things. If there are a few items that are ridiculously overpowered, they can be tweaked w/ server patching. The only players it would affect anyways are twinks, and honestly, who cares except other twinks? Blizz has always said that non-max level toons are not going to be balanced perfectly anyways - there are just too many variables in place to prevent that from happening. There is nothing to prevent them from making the MoP tier gains as large as they always have been in the past, so people saying that a lvl 89 player will be able to do things that a lvl 90 player would do is just silly. That's like saying that a raid of lvl 59 players would be able to complete AQ40 even if they all had full world drop epics. Not gonna happen. I mean, how many players even have that achieve from ulduar where you down a boss with nothing but ilvl items just one tier lower? And as a side note, wth is up w/ all the panda hate? I don't see people hating on cow warriors... so why all the anger over panda monks? Seems more logical to have an asian panda monk than a native american cow holy paladin... lol

[Deleted]

The squishing solution destroys - further - the point of old raids and dungeons existing since it appears they would be either faceroll at their level or not doable at their level requiring a faceroll by end game level (most likely the former).In my opinion, just go with better printing. The first solution is not silly, it is consistent. You only need to work on art and presentation. You are not the art guys it seems, trust them.

[Venteus]

No. It's really not. The numbers right now are rather absurd.

I'm all for squishing the item levels, and for doing it for MoP.

No. They're really not. The numbers right now are rather perfect.

[candle86]

Squish then paladins can wear T2 and be compeitive with folks in current 346 heroic gear, Thunderfury suddenly becomes awesome again, and Sunwell epics = T12 lol

[Lobstarrr]

Can't say i have a solution myself but this just feels like one big mega nerf, i don't really give a damn if i ''still do the same damage output but with lower numbers''. I geared my character up for 6 years trough each expansion and i really felt like i became stronger, and now we'll just jump right back into vanilla?

[lrntoplay]

New expansion, fix it all in one hit. Reduce the numbers to reasonable levels and allow room for future xpacs, bite the bullet. People are smart enough to realise its not a nerf.

[zingar]

pc limitations with big numbers? seriously? i love to solo old world stuff what will they do about that? theyre gonna change all the damage, health of every mob and skill/spell in the game ? that doesnt sound too easy, just use K and M and its all fixed