The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[Gwynedd]

I vote for item level squish to save the life of my computer, but I still want to crit for 12 MEGA DAMAGE. Perhaps we should just omit damage and call it MEGA DAMAGE.

[Arril]

Why the logarithmic scaling? Why does a 25% increase in item level (600 to 750) mean a 400% increase in stats like Strength? Wouldn't it still be desirable if it were say, a 50% increase in strength?

I can understand you don't want a geared 85 to be beating raid bosses in level 90 raids, but you can take care of all that with hit rating alone.

They could fix the scaling issue to make it such that we wouldn't get to super insane numbers in our lifetimes - but not if it continues on it's exponential growth path. Just make it more linear. Linear growth would also make it much easier to squish sometime in the distant future.

[Lylyth]

I'd love the level squishing. Mega damage sounds childish.

[Deleted]

Didn't they intentionally inflate stats in Cataclysm to be in line with a number of their new design philosophies such as damage shouldn't be as spikey, healing should be less effective against health pools, PvP should be less bursty, etc? Ghostcrawler seems to be treating stat inflation as akin to some inevitable economic force that they have to take drastic action against. Maybe they should have thought about that before quadrupling the average health pool from level 80 to level 85. Stat inflation in Vanilla, TBC and Wrath was just about fine, it was Cataclysm where it really (and intentionally on the part of the developers) went out of control.

[Deleted]

Hmm actually I can't test that so I don't know if it is good or no. But overall I think it is. One thing that I wonder about is... will it be harder to kill bosses? Same gear , same bosses but after squish (I think it is logcial that they will squish bosses dmg and hp too xd) .. harder or not?

[Mascotte]

How about changing the way we know gear entirely? Whatever way you go you'll end up with the same exact problem a year from now. The technology to limit gears effectiveness at a certain point is already there in heirlooms, use that? Example: DW HC gear gets a tag added to it 'This gear does jack shit for you at lvl87 and above' Problem solved? Old gear just lost its use into future expansions. No need for expansion stat jumps anymore.

[jasimpson12]

Why not do a little of both and squish the obvious issue here which is cata. Cata was to large of a stat jump and its what has caused the biggest issue. It also wouldnt affect old content soloing except wotlk but i dont think not able to solo the expansion before the current will cause as much QQ. And we would only feel a "nerf for basically the end of an xpansion if they do it soon.

[Deleted]

I can just imagine the bashings on DPS in MoP on end lvl instances if the numbers get compressed. "When I was playing Cata I did 30k dps! And you cant even pull 10k now? REPLACE!" Though the compression of the old nrs on stats and so on sounds great. Everything is starting to get to high. But the whole reward feeling he was talking about that you lose if the increase between the diff tiers wasn't as high as they were is something I don't really care about. To me just a slight increase in base stats(agi, str, int, stam, spi) and then different combination of secondary stats, resistance and maybe even proqs is what makes the new tier more exciting.

[mklovin]

I'd love the level squishing. Mega damage sounds childish.

Squish the numbers and just add a K to the end of everything. That way it will at least feel like we are getting bigger numbers still.

[Honeyprime]

I prefer the squish. I have been thinking for awhile that the ilevel jumps just seemed to wide.

[cerbdog]

Get to squishing! SQUISH!

[Alraml]

I actually really enjoyed this article. Makes a lot of sense and the picture was lulzy =P

I dunno why people would be bothered about DPS drops anyway, that happened at the start of Cata if people didn't remember. People were doing 12-13k DPS at 80 in ICC and then at 85 in greens and blues were pulling only around 7-8k

We've been here before so the squish should be no problem

[SomberAngel]

The problem I see with the item squish is that the devs would basically have to go back and rework all the dungeons, all the raids, all the zones, etc, etc... Which would mean more work, I think and more potentials for bugs... Granted, I do not feel that the two items they posted are great either. I just don't want to have less health then a lvl 50 dungeon boss at 90. It would just make no sense at all. I'm seriously hoping if they decide to item squish us, they don't take away all the fun in soloing past dungeons and raids

[Feldoom]

Squish pleeeeeeeease.

[Meakel]

I really think this is funny that Blizzard has finally mentioned the "NUMBER" problem with WoW. I've been seeing it as a problem for a while, and I meant to get their forums last night and post something about it, but hey they beat me to it.First off. I say fix the number issue before/with release of MoP. I am all for making the numbers smaller. And yeah people will QQ over the great. my Tier 14 gear only gives me like +1 str more than my tier 13. but I say. PEOPLE WILL QQ over anything they can.Blizzard, you seem to be trying to figure out ways to still keep things balanced from lvl cap to lvl cap 60 70 80 85 90 etc.The way I have been looking at it, and working out a way in my mind would to be do thisilvl = char lvl. this might seem sort of blah or lacking.so say I have my hunter I lvl up to 85, all the green gear i would be getting at lvl 85 with a ilvl of 85 would be so. but a blue would be 85.05 (heroic blue lvl), heroic purples/first tier of expansion could be 85.1, heroic version of first tier could be 85.15 and so on and so forth. To check dungeon abilities you could just use the currentish system u have for checking gear lvl on people for the Heroic Zul or raids. A player would need to have an average ilvl.I just had a 2nd idea that might work better. Set up a range of ilvls based on every 5 lvls of the hero. so a lvl 60-64 hero would have items ranging from 120-129 a lvl 65-69 would have 130-139 etc. This would drop the big ilvl numbers down a lot for you, but still provide a range of numbers for blue, purple, tiers and such. You would also have a little more give and take for requirements on dungeons and raids (or at least a better way to judge them)Also, I would love to see a smarter hybrid hero set up for tier gear. I love playing my pally, I love tanking with her (most of the time), but I would love to be able to swap over to healing or dos, but I hate the fact that hybrids have to farm twice as much to get two sets of tier gear over a standard single purpose class.My idea would to have something in the back ground of the hybrid armor sets that looks at their current spec, and sets stats accordingly. It would also be able to handle changes for a spec swap in that the gear could have multiple chants and gems set to them, and they change when the person changes specs. So I could have one set of tier gear. Chant and gem it for tanking, swap to healing/dps and have a different chant and gem set up. I know this could be a complex system, but I think it is something you might be able to put into the equipment manager system of Wow and really get people using it. You might even all spec swaps of dos only classes to change and have different gems and chants. b/c I know depending on spec your chants and/or gems change.so those are my two ideas for making the item numbers smaller. I hope you guys like them.

[caninepawprints]

I like his "pull the band-aid off fast" approach. Do it, get it done, and let it be over with. I like the squish approach, personally. The numbers are just too high right now, and they're only going to get higher.

[Deleted]

I laughed so hard at Fig. 3 and 4... Still, I agree it would feel off if we were going back to the kind of damage we used to to in WotLK. I actually wouldn't mind if we were to pull out some huge numbers such as 1,000,000. It would somehow feel powerful and that's a good thing, I guess.

[Draqson]

yeah squish! i want the times back where a 3k crit was a monster-crit!...

[Slyan]

While I don't like that if the squish happens it will (and don't kid yourselves, you know it'll feel like it) a nerf, not just a nerf but a massive nerf from the sounds of it, but it does seem like something that needs to be done even with a sadface on my face. I enjoyed seeing my tank health just going waaay up every time. Going to miss the 150k+ tank and frown at the return of the 20k tank but what must be done, must be done.

[Dokuza]

I think people are turned off by the 'MEGA DAMAGE!!!' caption and not actually reading the article.I would like the "turn the 1000s into Ks" idea. So if you're doing 30k dps, you're doing 30k dps...You hit mob for 30000 physical damage. Translates to:You hit mob for 30k physical damage.If it gets into the millions which it will, then simply will beYou hit mob for 3000000 physical damage.You hit mob for 3M physical damage.Seems like a simple easy fix.