Hellfire Citadel item levels altered [datamined info]

[Leih]

Everyone saying that loot from early bosses won't get used...

Ever considered you need the loot from the earlier ones to defeat the harder bosses for the better gear in the first place... Just saying.

And as I pointed out earlier, that would be perfectly fine if there was a full set of possible gear available from the later bosses. The idea of "You need gear from the first 6 bosses and you'll replace that with gear from the next 6 bosses" is quite cool in theory, but in practice it doesn't work that way because there aren't two distinct sets of every item, one at low ilvl and one at the high ilvl, they've just got one set of HFC loot arbitrarily split between the bosses.

They could fix the problem by adding more items so there's a full tier's worth of loot in each bracket... but I don't see that happening because each boss would have a pretty giant loot table in that case.

Even the crappy ilvl 720 gear that won't get used is still 20 ilvl's above Mythic BRF...

"My loot is better than the loot from last tier!"

Great, but that's not a lot of compensation when your friend who happens to favour different stats gets loot 40 ilvls above Mythic BRF just because his item happens to drop from a later boss than yours.

[threads]

Do any of you do actual progression raiding? This makes perfect sense. It always baffled me why bosses like Iron Maidens/Blast Furnace dropped gear equivalent to a piece of gear I can get from something simple like Oregorger. It made the whole progression throughout the instance feel weird. It truly was... "don't worry guys we'll kill this boss next week when we get better gear each week from easier bosses".

I don't even know why they changed the system during MoP. I'm glad the final boss isn't dropping weapons and rather just trinkets (trinkets like that make sense since they are more based around heirlooms like Garrosh).

Just saying. No idea why so many aren't looking at this as something positive for the raiding progression scene.

i do progression raiding and think this is retarded. already have to deal with trying to get warforged/socket now they come up with something to make it even worse.

[Deleted]

I mean, if you're a class that is looking for Crit gear, and the Belt with Crit/Mastery is on the first boss while the belt with Versatility/Haste is on one of the end wing bosses, you're going to have to either use shit stats for the better ilvl or you'll have to sacrifice 10 ilvls for the stats you need? That's not a very fun decision for you when meanwhile the other spec that loves Haste can have his cake and eat it too.

It's a decision of "sim it" and that's about it? No clue why people keep freaking out about secondaries like that. Most specs don't have huge differences between them. For some reason there seems to be this idea that this will make for bad scaling for certain specs, and godlike scaling for others, while in reality it'll barely be noticeable because it's probably limited to some slots and secondaries are still spread out on the later bosses (read: I doubt they'll have all last bosses drop the same specific 2 secondaries). Maybe weapons would make an impact, but apart from that some shift in secondaries won't.

[Gourmandise]

This is so obviously bad that I imagine it's a mistake or just ptr goofing around. Perhaps they're doing more work behind the scenes (reworking loot distribution, etc...)

[protip]

I think the problem they're trying to address with this system is the burnout that inevitably happens when your progression slows halfway through clearing a given difficulty. If your progression is slow (2-3 months or more) then you can easily fill every slot with the highest item level gear without clearing the raid. With this system, there is always incentive to progress further. The balance concerns can be addressed by rearranging the bosses' loot tables pretty easily.

[Deleted]

This is amazing! might actually consider starting to play again D:

[Leih]

It's a decision of "sim it" and that's about it?

You misunderstand.

The solution to the decision is easy enough. Yep, sure, sim it, see what's best.

That's not the point. The point is it doesn't feel nice that the decision exists in the first place. YOU have to make the decision between dropping ilvls or taking shit secondaries (or rather, you have to sim it and get one or the other). Meanwhile, your friend who plays a different class gets the best of both worlds, the higher ilvl and the best matching secondaries.

And yeah, you can make the argument "Well that's okay, as long as the classes are balanced around those different ilvls they're gonna have, it's fine!" But really, do you think everything is perfectly balanced right now? Or has ever been? Is it really a good idea to introduce ANOTHER obscure variable that classes have to be balanced around?

[Count Zero]

The early bosses will be killed more often, so more likely to roll warforged/socketed on their gear.

And I don't see the problem with having "bad" stats on the higher ilvl gear ... I'll wear whatever gives me better performance, period. I won't mind having a lower ilvl if my good stats are that much better, and I won't mind having "bad" stats if the overall stat budget makes those better.

I honestly don't care either way. I'm sympathetic to arguments on both sides of the matter, but ultimately it's really just not a big deal.

[Floopa]

i actually like this a lot.

it's a pretty good idea considering it's the final tier.

[Deleted]

It's a terrible idea for progression guilds, since the last bosses will be tuned for a higher ilvl than what the first bosses drop (else it would become trivial with gear), meaning a fast progressing guild will have a much harder times than a slow progression guild who will have the right gear because they'll spend several weeks on every wing and be geared for the others, it's like creating a gear cockblock to artifically make the progression last longer

[Floopa]

It's a terrible idea for progression guilds, since the last bosses will be tuned for a higher ilvl than what the first bosses drop (else it would become trivial with gear), meaning a fast progressing guild will have a much harder times than a slow progression guild who will have the right gear because they'll spend several weeks on every wing and be geared for the others, it's like creating a gear cockblock to artifically make the progression last longer

from ptr testing the bosses drop loot 5 item levels than they're being tested at

[Raiju]

from ptr testing the bosses drop loot 5 item levels than they're being tested at

So you're agreeing that loot off the first bosses is going to be sub par for the end ones?

[Zelendria]

"My loot is better than the loot from last tier!"

Great, but that's not a lot of compensation when your friend who happens to favour different stats gets loot 40 ilvls above Mythic BRF just because his item happens to drop from a later boss than yours.

I'm going to assume Blizz know better than 99% of people what actually is the best stats for any given class/spec. It's not so hard to suggest that they might just make sure the loot table reflects what is generally best, and stick some of that horrible Vers gear towards the start which obviously helps your defence which can only help progression.

I don't imagine a Crit/Mas cloth belt will be the first boss and a Vers/Multi is the final boss for example. That would be stupid.

It's loads of assumptions about something which might just be a test, mistake etc... Don't read too much into it just yet.

[Deleted]

it could also be testing i mean, they might testing it for next expansion. I mean i hate all these difficulty they could get everyone progressing on the same difficultly with them scaling it up as the bosses get harder. doubt it but i would love it to happen

[femur68]

it could also be testing i mean, they might testing it for next expansion. I mean i hate all these difficulty they could get everyone progressing on the same difficultly with them scaling it up as the bosses get harder. doubt it but i would love it to happen

I concur. *tinfoil hat on* This might be a method Blizzard might be testing the waters with where you have different levels of the raid be different difficulties. Then you just have one "raid difficulty" and a guild's skill is based upon how far they've progressed into the raid, and not what difficulty they're currently on.

In HFC (for example), you could make bosses 1-4 on the levels of "normal" difficulty. Then, you could make 5-8 on the levels of "heroic" difficulty. Bosses 9-12 would then be "mythic" with the last boss then being like super mythic difficulty. You could then just make an LFR version of the raid that covers all 13 bosses that's just super easy across the board so everyone gets to at least see what happens story-wise.

With less tuning needing to be done due to the lack of multiple difficulties (outside of LFR), Blizzard would have more time to churn out more raids (in theory). Now, how would the scaling system work? They might just make the whole raid scale 10-30 players, or maybe after a certain point in the raid you can have to use a certain amount. There's a few different ways they could go with it. This method of design raids could definitely help the multiple-difficulty burnout that I think a lot of players might be suffering from. *tinfoil hat off*

[Khelon]

Personally I would rather have them remove the item split like they are doing now (1 piece of each gear per boss). Either weapons should not drop from the final boss or it should be more powerful than the other. Its stupid that I have to go through almost whole brf for my bis weapon, especially when the 2nd best one come from the 9th boss. And then having it being same ilvl as twins agi mace.

As from a progression point of view I welcome this change, but for farming view I dislike it a lot. But if they dont mess it up everyone will lay around the same ilvl anyway, some will have higher ilvl weapon while others will have a more powerful trinket.

[Deleted]

I'm going to assume Blizz know better than 99% of people what actually is the best stats for any given class/spec. It's not so hard to suggest that they might just make sure the loot table reflects what is generally best, and stick some of that horrible Vers gear towards the start which obviously helps your defence which can only help progression.

I don't imagine a Crit/Mas cloth belt will be the first boss and a Vers/Multi is the final boss for example. That would be stupid.

It's loads of assumptions about something which might just be a test, mistake etc... Don't read too much into it just yet.

Bolding mine. Your assumption is unfortunately very often very, very far from the truth. Take fiascoes such as Windwalkers in SoO (with the devs constantly insisting players overvalued haste and being proven wrong both by sims and in practice over and over again) and the attunement of Protection Paladins to haste (with haste being so bad it later required a 600% buff to the attunement. Literally 600%. From 5% extra haste to 30% extra haste from gear) as more recent examples of cases where Blizzard had absolutely no fucking clue what they were doing.

The dev team has at best a very tenuous grasp on the workings of this game at the highest level, and prove it consistently with head-shaking design decisions and bizarre spec tuning. The people who understand classes best are the individual class theorycrafters like Skullflowers, Solsacra, etc, and by no means Blizzard. The insipid idea of having item level not be uniform across an entire raid tier (bar perhaps the end boss, gear from which is fundamentally irrelevant for progression purposes) is yet another example of their complete lack of insight into how the raiding metagame works.

[Vaerys]

It's a terrible idea for progression guilds, since the last bosses will be tuned for a higher ilvl than what the first bosses drop (else it would become trivial with gear), meaning a fast progressing guild will have a much harder times than a slow progression guild who will have the right gear because they'll spend several weeks on every wing and be geared for the others, it's like creating a gear cockblock to artifically make the progression last longer

Actually, it seems like a way to reward those that are able to meet the increased challenge.

[Woobels]

Wonder how this will affect caches.

I've disenchanted every single item but one from my mythic BRF caches and I don't raid mythic, so I hope there's less RNG (ie lower ilvl versatility garbage) there, people getting higher ilvl loot from caches while others get lower ilvl stuff would be annoying.

[Deleted]

oh boy, can't wait for that 720 haste/vers loot. What a joke. Means the earlier bosses are absolutely useless for farm (which they want people to do, one of the reasons they added tertiary/wf/random sockets rofl). Can't say I'm surprised though, they've contradicted themselves on a lot of things this expansion. Just another retarded decision that's absolutely pointless in the long run. Inb4 tier set items roll a random ilvl from 705-720 with varying stats on whichever number the dart lands on.