Hellfire Ilevel Spread

[Manabomb]

One of the largest problems with this watercooler starts well after the personal loot sections, as I don't have a problem with that in particular, and infact think those changes (despite being a nerf to the possibility of everyone getting a drop in a 10-30 man environment off a single boss, even though the rarity of that event is dubious) will be well received.

The problems start when the developers start comparing the game as it is now to the game as it was in Molten Core. One will remember as we all did with the 10 year anniversary that not only is the game drastically different now than it was then, gearing and how gear worked was as well. They admit to reducing bad itemizing and overall eliminating forced single drops (I.E. their example given with the hunter/shaman belt) despite these problems being glaringly obvious and should barely be recognized as achievements and more fixing the game. Giving them credit for atleast trying, moving on to "making secondary stats more competitive" seems like a no-brainer to anyone now, and at the time felt really stupid for a stat to be completely (or near completely) useless for a class despite it being on their armor. (Then again, WW/MW mastery would like a word.)

So far, we've get net nothing but an explanation on why they are attempting to add this new sense of excitement. How might you ask? By fluxing the secondary stats of items to prefer one or the other. In the article it plainly states they are wanting to move away from "equip the highest item level" gameplay. That's... News to me considering the next bit... The paragraph below it... Talking about -item level ramp up-.

This fancy new system has bosses farther in the raid drop better loot than the previous bosses, culminating in the final boss dropping the best loot! It sounds like a great idea, just like the previous idea, but when combined you get this mixed message of "We don't want you to equip the highest item level equipment, however the perfectly itemized Rune Infused Spear for feral/ww just dropped from Kormrok, but it's going to be replaced by the vastly inferior Xu'tenash, Glaive of Ruin of Mannoroth. because of ilvl ramp"

What is the message Blizzard is trying to send here? Is that Ilvl doesn't matter? That secondary stats should be a deciding factor, but only when the ilvls are equal, yet they deliberately make the ilvls scale recklessly within a difficulty without equality, especially regarding weapons? This change makes no sense. Nothing about the last two additions in this watercooler would end up being good down the road. One, or the other maybe, but both at the same time? That's begging for raiders to get fed up with replacing items in the same difficulty. I for one am already tired of replacing it through 2-4 difficulties. This is just ridiculous.

For reference. Even if you managed to get warforged socket Runed Spear, the pure 4 item levels of Xu'tenash in terms of agi and weapon dps outweighs any kind of perfect secondary stat itemization Runed Spear offers. And this is on the same damn difficulty, with countless other examples of this being given (this is namely the one I looked for, as I didn't want to spend more time than I had to trying to prove a point.)

[Thirteen]

As a hunter, I'm really bummed at the distribution of loot, rather than the concept of different ilvls. At this late in the PTR though, I don't expect them to make any changes to loot tables. In BrF, got sorta bummed that the only ranged weapons came off Maidens / Blast Furnace (last tier of Mythic progression). Now in HfC, it'll be more of the same where Archimonde doesn't even drop a ranged weapon at all.

Hunters definitely had the short end of the stick in BrF, but HFC has 3 ranged weapons between all its bosses - a 690 from Hellfire Assault, 695 from Socrethar and 700 from Mannoroth, so there's definitely going to be a steady rise in iLvl for hunter weapons (690N, 695N, 700N, 705H, 710H, etc). While you're not gonna be getting a 730M from Archimonde M like casters will, those weapons will be largely irrelevant because no one will be able to get them during progression anyway, unless they can be dropped from the cache.

[Deleted]

Mythic Archimonde loot doesn't really matter. This is by all accounts the last raid tier, so when you kill M-Archimonde, gear is already obsolete until the next expansion anyway.

[-Etna-]

Why even have secondary stats if ilvl is all that matters? If they are trying so desperately to make all secondary stats even.

[styil]

But the point remains that with the HFC model has a similar ilvl dropping from bosses with a similar difficulty (arguably). Even if a slightly easier boss from a different difficulty drops better loot than a harder boss from the lower difficulty (Blackhand H is harder than Flamebender M -> Archimonde H [720] is harder than Gorefiend M [725]), a 5ilvl gap isn't that significant. It's smaller than the WF-NonWF gap, so the previous tier of bosses ('tier' meaning the ranking system I used, not raid tier) will still be worth running for the chance of a WF item which will be slightly better than an item from the first boss of the next difficulty. If nothing else you're being rewarded for beating the bosses that Gorefiend is gated behind and meeting the Mythic requirements (flat 20 people, possible class requirements like Blast Furnace).

The point is, 4/13 mythic bosses will drop gear that is 5 ilvls higher than 4/13 heroic bosses (Put archimonde aside for now)

If we take your argument and say that the ilvls are so similar because the difficulty is similar, then there is a serious issue.

It means one of two things:
1. the first half of hfc is a complete joke for players in a given difficulty. Normal raiders who completed the second half of normal hfc (700-705) would need to do the first half of heroic hfc for the 'real' normal difficulty (705-710), and heroic raiders who completed the second half of heroic hfc (715-720) would need to do the first half of mythic for the 'real' heroic difficulty (720-725).
2. the second half of hfc is too difficult for players in a given difficulty. Normal raiders can no longer do the second half of normal hfc because it's too hard, and have no other option, and heroic raiders who completed the first half of heroic hfc (705-710) would need to do the second half of normal for the real 'heroic' difficulty (700-705).

[Thirteen]

Why even have secondary stats if ilvl is all that matters? If they are trying so desperately to make all secondary stats even.

Who said they are? I'd argue they're trying to do the opposite. Yes, across the board, all stats should matter. But they shouldn't matter equally to everyone. In fact I doubt there's a class that has no clear stat priority one way or the other. They actually explicitly stated this:

Inside Hellfire Citadel, you’ll see a wider range of high and low secondary stat values on items than you have in a long time. Alongside some tuning adjustments that should ensure your attuned stats are the right choice, this change should also make it easier for you to identify which items are good for you in a more interesting way than just “equip the highest Item Level.” Our goal is to help make Hellfire Citadel Raid items more distinct and meaningful to you, and we hope you’ll let us know how things feel once you start collecting your new gear.

1. the first half of hfc is a complete joke for players in a given difficulty. Normal raiders who completed the second half of normal hfc (700-705) would need to do the first half of heroic hfc for the 'real' normal difficulty (705-710), and heroic raiders who completed the second half of heroic hfc (715-720) would need to do the first half of mythic for the 'real' heroic difficulty (720-725).

I don't see why you'd say that. A raid isn't meant to be just plain 'hard' or just plain 'easy'. Boss difficulty has always varied from very easy to very hard, relative to each other, at least, within the same tier. The easier bosses come first, which actually makes complete sense, otherwise players would be hitting a brick wall before they even start. Let's say hypothetically, the boss difficulty ranges from 1-4 on normal, 4-7 on heroic and 7-10 (inclusive) on mythic. So the easiest group of bosses would be 1/4/7 out of 10 on N/H/M, and so forth with the last boss being a 4/7/10 out of 10 on N/H/M. A 1-10 scale makes the overlaps pretty awkward, and makes it impossible to rank certain bosses without decimals, but just go with it, for the sake of simplicity. So this means the 'average' boss difficulty for a normal raid (assuming 4+4+4+1 boss distribution, as far as difficulty is concerned) would be about 2.15 out of 10, which does actually make sense. Now this isn't to say that all bosses with a boss difficulty of ~2 together make up the 'normal' difficulty. It just means that all bosses of that difficulty should drop more or less the same ilvl, because a non-specific group that is able to beat one of them shouldn't have many problems beating most. And don't misquote me on this with specific iLvl and boss ranks in HFC, the numbers I chose are completely arbitrary. In the simplest terms: Just because two bosses are equally difficult doesn't mean they belong in the same difficulty, especially if they're entry level vs. end level bosses (eg. Boss 1 & Boss 9).

2. the second half of hfc is too difficult for players in a given difficulty. Normal raiders can no longer do the second half of normal hfc because it's too hard, and have no other option, and heroic raiders who completed the first half of heroic hfc (705-710) would need to do the second half of normal for the real 'heroic' difficulty (700-705).

This builds on what I already brought up - not all bosses in the same raid difficulty are meant to be equally difficult, nor are they meant to be beaten at the same item level. But a group that is able to clear ~40% of a raid should have the skill it takes to complete it, but may struggle due to a lack of gear (iLvl), provided they don't overgear it in the first place. So if <Guild A> is able to clear HFC normal with little difficulty, they should have the skill necessary to beat a few bosses on HFC heroic with some difficulty. At the same time, players who easily clear the first half of HFC heroic shouldn't run into too many problems clearing the rest of it. And if they do, within weeks of upgrading their gear, they'll be able to push through even that. This isn't new to HFC, it's how it's always been. HFC just goes a step further with this by having the drop in iLvl steadily increase - which isn't to say that by the time you reach Boss 10 you'll have overgeared the encounter already. While a lack of proper balance can lead to this, more than anything it means that the climb in difficulty would be steeper. So where you previously saw bosses ranked 1-4 in a 4+4+4+1 instance (3-winged, +final boss), we may be now seeing a 1-5 or even 1-5.5 difficulty range. Again, the 1-10 scale makes it a bit awkward, but I think you're getting my point.

[Exodeus]

Wow 685 for LFR thats like 20 ilevs too high.

[Deleted]

Keep in mind that normal HFC gear might still be better then mythic brf as they give way more 2ndary stats

i'm currently 703 ilvl full BiS boomie. I see myself doing normal hfc first week just for get tiers, but yes only if i can't get them on heroic ofc.

[styil]

Who said they are? I'd argue they're trying to do the opposite. Yes, across the board, all stats should matter. But they shouldn't matter equally to everyone. In fact I doubt there's a class that has no clear stat priority one way or the other. They actually explicitly stated this:

Inside Hellfire Citadel, you’ll see a wider range of high and low secondary stat values on items than you have in a long time. Alongside some tuning adjustments that should ensure your attuned stats are the right choice, this change should also make it easier for you to identify which items are good for you in a more interesting way than just “equip the highest Item Level.” Our goal is to help make Hellfire Citadel Raid items more distinct and meaningful to you, and we hope you’ll let us know how things feel once you start collecting your new gear.

I don't see why you'd say that. A raid isn't meant to be just plain 'hard' or just plain 'easy'. Boss difficulty has always varied from very easy to very hard, relative to each other, at least, within the same tier. The easier bosses come first, which actually makes complete sense, otherwise players would be hitting a brick wall before they even start. Let's say hypothetically, the boss difficulty ranges from 1-4 on normal, 4-7 on heroic and 7-10 (inclusive) on mythic. So the easiest group of bosses would be 1/4/7 out of 10 on N/H/M, and so forth with the last boss being a 4/7/10 out of 10 on N/H/M. A 1-10 scale makes the overlaps pretty awkward, and makes it impossible to rank certain bosses without decimals, but just go with it, for the sake of simplicity. So this means the 'average' boss difficulty for a normal raid (assuming 4+4+4+1 boss distribution, as far as difficulty is concerned) would be about 2.15 out of 10, which does actually make sense. Now this isn't to say that all bosses with a boss difficulty of ~2 together make up the 'normal' difficulty. It just means that all bosses of that difficulty should drop more or less the same ilvl, because a non-specific group that is able to beat one of them shouldn't have many problems beating most. And don't misquote me on this with specific iLvl and boss ranks in HFC, the numbers I chose are completely arbitrary. In the simplest terms: Just because two bosses are equally difficult doesn't mean they belong in the same difficulty, especially if they're entry level vs. end level bosses (eg. Boss 1 & Boss 9).



This builds on what I already brought up - not all bosses in the same raid difficulty are meant to be equally difficult, nor are they meant to be beaten at the same item level. But a group that is able to clear ~40% of a raid should have the skill it takes to complete it, but may struggle due to a lack of gear (iLvl), provided they don't overgear it in the first place. So if <Guild A> is able to clear HFC normal with little difficulty, they should have the skill necessary to beat a few bosses on HFC heroic with some difficulty. At the same time, players who easily clear the first half of HFC heroic shouldn't run into too many problems clearing the rest of it. And if they do, within weeks of upgrading their gear, they'll be able to push through even that. This isn't new to HFC, it's how it's always been. HFC just goes a step further with this by having the drop in iLvl steadily increase - which isn't to say that by the time you reach Boss 10 you'll have overgeared the encounter already. While a lack of proper balance can lead to this, more than anything it means that the climb in difficulty would be steeper. So where you previously saw bosses ranked 1-4 in a 4+4+4+1 instance (3-winged, +final boss), we may be now seeing a 1-5 or even 1-5.5 difficulty range. Again, the 1-10 scale makes it a bit awkward, but I think you're getting my point.

And the reason why we had those difficulty curves was because of the power of gear to artificially nerf the instance. Now, less of that gear is available. So these 'walls' will be more common. A casual guild might kill the first 3 normal bosses and get some 690 gear. But because it isn't 705 gear, the 3rd boss is now that much harder, and they may face a wall sooner than they otherwise would have, and would need to spend even more time farming the first three bosses to get enough 690 gear to continue. Then what happens after spending weeks farming that gear? They now get the same items 5 ilvls higher from the next boss! Cool!

[Thirteen]

And the reason why we had those difficulty curves was because of the power of gear to artificially nerf the instance. Now, less of that gear is available. So these 'walls' will be more common.

I have to say [citation needed] regarding the bolded part.

A casual guild might kill the first 3 normal bosses and get some 690 gear. But because it isn't 705 gear, the 3rd boss is now that much harder, and they may face a wall sooner than they otherwise would have, and would need to spend even more time farming the first three bosses to get enough 690 gear to continue. Then what happens after spending weeks farming that gear? They now get the same items 5 ilvls higher from the next boss! Cool!

I don't see why you'd need 705 gear for boss 3. I'm fully geared from mythic BRF and I'm just barely sitting on 701. No boss in the history of the game has ever required gear that's better than the one that he drops, or even of the same iLvl as the one that he drops. Not even mythic end-level bosses, let alone entry-level normal bosses. In fact I can confidently say that most if not all of heroic HFC can be cleared using mythic BRF gear (iLvl 700), plus whatever pickups you get from the HFC bosses.

[styil]

I have to say [citation needed] regarding the bolded part.

The gear dropping that would otherwise be 720 is now 705? Thus the average raid ilvl being lower.

I don't see why you'd need 705 gear for boss 3. I'm fully geared from mythic BRF and I'm just barely sitting on 701. No boss in the history of the game has ever required gear that's better than the one that he drops, or even of the same iLvl as the one that he drops. Not even mythic end-level bosses, let alone entry-level normal bosses. In fact I can confidently say that most if not all of heroic HFC can be cleared using mythic BRF gear (iLvl 700), plus whatever pickups you get from the HFC bosses.

What I am saying is that a team's average item level after killing the first bosses will be lower than it otherwise would have been because of these changes.
What I am not saying that you need 705 for boss 3. Obviously *you* don't, because you're not the target for heroic. But the guilds progressing through the first few bosses of h brf right now? They're average ilvl is about 680. From a raid that drops 685.

Now imagine this system implemented in brf. These guilds would be no where near 680 and have no chance at heroic, and the guilds that killed it earlier will now take longer to kill the bosses because of this gear gating. Is that what we want? If this was live in brf, I know it would've taken us about a month longer to kill Blast Furnace to accumulate enough gear for it, and I don't think our guild would've survived another month on Blast Furnace.

Lower ilvl = lower chance of success = reaching the wall sooner.

[FeralSynapse]

The problem I have with this kind of itemlevel distribution is that the amount of items for specific roles is never balanced. Sure, the itemlevel differences are minimal, but if you take a look at Archimonde he drops the following:

3 cloth items
2 leather items
1 mail item
2 plate items
1 tank neck
1 strength dps neck
1 two-handed sword
1 strenght dps cloak
1 caster staff
1 caster mace
(class trinkets)

Mail wearers are at a disadvantage, because they get fewer top itemlevel items. Cloth even gets 3 compared to 1 mail.
Hunters and 1handed-physical DPS classes are at a disadvantage, because they can't get a top itemlevel weapon.

This just sucks, really.

2H Agi is also really boned as they do not have an option either. For Feral our "Best" weapon (ideal stats) is 720. The best weapon we can get is 730. So our "best" weapon is 15 ilvl bellow what is avalible to other classes and our "highest ilvl" option is 5. Agi and Ap are rated higher then secondaries for Feral so we're forced to take a sub par option and don't have an ideal option for the last raiding tier of an expansion? Total Bullcrap.

[Deleted]

I think they are trying to ensure running normal has value to those guilds who are just hitting heroic brf on farm and maybe stepping their toes into mythic currently instead of forcing them directly into heroic hfc. It should prolong the content slightly by making them run multiple difficulties.

We are 10/10 mythic, and even for us, only way to compete is to run split runs on NORMAL too, because of the Archimonde trinkets and tiers.

[Marxman]

The main issue here is that instead of their goal of making later bosses more "exciting" by boosting their item level, instead people are just going to view the first half of the instance as garbage because the loot simply doesn't compete with the 2nd half of the instance. Relegating half of your loot useless within a single tier is not only a bad idea, it's absurdly stupid.

Worse still that Archimonde doesn't drop weapons for every class, giving some players a distinct advantage. Does it matter for progression? No. Progression DPS isn't the only thing that matters though. People want a fair game, especially in the last patch which will more than likely last 8+ months. It's going to feel really shitty to not be able to compete simply because X class has a 741 MWF weapon and you're stuck with a shitty 725 mythic weapon from an early boss.

This just reeks of poor forethought and bad design. I thought their idea of adding invisible WF/sockets to tier gear was their dumbest idea yet (to be fair, it was at the time), but this takes the cake.

[Thirteen]

The gear dropping that would otherwise be 720 is now 705? Thus the average raid ilvl being lower. What I am saying is that a team's average item level after killing the first bosses will be lower than it otherwise would have been because of these changes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that if it followed the "original" loot system, all heroic bosses would drop 720 loot, which currently only Archimonde heroic drops so you somehow feel that the rest of the loot has been "nerfed", is that right? But the truth is we don't know what the iLvl gap between BRF and HFC would've been if there was a flat iLvl for every difficulty. It's very likely that bosses will be tuned to be doable with in an average of 10 lower iLvls than they drop, at least the normal bosses. BRF normal dropped 665 originally (changed to 670 later), and was perfectly doable in 655 Highmaul normal gear, or well, the first half of it was, and those two raids were of the same tier. Generally, gear from Tier X normal should be perfectly fine for clearing about 40-50% of Tier X+1 normal, and for better guilds, it should be enough for a full clear with some struggles on the last boss. Obviously the same logic can't be applied for heroic or mythic because the climb in difficulty is much steeper, but I expect guilds with 10/10M to be able to clear the first ~4 bosses in HFC (which is about 30%) with few problems. I can't claim 100% accuracy on these numbers, but I'd say for mythic BRF, you needed about 680 for the 3 easiest bosses, ~684 for the next 3, ~688 for the next 3 and then about ~693 for Blackhand, solely based on the iLvl of heroic BRF and mythic BRF drops (680 and 695 respectively). So for HFC mythic I assume won't be too different in that the first bosses will be killable in ~710-713 gear, and Archimonde will be killable in ~732.

We are 10/10 mythic, and even for us, only way to compete is to run split runs on NORMAL too, because of the Archimonde trinkets and tiers.

I think that's a bit of an overstatement. Archimonde's loot on normal is only 5 iLvls higher than BRF Mythic, and the same iLvl as the entry-level bosses on heroic. While it's definitely not going to hurt you to have kill on normal, I'd say it's far from "the only way to compete". I'd go so far as to say that a fully geared mythic BRF group should be able to clear heroic HFC within 2-3 resets, and for some guilds even on the very first.

[itchy]

Hunters definitely had the short end of the stuck in BrF, but HFC has 3 ranged weapons between all its bosses - a 690 from Hellfire Assault, 695 from Socrethar and 700 from Mannoroth, so there's definitely going to be a steady rise in iLvl for hunter weapons (690N, 695N, 700N, 705H, 710H, etc). While you're not gonna be getting a 730M from Archimonde M like casters will, those weapons will be largely irrelevant because no one will be able to get them during progression anyway, unless they can be dropped from the cache.

short end of the *stick in BrF? Which is why all 3 specs are sim'ed in the top 6 right now? Great mobility, ST, Multi Target and survivability? /waa

[Thirteen]

short end of the *stick in BrF? Which is why all 3 specs are sim'ed in the top 6 right now? Great mobility, ST, Multi Target and survivability? /waa

You know what I meant :c The only ranged weapons drop from Iron Maidens and Blast Furnace.

[Deleted]

I think that's a bit of an overstatement. Archimonde's loot on normal is only 5 iLvls higher than BRF Mythic, and the same iLvl as the entry-level bosses on heroic. While it's definitely not going to hurt you to have kill on normal, I'd say it's far from "the only way to compete". I'd go so far as to say that a fully geared mythic BRF group should be able to clear heroic HFC within 2-3 resets, and for some guilds even on the very first.

No, the statement is correct. You apparently do not know that Archimonde will drop spec-specific trinkets, which in some cases SIGNIFICANTLY improve performance.
Tier sets will, again, in numerous cases, be a significant boost, even from normal.
We obviously WILL clear heroic within the first reset, but the only way to be able to compete is to run both heroic AND normal split runs for at least the first two weeks, before starting with mythic.

[Count Zero]

2H Agi is also really boned as they do not have an option either. For Feral our "Best" weapon (ideal stats) is 720. The best weapon we can get is 730. So our "best" weapon is 15 ilvl bellow what is avalible to other classes and our "highest ilvl" option is 5. Agi and Ap are rated higher then secondaries for Feral so we're forced to take a sub par option and don't have an ideal option for the last raiding tier of an expansion? Total Bullcrap.

So what do you care more about - ilvl or performance ? 'Cause what I'm seeing here is complaint about ilvl, not about how you will perform.

[angelmaz]

Making the weapons unequal like that is a really hateful decision. I don't understand how they think it's acceptable that certain classes should have better weapons simply by virtue of having theirs drop from the last boss instead of the next-to-last boss.

Lol, give me a break. People complain about homogenization and in the next breath whine about something insignificant, demanding to have exactly the same things as other classes.

Bosses have interesting loot. Sometimes the end boss doesn't drop loot that's very good for you, sometimes he does. 5 fucking ilevels is not sufficient for this to be called a "hateful decision".

Seriously, you are part of the reason we have this ridiculous perversion of WoW today. Accept some inequality sometimes and the game becomes more interesting for everyone. Demand an impossible-to-achieve level of equality and you get tedious homogenization.