Improving ilvl Inflation Across Difficulties

[Deleted]

1) With lenient enrage timers you have the option to stack healers. You aren't forced into running 2-3.
2) Gorefiend was killed with under 720 and no rings.

Yes it was. I know that. But i am 100% sure that was not easy or they were not overgeared for it like you are saying.

[Ahovv]

Yes it was. I know that. But i am 100% sure that was not easy or they were not overgeared for it like you are saying.

Sure, not every single boss.

[cFortyfive]

Don't agree with what you perceive as problems and don't see many issues with the current setup aside from increasing ilvls within the instance making half the gear essentially worthless but that wasn't really the topic.

[Adramelch]

2) Gorefiend was killed with under 720 and no rings.

Unless your argument is "it is more difficult to do that" in which case I agree. You know, that's sort of the point from my original post. It would be a much more compelling encounter without extra gear.

Well yeah but you have to understand that on that occasion, it's a case of the players reaching maximum potential of their respective classes. Judging what the intended gear is for an encounter is not really objective. It seems that in your case the intended gear for an encounter is the gear where you have to play at maximum potential of your class in order to beat the enrage timers. Which is absurd in the grand scheme of things and would make mythic a difficulty targeted at 1000 players tops.

For the record, if wowprogress is to be trusted, Paragon killed Gorefiend with 713.45 average ilvl (can't find the relevant information for Method after their guild-splitting shenanigans) which you'll surprised to know is very close to full heroic gear. Taking Balance druids as an example, and using the previous ring (715 version), BiS heroic gear gives you exactly 714 ilvl, and it's a class that genuinely prefers ilvl over anything else in most of the slots. Only trinket and cloak are different.

[Ahovv]

I don't really expect more casual-oriented players/guilds to care about these issues.

[cFortyfive]

I don't really expect more casual-oriented players/guilds to care about these issues.

Maybe you should blog about it and link it on the competitive wow reddit

[Ahovv]

Well yeah but you have to understand that on that occasion, it's a case of the players reaching maximum potential of their respective classes. Judging what the intended gear is for an encounter is not really objective. It seems that in your case the intended gear for an encounter is the gear where you have to play at maximum potential of your class in order to beat the enrage timers. Which is absurd in the grand scheme of things and would make mythic a difficulty targeted at 1000 players tops.

For the record, if wowprogress is to be trusted, Paragon killed Gorefiend with 713.45 average ilvl (can't find the relevant information for Method after their guild-splitting shenanigans) which you'll surprised to know is very close to full heroic gear. Taking Balance druids as an example, and using the previous ring (715 version), BiS heroic gear gives you exactly 714 ilvl, and it's a class that genuinely prefers ilvl over anything else in most of the slots. Only trinket and cloak are different.

That was also with some mythic drops, and I'm also not arguing that their kills would have been impossible with less gear either.

[Alroxas]

These problems can be resolved by only offering a minor ilvl increase on the same difficulty between tiers. For example, since BRF Heroic dropped 685 gear, HFC Heroic should have dropped around 700ilvl gear at its peak, similar to BRF Mythic. HFC Mythic should have dropped around 720 ilvl gear instead of up to 735.

Your math doesn't work out when you consider factors like warforged gear or valor upgrade. Using your math, 685 BRF Heroic vs 700 (peak) HFC Heroic, then HFC (using the 15 ilv difference between start to finish) would have had equal to 685 gear for the first few bosses in HFC. There's no sense of player power progression in HFC till the mid raid bosses where loot is roughly 690+.

In fact, you would have cases where warforged BRF heroic would be better pieces than standard HFC heroic gear (until mid-raid bosses or higher). Essentially, you would have a mini-Highmaul scenario where loot isn't that great.

Furthermore, with your system of overlapping ilvs, it would be more frustrating to see that WF last tier > non-WF this tier especially if tier bonuses weren't that great. A great example is disc priest T17 vs T18 bonuses where the 2pc T17 was such a QoL that may disc priest stayed with a 2pc/2pc split until post valor upgrade where the ilv differential finally offset the T17 bonus. The alternative to force players to move on to new tier is for Blizzard to nerf the older set bonus (as they did with Fire T17 bonus).

[Djriff]

They tried something like that with Highmaul and BRF remember? BRF Heroic gear was 5 ilvls less than HM Mythic gear and it didn't feel good to players to go down in ilvl just for set bonuses/trinkets. I think the system works fine but the big reason why there is such a difference between BRF and HFC is the scaling ilvl as you get further into the raid, resulting in most BIS outside of tier/trinkets being on the final bosses. I think it works fine overall and I like the power increase from raid to raid, it's how it should be. Once the next raid comes out the last raid is a moot point and no longer current content, ie doesn't matter.

[Ahovv]

Your math doesn't work out when you consider factors like warforged gear or valor upgrade. Using your math, 685 BRF Heroic vs 700 (peak) HFC Heroic, then HFC (using the 15 ilv difference between start to finish) would have had equal to 685 gear for the first few bosses in HFC. There's no sense of player power progression in HFC till the mid raid bosses where loot is roughly 690+.

In fact, you would have cases where warforged BRF heroic would be better pieces than standard HFC heroic gear (until mid-raid bosses or higher). Essentially, you would have a mini-Highmaul scenario where loot isn't that great.

Furthermore, with your system of overlapping ilvs, it would be more frustrating to see that WF last tier > non-WF this tier especially if tier bonuses weren't that great. A great example is disc priest T17 vs T18 bonuses where the 2pc T17 was such a QoL that may disc priest stayed with a 2pc/2pc split until post valor upgrade where the ilv differential finally offset the T17 bonus. The alternative to force players to move on to new tier is for Blizzard to nerf the older set bonus (as they did with Fire T17 bonus).

Set bonuses are a totally different issue, and in fact even as you said, with current t17 vs t18 ilvl differences some people decided it was still a good idea to run old bonuses. I don't see that as a "gotcha" in any way. It's just irrelevant.

Heroic brf warforged 691 gear being better than 700 pieces? Sure, if the other itemization is awful. Say, lots of versatility drops instead of proper stats. Again, this is an issue with itemization itself and not the ilvl discrepancies across tiers. Just like some set bonuses being awful, these are unrelated to the current discussion.

[Spotnick]

Almost all of the bosses in HFC have extremely lenient enrage timers. If you're actually suggesting Mythic Iron Reaver is tuned around having full heroic gear, then I don't know what to say. The dps check is simply nonexistent.

Wait a minute, there is a big dps check on Iron Reaver, it's to kill the damned bombs before they explode.

Now maybe it's trivial now, but it wasn't when it was released and nobody had the legendary ring.

[Deleted]

Wait a minute, there is a big dps check on Iron Reaver, it's to kill the damned bombs before they explode.

Now maybe it's trivial now, but it wasn't when it was released and nobody had the legendary ring.

Yes it was. You could easily do mythic iron reaver with 17 people the first ID without split runs. There was no gear check at all.

@OP Your solution wouldn't fix anything. And the reason is the same why top 20 guilds also do split runs for normal mode: the power of trinkets and tier sets isn't represented by ilvl alone.

The only solution to split runs would be forced personal loot for everything but mythic (but then the question is if that's worth the negative impact on other areas). Please don't come up with "would play 3x mages and take the most geared one" that's bullshit. Not even 15 guilds worldwide would do this cause the extra benefit is not guaranteed (in comparison to split runs today) and even if you get a benefit it's much lower than today.

[squee666]

Also if it was truly about about Ilvl, then Guilds would not be doing Split runs Since Cataclysm.

Remember top guilds got banned because they were split running with alts in 25Man DS to get full 4sets even though it was LFR Gear

Set bonuses and trinkets make a big difference than you are assuming

[Violetti]

idk if you're competing for worldfirsts(i'm not), but im pretty sure they like being able to kill of as much lootrng as possible with splitraid, and only having a 2 week content, with the most skilled winning, not the one whos able to maintain a 70h+ raidweek the longest.

[Socialhealer]

Wait a minute, there is a big dps check on Iron Reaver, it's to kill the damned bombs before they explode.

Now maybe it's trivial now, but it wasn't when it was released and nobody had the legendary ring.

no the dps check now is to kill reaver with the ring explosion xD

[Dracodraco]

Also if it was truly about about Ilvl, then Guilds would not be doing Split runs Since Cataclysm.

Remember top guilds got banned because they were split running with alts in 25Man DS to get full 4sets even though it was LFR Gear

Set bonuses and trinkets make a big difference than you are assuming

Just gotta make sure here buddy... You do know they were banned because they abused LFR-mechanics to run LFR with 1x unsaved character that traded the items to already-saved mains over and over and over to get everyone their 4 sets, and not because they were split running, right? They got banned for abusing a bug to gain gear after their characters were already loot-locked. Not for splitrunning.

[Octa]

Just gotta make sure here buddy... You do know they were banned because they abused LFR-mechanics to run LFR with 1x unsaved character that traded the items to already-saved mains over and over and over to get everyone their 4 sets, and not because they were split running, right? They got banned for abusing a bug to gain gear after their characters were already loot-locked. Not for splitrunning.

His point wasn't about why they got banned, it was that it's not gear ilvl that matters but the strength of the tier bonus/trinkets. World first guilds got banned for exploiting LFR to get LFR gear. He did word it strangely though.

[Spotnick]

no the dps check now is to kill reaver with the ring explosion xD

Oh I know that we nowkill it in 63 seconds, but still, if you had to many melee, it was kind of hard to do at the beginning.

At least that's my memory of the fight, already been 8 months and I was healing so maybe I'm wrong.

[KaPe]

His point wasn't about why they got banned, it was that it's not gear ilvl that matters but the strength of the tier bonus/trinkets. World first guilds got banned for exploiting LFR to get LFR gear. He did word it strangely though.

It's still a poor argument. Tier bonuses largely ignore item level and usually don't scale at all throughout difficulties, so there's just pure stats difference. Trinkets were often strangely itemized, frequently going overbudget and having crazy effects introduced to make them superior to previous tier's options.

But those are exceptions, not the rule and item levels are still very important. Honestly, I'm not sure why we went from +13ilvls/difficulty to 15. It's not that much, but it adds up to +8 across all four. Then there's extra +2 from upgrades and it's already +10.

[Deleted]

Its seems OT have miss some blizzard thoughs past in the years
Blizzard clearly says that they do not want the items from previous raid TIER to be equally powerful with New raid items so thats why they put a more high Ilv gap between both raids

Yes it was. You could easily do mythic iron reaver with 17 people the first ID without split runs. There was no gear check at all.

@OP Your solution wouldn't fix anything. And the reason is the same why top 20 guilds also do split runs for normal mode: the power of trinkets and tier sets isn't represented by ilvl alone.

The only solution to split runs would be forced personal loot for everything but mythic (but then the question is if that's worth the negative impact on other areas). Please don't come up with "would play 3x mages and take the most geared one" that's bullshit. Not even 15 guilds worldwide would do this cause the extra benefit is not guaranteed (in comparison to split runs today) and even if you get a benefit it's much lower than today.

They can always fix this by simply lock Master loot or group loot beside Myths for first few weeks only
Persoanlly i do not care that X top guild run like 50 split raids to get best possible gear for their race i do not want to do this and i simply found a guilds who do not do it