How Legion iLvls should've been to avoid insane power creep

[apelsinjuice]

This would be horrible with the current titanforge system

[Marston]

This worked out fine in earlier expansions though. You didn't have more than 10 iLvls between tiers but the encounters were tuned in such a way that you needed those 10 iLvls. Having a BiS item coming from the previous tier isn't necessarily a bad thing either, I remember getting an offhad back in TBC that I knew was BiS for two tiers, getting it felt really satisfying, I don't think we need to replace every single piece of gear as soon as a new raid comes out.

I myself won't really have a problem with this, mainly because I just wouldn't give a fuck. But would something like this still fly today? Being told "This is your BiS item for that slot. If you don't get it while the tier is current, have fun running it every week until you get it if you want to have the best gear." I am really not sure about this. Especially with a titanforge system, so even if you get it maybe it could be even stronger, so you still have to run it. Even if it would only be +5 itemlevels, as you proposed in your first post.

[Hctaz]

This would be horrible with the current titanforge system

The OP literally says "Without titanforgeing and with just warforging giving you 5 item levels"

so... your point is invalid.

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As others have pointed out, this is no easy problem to fix.

If you don't have powerlevel jumps between tiers, it seems like the difficulty will never truly go down (we actually had that in Nighthold Mythic) and lower tiers are still relevant, so it could happen your BiS item for the whole expansion is in the first tier, so you basically have to run that each week additionally to whatever raid is current.

I mean that's fine by me due to one reason: This chart supposes the removal of the titanforge system. If they removed that then it wouldn't matter if your BiS trinket came from EN, you'd just get one in EN and then be done with it. Sure, that might seem lame but like... oh well I guess. I mean as is right now it's significantly worse. So many people's BiS trinket is an 860 but only if it titanforges up to 955. Like.. does that not seem much, much worse to you? I hate having BiS locked behind insane RNG. Doesn't feel good when you get it really since most people will never, ever get it... This ends up either making the power creep worse since they need to keep releasing new trinkets that are better than the old ones or makes the grind worse by them keeping the power level roughly the same which means the old 860 at 955 item level will possibly be better than the new 930 trinkets at 955 item level. This is a huge problem either way in my eyes and would be completely solved with the removal of titanforging.

[Echocho]

The best thing about this system is that if you're a heroic raider you can go from heroic EN to heroic ToV to heroic NH to heroic ToS without having the progression experience disjointed by having to do trivial difficulties like normal or LFR for upgrades.

[Soxoffender]

I like how older content being relevant is seen as a bad thing by some. The magic of raid design in TBC and vanilla was that all the raids still felt "alive" and had some raiding community whether it was people new to the game or hardcore raiders. Karazhan was the most active raid even when BT was out. Expansions felt like more of a sandbox and open world. There was something magical about striving for that next harder raid, whereas now guilds are striving towards slightly adjusted numbers and mechanics for the same bosses. And then a few months later they are given a new hamster wheel on Blizzard's schedule. In fact it's a trend across the game in general that Blizzard nanny players and tell them how and what they should be doing. I don't know why players are ok with this.

The Vanilla/BC design was great if you were any good but it was terrible for those who weren't. With no easy way to outgear encounters a lot of guilds would get stuck at a single boss for weeks and weeks at a time. Eventually they might kill it but sometimes they got stuck in a vicious circle where just as they got close to a kill they'd lose their better members to a more progressed guild and others to burnout and then they'd be back at square 1 teaching new people the fight and gearing them up all over again. Loads of guilds in BC hit a ceiling and just repeated the same content over and over until a combination of attunement removal and 146 ilvl badge gear gave them a shot at brute forcing the likes of Vashj/KT and being able to more easily recruit replacements who were already geared.

Restricting power creep is great in an MMO that's got strict linear progression and is aimed at a more hardcore audience but if WOW was ever that game then it hasn't been for at least 9 years.

[Echocho]

Restricting power creep is great in an MMO that's got strict linear progression and is aimed at a more hardcore audience but if WOW was ever that game then it hasn't been for at least 9 years.

We have multiple difficulties for a reason. If we need to be able to overgear content so massively that everyone can do it we don't need multiple difficulties, if we have multiple difficulties we don't need to be able to overgear the content. What we have now are two systems with the same exact function and one of them needs to go. I think it's better to keep the four difficulties so that everyone can experience the content no matter how little effort they put in.

[Jastall]

Making ilvl half as rewarding but giving +60 of them is no different from having it at the current value and giving +30; same end result. If you don't want throughput to increase by literally 5x between the entry to Tier 1 and the exit of Tier 2 then don't increase the stats by that much either way.



That unfortunately only holds true in a small portion of content deemed "currently relevant" and when you disregard gear scaling week to week. If you step outside of that content or you change gear then it immediately becomes an important part of game design again

The previous tier hasn't been deemed relevant by Blizzard since Wrath, so I don't think they consider that a problem. Player power increases exponentially, threats in current content (high M+ and current raids) increases exponentially. Old content or overworld becomes easy as hell? Who cares, it's old stuff, and it allows more people to do it more easily as the expansion progresses. Players in general like demolishing bosses that gave them a hard time beforehand. Blizzard tried to counteract this with scaling mobs and people didn't like it.

I think the OP's graphic is a solution looking for a problem to be quite honest. Maybe Blizz should tone ilvl inflation down a bit, but the axe that is proposed to the game's reward structure is the wrong way to go on about it.

[Moozart]

Who gives a shit if people do more damage and have a high ilevel?

Its usually people that have been declined groups because of Ilev that tend to make these threads.

[Manabomb]

Mythic dungeons and M+ are far too rewarding in the model.

(Current)Mythic raids are far too unrewarding(not counting tier bonuses) because items will not be stat optimized. Ultimately the issue was(and remains) titanforging

Roflmao, Mythic raids are unrewarding. Okay unique models, best stats in the game, highest ilvl in the game, highest AP/boss kill, highest gold/boss kill.

Yeah Mythic raiders are totally unrewarded /s

Edit: The best part is when the "under-rewarded" mythic raiders should be doing Mythic for the challenge, not the reward.

It's one of the reasons I have hoped for the longest time that Blizzard would remove increased ilvl from Mythic raiding and have all the gear drops from there be transmog drops. That way, the gear treadmill for balancing Mythic raiding is completely removed and it's all based on heroic progression, exactly how it should be for the 'highest difficulty'. That way boss encounters can be designed around having BiS heroic instead of heroic pretty much not mattering save for the first week to use alt teams to "gear up".

[Onikaroshi]

Roflmao, Mythic raids are unrewarding. Okay unique models, best stats in the game, highest ilvl in the game, highest AP/boss kill, highest gold/boss kill.

Yeah Mythic raiders are totally unrewarded /s

Edit: The best part is when the "under-rewarded" mythic raiders should be doing Mythic for the challenge, not the reward.

It's one of the reasons I have hoped for the longest time that Blizzard would remove increased ilvl from Mythic raiding and have all the gear drops from there be transmog drops. That way, the gear treadmill for balancing Mythic raiding is completely removed and it's all based on heroic progression, exactly how it should be for the 'highest difficulty'. That way boss encounters can be designed around having BiS heroic instead of heroic pretty much not mattering save for the first week to use alt teams to "gear up".

It's a gear progression based game, of course people do mythic for the gear. You remove the gear and the already abysmally small portion of the player base that does mythic dwindles into basically nothing. Remove the gear, may as well remove the difficulty.

[Radaney]

Why is insane power creep a bad thing.

[Deleted]

I wish I could comment this with just "lol" but alas, #chars

[A dot Ham]

In this scenario titanforging doesn't exist but warforging +5 does. Mythic+ awards a static iLvl increase the higher you go up to the cap of current content heroic iLvls.

Agree 100%.

[Heladys]

Scale of power creep is only relevant to people who haven't kept up with the expansion, and even they have catchup mechanics that put prior versions of the game to shame. It's a non-issue.

[Manabomb]

It's a gear progression based game, of course people do mythic for the gear. You remove the gear and the already abysmally small portion of the player base that does mythic dwindles into basically nothing. Remove the gear, may as well remove the difficulty.

Why are so many mythic players obsessed with a gear grind on a difficulty mode that shouldn't be about the gear grind, but the difficulty? How can blizzard legitimately balance increased difficulty if people keep getting better gear that trivializes that difficulty? Why are mythic raiders not simply doing the content because it is difficult and because it gets unique models?

Yes, I'm aware if you make a level of difficulty that is actually hard, less people will play it, it's why Blizzard making Mythic raiding the way they did was such a spit in the face to raiding in general. The only way those bossfights are going to remain difficult is if Ilvl was synched, and I only know one other mainstream MMO that even bothers with that sort of fairness.

[Temp name]

Scale of power creep is only relevant to people who haven't kept up with the expansion, and even they have catchup mechanics that put prior versions of the game to shame. It's a non-issue.

But at the same time, it puts people who took a break during EN at a point where they're doing about a quarter dps of people who're geared now. In 1 tier of content. That's RIDICULOUS.

[Onikaroshi]

Why are so many mythic players obsessed with a gear grind on a difficulty mode that shouldn't be about the gear grind, but the difficulty? How can blizzard legitimately balance increased difficulty if people keep getting better gear that trivializes that difficulty? Why are mythic raiders not simply doing the content because it is difficult and because it gets unique models?

Yes, I'm aware if you make a level of difficulty that is actually hard, less people will play it, it's why Blizzard making Mythic raiding the way they did was such a spit in the face to raiding in general. The only way those bossfights are going to remain difficult is if Ilvl was synched, and I only know one other mainstream MMO that even bothers with that sort of fairness.

Because that's why they enjoy the game? You can enjoy the game for many reasons, you enjoy difficulty, a challenge. I play the game for two reasons, the people I play with and gearing characters. I gear one character as far as I can, then switch and gear another, this is why I play. Only through heroic cause you can't switch as much as I do in mythic and half our raid team were dropped on their heads as children, but the point remains the same, people play for different reasons and a lot play for gear progression.

Regardless of TF and shit, mythic still gives the best ilvl in general so yes, people are going to do mythic for gear.

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But at the same time, it puts people who took a break during EN at a point where they're doing about a quarter dps of people who're geared now. In 1 tier of content. That's RIDICULOUS.

You can get to 900 in a week with ZERO non-LFG content, so that point is irrelevant, and on top of that, taking a break SHOULD put you behind.

[Heladys]

But at the same time, it puts people who took a break during EN at a point where they're doing about a quarter dps of people who're geared now. In 1 tier of content. That's RIDICULOUS.

The word you're searching for to all-caps is "meaningless".

It doesn't matter whether you kill one boss with 1k dps in one minute or another boss with 100 billion dps in one minute. Both bosses die in roughly expected timeframes, and you're geared to make it happen. In the good old days you wouldn't try (unless carried) another tier of content until well-geared from the last, so precedent is set. Be geared for the content. The relative numbers and distance between them means dick-all.

[Aggrophobic]

It's a problem for sure but so is the feeling that you don't get stronger with new gear. It's probably hard to find the right balance there.

[Doogler]

I like how older content being relevant is seen as a bad thing by some. The magic of raid design in TBC and vanilla was that all the raids still felt "alive" and had some raiding community whether it was people new to the game or hardcore raiders. Karazhan was the most active raid even when BT was out. Expansions felt like more of a sandbox and open world. There was something magical about striving for that next harder raid, whereas now guilds are striving towards slightly adjusted numbers and mechanics for the same bosses. And then a few months later they are given a new hamster wheel on Blizzard's schedule. In fact it's a trend across the game in general that Blizzard nanny players and tell them how and what they should be doing. I don't know why players are ok with this.

That was an entirely different situation. There was no gear catchup in BC so every alt or new player had to start at Kara and worth their way up. Before Hyjal/BT this was not too bad as you could gear up Kara and then there were plenty of people doing SSC/TK. Once BT was out no guild that was already attuned wanted to touch SSC/TK. There were then very few guilds in that tier and it became really hard to get into a guild in BT because of attunements. In fact when BT guilds needed fresh blood they actively recruited from other weaker BT guilds and passed the problem on. Sure sometimes those guilds would be forced to attune new people but they did it as rarely as possible. The guild I was in back then only ran SSC/TK once after we moved on.

The main reason that Kara and ZA remained relavent for so long is because they existed a separate progress track for people not in raiding guilds and the alts of raiders. These days those people raid Normal/Heroic and a much easier time making the leap to mythic if they want to.