WoW Expansion Gear Item Level Trend

[NezzenFrostmane]

Out of boredom, I decided to make a spreadsheet looking at the trends of the item level of gear to required level depending on expansion. I have linked the actual graphical representation for those who want to make guesses of what the gear will possibly be like for cataclysm.

I took item levels from greens for each level 1-80, and then epics at each cap level: 60, 70, 80. blues were not consistent.
i left out in between ilvls for epics, and the top top top end ilvl's because they so few and far between. you will notice missing in between numbers, and maybe max ilvl for that cap.

Cool things to see, during pre-bc (vanilla), greens ilvl increased 1 for every level, during bc, the ilvl increased by 3 every level, wotlk ilvl by 4,
also, roughly the top ilvl of epics for that capped level, seems to imply the starting ilvl for greens in the next xpac.

My guess for Cataclysm Expansion based on this, is that starting ilvl for lvl 80 greens will be around 277ish . and that the ilvl will increase by 4-5.
so by lvl 85 green ilvl will be around 299.5 (300 rounding up using 4.5 ilvl per lvl average.)
epics at lvl 85 starting at probably 330 (pulling that out of my butt but eyeing it)

[Warwithin]

impressive

[MushroomBomb]

It's important to say that gear levels weren't really meant to be this high in WOTLK, though. Due to the extra, slightly unplanned addition of hardmodes, gear levels were inflated and more had to be added.

[Neb-X]

I'm very impressed. Originally I was going to disagree and say that they ilvl won't be that high. But then realised that due to there only being 5 levels to attain in Cataclysm, if they started off too low then no one would upgrade their gear until they were running instances at 85. Since Blizzard are always saying they like people getting new gear (this is the reason for not scaling legendaries) they'd have to set the ilvl's pretty high or everyone would just stay questing in their lvl 80 epics.

[yaij9841]

Looking at this somehow makes me wish there was an easy way for blizz to pull stats of gear and put it in another way.

[Paladin885]

i wouldnt be surprised to be wearing 465 ilvl gear when deathbringers raid is released or even before then

[AnotherPaladin]

Very impressive work you got there. I've been wondering myself what I can expect when it comes to the Cataclysm. Thanks for the information!

[Aktavite]

I'm very impressed. Originally I was going to disagree and say that they ilvl won't be that high. But then realised that due to there only being 5 levels to attain in Cataclysm, if they started off too low then no one would upgrade their gear until they were running instances at 85. Since Blizzard are always saying they like people getting new gear (this is the reason for not scaling legendaries) they'd have to set the ilvl's pretty high or everyone would just stay questing in their lvl 80 epics.

They like people to get new gear, but they've also stated numerous times that people in high end epics generally have to wait until later on in the levelling cycle to replace them.

And as touched on by one of the earlier posters, gear/iLevel will be changed for Cataclysm. There is currently too much stat inflation, and the gear level has gotten out of hand.

[Nevor]

My guess for Cataclysm Expansion based on this, is that starting ilvl for lvl 80 greens will be around 277ish . and that the ilvl will increase by 4-5.
so by lvl 85 green ilvl will be around 299.5 (300 rounding up using 4.5 ilvl per lvl average.)
epics at lvl 85 starting at probably 330 (pulling that out of my butt but eyeing it)

ilvl 277ish is way too high for the first green items people can get with the addon...

blizzard always let people keep their highest tier epixx for at least a few levels and this was the same at the beginning of wotlk (if you remember...) :

black temple epixx: ilvl 141+151
sunwell epixx: ilvl 159+164
green items [wotlk] starting at: ilvl 130/134/138 etc...
green items [wotlk] for lvl 73: ilvl 154 (most people will still prefer their bt epixx...)
green items [wotlk] for lvl 76: ilvl 166 (most people will still prefer their sw epixx...)
(there will be good enchants etc on your epic gear and if you are no enchanter who needs some skillpoints you will not spend money to put new ones on green crap for just a few hours of playing

so you were able to do 1/3 of the leveling in your bt epixx without even thinking of dropping some items for greens and 1/2 of the leveling without dropping sunwell epixx.

and this wont change. you can probably switch "bt epixx" with "icc25 / icc10 hardmode epixx" and "sw epixx" with icc25 hardmode epixx" and it will be the same for cataclysm...

you can do the math for that

[Powerogue]

i was thinking the greens would start at 232, that seems more reasonable.

[Ultralisk]

Nice work!

I'd say, just going by the last two expansions, the item level for max level 5-man blues in expansion X will be 100*(X-1). Burning Crusade had lvl 100 blues and lvl 110 epics from normals/heroics. Wrath had lvl 200 blues and lvl 200 epics, because they added a separate "is epic, so has higher stats" modifier rather than basic epicness purely off item level vs. equippable level.

The start of BC was skewed by the fact that they halved the item budget cost of stamina on level 61+ gear going from Vanilla to BC, but didn't update the old-world gear in the same way. The gear reset at the start of Wrath was much gentler. If the launch of Cataclysm follows suit, you'll be replacing some of your triumph/toc25 gear with quest blues by 82-83 and you'll wear your T10 / ICC25 gear until level 85 heroics. Quest blues will range from level 219 at level 80 through to around lvl 278-284 for lvl 85 crafted items, and heroic epics will start at level 300. They'll probably try and plan the raid progression so that gear caps out at ilvl 370-380.

[NezzenFrostmane]

Considering Blizzard Blue posts about moderation compared to what they have done previously, they will probably have a nice jump in ilvl for greens in Cataclysm but they will probably increase ilvl / lvl at the same rate.

Then again, since it is only a 5 level difference, they might try and squeeze 10 levels of Wrath gear improvement into those 5 levels. only time will tell. Those 5 levels will probably take as much time to level as it did from 70-80

[Shylah]

I hope they don't inflated the gear as they did this expansion its retarded

new tier/season and you entire gear is crap
new tier inc
whoops your helm just went from BiS to not even close to good...

[PurechaosSK]

Very cool. I dont think that starting greens for Cata will pass the i277 level. I think that the first round of tier gear will just pass that heroic gear so around ilevel 280-290.

[Evolixe]

I hope they don't inflated the gear as they did this expansion its retarded

new tier/season and you entire gear is crap
new tier inc
whoops your helm just went from BiS to not even close to good...

gief OP items plx!!!

[M1kra]

ilvl 277ish is way too high for the first green items people can get with the addon...

Epic > Green even if iLvl is the same, so considering that you won't upgrade your Epics directly, and most will want to keep their setbonuses since those outweigh the iLvl on greens even more....and you can just hope they fixed the ilvl inflation for cataclysm

[JebJoya]

To be honest, what I'm most interested to see come 4.0 upgrading is how we end up revaluing our epics with the introduction of the radically changed bonus mechanic (lack of SP on gear yadda yadda). Assuming that they will not upgrade all old world (1.0-3.3) gear (so you will still get SP on pre-cataclysm goodies), how are they going to balance switching out of patch 3.3 epics to patch 4.0 greens/blues at around the "right" level (82-83ish?).

Taking the spell DPS example (since my main is a lock and I've only really looked at the cataclysm info from that perspective), if we're removing SP from gear and causing Int->SP from class natural abilities, how will the T10 legs with 123 Int and 171 SP now scale? Will these suddenly be at 171+(x*123) Spell Power, thus making them more valuable than they once were, or will they remove any effect of SP, making it just (x*123) SP, which makes old cloth DPS gear rather more dependent on Intellect (think pre-60 gearing for how that could be an issue, or the green level 80 gloves of intellect or whatever, which could end up being "better" than ilvl 200-213 epics if they're not careful).

I think your ilvls could well be about the right ballpark, but my bigger interest lies in how Blizzard will manage to achieve the correct scaling across levels... I'm sure they'll get it right, don't get me wrong, I'm just intrigued by how!

edit: Of course this is all on the assumption that they don't just run some algorithm over all gear changing it "appropriately"

edit2: And yes, I do know that the scaling of key statistics is going to be changing wildly come cataclysm, it's still an interesting thought about quite how much work is going to have to go into getting this right!

[Ultralisk]

Assuming that they will not upgrade all old world (1.0-3.3) gear (so you will still get SP on pre-cataclysm goodies), how are they going to balance switching out of patch 3.3 epics to patch 4.0 greens/blues at around the "right" level (82-83ish?).

I believe they've said they *will* go back and re-design all the old-world gear. Exactly how that affects what is BiS and what is garbage is yet to be seen. It'll be interesting times, though, definitely.