Cataclysm Gear. Fix all the issues in one easy step!

[Deleted]

First, this isn't a QQ thread. Basically there are a few problems with the game, some of which Blizz have acknoledged, one way or another. The rest, the community seems pretty strongly united on.

All players should see all content
Heroics are boring and too easy
Old raids are too easy
Old raids offer nothing of value (Mostly)
People don't know their classes

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these seem to be the things people are annoyed about right now.

As I see it, blizzard could solve all of these issues easily in Cataclysm with one design change. Basically, gear scaling from tier to tier at the moment is a stat gap. You wouldn't dream of running naxxramas at the moment because anything from there is a lot worse than gear from ToC or the new 5-mans.

This means people ding 80, and skip 2-3 tiers worth of raids so don't see content.
People outgear heroics by a mile, hence they become boring.
People outgear old raids by a mile, it becomes boring and hardmodes become trivial.
While hardmodes are trivial, they also offer no good gear (In most cases) so why bother doing them?
Why learn your class when you can be carried through content and get shiny new gear?

With less gear difference between tiers the effect would be:

People ding 80, don't automatically assume the first tier raid gear is awful, might actually see it.
People don't outgear heroics by a mile, they stay fun and challenging (ish).
People don't outgear old raids by a mile, Hardmodes stay hard and fights are still challenging.
Hardmode gear stays good!
People will be forced to become better raiders as their gear won't carry them through old content so easily any more.

Blizzard wins by more people seeing content, less people cancelling their subscriptions, and not having to put in -20% dodge requirements to raids etc
We win by raids/heroics staying fun, gear staying current(ish), and people learning their classes.

What do you think?

[ComputerNerd]

For the most part I agree with a lot of that, there is little incentive for players to run the lower tiers, so I feel that as an alternative then there should be some minimum gear requirements for each tier, and in order to run one you must have cleared or made sufficient progress in the previous. Almost attunements as such and perhaps a repeat of the Magister's Terrace in which to run the Heroic version of a dungeon you must complete the normal to avoid the example I saw of a hunter in Trial of the Champion Heroic without the faintest idea of how to use the mounts, attacked one of the faction champions on foot, and got squished very quickly as a result.

Heroics are not boring, easy perhaps for the most part only because we overgear them substantially. Try running them in 187-200 blues and green quest rewards and see how easy they are then. The rush through and get the emblems farming mentality is to blame for that, and people leaving a dungeon because it is not their personal preferance or because the group won't skip bosses should be penalised and suffer a longer debuff.

Old raids are something I am working on towards various achievements but do not offer much to most, and I cannot see that changing at all.

Lack of class knowledge is due in large part to people being unwilling to learn, idiots will be idiots whatever they are provided with in-game. Questing is easier, money is easier to make, mount training costs less than ever yet people still cannot afford to buy their mounts because they will blow the money or be unwilling to quest for it when they would rather spend 2 hours begging in a city.

The -20% dodge debuff is due entirely due to hard modes pushing up the itended item level rather higher than originally intended since more tiers of gear than was originally planned for with the scaling have been introduced. If there wasn't the push for the hard content, and so the gear for the "elite" players then that would not have been required.

[Voltaire]

I think what the two of you are forgetting is that time-consuming != fun.

Heroics are easy as all get out because we outgear them, but they're not boring because they're easy - they're boring because we've done them all to death. Oh, I'm sure they're exciting to freshly-dinged 80s with no previous experience in them, but I'm sick to death of running them as they are.

[Nathanyel]

With less gear difference between tiers the effect would be:

that people skip the initial raids because they don't give them that much of an upgrade, and immediately head towards the later ones, as their current gear isn't all too bad for those.

[Deleted]

that people skip the initial raids because they don't give them that much of an upgrade, and immediately head towards the later ones, as their current gear isn't all too bad for those.

^this

/thread

[Bowen]

Attunements simple as, force people to actually do proper progression rather than wait for months come back, farm 5mans and get straight into raiding. The opening of vendor gear and such to 5man farm has practically ruined the pve side as well.

People don't learn to play because under the new system and philosophy blizzard has introduced, they get carried and get rewarded no matter, also the content is easy that they have access to.

[Rogge]

/thread

Argh! I wanted to have an opinion here, but you finished the thread

[Kaeyne]

The problem with implementing less gear difference between tiers is that with less of a gear gap, people don't need/want the gear as much. Things like set bonuses stick around for a lot longer.

People don't run Naxxramas/Ulduar anymore because the gear is obsolete, this would be a problem after any expansion has been out for the time that WotLK has. In Burning Crusade, my guild stopped doing Karazhan long before WotLK came out. Likewise with Gruul's/Mag's and SSC/TK. The gear just became obsolete.

[henern]

Would've been nice doing older raids and actually getting something you want, but it won't work, for the reasons already mentioned in this thread. Less difference = you can start endraids with gear acquired from earliest raids/instances

[Dundebuns]

Account bound Attunements.

That will fix people seeing all the content

[Spronny]

I kinda think that gear wasn't too bad up until ToC opened up. When you start giving people a bunch of epics for a regular instance, thats a bit too far. Then have the epics be better then the current low tier....

Yea they need to reduce the game in them. But they won't. So concerned about opening all content to all players just causes problems. Instead of trying to do that, they should try to add something to the game like they did with achievements, adding another aspect that a player can focus on so that they don't get upset because "I am a casual player, open up end game content to me cause i have nothing else to do."

The holiday events are a good example of the type of aspect they could add to the game. Creating chain quests that arn't too hard, and let you experience some old and some new stuff would be good. Since they are already going to change so much in Cataclysm, how about altering some of the old instances to have more event like things in them, but give the option to run it the old way. Could do phasing in the dungeons where after you progress to a certain point different npcs enter the place, or do something like in the caverns of time where you go through the same instances 3 times, each in a different time, and have more then one ending based on what you did. Have these things progress you character in something seperate from gear.

[rabbimojo]

Account bound Attunements.

That will fix people seeing all the content

Or, as they've mentioned doing before, guild-based attunements. Solves a lot of the problems attunements had in BC.

I think one premise from the OP was off, though: People/Blizz don't necessarily believe that all players -should- see all content. It's more that they should have the -opportunity- to see that content.

That's why the gear jumps have been added. They're intentional, because they don't want to force us to run old dungeons again and again on every alt we bring in.

[phai]

It would indeed be a lot better if later tiers wouldn't be so much stronger than the previous ones.
Right now between each tier there is a "jump" of 13 Itemlevels, pretty much the same as it was since Vanilla.

We have now an insane (imo) hole between the first tier (25 naxx, 213) and the latest tier (25 icc, 264), but only because we had not only 3 tiers (like BC), but 4 tiers (t7, t8, t9 and t10) which dragged a huge line between early 80's and highend 80's.

lets say that the "jump" between tiers would be cut in half, so 6 itemlevel per tier or 3 itemlevel less for 10 mans, we would stay at an itemlevel of 224 now, or 226, some sort of ulduar items. the gap between those would be so closer and hardmode items could still be hardmode, so lets say for a tier 10ish hardmode boss there would be items with an itemlevel of 230 or (as we have it now) 232.

4 Tiers with a difference in 13 itemlevels each ist just too much for ONE expansion.

[Wysmark]

Bah the reason is the loot pinatas that Blizzard made in ToC, ICC HC's and VoA.

I can live with people grinding badges in heroic, but between them a couple of easy normal instances offer better gear than 25 man Naxx which i agree is fucked up.

Problem is that Blizzard didnt have a plan from teh beginning so they haphazardly implemented gear to get their immediate not-quite-thought-through ideas through.

We can but hope that they make a plan for Cata.... Bring back attunements.....it would ahve made sense for instance if people had to kill KT if they wanted to assault Icecrown.

[DrgnDancer]

I think what the two of you are forgetting is that time-consuming != fun.

Heroics are easy as all get out because we outgear them, but they're not boring because they're easy - they're boring because we've done them all to death. Oh, I'm sure they're exciting to freshly-dinged 80s with no previous experience in them, but I'm sick to death of running them as they are.

This. I'm currently running chain heroics on my freshly dinged Mage to get him gear. My gear sucks, mostly 187 blues or below (recently acquired 2pT9, but in the swarming sea of mediocrity that is the rest of my gear, it's hardly noticeable). I've been grouped with others who are in similar gear. It doesn't make the Heroics more fun, mostly, it just makes them take longer. I still know all the fights like the back of my hand, I can still run the things mostly on auto pilot, I just do less damage and bosses take longer. It's been interesting a few times to have to go back and actually use tactics to down a boss that we can't just Zerg, but mostly I just can't wait to get all the Triumphs I need to finish a base gear set. Heroics simply aren't fun anymore, even at proper gear level.

(Note: I'm not saying that Blizzard did a crappy job, or that all the WOLK Heroics suck, or were all easy from the very beginning. I remember having fun in them, learning the tactics, wiping on the bosses, etc. It's just been a year and a half already, nothing you can do to them at this point will make them fun.)

[sithorion]

A main problem I see is that the raids are too easy because of the high DPS that is possible to do atm.. Therefore, encounters and tactics get easier, because it's not like fixating on getting OOM or staying focussed, but just stand still, let you get healed, crank out +13131 dps, and the boss is done in no time..

I hope they either let the dps stay on the same lvl, or give the bosses like +50% health, so that people actually have to obey the tactics..

I run in a low dps guild, and when I do ICC, I notice that a lot of things are harder to get because our dps is 3/4k general.. would be easier if all mobs would just been shot down with 6k overall.. Imagine a fight like lady deathwhisper: that is allmost impossible to do if you have low dps, since the adds need to die quite quickly... The game is not about tactics anymore, it's all about shoving enough dps in some bosses ass, and it's done..

ruïns the game imo.. I remember karazhan, where you were sitting around 800/1k, and in sunwell maybe 600/1k higher... wasn't enough to speedkill the bosses, so it was harder, therefore more fun for me

[frester]

Account bound Attunements.

That will fix people seeing all the content

yeh, partially.

imagine you are new to game, and just dinged in the middle of the expansion,
now you can go LFG and gear to run some ToTC pugs and move on to ICC slowly.

if you need BoA attunement you are screwed as everyone and their mother have one,
and at this point it's no different to normal attunement

it's all about gear and nothing will change that

[malkara]

Yeh, we all want to carry our t7 equilivant into icc.

[Arganaut]

Imho there is too much emphasis on gear WOW. The game is based too much around it and players rely too much on it. Gear can make people greedy and elitest. The game revolves around gear and less so on skill or ability at the moment. Gearscores, DKP, grinding heroics for badgers for better loot, or PVP/Arena for better loot, raiding 5 nights a week to ensure that if something drops you are online to get it, if your gear sucks too bad you are not allowed into a raid, or an heroic if people are pedantic enough.

I'm not suggesting players should not be rewarded for their efforts. The old cliche time = reward. But surely the current rate of gear change cannot be sustainable.

How long will it be until you have tanks with 200K HP or Mages with 20,000 spell power. How long will it be before they run out of sensible names for PVP kit or will they recycle the old Grand Marshall ones.

The idea of changing your gear in Cataclysm excites me. An item drops, 3 or 4 classes could use it, but you can alter the stats on that item to make it suit your style. I like this.

But why not ensure that gear scale with your level? OK, the more your progress in whatever play may be your bag, the strong and more powerful you should get and you should look the part. OK I get this, continue to add new loot into the tables, but ensure that item does not become redundant the moment you leave that tier of content. How about an alternative way.

For instance, I'll use an example of Retri Paladin and a well known weapon, Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.

No good for someone at 80. But say it can scale. Let's say at 80, it has a damage rating of 320. You ding 81, the damage increases to 330, the stats increase by a small percentage. In addition to this, you can then customise your weapon, as a reward for PVP/RAIDING whatever.

So:
Add a gem slot.
Replace a stat that doesn't work for you, i.e. ARP for more Crit
Add an extra stat altogether, i.e. more Haste
Increase the weapons damage rating by a small amount
Add a stronger hand guard which increases your defense rating (I know defense won't be in Cata but think outside the box)

And in addition - because looking good and showing your epeen is what people want:
Add a new texture so it glows a bright orange, or something
Add a sound so when you hit with it, it makes a different sound

Basically, take what could be unused and redundant, but quality looking loot, and reuse it.

[Deleted]

that people skip the initial raids because they don't give them that much of an upgrade, and immediately head towards the later ones, as their current gear isn't all too bad for those.

To be fair, I wouldn't completely say that's a bad thing either. Less "mindless" heroic farming to get up to speed. Fixes the issue of having heroics give the latest tier of gear and making people farm it to get int ToC/ICC.

"Bring the player, not the gear" springs to mind.