Has relative power between Fully Geared vs Ungeared been higher than this before?

[Ariluz]

The gear is now 90% factor of the damage you dish out, instead of a healthy mix of skill and gear. What makes it even worse is that a fully PvE geared raider whoops the ass of my fully PvP geared toon.

Eh, I've seen people @ around 553 ilvl (and they had cloak + meta) pulling 100-120k dps and they weren't autoattacking. I'm not sure how its possible, but some people do find ways to reach levels of fail where it should be possible for lower geared people to beat them.

[Sierra85]

i find the item level disparity insanely high, the 496 timeless gear is meant to help catch you up but when you get a full set of gear and then you try to do a flexi but people are asking for 535+ for flexi's you're shit out of luck.

What's the point in the catch up when you're still years behind???

[KaPe]

I did 80-100k on ST fights in raids @ around 496 ilvl. I did have a 548 BoA weapon which probably skews things, but I also did have a few blues which brought my item level down to around 496. Also, don't take simcraft numbers as gospel - its a rough estimate that is in no way an exact dps number. The use of simcraft is more for getting your stat weights and calculating the relative upgrade of an item.

So, wait, your single most important piece of gear was FIFTY levels higher than the average, and yet you claim that it's "trivial" to do 100k dps in that gear? I could remove both of my rings and similar "weak" item slots. It would result in my average ilvl plummeting, except weapons/trinkets would still be Heroic/WF, so the decrease in output would be minimal.

You did not "easily" do 100k dps in 496 gear. I have an alt which has random TI crap, couple blues and normal Garrosh BoA. Said alt does over 100k "easily". Too bad replacing TI weapon with BoA has doubled that dps, because otherwise it wouldn't reach 6 digits due to said blue slots being actually important ones like trinkets.

[Seditian]

i find the item level disparity insanely high, the 496 timeless gear is meant to help catch you up but when you get a full set of gear and then you try to do a flexi but people are asking for 535+ for flexi's you're shit out of luck.

What's the point in the catch up when you're still years behind???

Just be patient. Hell, I got accepted into an HC progression guild (8/14 now) with only 515 item level.

[Deleted]

Just be patient. Hell, I got accepted into an HC progression guild (8/14 now) with only 515 item level.

How is your server population? My server is labeled als "full" and it is pretty much impossible to get into a HC progression guild. It is nearly impossible to get into a Flex pug without having LFR upgraded 2/2 and you need to have the legendery cloak to be able to meet the "required" ilvl.

[zorkuus]

i find the item level disparity insanely high, the 496 timeless gear is meant to help catch you up but when you get a full set of gear and then you try to do a flexi but people are asking for 535+ for flexi's you're shit out of luck.

What's the point in the catch up when you're still years behind???

To be fair some of the people requesting "overgeared" people for flex are not geared themselves and are just looking for a way to get carried (or it's an alt who knows the content but that's besides the point because still they're asking everyone except them should be geared). Sometimes they get called out for it, often not.

[Magruun]

I recently levelled a paladin alt to 90, when I was getting ganked at 89 the people who ganked me had almost 4 times as much hp (180k vs 600k) and managed to kill me in seconds, it used to be an almost level capped character would at least be able to put a dent into the max level player, take away maybe 25-30% of his hp but this was just impossible, it was like being level 40 vs a 60 in epics.
These insane gaps in power have to be fixed, I just can't start pvp without being slaughtered for weeks untill I have the honor gear.

[Seditian]

How is your server population? My server is labeled als "full" and it is pretty much impossible to get into a HC progression guild. It is nearly impossible to get into a Flex pug without having LFR upgraded 2/2 and you need to have the legendery cloak to be able to meet the "required" ilvl.

I'm on Ragnaros EU, almost the biggest server of Europe. But yes, pugs ask for a very high ilevel.

[Ariluz]

So, wait, your single most important piece of gear was FIFTY levels higher than the average, and yet you claim that it's "trivial" to do 100k dps in that gear? I could remove both of my rings and similar "weak" item slots. It would result in my average ilvl plummeting, except weapons/trinkets would still be Heroic/WF, so the decrease in output would be minimal.

You did not "easily" do 100k dps in 496 gear. I have an alt which has random TI crap, couple blues and normal Garrosh BoA. Said alt does over 100k "easily". Too bad replacing TI weapon with BoA has doubled that dps, because otherwise it wouldn't reach 6 digits due to said blue slots being actually important ones like trinkets.

I would disagree that weapon is the single most important piece of gear. Trinkets are quite a bit more important, especially when you consider procs/things of that nature. Also, everyone should have two 496 trinkets if they take the time to unlock the 5.1 jp vendor. The only items that are hard to find is generally necks/rings, which are less important for dps than the other slots. From what I remember, I had green legs and some blue and green rings.

[ypolt]

If I may add a related question to the discussion; would any of you feel that an expansion was not worth getting if the gear progression continued similar to what it does within the lifetime of an expansion but they added story lines and dungeons and levels similarily to what they have done?
Like, imagine when TBC came out, the difference between 60 and 70 would have been similar to maybe 55-60, all the new content would have been there properly scaled and the difference in gear from the level 60 tiers would have been similar to the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 2.

If this were to happen in a future expansion, would you consider it a good thing or a bad thing?

[Deleted]

I'm on Ragnaros EU, almost the biggest server of Europe. But yes, pugs ask for a very high ilevel.

Main a Hunter? Just curious.

[Thyranne]

No, and there's a perfectly logical reason for why.

#1) The amount of stat points required to make an upgrade seem "significant" has gone up over time. Since a new expansion is always intended as a gear reset, and you can't balance new content with the expectation that people are coming in to it with anything but leveling greens from the previous expansion, but you also want to be sure that those fully decked out with heroics from the previous one will replace their gear, you have a sudden huge jump in item level at the start of a new expansion. Every time this happens, the jump has to be proportionally bigger. 10 stat points used to be a "significant" increase - now we're looking at needing hundreds before you even notice the difference in power.

#2) We've never had as many tiers of gear. Gear from heroic has to be more powerful than gear from normal, which has to be more powerful than gear from flex, which in turn has to be more powerful than gear from LFR, which again has to be more powerful than gear you can get outside of raids in general. When a new tier of content has come out, they needed to jump the item levels such that everyone can progress, and the best progression path didn't become to ignore current content and go back and do old content.

Combined, it means that going from one tier to the next this expansion is a proportionally HUGE step in relative power, so if you compare a fresh 90 to a Heroic Warforged geared player, the gap is proportionally bigger than comparing a fresh 85 to one fully decked out from Heroic Dragonsoul. It would get even worse in WoD if nothing was done.


If you've ever wondered why they're doing the Item Squish - this is the reason.

Ew no sorry. They'll keep exponential growth for next expansion and future expansion hence they'll keep doing squishes every 1-2 expansions.

The only reason for the squish is, according to Blizzard, HP value is getting too high for 32bit integer. That's all.

[ypolt]

Ew no sorry. They'll keep exponential growth for next expansion and future expansion hence they'll keep doing squishes every 1-2 expansions.

The only reason for the squish is, according to Blizzard, HP value is getting too high for 32bit integer. That's all.

Nah, they stated at Blizzcon that it's because numbers don't feel relevant and just silly. A 32bit signed integer can hold a maximum value of 2147483647 which would last more than a few expansions to come.

[Thyranne]

Nah, they stated at Blizzcon that it's because numbers don't feel relevant and just silly. A 32bit signed integer can hold a maximum value of 2147483647 which would last more than a few expansions to come.

Take a look at Ra-Den 25m bug in phase 2 after he eats many orbs that increases his HP.

[zorkuus]

Nah, they stated at Blizzcon that it's because numbers don't feel relevant and just silly. A 32bit signed integer can hold a maximum value of 2147483647 which would last more than a few expansions to come.

Maybe on player hp but not boss hp.

[ypolt]

Take a look at Ra-Den 25m bug in phase 2 after he eats many orbs that increases his HP.

Good point. Still far from the only reason though.

[Thyranne]

Good point. Still far from the only reason though.

Ghostcrawler literally said that "it'd take way too much time" (which I don't believe).

In before some Blizzard knight attacks me...

[Zka]

Nah, they stated at Blizzcon that it's because numbers don't feel relevant and just silly. A 32bit signed integer can hold a maximum value of 2147483647 which would last more than a few expansions to come.

I guess the reason is manifold. 1) numbers feeling silly 2) too huge throughput gap between first and final tier 3) storage problems presented by 32bit limit

#2 will not simply go away by the squish unless they tweak the item budget formula and/or rethink ilvl differences between tiers.

[Thyranne]

I guess the reason is manifold. 1) numbers feeling silly 2) too huge throughput gap between first and final tier 3) storage problems presented by 32bit limit

#2 will not simply go away by the squish unless they tweak the item budget formula and/or rethink ilvl differences between tiers.

1) is subjective.

2) true and they already said they have no plan to change it.

3) just being delayed. Nothing else.

Those are some reasons that I think that squish is a stupid idea.

[ypolt]

Ghostcrawler literally said that "it'd take way too much time" (which I don't believe).

In before some Blizzard knight attacks me...

Ghostcrawler did a blog post on this back in 2011 already where he described the internal discussions about how weird it felt having these big numbers and what methods they were discussing on how to solve it.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9995063/

And yes, they have commented on the numbers going to get too big to compile aswell. Again, more than one reason but nevertheless the change is needed.