Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Tehr]

Hard to gauge that depending on classes. A lot of classes were doing 90-100k at the end of the first tier in MoP, and ended up doing close to 500k near the end of SoO. Depending on if you had good warlocks or not, they probably multiplied their damage by a factor of five to six by the end of SoO. Let's not forget tanks with vengeance back then either (I certainly remember doing ~600k on Heroic Garrosh).

But yeah, assuming one more tier and the model they are doing right now (+30 on legendary and increasing TF cap by +30). Legendary items will be 1000 and TF cap will be 985 on Argus. You'll see people in the ~995 iLvL range.

Personally it's less the item level (which can be completely arbitrary) and more the stat curve that I'm worried about.

Screenshots taken from WoWHead:



Since when are we supposed to have items with 250% more primary stat in less than a year of the expansion?

I guess DPS increasing by a ton isn't completely new (I remember ~2k DPS in Wrath Naxx, and then ~15k in ICC), it just feels bad that everything that's not bleeding edge content is only useful for warforges at this point.

[Tojara]

Vanilla is a really hard one to talk about because baseline DPS from dungeon gear was actually pretty good. I remember doing ~400 DPS in Molten Core with decent gear, and ending the expansion around 750-800 as a combat rogue. You could get higher, but that era of the game was weird, as late Naxx assumed world buffs (UBRS, Onyxia, ZG, and Felwood songflower). Stat scaling was also weird as for the most part as you relied solely on primary stats to boost your character, as combat ratings didn't exist in the beginning. ilvL budget was also weird solely because of the lack of combat ratings. We had loads of items with 2% hit or 2% crit as early as Molten Core, but because of how budget was assigned, getting something with 3% wasn't going to happen. There was no real room to make items interesting back then for DPS because it was assumed pieces would have a 1-2% hit, 1-2% crit, then just primary stat increase lol.

I can't recall TBC the beginning of TBC. All I remember is BT/Hyjal my rogue was doing ~2200 DPS, and in Sunwell I ended ~3000 DPS (RIP no glaives, and not counting 3.0).

WoTLK was higher than that though. My DK (unholy at the time) was pulling around 6k even in WoTLK Naxx, and I distinctly remember warlocks being the strongest class at the beginning (albeit only every 10 minutes with doomguard). 15k sounds about right though for ICC, give or take a couple thousand. Hard to gauge that one simply because of the % damage mod present in ICC.

Squish is probably coming though. I think the reasoning behind the primary stat gain is because of a shift in philosophy. IIRC correctly they wanted to give make stamina values higher, and they also wanted to make primary stats more plentiful, because in previous expansions secondaries ruled all, even at the beginning of expansions. Primary is GENERALLY better now in almost every circumstance, but there are classes now that are starting to weigh secondaries over primary stats, even with the massive amount of primary we gain for a moderate amount of iLvL gain.

One thing they also did this expansion was give us a massive amount of primary stats when we gained a level this expansion, and made it so we didn't lose as much secondaries as we did in previous expansions. Mostly because they wanted it to be easy to get to a point in secondaries where classes felt 'good' (i.e fire mages felt like shit with low crit, so they curbed how much we lost while leveling, while additionally giving some classes higher baseline crit/haste/mastery, or whatever).

[Deleted]

Tojara: This is offtopic, but I really can't remember having any gear with hit chance from MC, before the Ahn Qiraj boss ring.
As for current stats, when primary / secondary budget was shifted in 7.1.5, it became evident that devs didn't have exact plans for the whole expansion regarding maths and stuff (lack of competence is assumed sometimes, not without reason). Things can easily get out of control again.

[Tojara]

Tojara: This is offtopic, but I really can't remember having any gear with hit chance from MC, before the Ahn Qiraj boss ring.
As for current stats, when primary / secondary budget was shifted in 7.1.5, it became evident that devs didn't have exact plans for the whole expansion regarding maths and stuff (lack of competence is assumed sometimes, not without reason). Things can easily get out of control again.

Not on launch, and I'd have to check, but Diremaul released prior to BWL coming out (so MC was still relevant, but we are talking Vanilla, where content was relevant throughout the entire expansion), and I'm fairly sure there was % hit gear in there. Also can't remember when the crafted plate gear was introduced (pretty sure still prior to BWL, but that stuff had no primary stats and had both crit and hit on it).

Hit gear was definitely in the game though, it was just super rare. BWL certainly had an abundance of it, rogue gear tier did anyway (iirc the gloves had 2% on them).

I'm cool with a stat squish though, doesn't really bother me one way or another. Once numbers get too big you stop caring about them as they get lost in a sea of other big numbers.

[Deleted]

I'm cool with a stat squish though, doesn't really bother me one way or another. Once numbers get too big you stop caring about them as they get lost in a sea of other big numbers.

If I'm not mistaken they already confirmed there's going to be a squish next expansion. What's left to see its the magnitude of it.
As far as I'm concerned I would squish the players level too, and hard squish ilvl in order to return to WOTLK numbers wise. From there, control ilvl inflation and make sure we never reach this points again.

[Tojara]

I don't think they confirmed, so much as they said it was a high possibility. I believe back when they did it for WoD they said they would likely have to do it again after a couple of expansions. So regardless, it's highly likely.

They would have to do some hard look at leveling to get WoTLK numbers. Health aside, the squish from MoP > WoD put damage numbers somewhere in the middle of Cataclysm, with the scaling putting us back to the beginning/mid part of MoP but the end of WoD. They can probably squish the numbers again fairly easily, it's just a question of how much work is required and how far they are willing to go with it. I doubt they are going essentially fix it for several expansions, I fully expect a band-aid approach that lasts another couple of expansions.

Whether it's true or not, the likely have the perception that players like seeing their numbers go up, and seeing a difference in gear. This is why they chose the iLvL jumps they've chosen for each tier afterwards. It's enough to trivialize previous content, and it's enough that you can actually see it. While you could certainly see improvements in gear back in Vanilla/TBC, there were times (at least in Vanilla) that you would be hard pressed to see much of a difference in your gear, as you essentially just gained 6 attack power from equipping that new item).

Not sure how they would squish levels. The best thing they could do is having their zone scaling tech apply to every aspect of the game, but that would require them to award dynamic items to old content, and is likely way too much work.

[Tehterokkar]

Personally it's less the item level (which can be completely arbitrary) and more the stat curve that I'm worried about.

Screenshots taken from WoWHead:


Since when are we supposed to have items with 250% more primary stat in less than a year of the expansion?

I guess DPS increasing by a ton isn't completely new (I remember ~2k DPS in Wrath Naxx, and then ~15k in ICC), it just feels bad that everything that's not bleeding edge content is only useful for warforges at this point.

150%, not 250%.

Also Wrath had other things that severely inflated gear, namely sockets. In Naxx gear you would be lucky to have 1 socket. In ICC literally every piece had either 2 or 3 sockets.

Wrath had way more DPS inflation than Legion, as you said, going from 2k in Naxx to 13-17k in ICC is a massive difference. For reference, classes did around 250-300k at the start of EN. Now classes do 900k-1m DPS at the end of the first tier. If we go by Wrath inflation, at the end of Argus we should be at around 2m DPS ST.

[Philondra]

I remember doing around 4k on Patchwerk as enhancement back in WotLK well before Ulduar came out. Hell, I can recall seeing a log of a Sunwell-farming, legendary bow-wielding hunter doing 4k on a massive slaughter of Teron Gorefiend toward the end of BC. Of course, good luck dredging up any of those logs now.

[Snuffleupagus]

If I'm not mistaken they already confirmed there's going to be a squish next expansion. What's left to see its the magnitude of it.
As far as I'm concerned I would squish the players level too, and hard squish ilvl in order to return to WOTLK numbers wise. From there, control ilvl inflation and make sure we never reach this points again.

With their streamlining of questing, I would love to see them redo all the lower levels (although this would never happen).

0-20 Vanilla (bringing back old quest chains and storylines)
20-30 Burning Crusade
30-40 Wrath of the Lich King
40-50 Cataclysm (slightly redoing the quest chains and storylines, and allowing access to the old world via the Caverns of Time)
50-60 Mists of Pandaria
60-70 Warlords of Draenor
70-80 Legion
80-90 ???

In addition, it would be good to see all the old raids and endgame story turned into a single player scenario for new players and alts. None of the gear, no removal of old raids, but make the story consistent between expansions.

I also think a power drop between expansions wouldn't be the worst thing. Make it part of the story, and you climb back to where you were at the end of the previous expansion as a baseline for the new one.

[Dreyen]

TBH all they need to do is make all lower level content dynamic level like legion.

Just for diversity sake, theyd need to make people choose between different zones. Perhaps keep vanilla content 1-60 and 60-110 can be done in any expansion. Kinda lame to do 1-2 zone and be done with an expansion completly.

[Tojara]

Well, I mean you don't have to do anything. Some people literally dungeon to max level and don't touch zones at all.

Dynamic leveling would be best, but that would mean going back and changing reward structure too, such that gear rewards scale to your current level. I just think it would be a lot of work. They would also have to mess with the leveling curve, but that's probably not too difficult.

Best thing they could do is literally have things scale right up to the current expansion honestly, allowing you to level wherever you wanted to level. If you really wanted to you could level in the current 0-60 zones all the way to 110 for example. TBC would start at 60 and scale to 110, WoTLK 70 to 110, Cataclysm from 80-110, MoP from 85-110, and WoD from 90-110.

Still a lot of work, but honestly the current 0-60 leveling zones are far superior to anything in TBC/WoTLk at the very least, so allowing you stay in them for as long as possible (if you wanted would probably be best).

People definitely didn't do 2k DPS in WoTLK Naxx. People were pulling those numbers in Hyjal/BT in TBC.

[Tehr]

Regarding scaling zones, I would personally love it if everything scaled fully. It would be great to be able to quest all the way through the Eastern Kingdoms or something and experience the entire story. As it is, you barely finish 1/3 of the zone before you're sent off somewhere else if you have Heirlooms. It also doesn't really make sense to me that Invasions are only happening on the Broken Isles. I understand that going back to old content is difficult technologically, but it doesn't make sense that the Legion is only invading these new zones. They could even re-use the pre-patch invasion zones with minimal adjustments.

I do plan to eventually level a character from level 1 with minimal addons (and probably lots of marijuana) and hit every zone's major questline (probably lots of wasted experience), but probably not until I've cleared Argus and am waiting for 8.0 to drop.

People definitely didn't do 2k DPS in WoTLK Naxx. People were pulling those numbers in Hyjal/BT in TBC.

I guess DPS increasing by a ton isn't completely new (I remember ~2k DPS in Wrath Naxx, and then ~15k in ICC), it just feels bad that everything that's not bleeding edge content is only useful for warforges at this point.

I hate to disappoint you, but there are people tryharding at 150k DPS in Legion. I think 2k is an understatement, to be sure, but the point of the original statement was that large DPS increases aren't new (and plus I was in a super casual social guild on a dead server in Wrath that pugged everything). I know I was certainly doing between ~2k and ~3k DPS in Naxx, but I also never really had anything better than dungeon gear and a Titansteel Destroyer until late Ulduar (plus I was also playing on 250ms+ ping - I had dial-up until 2011 - and a 13" laptop that got between 3 and 7 FPS, so I suppose I have an excuse).

Here's a video of Method 25man in Naxxramas. They're at Patchwerk around 2:00, and the top 10 DPS are between 5k and 6k (note that the ones I saw were not their first kills, so it's hard to get a good look at their real DPS). Considering this guild cleared Naxxramas 25 at World 2nd (and thus the players are among the best in the world), I think 2-4k is probably a good average skill range of players, with 2k being the admittedly very casual. At the very least, I vividly recall pug groups requiring 2k DPS.

[Philondra]

This discussion has been entertaining, for sure, but I'd like to bring the discussion back to 7.2.5 for a moment.

Someone (Tehr?) mentioned playing with Heart of Ice a bit on the PTR and getting a relatively high uptime on it, and I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on it. I remain unconvinced, as IBF is generally used when we specifically need a damage reduction cooldown rather than as a defense-against-attrition button and VB is both stronger and more readily available for periodic instances of high damage. I could see it getting some use together with the tank trinket from Kil'jaeden to turn IBF into a rotational button like VB, or perhaps on a fight where we take Rune Tap and can reserve IBF for periods of attrition, but for general use Heart of Ice looks a little lackluster.

Has anyone tried it out in "real" content on the PTR and can offer some insight?

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I hate to disappoint you, but there are people tryharding at 150k DPS in Legion.

All too true. I've lost count of the number of 10s/11s I've run with people pulling around 200k on trash and somehow still managed to 2-chest.

Seems like anyone can run mid-to-high level mythic+s these days.

[msdos]

- - - Updated - - -



All too true. I've lost count of the number of 10s/11s I've run with people pulling around 200k on trash and somehow still managed to 2-chest.

Seems like anyone can run mid-to-high level mythic+s these days.

This will change when they remove the deplete mechanic. When the deplete mechanic goes away, people will be more apt to just flat out leave if they notice dead weight, at least I know I will. The only reason I don't say anything now is because I don't want to waste time and create a conflict that will most likely lead to the key depleting.
That's one thing I can't tolerate in this game is dragging along bad DPS. They belong in a lower key.

[Deleted]

This discussion has been entertaining, for sure, but I'd like to bring the discussion back to 7.2.5 for a moment.

Someone (Tehr?) mentioned playing with Heart of Ice a bit on the PTR and getting a relatively high uptime on it, and I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on it. I remain unconvinced, as IBF is generally used when we specifically need a damage reduction cooldown rather than as a defense-against-attrition button and VB is both stronger and more readily available for periodic instances of high damage. I could see it getting some use together with the tank trinket from Kil'jaeden to turn IBF into a rotational button like VB, or perhaps on a fight where we take Rune Tap and can reserve IBF for periods of attrition, but for general use Heart of Ice looks a little lackluster.

Has anyone tried it out in "real" content on the PTR and can offer some insight?

I didn't test it on the ptr, but like you I remain dubious toward HoI. In any situation where you want a dr cd up more often you would take RT, while in attrition scenarios VB already does the trick.
I'm not implying it's a useless talent (better than soulgorge anyway), but I can't really imagine a scenario where I would want to use it.

[Tojara]

RT is really only used for bursts every so often, you can't really spam it. IBF for all intent and purpose is a worse RT (less DR, and way longer CD). Generally the duration on it doesn't matter because you usually don't run into scenarios where periodic burst is going to happen in an 8 second window, it however is still useful for extended periods of burst, but even then... with an 8 second duration it's still not all that useful.

HoI is interesting, but only if encounter design fits it. Which is interesting because it actually would compete with spectral deflection in a lot of cases for those encounters. I think I mentioned it way earlier in the thread, but the only time I could feasibly see HoI being semi useful would be on Botanist if you're the tank trying to prolong the dispel for a really long period of time. In such a scenario HoI would might be superior to spectral deflection. HoI also inherently plays a bit better with vampiric blood, compared to spectral deflection as we all know what spectral deflection does for RP generation if it's consistently being procced.

Basically if you have extended periods of time where you're getting your shit pushed in, and for whatever reason you aren't going to tank swap (either because you're solo tanking, or because it simplifies things) HoI might be an option. With the KJ trinket you can have it up for a pretty beefy amount of time, or you could opt to have it up for a decent amount of time with a shorter CD. I have yet to really look deeply into ToS fights (soon), but I have to imagine there will be situations where the talent and trinket combination might be used.

Entirely encounter dependent though. Not sure if it will see use or not, and as stated, the uses in NH would have been incredibly limited had both the trinket and talent (or just the talent existed). Certainly has more applications than soulgorge ever did though.

[Tehr]

I haven't done a ton of raid testing on the PTR (a few half-hearted Mythic tests, and 13 real pulls on Heroic Kil'jaeden), but I know I felt like I was getting my shit pushed in constantly by all of the bosses' melee attacks, either due to poor ilvl scaling or due to them brutally penetrating my butthole. I think the trinket and/or talent might get some use on fights like Kil'jaeden if you can correctly time your uptime to end right as the tank swap happens to minimize the healing requirement. As mentioned, it's hard to find a spot in our kit for a shitty hybrid between RT and VB, but I think healing requirements are very important to note for tank - and a LOT of ToS fights are based around spread AoE damage - so having the talent/trinket combo could actually be sleeper OP for those times when you won't get a steady stream of heals. Obviously I would vastly prefer for both to work with VB and to just remove IBF from Blood, but I will take what I can get.

[Deleted]

If you play properly with HoI you can have 100% uptime on Icebound. I assume that isn't intended. I tested every boss but I wouldn't call the testing I did on Desolate host good, it was way to buggy. There hasn't been a boss where I would need to increase the duration on Icebound.

I don't know why you were struggling with PTR testing. The boss damage felt fine to me.

[Tehr]

I don't know why you were struggling with PTR testing. The boss damage felt fine to me.

Because we were 11-manning Mythic bosses lol, even BDKs need more than 1 healer per raid.

[Deleted]

Because we were 11-manning Mythic bosses lol, even BDKs need more than 1 healer per raid.

"I felt like I was getting my shit pushed in constantly by all of the bosses' melee attacks, either due to poor ilvl scaling or due to them brutally penetrating my butthole."

As if I'm supposed to get that your 11 manning from that. If you're 11 manning the content the issue isn't poor item level scaling. I would think it would be common sense to state that your 11 manning content before you start complaining about how hard it's hitting.