Inflating item levels - 2.1bil bosses by end of expansion

[Homsel]

This problem had been explained over a year ago by Ghostcrawler (The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria). The part which still bothers me the most is what he mentioned in the paragraph "Mega Damage", where he stated "Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.". Several times i've now seen really wierd things on Gara'jal, when there was no chance for our tanks to get the boss back from a dd and Gara'jal just killed the dd.

[Koji2k11]

item level have nothing to do with the massive amount of hp itemlvls could be 1 and you woul still have 1m HP its that stats on the item

[Ferocity]

Bosses' HP are already represented by floating point numbers. There is nothing special about 2.1 bil number really. We can go much-much further.

We don't need any kind of "stats crunching".

The part which still bothers me the most is what he mentioned in the paragraph "Mega Damage", where he stated "Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.". Several times i've now seen really wierd things on Gara'jal, when there was no chance for our tanks to get the boss back from a dd and Gara'jal just killed the dd.

Threat points are artificially inflated, so 1 damage translates into 102 threat points before threat multipliers. They could make it to translate only in 2 threat points (with 1 threat point being generated by 1 point of healing) or even 1 (by adding multiplier directly to healing threat). But all inflation "problems" come from part of game systems which were made only for temporary use, only during TBC and WotLK as maximum, - ratings.

And you saw weird thing son Gara'jal because boss himself behaves weirdly (if someone dies - it might bug him a bit), but it can be easily negated by proactive taunting (it won't turn boss on you, but will move your threat to highest on list) few seconds before banishment of other tank. If some dps would get higher threat at that moment and would get "Voodoo doll" - no amount of threat would allow to take it from dps: part of mechanics.

[fangless]

Keep in mind, most of the bosses that have billions also have insane damage increase mechanics in them.

Stuff like Ambershaper, Wind Lord, Elegon, etc, all give 100 to 600% damage debuffs on themselves :P

[Raxxed]

Using sha of fear as an example is pretty poor, its an abnormally long fight.
Sure if every boss in the tier averaged 20 minutes you could use it as an example, but something more 'normal' would be hmm.. something like Blade lord or Vizier. Neither have damage buffs and have an appropriate amount of 'not hitting the boss' time.
They both have roughly 650mil on heroic, iirc.

[Gilian]

Yeah nearly 100 ivl difference in 2 raid tiers (463 - 550 (estimated)). I have a feeling blizzard is intentionally massively inflating Ilvls this expansion just so to minimize the player outcry and opposition for when they put in the Ilvl crunch next expansion.

Next expansion ilvl crunch and one raidsize and maybe another huge change . Better to do it all in one go.

[jp165]

amount of hp and current ilevel doesn't really matter in regards to power ups on encounters - they can always pump the boss or put some kind of limitation(like only 10 people can attack at a time) or some sort.

id be more worried with people going over 1 mil HP at the end of the xp.

i play tank dk and with CD's i can get over 1 millinon health allready

[bals]

This problem had been explained over a year ago by Ghostcrawler (The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria). The part which still bothers me the most is what he mentioned in the paragraph "Mega Damage", where he stated "Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.". Several times i've now seen really wierd things on Gara'jal, when there was no chance for our tanks to get the boss back from a dd and Gara'jal just killed the dd.

you know that Gara'jal fixates, right? >.>

[Keoren]

So going from doing 70-100k dps and from 300k~ health down to 10-15k or less and 20k health wouldnt be weird for you

That sounds quite ideal to me, personally. The numbers are more down to earth which is what I prefer in an RPG. I think smaller numbers also give a better sense of progression.

[Ferocity]

You're probably thinking of Garalon.

Gara'jal tanking is based on fixate, "Voodoo Doll". He fixates on first person who pulls him on start, and then banishes him after some time and goes for next in threat list, fixating on him till death or banishment (whichever occurs first).

That sounds quite ideal to me, personally. The numbers are more down to earth which is what I prefer in an RPG. I think smaller numbers also give a better sense of progression.

There are some addons which might make it cosmetically more clean for some people who don't like big numbers. But prorgession-wise - just look through how much theoretically (and some players - practically) we have passed through - dozens upon dozens of zones, dungeons and raids. Sadly, not a single single-player RPG has as much content as WoW had for all these years since start altogether - you just can't compare. Long journey - longer prorgession - higher numbers. And, hopefully, they will keep growing.

[Keoren]

Gara'jal tanking is based on fixate, "Voodoo Doll". He fixates on first person who pulls him on start, and then banishes him after some time and goes for next in threat list, fixating on him till death or banishment (whichever occurs first).

Yes, that's correct. I read the person he was quoting wrong, thinking he meant that their tank died and they couldn't generate enough threat to catch up. It was a brainfart on my behalf.

I have edited the post.

[Delaios]

The obvious solution to this would be to make bosses have different body parts, that can each go up to the health cap if needed. Sort of like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

[Jaese]

Yeah. You have to account for negative numbers too. It doesn't have much use for something like boss health of course, but there's many applications for them.

I believe his issue was an unsigned being negative, which isn't possible.

[skitzy129]

Bigger the better. Reflects growth and progression so so so much better.

[bals]

Why are people so scared of large numbers? :S

Higher numbers make sense, IMO. It shows just how much stronger you are getting as you play. Do you think 10/25 people with only 15k HP and maybe 2k DPS would have been able to defeat something like Deathwing? Or Ragnaros? No, you need to be this powerful hero to take on the enemies that you do. Otherwise it makes no sense.

the numbers are completely arbitrary.

[Count Zero]

Why are people so scared of big numbers ??

[Bryntrollian]

Do you remember the ilvl 800 gear blizzard linked that one time ? They were actually testing those pieces but as full sets to see the effects.

[huth]

That sounds quite ideal to me, personally. The numbers are more down to earth which is what I prefer in an RPG. I think smaller numbers also give a better sense of progression.

Both are arbitrary numbers that have been assigned as an abstraction. There is no such thing as "down to earth" here.

[Deleted]

Hm I could have sworn in one phase of testing I had seen H Mel'Jaraks HP at ~2,200M. I could be wrong tho.

[Tenjen]

numbers increase and ratio's remain similar