So, item levels are getting spiked for no reason. Again.

[Tonkaden]

Oh no they were difficulty differences, too. Impossible to have 10 and 25's be the same difficulty. things were scaled differently

I know you don't know that, mr classic

Your reading comprehension is abysmal. Utterly fucking abysmal. I played through wrath. Ive played every expansion out. Logistically , yea, there are differences, but this doesn't mean they are 4 difficulty levels. There were 2. Normal and Heroic. Just like we have 4 today. LFR, Norm, Heroic, and Mythic. Sure, doing a raid with 16 man heroic might be easier / harder than a heroic raid with 25, but we don't say oh their are multitudes of difficulties.

Oh look, we have Normal-10 man, normal-11 man, normal-18 man. GTFO with this ignorance.

[Gargarensis]

It's been nothing like this 'for a long time'.

Absolutely nothing like it.

It largely started in Legion, but was nowhere near as bad as this.

Those arguing to the contrary are largely telling me that they've been playing the game for a few years; at best.

Funny how they disagree with you lol.

But yeah, you're right. Most of the brats not seeing the problem are kidding themselves, yet again.

The emphasiz being on ilvl doubling after what, 6 months? That IS ridiculous.

[Tonkaden]

25 man heroic was the only difficulty you could get invincible from. If 10 and 25 were the same then why couldn't you get it from 10 too?

They rewarded you for the logistical aspect of getting 25 together as opposed to 10. Normal is still normal. Heroic is still heroic.

[Elias01]

You could buy gear that was even better than T5 when T6 was current.

Np you couldnt. Stp making stuff up. And you had to kill how many? 40+ bosses from heroic dungeons and karazan? And you compare this to 20 minute afk warfront? Give me break.

[rohoz]

Your reading comprehension is abysmal. Utterly fucking abysmal. I played through wrath. Ive played every expansion out. Logistically , yea, there are differences, but this doesn't mean they are 4 difficulty levels. There were 2. Normal and Heroic. Just like we have 4 today. LFR, Norm, Heroic, and Mythic. Sure, doing a raid with 16 man heroic might be easier / harder than a heroic raid with 25, but we don't say oh their are multitudes of difficulties.

Oh look, we have Normal-10 man, normal-11 man, normal-18 man. GTFO with this ignorance.

10man was a difficulty
25man was a difficulty
10man H
25man H

there's 4.

Flexible raids work differently to fixed size raids.

You are extremely stupid.

[Elias01]

The only thing new here is warfronts rewarding heroic raid level gear. Everything else including gearlevels spiking has been the same since Wotlk.

Source: I've been playing since before Vanilla launched.

Yes thats why wotlk was time where wow went downhill.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Wow. Just... Wow. Here's the text from the post, for those who haven't read it.

- New Maximum Item Level: With great challenges come great rewards and the maximum possible item level will go up to 425.
- Battle for Darkshore Warfront: Battle for Darkshore rewards will also increase to 400 from both the outdoor boss and from Warfront quest that can be completed once per cycle. The difficulty of the Warfront will increase however, and the item level required to queue will increase to 335. These changes will go into effect after the current Warfront cycle has ended. Until that time, players will still receive Season 1 rewards.
- World Quest Emissary Rewards: World Quest Emissary weapon and armor rewards will also now scale up to 385 based on the player’s own item level. Rewards from the original Battle for Azeroth Launch World bosses will remain at item level 355 to stay on par with Uldir.
- Dungeon Rewards and Difficulty: The difficulty of Heroic and Mythic dungeons will also be increase as follows: Normal–340, Heroic–355, and Mythic– 370 (baseline).
- Mythic Keystone Dungeons and PvP: During the first week of Season 2 Mythic Keystone Dungeon rewards will be capped at Mythic 6 quality (item level 385). PvP Season 2 end-of-match rewards will be capped at 385.
- Seals of Wartorn Fate: Seals of Wartorn Fate are not being reset and this same currency can be used for Battle of Dazar’alor and Season 2 bonus rolls; the cap on how many can be held at once remains at 5.

Meh, enough is enough.

I'm not putting any more money into this because, frankly, this design team just hasn't got a clue why its systems are broken, and why so many players are resolutely unhappy with it. With a single raid tier, the item level has been well over doubled from what the expansion starts with, and rather than keeping content relevant it just gets made laughably pointless with a shallow system that players want sheer luck from in order to gear past the spots of what they're actually doing.

Welcome to Diablo 3, built by a team that has fundamentally no interest in making a game that its players are interested in.

Dungeons just jump 30 points, while WQs jump to 385.

Jesus.

I think the OP and a chunk of the thread isn't getting the new seasonal nature of WoW, where instead of only funneling players into new areas/dungeons with each content release, previously released content is given that bit of persistent growth to keep it relevant. IMO it's a practice in inefficiency to create 10 or so dungeons each tier, leaving the previous dungeons to languish.
In a world of unlimited funds and instant development, sure. But I think that's only a world that OP wishes for - hardly reality.
That said, some bits of content are being left behind, like the previous raid and the 8.0 raid bosses. TF is just a wildcard, and separate conversation altogether.

[kamuimac]

Thats how every vendor that had any raid gear worked. It was equal to normal, at best. Never heroic.

i think you are obtuse on purpose. or just never played prior to WoD

old normal is current hc.

old hc is current mythic.

[Echocho]

i think you are obtuse on purpose.

old normal is current hc.

old hc is current mythic.

Not entirely. Current mythic is way harder than old heroic ever was. I'm not sure I think that is a good thing, it's not as fun when the content is so difficult that you can't complete it.

[RoKPaNda]

Yes they would just like they did in vannila and tbc.

No they didn't. Who did that? You'd gear up a character in dungeons, you'd stop running them. Unless you were doing it for a specific material that only dropped there or for the tribute buffs in dire maul. If WQs and Emissaries had static rewards and weren't updated people wouldn't run them, same with dungeons.

Sure there is! The sheer mindlessness of doing the same dungeons and WQs non-stop, forever, until your brain melts. Not all content needs to be alive for the whole game for all of the players. Sometimes you can say, "Okay, they've hit Exalted with these factions, they don't need to do those anymore unless they feel like it. It's much better for them to be doing that content over there instead."

EDIT: Let me put it this way... I loved Timeless Isle for what it was, but if it had existed for the entirety of Mists of Pandaria, I would've gotten utterly sick of it.

You're comparing different things though. This isn't like that at all. With Legion we got a new timeless isle each time. Yes content like dungeons does need to be kept relevant.

Timeless Isle is a good example of one thing, it was a catch up area. It was also the ONLY area worth doing and previous areas became obsolete. Dungeons became obsolete, previous world content became obsolete. This way fixes that.

This is better for players, this is better for guilds.

[vsb]

If you were doing 12k with 385, there might be a problem. That is very low.

Yeah, I'm not very lucky with crits and stuff, I often parse gray. But solid stat increase will help me nonetheless.

[Zantos]

i think you are obtuse on purpose. or just never played prior to WoD

old normal is current hc.

old hc is current mythic.

I have been playing since BC. Not being "obtuse". The context of the discussion and my statement is clearly from the time when badge gear was a thing. Thus, the distinction you make is not needed. It just further muddies the situation. Badges stopped being a thing long before the change took place. Anyone talking about badges should know that.

[Borgmore]

Bye....have fun

[ablib]

People here are either stupid, or forgetful. I'm going to say both.

In Wrath the starting raid tier was ilvl 200. Next, when Ulduar came out, it was raised to 219. 19 item levels people.

[vsb]

People here are either stupid, or forgetful. I'm going to say both.

In Wrath the starting raid tier was ilvl 200. Next, when Ulduar came out, it was raised to 219. 19 item levels people.

Yeah, 19 is almost 10% of 200, so ilvl was increased by 10%. Now they are increasing it for less than 10%, 355 -> 385 is 8.5% increase. Wrath was so reckless.

[Canderous1]

didnt they have 2 different item levels for 10/25man naxx? i think that was a thing.

[Sevyvia]

Welcome to World of WarCraft that has been like this for 15 years.

Spoken, truly, like someone who hasn't experienced the game before it was like this, but is desperate to look knowledgeable.

[huth]

Okay, I'll clear this up for the people who just don't get it.

Tell me:

1. When did dungeon items get their item levels increased, rather than new dungeons with better gear?
2. When did World Quests start getting their items increased, rather than replaced via new content?
3. When did vendors get their items increased, rather than a new tier vendor prior to the system removal?
4. When did gear bonus procs start their random item level increase, rather than a specific value?

1. Same thing, different window dressing. Also, badge gear improved over the course of expansions since TBC, effectively providing better loot from Dungeons.
2. First patch after they were introduced for the first time. We also got way more World Quests than we ever got Dailies beforehand, and we still get additional ones in patches, so there is no loss here. Having content be useful for longer is not inherently bad.
3. Why does it matter if the vendors iLvls get increased or they plonk down a second vendor 3y over with better iLvl? Same result either way. Increasing iLvls is just less clutter.
4. Unrelated to issue.

Seems like you're the one "not getting it".

- - - Updated - - -

I think the OP and a chunk of the thread isn't getting the new seasonal nature of WoW, where instead of only funneling players into new areas/dungeons with each content release, previously released content is given that bit of persistent growth to keep it relevant. IMO it's a practice in inefficiency to create 10 or so dungeons each tier, leaving the previous dungeons to languish.
In a world of unlimited funds and instant development, sure. But I think that's only a world that OP wishes for - hardly reality.
That said, some bits of content are being left behind, like the previous raid and the 8.0 raid bosses. TF is just a wildcard, and separate conversation altogether.

It's not like we're not still getting about as much extra content as before, either. We just don't immediately lose the old stuff anymore.

Apparently, that's a terrible insult to... somebody.

[lappee]

Not entirely. Current mythic is way harder than old heroic ever was. I'm not sure I think that is a good thing, it's not as fun when the content is so difficult that you can't complete it.

Mechanically, perhaps but then again we do have way more tools to deal with said mechanics. Previously part of difficulty came from figuring out what spells did what while now we can just read said stuff on DJ

Some bosses are hard because of numbers, others are because of mechanics requiring immunities, mechanics being raid killers (so that even if the mechanic itself isn't "hard" missing it causes wipes), mechanics targeting random raid members (so everyone needs to know exactly what to do), mechanics requiring coordination or any combination of those.

While later expansions have had more bosses with a combination of the difficulties above most raids have had the last boss including majority of them. In hindsight its always easy to say "bosses before weren't hard" because you know the fight all around and you probably compare it to something current ones have but don't count for the toolkit changes.

[AlamarAtMMOC]

Just because you don't understand the reason, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist...

Also, stop focusing so much on the numbers, and how stagnant you appear to want to make progression across tiers... Enjoy the content, or go play something new (that does the same thing, but seems like the best thing since sliced bread, because it's new to you ; ).