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

[sephrinx]

I don't want to "play the patch." I want to play the game.

I don't want my gear and progression to reset every 3 or 4 months.

I hate this god damn game.

[Forogil]

Sigh.

The majority of players were under 200, because only those who completed Normal raids or above would be at the level you're describing.

You haven't been playing this game I see. Normal raids weren't needed for lvl 200.

I checked a legion alt - that hadn't done even a single boss in lfr (or higher) - or even used artifact weapon, and it was still average ilvl 197; with non-upgraded heirloom trinkets.
I cannot see how a significant port of player mains were below that in legion, most would be 210-250, and still the top players currently are not 200 lvls higher than this low-lvl alt, as you incorrectly stated.

So, even when comparing below average players at the start of the expansion with top-geared players at the moment there is not a 200 level difference.

The reason is that invasion point bosses dropped 210+, and lfr actually dropped 195-205+, pre-bfa darkshore gave 210+ items - and there were legendaries in legion that increased the average lvl.

Many of these were part of catchup-mechanisms, that legion had as all preceding expansions.

So, in summary your post contained:

'Corrections' that are obviously wrong.

[Bonegoat]

I feel you Jeezo, I feel you. And also the answer to all of your questions are : Legion/BfA.

[Osmeric]

1) The scaling is now so large, irrespective of what content players are doing, that new gear doesn't feel like an achievement.

So, you're claiming that if I get gear that has a smaller ilvl/stat increase, it will feel like MORE of an achievement?

This is obvious bullshit.

What stops the feeling of achievement is a long string of rewards, that causes reward fatigue. Making the individual steps in that chain smaller wouldn't fix that fatigue.

[Ealyssa]

My one, for example, stipulates what this expansion starts with; meaning the item level that levelling starts with from level 110.

Holy shit you're so smart you can't even check the numbers do you ? Because you ARE WRONG. You said something retarded just like all your comment in this thread, deal with it.

[Pua]

So, you're claiming that if I get gear that has a smaller ilvl/stat increase, it will feel like MORE of an achievement?

This is obvious bullshit.

That's not what I'm arguing.

At the moment, I'm questioning whether or not it's worth clearing it up for someone who clearly isn't interested in viewing alternative opinions to his own.

Okay, but I'll keep it short:

The snag is that item level is important for both content, and controlled player development. As things stand, players are in absolutely no control of the development of their players because they have no say in what procs happen, to what items, and to what extent. It's entirely random, and built by a system that is now exasperating item issues because of the other point Ghostcrawler made that you've completely ignored either accepting, or discussing (I have an inkling why - namely, that it proves my point and disproves yours).

What this means is that going from an item level of 200 to an item level of well over 350 is completely unnecessary, and has largely happened, I think, because of the utterly unnecessary number of difficulties that are being provided by endgame PvE, as well as the laughably random proc system. Ultimately, neither dungeons nor raids need five and four difficulties to meet their demand. It's utterly unnecessary, and the majority of players who only raid the bottom levels of those are getting absolutely nothing from them as a result. The point made about Wrath earlier, that it only jumped 77 points as an entire expansion, is being conveniently ignored by people like yourself who can't accept that it didn't have anywhere near the 'problem' that people think the new Diablo 3 system is helping.

So, do you think Ghostcrawler was right? Do you think he was wrong? Do you understand why using a Diablo 3 system is a huge problem across the board?

Or are you a pure benefit-winner from a broken approach to gearing, which explains why you think bad design is really great?

Answers on a postcard.

Holy shit you're so smart you can't even check the numbers do you ? Because you ARE WRONG. You said something retarded just like all your comment in this thread, deal with it.

My apologies; I've just noted that you're in Switzerland and may therefore struggle with English.

If you can't grasp what I'm telling you for that reason, there's not really much power I have to fix it - the only other language I speak properly is Dutch.

[cparle87]

No the argument is about to high and spiked ilvl increase.I felt it for 1st time in legion and then it moved to BFA.What is it +5 ilvl per difficulty?LFR>Normal>HC>Mythic then repeat it a few times per patch and you end up with item squish on the 3rd expansion.

Nothing wrong with that. You level up, hit cap, become progressively stronger. Then when a squish comes it flattens the entire bar to become linear until you hit the next cap. They had a graph showing this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=item...ySUn9lkEbaqaM:

See those little upswings at each level cap? That's where we are now. Becoming stronger tiers go by and we gear up. Then a squish happens and it goes linear like it is 1-60 on that bar from 1-110 and we get another upswing.

[Pua]

I feel you Jeezo, I feel you. And also the answer to all of your questions are : Legion/BfA.

Correct!

If I knew you in real life, I'd come up with a prize.

[Willias]

This just exaggerates the issue that happens around level 117 when you hit the expansion's actual gear reset. Stats just start blowing up at that point, and you realize that you're just climbing back up to where player power was back in Legion at a stupid rate.

The original stat squish was to bring player stat values back into easily understandable levels and to help Blizzard's back end systems to work more efficiently. Doing stat squishes every other expansion kind of misses the point of the original stat squish, and shows a lack of foresight on the part of the developers.

[Osmeric]

That's not what I'm arguing.

You're attempting to avoid being contradicted by making your points so meandering and muddled that you can deny any attempt to interpret them.

[Pua]

You're attempting to avoid being contradicted by making your points so meandering and muddled that you can deny any attempt to interpret them.

So you've nothing to say about my earlier correction of what you clearly hold as a wrong view.

Noted.

What stops the feeling of achievement is a long string of rewards, that causes reward fatigue. Making the individual steps in that chain smaller wouldn't fix that fatigue.

So, you agree with my other view; that dungeons and raids have too many difficulties?

[Marrilaife]

What stops the feeling of achievement is a long string of rewards, that causes reward fatigue.

Nope, what stops the feeling of achievement is that it takes absolutely no effort to get semi-decent gear. In the past people had to run dungeons etc. to catch up, stuff like farming badges or the wotlk / cata wave of dungeons with better gear (3 icc dungeons, 2 troll dungeons, 3 dragon soul dungeons). Now it's log in, do 4-5 mindless world quests, collect gear.

As they say, easy came, easy went. No one cares about stuff they get for free and don't have to work for.

Having to work through a ladder of rewards that has clear upgrade structure is how rpg works. No one goes from rags to bis gear in 1 go.

The issue is around 60% of the content in wow's "ladder" is cannibalized by world quests. Why would people bother to do mythic+5 or normal raiding if they get the same rewards from invasion and emissary boxes? People always choose path of least resistance.

In my opinion world quests rewards should immediately start at higher ilvl floor (not laughable 295) but cap out at lower ceiling, enough so people can queue for lfr and enter mythic0 dungeons, but not replace most forms of casual end game. World quests should work as a quick catch up instead of standalone endgame grind.

[MoanaLisa]

- It is a ridiculous system that breaks immersion and any sense of character within the game due to rapidly changing number values

RPG Immersion is broken anyway if you're even thinking about the number values on your gear in any sense at all. Immersion is broken in any case when a new expansion starts as the best gear is replaced quickly by leveling content gear. You may or may not have a point but basing it around something like 'immersion' doesn't make any sense.

[Forogil]

It was 277, still that doesn't invalidate your point, on the contrary it strengthens it. 264 was the heroic 10/normal 25 gear. 200 item level gear from heroics was awarded only from the final boss of each heroic instance, not the entire dungeon. I think the rest was ilv 185 or something similar.

So, between heroics dungeons and final raid boss wrath had 92 levels.
BFA between heroics dungeons, 325 and realistic current top, 390, we have 65 levels.

You have to include leveling content.

The idea that we have to include leveling contents for BFA and ignore it for Wrath is a bit odd; what did Wrath start leveling with, 120?

[Kathranis]

I think a lot of people are looking at an individual drop and conflating that with being fully geared in BiS for some reason.

Getting one 385 piece from an emissary cache once or twice a week is not comparable to gearing up in a mythic dungeons or normal or heroic raids.


If you're gearing exclusively via world content, you'll get a 400+ piece every 3~ weeks from Darkshore and maybe a 380+ piece once or twice a week. And it won't take long before you start getting duplicates. It's unlikely a player playing in this style will come close to hitting an overall ilvl of 400 before the next tier drops.

[Elias01]

I think a lot of people are looking at an individual drop and conflating that with being fully geared in BiS for some reason.

Getting one 385 piece from an emissary cache once or twice a week is not comparable to gearing up in a mythic dungeons or normal or heroic raids.


If you're gearing exclusively via world content, you'll get a 400+ piece every 3~ weeks from Darkshore and maybe a 380+ piece once or twice a week. And it won't take long before you start getting duplicates. It's unlikely a player playing in this style will come close to hitting an overall ilvl of 400 before the next tier drops.

Well currenly in S1 i am 375 itemlvl with 7 days play time so yeah. 400 every 3 weeks? I dont think so. It is more like 2-3 every 2 weeks. You completly ignore world boss, weekly events and lucky tiatnforiging.

It is not like you have to play 6 months to reach itemlvl 400+. It is like saying it is ok becouse getting 415 itemlvl took casuals 12 motnhs becouse thats how long have been expansion out. No it is about in game play time. And dont tell me that person who raids will have less play time than actual casual player. From what we know doing raids is pretty time consuming so how is raider getting loot faster again? Pretty sure getting my 375itemlvl took me far less play time than any of current raider doing heroic/mythic.

[Tojara]

I hate to break it to people, but new raid tiers have been invalidating the previous for a very long time, just in a different way.

It starts to break down a bit when you compare TBC/Vanilla to modern day (you can actually make some comparisons to TBC BTW), but it certainly was the case in WoTLK. People have to understand, they just did things differently then (arguably worse) and the catch up mechanisms were different.

Legion/BFA have their own model to where iLvL increases by 30 between tiers and dungeons/WQ are scaled up to compensate as well. This essentially (for the most part) invalidates pretty much everything in the previous tier. The key component here though, is that WQ scale based on gear you already have, and dungeon difficulty actually increases as well. The new seasons dungeons are harder than launch dungeons simply because of a scaling increase. You still have to go and increase your iLvL however, just like any other expansion.

WoD did something similar at the end of the expansion, but they did this virtue of adding Mythic difficulty to dungeons, something we didn't have before. This essentially invalidated Highmaul.

I'm actually curious what people are arguing about. Some of you are the same people who don't recognize that daily quests are essentially the same as WQ. The only difference being that WQ offer better rewards, and scaling rewards. These rewards are never amazing, but they essentially get you to a level right before raid content arrives. If you want to accelerate the process you can do heroic, mythic, or M+ dungeons. Essentially what they do now is give you far more options.

Where a lot of these arguments fall a part are when you actually analyze how they approached things in the past. Dungeons remained static, essentially making them worthless past the first few weeks of an expansion. Catch up gear (which can be compared to a new season in Legion/BFA) was accomplished by currency systems and new dungeons being added. It's exactly the same thing, it's just approached differently. I'd argue the new model is better simply because you don't invalidate every single dungeon in the game and at the same time you elevate the difficulty of dungeons/WQ to compensate. In the past you would ignore those dungeons and old dailies completely, because the new ones were just better (thus, invalidating everything you did in the previous tier/season).

Seriously, how is it that different? In Cataclysm every fucking launch dungeon was worthless after you started raiding. When Firelands was on the horizon the only way you prepared for it was to do the launch raids OR do the new dungeons they released with increase difficulty (ZG/ZA). All launch dungeons and quests once the new dungeons and tier hit were worthless. When Dragonsoul came out, the only way you prepared for this dungeon was do to the new 5 mans that launched, or do Firelands. Now ZG/ZA was worthless, and launch raids were completely useless.

I can compare WoTLK too, which a lot of people forget is the bastion of "casualcraft" (others words, not mine). Here the exact same model as Cataclysm existed. New tier releases? Ignore the previous ones and it's dungeons completely? Why, because they are useless. ToGC comes out and suddenly dungeon loot is somewhat useful, completely invalidating Naxx. ICC comes out? Dungeon loot from the new 5 mans released with that patch completely invalidate Ulduar. The part that makes WoTLK far more "casual" than other expansions however lies within it's badge system though (which if I wanted, could compare to TBC as well). This actually rewarded people for doing trivial content in the form of badges, to essentially collects a good chunk of rewards that were relevant in the current "season". My opening statement about dungeons being invalidated is actually pretty misleading, while their difficulty is invalidated, this era of the game made them relevant by making you do absolutely trivial shit for pretty high tier rewards.

You got two pieces of tier gear for doing trivial dungeons, raids and dungeon finder each week during WoTLK, let that sink in. Do people not remember this shit?

iLvLs have been spiked for pretty much the entirety of WoW being out. Previous tiers/raids always get invalidated for the most part, except for a few key items (trinkets) or legendary parts that existed in certain areas of the game. The only real era this didn't exist was Vanilla WoW, and yes, this happened in TBC. I guess you can rationalize this not happening in TBC either, but only if you can come to terms with the fact that "casual" players could just stomp out trivial dungeons/raids (Karazhan) for badges to buy various rewards throughout the expansion (during Sunwell, you could buy BT iLvL gear from a vendor by doing Karazhan and Heroic dungeons!).

But yeah, invalidating shit has been happening for well over a decade whether you like it or not. Personally prefer the approach they do now, because the ~10 dungeons they launch on the release of every expansion aren't completely invalidated (only used during launch weeks, leveling, or badge farms) difficulty wise. They get brought up every tier and aren't complete stomps. To a certain degree I liked the Vanilla model because everything felt useful for far longer (to some extent this would be annoying as well). This ended in TBC though. Aside from Gruul's Lair for DST, as soon as we hit Hyjal/BT, we dropped everything before it like a sack of shit.

[Elias01]

I hate to break it to people, but new raid tiers have been invalidating the previous for a very long time, just in a different way.

It starts to break down a bit when you compare TBC/Vanilla to modern day (you can actually make some comparisons to TBC BTW), but it certainly was the case in WoTLK. People have to understand, they just did things differently then (arguably worse) and the catch up mechanisms were different.

Legion/BFA have their own model to where iLvL increases by 30 between tiers and dungeons/WQ are scaled up to compensate as well. This essentially (for the most part) invalidates pretty much everything in the previous tier. The key component here though, is that WQ scale based on gear you already have, and dungeon difficulty actually increases as well. The new seasons dungeons are harder than launch dungeons simply because of a scaling increase. You still have to go and increase your iLvL however, just like any other expansion.

WoD did something similar at the end of the expansion, but they did this virtue of adding Mythic difficulty to dungeons, something we didn't have before. This essentially invalidated Highmaul.

I'm actually curious what people are arguing about. Some of you are the same people who don't recognize that daily quests are essentially the same as WQ. The only difference being that WQ offer better rewards, and scaling rewards. These rewards are never amazing, but they essentially get you to a level right before raid content arrives. If you want to accelerate the process you can do heroic, mythic, or M+ dungeons. Essentially what they do now is give you far more options.

Where a lot of these arguments fall a part are when you actually analyze how they approached things in the past. Dungeons remained static, essentially making them worthless past the first few weeks of an expansion. Catch up gear (which can be compared to a new season in Legion/BFA) was accomplished by currency systems and new dungeons being added. It's exactly the same thing, it's just approached differently. I'd argue the new model is better simply because you don't invalidate every single dungeon in the game and at the same time you elevate the difficulty of dungeons/WQ to compensate. In the past you would ignore those dungeons and old dailies completely, because the new ones were just better (thus, invalidating everything you did in the previous tier/season).

Seriously, how is it that different? In Cataclysm every fucking launch dungeon was worthless after you started raiding. When Firelands was on the horizon the only way you prepared for it was to do the launch raids OR do the new dungeons they released with increase difficulty (ZG/ZA). All launch dungeons and quests once the new dungeons and tier hit were worthless. When Dragonsoul came out, the only way you prepared for this dungeon was do to the new 5 mans that launched, or do Firelands. Now ZG/ZA was worthless, and launch raids were completely useless.

I can compare WoTLK too, which a lot of people forget is the bastion of "casualcraft" (others words, not mine). Here the exact same model as Cataclysm existed. New tier releases? Ignore the previous ones and it's dungeons completely? Why, because they are useless. ToGC comes out and suddenly dungeon loot is somewhat useful, completely invalidating Naxx. ICC comes out? Dungeon loot from the new 5 mans released with that patch completely invalidate Ulduar. The part that makes WoTLK far more "casual" than other expansions however lies within it's badge system though (which if I wanted, could compare to TBC as well). This actually rewarded people for doing trivial content in the form of badges, to essentially collects a good chunk of rewards that were relevant in the current "season". My opening statement about dungeons being invalidated is actually pretty misleading, while their difficulty is invalidated, this era of the game made them relevant by making you do absolutely trivial shit for pretty high tier rewards.

You got two pieces of tier gear for doing trivial dungeons, raids and dungeon finder each week during WoTLK, let that sink in. Do people not remember this shit?

iLvLs have been spiked for pretty much the entirety of WoW being out. Previous tiers/raids always get invalidated for the most part, except for a few key items (trinkets) or legendary parts that existed in certain areas of the game. The only real era this didn't exist was Vanilla WoW, and yes, this happened in TBC. I guess you can rationalize this not happening in TBC either, but only if you can come to terms with the fact that "casual" players could just stomp out trivial dungeons/raids (Karazhan) for badges to buy various rewards throughout the expansion (during Sunwell, you could buy BT iLvL gear from a vendor by doing Karazhan and Heroic dungeons!).

But yeah, invalidating shit has been happening for well over a decade whether you like it or not. Personally prefer the approach they do now, because the ~10 dungeons they launch on the release of every expansion aren't completely invalidated (only used during launch weeks, leveling, or badge farms) difficulty wise. They get brought up every tier and aren't complete stomps. To a certain degree I liked the Vanilla model because everything felt useful for far longer (to some extent this would be annoying as well). This ended in TBC though. Aside from Gruul's Lair for DST, as soon as we hit Hyjal/BT, we dropped everything before it like a sack of shit.

You couldnt invalidate older raids back in TBC becouse gear didnt had such giant power creep in first place. Few items from vendor didnt make you skip any content at all there were plenty of guilds doing old raids all the time. And in order to get those items you actualy had to do something (running heroic dungeons) and no just being afk in warfront or LFR. Dont even bring WOTLk becouse that expansion no matter what other people say was time where players start quiting in giant numbers as direction of game changed. Biggest grow was during TBC not during WOTLK. No WOTLK wasnt great expansion as many beliaves becouse it had subs on all time high. WOTLK was time where direction of game changed and start damaging game thats why you see nothing but sub losses since then. Saying things now are ok becouse they were also in WOTLK is absolute nonsense as those same things we have now also made people start qiuting game during WOTLK.

Oh yeah and BTW raids back in TBC had no difficulty levels so if you actualy wanted to have those bosses cleard you had to do that 1 difficulty. You couldnt just skip raids and go into LFR to see everything as we do now. So for reason guilds had still bosses on to kill list they went to do older raids. Saying TBC raids were invalided with gear is absolut nonsense becouse main reason why people actualy did raids back in TBC is to beat and see bosses. This vanished with LFR.

[Pua]

So, between heroics dungeons and final raid boss wrath had 92 levels.
BFA between heroics dungeons, 325 and realistic current top, 390, we have 65 levels.

I cleared this up earlier.

Wrath dungeons started at 200 and ended its last tier at 277.

This expansion started at 310 (level cap dungeons) and its first tier is 415, without including item level procs.

[Forogil]

I cleared this up earlier.

Your attempts at clearing up are just making a bigger mess, and I can't see anyone trusting you.

Wrath dungeons started at 200 and ended its last tier at 277.

This expansion started at 310 (level cap dungeons) and its first tier is 415, without including item level procs.

Others say Wrath heroic dungeons started at 185 (200 just for end) and wrath ended 284 - not 277. I can't remember.

However, 415 is clearly not the first tier of this expansion - since we have had one tier and no-one is above 395 in item level.
And 310 are normal dungeons at max-level; comparing that to Wrath heroics is just misleading.