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

[Tojara]

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.

You missed part of my point entirely. First off I said that TBC was a partial example, not a full example. It's also disingenuous on a few grounds because these are entirely different eras. It's not just about raids it's also about dungeons, and dungeons have been invalidated in more ways than one after initial launch of an expansion until Legion came out.

Dungeons weren't invalidated in TBC just like they weren't in WoTLK, and the only reason they weren't was because people were forced do them. The difficulty was flat in dungeons and the rewards were terrible outside of the first couple weeks. The game just forced you to do them for the badges you could get at the end. The challenge and difficulty of these dungeons are gone almost immediately, but we are forced to do them because of busy work.

LFR existing doesn't really change my point about raids being invalidated either. People have, and almost always have done the path of least resistance in this game. The amount of people that joined my guild back in TBC who didn't beat SSC/TK were numerous. Why? Nobody cared to go back and "see" the fights, and the only reason people went back to "see" fights is because gear was attached to it. I assure you most people clearing content dropped both SSC/TK the moment they were able to spend time in Hyjal/BT, just like people dropped Hyjal the moment Sunwell came out. Unless there was a reward attached (trinkets in BT, Warglaive's, or DST), people dropped old content fucking immediately. Maybe you're in the minority of people who just want to see shit, but most people took the path of least resistance, did the content they were able to do and that was it. Most people farmed badges in both TBC/WoTLK to get powerful gear, and they did this by taking the path of least resistance (Heroic dungeons and Karazhan).

Before you cite attunments, they removed most of the relevant ones or difficult ones after they realized how ridiculous it was to force you to do Kael'Thas in TK half a dozen times for a single raid group (not accounting for new recruits, or bench players) because of the limited amount of water the boss dropped.

Again, LFR didn't cause people to stop caring about raids. Most people didn't care about clearing the dungeon a single time, regardless of whether or not there was one difficulty. People did what was easiest for them and acquired gear that was easy for them to get too. People dropped raids that weren't useful or had very little rewards, and this happened in every expansion for every type of player. The assumption you make about why people farmed badges to begin with are also pretty silly. Most people farmed badges because it's all they could do. These people weren't interested in doing raids that weren't easy, nor were they interested in 'skipping' content. Just like you mentioned, badge gear alone wasn't going to allow you to skip content, but that's assuming people wanted to do content to begin with. I know so many people whose only interest in TBC was doing Karazhan each week and getting badges. Why? Because it was the only way they could get gear reliably and that content, along with heroics was easy. This also speaks volumes about game design, because you start to see the need for more 5-10 man content, as these people weren't interested in pursuing raiding at all (25 man at the time, fixed difficulty, and just two 10 man raids). This led to multiple difficulties in WoTLK, every raid having a 10 man variant, and ultimately setting up Cataclysm/MoP to have an alternative to 25 man raiding at the highest difficulty, with them splitting the game into 10/25 man.

Not going to get into sub numbers because it's a very convenient fall back for people that really don't have a leg to stand on. If you want to argue about what made WoTLK great, I'm all ears. But if you're only retort is it was good because it had subs, well, why even have a discussion? My argument has and always will be that WoTLK was pretty bare bones and was propped up by a few things that later expansions didn't have. One, people wanted to see what happened to Artha's, and two the game was 4 years old at the time as opposed to 14. I'm not excusing bad game design by Blizzard over the years, or less popular expansion features... but to expect the game to grow constantly for 14 years is pretty unrealistic. Could they have curbed sub loss over the years better? Yeah, probably, but people are living in a fucking fantasy land if they think any design choice or feature additions would have continued to make the game grow.

[Whiskra]

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

I'm just gonna make the WotLK itemlevels abundantly clear because they've been constantly confused all over this thread.

Launch dungeons dropped ilvl 187 blues on normal (at best, remember, dungeons had level ranges at this point, so item levels for normal launch dungeons varied), and ilvl 200 blues on heroic with the last boss on heroic dropping an ilvl 200 epic as well. Naxx10 dropped ilvl 200 epics, Naxx25 dropped ilvl 213. Kel'thuzad dropped 213 in 10-man and 226 in 25-man. Sartharion dropped ilvl 200 epics in 10 man, and 213 in 25 man. Malygos dropped 213 in 10-man and 226 in 25-man. Ulduar10 dropped ilvl 219 and Ulduar25 dropped ilvl 226. Hardmode drops were 226 for 10man and 232 for 25 man. Val'anyr was ilvl 245. ToC10 normal dropped 232, ToC10 heroic dropped 245, ToC25 normal dropped 245 and ToC25 heroic dropped 258. A few select pieces in Tribute to Insanity would drop at ilvl 272. ToC 5-man dungeon dropped ilvl 200 epics on normal and ilvl 219 epics on heroic. ICC10 normal dropped 251, while ICC10 heroic and ICC25 normal dropped 264. ICC25 heroic dropped 277. Lich King 10-man normal dropped ilvl 258, while Lich King heroic 10-man dropped ilvl 271. Lich King 25-man normal dropped 271 while Lich King heroic 25-man dropped ilvl 284. Shadowmourne was ilvl 284. ICC 5-man dungeons dropped ilvl 219 on normal and 232 on heroic. Halion dropped 258 in 10-man normal, 271 in 10-man heroic, and dropped 271 on 25-man normal and 284 on 25-man heroic.

During the course of WotLK, a bunch of different emblems were available, with a new variant launching each tier. During T7 you got Emblems of Heroism from heroic dungeons and 10-man raids. These could be used to purchase items of ilvl 200 epic quality. 25-man raids awarded Emblems of Valor, which could be used to purchase ilvl 213 items. In T8, Emblems of Conquest were introduced which could be used to purchase ilvl 226 gear. Dungeons and T7 10-man still dropped Emblems of Heroism. T7 25-man still dropped Emblems of Valor. Ulduar 10-man would award Emblems of Valor. In T9, the Emblem system was overhauled. T9 raids would award Emblems of Triumph, which could be used to purchase ilvl 245 gear, as well as the base ilvl 232 T9 sets which did not drop from any boss but had to be purchased and then upgraded with Trophies of the Crusade which dropped from ToC 10-man heroic/ToC 25-man normal difficulties and up. All 5-man heroic dungeons and raids prior to ToC would now award Emblems of Conquest. You could now purchase Emblems of Valor with Emblems of Conquest and Emblems of Heroism with Emblems of Valor. ICC introduced Emblems of Frost which could be used to purchase ilvl 264 gear, or T10 gear at ilvl 251, which could be upgraded with various types of Marks of Sanctification which dropped from ICC 10-man heroic/ICC 25-man normal difficulties and up. All heroic dungeons and raids prior to ICC would now award Emblems of Triumph.

I reserve myself for some potential minor errors, but it should be largely accurate.

[Echocho]

People using the "it's always been this way", even if that was true is it really relevant?

If something is wrong it doesn't matter how long it's been wrong it's still wrong. "Well my dad beats me every day so it's fine."

Catch-ups have existed since TBC yes. Catch-ups THIS BAD have never existed.

Getting caught up so you can do normal raids is fine. Getting caught up so you can do mythic raids is insane.

[RoKPaNda]

there is - if you level a new character. I dunno. I just miss hacing old content being relevant cause you needed to do it in order to reach the newer content.

Oh boy, I can level an alt and do a couple dungeons and get my guild to waste their time carrying me through attunements. FUCK YEAH! SO MUCH FUN!

If it was better this way they would be losing subs left and right. There is nothing to reach for no point to actually staying subbed. Oh I'm going to be on vacation for a few weeks eh might as well deactivate my sub gear will just get reset in a month or two anyway.

Yes because one change is going to fix the game being old as balls. You're dreaming if you think that there was ever more to reach for than there is now. The old way was "Oh hey you're not in the small fraction of the playerbase that raids at all? Too bad tough shit. Want to get into raiding? Well you're going to have to leech off a mediocre group in order to eventually get into a decent group! Sweet!" Garbage way of doing things. They spent right up until the end of Cataclysm trying to get more than a tiny amount of people engaged in raiding. For those of us that always loved raiding it was great, from the perspective of the company that designed it and their investors, the old way of doing things was an absolute failure. Especially for something that took a fuckton of resources in major content patches.

[Raysz]

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.

This has happened always in WoW, since Vanilla item levels have gone up, are you new to the game? Some people are just grasping for straws, dear god. Before you make some random uninformed post, try to educate yourself.

[Th3Scourge]

Great video and summary on the topic of gear. It is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the game right now (next to class design)

Some time ago, I would look at boss loot tables and map out my gearing, some gear would stay with you for an entire expansion because it was just that good. Now, everything is just linear is just dull and unrewarding.

It's just the same gameplay, just bigger numbers.

Let's think about the BC gearing model (pre-sunwell). Gear was non-linear, significantly harder to acquire, players at the top echelon were happy, super-casual players were happy that they had something to aspire to. Both hardcore and casuals were happy. Now, only one side is happy and that's really bad for the game

[Drewbacca]

It reflects (or it should) power character and progression. But not anymore since you can get heroic raid ilvl from warfronts, a literal afk loot distributor.

I know what ilvl does. My question is what is the point of the squish? As someone who understands basic math I can tell someone's a higher ilvl regardless of whether they're 200 or 2,000,000. People keep getting worked up over high numbers? Who cares? This should be on the bottom of Blizzard's priority list. I think the only reason for it would be for technical issues that would slow the game down. If that's the case, why does it matter to players how often it occurs?

[Wisconsen]

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?

I'll let you start with those four. And, to be fair, anyone is allowed to answer them. I'll happily correct those who are wrong, just to put this "this iz fiftein yearz lolz" claim out of the thread, because it's laughably incorrect.

@OneWay, @XDurionX, @Gaidax and @Felrush are all invited to answer these questions, too.

I don't disagree, but there are some points i think should be addressed.

1 - This is to keep all dungeons relevant instead of only the newest. It doesn't matter if a xpack has X or X+N dungeons if only the most recent 1-2 are relevant because of gear ilvl. Argueably this shouldn't matter because of M+, which should keep all dungeons relevant. However, M+ is a steaming pile of shit atm. Both in gear acquisition, class balance, and most importantly Fun. M+ isn't fun, M+ sucks for gearing, and M+ has shitty class balance via utility being highly clustered on specific classes.

2 - WQs replaced old daily quests. This again is keeping content relevant, instead of X specific and static dailies for a raid tier, followed be a new set of X specific and static dailies for a raid tier that completely invalidate all previous sets in regards to progression. We have a large number of rotating quests.

3 - I assume this is in regards to the azerite vendor. This is side effect of the vendors in question giving gear that drops. When that drop ilvl increase the vendor has to as well. This is actually a good thing in this instance, but only because it's bring back a badge system which gives players a deterministic way to gear up and specific, tangible, and realistic goals to set. This is good.

4 - MoP started the titan forging idiocy. It was bad then, it's still bad now.

Now to be clear, i agree the current state of gearing is really bad. Bad for the game, Bad for players, Bad from a design perspective, and Bad Mechanically. It's really really bad. Gear no longer matters, which is a huge problem for a game who's primary progression systems are gear based, because that means progression doesn't matter. People don't care about gear because it seems easy to get but is actually harder than ever to get.

It seems easy to get because everything is giving high level gear, especially with catch-up systems being so much more prevalent than previously. You can do almost anything and get showered in gear.

It's actually harder than ever because while you are getting showered in gear, it's all shit. If it didn't titanforge a high ilvl and get a socket it doesn't really matter.

This is the a large reason guilds farm lower difficulties even after the base ilvl drops are 100% useless to them for progression. Fishing for Titanforges. It's cancerous to the game and might be too late to actually excise, though hopefully not. It artificially extends content. Hobbles the crafting system. Promotes bad play practices. And, rewards gambling rather than setting and accomplishing goals.

[Marrilaife]

Great video and summary on the topic of gear. It is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the game right now (next to class design)

I don't agree with everything that he said, but I do agree with 2 major points:

1. The gear used to have more customization with many sockets, coloured and with socket bonus, many enchants, other profession enhancements like embroideries, belt buckles, shoulder enchants. It's all been replaced with rng, rampant titanforging and "sim yourself" attitude among players who still care about the gear, because nobody really has any firm guidelines in the sea of rng gear.

2. The "catchups" that were supposed to foster participation in the end game (no one's excluded etc.) instead cannibalize it, replace it completely. Attach good rewards to bad content and players will do it for the reward to an extent, and then unsub because "I can't really pin point it, but the game became kinda boring..." Well duh, if you're constantly incentivized and compelled to participate in snooze fest content, while most moderately challenging content is not that appealing reward-wise, maybe the super top end is, but average player won't be ready for that content without the intermediary steps.

And then we have the usual issue that normal raiding / mythic+5 rewards aren't good enough, they can be made obsolete by emissaries and invasions, but then the player wants to "progress" in mythic+10 or heroic / mythic raiding and hits a wall. Suddenly he sees people want experienced players, but he never had any reason to experience that content in more forgiving, yet slightly challenging setting. All he did was grind world quests, that taught him nothing. He's "ready" gear wise, but not ready experience wise. And it feels like he has to "backtrack" now into content that awards no upgrades to get the required experience. He gets frustrated, calls the playerbase "elitist" and unsubs.

[Airlick]

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.

They didn't completely invalidate previous tiers, though. For one, some items were so good they were being used even 2 tiers forward.
Two, gearing was a much slower process, so it was pretty likely for guilds to be running old raids to gear up new raiders or target some specific items for raiders that didn't get them beforehand. This is aside of attunements, obviously.
Three, the way they "invalidated" previous tiers was strictly by raid gear being better. From what I recall, badge gear (even in WotLK) was barely on par with previous tier raid's gear, the itemization was much worse and there were no tier sets. All of this made badge gear merely a catch-up mechanic that sped up the gearing process for new/returning players, but they still had to run old raids or get boosted by their guilds in order to really start contributing to their guilds' progress. Gem sockets alone, which badge gear usually didn't have, made a world of difference.
This is completely different from just increasing item levels across the board combined with the way gearing and ilvl works now. There was no pressure to change gear strictly based on ilvl even in WotLK, and the power creep was simply much smaller. You didn't replace a very well itemized piece of gear for a random reward with useless stats simply because it had 5 ilvl more. What they are doing is lazy design that is getting implemented solely because it takes little time and effort to develop, and to force players to start farming what is basically old content, counting on RNGods to smile on them. Those MAUs need to increase, after all.

[Th3Scourge]

I don't agree with everything that he said, but I do agree with 2 major points:

1. The gear used to have more customization with many sockets, coloured and with socket bonus, many enchants, other profession enhancements like embroideries, belt buckles, shoulder enchants. It's all been replaced with rng, rampant titanforging and "sim yourself" attitude among players who still care about the gear, because nobody really has any firm guidelines in the sea of rng gear.

2. The "catchups" that were supposed to foster participation in the end game (no one's excluded etc.) instead cannibalize it, replace it completely. Attach good rewards to bad content and players will do it for the reward to an extent, and then unsub because "I can't really pin point it, but the game became kinda boring..." Well duh, if you're constantly incentivized and compelled to participate in snooze fest content, while most moderately challenging content is not that appealing reward-wise, maybe the super top end is, but average player won't be ready for that content without the intermediary steps.

And then we have the usual issue that normal raiding / mythic+5 rewards aren't good enough, they can be made obsolete by emissaries and invasions, but then the player wants to "progress" in mythic+10 or heroic / mythic raiding and hits a wall. Suddenly he sees people want experienced players, but he never had any reason to experience that content in more forgiving, yet slightly challenging setting. All he did was grind world quests, that taught him nothing. He's "ready" gear wise, but not ready experience wise. And it feels like he has to "backtrack" now into content that awards no upgrades to get the required experience. He gets frustrated, calls the playerbase "elitist" and unsubs.

You touch on a key point about incentives and content. I think this is a direct result of Ion's influence. I'm trying to stay away from bashing devs where possible but here we have an individual who has been know for being highly analytical, data driven, meticulous and methodical in his approaches both as a player and professionally.

In many respects these are very good qualities to have but the purely quantitative approaches to game design seem to fail the 'fun' test. I for one absolutely despise Warfronts with a passion, however I am incentivized to participate in them by the loot from the quest. It doesn't make the game fun, nor rewarding, to participate in content which just makes the game boring and unfulfilling.

[Tojara]

They didn't completely invalidate previous tiers, though. For one, some items were so good they were being used even 2 tiers forward.
Two, gearing was a much slower process, so it was pretty likely for guilds to be running old raids to gear up new raiders or target some specific items for raiders that didn't get them beforehand. This is aside of attunements, obviously.
Three, the way they "invalidated" previous tiers was strictly by raid gear being better. From what I recall, badge gear (even in WotLK) was barely on par with previous tier raid's gear, the itemization was much worse and there were no tier sets. All of this made badge gear merely a catch-up mechanic that sped up the gearing process for new/returning players, but they still had to run old raids or get boosted by their guilds in order to really start contributing to their guilds' progress. Gem sockets alone, which badge gear usually didn't have, made a world of difference.
This is completely different from just increasing item levels across the board combined with the way gearing and ilvl works now. There was no pressure to change gear strictly based on ilvl even in WotLK, and the power creep was simply much smaller. You didn't replace a very well itemized piece of gear for a random reward with useless stats simply because it had 5 ilvl more. What they are doing is lazy design that is getting implemented solely because it takes little time and effort to develop, and to force players to start farming what is basically old content, counting on RNGods to smile on them. Those MAUs need to increase, after all.

It was actually pretty unlikely that people even in Vanilla would go and clear old raids when Naxxaramas was out. This only really happened if you were light on geared tanks. Otherwise, most guilds (I'm talking 13 years ago, not on private servers when things are easier as everybody knows exactly what to do) dropped MC/BWL. Gear from AQ40 wasn't exactly amazing for Naxxaramas aside from C'Thun, and considering that most guilds ran 12-16 hours back then, convincing people to go back solely for C'Thun wasn't something every guild wanted to do. Read that I'm talking progression, not necessarily the state the game reaches when private server guilds have everything on farm.

Vanilla was a different beast and people can make an argument about it, but not TBC. I don't know of any guild at the time that was progressing through content that went back to SSC/TK/Mag's after Hyjal/BT were unlocked. There was nothing of value in those instances for the time spent, and you were much better off farming trash in Hyjal/BT or spending your valuable time just progressing in those instances. They were an absolute waste of time, much like Hyjal was a waste of time once Sunwell came out. You can cite tier, but considering you only needed one piece of tier from either BT/Hyjal to make up your 4 piece, the chances of you needing anything from Hyjal at that point were slim.

The absolute only item that people went back and farmed was DST from Gruul's Lair, even late into the expansion. It was BiS for the entire expansion, and considering the time spent for a shot at it, most guilds didn't mind the 30 minute off-time to see if one would drop.

So aside from Gruul's Lair and BT, you didn't really do old raids when the next tier came out. Maybe there are some magical guilds out there that went back and cleared Hyjal, SSC/TK every week. Whether to gear current members or returning players (we didn't, returning players just got badge gear, did ZA or came along to BT).

Not sure what iteration of WoTLK you played, but badge gear had a pretty wide range of what you could buy, including two set items.

I mean I don't necessarily agree with the model of having to farm old content to get new rewards (you stated this yourself), but that's exactly what they did in TBC and WoTLK as well in the form of badges. I mean the badge vendor in WoTLK literally updated every single patch to match the new tiers rewards, whereas new badge items only appeared once in TBC (with Sunwell unlock). I'm not really making excuses for BFA design, but your reasoning is pretty contradictory. You're literally against farming old content (BFA/Legion dungeons), but at the same time you were okay with farming old content in an expansion like WoTLK? I'm not sure if you have amnesia or not, but there were a couple items that high end players wanted every time a new "season" of badge gear came out. I know people hate the word seasonal, but WoTLK essentially had seasons with badges, just like they had seasons with the PvP bosses in Vault lol.

I've played the game since the start and have a pretty good handle on what was important and what wasn't, especially as a RL/GM for all of that time. Vanilla aside, there were very few instances in this games history (exception being legendary collection, and a couple trinkets) where you would drag your entire guild to a previous raid tier to gear up. New people gearing up was pretty easy in all iterations of this game, including Vanilla. The only reason Vanilla was easy to gear up is because power creep truly didn't exist in this expansion and you could get appropriately geared from some dungeons, ZG and AQ20 without stepping foot into a raid (again, this excludes tanks for Naxxaramas progression).

[ShmooDude]

One thing everyone seems to be forgetting is that item levels now (or even pre-squish) are NOT comparable to ilvls in Classic, BC, or WotlK: http://classic-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Item_level It wasn't until Cataclysm that ilvl by itself defined stats on an item.

For example both of these are ilvl 200:
https://wotlk.evowow.com/?item=41659 (Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes, epic) vs https://wotlk.evowow.com/?item=41658 (Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes, blue)

Wotlk quest items started at ilvl 138 to ilvl 174 greens
Dungeons ilvl 166 to ilvl 200 blues
Raids ilvl 200 to ilvl 284 epics

But, once you factor in the fact that greens are stat inferior to blues and epics pre-cataclysm, it's really not dissimilar from what we have now.

[Alz94]

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.

They did the same in Legion. Just sayin..

[kamuimac]

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.

the only reason why you would be 375 if that you either run mythic +/hc raids - or you did play since launch and you were 360+ prior to release of up to 370 gear from invasions.

stop bs . - 1 x 400 itlv item every 3 weeks and 1 chance of 1-2 x 400 itlv items every 3 week wont make you 400 itlv overall not sooner then in 2020.

- - - Updated - - -

I know what ilvl does. My question is what is the point of the squish? As someone who understands basic math I can tell someone's a higher ilvl regardless of whether they're 200 or 2,000,000. People keep getting worked up over high numbers? Who cares? This should be on the bottom of Blizzard's priority list. I think the only reason for it would be for technical issues that would slow the game down. If that's the case, why does it matter to players how often it occurs?

2 things :

1)first ofc extremly outdated systems wow runs on .

2)rewards seems more worth to chase then its on low itlv gear - for example in legion we were hiting such high levels of gear that it seemed worthless to chase extra 5-10 itlv if gear was 1000 - yes mathematicaly it was worth it but 15/1000 is 1,5 % - 15 / 300 is 5% upgrade - psychologicaly its bigger reward although mathematicaly they would be the same .

- - - Updated - - -

Great video and summary on the topic of gear. It is, in my opinion, the biggest problem with the game right now (next to class design)

Some time ago, I would look at boss loot tables and map out my gearing, some gear would stay with you for an entire expansion because it was just that good. Now, everything is just linear is just dull and unrewarding.

It's just the same gameplay, just bigger numbers.

Let's think about the BC gearing model (pre-sunwell). Gear was non-linear, significantly harder to acquire, players at the top echelon were happy, super-casual players were happy that they had something to aspire to. Both hardcore and casuals were happy. Now, only one side is happy and that's really bad for the game

seen it - typical rambling of burned out mythic raider for whom gear threadmill has been only source of joy in this game.

especially the part about "i could name every piece of gear i had " - jezus there is a limit to how someone can nolife the game.

the part about secondaries that mattered and gems ? fuck blizzard removed it because 99% of playerbase ignored any caps and never enchanted and gemmed in first place.

Preach is just salty because he has no fun playing game but since its his only source of income he cannot leave it because next to nobody wants to watch him play other games - thats why he had to let Andy go because his multigaming channel flopped badly .

[AlmightyGerkin]

the only reason why you would be 375 if that you either run mythic +/hc raids - or you did play since launch and you were 360+ prior to release of up to 370 gear from invasions.

stop bs . - 1 x 400 itlv item every 3 weeks and 1 chance of 1-2 x 400 itlv items every 3 week wont make you 400 itlv overall not sooner then in 2020.

- - - Updated - - -



2 things :

1)first ofc extremly outdated systems wow runs on .

2)rewards seems more worth to chase then its on low itlv gear - for example in legion we were hiting such high levels of gear that it seemed worthless to chase extra 5-10 itlv if gear was 1000 - yes mathematicaly it was worth it but 15/1000 is 1,5 % - 15 / 300 is 5% upgrade - psychologicaly its bigger reward although mathematicaly they would be the same .

- - - Updated - - -



seen it - typical rambling of burned out mythic raider for whom gear threadmill has been only source of joy in this game.

especially the part about "i could name every piece of gear i had " - jezus there is a limit to how someone can nolife the game.

the part about secondaries that mattered and gems ? fuck blizzard removed it because 99% of playerbase ignored any caps and never enchanted and gemmed in first place.

Preach is just salty because he has no fun playing game but since its his only source of income he cannot leave it because next to nobody wants to watch him play other games - thats why he had to let Andy go because his multigaming channel flopped badly .

Really need to look past your ignorance and see it through his perspective.
1: seen it - typical rambling of burned out mythic raider for whom gear threadmill has been only source of joy in this game. Hes done the hardest content the game has to offer and it happens with every tier.
2: especially the part about "i could name every piece of gear i had " - jezus there is a limit to how someone can nolife the game. He was stating back than gear had a much more importance than todays gear has. Back than you were excited to get a piece of gear from the raid and knew what to go for. Now its you get a piece of gear and its meh than you need sim it etc.
3: Irrelevant to what he was saying. Back to the previous point was gear mattering for classes. It made gear more diverse and helped players to know what type of gear to aim for. And people did go for caps like hit cap/spell cap which were the two main ones. The other ones did not really have a cap as much as hit/spell did.

How would you feel if you were in his shoes that you push the hardest content and some person can do 10x lower the difficultly and get a chance to get the same gear item level as you?

[Forogil]

The squish is due to 32-bit integer overflowing in some events.

The original stat squish was due to that, but I think the ilvl squish seems to have other reasons.

And the 32-bit integer issue has been solved, even if at first it seemed a bit oddly done - some things that should trigger on boss-death triggered multiple times for bosses with health above max 32-bit integer (like DMF archaeology drops).

[dirtyjokes]

This system is clearly intended for players who play a patch for a month or two and then come back whenever a new patch is released. Everybody else can grind out on mythic raids. Catch up gear and ilvl spikes are the middle ground for both of these groups.

[sam86]

That is exactly what I want. Progression felt a whole lot more meaningful in those days when every patch didn't completely trivialize all the previous effort you put into the game.

those 'days' were vanilla wow, because even tbc made progress irrelevant with badge gear that was superior to even BT gear (but no bonus however)
and since my guild was ruined twice in vanilla and even made me leave game, i don't miss those days at all, u might were lucky starting from day 1 (i started after bgs were in game) with guild that never had massive drama or break or get cannibalized by other guilds eating ur MT, but i do and i remember them, and i don't miss it one bit spending months farming only for losing the core MT who left to another guild and forget the idea of start farming again

[Elias01]

Oh boy, I can level an alt and do a couple dungeons and get my guild to waste their time carrying me through attunements. FUCK YEAH! SO MUCH FUN!



Yes because one change is going to fix the game being old as balls. You're dreaming if you think that there was ever more to reach for than there is now. The old way was "Oh hey you're not in the small fraction of the playerbase that raids at all? Too bad tough shit. Want to get into raiding? Well you're going to have to leech off a mediocre group in order to eventually get into a decent group! Sweet!" Garbage way of doing things. They spent right up until the end of Cataclysm trying to get more than a tiny amount of people engaged in raiding. For those of us that always loved raiding it was great, from the perspective of the company that designed it and their investors, the old way of doing things was an absolute failure. Especially for something that took a fuckton of resources in major content patches.

Ok cool so why vannila and rbc retained players far more than curent game with acessible content? Your logic doesnt make sense becouse you say things are not in better state even tho people are quiting left and right complaining about exact things you say were bad for the game. I thino you dont underatand psychlogy behind exclusive content.

Attuments were fun just badly implemented. But Blizzard instead try to implement them better they just removed them completly, becouse why bother to be creative right?