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

[rhorle]

I'm honestly curious, given that your sentence is dramatically incorrect.

It isn't incorrect. Blizzard started on that path in TBC. A developer is the one that coined the phrase Welfare epics. It has been a long journey to now but it all started in TBC. More with IQD then the arena epics however.

- - - Updated - - -

Much better and you wouldn't trivialize dungeons and open world to the degree it is happening right now!

Sure you will. Because dungeons become trivial even with the lowest raid gear. With Season 2 though Blizzard increased difficulty and rewards so dungeons being trivial really has nothing to do with the amount of item level on gear. It is all how they are designed to fit in the greater picture.

[Jambalam]

Ian said in the Q&A that "they want people to get meaningful upgrades when entering the new raid content".
He specifically mentioned the normal mode raider that barely touched heroic to be able to enter next tier normal mode and the gear dropped to be a reward.
Well if there was not titan forging and 15ilvs difference between each difficulty mode wich is larger that the difference between the ilv tier 5 was rewarding vs tier 4 back in TBC (and content was relevant almost till Sunwell because of it!)
So instead of inflating stuff, to offer meaningful rewards, just reduce the ilv jump from one mode to the other, and remove titenforging!
Then, even by keeping all 4 difficulties (i find it over the top) you would have much smaller margin between mythic loot and lfr loot of the same tier, and smaller ilv jumps from tier to tier!
We could have
Uldir LFR 340 - Normal 350 - Heroic 360 - Mythic 370
BoD LFR 355 - Normal 365 - Heroic 375 - Mythic 385
8.2 LFR 370 - Normal 380 - Heroic 390 - Mythic 400
No titanforge!

Much better and you wouldn't trivialize dungeons and open world to the degree it is happening right now!

No no no they can't do this because little jimmy who plays 20 minutes a week likes it when his LFR gear titanforges and that's good for the game somehow.

[WrongCracker]

Adding item levels to new content is ok. Boosting item levels per season is OK too.

The thing is - we want goals to reach for.

What I want is to go into a season and say "I really want to get that shield off G'huun and a full set of my class gear from Mythic+, complete that cool transmog set from Uldir, win this BiS trinket from Withered J'im" like I don't really care where it comes from. I don't care if it's "I want this item from seafarers dubloons", it's a tangible goal to work towards.

And hey, if I know that those items will be what I want just until the next season comes along, that's OK. Because then with the new season there will be new things to work towards.


The problem is we have loot soup. There's nothing I want, no goals I have. I just want a number. I want my item level to go up. I don't want anything in particular from any boss, or from any dungeon. I just want something with a higher item level, and hopefully a slightly more favorable stat distribution. But it would be good if it had a better ilvl and a socket.

The problem with the season increasing is that it's the exact same thing, but it's still just a number. I can't target a piece of gear that I want. I just do the Mythic+ keystone that I own, and hope that the item that drops titanforges to have a better number than I currently have. Then when I go do the raid, I realize that the titanforged trinket that I got from a world quest is better than any of the trinkets that drop in the raid. But I didn't work for that, I didn't target those world quests. They were randomly assigned to me, I did them to get rep, and happened to get a random roll making it powerful.

Now it would have been one thing if I did the same quest every day trying to get that trinket and then I kept at it to try and get a titanforged version. That's a goal that I can take action to try to effect a result. But that's not what happens. As my five year old daughter says "You get what you get, and you don't get upset." You just are offered a platter of world quests and those are what you get to do.

It's the same with Mythic+, you can't target a dungeon, you can't target a boss. You get a random dungeon, you do whatever you get to get a new keystone, and you don't get a drop from a boss, you get a random item from the entire table, and your weekly reward is from every dungeon out there.

There's nothing that I worked towards in the last season. I worked towards a number. I got 383 item level, not terrible, not great. Now you can kill 25 hordies and get a 400 itemlevel item. Who cares what, it's a random item, not anything in particular that anyone desires.

When I want to do a dungeon, I don't seek out one that has an item that I want, it's just whatever. There's nothing new or exciting. It's just now my numbers are under par, and I can get bigger numbers from doing the same shit I did last week, with just as little control or interest in the outcome.


If the season came and I thought "Alright, now I'm going to go and do X for this new awesome weapon that will make my character better." that would be fine. But it doesn't. I just think "Ok, now I will do things and hope my number goes up."

very very well said! I hadn't thought of it from that angle before.

- - - Updated - - -

Ian said in the Q&A that "they want people to get meaningful upgrades when entering the new raid content".
He specifically mentioned the normal mode raider that barely touched heroic to be able to enter next tier normal mode and the gear dropped to be a reward.
Well if there was not titan forging and 15ilvs difference between each difficulty mode wich is larger that the difference between the ilv tier 5 was rewarding vs tier 4 back in TBC (and content was relevant almost till Sunwell because of it!)
So instead of inflating stuff, to offer meaningful rewards, just reduce the ilv jump from one mode to the other, and remove titenforging!
Then, even by keeping all 4 difficulties (i find it over the top) you would have much smaller margin between mythic loot and lfr loot of the same tier, and smaller ilv jumps from tier to tier!
We could have
Uldir LFR 340 - Normal 350 - Heroic 360 - Mythic 370
BoD LFR 355 - Normal 365 - Heroic 375 - Mythic 385
8.2 LFR 370 - Normal 380 - Heroic 390 - Mythic 400
No titanforge!

Much better and you wouldn't trivialize dungeons and open world to the degree it is happening right now!

seems to simple lol

[Daffan]

It's been this way since Burning Crusade when they first introduced welfare gear.

That's cute you think BC 'welfare' was anything like now, or even the last 9 years. Maybe at the very, very end with Isle of Q it had some resemblance.

[Pua]

It isn't incorrect. Blizzard started on that path in TBC.

No, they didn't.

Suggesting that there was a way to get gear, and that started something that began in Legion, is flat out wrong.

[Forogil]

It isn't incorrect. Blizzard started on that path in TBC. A developer is the one that coined the phrase Welfare epics. It has been a long journey to now but it all started in TBC. More with IQD then the arena epics however.

True, and I even remember a player in our guild with leaving the game due to the gear-obsession showed at the badge-vendor at IQD.

I don't agree with his actions - but at least he noticed things - in contrast to the ones that seems to have just realized that there are welfare epics, and want to redesign the game without the faintest understanding of how it all works.

However, in one sense it also started with TBC itself, since as all expansions it was a full gear-reset.

[Azerate]

I'm in a heroic raiding guild. We cleared heroic Uldir like 15 times, and I was also doing m10 every week throughout the first tier. At the end of the tier, I ended up with 383 ilvl.

So yeah, I am happy there is a 30ilvl jump, because if it was just 15 ilvls of an increase, I would basically be getting NOTHING out of the progression. Sure, I want to kill the bosses, but getting rewards from them is a part of the fun. Thanks to the current system, the first kills we make might already give me some upgrades.

Now imagine, that we only have a +15 ilvl increase. My raid manages to kill a boss on heroic, which is my endgame. The boss drops a 385 ilvl item...which is at best a minor upgrade for me, and potentialyl not an upgrade at all.

A lot of people in this thread don't seem to know what the reality is for normal and heroic raiders, which is probably 95% of the whole raiding populace. With the current system, a 15 ilvl jump between tiers would make the whole game pointless pretty much.

PS. As for the "remove wf/tf reeee" arguments, that's an entirely different thing. There are both advantages and disadvantages to the system, I'm not denying that. However, I know I wouldn't probably be farming a raid I managed to clear already for months if WF/TF didn't exist. That's one of the major reasons you want to return to a raid you've already beaten - to potentially get some lucky upgrades. Love it or hate it, but the wf/tf system is making people raid way more than they normally would have, which keeps the game alive.

[Osmeric]

One reason for the large ilvl increase is that Blizzard is now using gradually slowing gear accumulation (via -forging and alternate gearing sources) instead of outright nerfs to the raid instances, in order to keep progression moving during a tier. This means there's an extra ilvl bump at the tail end of a tier as this helps lagging guilds finish their intended difficulty levels.

The alternative was tried before: a hard cap on gear, with no -forging, and nerfs to the instances. The downside to this approach, from Blizzard's point of view, is that it rewards unsubbing until the end of the tier. They'd rather have people work for the nerfing-by-gear.

Of course, eventually they do have to provide catch-up, but only after the tier has become history and finishing it feels less rewarding.

[Kuntantee]

What's new here?

The amount of jump. In WotLK, the jump was about 150 or so item levels from start to finish. In BFA, you have that kind of jump in just 1 patch.

[rhorle]

No, they didn't.Suggesting that there was a way to get gear, and that started something that began in Legion, is flat out wrong.

Badges of Justice, Welfare epics(Arena), IQD/Terrace. They started to implement "catch up". Legion didn't start anything but world quests.

[Zorachus]

I'm a casual player, but I do play almost nightly, but only for 20 to 30 minutes each night.

All my character's are i375+ and I have yet to step foot in any BfA Raid yet, and zero Mythic + runs yet.

So before the brand new Raid, my characters were Heroic Raid gear iLvl, but only from doing WQs, Assaults, and a few Warfronts here and there.

I do think that's a bit messed up, that a casual player can easily be at Heroic Raid gear, without ever Raiding and never dungeon running either.

I do not recall gearing up in WoW to be this braindead easy and fast before ? To be Heroic geared with just WQs and Assaults is a strange thing for Blizzard to allow.

[Osmeric]

I'm a casual player, but I do play almost nightly, but only for 20 to 30 minutes each night.

All my character's are i375+ and I have yet to step foot in any BfA Raid yet, and zero Mythic + runs yet.

So before the brand new Raid, my characters were Heroic Raid gear iLvl, but only from doing WQs, Assaults, and a few Warfronts here and there.

I do think that's a bit messed up, that a casual player can easily be at Heroic Raid gear, without ever Raiding and never dungeon running either.

I do not recall gearing up in WoW to be this braindead easy and fast before ? To be Heroic geared with just WQs and Assaults is a strange thing for Blizzard to allow.

You are heroic raid gear level at the end of the tier. That's because the current design is using intra-tier gear inflation to effectively nerf the raids, rather than explicitly nerfing the raids during the tier.

[Forogil]

You are heroic raid gear level at the end of the tier. That's because the current design is using intra-tier gear inflation to effectively nerf the raids, rather than explicitly nerfing the raids during the tier.

And so far that is actually one of the larger changes in raid design compared to what they have been doing both in TBC and Legion.

When SWP was released they also nerfed the previous raids - including removing attunements. In Legion as far as I recall there were raid-wide auras nerfing previous raid tiers, combined with the release of the next one.

However, this time, as far I recall, there hasn't been any major nerf to Uldir - except for the new items (and some of them are less useful in Uldir).

That seems like an improvement from Blizzard's side (assuming it is intentional). People tire of doing the same raid, and explicit general nerfs don't feel right. Thus a nerf of the previous tier makes little sense.

[PlazaPlaza]

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.

Stop playing the game if you getting so fired up about it, noone will care. You are just spamming a World of Warcraft Fan website with your QQ. A lot of people like playing this game.

[Zorachus]

I've been i370+ on most my characters for a while now, couple months. So at the time Heroic raid geared since November without ever running the Raid once or M+.

Uldir came out in September, I was equal to Heroic raid gear iLvl just two months later, and I never once stepped foot in Uldir. Only doing World Quests and Warfront's and the Emmisaries.

I'm not complaining, more making a point, I don't recall it being so easy to casually be Heroic geared, without ever Raiding or running Mythic dungeons. It almost seems to easy and fast to gear up in BfA.

Previous expansions were not like this. I do think Legion started this though, it was pretty easy to gear up, but you couldn't be Heroic geared just from WQs and Invasions.

[Pua]

Badges of Justice, Welfare epics(Arena), IQD/Terrace. They started to implement "catch up". Legion didn't start anything but world quests.

So there were procs where the item level grew? And daily quests of random items? And the first tier of raiding was just passed, with its four difficulty levels, by this? Oh, oh, and gear from professions was boosted every patch, too? What about the enchants, there were hardly any on gear? And the means to access Badges of Justice to buy gear was numerically random?

No?

No.

The systems were totally different. Please stop arguing otherwise.

[rhorle]

So there were procs where the item level grew? And daily quests of random items? And the first tier of raiding was just passed, with its four difficulty levels, by this? Oh, oh, and gear from professions was boosted every patch, too? What about the enchants, there were hardly any on gear? And the means to access Badges of Justice to buy gear was numerically random?.

Every expansion the systems evolve and change. You can't deny that they started on the path of making gear easier to obtain and not requiring old tiers to be completed this expansion or last. The process began long ago and its current evolution is what we have today. No one said the systems in Legion or BfA were the exact same as there were in TBC. Stop being an idiot and inventing arguments. I have never said the systems were not different. Please tell me where I said that otherwise lets leave your delusions out of this.

[Pua]

Every expansion the systems evolve and change. You can't deny that they started on the path of making gear easier to obtain and not requiring old tiers to be completed this expansion or last. The process began long ago and its current evolution is what we have today. No one said the systems in Legion or BfA were the exact same as there were in TBC. Stop being an idiot and inventing arguments. I have never said the systems were not different. Please tell me where I said that otherwise lets leave your delusions out of this.

Well, Flutterguy said:

"It's been this way since Burning Crusade when they first introduced welfare gear".

My statement was that the sentence was dramatically incorrect; essentially, because it is.

That's when you decided to prompt with:

"It isn't incorrect".

Yes.

It IS incorrect.

It's absolutely incorrect to suggest that The Burning Crusade was like Battle for Azeroth, and your first claim was (incorrectly) the opposite. I'm not 'inventing an argument', what's happening is that you're incapable of accepting that you made an error, and are desperately trying to avoid admitting it.

But the evidence is there. And because I asked you some clear questions, you're now desperately trying to move the topic to something different.

You were wrong.

Accept it.

[rhorle]

You were wrong. Accept it.

This way meaning gear getting outdated, catch ups, and more casual. Not this way as in BfA. Actually read what I posted instead of the delusion of what you think I posted. Here I'll include the quote instead of your mangled version:

It isn't incorrect. Blizzard started on that path in TBC. A developer is the one that coined the phrase Welfare epics. It has been a long journey to now but it all started in TBC. More with IQD then the arena epics however.

At no point did I suggest TBC was the same as BfA. However that doesn't mean that they didn't start along the path in TBC. BfA is just the latest evolution of the same concept. Just as BfA added seasons to the Legion model. And Legion improved on the Warlords model. And Warlords improved on the Cata model. Etc. BfA introduced no new concepts related to what we are discussing. They just changed how those concepts are implemented in the game.

You are the one who is wrong. Remember the comment that sparked you to say it is incorrect was:

Very slowly becoming world of casual craft.

It's been this way since Burning Crusade when they first introduced welfare gear.

So are you claiming that TBC did not start the path to being casual friendly? Welfare epics, Badges, IQD, removal of attunements. Again I am not wrong. The facts are there for anyone to see. You just have to be willing to see them.

[Pua]

I actually laughed at your post, @rhorle.

You cannot accept when you were obviously wrong. You will instead, quite literally, alter the entire reality of a conversation, rather than just take the hit.

This particular conversation, therefore, is over.