What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[garicasha]

I'm glad to hear they plan on making Ulduar last a lot longer than the 3 1/2 months it initially did.

Reducing the ilvl of TotC gear is also an interesting decision...and will make ICC harder...for like a week.

Edit:
So ilvls were super screwed up to begin with, I kind of forgot just how all over the place they were.

https://www.warcrafttavern.com/wotlk.../ulduar%20(10/

So the short version:
200--Naxx 10
213--Naxx 25
219--Ulduar 10
226--KT 25, Malygos 25, Sarth + 2 drakes, Uld 10 H, Uld 25 N
232--Uld 10 H Weapons, TotC 10 N, Ony 10
239--Uld 25 H
245--TotC 10 H, TotC 25 N, Ony 25
258--TotC 25 Hard, Halion 10 N
251--ICC 10 N
264--ICC 10 H, ICC 25 N
271--LK 10 H, Halion 25, Halion 10 H
277--ICC 25 H
284--LK 25 H, Halion 25 H

The long version with all the 5-mans:

187--5 man normal dungeons

200--5 man heroics, Naxx 10, Trial of the Champion normal, Sartharion 10

213--Naxx 25, Malygos 10, Sartharion 25, Sartharion 10 + 2 drakes (only 4 items on loot table)

219--Ulduar 10, Heroic Trial of the Champion (the 5-man), ICC 5-mans normal (Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, Halls of Reflection)

226--Kel'Thuzad 25, Malygos 25*, Sartharion 25 + 2 drakes***, Ulduar 10 Hard Modes** + Algalon (except weapons), Ulduar 25 (except weapons).

*Note that Malygos had no weapons on his loot table (he had trinkets).
**Ulduar hard modes had separate loot tables from normal modes. Trial of the Crusader they were just higher ilvls of the same weapons.
***Only 5 items on his loot table

232--Ulduar 10 Hard Mode Weapons*, Normal Trial of the Crusader, Onyxia 10, ICC 5-mans heroic

*232 weapons from Ulduar are: Aesir's Edge, Hammer of Crushing Whispers, Icecore Staff, Tortured Earth, Boreal Guard, The Caress of Insanity, Combatant's Bootblade, Perilous Bite, Serilas Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm, Shiver, Magnetized Projectile Emitter, Twirling Blades, and some off-hands)

239--Ulduar 25 Hard Mode, and weapons were back to the same ilvl as everything else

245--TotC 10 Hard, TotC 25 normal, Onyxia 25, Val'anyr

258--TotC 25 Hard, Halion 10 normal

251--ICC 10 normal

264--ICC 10 Hard, ICC 25 normal

271--Lich King 10 Hard (he only had weapons on his loot table, listed below), Halion 25, Halion 10 Hard

277--ICC 25 Hard

284--Lich King 25 Hard (weapons only), Halion 25 Hard, Shadowmourne

And just for fun, Lich King 10 weapons were:
Warmace of Menethil
Halion, Staff of Forgotten Love
Tel'thas, Dagger of the Blood King
Tainted Twig of Nordrassil
Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer
Windrunner's Heartseeker
Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King
Pugius, Fist of Defiance
Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betrayer

LK 25:
Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand
Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General
Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas
Royal Scepter of Terenas II
Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas
Havoc's Call, Blade of Lordaeron Kings
Bloodsurge, Kel'Thuzad's Blade of Agony
Heaven's Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies
Mithrios, Bronzebeard's Legacy
and Invincible of course

Ok so the rose-tinted glasses are coming off for me, it literally took me over an hour just to look all that up because ilvls were such a mess in Wrath. I remember back in the day even they were saying how having Kel'Thuzad drop 226 weapons caused enormous problems for the rest of the expansion.

Given how messed up ilvls were to begin with...I don't think changing them slightly is going to affect much of anything.

[Kralljin]

I think it's a good decision, it was a great shame how even TotC 10man, which was like 5man dungeon difficulty, rewarded better loot than Ulduar 10 and even 25 man (disregarding Hardmodes).

Reducing the ilvl of TotC gear is also an interesting decision...and will make ICC harder...for like a week.

Eh, i think it's going to be pretty solid, i strongly doubt they'll stagger ICC like in Retail, meaning you can't gobble yourself up on 25man Normal Loot for weeks until heroic is finally out.

If you go into ICC HC now, most people will wear 245 gear, which is a far cry from what people had when heroic launched back in 2010.

[Exkrementor]

Bad and unnecessary. It takes you like 30 minutes to clear ToGC and you can only do it on heroic every week so naturally guilds are going back to Ulduar. Nerfing the ilvl will rebalance the whole game and we know Blizzard will most likely fuck it up rather than make it better. Also players will see that too much Ulduar will fucking suck. Nothing more exciting than clearing Vezax trash 4 times per week. People are skipping BT bosses because the trash sucks so much. You cant skip Vezax though.

Rather than nerfing ToC loot they should buff Ulduar hardmode loot. Make it like 250. Its better than ToC normal but still worse than ToGC.

Seeing how classic players struggle with Sunwell and BT its safe to say that ICC doesnt need to be made harder. ICC is already harder than everything in TBC.

[Tiev]

If it means keeping raids relevant for longer, I'm for it. But we'll have to see if it works the way they're planning.

[SinR]

where do you get 4 Vezax a week from?

[varren]

No reason to make the raids harder. If pre nerf T5 is any indication, casual guilds will already have a difficult time with ICC to begin with.

[Battlebeard]

I'm keeping it simple, anything that goes against #nochanges is wrong and I am against it.

[ablib]

No. It's a solution in search for a problem that doesn't exist. Make Ulduar last for 6+ months. That's it. Problem solved. You run Ulduar weekly for 6 months, and the rose colored classes will come off about it being the best raid ever.

Plenty of people still ran Naxx and Ulduar weekly on alts. They will even more now since people can't spam LFG for badges for badge gear.

[Bigbazz]

I think it's a stupid decision to start altering the balance and progression of the game, we're approaching where it's better to play a private server because they respect the expansion "as it was" and don't try to mess with it. If they want Ulduar to be longer then make Ulduar longer, what they shouldn't do is fall into this trap of "T9 is the worst evaaa!!" as some excuse to change the entire progression of the expansion, based on opinions parotted by a lot of people who didn't even play WOTLK to begin with

T9 was fine, the encounters are well designed, the normal mode is too easy but the heroic mode is challenging, it only served as a filler content for ICC anyway. Ulduar is being put on a pedestal too much, to the extent I think people are going to have a wakeup call. Ulduar is a great raid, but mark my words people will be sick of it after raiding it for 5-6 months, the fact that is massive and long is exactly the reason it burned people out the first time.

Of all the changes that they have toyed with, this is the worst one because it messes with half the expansion, it messes with class balance and scaling and completely changes the game. If I had any faith left in the Classic team it's certainly gone if they go in with this dumb idea.

Rather than nerfing ToC loot they should buff Ulduar hardmode loot. Make it like 250. Its better than ToC normal but still worse than ToGC.

That's bad too, it'd result in both Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader being too easy if the hardmode loot got +11 ilvls. If you want to maintain the integrity of Ulduar you don't start by making it incredibly easier via overgearing. I simply think they need to leave it alone, Ulduar doesn't need a reason to continue farming it after TOTC comes out, if you want Ulduar to be out for 6 months then don't release T9 for 6 months, by which point people will be begging to move on to something fresh.

Then you have 3-4 months of TOTC and go into ICC.

[Relapses]

Seems like this pisses off the #NoChanges crowd so that means that it's 100% the best way forward.

[deenman]

Seems like this pisses off the #NoChanges crowd so that means that it's 100% the best way forward.

Im not sure if those people are joking or seriously have some perverted desire to have an objectively worse game experience

[Bigbazz]

Im not sure if those people are joking or seriously have some perverted desire to have an objectively worse game experience

Is it a better gaming experience to

1. Have badges from completing quests, epics equipped on ding 80 from doing nothing? Exactly what is the purpose of this? Their reasoning seems entirely illogical and nonsensical.

2. Not be able to choose male/female because of political ideology being hamfisted into the game?

3. Not have dungeon finder but now being forced to use the new and still useless LFG tool in order to be able to talk/post in LFG chat? Automatically removed if you have 5 in group? Oh even better.

4. Have to choose between normal/heroic for TOTC to make Ulduar Hardmode loot more relevant/necessary to progress TOTGC and to avoid "burnout" from 4 potential lockouts.

5. Also nerf TOTC loot to keep people in Ulduar longer, a gigantic grind of a raid people will have been doing for many months already.

6. 5+6 Farming 2 raid tiers simultaneously, including Ulduar which by itself takes longer than 4 lockouts of TOTGC, but we're avoiding burnout right?

7. Killing the dreams of scaling classes (Aka Fire Mage, Combat Rogue, Fury Warrior etc) with the lower ilvl cap from the T9 squish, completely changing the class progression of the expansion as it was in 2010.

8. As a result ICC becomes harder. LK was never killed pre-nerf (5% raidwide buff active), and many guilds didn't even beat it on HC25man with the 30% buff. Forget ilvl, Blizzard literally scaled up everyones damage/health/healing by 30% within ICC over time, if they wanted to make it harder then just hold off on that for longer? ICC was never easy to begin with anyway, some guilds wiped 50-100x before killing Muru, ICC is way tougher than Sunwell and doesn't need to be harder.

9. Rocket boots working in arena because "nostalgia", despite it being broken unbalanced.

10. Whole raid can reset cooldowns after 30 seconds in combat with a boss, which can still be abused after fixes. QOL changes are fun, but don't let them be abused, it took all of a day for speedrunners to find how to exploit them after the "fix".

"Objectively" better arguments are dumb, partly because this topic is entirely within the realm of subjectivity and mostly because there is no consistency or logic in a lot of the changes. The amount of thinking and consideration that has been put into these changes has about the same depth as a puddle of water. The person who came up with the T9 idea on the community council was someone with next to no raiding experience in TBC at all and Blizzard fully went in an entertained the idea of turning the expansion upside down for a solution that is as easy as "just let Ulduar be current for longer"..

[Celarent]

I know Blizzard likes to iterate from publicly released tentative plans, but this is really short on logic and details, and something nobody really asked for.

Season of Mastery, okay whatever. Classic? No. Wrath worked like it worked and people loved it.

[garicasha]

One thing I find it interesting, although I kind of started the conversation on ICC and Ulduar, but obviously the lower ilvl on TotC gear will make TotC hard modes harder as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Wrath worked like it worked and people loved it.

I kinda disagree with that, because they're right that Naxx was super easy and that Ulduar was a huge step up in difficulty.

Not necessarily saying this is the solution but I'm sure they have metrics for boss kill numbers and I'm sure they were a fraction of what they thought they should be.

Although the modern WoW player will crush these fights.

[Amagh]

I very much disagree with this change... Ulduar is a very long raid and it seems insane for Blizz to expect groups to grind both ToGC and HM Ulduar each week? Did they mention how this'll effect the ICC 5 mans? Is their item level still the same as it was back in the day? (IIRC 219 for normals and 232 for HC)? Because if not then this change is absolutely going to kill any casual's hopes of raiding ICC when it comes out if they only have access to a squished T9 and some offset pieces from the Badge vendor because I remember even back in the day very few PuG groups I was in even ib 10man ToTC made it past the Jormungar....

[varren]

I think it's a stupid decision to start altering the balance and progression of the game, we're approaching where it's better to play a private server because they respect the expansion "as it was" and don't try to mess with it. If they want Ulduar to be longer then make Ulduar longer, what they shouldn't do is fall into this trap of "T9 is the worst evaaa!!" as some excuse to change the entire progression of the expansion, based on opinions parotted by a lot of people who didn't even play WOTLK to begin with

T9 was fine, the encounters are well designed, the normal mode is too easy but the heroic mode is challenging, it only served as a filler content for ICC anyway. Ulduar is being put on a pedestal too much, to the extent I think people are going to have a wakeup call. Ulduar is a great raid, but mark my words people will be sick of it after raiding it for 5-6 months, the fact that is massive and long is exactly the reason it burned people out the first time.

Of all the changes that they have toyed with, this is the worst one because it messes with half the expansion, it messes with class balance and scaling and completely changes the game. If I had any faith left in the Classic team it's certainly gone if they go in with this dumb idea.



That's bad too, it'd result in both Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader being too easy if the hardmode loot got +11 ilvls. If you want to maintain the integrity of Ulduar you don't start by making it incredibly easier via overgearing. I simply think they need to leave it alone, Ulduar doesn't need a reason to continue farming it after TOTC comes out, if you want Ulduar to be out for 6 months then don't release T9 for 6 months, by which point people will be begging to move on to something fresh.

Then you have 3-4 months of TOTC and go into ICC.

Absolutely agree especially with Ulduar. ToC will be a nice change of pace after months of the monstrosity that is Ulduar.

[SinR]

Naxx 10/25 was rehashed because "only 1% of the playerbase got to do it"

[Glazey]

Naxx 10/25 was rehashed because "only 1% of the playerbase got to do it"

not really. it was more of a "we ran out of time" scenario and slapped a massively nerfed Naxx on top of the the other raids

[stomination]

I know Blizzard likes to iterate from publicly released tentative plans, but this is really short on logic and details, and something nobody really asked for.

Season of Mastery, okay whatever. Classic? No. Wrath worked like it worked and people loved it.

People did complain about Ulduar not lasting long enough.

[shise]

No reason to make the raids harder. If pre nerf T5 is any indication, casual guilds will already have a difficult time with ICC to begin with.

Not really, SWP was an exceptional raid. In wrath, all will be facerolled badly.

--------------

This is a good thing indeed, TotGC will still be raided and nice to do for a change, but Ulduar will have the respect it deserves.