The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[Ausr]

Anyone else laughing at the people getting mad because instead of seeing a 50k crit on a million health mob, they'd see a 5k on a 100k mob? Oh please guys, rage more because you won't have a super mega crit number.

[Kosic]

Honestly, i'd like to have my items squished, so my hp isn't over 100,000. I found it silly going from a steady 16k at the start of WOTLK, to 24k, and then ended up at 32k because of the HP buff towards the launch of Cata.Back in Vanilla we had about 3.8-4.2k health, then in TBC it was somewhere near 8-13k HP. Then Wotlk wa 16-23k. Now we go from 23k-120/140k Health. It's such a huge number which i disliked. It was a change that ruined a part of WoW for me. Also, it's the reason we got this problem now. I don't wanna see 2 Xpacs down the road, people running around with 2-4 million health.Smaller numbers seem to be easier to manage. But will people like being brought down to a smaller amount of stats, compared to what they've been used too for the past year?

[isendims]

Ok, so I just looked at the graph and it's not giving any data. It's plotting character level vs. ilevel, but ilevel isn't a measure of damage or health, its a randomly assigned number by Blizzard. I'm all for a gear reset, but please show some meaningful data, not some random graph that is void of any real data. The growth of the curve is thrown even more by the fact that we went from 10 levels an xpac to 5 lvls in Cata. If Blizzard wants community imput on the decision, please trust the community enough to give us real data on gear escalation and some real numbers regarding what a squish would mean.

Well, all gear with the same ilvl (and gem sockets) have the same stam, agil/str/int, and total ratings as any other piece of the same slot of the same ilvl. That there gives you an idea and plenty of information

[Deatheryn]

Anyone else laughing at the people getting mad because instead of seeing a 50k crit on a million health mob, they'd see a 5k on a 100k mob? Oh please guys, rage more because you won't have a super mega crit number.

Yep, and the show has only just begun, so grab some popcorn and a comfy seat because the main event of QQ is about to begin! lmfao!

[DBZMerciter2005]

I'm for the squish. It's the only halfway decent, viable long term idea they have.

[Xenofreak]

And this brings me to what has bugged the hell out of me about Blizzard for years now. They have absolutely no foresight. None. At all.

[Xinia]

People say they want to see big numbers and support the mega way yet with that way all they would see is 300M instead of lets say 3000.

[Deleted]

I hope they will choose the second option.

[Arganaut]

well this won't deflate stat value which means you will still hit for extreme numbers and have a high health pool.. i dont get why the numbers are such a big deal to me it sounds like " i dont want 1000 str on my chest piece make it 1k instead! despite the fact that its the exact same thing!!"

Mega numbers just delay the problem. Seeing 1k or 11k or 111k or 1m is just silly.

The stats are out of hand. Squish them and scale them more sensibly from MOP so it can be sensible for the remainder of Wow.

Right off Cata as the joke it is.

Mop is a new beginning.

[oleander89]

Anyone else laughing at the people getting mad because instead of seeing a 50k crit on a million health mob, they'd see a 5k on a 100k mob? Oh please guys, rage more because you won't have a super mega crit number.

I think more people are upset about the actual gameplay impact it will have. The graph really makes it look like all that matters is max level. People also don't want to have to find nearly full raid groups for Vanilla/BC raids. Twinking would also take a major hit.

[Deleted]

Makes me remember a discussion I had at the end of Vanilla: "If our damage keeps rising like this and Blizz wants to keep PvE and PvP in line we will run around with 12k HP in the Burning Crusade" ... (which should've been a joke, but we all how that went^^) I actually prefer the downscaling idea. You still see rising damage numbers (2.9k Crits getting to 3.1k Crits when starting a new Tier for example), while the DPS Numbers stay relatively low. Should improve balance if there aren't DPS spikes ranging from 22k to 30k.

[Donald Hellscream]

Mega numbers just delay the problem. Seeing 1k or 11k or 111k or 1m is just silly.

The stats are out of hand. Squish them and scale them more sensibly from MOP so it can be sensible for the remainder of Wow.

Right off Cata as the joke it is.

Mop is a new beginning.

well of course.. though in my own opinion i absolutely love the numbers in cata, maybe im a big number guy but i get the same feeling then i do a 40k crit as i get then i see a fat paycheck roll in.

[Deatheryn]

What my question would be, is what would lvl1-5 gear look like post-squish? Would a lvl 5 str chest have 0.002 Str, 0.0021 Stam,..etc?,or would it stay the same as it is now but it just wouldn't rise as much from 1 level to the next? I would guess the latter!

[twinkleblur]

i wouldnt mind a squish..though doing signifcantly less damage than i am now isnt right..though at the same time critting for over 1 million isnt right either.

[Deleted]

But I genuinely don't think that stat budgets need to grow as much as they do - regardless of what your experience says. I think that having budgets much closer is good for several reasons:

1) It keeps content relevant for longer. I realize that you want everyone to be able to raid every tier; that's fine. But under the current system, old content is completely worthless, it may as well never have existed. In addition to the rewards remaining competitive, the content itself would remain competitive longer. I think lots of players would welcome the ability to introduce some variety to their raid nights, and get something out of it as well (other than more mount reskins!)

2) It leads to more thoughtful itemization. I realize you don't want people to be making "bad" choices when it comes to gear, but really, there are NO choices really anymore. Even if a new item's stats arent ideal, the higher stat budget and reforging means that its almost always the right choice. Gear may still have about 10 possible stats overall, but there's only one number that really matters. It would keep things interesting if that number mattered less, and you had to genuinely think about your stats a bit more; and it wouldn't kill the game if you didn't have a new BiS item for every slot every tier.

3) It solves the exponential growth problem!

In many ways, its just a problem of escalation. When you're throwing purples around like disco lights, casual players want something else that differentiates them. Like a number. "359 is better than 353!" they cry. Yes it is. It is six better; look, it says so right there.

[Sny]

What my question would be, is what would lvl1-5 gear look like post-squish? Would a lvl 5 str chest have 0.002 Str, 0.0021 Stam,..etc?,or would it stay the same as it is now but it just wouldn't rise as much from 1 level to the next? I would guess the latter!

Gear from 1 - 59 wouldn't change at all, looking at the chart it's pretty easy to tell.

[6kle]

Simple people are against the item squish because they relate power so heavily to numbers and can't understand the concept of relativity. They will cry if their spell does 100 damage instead of 10 000 even if both chop the same percentage off. This reminds me of a kid in my class back in the 90's who couldn't understand the concept of huge inflation. The history teacher tried to explain how something trivial like a piece of bread cost millions during the huge inflation in germany after the first world war. The kid just kept saying "but it could not have cost millions because that's way too expensive". The same simple minded people are having a hard time understanding that they are not being nerfed even if their damage and health numbers go down.

[Vanaline]

I don't see the problem myself, but I do realize dumb people have an adverse reaction to large numbers and calculations, so whatever. It's not really of any import.

[topitopi]

Am I the only one that doesn't care about gigantic stats? Proportionally, yes it is the same. I just like the feel of seeing my toons get exponentially stronger as time goes on. I'm in the minority here, but they could just let the stats keep growing bigger and change the presentation. I think it would be too much work to go back and change everything. It would also make players feel a lot weaker.

[Bogrim]

I don't see squishing as the solution either. You're just putting off the problem for a couple of expansions, then it'll return. But instead of climbing up to new numbers, we'll climb back to the numbers we were used to dealing - which won't feel like progression. A mixed solution would be to categorize damage (but not in lines with "Mega damage") and nerf it, e.g. you'd have "Cataclysmic damage" for this expansion and simply make getting new expansion gear transcend your damage output to a new type of damage while the old damage type would become less and less effective against creatures from the new expansion pack with each new level (e.g. level 90 creatures would take 50% less damage from Cataclysm gear). With other words, acquiring gear from a new continent would teach you how to better damage creatures from that continent and remove the need for stat inflation.