Remove ALL iLvLs

[BeastmasterGuardian]

No more iLvL req for LFD/LFR? Would Raiders be happier?

Before this becomes a matter of someone thinking I am "asking" for this to happen, please note that I am not a raider and am merely sparking a discussion amongst people in this forum who think Skill > Gear, and by lifting the iLvL req, and not have to grind dailies (which I happen to like) for better gear.

[soxyboi]

While I agree with this in principle, all that would happen would be the return of the worst addon ever 'Gearscore'

[Maelle]

Just removing the ilevel would not affect whether or not the gear was an upgrade stat-wise...
Any pug would just inspect you / armory you and make a judgement, which is what they do now anyway, to check for gems / enchants etc if they are serious. Which is what they did before ilvl was visible - and it takes about 30 seconds ^^

[Thelxi]

It could work out nicely for many people, but WoW is an extremely gear driven game and that just won't change anytime soon.

[chazus]

I dont think you understand what ilvl is, or something.

There is no difference between now, and patch 1.0, as far as raiding goes. The only time ilvl is involved is getting into heroics, and LFR. Which is sort of a gating system so you can't technically cheese your way in (you can still cheese your way in, regardless).

Raiding is unaffected. ilvl and gearscore existed in 1.0, they just werent visible to the player.

The only thing ilvl requirement does is give you realistic goals for completing things. Most people (except just before an expansion) did not go straight from ding-60 to raiding, unless they had a guild with the specific intention to be carried.

[wookybear]

They added an ilvl requirement to raids???

And the forums didnt blow up?

[Kujako]

What in your mind is "reg" gear? Gear from quests? Gear from heroics? Crafted gear?

[Youarefired]

If ilvl was gone, we'd get the same thing as we had back in Wrath; Gearscore and other addons that tell us the item level.

[Viradiance]

A game based around gear would hardly do well if gear was removed.

Ilevel is a poweful and much-needed gating system. It's the abuse or misunderstanding of ilevel that is the problem.

[chazus]

It's the abuse or misunderstanding of ilevel that is the problem.

I think this is important to note. Everyone hated gearscore, but the only reason gearscore was a problem was because for some reason, people were retarded about it.

I know nothing about a player. I don't know his skill, I don't know his experience. I know nothing. BUT, I do see that his gearscore (or ilvl, same thing), is abysmally low. THAT is a sign to me. And while yes, he could be a fantastic player with low score, or a terrible player with high score, I have something to get an idea.

[Rinoa]

I'm not sure you know what ilvl is.

[Kissme]

I think this is important to note. Everyone hated gearscore, but the only reason gearscore was a problem was because for some reason, people were retarded about it.

I know nothing about a player. I don't know his skill, I don't know his experience. I know nothing. BUT, I do see that his gearscore (or ilvl, same thing), is abysmally low. THAT is a sign to me. And while yes, he could be a fantastic player with low score, or a terrible player with high score, I have something to get an idea.

Also important to note is that LFD and LFR, while making things more convenient, have exascerbated this problem. Between realm transfers, name changes, and the fact that you don't really need to interact with players on your realm much outside of guild preform raids, player reputations have significantly vanished. In TBC I actually would know most of the players who were good or bad on my realm through word of mouth rather than an arbitrary number. If I didn't know a player it usually meant they were average or were new. If it was the former, then they wouldn't hurt your pug, if it was the latter then you gave them a shot and they built their rep from there.

In response to the OP - I would love to see item level go away, but item stats would also have to go away for it to be at all meaningful. And this would mean that gateway bosses and character development would have to be tied to some other mechanism. At this point that is probably too major a shift in game design for WoW to even consider. Of course I also didn't see the death of the talent tree until they threw it out there with MoP, so Blizzard has surprised me before.

[yjmark]

Um - I didn't think there were any ilvl requirements for regular/heroic raids.

If you specifically mean LFR - then they need to be there to prevent people going in that are not prepared. Plus, the fact that you are going in a random group, you need to have slightly better gear than a base requirement to help ensure a higher chance of success. It's not like reaching the min ilvl requirements is difficult or time consuming. So I'm not sure what benefit you are looking for.

[StationaryHawk]

This worked once, but given that the dungeon finder is now a regular part of PvE, I'm not sure removing iLvl would be for the best anymore.

[Surfd]

You do realsie that iLevel has ALWAYS been there. "item Level" is the stat that blizzard used to determine how many points worth of stats could be put on an item. iLevel has been in the game, in some form or another, since the beginning of vanilla. The only difference is that blizzard finally made the actual, system based iLevel of gear directly visible to players. Why? Because players requested it (and also because prior to that, mods were essentially developed to datamine it so it could be displayed anyway).

You cant "remove" iIlevel. The best you could do would be stop displaying the iLevel number on gear. And all that would do is bring back the days of physical gear inspections, and data mining mods. Nothing would change. You might end up with a slightly higher chance of sneaking your undergeared character into someone's pug raid, but at the trade-off that said raid would take 5x longer to form, because the raid leader would be individually inspecting each appliacant.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Wouldn't work in today's WoW. A shift away from iLvl with today's playerbase would, like others said, just mean we would start giving ourselves scores.

Players with the iLvl mentality and the gameplay that lfr, normal and heroic iLvls bring will never change.

[Kurzior]

Ok, changing my post because I reread the OP a few times and I think I understand better now. Not removing item level as a stat, but just remove the requirements from things like LFD and LFR that have minimum requirements.

As to that, here's the reason those things exist. Back in BC, there was no LFD or LFR tool. You either found a group of people on your realm to group with or you didn't do the content. There are arguments for and against this system relative to the tools we have now, but that's not the point here. When you could choose your own group, you had a great amount of control over several things. Class composition, personalities in the group, skill level of players, etc. All of these things make successful runs easier and usually more fun.

Now fast forward to patch 4.3 and later. LFD and LFR are integral parts of the PvE content base. Most players, even hardcore raiders run this content (at least briefly) because it contains upgrades they need. However, now you go into runs with mostly, if not all, completely unknown players. You don't know their skill level, you don't know what class composition you may get. Hell, you probably won't even say 2 words to any of them for the entire run, so personalities really don't come into play. All this means is that the content is inherently going to have a lower success rate because you as a player have no control over the other players you run with. To compensate for this, blizzard needs to have a way to ensure this content has a high enough success rate for most players who enter it, otherwise the content will not be used and they've wasted a great deal of developement time.

There are 2 ways to accomplish this. First, make the content so mind-numbingly easy that a monkey with a keyboard and a level 90 character could kill bosses by throwing feces at his computer screen. Obviously, that ups the success rate of groups in LFD/LFR, but that really doesn't sound like fun content for me. If success requires me to enter a dungeon, spam 1 button for a while and never move, I'm not going to enjoy it. I may appreciate the upgrades I get, but it won't be a fun game. At that point, I'm going somewhere else to spend my time.

The second way is to have some gating system that ensures players have at least some level of experience (because it does take some work and experience with similar content to get the appropriate gear), and at least the ability to perform well in the given content area. Hence, the item level system. It may not be perfect, but at least it allows them to continue creating fun and challenging content with the current game model.

[Radoria]

No...I like the general idea of it. However i do think that they should lower the requirements for the last 3 raids. IL 470 is too fucking hard to acquire without doing the dailies. I also don't like the idea of some nub 90 who just dinged last this morning already raiding some of the hardest raids in the game. So basically what I'm saying is...keep the item level shit, but lower the standards for them. Maybe shaving off 10 IL points for any given situation would be good. Instead of 435 for heroics, make it 425. Instead of 460 for the first 2 raids, make it 450. And most importantly, for the IL 470 raids, make them 460 so you don't jam your goddamn dailies down my fucking throat! I got 2 alts that are stuck between 460 and 470 because I absolutely refuse to do the same goddamn quests that I already did for a month on TWO more characters. And no the double rep thing isn't enough. It should be like 5x rep or something. Because really...who the fuck enjoys doing the dailies? If they didn't come with rewards would you ever bother doing them? Me neither.

[klaps_05]

im not sure what you mean exactly - you want all ilevels from items to be removed or you want the requirements for dungeons/hc/lfr be removed? if its the first I wouldnt even comment, if its the latter, whats the purpose of you having say 420 ilevel joining a 476+ raid?

you wont do good dps, you wont do good healing, you wont be a viable tank. now imagine everyone being in 420. you wont have enough dps, you wont have the healing and mages will be as good tanks as a protection warrior, so you will just wipe and never kill anything.

[Tenjen]

they'd only go back to judging people's worthiness of entrance by remembering gear name.