Item Squish: Skill > Gear

[Haywire5714]

Notice how much harder it gets every expansion to out-dps someone who has better gear than you? Even if you outplay them in every way it can be impossible to perform better than someone that has 10 - 20+ item levels on you.

The stat inflation on gear has progressed to the point where a BiS level 90 can do at least 10 times the dps of a fresh level 90; If I remember correctly this was possible at the very end of Cata and Wotlk but since we are only in the 2nd tier of content this expansion that number will increase significantly.

When the idea of an item squish was announced I didn't support it nor oppose it because quite frankly I didn't care; but after realizing that this ridiculous stat inflation will tarnish one of the few remaining reasons of why I play this game (Recount competition), it would be a real shame "for me" if they didn't implement this. The item squish will mean that gear upgrades won't be as significant (which i'm sure people won't enjoy) and in effect will narrow the range of dps. Despite the inconveniences that may be involved in implementing this and the minor (or massive?) misconception of the player base I think this would be a beneficial change for the game overall.

[Daetur]

Gear will still obviously have an effect on power, but I agree that it will allow skill to bring players much closer in line even when there is a gear disparity, and that is a good thing.

It means that it will be easier to get into raids if and when you have a slightly lower gear level, and it means that a raid won't be so grossly weakened by bringing a lesser geared player.

I'm really hoping this change goes through. I'm looking forward to it.

[RoKPaNda]

I hate to break this to you, but the gap was that huge in every expansion. The numbers have gotten bigger, but the gap between a BiS character and a fresh level capped character at the end point of an expansion has always been absolutely huge. It's not a skill thing. In Vanilla when I was in a mix of AQ40 and Naxx gear as a fury warrior, even compared to an MC/BWL fury warrior the different in damage was huge, and damage difference between a warrior that just got level 60 .. Well .. You could barely even see their bar on the meter.

If/when the item squish occurs, people in good gear are going to still outDPS people in lesser gear by a large amount. It's a combination of skill and gear, but even if you take someone in leveling gear and someone in good gear and they both just face roll, the one in better gear is going to win.

[mistahwilshire]

10x is just largely incorrect. Burst maybe but sustained absolutely not. I did 60-65k as a fresh level 90. I don't know anyone sustaining 650k.

The ratios seems pretty in line with every other expansion to me. I still vote no on squish.

[Haywire5714]

10x is just largely incorrect. Burst maybe but sustained absolutely not. I did 60-65k as a fresh level 90. I don't know anyone sustaining 650k.

The ratios seems pretty in line with every other expansion to me. I still vote no on squish.

As soon as you ding 90 you can do 60 - 65k dps single target? With just your questing/normal dungeons gear that sounds very impossible.

[matters]

This sadly will not be the case, the numbers will scale with the stat budget of an item but the numbers will just become smaller not the difference between a player who is very geared and one who is freshly max level. The item level squish is basically like the Mega Damage thing, whether the 2 has thirteen 0s after it or not the actual difference between a geared player and a not so geared player will stay the same (excluding over powered trinkets like UVLS, Woosh, Vial of Shadows, Cunning of the Skill etc), or at least it should.

[jbombard]

If we are talking about end game, it will have zero effect. Blizzard has stated that they won't be squishing the most recent expansions. So while numbers will be lower across the board, the % increase in power and health from one tier of gear to the other in the same expack will be exactly the same as it is now, and with the recent trend of lots and lots of raid tiers start of expack compared to end of expack will continue to be a massive gap in gear power.

[Vorality]

This sadly will not be the case, the numbers will scale with the stat budget of an item but the numbers will just become smaller not the difference between a player who is very geared and one who is freshly max level. The item level squish is basically like the Mega Damage thing, whether the 2 has thirteen 0s after it or not the actual difference between a geared player and a not so geared player will stay the same (excluding over powered trinkets like UVLS, Woosh, Vial of Shadows, Cunning of the Skill etc), or at least it should.

They said the item level squish isn't going to be the Mega Damage thing, they are two separate ideas.

- - - Updated - - -

I hate to break this to you, but the gap was that huge in every expansion. The numbers have gotten bigger, but the gap between a BiS character and a fresh level capped character at the end point of an expansion has always been absolutely huge. It's not a skill thing. In Vanilla when I was in a mix of AQ40 and Naxx gear as a fury warrior, even compared to an MC/BWL fury warrior the different in damage was huge, and damage difference between a warrior that just got level 60 .. Well .. You could barely even see their bar on the meter.

If/when the item squish occurs, people in good gear are going to still outDPS people in lesser gear by a large amount. It's a combination of skill and gear, but even if you take someone in leveling gear and someone in good gear and they both just face roll, the one in better gear is going to win.

I don't think you're right about this at all. As a fresh 80 in WoTLK I did about 3k-4k dps, and in ICC I was doing about 8k-10k dps in decent gear. It's NOTHING compared to the fresh 90 doing 40k dps to a geared 90 doing 100k dps. Also, in TBC it was even a smaller gap, hell, hardcore raiding guilds kept doing all of the older content of that expansion every week just to compete. The ilvl gap between raids in MoP makes older content not worth doing at all.

[R0ninX3ph]

I don't think you're right about this at all. As a fresh 80 in WoTLK I did about 3k-4k dps, and in ICC I was doing about 8k-10k dps in decent gear. It's NOTHING compared to the fresh 90 doing 40k dps to a geared 90 doing 100k dps. Also, in TBC it was even a smaller gap, hell, hardcore raiding guilds kept doing all of the older content of that expansion every week just to compete. The ilvl gap between raids in MoP makes older content not worth doing at all.

You just proved their point. You were doing around a maximum around 4k and then in ICC around 10k. Now a fresh dinged 90 doing 40k then a geared 90 doing 100k, a little over double the fresh dinged 90. Seems like a pretty similar margin and within acceptable bounds. Sounds like the fresh dinged character in both situations did around 40% the damage of a geared equivalent geared character.

[Reyzzz]

I don't think you're right about this at all. As a fresh 80 in WoTLK I did about 3k-4k dps, and in ICC I was doing about 8k-10k dps in decent gear. It's NOTHING compared to the fresh 90 doing 40k dps to a geared 90 doing 100k dps. Also, in TBC it was even a smaller gap, hell, hardcore raiding guilds kept doing all of the older content of that expansion every week just to compete. The ilvl gap between raids in MoP makes older content not worth doing at all.

/facepalm

Did you even think about what you posted?

The gap is the same as ever before. Also, if we were forced to do every tier of content like in TBC, raid would have to be considerably smaller (4 boss TK vs 14 boss SoO).

[Deleted]

When you ding 90 on a char and hit hc dungeons with 440, you're probably looking at about 30-50k DPS, depending on what kind of weapon/trinkets you already have, and how well your class does with low gear.

Current BiS geared chars are above 200k single target, so the damge increase is anywhere from 500% to 700% right now, it will be closer to the 10 times more damage figure OP mentioned with SoO BiS gear.

No idea about how things scaled before Cata, but I remember doing somewhere around 8-10k in hc dungeons (given I just started playing there) and somewhat around 50k on hc Ultraxion (not full BiS gear), so figures are closer to 5-6 the damage and even that is an insane jump.

[Vorality]

/facepalm

Did you even think about what you posted?

The gap is the same as ever before. Also, if we were forced to do every tier of content like in TBC, raid would have to be considerably smaller (4 boss TK vs 14 boss SoO).

Reply to my post with more information as to why you don't like it? Everything made perfect sense and is true. You're not seeing the big picture, lol. We've been getting less raiding content per expansion now, and going back to older content of that expansion being worthless. TBC got 8 raids! WoTLK got 8 raids! Cata got 5, MoP with 5! Woah, wait a second, what happened right before Cata came out? OH YEAH! Activision-Blizzard. I would much rather have a lot of COOL raiding content to go back to rather than doing the same content for months at a time.

[Deleted]

I don't think you're right about this at all. As a fresh 80 in WoTLK I did about 3k-4k dps, and in ICC I was doing about 8k-10k dps in decent gear. It's NOTHING compared to the fresh 90 doing 40k dps to a geared 90 doing 100k dps. Also, in TBC it was even a smaller gap, hell, hardcore raiding guilds kept doing all of the older content of that expansion every week just to compete. The ilvl gap between raids in MoP makes older content not worth doing at all.

You started with 3-4k in leveling gear at 80 but then did only 10k in ICC? First, ICC was not the last raid, second this is just very low. I can remember me doing about 20k in ruby sanctum, but starting with about 1.5-2k while doing heroics.

Reply to my post with more information as to why you don't like it? Everything made perfect sense and is true. You're not seeing the big picture, lol. We've been getting less raiding content per expansion now, and going back to older content of that expansion being worthless. TBC got 8 raids! WoTLK got 8 raids! Cata got 5, MoP with 5! Woah, wait a second, what happened right before Cata came out? OH YEAH! Activision-Blizzard. I would much rather have a lot of COOL raiding content to go back to rather than doing the same content for months at a time.

Are you serious? You are comparing the raw number of raids, instead of bosses or raid tiers?
T4: Magtheridon (1) + Gruul (2) + Kara (12) = 15
T5: SSC (6) + TK (4) = 10
T6: MH (5) + BT (9) + SWP(6) = 20
=> 45 Bosses (but only 33 in 25 men)

T7: Naxx (15) + EoE (1) + OS (1) VoA (1) = 18
T8: Ulduar (14) + VoA (1) = 15
T9: ToC (5) + Ony (1) + VoA (1) = 7
T10: ICC (12) + RS (1) + VoA (1) = 14
=> 54 Bosses, but ALL in 10 AND 25 men

T11: BoT (5) + TofW (2) + BWD (6) + TB(1) = 14
T12: FL (7) + TB (1) = 8
T13: DS (8) + TB (1) = 9
=> 31 Bosses

T14: MSV (6) + HoF (6) + ToeS (4) + Galleon + Sha of Anger = 18
T15: ToT (13) + Oondasta + Nalak = 15
T16: SoO (14) + Wordlbosses (2) = 16
=> 49 Bosses

So, you see, even if there are lesser raid instances then in TBC, in MoP we will have MORE bosses overall. Following your logic it would be best for blizz to just release 10 raids with only one boss every tier, since then the expansion could have about 30 raids, wow, what a number.

[SL1200]

If that was going to be a side effect of the squish more people would be raging about it. You may have just handed some nice ammunition to the anti-squishers.

[Vorality]

You just proved their point. You were doing around a maximum around 4k and then in ICC around 10k. Now a fresh dinged 90 doing 40k then a geared 90 doing 100k, a little over double the fresh dinged 90. Seems like a pretty similar margin and within acceptable bounds. Sounds like the fresh dinged character in both situations did around 40% the damage of a geared equivalent geared character.

You're speaking out of sense of percentages and not actual numbers. 3-4k dps, roughly 6-10k damage per hit, or cast if you will (I'm generalizing), you then compared that to 8-10k dps, roughly 14k-20k damage per hit, or cast. NOT a big number difference, which this original post is about. You now look at 40k dps and 100k dps (200k it seems like actually from the post above, as I don't have much experience in the high tier of raiding when considering BiS gear), the number difference per hit or cast is HUGE. We're talking 100-150k dmg. When someone does 3-4k more dmg per hit than you, wippy. But when someone does 100k-150k more dmg than you? Wtf? Retarded.

- - - Updated - - -

You started with 3-4k in leveling gear at 80 but then did only 10k in ICC? First, ICC was not the last raid, second this is just very low. I can remember me doing about 20k in ruby sanctum, but starting with about 1.5-2k while doing heroics.

Mind you I was playing a DK and I had the heroic axe from HoL doing 3-4k dps in Naxx, fully buffed, rest was pretty much blue gear. I'm talking progression ICC, so you didn't have the bullshit buff that gave you insane stats, so yeah, 10k was good dps. I was doing 24k dps on my ele shaman in Ruby Sanctum.

[jbombard]

You're speaking out of sense of percentages and not actual numbers. 3-4k dps, roughly 6-10k damage per hit, or cast if you will (I'm generalizing), you then compared that to 8-10k dps, roughly 14k-20k damage per hit, or cast. NOT a big number difference, which this original post is about. You now look at 40k dps and 100k dps (200k it seems like actually from the post above, as I don't have much experience in the high tier of raiding when considering BiS gear), the number difference per hit or cast is HUGE. We're talking 100-150k dmg. When someone does 3-4k more dmg per hit than you, wippy. But when someone does 100k-150k more dmg than you? Wtf? Retarded.

Both health and damage scale is percentage based. If health scales at exactly the same rate the bigger numbers don't change anything. In other words if it takes 3 seconds to kill you, it doesn't matter if it was 1,000 DPS and 3000 health or 1,000,000 DPS and 3,000,000 health. Just because numbers are smaller doesn't mean it is better, it is the same just with smaller numbers because everything is scaled down not only DPS.

[Deleted]

Mind you I was playing a DK and I had the heroic axe from HoL doing 3-4k dps in Naxx, fully buffed, rest was pretty much blue gear. I'm talking progression ICC, so you didn't have the bullshit buff that gave you insane stats, so yeah, 10k was good dps. I was doing 24k dps on my ele shaman in Ruby Sanctum.

But, this topic was about what you are doing as fresh max level character (not geared for the first raid, but in leveling gear!) versus a BiS-geared character, not while you are progressing.

[Dblbaconator]

Reply to my post with more information as to why you don't like it? Everything made perfect sense and is true. You're not seeing the big picture, lol. We've been getting less raiding content per expansion now, and going back to older content of that expansion being worthless. TBC got 8 raids! WoTLK got 8 raids! Cata got 5, MoP with 5! Woah, wait a second, what happened right before Cata came out? OH YEAH! Activision-Blizzard. I would much rather have a lot of COOL raiding content to go back to rather than doing the same content for months at a time.

First, "cool" is subjective and everyone has their own opinion on what is cool, so let's not bother continuing down this train of thought.

Second, "number of raids" is not a good indication of the quantity of raiding content. Sure, Wrath had nine raids (not sure if you forgot Onyxia or VoA), but four of those raids had only one boss in them each, and one had the lowest number of bosses for an ENTIRE TIER since...well, ever. We've still not hit that five-boss low, even after the abysmal tiers 12 and 13. If we count VoA as a Wrath raid (Naxx, OS, EoE, VoA, Uld, ToC, Onyxia, ICC, RS), we should also add in BH for Cata, so technically there's six raids in Cata.

Even boss numbers isn't a good indication of raiding content quantity (notice I'm continuing to say quantity and not quality). Sure, Classic and BC had dozens of bosses each, and if you take out rereleased raids like Naxx and Onyxia, Wrath doesn't have near as many, nor do Cata or Mists. However, Classic and BC only had one raid difficulty per raid, most raids falling under one group size (40 for Classic, 25 for BC). Wrath added in multiple raid sizes for every raid at the start of the expansion, then added in heroic raiding at the end. Cata added in LFR towards the end, and now Mists is adding in Flexible. It's a testament to the raid developers that, despite now having four difficulty levels (two of which have 10- and 25-man sizes, and one of which has to be balanced to scale properly for anywhere between those numbers), Mists will end up with about the same number of new bosses as Wrath had. I worked this out a while back, I wish I still had my math, but you can go back and add it up yourself.

I can understand that multiple smaller raids lets you see a greater variety of locales. If you don't particularly like one raid, but that's the only raid for a tier, then you're kinda shit outta luck. However, trying to insinuate that the quality of raids has declined since ye olde golden days of BC is just disingenuous, as is trying to pin that on ActiBlizz. They've been working their asses off all expansion to appease those who pointed out that Cata was a bit more lackluster in the raiding department, and if you can't see that, sorry.

[clevin]

Reply to my post with more information as to why you don't like it? Everything made perfect sense and is true. You're not seeing the big picture, lol.

Reread your post. IN each case the freshly dinged max level toon was doing 40% of the BiS toon BY YOUR OWN WORDS. Jesus people, think before hitting Reply. Yes, the raw numbers are bigger... but the relationship between the is the same.

[Vorality]

But, this topic was about what you are doing as fresh max level character (not geared for the first raid, but in leveling gear!) versus a BiS-geared character, not while you are progressing.

Having BiS gear would still put you around 12k-14k, WITHOUT the dumb buff in ICC.

- - - Updated - - -

You started with 3-4k in leveling gear at 80 but then did only 10k in ICC? First, ICC was not the last raid, second this is just very low. I can remember me doing about 20k in ruby sanctum, but starting with about 1.5-2k while doing heroics.



Are you serious? You are comparing the raw number of raids, instead of bosses or raid tiers?
T4: Magtheridon (1) + Gruul (2) + Kara (12) = 15
T5: SSC (6) + TK (4) = 10
T6: MH (5) + BT (9) + SWP(6) = 20
=> 45 Bosses (but only 33 in 25 men)

T7: Naxx (15) + EoE (1) + OS (1) VoA (1) = 18
T8: Ulduar (14) + VoA (1) = 15
T9: ToC (5) + Ony (1) + VoA (1) = 7
T10: ICC (12) + RS (1) + VoA (1) = 14
=> 54 Bosses, but ALL in 10 AND 25 men

T11: BoT (5) + TofW (2) + BWD (6) + TB(1) = 14
T12: FL (7) + TB (1) = 8
T13: DS (8) + TB (1) = 9
=> 31 Bosses

T14: MSV (6) + HoF (6) + ToeS (4) + Galleon + Sha of Anger = 18
T15: ToT (13) + Oondasta + Nalak = 15
T16: SoO (14) + Wordlbosses (2) = 16
=> 49 Bosses

So, you see, even if there are lesser raid instances then in TBC, in MoP we will have MORE bosses overall. Following your logic it would be best for blizz to just release 10 raids with only one boss every tier, since then the expansion could have about 30 raids, wow, what a number.

Don't count the lousy World Bosses...you didn't count any of them they had in TBC, Kazzak, Grove of Twilight Dragon, etc. They aren't counted, as they aren't in actual "raid instances".