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

[Raelbo]

I can only conclude it's a grasp misunderstanding of what the complaint actually is.

I'm not sure what else you expect if you're not going to bother to explain your position.

Essentially you've made a thread with questionable title (I and others have repeatedly stated the reasons) and a made a bunch of assertions that you've never bothered to substantiate. And then instead of answering questions people ask you, you deflect and ask your own questions.

[Zka]

We went +200 ilvl in just one raid tier. Blizzard made their ilvl/stat squish meaningless within a few months, it's shocking how they keep butchering the character progression by throwing endless gear/ilvl/difficulties into a blender.

200? We started out with 310 blues and ended with 380-395 epics, that's less than half of what you claim. New raid tier will bump our itemlevels by roughly 30 - that's a way smaller gap than in earlier expansions.
So basically everything you complain about has actually improved over the last few years yet you choose to whine about it.

The game has a lot of real, objective issues, yet people whine (and blatantly LIE) about the stupidest shit all the time. Why do you guys do this?

[Bane-Thunder-God]

The problem with this thread and the OP, is he's complaining that current content is being made relevant in the new season, so you'd rather have content that came in BFA to no longer be relevant and just sit there rotting?

I'm so glad you're not a dev cause thats something I hated about previous expansions. New expansion content becoming irrelevant one patch later. It's just stupid to do that.

The best thing is to boost the rewards for that content so they remain relevant throughout the entire expansion.

Even tho I'm ilvl 372 I still want to do the occasional WQs cause its the one thing that makes me go to the world and leave the city hubs. Also a chance to encounter some wpvp and to see people out in the world doing things. And I wouldnt go to do WQs unless the rewards were atleast something decent. So boosting the ilvl of those rewards is VITAL.

[Feuerbart]

Repeating the same mistake again and again, but that gets worse every expac because of the ever increasing number of difficulties.

Quite the populistic view here. Just for the fun of it. When did we have four difficulties first? I´d say Wrath. And how long do we have the actual system of 4 now? 3 Expansions stable would be my answer.

So where is ever increasing in this? And why the hell can people not understand that multiple difficulties is good for everybody because everybody can choose the difficulty for him/herself. Because not everybody is ready for mythic and there are people that are not even ready for heroic raiding because of multiple valid reasons. So why deny the the easy version of the raid? Just because we myhtic raiders are the only real guys? Bullshit.

Why is there no petition for the sudoku industry to only produce the hardest ones and not ones that can be solved while drunk by people that do the harder ones?

And as to your graph Blizz has stated multiple times why they have exponential growth in itemlevel. Which is each new item should mean something and you should feel the difference which would be much harder when you have linear growth.

And the 200 itemlevel with the first raid that someone mentioned are bullshit aswell. Much of that is expansion start growth. 10 character levels worth of that, dungeon span worth of that and then let´s say 340+ to 385 from the raid +10 for forging. Mere hyperbole on here.

[Raelbo]

has it been THIS bad before? I dont remember it like that, but maybe it has.

Who says it's "bad". And if so, why?

What did I do the past few months that gives it any meaning? I got my warlock to around 385 - and for what? 385 will be the new baseline for newly dinged alts with this spike...

The point of obtaining gear from content is to help you progress through that content. Gearing is not a means unto itself. So if you're looking for meaning in your ilevel then you're looking in the wrong place. The real question is what content were doing that allowed you to obtain that gear? That's where you'll find the meaning.

to me this seems excessive? normaly mythic, not even mythic+ will now award 370 gear??????? I mean.... maybe the mistake is that this time around they have nothing covering or making up for this in a content form. its the same shit just higher ilvl completely making the past 6 months IN THE SAME XPAC - feel meaningless...

By that argument, the last 14 years of WoW has all been meaningless. But the game isn't meaningless because at the time you're doing it, there is always content that is meaningful in the here and now.

[Ophenia]

Quite the populistic view here. Just for the fun of it. When did we have four difficulties first? I´d say Wrath. And how long do we have the actual system of 4 now? 3 Expansions stable would be my answer.

The infamous LFR in Wrath. Sigh.

LFR appeared in the last raid of Cataclysm. Flex appeared in MoP. Warforging/Titanforging appeared in WoD I think (? Edit: nop, MoP too it seems with Thunderforged and Warforged, but they were limited to +6 and +5). Mythic+ appeared in Legion. The only expansion without another layer of Ilvl inflation is BfA tbh.
Mythic dungeon also appeared in Legion maybe ?

I full understand why difficulties are here. But Normal + Mythic should be enough, LFR and Heroics are unnecessary relics spreading the community over 4 difficulties where two would be enough.
And Dungeons don't need 18 difficulties either (Normal, Heroic, Mythic +15 layers of Mythic+).

[Raelbo]

And why the hell can people not understand that multiple difficulties is good for everybody

Honestly, I am starting to wonder if it isn't just that those people are simply so self-centred that it hasn't even occured to them that someone else might be different. Either that or they don't place in value in the needs of other players.

[Narzok]

honestly, i like the "season-like" resets between tiers

a hardcore player will keep his alts up-to-date no matter how much he likes the gameplay. you won't hear "i don't like balance druid, i don't play it" from a serious mythic raider.

but for casual people, "fun to play" is far more important then potential dps. so if a specc sucks in that regard, you don't play it.
when the specc gets changed (e.g. 7.3 feral) and suddenly you like it, you would have to farm gear from old content that no one want to run just so you can do what everyone else can. (including your equally casual main)


i do agree that the power creep is rather big. most likely due to 4 modes for each raid.
i don't know if having each difficulty be for itself is a good solution (meaning that normal uldir clear gear would be enough for normal BoDA progress.)
the devs seem to think differently, as BoDA LFR requires 350 while LFR Uldir rewards 340.

instead of handing out higher level gear for low-skill activities, they could try to keep the game at a pace that allows the weaker person to still do stuff in a reasonable manner.
325 is current max lv hc dungeon loot. while some speccs simply do less dmg, some are close-to-unplayable on low stat values (firemage was one in the past, not sure if still as bad)

[XDurionX]

The infamous LFR in Wrath. Sigh.

LFR appeared in the last raid of Cataclysm. Flex appeared in MoP. Warforging/Titanforging appeared in WoD I think (? Edit: nop, MoP too it seems). Mythic+ appeared in Legion. The only expansion without another layer of Ilvl inflation is BfA tbh.

ToC, ICC had 4 difficulties 10N, 25N, 10H, 25H. Ulduar had 10 and 25 man with their respective hard modes. You could argue that those difficulties were more similar, but to argue that there haven't been 4 difficulties is just plain wrong.

[Raelbo]

The infamous LFR in Wrath. Sigh.

Wrath did have 4 difficulties though. Normal and Heroic, 10 man and 25 man. And in spite of this it still wasn't particularly accessible to most players because those difficulties weren't well aligned with the vast majority of players. The system we have now is significantly better, in a large part due to how it's built on the lessons learned from the WotLK (and other) experiences

[6ev4enko]

holy fuck, I know that BFA doesnt have the best story, we know that most people hate the casino gear mechanics from weekly chests and personal loot (me included), but people started bitching about literally everything, even things that HELP them and were a problem in previous expansions.

For example people ask why they ramp up the gear from dungeons. Do you even remember how it was in WOTLK (claimed one of the best xpacs)? No one was running the starting dungeons, because they gave shit gear. They introduced only 1 dungeon - Trial of the Champion with the Trial of the Crusader raid. They also introduced 2-3 dungeons (cant remember, but I think it was 2) when ICC was released. You were forced to run only those in order to get some gear that you were missing.

Everyone knows that people playing RPGs want to feel their progression of the character. Blizzard has stated that over the years they have realised that 30ilvl between tiers is a good sweetspot for everyone to feel and notice that their character is MORE POWERFUL than before. And this has been around forever - new raid = more powerful gear. Maybe, before, the jump was not as big as 30ilvls, maybe it was 7 or 15ilvl, but that is from filler raids or shit like that, and getting gear from those doesnt make your character's power growth noticeable, therefore blizzard increased the gap.

TL;DR: Stop complaining about shit that actually helps you in the game (not holding your hand along the way) and extended content. I welcome you in complaining about gear distribution and gear systems which are garbage. Learn to separate stuff that are just bad for the game as a whole and stuff that you just do not prefer individually for whatever reason.

[eduwneso]

It feels like getting the middle finger from Blizzard. All the work you did in 8.0 regardless of what level you play is now completely invalidated. Even the mythic raiders are getting the shaft, they could've cleared the raid once and then just waited until 8.1 and got the same quality gear for literally no effort at all.

Character progression is dead. You're now truly playing the patch, not the expansion.

So, I guess you will be doing less dps, have less crit, mastery, etc in this patch right? since your character doesn't progress. I like it this way, I know I will be more powerful the more the expansion goes on, and in the end I will be incredible, yeah I like this kind of progression, and no I don't want to do uldir with my alts to get into the new raid, that is shit, I've been doing uldir for 5 months now why should I keep doing it and make my guild run it just to gear my alter because we need that class for example. it's a bad system because it consumes a LOT of time, with how wow is now they make it easier for you to be on the entry level for the real challenging content, and that's ok, they should lower the rewards a bit and nothing outside of pvp, M+ and raid should grant more than normal raid ilvl gear.

[Ophenia]

Wrath did have 4 difficulties though. Normal and Heroic, 10 man and 25 man. And in spite of this it still wasn't particularly accessible to most players because those difficulties weren't well aligned with the vast majority of players. The system we have now is significantly better, in a large part due to how it's built on the lessons learned from the WotLK (and other) experiences

10 and 25 are two "modes". There were two "difficulties" (Normal and Heroic).

If you want to go this way, we can say we now have a shitload of difficulties. LFR, 10-man Normal, 11-man Normal, 12-man Normal... So yay, we have Mythic 20, Normal 10-30, Heroic 10-30, and LFR (which is also flexible but I'll be nice and only count one), that's a whopping 42 difficulty modes solely for the raids !

[Elias01]

So, I guess you will be doing less dps, have less crit, mastery, etc in this patch right? since your character doesn't progress. I like it this way, I know I will be more powerful the more the expansion goes on, and in the end I will be incredible, yeah I like this kind of progression, and no I don't want to do uldir with my alts to get into the new raid, that is shit, I've been doing uldir for 5 months now why should I keep doing it and make my guild run it just to gear my alter because we need that class for example. it's a bad system because it consumes a LOT of time, with how wow is now they make it easier for you to be on the entry level for the real challenging content, and that's ok, they should lower the rewards a bit and nothing outside of pvp, M+ and raid should grant more than normal raid ilvl gear.

You wont be incredible becouse everything scales with you. If you were killing boar on 300 itemlvl 5 sec you will also kill him ib 5 sec with 420 gear.

[Chrotesque]

Not really quite like this though. We used to get new dungeons, new token vendors and generally new stuff in patches, not this "new season, new reset, lol" stuff they're serving now.

1. When did dungeon items get their item levels increased, rather than new dungeons with better gear?

Imho this change is a good thing, IIRC back in Wrath, once the 3 new ICC dungeons were out, all the previous ones were irrelevant (once you outgeared them). The pool of available dungeons to run shrank from (IDK) 8 or so to 3 and that happened in a bunch of expansions.
I always found it quite the waste of all that dungeon work to have them become pointless at a certain point, which is why I prefer the current system in which each dungeon just grows with the expansion.

[Feuerbart]

I full understand why difficulties are here. But Normal + Mythic should be enough, LFR and Heroics are unnecessary relics spreading the community over 4 difficulties where two would be enough.

Why is normal+mythic ok but not normal, heroic, mythic. And lfr is an utterly different beast (which i would close down myself, but I understand the need for such a mode).

Look at sports and how many leagues of rising difficulties they have? Noone there says we have Champions League and field club soccer and that`s enough. People have very fine grained differences in skill that are driven by many different factors. Perception, recognition, tactical, focus (be it special or broad), locigal thinking (and even that with a speed component, how fast can one react to a situation and produce a solution), pattern building (many people can´t do that if their life depended on it) and god knows what else.

Don´t look at which difficulties others get but look at which you get and if that is good for you. If you are a mythic raider good for you, ignore the itemlevels you jump over because the "easy" stuff is just filler for you. Those guys could say we don´t need myhtic with the same straight face as you say we don´t need heroic. And from outside the have the bigger base for such a view point because they are more then we mythic raiders. So how about 4 difficulties might be ok for the total populace of wow and each of us looks a bit less on what others get because that doesn´t change what we do or get in any way.

[XDurionX]

You wont be incredible becouse everything scales with you. If you were killing boar on 300 itemlvl 5 sec you will also kill him ib 5 sec with 420 gear.

This is not how anything of this works. It doesn't scale proportionally. If you deal twice the damage, you won't kill it twice as fast, but you won't need the same amount of time, either.

[Elias01]

Since you arrogantly state that you know what's right, why should anyone care answer it? But I'll humor you. The answer is: Never. But: There were always catch up mechanisms in the game to help Level twinks or bring late starters to the current content. So what? They try some other way to bring people along, what's the deal? Does it invaluate the effort you put in your toon? Not a bit. But if you suffer from low self esteem and can't have fun playing a game but instead need the game to validate the time you put into it, I can understand that something that doesn't affect you in any way can be seen as a problem.

Yes it devalues effort into your toon and what new players actualy catch up helps to bring in? There arent any new players coming to wow anymore. Completly ruin progression for couple playrers what start playing late is plant stupid. You remove content from the game. You remove everything what players work towards. If everything this system only makes people quit game not actualy keep playing. Sying that system what actualy makes people quit game is good for the game is insane.

[Elias01]

This is not how anything of this works. It doesn't scale proportionally. If you deal twice the damage, you won't kill it twice as fast, but you won't need the same amount of time, either.

Yeah it will go down to like 4.2 sec instead 5 thats still like nothing.

[XDurionX]

Yeah it will go down to like 4.2 sec instead 5 thats still like nothing.

Even if that was true, that's 3 GCDs instead of 4, which mulitplied by hundreds of mobs every day, is a pretty huge deal. If you think oneshotting everything is interesting, go play clicker games i guess?