9.1 seems to be addressing the casual gearing concerns

[Mafic]

It is not about a fair gearing system.

Right now the gearing system is not balanced. Ten item level jumps should NOT yield such great power compared to previous expansions. And the first patch is not even out yet lol.

I rest my case.

[arkanon]

It is not about a fair gearing system.

Right now the gearing system is not balanced. Ten item level jumps should NOT yield such great power compared to previous expansions. And the first patch is not even out yet lol.

I rest my case.

As proven by various people through both in game data, sims, and even ion himself, you are entirely wrong. So don't rest your case too quickly.

[Mafic]

As proven by various people through both in game data, sims, and even ion himself, you are entirely wrong. So don't rest your case too quickly.

Why would you accept what dear leader says at face value? When has he been honest and candid about the current game?

WotLK private servers exist. Even vanilla exists.

The huge jump in ilevel before the first patch release is unprecedented. And that is with a level squish and an item squish (again). The data is out there.

[Frozenbro]

Why would you accept what dear leader says at face value? When has he been honest and candid about the current game?

WotLK private servers exist. Even vanilla exists.

The huge jump in ilevel before the first patch release is unprecedented. And that is with a level squish and an item squish (again). The data is out there.

And it was already proven with sims and data that the jump is indeed 1% per ilvl like Ion said, you and many others saying "the jump in power is insane" are just feelycrafting, and you know what feelycraft is? a meme.

[arkanon]

Why would you accept what dear leader says at face value? When has he been honest and candid about the current game?

WotLK private servers exist. Even vanilla exists.

The huge jump in ilevel before the first patch release is unprecedented. And that is with a level squish and an item squish (again). The data is out there.

No, I wouldn't. That's why I said that his statement has been backed up by countless people simming their toons in identical gear, 20 ilvls apart, as well as various in game / log data.

The problem is a lot of ppl at say 200ilvl get outperformed by someone @220 by quite a large amount, and ignorantly put it ALL down to gear. The reality in many cases is that the person has 220 gear because they consistently play at a much higher level than the 200 ilvl person. There are exceptions to every rule, obviously, but this is the reality.

[rhorle]

It is not about a fair gearing system.Right now the gearing system is not balanced. Ten item level jumps should NOT yield such great power compared to previous expansions. And the first patch is not even out yet lol. I rest my case.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...er_creep_math/

That post is the first result for look for the math. I'm sure there are others but that one equates a 11.5% difference in sims for 12 item levels. Skill plays a larger role in the "power gap" then item level does. The gearing system is actually very well balanced. The problem is the acquisition rate on the low end since you can out gear LFR. But Blizzard likely did that in a way to encourage more people into M+ since Covenant and World Quests rewards are Mythic +5/6 for end of dungeon.

That experiment seems to have been a failure though give the push back against the gearing process.

[Kalisandra]

People care more about end game even if they don't participate in it then they do average level content. Without a solid mythic culture a realm dies. It doesn't matter how many average or below average players a realm has in time they will follow the high end.

In my experience, the wanna-be elites follow the real high end. The other players (that might be called casual) just drift away from the game if there's no real, vibrant life on the server. The loss of meaningful server communities accelerated this.

- - - Updated - - -

LFR hasn't been a step in the gearing process since forever, except if your teir set bonus was very good and it wouldn't drop elsewhere. It used to go heroic 5-mans -> Normal raids -> heroic raids (and then -> mythic). Nowadays it's all over the damned place, which is part of the problem.

[Kallisto]

In my experience, the wanna-be elites follow the real high end. The other players (that might be called casual) just drift away from the game if there's no real, vibrant life on the server. The loss of meaningful server communities accelerated this.

- - - Updated - - -

LFR hasn't been a step in the gearing process since forever, except if your teir set bonus was very good and it wouldn't drop elsewhere. It used to go heroic 5-mans -> Normal raids -> heroic raids (and then -> mythic). Nowadays it's all over the damned place, which is part of the problem.

It's only all over the damn place because people choose to do so, then complain. There is literally nothing in game stopping the old level > normal dungeons > heroic dungeons > normal raids > heroic raids > mythic.

[Mafic]

No, I wouldn't. That's why I said that his statement has been backed up by countless people simming their toons in identical gear, 20 ilvls apart, as well as various in game / log data.

The problem is a lot of ppl at say 200ilvl get outperformed by someone @220 by quite a large amount, and ignorantly put it ALL down to gear. The reality in many cases is that the person has 220 gear because they consistently play at a much higher level than the 200 ilvl person. There are exceptions to every rule, obviously, but this is the reality.

Simming gear from this expansion between 200 ilevel and 220 ilevel is a useless exercise. Dear leader's statement was it was always this way and was consistent with past expansions which is not true.

This is the first expansion where you have such rapid difference in ilevel before the first patch.

And it was already proven with sims and data that the jump is indeed 1% per ilvl like Ion said, you and many others saying "the jump in power is insane" are just feelycrafting, and you know what feelycraft is? a meme.

We have access to data from vanilla and PS of WotLK. There is no feelycraft involved. Again, doing the jump in ilevel before the first patch has dropped is in unprecedented territory. And that is with an item level squish. At this rate by the third patch players will be back to half a million HP.

The obfuscation coming out of BlizZard HQ is like teflon at this point. Who are they fooling? You have players sitting at 40K HP before the first patch has arrived....

- - - Updated - - -

BfA
You could get WQ gear to scale to normal and then against overwhelming odds and the warfront

You are correct that in legion and BFA gearing was relatively much higher from such content. Actually the problem with gearing was it was too RNG so BlizZard decided to make it more deterministic. But in the process they throttle total gear drops in PVE while making PVP more grindy. For example, updating PVP honor gear has never taken this long in the history of WoW. One would argue that PVP honor gear has never been upgradable to be that high on ilevel. But the flip side is that PVP honor gear had a stat budget for resilience that looked similar to conquest gear so ilevel gap didn't matter that much in PVP. Or often times had more stamina as it was with aspirant PVP gear in WoD and WoD PVP gearing structure had a reasonable hard cap gear ilevel for PVE and PVP in instanced PVP and PVP combat.

[czarek]

You do now realize that WoW is casual concentrated ? Dude this game is casual focuesed since late WOTLK ><

[Daffan]

I do wish games were less focused on rewards...well maybe not cosmetic rewards I do love my transmog but I think wow is to reliant on power rewards. Would torghast for example even be minded if it just had cosmetics rather then the devs hamfisting it into the progression system?

The game needs more rewards, special rewards not welfare bread

Cosmetic, time limited rewards that can never be got again. None of this drop chance changed to 1% bs "next xpac or next tier" no, make it like the Grove Warden exclusive but make it so much more, weapon t-mog, pets and toys etc.

So that people actually have a reason to do the raid more than once. So that people actually need gear (as they require it to do the harder content) rather than gear being useless for 80% of players. So people want to do more than just LFR as they are hooked on the life-long, never depreciating cosmetic rewards.

Gear is not the hook anymore since welfare will obsolete it in 1 patch anyway.

Mage tower is a prime example of this. I can wager that tons of people stuck around grinding alts, gearing them through normal/heroic Argus and playing A LOT of M+ just so they could gear and could get the time limited & prestigious artifact appearance (I know it's prestigious and special because of all the whiners who say they should be made free now)

This is also a win for Blizzard, because to them, it's all about RETENTION.

[Crimson Spears]

In my experience, the wanna-be elites follow the real high end. The other players (that might be called casual) just drift away from the game if there's no real, vibrant life on the server. The loss of meaningful server communities accelerated this.

- - - Updated - - -

LFR hasn't been a step in the gearing process since forever, except if your teir set bonus was very good and it wouldn't drop elsewhere. It used to go heroic 5-mans -> Normal raids -> heroic raids (and then -> mythic). Nowadays it's all over the damned place, which is part of the problem.

I don't really care what you want to call the group I am just looking at the difference between successful realms and dead ones and raidings the name of that game barring very rare outliners.

[Kalisandra]

It's only all over the damn place because people choose to do so, then complain. There is literally nothing in game stopping the old level > normal dungeons > heroic dungeons > normal raids > heroic raids > mythic.

Sure, there's nothing stopping you. Except what's the point when you have to do much of the covenant questline just to open all your soulbinds, and doing the whole thing is one of the fastest ways of getting your renown up (necessary to open all the tiers in your soulbinds), and this brings you gear that can be made better than heroic 5-man drops?

Or you can do random BGs and get gear that's better than 5-man heroics, and unless you have a terrible losing streak, it's faster. However, now that renown isn't time gated this isn't as attractive as it was initially.

So, while you can use the traditional path, it's not that good a one.

[Mafic]

The game needs more rewards, special rewards not welfare bread

Cosmetic, time limited rewards that can never be got again. None of this drop chance changed to 1% bs "next xpac or next tier" no, make it like the Grove Warden exclusive but make it so much more, weapon t-mog, pets and toys etc.

So that people actually have a reason to do the raid more than once. So that people actually need gear (as they require it to do the harder content) rather than gear being useless for 80% of players. So people want to do more than just LFR as they are hooked on the life-long, never depreciating cosmetic rewards.

Gear is not the hook anymore since welfare will obsolete it in 1 patch anyway.

Mage tower is a prime example of this. I can wager that tons of people stuck around grinding alts, gearing them through normal/heroic Argus and playing A LOT of M+ just so they could gear and could get the time limited & prestigious artifact appearance (I know it's prestigious and special because of all the whiners who say they should be made free now)

This is also a win for Blizzard, because to them, it's all about RETENTION.

BlizZard doesn't view cosmetic rewards that highly. If they did they would have made more customizations for systemlands.

[derekmmorgan94]

My main is only 214 ilvl. I can only play about 3 days a week at night now because of work. Knowing my skill-cap I know I'm not good enough to do mythic raiding so I accept that this is my cap and I am happy here. Honestly my 214 is higher than other expansions because weekly vault and weekly free gear. Gearing for casuals is extremely easier this expansion. The problem seems to be that people can't accept their skill-cap. If you can't heroic raid, you don't deserve a 213 ilvl. If you can't mythic raid you can't expect a 226 ilvl. But this expansion seems to give you a few free items to boost your ilvl and then when you reach your skill-cap, there's more you can do. I finished professions, play the AH, still raid and dungeons FOR FUN, talk to friends, do quests and collect mounts and pets. Just because you aren't good enough to keep getting gear doesn't mean the game is over or you deserve it. Either quit or do the 100,000 other things you can do in game til next patch.

[Glorious Leader]

My main is only 214 ilvl. I can only play about 3 days a week at night now because of work. Knowing my skill-cap I know I'm not good enough to do mythic raiding so I accept that this is my cap and I am happy here. Honestly my 214 is higher than other expansions because weekly vault and weekly free gear. Gearing for casuals is extremely easier this expansion. The problem seems to be that people can't accept their skill-cap. If you can't heroic raid, you don't deserve a 213 ilvl. If you can't mythic raid you can't expect a 226 ilvl. But this expansion seems to give you a few free items to boost your ilvl and then when you reach your skill-cap, there's more you can do. I finished professions, play the AH, still raid and dungeons FOR FUN, talk to friends, do quests and collect mounts and pets. Just because you aren't good enough to keep getting gear doesn't mean the game is over or you deserve it. Either quit or do the 100,000 other things you can do in game til next patch.

Yes people are not thrilled the game is designed in such a fashion to reinforce the idea they suck. So they quit. Why anyone actually thinks this is health, beneficial or even necessary for the game is the real question.

[rhorle]

Yes people are not thrilled the game is designed in such a fashion to reinforce the idea they suck. So they quit. Why anyone actually thinks this is health, beneficial or even necessary for the game is the real question.

Any multiplayer game will eventually make the difference in skill between players known to the players of that game.

[Crimson Spears]

Yes people are not thrilled the game is designed in such a fashion to reinforce the idea they suck. So they quit. Why anyone actually thinks this is health, beneficial or even necessary for the game is the real question.

Isn't it best for everyone?

Trying to hide the results of a players ability in the game just creates toxic groups. Wow needs to pick a audience this catering to everyone is collapsing. I am even fine with it not being me but they can't keep trying to spin all these plates.

[Glorious Leader]

Isn't it best for everyone?

Trying to hide the results of a players ability in the game just creates toxic groups. Wow needs to pick a audience this catering to everyone is collapsing. I am even fine with it not being me but they can't keep trying to spin all these plates.

I dont considered half assed attempts at catering to casuals as actually attempting to cater to everybody. They threw the casual player under the bus this expansion so you wouldn't feel obligated to participate or feel less obligated at any rate.

Having said that I actually agree to an extent. I'd rather they go full on hardcore and only cater to mythic raiders. That way they can be promptly fired. Its really quite amazing they haven't by this point.

[Crimson Spears]

I dont considered half assed attempts at catering to casuals as actually attempting to cater to everybody.

I don't think this game has catered to casuals since... I guess wod or mop?

It seems to increasing cater to people with excessive amount of time to invest into easy content. CM and mythic are arguably the last pro casual changes to the game.