What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[Segus1992]

Yeah, my bad.

But i still hold the view that the 13 Ilvl are not going to make a massive difference when it comes to Normal raids, the first four bosses in ICC are a complete pushover and from there you can easily cherrypick the easier bosses to gear up.

It won't, at least not on its own. The main goal of the stat squish is to keep Ulduar relevant longer, the secondary goal is to reduce stat bloat. The little change in difficulty is just a bonus and will be complemented by other changes (I hope).

[VinceVega]

Longer Ulduar is good. I can't think of anything speaking against it. The new Hardmode mechanic give double the content and it is doable by normal guilds this way.

ToC was never really liked in the first place. This way the... felt force to play it is abit lower as the iLlL is not extremly OP.
But i don't think it makes a difference for raider in the current content.

It DOES make a difference for alts and people coming in later as the power infaltion is a bit flatter.
And ICC is not as easy as it was back then as a result. And ICC was easy. At least everything except LK himself.

[Relapses]

Yes, let's antagonize an entire group of players because you disagree. Slow clap for this little guy, you really showed 'm this time.

If we didn't have an adamant 'no changes' group, you can bet your ass that blizz would've overmonetized the fuck out of classic as if it where retail, and people like you would've simped for it.

I may not agree with the no changes crowd every time, but they are an increadibly important part of why classic is here and how it's being made. If you don't like them or what the have to say, then you should stick to retail.

The only thing the #NoChanges crowd has ever brought to this community are a bunch of shitty, easily defeated arguments which show the entire movement is full of petty players who think "I'll just play on a private server then!" is a valid threat against Blizzard having the audacity to change something for the betterment of the game.

[Kralljin]

Yep, Ulduar gets really glorified by people who havent done it for 14 years. There is a lot of annoying trash in Ulduar. Remember Vezax hardmode? Ah waiting for 5 minutes is so much fun. Algalon randomly oneshotting your tanks is also always nice.

Considering what people put up with in both Classic and TBC, i would say that Ulduar very much swings on the easier side as far as trash is concerned.

Disregarding that complaining about a bad encounter within a raid that also has Yogg and Firefighter seems a bit silly.

Bottomline is, Ulduar is more relevant and ToC is less relevant and if that's bad news for some people, then i do not believe they are genuine or frankly represent a minority opinion.

The itemlevel inflation is what makes wotlk one of the best expansion.

13 Ilvl are not suddenly going to make a 180° how your class plays.

Like seriously, for most people, 277 gear was out of reach, now because the highest Ilvl is 264 it's suddenly a dealbreaker?
Most people didn't even came to experience that gear level.

[Ragedaug]

I'll trade them this change if they bring RDF back. I mean if they need to make a change I'm be much happier giving them this.


The first time around, my casual BC guild never got past the 2nd boss in SSC. Granted guild poaching had some impact in that, but suffice it to say we didn't even get to T6 content. But in Wrath, we down LK 10 man normal and got about 7-8 10 man hard mode bosses down in ICC.

Compare that to this time around and my casual guild downed Archy and Mother. So considering how far better the player base is now than we were then, I don't have a problem lowering the iLvl of ToGC gear. TBH, it always felt like the raid gear scaled too well back then. Jumps in power were too drastic from tier to tier, so that's another reason I'm OK with it.

[Soikona]

Seems like this pisses off the #NoChanges crowd so that means that it's 100% the best way forward.

Making changes to what is the most popular time of WoW is good? You get more weird every day.

[Relapses]

Making changes to what is the most popular time of WoW is good? You get more weird every day.

Ulduar is widely regarded as one of WotLK's best raids. It's half the reason people have nostalgia boners for the expansion. If the #NoChanges crowd has their way, it'll get swept right under the rug by ToC's gear just as it was when it was first released. Ulduar being relevant for a longer time will be better for the game.

[Monteverdi]

It's an insane idea. Ulduar didn't last long enough on live, yes. But the answer isn't this.

There are several problems here:

* ToC/Ony is a content-light phase already. A 5 boss raid with little trash and a single boss raid with little trash is not a lot for raiders to chew on, so most guilds were *already* planning on being in Ulduar getting more Val'anyrs for their healers anyway. T9 has already been devalued by the lockout changes, is it really a good idea to devalue it further by invalidating its lower difficulties, making its middle difficulties sidegrades at best?

* Itemization changes have massive implications. Anything impacted by ilevel from ToC onward (which is pretty much everything) changes. PVE rankings, PVP rankings, gear priorities, stat weights, etc. Everything about that changes. Even if something comes out in the same rank/priority/etc. as it was before, the underlying math has changed and has needed to be reviewed. For balance reasons, this would necessitate reviewing everything, and would almost certainly have ripple effects, potentially major ones, across multiple game systems. This is a ton of work for a dev team that is relatively small.

* While this does raise the difficulty of raids, it raises that difficulty from the bottom up and disproportionately impacts casual raiders and 10m raiders. WotLK is so fondly remember by many because it had a wide range of difficulty, allowing the most casual players to raid while still presenting some of the most challenging content the game has ever seen. While I can understand veteran players wanting more difficulty, raising the bar from the lower end only serves as an accessibility hurdle for those casual players while serving as a minor inconvenience to others. This is a potentially major impact to the casual/10m guilds with little upside for the more hardcore guilds who won't struggle anyway. If we want more challenge, there are ways to add challenge to the top end by *adding* things rather than forcing challenge to the bottom by taking away.

Their stated objectives (make Ulduar last longer and add difficulty to ICC) are worthwhile, but this proposed change is not the way to do it.

[WaltherLeopold]

This is a great idea and I support it completely.

[Monteverdi]

Ulduar is widely regarded as one of WotLK's best raids. It's half the reason people have nostalgia boners for the expansion. If the #NoChanges crowd has their way, it'll get swept right under the rug by ToC's gear just as it was when it was first released. Ulduar being relevant for a longer time will be better for the game.

Well you can have Ulduar relevant for longer (not that Ulduar will ever be irrelevant after it launches) without decimating another phase, which is also a reason people - albeit fewer people - have nostalgia.

Further devaluing ToC to artificially lengthen Ulduar's lifetime just makes a content-light phase even less appealing, which would not be good for anybody.

Just don't release ToC 4 months after Ulduar like back in the day. Release Ulduar more quickly, and keep it the main content for longer than before, then move as we did back then.

[Relapses]

Well you can have Ulduar relevant for longer (not that Ulduar will ever be irrelevant after it launches) without decimating another phase, which is also a reason people - albeit fewer people - have nostalgia.

Further devaluing ToC to artificially lengthen Ulduar's lifetime just makes a content-light phase even less appealing, which would not be good for anybody.

I don't think anybody will miss ToC all that much. It was meant to be a pitstop while they finished ICC in the first place; the benefit of retrospect means that they can easily gloss right past it. It does mean that the first few ICC clears will be more difficult but players will quickly catch up after a month or so of lockouts.

Just don't release ToC 4 months after Ulduar like back in the day. Release Ulduar more quickly, and keep it the main content for longer than before, then move as we did back then

This fucks with the Arena season which is why Blizzard chose to do it this way.

[Fkiolaris]

Well you can have Ulduar relevant for longer (not that Ulduar will ever be irrelevant after it launches) without decimating another phase, which is also a reason people - albeit fewer people - have nostalgia.

Further devaluing ToC to artificially lengthen Ulduar's lifetime just makes a content-light phase even less appealing, which would not be good for anybody.

Just don't release ToC 4 months after Ulduar like back in the day. Release Ulduar more quickly, and keep it the main content for longer than before, then move as we did back then.

100% this. Honestly, I just don't get why this is so difficult for some people to understand, just shorten Nax and ToC a bit and expand the Ulduar tier and that's it. This has a high probability to cause a clusterfuck somewhere because changing the itemisation halfway through the expansion is not a simple "I will just dial this down a bit" affair. But Blizzard has to be Blizzard.

This fucks with the Arena season which is why Blizzard chose to do it this way.

But changing the itemisation in half the expansion doesn't fuck with Arena?

[Monteverdi]

I don't think anybody will miss ToC all that much.

I think you'd be surprised. Don't get me wrong, I get why people love Ulduar, and I can see why some people don't like ToC (just like I can see why others - me being one of them - very much do.) The biggest problem back then is that ToC came out when most guilds were still progressing through Ulduar. It cut their Ulduar progression short because they could just go get better gear from ToC. But, again, the answer there isn't to hurt ToC. It's just to give Ulduar enough time to breathe.

No one wants to be artificially held back in Ulduar. I'd say the majority of players simply want the appropriate amount of time to fully gear their characters in Ulduar before moving forward. You can accomplish this in other ways.

This fucks with the Arena season which is why Blizzard chose to do it this way.

Well, to be clear, Blizz hasn't chosen to do anything. It's an idea they're tossing out for discussion. But the concern about the arena season isn't about keeping Ulduar longer, the concern about the arena season would be from hypothetically truncating ToC's life. (the quote is "the first Idea we considered was simply making the Trial of the Crusader tier (Tier 9) much shorter, potentially up to half as long as Ulduar (Tier 8). However, the major problem with that plan is that we’d then need to either start Arena Season 7 right in the middle of Tier 8 and create a situation where PvP gear would be in many cases BiS to PvE raiders for multiple months, or start Season 7 late and have it be a very short, truncated season." from Aggrend, under the stated goal of "don't cut Arena Season 7 short")

Bottom line, I don't see any reason to fuck with itemization in such a drastic way. It's a massive development headache for the small classic dev team, it further devalues content from a phase that is already going to have less enthusiasm, and it disproportionally hurts casual/10m guilds. All for relatively little gain. The stated objectives are laudable, but there are other ways to achieve them.

[Raidoser]

Ulduar is widely regarded as one of WotLK's best raids. It's half the reason people have nostalgia boners for the expansion. If the #NoChanges crowd has their way, it'll get swept right under the rug by ToC's gear just as it was when it was first released. Ulduar being relevant for a longer time will be better for the game.

Normally classic was made so people can see the good and the bad of each expansions, if you want to change something to make a better experience SOM is normally there for that.
They make so many change to the woltk experience but none of them are true QoL change that would help : like faction tagging (which would be nice for the first weeks of leveling), herb/ore gathering working like on retail on very high pop server, LFG tool improvement.

[Relapses]

But changing the itemisation in half the expansion doesn't fuck with Arena?

It at least prevents a weird situation from occurring where PvP gear is much better than the PvE alternatives.

[WaltherLeopold]

Normally classic was made so people can see the good and the bad of each expansions, if you want to change something to make a better experience SOM is normally there for that.
They make so many change to the woltk experience but none of them are true QoL change that would help : like faction tagging (which would be nice for the first weeks of leveling), herb/ore gathering working like on retail on very high pop server, LFG tool improvement.

Why does it have to be a QoL change for it to be a good change? They've established that no changes is completely dead and are more interested in acting in the spirit of classic even going as far as having original developers on the classic team now to better inform their decisions. It seems to me like they want to reduce QoL, because QoL changes are the path to retail.

Reducing ilevel bloat, removing RDF are all moves to not repeat past mistakes.

[Celarent]

Why does it have to be a QoL change for it to be a good change?

It doesn't, but this proposal is not only a long way from convincing, it's singly the largest structural change to a Classic expansion.

[Monteverdi]

Why does it have to be a QoL change for it to be a good change? They've established that no changes is completely dead and are more interested in acting in the spirit of classic even going as far as having original developers on the classic team now to better inform their decisions. It seems to me like they want to reduce QoL, because QoL changes are the path to retail.

Reducing ilevel bloat, removing RDF are all moves to not repeat past mistakes.

Well... first, define the "spirit of classic"? I thought the idea was to release Classic and let people relive their favorite eras in WoW's history with some changes where it makes sense, then make content/design changes in SoM. Removing RDF is already controversial enough of a change, but changing ilevel is a complete redesign of the last half of the expansion.

ilevel bloat was an issue then, sure. And it was an issue they solved in a way they may have wished they had done differently. But that Jenga tower has already been built, and taking blocks from the middle is gonna risk the whole thing falling back down.

You can just blanket drop everything by 13 item levels and be done. It dramatically changes everything that follows. Just as I can't take a cake recipe, remove 1tsp from each ingredient listed, and expect it to be the same cake. Not all stats scale linearly, and not all classes/specs scale the same with stats.

I can understand them wishing they had handled ilevel bloat differently back then, but trying to change it now is a massive task for a relatively small dev team. For one thing, the minute they make this change they can no longer lean so heavily on past balancing decisions. Everything will have changed. PVE balance, PVP balance, class viability, gear priorities, buff interactions, trinket procs, encounter balance, etc. All of it changes. A lot of it may end up in roughly the same place it was before, but undoubtedly not all of it will. The underlying math has fundamentally changed.

Not to mention the disproportionate impact this has on casual/10m guilds, and the fact that it's further devaluing the most content-light tier in the expansion.

[Bigbazz]

If it wasn't clear where my wall of text was going.

Ulduar was too short? Make it last longer, problem solved.

TOTC 4x lockouts was too grindy? They already reduced it to 2 lockouts, they can keep it to a 3-4 month phase.

ICC too easy? Originally it was gated, people geared up a tonne before they even reached LK normal, let alone HC. Without gating and without Hellscream's buff ICC will be too difficult for many. Without Hellscream's buff ICC normal is harder than SWP, and SWP was hard enough, the game isn't better by doing what retail does and catering to the top elite guilds, the elite players find their fun with speedrunning.


They will not improve the game in any way by messing with it like this, some changes are fine but this would be huge, doesn't matter how good you think Ulduar is, people will get sick of it and burnout, T9 is a great "cooldown" raid and fun period with alt catchup before ICC, nothing needs to be changed there.

Well... first, define the "spirit of classic"? I thought the idea was to release Classic and let people relive their favorite eras in WoW's history with some changes where it makes sense, then make content/design changes in SoM. Removing RDF is already controversial enough of a change, but changing ilevel is a complete redesign of the last half of the expansion.

Exactly, it goes against the whole point of Classic, I've never been so against any change as this.

[WaltherLeopold]

Well... first, define the "spirit of classic"?

That's not for me to say, but I reckon it has something to do with taking classic developers and developing upon either unfinished or unrealized projects or continuing with a trend that they wish to see renewed.

ilevel bloat was an issue then, sure. And it was an issue they solved in a way they may have wished they had done differently. But that Jenga tower has already been built, and taking blocks from the middle is gonna risk the whole thing falling back down.

You can just blanket drop everything by 13 item levels and be done. It dramatically changes everything that follows. Just as I can't take a cake recipe, remove 1tsp from each ingredient listed, and expect it to be the same cake. Not all stats scale linearly, and not all classes/specs scale the same with stats.

What makes you think that a 13 ilevel reduction on an item is a proportional 13 ilevel reduction in all the stats on that item? If you take a 277 item and reduce its stamina, str and crit budget disproportionally you could keep other stats unchanged.