What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[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.

[Monteverdi]

I can understand Classic developers wanting another at-bat, but it's a risky proposition, especially when they're looking at an expansion that's so universally loved. Big changes like this have big ripple effects, and there are other ways to meet their stated objectives that don't have such wide-ranging implications and don't have the same collateral damage.

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.

I don't follow what you mean by this, could you please elaborate? I may be missing something.

[WaltherLeopold]

I don't follow what you mean by this, could you please elaborate? I may be missing something.

A reduction of 13 ilevels don't have to proportionally reduce all the stats of an item, you could see a greater reduction in stamina than haste but still reduce the item budget by 13 ilevels.

[Monteverdi]

A reduction of 13 ilevels don't have to proportionally reduce all the stats of an item, you could see a greater reduction in stamina than haste but still reduce the item budget by 13 ilevels.

So, that's an interesting solution but not necessarily what they're proposing as far as I'm aware. The ilevel reduction would, I assume, just be a flat item level reduction. What you're talking about - a target reduction of specific stats - is an interesting notion, but even if it was within the scope of what they're proposing, it would again go to the point of this being too much dev work for such a small team, with minimal upside and potential collateral damage elsewhere.

[WaltherLeopold]

it would again go to the point of this being too much dev work for such a small team, with minimal upside and potential collateral damage elsewhere.

I don't think this is necessarily a fact, naturally it seems like a lot of work but if this is an avenue blizzard is going for then evidently they feel like they are capable of taking on the workload.

[Monteverdi]

I don't think this is necessarily a fact, naturally it seems like a lot of work but if this is an avenue blizzard is going for then evidently they feel like they are capable of taking on the workload.

Eh you have more trust in blizz than I do. But even if they were willing and able to take on that workload, it seems like it would be a massive amount of work. Especially considering the rebalancing you'd need to do to accommodate classes that only performed well in the last patches of WotLK due to the ilevel scaling, unless the thought was to *not* rebalance those classes, in which case this comes with more collateral damage.

It just doesn't seem worth it to me. If the stated goal is to make Ulduar last longer, to prevent the PVP season from being truncated, and to add difficulty for those who want it in the later raids (raising the difficulty for casual/10m players is a losing proposition IMO, but optional difficulty at the top end is laudable), then there are ways to go about this that don't have the negative impact this could/would have.

[Caprias]

Wouldn't this have great implications on the later metagame? Especially for scaling arpen classes and fire mage (having less crit would actually worsen their gameplay, lol)?

Just because of that it sounds like a bit much of a change.

[Telosen]

Since some specs scale better than others this could be a good thing. It'll tone down the obvious best specs in arena and raids while making ToC and ICC harder which most people would probably like since the game has been figured out already. And specs that fall off like Elemental will be more competitive since the best specs don't go to the moon with better gear and leave them behind.

[Monteverdi]

Since some specs scale better than others this could be a good thing. It'll tone down the obvious best specs in arena and raids while making ToC and ICC harder which most people would probably like since the game has been figured out already. And specs that fall off like Elemental will be more competitive since the best specs don't go to the moon with better gear and leave them behind.

Yeah as-is, dropping 13 ilevels across the board would be a nerf to *everyone* technically, but due to the way scaling works it would disproportionally affect some specs more than others, which would mean that some specs could perform better in relation to others than they currently do, just as some specs would perform worse (in relation) than *they* currently do. The question is... why is this a good thing? Why do we want a complete class rebalance in an expansion that is widely remembered as a golden age for class balance? Not to mention that none of Blizzard's stated objectives around this change is a rebalance of class/spec performance.

[karrad]

Blizzard is back to making you play the way they want by making every other option shit.


Removing the ability to do normal and HC ToC is going to cut the raid tier down to like an hour once its on farm. Most guilds will still be doing Ulduar for valanyr/alt gearing during ToC anyway. The sweaty ones will be doing split runs until all of their healers have their mace. If you want Ulduar to be more appealing then improve on its experience, don't make it look better by smearing shit all over ToC.


You could make Ulduar drop ToC badges. Or add Normal ToC drops to Ulduar HM loot tables (you're already cutting the loot drops in half for ToC). There are tons of avenues to make people want to head into Ulduar but blizzard is just taking the easy path.

[Bigbazz]

A reduction of 13 ilevels don't have to proportionally reduce all the stats of an item, you could see a greater reduction in stamina than haste but still reduce the item budget by 13 ilevels.

This is not how Blizzard scales ilvl, you're making a giant leap here to assume that Blizzard would (for what reason?) change how they scale ilvl for the sake of what? If their goal is to reduce player power then the obvious and simple answer is for them to scale ilvl exactly as they already do. I don't understand why you think they would scale an ilvl down by 13 via disproportionately scaling the less important stats to offset some of the loss?

Everything follows the same formula, if an item is expertise heavy it will remain expertise heavy but have less overall. And with weapons it is purely homogenous, for example every ilvl 232 weapon has the same dps within 0.1dps, with only tiny variations based on weapon speed. You can already see this in the game, there are plenty of items that are copy/paste with higher/lower stats.

You've made some giant leaps and presumptions based on no reasoning as a way to support your opinion, if you need to do that then I'm not even sure you've convinced yourself this is a good idea. Not surprising, because it's a bad idea.

Wouldn't this have great implications on the later metagame? Especially for scaling arpen classes and fire mage (having less crit would actually worsen their gameplay, lol)?

Just because of that it sounds like a bit much of a change.

Yes, classes that start out weak and become good later on (Fire Mage, Ret Pala, Fury Warrior, for example) will get massively affected by it. It would also change the desired raid comp for ICC progression because ArP would be weaker, making physicals less attractive than they were originally.

Such a change would dramatically alter the 2nd half of the expansion, which happens to be the only half of the expansion that would have been accurate to begin with, since we're not running T7/T8 with the original class design/tuning. With this change, the entirety of the expansion will play out differently.

[Fkiolaris]

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

If only they had the means to synchronise the season with the tier, mate

[bloodkin]

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.

How did it fly over your head that it's the no changes group that keeps blizz from doing predatory monetization, rampant changes and keep them in check from dumb decisions, it's clear that in this day and age blizz needs a babysitter to keep them from ignoring the community and fucking up like that past four expansions. Your other argument is irrelevant considering classic was a result of blizz being forced to react to private servers, those vanilla/tbc/wotlk servers were closing in on popularity and gaining a better reputation than blizz at the time.

It's time to stop simping, good'ol blizz is dead and gone.

[Relapses]

How did it fly over your head that it's the no changes group that keeps blizz from doing predatory monetization, rampant changes and keep them in check from dumb decisions, it's clear that in this day and age blizz needs a babysitter to keep them from ignoring the community and fucking up like that past four expansions. Your other argument is irrelevant considering classic was a result of blizz being forced to react to private servers, those vanilla/tbc/wotlk servers were closing in on popularity and gaining a better reputation than blizz at the time.

It's time to stop simping, good'ol blizz is dead and gone.

Ah yes, it was the great and illustrious people who pirated the fucking game that saved Blizzard from themselves.

Jesus fucking Christ dude, I get that you just want to get off by calling me a Blizzard simp but at least try to form a halfway coherent argument next time.

[rogoth]

One thing I find it interesting, although I kind of started the conversation on ICC and Ulduar, but obviously the lower ilvl on TotC gear will make TotC hard modes harder as well.

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I kinda disagree with that, because they're right that Naxx was super easy and that Ulduar was a huge step up in difficulty.

Not necessarily saying this is the solution but I'm sure they have metrics for boss kill numbers and I'm sure they were a fraction of what they thought they should be.

Although the modern WoW player will crush these fights.

no it wasn't, you're confusing ulduar hard mode encounters with ulduar baseline, when ulduar first came out even pugs could clear half the raid week 1, mechanically the last few bosses were a step above and were a bit more difficult but in the main the baseline encounters weren't that hard, it wasn't until 'hardmode only' pug runs came around in the later stages of the expansion that people really struggled because most had very little experience with those encounters.

i don't know what you're talking about nerfing TOTGC ilvl, are they not having the 232/245/258 progression? cos that's just dumb, and just removes the point of the ilvl scaling of the entire expansion, are we gonna have naxx no longer giving 200/213 (226 from KT), are gonna see a shrink in EoE/OS drops so they also don't encroach on ulduar drops?, this is just fixing a problem that doesn't exist and is making something out of nothing, i don't get it.

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If only they had the means to synchronise the season with the tier, mate

the technology just isn't there yet /s

[Monteverdi]

i don't know what you're talking about nerfing TOTGC ilvl, are they not having the 232/245/258 progression? cos that's just dumb, and just removes the point of the ilvl scaling of the entire expansion, are we gonna have naxx no longer giving 200/213 (226 from KT), are gonna see a shrink in EoE/OS drops so they also don't encroach on ulduar drops?, this is just fixing a problem that doesn't exist and is making something out of nothing, i don't get it.

Yeah that's what's being discussed in this thread. Blizz is floating the idea of a 13 point item level reduction in all gear from ToC, Ony, and ICC as a means to: increase Ulduar's lifespan, raise ICC's difficulty, and tone down the ilevel inflation of OG WotLK. These are the stated objectives per Blizzard.

More info here: https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic...hat-with-devs/

[Relapses]

If only they had the means to synchronise the season with the tier, mate

I don't think diminishing the experiences of PvP players is a particularly good idea either. This is a situation where the obvious solution has drawbacks so they chose to compromise. In the grander scheme of things most players will not give a shit and the net benefit of having more time in Ulduar is better all the way around.

[Monteverdi]

I don't think diminishing the experiences of PvP players is a particularly good idea either. This is a situation where the obvious solution has drawbacks so they chose to compromise. In the grander scheme of things most players will not give a shit and the net benefit of having more time in Ulduar is better all the way around.

Well you keep saying 'they chose' something and they haven't chosen anything. This is a change that they are floating as an idea.

But they've also said nothing about elongating the PVP season. They've said they don't want truncate the ToC phase because that would force them to truncate the PVP season, which would be bad. But they've not said anything against *elongating* the PVP season which is what would happen if they elected to simply give Ulduar a bit longer. If we really want to change anything in order to give Ulduar 'time to breathe' this would certainly be the path of least resistance.

[Kralljin]

How did it fly over your head that it's the no changes group that keeps blizz from doing predatory monetization

...Mate, the sole reason why you didn't have a storemount or leveling boost in Classic is because Blizzard didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
If the beancounters say that the devs have to add a store, the devs that say no get moved to a new team or have to look for a new job.

That's just the plain reality, all those design philosophies fall out of the window the second those people see an opportunity to make money, they also sat there and mused about the authenticity of TBC when they added both a mount and level boost.

Disregarding that the second you bring that into the argument, i think you should first and foremost attack the leveling boost, not any change that's purely mechanical and has no monetary involvement for Blizzard.

Like seriously, where were all those #nowotlkchanges people when they announced the continuation of the leveling boost into Wotlk?

i don't know what you're talking about nerfing TOTGC ilvl, are they not having the 232/245/258 progression? cos that's just dumb, and just removes the point of the ilvl scaling of the entire expansion, are we gonna have naxx no longer giving 200/213 (226 from KT), are gonna see a shrink in EoE/OS drops so they also don't encroach on ulduar drops?

Two reasons.

One, they stated their intent is to keep more than just the current content relevant, which is something that TotC heralded into the game ("play the patch").
Both Naxx and Malygos remaining relevant during Ulduar very much follows this intent.

Second, the amount of items you actually use from KT and Malygos are rather limited, it's not like you can deck out almost your entire character with KT and Malygos items.

[Onikaroshi]

Horrible idea, will a quit moment for me if they decide to actually go through with it.