What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[Makaloff]

I really do not think fucking over Ulduar is a good idea, especially when you're doing it for a Tier that isn't remembered very well at all.

well everything isnt perfectly balanced, thats just how it was back then. If anything it can help to push up ulduars ilvl a bit to make the gap less, people are gonna want to go back to ulduar nontheless, mainly due leggy mace but also other items. Ilvl doesnt always trumph as we can see in both classic and TBC. heck me as hunter was still using DST going into SWP, i still cleared BT each week to get my hands on the illidari council trinket for example. I feel blizzard is making a hen out of a feather. Ofcourse i understand they want the tier last longer and thats fine, i just think its wrong that ToC and ICC especielly is going to have to suffer just beacuse of one raid tier.

or they could squish the ilvl in ToC and leave ICC alone, thus making it a bit more challening in the start of ICC and scaling classes wont be punished in ICC thanks to ulduar.

[Relapses]

or they could squish the ilvl in ToC and leave ICC alone, thus making it a bit more challening in the start of ICC and scaling classes wont be punished in ICC thanks to ulduar.

...that's exactly what this topic is about lol

See below.

[Makaloff]

...that's exactly what this topic is about lol

the problem is that they are planning to squish the ICC gear aswell, which is a pretty big issue. if it was only ToC i wouldnt mind too bad (even if ulduar is a massive drag), or have i completly misunderstood their intentions?

[Segus1992]

From a PVE standpoint that would work, but they've said they don't want to cut the PVP season short, so that's off the table. Making Ulduar longer would be fine though.

I mean, considering the PvP gear would have to be appropriately nerfed as well, do we really need that PvP season?

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...that's exactly what this topic is about lol

It isn't. Read the blue post.

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the problem is that they are planning to squish the ICC gear aswell, which is a pretty big issue. if it was only ToC i wouldnt mind too bad (even if ulduar is a massive drag), or have i completly misunderstood their intentions?

You haven't.

[WaltherLeopold]

i want my class to scale as intended, not getting nerfed beacuse they wanna force people to do ulduar longer.

This talk about intended falls kinda flat, when the people pushing these changes are people who worked on the core systems of Wrath of the Lich King. It's like arguing with an author about intent and allegory in their own works, you are simply clueless and have absolutely no idea of what they think or what they intended.

Now granted I think they could have conveyed their thoughts better and because of their lack of clarity people like you can spring up from nowhere and claim that you know the intimate intents of the developers.

[Relapses]

the problem is that they are planning to squish the ICC gear aswell, which is a pretty big issue. if it was only ToC i wouldnt mind too bad (even if ulduar is a massive drag), or have i completly misunderstood their intentions?

It'd be kind of ridiculous to jump two tiers worth of item levels in a single raid so that doesn't make a lot of sense. I assumed that we understood that ICC gear's power had to be curbed by the existence of a ToC gear squish, sorry if that wasn't clear in my response. You've also gotta keep in mind that ICC had a scaling up-to 30% buff which increased over time on top of the usual indirect nerfs through player power increasing. Early ICC will be tougher for a few lockouts but this compromise is a way to kind of correct the mistakes they made with item level bloat in Wrath in the first place while also making the content more challenging without needing to adjust everything dramatically. I honestly don't think this is as big of a deal as many are making it out to be.

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It isn't. Read the blue post.

I worded that poorly. See above.

[Kralljin]

Seems like a lot of work they are putting in when a lot simpler solutions are on the table.

Secondary effect is to keep tiers relevant longer, they specifically stated that's something they liked about Classic / TBC and something that TotC broke.

With the planned squish, anything before TotC remains relevant for longer because TotC gear doesn't beat Ulduar by a mile, meaning even new characters will likely still do some Ulduar because it drops relatively decent gear compared to TotC / ICC.
With this squish, Ulduar 25man Hardmode gear (239) is better than ICC 10man Normal gear (238), when previously ICC 10man Normal gear (251) was way better.

[Bigbazz]

Sorry, but praising Wotlk into the heaven and flipping the script on Ulduar comes across as awfully contrarian.

Quite impressive how you managed to entirely miss the point of my post at every step. Ulduar is a great raid, but Ulduar is not the entirety of WOTLK and you need to stop treating it like that. You know what I remember of Ulduar? People trying to bail out of reclearing it because it was too long and boring for them, had to fucking drag them in there at the end.

The expansion does not revolve around Ulduar, and given Ulduar was a 4 month period (just like TOTC) within a 2 year expansion I don't know how the hell you've come to this conclusion. That little fact about it being a 4 month phase is exactly the solution to making Ulduar relevant for longer, just wait longer before you bring out TOTC, leave TOTC the same and then ICC also still has plenty of time.

"flipping the script" my ass.

This talk about intended falls kinda flat.

It's clear he means intended to mean as it was, historically accurate. Also, if the developers didn't "intend" to have the ilvl scale up to 277/284 in 2010 then they wouldn't have done that, what they say in hindsight is neither here nor there, we went back to classic to reverse this process and play the old game. Obviously cutting out an entire tiers worth of ilvl will have a big impact on the balance of the game.

Specs that were originally scaling to be good by TOTGC25 HC BIS would not be getting there till close to ICC25 HC BIS, and the top end of scaling would be much much lower. That means classes like Fire mages, Fury Warriors, Ret Paladins, Combat Rogues, MM hunters. It would actually change the optimal raid comps for the 2nd half of the expansion quite a bit, particularly in favour of remaining closer to what it will be in Naxx/Ulduar.

That's going to be a pretty disappointing experience for those players who were expecting to get good going into ICC, and a far cry from actually being anything like WOTLK.

[Kralljin]

but Ulduar is not the entirety of WOTLK and you need to stop treating it like that.

That doesn't change the fact that i've already said: Remove Ulduar and Wotlk's raid content suddenly has two terrible raid tiers opposed to a single decent one.

within a 2 year expansion I don't know how the hell you've come to this conclusion.

Because even mentioning the two year length of Wotlk is just intellectually dishonest.

It was never intended to be that long, it was solely that long because Blizzard takes ages to launch a new expansion, this entire one year period between ICC and Cata is solely down to Blizzard not being able to develop Cata quickly enough.
And that doesn't even account that ICC was timegated into oblivion, it took them like 6(!) weeks from launch until the actual full raid, including heroic, became available.

That is the crux, portraying Ulduar as a mere 4 month period within a 2 year span is so faulty because at the end of the day, Wotlk had four raid tiers and just one of that lasted longer simply because of outside factors.
And under the aspect, i think it's absolutely justified to shift a bigger focus onto the raid tiers that are actually good, rather than the ones that are bad.

That little fact about it being a 4 month phase is exactly the solution to making Ulduar relevant for longer, just wait longer before you bring out TOTC, leave TOTC the same and then ICC also still has plenty of time.

Just undermines a critical secondary points:
1. It fucks over PvP seasons
2. TotC still (largely) invalidates Ulduar.

People trying to bail out of reclearing it because it was too long and boring for them, had to fucking drag them in there at the end.

I'm sure those people were fun in ICC as well, especially when you farmed that place for over a year.

[kranur]

At first, it got me mad. But after letting it sink in, making ToC 25 normal and below not drop gear that's better than Ulduar's HM's is not really a bad thing. The only real "problem" remains to be seen is how long before ICC releases, because 8 months of Ulduar will make a lot of people quit and never return ... as good as it was, it god boring fast.

At the end of the day the only people "negatively" impacted are the no changes and the big numbers crowd.
Keeping Ulduar HM's gear relevant for people that didn't get to complete them with Ulduar being current content instead of invaliding them by ToC 25 man normal joke is not a bad thing.

Now for people that clear everything, this only means smaller numbers (and possibly different meta) since ToC25 Heroic will still drop the best gear. It would make no sense for a new tier to not drop better gear than the previous.

[Monteverdi]

I mean, considering the PvP gear would have to be appropriately nerfed as well, do we really need that PvP season?

I don't understand why people are so quick to just devalue this phase entirely. No, removing an entire PVP season is not a good idea.

At first, it got me mad. But after letting it sink in, making ToC 25 normal and below not drop gear that's better than Ulduar's HM's is not really a bad thing. The only real "problem" remains to be seen is how long before ICC releases, because 8 months of Ulduar will make a lot of people quit and never return ... as good as it was, it god boring fast.

At the end of the day the only people "negatively" impacted are the no changes and the big numbers crowd.
Keeping Ulduar HM's gear relevant for people that didn't get to complete them with Ulduar being current content instead of invaliding them by ToC 25 man normal joke is not a bad thing.

Now for people that clear everything, this only means smaller numbers (and possibly different meta) since ToC25 Heroic will still drop the best gear. It would make no sense for a new tier to not drop better gear than the previous.

There is more to consider than Ulduar HM vs. ToC 25. Ignoring the balance problems this could cause, and the increased dev work this could bring, this change would dick over casual/10m guilds disproportionately. a 13 ilevel drop means that there would be *no* change in level moving from Ulduar 10m to ToC 10m.

If you really want to make Ulduar HM gear better than ToC 25 gear, the better option would be to boost the Ulduar HM gear, but even that comes with a ton of balance changes and problems.

This isn't strictly a #nochanges argument, it's just the reality of the situation. This is a house that has already been built, so going back and knocking out the walls for rennovations isn't a simple prospect. Changes this significant fundamentally change everything that follows.

[Bigbazz]

Just undermines a critical secondary points:
1. It fucks over PvP seasons
2. TotC still (largely) invalidates Ulduar.

1. How does it fuck over PvP seasons? Exactly how is having PvP seasons of a different length a problem? They have literally already done this during WOTLK in 2008-2010. You've invented a problem that does not exist, the PvP seasons do not need to be equal length just like the PVE raid phases do not need to be. 1-2 months here or there does not matter as long as they have a good run.

They literally released S3 with T6 in TBCC when S3 weapons invalidate many BT/Hyjal weapons, because S3 was not originally designed to be released alongside BT. That was a huge change in the name of stopping PVE gear from BT dominating S2, but somehow having slightly different length seasons to accommodate a better PVE pace is a problem? Somehow the solution is just to you know, fucking change the entire balance of the 2nd half of the expansion instead? Lmao.

2. And ICC invalidates TOTC as Ulduar invalidates Naxx, as SWP Invalidated BT. Aside from Warglaives nobody would need to farm BT after SWP, the jump in power from BT to SWP was larger than the jump from Karazhan to Black Temple for many specs, but no shortage of Black Temple raids. Ulduar doesn't need to be relevant forever, and I would be annoyed if it was, but thanks to the Legendary people will farm it forever anyway.

You need to let go of this dumb thing you have in your head where WOTLK needs to revolve around Ulduar, and where it's a problem that the newest raid makes the old raid mostly obsolete, that is how WOTLK was and we're here to play WOTLK, we're not here to play "Ulduar, the expansion".

That is the crux, portraying Ulduar as a mere 4 month period within a 2 year span is so faulty because at the end of the day, Wotlk had four raid tiers and just one of that lasted longer simply because of outside factors

And this one takes the cake. Every expansion is 2 years long, it doesn't fucking matter what reason it is or isn't 2 years, every expansion is 2 years long. You've got a 2 year period to space out content in, to even attempt to use this as an argument as you have is not only intellectually dishonest, but it's fucking stupid.

[Celarent]

It's like arguing with an author about intent and allegory in their own works

But of course this is Classic, where the commercial purpose was always to return customers to an experience they enjoyed enough to pay for twice. Intention then refers to sensible reproduction.

However, to the claim -- like George Lucas and the Prequels?

Creators aren't deities, nor are large-scale works -- especially interactive phenomena like multi-player games -- single-source affairs, let alone solo efforts. So much of the finished product comes from developmental adversity and market realities.

Whatever design philosophy Blizzard had that failed to emerge in Wrath is less relevant the more complex or abstract or disruptive it becomes because the Wrath the world got -- mistakes, incidentals, whatever
-- was uncontrollably popular.

[WaltherLeopold]

But of course this is Classic, where the commercial purpose was always to return customers to an experience they enjoyed enough to pay for twice. Intention then refers to sensible reproduction.

However, to the claim -- like George Lucas and the Prequels?

Creators aren't deities, nor are large-scale works -- especially interactive phenomena like multi-player games -- single-source affairs, let alone solo efforts. So much of the finished product comes from developmental adversity and market realities.

Whatever design philosophy Blizzard had that failed to emerge in Wrath is less relevant the more complex or abstract or disruptive it becomes because the Wrath the world got -- mistakes, incidentals, whatever
-- was uncontrollably popular.

Oh for sure, but on the other hand who better to interpret the intent of the developers than the actual developers themselves? Truth is only those in the know, know. I thought that would be a redundant statement but it seems not, since people are ascribing a lot of shit that's unverifiable or conspiratiorial on a very lax basis.

Blizzard has used the concept of in the spirit of Classic ever since they started this project. It's shortsighted, if not wholly incorrect to only look at one of the mission statements, which was to recreate or replicate the old game & expansions. They outright said from the start that they have given themselves a massive berth to go forward.

That said, the reasoning behind Classic's onset is quite irrelevant, we're several years into the development of this new product and time itself will warp and change the direction of things. Evidently as per their own actions they are very keen on remedying things that they consider to be harmful for the future continuation of this iteration of WoW with the full blessing of Blizzard behind them.

[Makaloff]

This talk about intended falls kinda flat, when the people pushing these changes are people who worked on the core systems of Wrath of the Lich King. It's like arguing with an author about intent and allegory in their own works, you are simply clueless and have absolutely no idea of what they think or what they intended.

Now granted I think they could have conveyed their thoughts better and because of their lack of clarity people like you can spring up from nowhere and claim that you know the intimate intents of the developers.

intended most likely was the wrong word used by me but in the end my point is that i dont want my specc to get nerfed just beacuse they want to prolong ulduar. The issue with ilvl squish is that it will upset the specc balances and everything needs to get theorycrafted again. Sure as surv hunter i wont notice much since it doesnt scale with ARP but take MM for example, thats a specc thats start to pace up once ToC hits. Fury warrs having same issue aswell. by introducing a Ilvl squish, it simply is punishing the speccs that scale and everything needs to be theorycrafted yet again due to different stat values etc.

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It'd be kind of ridiculous to jump two tiers worth of item levels in a single raid so that doesn't make a lot of sense. I assumed that we understood that ICC gear's power had to be curbed by the existence of a ToC gear squish, sorry if that wasn't clear in my response. You've also gotta keep in mind that ICC had a scaling up-to 30% buff which increased over time on top of the usual indirect nerfs through player power increasing. Early ICC will be tougher for a few lockouts but this compromise is a way to kind of correct the mistakes they made with item level bloat in Wrath in the first place while also making the content more challenging without needing to adjust everything dramatically. I honestly don't think this is as big of a deal as many are making it out to be.

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I worded that poorly. See above.

my big worry is how it will affect the speccs that scales from ToC and onwards. sure the 30% buff in icc is going to be a thing, but if they wanted icc to be tougher why keep it? simply put, i dont want to be punished playing a specc that scales, the ilvl squish biggest issue is upsetting class balance. We dont have a option to test the changes either unless you got Beta, so what we can do is simply theorycraft. the ilvl bloat only became a issue when LFR got introduced and we had 4 difficulties instead of 3, thus raising the bar even further in terms of ilvl (and eventually leading to a number squish due system can only handle a x amount of numbers).

Another reason why the squish is a big concern is due blizzards history with squishes, some items becoming absolute trash thanks to it and some getting ridicously strong, some stuff simply just gets broken and plenty of bugs to boot. The ilvl squish is more headache than nessecery from my perspective.

[Kralljin]

1. How does it fuck over PvP seasons? Exactly how is having PvP seasons of a different length a problem? They have literally already done this during WOTLK in 2008-2010.

Because Rating Inflation is a thing and you'd also don't want to have the top tier players play forever to stay on top.

Disregarding that i don't see how "Blizzard did it in 2008" is a justification.
They also staggered T5 when TBCC launched, that wasn't the case in 2007, it's really just a non argument.

They literally released S3 with T6 in TBCC when S3 weapons invalidate many BT/Hyjal weapons, because S3 was not originally designed to be released alongside BT.

Well, there's two easy answers.

1. Those are weapons, not the entire gear.
2. Those weapons are Rating locked, so they were not free to get for everyone (unlike TotC).

Please, this argument is grasping at straws.

but no shortage of Black Temple raids.

We're at a point where you basically engage in historical revitionism to an insane degree.

First off, Blizzard literally said that their intent behind TotC was that people would no longer have to engage in previous content.
Second, both in Classic and TBC, people still engage in previous content, people have done MC throughout Classic, people have done Karazhan throughout TBC.
That is something that has changed with Wrath (or TotC to be specific) because the content was that easy and had such high value loot that it was frankly a waste of time for any Alt or new player to engage in Naxx / Ulduar but just jump straight into TotC after farming heroic dungeons.

If we are at a point where you question the "play the patch" philosophy that TotC has introduced into the game - which was not how the game was previously designed - then you've dug yourself that deep into this narrative to deny one of the critical differences that Classic (and by extension, TBC) has to Retail.

People at large will not bothering to do Ulduar, let alone Naxx outside of 25man Guilds where a Healer strongarms the guild into farming the 4th Val'anyr, at which most people are going not to bother for it because they don't get anything out of it.

Somehow the solution is just to you know, fucking change the entire balance of the 2nd half of the expansion instead? Lmao.

It's 13 fucking Ilvls, not a redesign of the whole expansion.
Most people didn't even get to this point in actual Wrath, are you that dense to believe that 13 Ilvl will make a 180° on how the Class Meta will look like?
It doesn't turn the world on its head for fucks sake, the TotC Class Meta is not fundamentally different to how it looks in ICC.

Seriously, imagine someone telling somebody "Well, you can't play that spec until 277 Gear, 264 is not enough".

You need to let go of this dumb thing you have in your head where WOTLK needs to revolve around Ulduar

It's not just about Ulduar, it's also about T7 and that people engage in more than just the most recent raid tier.
Which frankly requires a closer Ilvl, between the tiers, else it's not going to be worth.

The only raid who gets nerfed is TotC, nothing else, any raid before that benefits from it and it doesn't affect the relevance of any raid past it.

that is how WOTLK was and we're here to play WOTLK, we're not here to play

Yeah and Blizzard has made it abundately clear that they're not in for delivering a 1:1 authentic experience.

You can cry about it, but when you do, then at very least,do me a personal favor and bemoan the existence of the leveling boost and the absence of spellbatching.

Because any person who seriously flirts with the idea of #nochanges has to also oppose these things.

And this one takes the cake. Every expansion is 2 years long, it doesn't fucking matter what reason it is or isn't 2 years, every expansion is 2 years long. You've got a 2 year period to space out content in, to even attempt to use this as an argument as you have is not only intellectually dishonest, but it's fucking stupid.

Yeah, that's why the enterity of TBC's content came out within less than year, despite the fact that actual TBC ran for 1.5 years.

Seriously mate, how long an expansion lasted has no bearing on how quickly content comes out in its rerelease.
Do you believe Blizzard will stretch out Cata for ~2 years if Cata Classic happens? No, they won't, because it'll only have 3 phases, 4 if we're generous.

-snip-

If you seriously subscribe to the idea of #nochanges again, then you just haven't paid attention to has happened in Classic and TBC.
And yes, Classic was also extremely popular both in 2004 and in 2019, that doesn't mean it was perfect.

And i tell you the same thing: If you argue for #nochanges, you also argue that the leveling boost shouldn't exist while you also have to put up with spellbatching.

[Relapses]

intended most likely was the wrong word used by me but in the end my point is that i dont want my specc to get nerfed just beacuse they want to prolong ulduar. The issue with ilvl squish is that it will upset the specc balances and everything needs to get theorycrafted again. Sure as surv hunter i wont notice much since it doesnt scale with ARP but take MM for example, thats a specc thats start to pace up once ToC hits. Fury warrs having same issue aswell. by introducing a Ilvl squish, it simply is punishing the speccs that scale and everything needs to be theorycrafted yet again due to different stat values etc.

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my big worry is how it will affect the speccs that scales from ToC and onwards. sure the 30% buff in icc is going to be a thing, but if they wanted icc to be tougher why keep it? simply put, i dont want to be punished playing a specc that scales, the ilvl squish biggest issue is upsetting class balance. We dont have a option to test the changes either unless you got Beta, so what we can do is simply theorycraft. the ilvl bloat only became a issue when LFR got introduced and we had 4 difficulties instead of 3, thus raising the bar even further in terms of ilvl (and eventually leading to a number squish due system can only handle a x amount of numbers).

Another reason why the squish is a big concern is due blizzards history with squishes, some items becoming absolute trash thanks to it and some getting ridicously strong, some stuff simply just gets broken and plenty of bugs to boot. The ilvl squish is more headache than nessecery from my perspective.

Ultimately we're talking about 13 item levels worth of scaling. This isn't insignificant but it also isn't nearly as game breaking as you seem to be implying. Completely imaginary numbers here but a class which may have done 12k on an encounter in OG Classic is going to do 11.5k in this version. This may make certain DPS checks more difficult but that's where the scaling ICC buff kicks in. (ToC, I'd imagine by virtue of not having the scaling buff, may actually end up being even more difficult than ICC... perhaps to the point where most guilds won't even bother doing it on Heroic until after they've got ICC gear.)

Regardless, I would assume that these changes will show up on the PTR before they get launched onto Live so this would be where we'd have a chance to see exactly how impactful the changes are.

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If you seriously subscribe to the idea of #nochanges again, then you just haven't paid attention to has happened in Classic and TBC.
And yes, Classic was also extremely popular both in 2004 and in 2019, that doesn't mean it was perfect.

And i tell you the same thing: If you argue for #nochanges, you also argue that the leveling boost shouldn't exist while you also have to put up with spellbatching.

We rarely agree on much here but I'm with you on this one. The whole #NoChanges movement is something that's really popular on discussion forums because people like to pretend the sanctity of the game is tantamount to Godliness; but the reality is that most people simply do not give the faintest fuck and Classic has continued to be incredibly popular despite the loud, impotent criticism from these folks.

[Makaloff]

Ultimately we're talking about 13 item levels worth of scaling. This isn't insignificant but it also isn't nearly as game breaking as you seem to be implying. Completely imaginary numbers here but a class which may have done 12k on an encounter in OG Classic is going to do 11.5k in this version. This may make certain DPS checks more difficult but that's where the scaling ICC buff kicks in. (ToC, I'd imagine by virtue of not having the scaling buff, may actually end up being even more difficult than ICC... perhaps to the point where most guilds won't even bother doing it on Heroic until after they've got ICC gear.)

Regardless, I would assume that these changes will show up on the PTR before they get launched onto Live so this would be where we'd have a chance to see exactly how impactful the changes are.

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We rarely agree on much here but I'm with you on this one. The whole #NoChanges movement is something that's really popular on discussion forums because people like to pretend the sanctity of the game is tantamount to Godliness; but the reality is that most people simply do not give the faintest fuck and Classic has continued to be incredibly popular despite the loud, impotent criticism from these folks.

that is a fair point, allthought im not too worried about ToCs difficulty, i remember it was fairly easy back in the days (with bad computers and wonky internet connections). ill guess we have to wait and see how things turns out. Atleast it was a good call to change the trinkets to being unike.

[garicasha]

Since it’s been so long, what is the difficulty equivalent of the Trial heroic 25 fights in terms of either a Shadowlands or Legion fight, and how much will a 13 ilvl drop affect them?

Template:
Northrend Beasts (25 H) is equivalent to
Lord Jaraxxus is equivalent to
Faction Champions is equivalent to
Val’kyr Twins is equivalent to
Anub’Arak is equivalent to

Actually 25 Hard Anub’Arak could be really f——- hard at 13 ilvls lower, that’s the one where he’s leeching the whole raid and you have to out DPS the leech right?

[Bigbazz]

Since it’s been so long, what is the difficulty equivalent of the Trial heroic 25 fights in terms of either a Shadowlands or Legion fight, and how much will a 13 ilvl drop affect them?

Template:
Northrend Beasts (25 H) is equivalent to
Lord Jaraxxus is equivalent to
Faction Champions is equivalent to
Val’kyr Twins is equivalent to
Anub’Arak is equivalent to

Actually 25 Hard Anub’Arak could be really f——- hard at 13 ilvls lower, that’s the one where he’s leeching the whole raid and you have to out DPS the leech right?

It's hard to try to difficulty match 13 year old content with current content, especially since stuff is nerfed constantly and people have an entirely different idea of what is hard/easy. Like Sludgefist on even Normal in Castle Nathria was originally considered really hard due to tuning, but after nerfs and a week of gear it was barely above LFR. Same with like Emerald Nightmare in Legion, known as being one of the easiest raids but plenty of guilds didn't clear it in week 1, guilds with very good players but not the absolute elite. After nerfs/adjustments and with gear/ap (main contributor) it was then easy enough for very mediocre "heroic" guilds to completely stomp it.

TOTC normal was too easy, TOTGC (HC) on 25 was very difficult relatively speaking, maybe around the level of a good Heroic or easy Mythic boss, with Anub being a step above, like a mid point Mythic boss in a raid like Nighthold. A lot of guilds (particularly those without already decked with Ulduar 239) did not have much success in 25m TOTGC, because of the steep difficulty increase tuning wise from anything before combined with some specialised boss mechanics (leech on Anub).

If you drop ilvl by 13, it turns it into a pretty serious raid that only really good guilds will clear early, many wont kill at all. ICC was already too difficult, even with months of farming early wings before LK was even available most guilds barely did anything before the Hellscream buff came into effect, LK HC didn't die before then either. ICC was only considered easy because most people who cleared it did it with the full 30% buff. Of course guilds like Progress will stomp it, but it's nowhere near needing to be more challenging.

13ilvl is a big deal, all these changes would not only make T9 and T10 more difficult, punish 10man guilds disproportionately, but it also is a motivation killer for any player who was turning up to relive the incredible fun of playing the game with ilvl277/284 gear and the massive secondary stat scaling that came with it. The only benefit of the 13 ilvl drop really is for more competitive world first race, the same dumb shit as retail has.