What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[Kralljin]

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?

Comparing fights is always a tricky thing but generally speaking, the Totgc fights aren't too difficult.

Northrend beasts can be relatively tough if you have shitty dps, because the Worms and Icehowl spawn on a timer, if you aren't done, you probably wipe.
Icehowl itself is pretty straight forward, just don't have anyone dying to the charge, else you probably hit the Enrage because you lose the dps from Icehowl not getting stunned.

Jaraxxus, again, pretty straight forward but if your dps manage to press tab and kill the right target, it's easy going.

Faction champion is a pure brain check, has little to do with gear.

Twin Val'kyrs is the same, if you wipe because of a lack of dps, people are doing something wrong.

Anub'arak is a 100% healer fight, the only difficult part about this fight is Phase 3 and there the healers have to set up their UI properly so they don't heal the same targets.

Basically, if you manage to kill Northrend Beasts, you're over the hill and can kill anything up to Anub'arak.

Nevermind that in this entire debate about difficulty, the cooldown reset thing is actually quite massive, first because it allows you to make pulls back to back without waiting for any CD's and second because you can also stack Warlocks + Druids under the roof to have a ton of Soulstones and Battle rezzes.

[SinR]

Now they're talking about buffing Ulduar gear.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

[NoiseTank13]

Now they're talking about buffing Ulduar gear.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

Sounds good to me.

Listening to #NoChanges people tanked Classic and TBC with all the boosting and GDKP nonsense.

[Kralljin]

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

While works to some extent, i prefer the first solution.

It was their stated intent to keep multiple tiers of raiding relevant, buffing Ulduar loot isn't going to change to the same extent because ToC will very much invalidate previous raid tiers.

Ulduar Normal being buffed by 6 Ilvl doesn't really make it more attractive than ToC, you're still matching 226 / 232 (10 / 25 Ulduar Normal) against 232 / 245 (10 / 25 ToC Normal).
With this change, people aren't going to do T7 / Ulduar once ToC is out, because its loot is hardly relevant anymore, Uldar 10man drops 219, 25man 226, that cannot compete with 232 / 245 out of ToC, especially when you consider that ToC is a far more time efficient & easier raid.

This change largely affects people who will engage in the Ulduar Hardmodes, because the 251 Loot is quite strong and you'll have especially trinkets that are going to be pretty strong.
But for anyone who's not interested in the Ulduar Hardmodes, they just stick to ToC 10 / 25, ignore T7 / Ulduar.

[Relapses]

Now they're talking about buffing Ulduar gear.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

Interesting. I kind of preferred the first solution myself but this is a way to do it that doesn't involve nerfing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[garicasha]

Well kneejerk reaction is that...well the first solution, if Trial and ICC wound up being too hard, they would have had to either return the item levels back to original levels or nerf the bosses....which if that winds up being the case would just be a mess and way worse than just launching the game as it originally was. And I think there's a significant chance that Heroic Anub'Arak 25 with a 13 ilvl penalty could wind up being too hard for even decent guilds...but it's not been so long who knows?

Raising the item levels of hardmode 25s and then putting the pre-nerf bosses in...I never did the hardmodes nor would I remember their precise difficulty if I did, but given that it's 1 piece of 251 per boss, split amongst 25 raiders each with 16 slots...my first impression is that it could work.

Although I'm still not sure this is an improvement over just doing the original ilvls and the post-nerf bosses.

Also what does pre-nerf Vezax mean, have to stack resto druids who still get their lifebloom mana back?

[Warning]

The idea of buffing Ulduar gear seems worse to me than the originally planned nerf of ToC and ICC gear. This is more likely to fk up pvp balance plus it'd make ToC a complete joke probably. Also does nothing to fix endgame scaling of secondaries. Imo drop ToC and ICC gear by 3-7 ilvls or leave it alone entirely.

[Bigbazz]

Now they're talking about buffing Ulduar gear.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

I'm much more OK with that, but I'd prefer if it also came with buffing the content to compensate. The opposite effect of making Ulduar too easy is also pretty bad. I still think the best solution is to leave everything as it is and have a longer Ulduar phase and keep TOTC phase the same length. I'm also fine with them gating ICC for a month, but not gating ICC would have their desired effect of making it harder anyway so that's fine too.

+6 ilvl to Ulduar and leave everything else the same is much better than dumping the 2nd half of the expansion by 13ilvl.

if Trial and ICC wound up being too hard?

If you set aside the elite level guilds then that would have happened. The hardest thing people in Classic have seen so far is Muru, which caused a lot of guilds a lot of trouble even in 2022, the reality check they are going to have to face when they get to Firefighter pre-nerf, and then have to do buffed TOTGC/ICC... It's just not gonna happen, those fights are hard from a tuning standpoint even in their original forms.

ICC has a get out of jail free card with the Hellscream buff, 30% is monstrous, but TOTGC has nothing like that, I don't think the right solution is making those raids harder.

[Celarent]

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.

I'm torn on whether it's necessarily a good thing, though. Timeless things have flaws, and you can restore to a point. I'd say that's where #some changes is most appropriate. E.g., Taste for Blood was never supposed to randomly skip procs, and the effect of fixing it would be minor (and easily calculable). Once we reach the point of remaking, the essence of the thing may change a lot -- and again, this is for customers to make cash. Art plays a part in there but not the biggest one. And, too, that's where SoM comes in.

-snip-

Oh Kralljiiiiin

[Kralljin]

Oh Kralljiiiiin

That is what you are however effectively arguing that the citation of the success prevails over the authors intent.

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.

This paragraph perfectly describes the philosophy behind #nochanges.

You can dance around it, but that's what you said there.

And I think there's a significant chance that Heroic Anub'Arak 25 with a 13 ilvl penalty could wind up being too hard for even decent guilds...but it's not been so long who knows?

I doubt it, Anub'arak is at the end of the day, solely a healer check.

First off, keep in mind that people will be abusing Battle ress and Soulstone like hell unless Blizzard chooses to exclude them from reseting on wipe, which is a *huge* deal on Bosses like Anub'arak where losing people during the last phase due to healer incompetence is very likely.
Second, Anub'arak was more than doable with 3.2 class balance, 3.3 is arguably stronger because, for example, introduced haste scaling dots / hots to a lot of specs.

The sole gearcheck involving Anub'arak is pushing him into the last phase before getting a 3rd intermission phase, which shouldn't happen if you made it past the previous bosses.

[garicasha]

If they were to re-release Ulduar with all its bugs, all the messed up ilvls, only out for the same short time, completely invalidated by TotC gear...that'd be fine. I'm not saying it couldn't be improved upon. But it'd be close. Therefore there's a lot more that can be screwed up than improved upon.

As for stat scaling, I don't think it's possible to "fix" that. Either the classes that scale super well are OP in ICC 25 heroic gear, or if nerfed, then other classes benefit at their expense. Although maybe I should see some data first, like just how out of control do fire mages and armor penetration classes get above other classes?

We should also dredge up a copy of the actual Ulduar nerfs before we go around saying adding 13 ilvls is too much or too little before we even know how much they reduced the boss health.

[Relapses]

We should also dredge up a copy of the actual Ulduar nerfs before we go around saying adding 13 ilvls is too much or too little before we even know how much they reduced the boss health.

Just wait for it to show up on the PTR, imo.

[Monteverdi]

Now they're talking about buffing Ulduar gear.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...devs/1317075/9

Love it. Where the previous recommended change would have changed everything that followed in drastic ways, this change largely only impacts T8 and achieves all their previously stated goals without nerfing anything and without detracting from T9 (while still giving a way for people to largely skip T9 if they prefer). Seems like a win. Can't believe this wasn't their first idea, how in the world they came up with the bone-headed thought to nerf all post-Ulduar gear I'll never know.

[garicasha]

This link seems to jive with what warcraft tavern says for DPS levels in ICC. Most classes can do 12k, the best 13k, the worst under 12.

https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-06-...s-by-spec.html

[Warning]

Think the main issue is ToC gear scaling 27 ilvls from n10 to H25. Reduce the gap between 10 man and 25 man from 13 to 7 ilvls and everything looks better.
Ulduar Normal 10: 219
Ulduar Normal 25: 226
Ulduar Hard mode 10: 232
Ulduar Hard mode 25: 239
ToC Normal 10: 232
ToC Normal 25: 239
Toc Heroic 10: 245
Toc Heroic 25: 252.

ToC remains an upgrade but hardmode Ulduar is still relevant for much longer.

[garicasha]

So my understanding is that Yogg+0 was barely even attempted by anyone in 2010 and ... Stars did it after TotC?

Are people now able to crush Yogg+0 in Ulduar gear? I'm guessing so, but they've had 10+ years to learn how to avoid skulls in the brain rooms.

[WaltherLeopold]

I'm torn on whether it's necessarily a good thing, though. Timeless things have flaws, and you can restore to a point. I'd say that's where #some changes is most appropriate. E.g., Taste for Blood was never supposed to randomly skip procs, and the effect of fixing it would be minor (and easily calculable). Once we reach the point of remaking, the essence of the thing may change a lot -- and again, this is for customers to make cash. Art plays a part in there but not the biggest one. And, too, that's where SoM comes in.

I was personally very #nochanges, though I have kinda been made to move on from it since they have made it very clear they have no intention of releasing Classic the way I want it to. So I am mostly just shifting gears to get behind changes that I think are good for the game, remedying issues that have had in my opinion drastic negative impacts on WoW over the years. I think addressing RDF and runaway ilevel bloat is super commendable. That said I don't like them buffing ulduar because i'd rather see a reduction in ilevel rather than an increase.

[Bigbazz]

As for stat scaling, I don't think it's possible to "fix" that. Either the classes that scale super well are OP in ICC 25 heroic gear, or if nerfed, then other classes benefit at their expense. Although maybe I should see some data first, like just how out of control do fire mages and armor penetration classes get above other classes?

It's more like certain specs have a niche where they pull massively ahead. Would be like Fury Warrior on Marrowgar due to burst cleave, or Combat Rogues on large scale AOE with FOK. When you look at pure single target the balance is reasonably close, with those scaling specs typically being specs that weren't so strong earlier in the expansion (Fury/Fire) on single target, scaling with secondaries to where they are now strong. Pair that with Shadowmourne is why you see Ret/Fury really pick up.

It's nothing like the balance difference in TBC, there are still niche scenarios where some specs look busted strong but that happens throughout the whole expansion, it's not something that emerges because of specs scaling specifically in ICC.

I also think people overestimate the ArP scaling impact, it's just overall stat/secondary scaling. Combat Rogues go ArP too but they can damn near achieve the same results by focusing on either haste or raw AP too, even if ArP comes out ahead Rogues can go down any of those paths and still be extremely good.

[Relapses]

I was personally very #nochanges, though I have kinda been made to move on from it since they have made it very clear they have no intention of releasing Classic the way I want it to. So I am mostly just shifting gears to get behind changes that I think are good for the game, remedying issues that have had in my opinion drastic negative impacts on WoW over the years. I think addressing RDF and runaway ilevel bloat is super commendable. That said I don't like them buffing ulduar because i'd rather see a reduction in ilevel rather than an increase.

The big thing that confuses me about this is how they initially said they didn't want to make PvP feel weird then turned around and threw out a suggestion that does exactly that... then kind of swept the impact under the rug by saying "we'll adjust upwards as needed."

Honestly, the more I think about it the more I'm thinking the only real way to make Blizzard's decision to "let Ulduar breathe" come to fruition is to simply remove ToC altogether. Bump Naxx/Uld item levels a bit then skip ToC altogether after Ulduar has been farmed for a few months. Then toward the end of ICC where we'd normally get Ruby Sanctum they can re-release ToC w/ inflated item levels/scaling so we get more to do while Blizzard figures out whatever the fuck they're going to do with Classic post-Wrath.

[Kraenen]

Seems like a decent choice. Gear inflation got pretty bad as the game went along.