What do you think of reduced ilvl on TotC gear?

[peterpan007]

I like the change as having ulduar relevant will make it easier to farm the legendary

[Sinte]

I very much disagree with this change... Ulduar is a very long raid and it seems insane for Blizz to expect groups to grind both ToGC and HM Ulduar each week? Did they mention how this'll effect the ICC 5 mans? Is their item level still the same as it was back in the day? (IIRC 219 for normals and 232 for HC)? Because if not then this change is absolutely going to kill any casual's hopes of raiding ICC when it comes out if they only have access to a squished T9 and some offset pieces from the Badge vendor because I remember even back in the day very few PuG groups I was in even ib 10man ToTC made it past the Jormungar....

Holy shit nobody *expects* you to do anything, it's not your job. You've beaten this content before. Play it for fun. My lord when you kids hit your 30s you're going to have a HARD time getting used to life if you think its all about the stupid game pixels.

[Segus1992]

So, Phase 3 is likely to be ToC, Ony, and the Argent dailies/5-man. ToC has already been devalued via the lokcout change.

Ignoring, for the moment, the ripple effect of changing the gear item levels and how that fundamentally changes class balance and encounter balance for the remainder of the expansion, and also ignoring for the moment the fact that this will be a change the disproportionately damages casual/10m guilds.... Ignoring all that, why still would you think this is a good idea to devalue the only raid content for an entire phase? How will making the raid practically irrelevant make that phase any more interesting for players at large?

I'm all for giving Ulduar a longer time in the sun than it had back in the day, but devaluing ToC is a massive mistake.

Make the phase shorter a la ZA.

[Amagh]

Holy shit nobody *expects* you to do anything, it's not your job. You've beaten this content before. Play it for fun. My lord when you kids hit your 30s you're going to have a HARD time getting used to life if you think its all about the stupid game pixels.

How naive of you to expect that people who're pushing the very top of the content are going to just settle for either ToGC or Ulduar each week... Or that "MuH CoMmuNitY" will just accept people with sub optimal gear onto PuG runs of ICC and much less something as long as Ulduar. "PlAy iT foR FuN" is such a cop-out excuse for anything, what if "fun" involves dabbling in some casual raiding? No serious guild is going to recruit someone who has maybe one night a week to raid if even that much.

Like many have suggested they should've just made the Ulduar cycle longer and leave patch 3.2 (Argent Tournament) content as is. TotC and ToGC were a nice little "breather" raids between the slogs that were Ulduar and ICC now that thing is being gutted in favour of giving Ulduar more time in the sun.

Also just a little math check for you. I was around during Wrath, which launched 14 years ago. If I'm a "kid" now how young do you expect I was back then? An adolescent?

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So edited/pruned for clarity:

I am curious how hard LK 25 H is by modern standards, and how hard it would be doing it with 13 ilvls lower.

But then again can you imagine if a modern WoW raid had a scaling buff that went up to THIRTY percent DPS, Stam, and Healing? I mean that's by modern standards ENORMOUS.

IIRC Paragon's world first of the Lich King had the LK actually Enrage. Luckily he was so low that they were able to DPS him down to clear the encounter. Lowering gear by 13 ilvl seems like it would have a fairly obvious negative impact.

[Bramickias]

I am curious how hard LK 25 H is by modern standards, and how hard it would be doing it with 13 ilvls lower.

But then again can you imagine if a modern WoW raid had a scaling buff that went up to THIRTY percent DPS, Stam, and Healing? I mean that's by modern standards ENORMOUS.

If they lower the ilvl a bit, it also makes sense that they would lower the bosses hp and damage a bit. Adjusting ICC for that is pretty easy. Boss is supposed to take X minutes to kill, find out the new dps a group can do in X minutes, and adjust the HP of the boss accordingly.
It's more tricky to adjust it for ToGC. A group entering ToCG decked in Ulduar gear is the same as it was originally, but the new gear they gain in ToCG gives them less power then originally so it makes the later bosses harder. Blizzard has always made their later bosses tougher, while taking for granted that the average group will take a couple weeks to get there and are better geared then the first day they entered. Would they go with their current Retail route and make the harder version of the endboss for the first week race and then nerf it, or adjust him for the new dps output from day 1?

[garicasha]

In a world where Ragnaros and KT originally went undefeated for weeks and months, then didn’t last a week / 90 minutes after re-release, obviously player sophistication has increased immensely.

And more recently, top guilds managed to find a way to eke out 5% more P3 Sylvanas damage in just a few days, which was very impressive and had little to do with ilvl.

But at what point does it start being small differences and not big ones?

Elitist Jerks was in widespread use by then so the fan machine was starting to roll. But it still wasn’t the wowanalyzer / WCL / Class discords we have today.

The sweatiest guilds will crush anything (it’d be nerfed if they couldn’t), Top 100-250 guilds will probably still manage, but more casual guilds could definitely struggle more in ToTC 25 H especially without 13 extra ilvls. ICC not so much with radiance or whatever it was called.

It’s possible this change wouldn’t slow down the best guilds much, but would really hurt casual raiding…yah that doesn’t quite sit right. Although…it is just a 5-boss raid.

[Monteverdi]

Make the phase shorter a la ZA.

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.

[Bigbazz]

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.

Originally Naxx was about 5-6 months, Ulduar 4 months, TOTC 4 months, ICC 40 years.

All they have to do is pace the expansion differently, TOTC can still be 4 months, Naxx has no business being almost 6 months long and Ulduar would be fine being 6 months long. Being tied down to some arbitrary length of time they want for the PvP season is pointless, because they weren't all the same length of time anyway.

[stomination]

Adding a month or two to T8 would suffice.

Prbly would in the past but now classic raids are being cleared day of.

[BSwitch]

In general I'm opposed to little tweaks like this to things as critical as gearing. Systems adjustments, I can understand to an extent (Wintergrasp as a BG now, layering, even RDF removal - though still not thrilled with their replacement), but changing gear and stats upon that gear feels like a step too far. I remember doing all kinds of math back in the day when the first retail stat squish happened, and my recommendation was to adjust the ilvl - I looked at the rational difference between tiers in Classic through Wrath, and saw that each had subsequently higher and higher jumps. In Classic (I don't have my numbers in front of me, but) essentially you had your character level (60) and your intro item level (60). By the end of Classic, the highest ilvl was basically 90, so you had 150% jump over clvl by the end. By TBC, that increase (up to 164) was roughly a 234% increase over clvl. In Wrath, we'll be getting a top level increase of 355% over clvl (lvl 80, ilvl 284). Obviously, in subsequent expansions that got much, much worse.

So, is there a disconnect between character power levels in Wrath...maybe, but is the answer to change things now? I'd argue that the stats and power we have in Wrath is a good thing. You feel significantly more powerful each tier that comes out, and by the end it feels like you just may have the power to defeat the Lich King, who's been toying with you all expac.

Now, Blizz did their own thing in their first squish. They didn't lower the ilvl, they lowered the stats on items per ilvl. Do you remember the first iteration of Sulfuras or Thunderfury after the stat squish? It was terrible - something like 80 dps dropped to 11. Now it's even worse, after another squish, sitting at 5.4 dps...for a legendary 2h...

At least in this case they're acting like they're going to be more controlled and only potentially making minor adjustments, but for me, I don't trust them to make these changes. For me, they should leave things as-is. Yes, I want Ulduar to be relevant - TOC isn't really a great replacement after the epic scale of Ulduar, but at the same time going to a shorter raid with zero trash is pretty enticing. Ulduar is going to be a loooong raid for most guilds. No matter how great a raid, it will at times feel like a slog. If they make this change simply to force people to feel like they're not as powerful and MUST return to the last raid, that's no good either. Personally, I think they should just leave well enough alone. Val'anyr is still important enough that you'll want to farm as many as you want/need, and having a shorter raid, now with only 1-2 lockouts instead of 4 required will, by itself, be enough to let most guilds blast through TOC and head back to Ulduar.

Just leave it alone Blizz.

[Monteverdi]

Originally Naxx was about 5-6 months, Ulduar 4 months, TOTC 4 months, ICC 40 years.

All they have to do is pace the expansion differently, TOTC can still be 4 months, Naxx has no business being almost 6 months long and Ulduar would be fine being 6 months long. Being tied down to some arbitrary length of time they want for the PvP season is pointless, because they weren't all the same length of time anyway.

I don't disagree, just saying Blizz has stated that one of their goals is to not need to cut a PVP season short by truncating a tier. So extending Ulduar is on the table, but shortening ToC is not.

[Toppy]

Gotta keep jacking off those raiders amiright. Thats always been a smart move.

[Makaloff]

im worried how this will affect progression in ICC and how it will affect class balance. some speccs like fury warrs and MM hunters only starts to scale once TOC hits, and reducing the ilvl would hit them pretty hard, especielly taking into accounts of other important stats like expertise and hit rating. Will we still clear content? ofcourse. Is it fun that blizzard meddles with things they shouldnt? no.

If they HAVE to change, just bump up the ilvl a bit on the ulduar gear and then let it be.

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

imagine taking a product that is perfectly fine and popular and make it worse. They should just released wotlk as it was, why change things that aint broken? They have the formula and they are on their way to screw it up instead of just releasing it. its like those people who put humongous wheels on their car to the point you can barely drive them.

[Dalinos]

I've said this before and I'll say it again - y'all are 100% delusional if you think WOTLK systems, ilvl, mechanics etc are what made that expansion the most popular ever. It was 1 thing, and 1 thing only.

It was the fact we were getting the end of the Arthas Menethil storyline that started way back when in original WC3: The Frozen Throne. You think it was 4 tiers of Badges? The easiest Heroics ever? The most imbalanced class ever added to the game on release (Death Knights)? No. It was the fucking artwork on the box.

[Konteil]

the only thing about this that is making me agravated is making the lockouts shared on toc normal and heroic iw as looking forward to running normals with guild nad heroic with pugs or whatever. the other thing i dread is them using this with all raids. changing to heroic lootship was a fun way to add some extra gear optons to ICC

[Fkiolaris]

I don't disagree, just saying Blizz has stated that one of their goals is to not need to cut a PVP season short by truncating a tier. So extending Ulduar is on the table, but shortening ToC is not.

And I am going to ask you the same question like the other poster: what is the problem with adjusting the duration of a pvp season, especially for a Classic release that will get no mid-expansion balance changes? I understand with a Tier that not enough people might complete a raid while it's current etc, but with pvp I completely fail to see the difference that it makes other than potentially not letting raiders run with current legendaries in Arena for longer.

[Monteverdi]

And I am going to ask you the same question like the other poster: what is the problem with adjusting the duration of a pvp season, especially for a Classic release that will get no mid-expansion balance changes? I understand with a Tier that not enough people might complete a raid while it's current etc, but with pvp I completely fail to see the difference that it makes other than potentially not letting raiders run with current legendaries in Arena for longer.

It doesn't bother me, but I'm not a PVPer so I can't really speak intelligently to the impact of a shorter season. It's just a stated goal of blizzard, that they *don't* cut a PVP season short, so we can rule that out as an option per their statements.

[antelope591]

Seeing as how Totc is the worst raid in the history of the game this is a great change. If they revert on their idiotic LFD stance I legit think Wrath will have more players than retail.

[Relapses]

imagine taking a product that is perfectly fine and popular and make it worse. They should just released wotlk as it was, why change things that aint broken? They have the formula and they are on their way to screw it up instead of just releasing it. its like those people who put humongous wheels on their car to the point you can barely drive them.

Imagine thinking that letting the most popular raid Blizzard has ever designed get completely invalidated by a shittier raid is a good idea simply because you just can't cope with the concept of change.

[Azsune]

I am hoping the ilvl change will make ICC a bit more challenging but I doubt it. The people complaining about having to go back and do Ulduar at same time as ToC are forgetting most guilds were still doing BT weekly as well as Sunwell. Just like we were doing SSC/TK while we were doing Hyjal/BT.

Back in Wrath we had the most raiders quit during the ToC period of the game. Some came back when ICC came out.