The dangers of MUDflation - gear scaling in WoW

[Rivin]

Wotlk, ppl were only doing ICC and rarely did ToC, for their alts to get some gear real quick.

That depends on the server. On the one I played on in Wrath, there were ToC pugs going almost every day even up to near the release of Cataclysm, and many Ulduar pugs too (although nowhere near as many as ToC).

[Rankin]

But you can't deny that the blues from those dungeons weren't that far off from gear up to BWL.

The blues were iLevel 63, MC epics were mid-60s, and most of BWL (being low to mid 70s). At most you'd be slightly more than 1 (13 level) tier worse after two raid tiers.

That you can get gear easily nowadays is irrelevant. There are still problems even if you can farm heroics for a few weeks to catch up.

The problem is that you're looking purely at ilevel, the difference in rare/epic also changed how many stats were available.

Look at Beaststalker Armor compared to Giantstalker Armor and Dragonstalker Armor.

The jump from dungeon set to T1 was a noticeable increase in stats, while T2 was just a bit better than T1.

[eucatastrophe]

The only point I may agree with on this poster's analysis is that older content in the current expansion is too easily rendered unimportant. (t11 is easily outstripped by t12 in a massive way). I'm not sure how I feel about this one way or the other

Yes, these are my thoughts as well.
If anything, I think the iLvl difference between the expansions (well up to the end of TBC anyway) are fine.
That being said, the gear inflation in WotLK and after is bordering on ridiculous.

[MikeBogina]

Bosspower is completely arbitrary and can easily be scaled to accommodate any item-level.

Your statement isn't an argument.

We wouldnt see bosses with with Huge health pools Either, rag has 201m on normal, 459m on HM(thats what wowwiki and wowpedia says)

wouldnt be surprised if Deathwing has 1 billion

And this also hurts professions. As the previous tier is useless

[Flaks]

I've been pointing this out for god knows how long (though not nearly in as coherent terms).

This is easily THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS GAME. If this problem was fixed, progression would once again be more prevalent, Blizzard would not be forced to make the previous tier gear available through heroics because heroics would serve as a precursor to the FIRST RAIDS while STILL HAVING RELAVENCE BY DROPPING GEAR THAT ISN'T ABSURDLY OBSOLETE.

The best part about it all is how a tier 2 weapon so far and away outperforms a tier 1 pvp weapon. The difference is of anywhere between 700-1000 top end and a full 100 dps. That is absurd and regardless of how inflated the health pools are it gives the tier 2 weapon-wielder a nearly insurmountable advantage over his/her opponents with supposedly slightly weaker gear.

[MikeBogina]

That depends on the server. On the one I played on in Wrath, there were ToC pugs going almost every day even up to near the release of Cataclysm, and many Ulduar pugs too (although nowhere near as many as ToC).

I'm on a heavily populated horde server, only Ulduars I saw were Guilds getting their alts mounts : /

oh and I once did a Naxx when ToC was relevant, no one knew the fights, but had ToC gear....and they wiped on every fight : /

[darkwarrior42]

There are 2 points I haven't seen raised yet; both are rather long.

Point 1) In classic, as you said, a difference of 2 dps was significant, and blues were still considered useful (if not exactly great). However, when you hit max level, you continued to progress your character by getting stronger and stronger gear.... and people that were decked out in full T3 weren't going to lose to someone in blues unless the T3 player was truly atrocious (and considering how hard original Naxx was, that wasn't very likely) and the player in blues was superb.

However, then you have The Burning Crusade. Now you have a slew of level 60 players in everything ranging from quest greens to T3 epics, and they're all going to be questing and leveling in the same zones. In classic, item level was typically 5 higher than the minimum level required to use the item... so an ilvl 45 item could be used by a level 40. Naxx, however, went all the way to ilvl 90.... so if you wanted a straight linear progression, then the gear from original Naxx is what we should be using right now as level 85 characters. However, by the end of Classic, that was no longer possible. Raid gear in TBC pretty much had to be better than T3 stuff, or the raiders would have nowhere to progress. Even more, you ideally want the heroic dungeons of TBC (intended to be a gateway to raiding) to be better than T3 by at least a little bit.... and that's pretty much what was accomplished. Heroic gear was substantially higher ilvl, but was also blue (not purple) and had a lower stat budget per ilvl, and had no set bonuses (ok, there were a few, but they weren't that great by and large).

So let's assume for a moment that ilvl 115 blue is/was the appropriate level to make the heroic level 70 gear better than the T3 gear, without completely eclisping it. That right there sets the bar on progression through Outland; anyone who levels through outland will be around T3 level (very approximately) going into heroics, so that they can move up to heroic gear. So your player wearing quest greens (ilvl 50-60, let's say) will advance to the equivalent of ilvl 90 epic over the course of 10 character levels. This is all done to ensure that players who progressed in Vanilla still have progression to do (ie they don't get a free pass on the next expansion by beating the prior one), and to ensure that players who didn't progress in Vanilla (for whatever reason, including new characters) can still progress through Outland without getting slaughtered (at least too much). Progression through raiding in TBC, then had to feel significant, and that led to another ~30 ilvls of gear for most people (the best of the best, who beat Kil'Jaeden, could earn themselves ilvl 164 weaponry, and that was the pinnacle of gear in TBC, almost 50 ilvls higher than the blue heroic gear they started in.

Now we come to Wrath of the Lich King, and once again you have similar problems; raiders decked out in top end epics ready to rip apart anything that looks at them cross-eyed, and fledgling level 68 characters in greens that probably would break under that same cross-eyed gaze. They both need to level and progress. More, Blizzard wanted to avoid having people jump into raid content wearing tier sets from the last expansion as much as possible (there were guilds that cleared Kara wearing T3), which necessitates setting the power of level 80 heroic gear as being higher than T6.5 Sunwell gear. Furthermore, you also have the new 10/25 man raid design, but with a holdover that said that 25-man raiding should be inherently more valuable and thus should get higher level gear. Whether this was a good idea or not is beside the point, that's how it was. That means that you had heroic gear set to be a good deal higher than T6 if possible, and then another full tier of raid gear above that even in the entry tier. Given ilvl 164 gear from kil'jaeden, ilvl 187 was the lowest implemented that would exceed the 164 gear, and thus provided the benchmark for level 80 normal gear, what you would use to get geared up in heroics (reference: http://www.wowhead.com/items=2.8?fil...v=148.8#0+12+1 a search on 2-handed swords with dps equal to or greater than Apolyon, the Soul-Render). That necessitates 2 full tiers beyond that level (one for heroic, one for 25-man raiding), and that pattern was continued, exacerbated both by one tier more than originally planned and by heroic modes; each of those factors added another full raid tier, meaning that ilvl 245 was probably the intended ending point for Wrath.

Now we come to Cataclysm.... and we have a brand new stat, an entirely new model for health and stats (both secondary and primary, and their relative worth), and a need to get every player changed over. That pretty well mandates having *everyone* fully replace their gear as quickly as possible (if the T10 gear had been viable in level 85 dungeons, top guilds would have used that gear to clear the early raids), which is why we saw such a large jump in power heading into Mount Hyjal.

The point here? While there has been some rather crazy growth in character power, it wasn't random and it wasn't without reason. Each change was undertaken for very specific reasons, and flatlining growth in the way you propose (or at least, in the way the post you linked proposed) would have impaired the ability of Blizzard to achieve their goals. You may or may not agree with their goals, but that doesn't mean those reasons did not exist.

Point 2) All of that address the need for growth in terms of relating items to each other, but doesn't address why a raid tier is presently 13 levels. In classic, raid tiers were ~10 levels, and in TBC that grew to 13... but has held relatively static ever since (I say relatively static because the presence of hard modes has changed it a bit; Blizzard seems to want their higher tier gear to be definitively better, and as such they set the next tier's gear about half a tier higher than the hard mode of the previous tier.... T11 normal is 359, T11 heroic is 372, and T12 normal is 378).

Still, one of the big proposals of your post is that raid tiers shouldn't be so large... that they should be closer together. That flatlines growth, certainly... but is that really desirable? As you said, in Classic blues still felt useful because the difference in performance was relatively small. Let's assume for a moment that pattern of growth had continued through all expansions, as illustrated in the "ideal". Do you know how marginal a difference any given upgrade we get now would be? Unless you intended to let raiders get off without needing to progress, or unless you intended to not let raiders progress by getting better gear, most of what was said above in point #1 still applies. That means people heading into TBC still get a large power jump (in contrast to the flatline growth), and it means that ilvls still outstrip character levels by necessity.

But let's assume that raid tiers were fixed at 5 ilvls, and they wanted to maintain that flatline growth (including not bumping up the normal mode of the next tier to make sure it's higher than the heroic mode of the previous tier). That means Tier 3 ends at ilvl 70, Tier 4 starts at 75, Tier 6.5 ends at 90 (I'll give it the benefit of a full tier), Tier 7 starts at 95, tier 7 25-man is 100, tier 8 25-man is 105, tier 8 25-man hard-mode is 110, and tier 10 25-man hard mode is 120. Now in Cataclysm they reverted 25-man being higher ilvl than 10-man, so we'll set everyone to the 25-man level going into Cataclysm... that puts Tier 11 normal at 120, Tier 11 heroic at 125, and thus Tier 12 normal at 125. Such a scenario means that gear we would be getting in firelands would be not quite as strong the live version of Tier 5.

So having achieved all of that... what do we have? Well, raiders never have to get gear from questing, leveling, or normal dungeons when an expansion hits, because the flatline growth means they're already at the start point of the next raid tier (handling this by any other method leaves people who hadn't completed the prior expansion's raid content would stand no chance against mobs in the newer zones). Having such a small gap in the performance allowed by gear also trivializes the need to get new gear in the first place, outside of bleeding edge hard modes (and since they typically operate while undergeared in the first few weeks anyways, even there it probably wouldn't matter too much).

*shrug* I see what you're driving at, but there are reasons for gear to grow the way it does, that have little to do with enforcing an artificially constant rate of growth onto players, regardless of the effect that would have on game design.

[Flaks]

Also please post this on the official forums. This seriously requires a blue response and needs to come to the developers' attention. I believe the last time they addressed this issue was middle of Wrath and said that they'd do something about gear-inflation. Instead we got the problem getting worse instead of being addressed in any way shape or form.

So I'll say it again. Post this on official forums both EU and US and bump it to high heaven.

[MikeBogina]

You're right, you're bad at math. Vanilla to BC is slightly more than a 200% increase. BC to WotLK is around a 250% increase. WotLK to Cataclysm is almost a 300% increase, and we're not even at the last tier of content yet. Please delete your entire post now.

looking at the New Greatsword(2200)
does 839dps
460Strength
689Stamina
306 crit and 306 resil

Compared to Ulduar tier, thats more then 200%

[darkwarrior42]

This is easily THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS GAME. If this problem was fixed, progression would once again be more prevalent, Blizzard would not be forced to make the previous tier gear available through heroics because heroics would serve as a precursor to the FIRST RAIDS while STILL HAVING RELAVENCE BY DROPPING GEAR THAT ISN'T ABSURDLY OBSOLETE.

If you can use the heroic gear to complete Tier 2, then Tier 1 gear is obsolete by definition. It's not needed to progress, so is not a part of actual progression (at best, it's a crutch for lesser players to use). You wouldn't be forcing progression, you'd just be changing which tiers are skipped.

The only way to force progression in its entirety is to have a large item level gap between tiers (large enough that you need to complete Tier X and get geared from Tier X to be able to complete Tier X+1), while not having any way to skip tiers (such as BoE gear, badge/justice gear, etc).

[Belloc]

I've been pointing this out for god knows how long (though not nearly in as coherent terms).

This is easily THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS GAME. If this problem was fixed, progression would once again be more prevalent, Blizzard would not be forced to make the previous tier gear available through heroics because heroics would serve as a precursor to the FIRST RAIDS while STILL HAVING RELAVENCE BY DROPPING GEAR THAT ISN'T ABSURDLY OBSOLETE.

The best part about it all is how a tier 2 weapon so far and away outperforms a tier 1 pvp weapon. The difference is of anywhere between 700-1000 top end and a full 100 dps. That is absurd and regardless of how inflated the health pools are it gives the tier 2 weapon-wielder a nearly insurmountable advantage over his/her opponents with supposedly slightly weaker gear.

So, what happens when you decide to make an alt after Deathwing's raid is released? You'd have to spend the rest of the expansion gearing up just to get to him. No, that's not a good idea.

Do you remember back in TBC when there were still attunements? End-game guilds hated running SSC/TK just to get a new recruit attuned. If they also had to run those instances to get that player geared up... do you think they'd continue playing the game? If I made a new character during ICC and had to run normals, heroics, tier 7, tier 8, and tier 9 just to get to tier 10, do you think I would've bothered? Hell no. There's no way anyone should be expected to do that. It's a bad idea.

[Brewski]

It's not particularly hard for Jimmy to get Tom gear though. So the whole point goes away.

You kind of missed the point.

[Morrin]

It should have been like this:
Vanilla: 0-99
TBC: 100-199
WOTLK: 200-299
Cata: 300-399
???: 400-499

It was working until cataclysm, sadly they started at 359 instead of 300, so we have an extra 3 tiers worth of dmg output that should have been reduced.

[Fojos]

It should have been like this:
Vanilla: 0-99
TBC: 100-199
WOTLK: 200-299
Cata: 300-399
???: 400-499

It was working until cataclysm, sadly they started at 359 instead of 300, so we have an extra 3 tiers worth of dmg output that should have been reduced.

Why? What's the reasoning? I haven't heard a single logical one as to why we should be forced to do previous content to compete in current. Why the heck does inflation matter when they can easily increase everything else as well?

[sephrael]

Also please post this on the official forums. This seriously requires a blue response and needs to come to the developers' attention. I believe the last time they addressed this issue was middle of Wrath and said that they'd do something about gear-inflation. Instead we got the problem getting worse instead of being addressed in any way shape or form.

So I'll say it again. Post this on official forums both EU and US and bump it to high heaven.

Not to burst your bubble but this line of questioning has been posed to Ghostcrawler and Co. on many occasions and they have explained it more or less along the lines of other posts in this thread (look for the long ones). At the end of the day, the stat inflation is designed to give the encounter developers a finer degree of granularity in how players get damaged (You go into Derpina's Raid of Pain, Derpina hits for 80k hp a swing and your tanks have 88khp. You then progress into Herpina's Raid of Annoyance, who hits for 102k a swing.) or otherwise participate in the fight. In fact, the gear inflation is designed more to serve the purposes you espouse (forced to do previous raids), as the "hapless casuals" will certainly not be able to take on current content alone with the 4 or 5 pieces of badge gear they can get.

As for doing long-assed chains of old content, I think both Blizzard and a vocal component of the community have made it abundantly clear that going that way is not conducive to the continued success of this game. And frankly if you think the idea of having to go through 3+ tiers of raiding in a patch to get current, you need only look back to TBC. In this case, if you think that this is a good idea from this era, I posit that you:

A) Were not playing at that time and buy into the hype of the cynical and bitter old-timers who dislike having to work to keep on top.
B) Were in one of the guilds at that level of competition.
C) Are a moron.

Because if neither A or B is true, then you were either not raiding and shouldn't be saying anything, or you were stuck in one of the many thousands of "farm team" raiding groups.

[Fojos]

It should have been like this:<br>
Vanilla: 0-99<br>
TBC: 100-199<br>
WOTLK: 200-299<br>
Cata: 300-399<br>
???: 400-499<br>
<br>
It was working until cataclysm, sadly they started at 359 instead of 300, so we have an extra 3 tiers worth of dmg output that should have been reduced.

<br><br>Why? What's the reasoning? I haven't heard a single logical one as to why we should be forced to do previous content to compete in current. Why the heck does inflation matter when they can easily increase everything else as well? Making the gaps smaller doesn't mean it will be more interesting, it means you'll have to spend more time with spreadsheets, nothing else.

Besides, at level 60, people did old content because it was an entirely different game back then. Blue wasn't nearly as good as epics (as some here seem to believe), but there was no theorycrafting out there telling people that. Only some items because of messed up mechanics.

[eucatastrophe]

I'm on a heavily populated horde server, only Ulduars I saw were Guilds getting their alts mounts : /

oh and I once did a Naxx when ToC was relevant, no one knew the fights, but had ToC gear....and they wiped on every fight : /

Yeah, I don't know what server that guy you quote played on... Ulduar pugs were few and far between - in my experience across not one, but 2 servers.

Usual trade chat pugs failed at Flame Leviathon. As time went on (3-4 weeks), they would usually manage to kill him after many wipes. Then Razorscale would be a 50/50. Ignis OTOH, they would fail at so he became the default skipped one (Predictably, the raid weekly "Ignis Must Die!" was the least successful one). XT, early on, people failed at because of well, everything: DPS requirements, Titan Tantrum, Light, and Gravity Bombs.

As time went on, close to ToC release, pugs could go up to Kolo on 25 man and Auriaya on 10.

In comparison, SUCCESSFUL ToC pugs were a dime a dozen - and I saw this on a horrible, dying PvP server where the raiding population was tiny and poor.

As to your last point... scary but it happens. Shortly before I quit, I led a heroic 5-man geared raid of level 85s into Ulduar 25. I had had the Celestrial Planeterium key since 80 but didn't have my title, so I wanted my Astral Walker title and they wanted their drakes. It was scary to see them fail on Hodir hardmode. o_o

[MikeBogina]

If you can use the heroic gear to complete Tier 2, then Tier 1 gear is obsolete by definition. It's not needed to progress, so is not a part of actual progression (at best, it's a crutch for lesser players to use). You wouldn't be forcing progression, you'd just be changing which tiers are skipped.

thats not true, ppl will go to them for upgrades,
Easier upgrade>semi better upgrade
however it right now its
Easier Upgrade<a lot better upgrade
If I just hit 60, i would do MC before doing Naxx or AQ
if i just hit 80, I would be doing ICC and never touch Naxx
in the end, no one wants to do Naxx : /

[eucatastrophe]

(You go into Derpina's Raid of Pain, Derpina hits for 80k hp a swing and your tanks have 88khp. You then progress into Herpina's Raid of Annoyance, who hits for 102k a swing.)

LMAO.
I think I love you xD

[Flaks]

I feel like the two opposing arguments here and the people behind each are either driven by 1.) You want to run old content to progress -or- 2.) You don't want to run old content to progress. Is that a fair assessment?

No, if you've run the content before then you're in a guild good enough to carry your alt through more recent or the most recent content. That case is dismissed and this has little to nothing to do with that.

Gear that drops from heroics should not be utterly null-and-void. At the moment it has no purpose whatsoever. The VP/JP that drops from the heroic dungeon itself makes that gear obsolete. (this is also not what the OP is addressing)


What I feel the OP is trying to address is gear relavence. There is no reason that a person in t11 gear should have such a sheer advantage over even a ZA/ZG geared player that they can destroy them on the meters with no effort at all. A person with a perdition's blade (ilvl 77 I believe) would still have a tough time against one with with dal'rend's sacred charge (ilvl 58 I think) because the two items were not that absurdly imbalanced in comparison to one another. On the other hand, a player with a Jeklik's Cursher stand little to no chance against a player with Akirus. Even worse, this problem seeps into pvp where a tier 2 weapon grossly outperforms a tier 1 pvp weapon. The difference of a 100 dps is insane. If the ilvls were brought under control as was promised after Ulduar (where the actually problem started becoming evident) then the difference between the two would only be maybe 25 dps and a tier 1 pvp weapon could outperform a tier 2 player who displayed lesser skill.