Even Blizz knows there's too much power in gear

Community General Discussion
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Last one for the weekend, guys.

I really don’t understand Blizz. They KNOW the power gap in gear isn’t fun for anyone. It’s fun to pursue itemlevels, but it is fun in the same way pulling the lever on a slot machine is - it’s not the game that is fun, it’s just how it has conditioned you to feel pleasure from meager rewards.

But you know why Blizz knows there’s too much power in gear? Cuz they scale you. When it comes to pvp scaling, there’s no good formula. Ever. If you have to scale players in pvp, then you’re admitting your gearing ways aren’t working. Basically, with any formula you choose to implement, you will hit a wall where a players get diminishing returns from gear, or even that their gear makes them weaker.

So why not just have every patch raise the gear by 20 item levels, where the new raid’s heroic is more or less equal to the old raid’s mythic? Then have mythic dungeons that drop gear that is between heroic and mythic raids, like it is currently, and it will work. And you know it will work, because this is the current system, except the main difference - the new raid’s normal is equal to the old raid’s mythic.

Making the power gap less prominent will make the game more pleasant. Not deleting the old content when the new patch comes will make the game easier to catch up. You need gear? Just get carried by your guild on the old raid’s mythic. 2 runs and you’re kitted for the current heroic. It’s perfect.

It’s simply not right that N’zoth LFR drops 440 ilvl gear and Azshara on MYTHIC dropped 445. Not every patch needs to feel like the start of a new expansion for veteran players.

2 Likes
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ye the gap between mere patches is like a gap between entire expansions in the past. Sure patches released better gear and catch-up systems but you were not expected to replace EVERYTHING in mere 1 week, maybe 2 if unlucky.

Patch 8.2 gear was up to 425 for casuals (Benthic system) and 445 for Mythic raiders (possible warforgings up to 455 but these were rare). Patch 8.3 is invalidaning any and all 8.2 content by dropping 445 loot (=Mythic EP!!!) from a simple world quest cache which is the easiest content in this game. Same 445 loot can be acquired for other very simple tasks, such as world boss kill, doing a weekly assault, doing a vision without masks, killing 25 players in War Mode etc. Very easy stuff. And once you step into mythic+ you get gear surpassing Mythic EP from a mere +7 (450 drops at the end). Push it to 9 and you get 455 and +11 for 460. On top of raw ilvl you had Corruptions too which sometimes added like 50-100 additional item levels to the gear piece. No joke here, ilvl 420 from a WQ with Twilight Devastation III was basically ilvl 999 BIS nuclear bomb. At least early on, before vendors and all that crap.

These huge, massive gaps between patches cannibalize the game’s own contnet. BFA has 5 raids to offer but just one of them drop gear you want (maybe EP on mythic for those trinkets - only certain classes though). Why would you want to go to Uldir or BOD now? These are BFA raids, but rendered obsolete, they might as well have legacy soloing buff now and be grinded for transmog. Doesn’t matter anymore.

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Not everything about gear is about RNG. You’re not satisfied by the low odd of getting something good, but rather the progression and building your character.

If anything the rng is frustrating rather than fun.

Get rid of gear progression from one patch from another and you’ll get rid of most of the incentives behind playing the game, because gear is still the main goal in WoW.

Reduce it from 30ilvl per patch to 15 and you’ll make raiders waste most of their time because the first few bosses of a tier are easier than the last few of the previous difficulty. And Blizz wants to please their raiders, not the other way around

They don’t scale you because of gear itself, they scale you because they went crazy with systems and how stats translate into hp or power. No xpack ever had the same gap between a fresh char and a cap ilvl character that BFA suffered from.

With or without the ilvl gap from one patch to another BFA would’ve been a clown fiesta with how they handled stats and player power…

Anything’s good at this point, but Blizz claimed that they ran their own studies and found out that players only feel like they got an upgrade if there’s a +15ilvl increase.

And they want us to be able to progress through two difficulties every patch and still find upgrades in the next patch, which explains the 30ilvl gap.

Yet studies showed it doesn’t. Guess they should try it live and see how many unsub after a few weeks.

If there’s anything I believe Blizz is good at it’s designing grinds aimed at making players spend more time in game, even at the cost of the game itself.

If they could get away with lower ilvl gap between difficulties but longer gear grind up to the cap they would gladly do so imo. Yet here we are so I guess our dear MAU analysts proved it wouldn’t work

Sure but Ilvl bloat isn’t the issue here.

BFA had something like a +900% HP from a fresh character to a cap ilvl one, and in some cases a much bigger performances gap. Meanwhile we went from 280ilvl to 485 ilvl so barely more than +73%. Iirc at some point we used to have +15% stats per 15ilvl, we’re far from that +200% stats.

Fairly sure that’s a completely unprecedented increase over the course of a single xpansion.

How about we don’t add stuff like +3% stamina and not inflate the stamina to hp ratio to compensate for broken systems and actually try to balance this mess instead ?

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I think players only care about ilvl because ilvl is displayed and it shouldn’t be. Gear should only display its stats and players should decide what to wear. Everyone already sims, and sometimes higher ilvl gear doesn’t sim better, unless it is the exact same item, just with higher stats. Needless to say, I don’t think ilvl should be displayed.

But the thing is… we won’t get rid of gear. Everything will remain exactly the same. Within a week of a new patch, mythic raiders are doing m+15 dungeons, so they’re already getting gear equal and better than new patch heroic gear. If someone isn’t doing mythic raiding, they’re just doing m+15’s to get the weekly chest, and it will take the exact same time to be done with m+ gearing, maybe minus one week. I don’t think the skinnerbox will change all that much.

Nah, Blizzard aren’t really good at it. The devs of Azur Lane and Girls Frontline know how to design grinds, these games are so addictive, and they’re simple mobile games (well, Girls… can be challenging actually, it’s a solid deck builder on top of qt girls).

Blizz has only one retention mechanic, and it is delayed for after a full week, and they could be doing something more. For example, instead of titanforging, they could’ve had a system where you could fuse duplicates of items. They fail so hard at making items feel useful beyond the direct increase to player power. And this is what mobile skinner boxes excel at. Playing Azur Lane, you’re feeling good all of the time, you’re getting stuff, all of it has multiple uses, and it is always useful to you. I don’t think Blizz is good at all at designing the game to keep you playing. They’re too blatant and heavy handed. On top of that, I don’t think I’ve felt good about opening my weekly chest in… months. I got one decent upgrade for my offspec once. Everything else gets scrapped for expulsom which I needed to get my engineering to 175 and learn the blingtron. And I did that today, after I found out I don’t need expulsom to do that. So now I don’t really have anything to do.

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Item level problems are being looked at in SL already

Expansion Pre-Shadowlands Item Level Post-Shadowlands Item Level
Vanilla 58-59 34-35
Burning Crusade 80-89 38-39
Wrath of the Lich King 100-102 41
Cataclysm 108-114 42
Mists of Pandaria 116-130 43-45
Warlords of Draenor 138-147 46-47
Legion 168-240 50-54
Battle for Azeroth (Mythic Uldir) 385 66
Battle for Azeroth (Mythic Nya’lotha) 475/485 130/140

Look closely at how the gap is being really reduced .

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patch 8.0 or 8.1. It takes everything in me to kill the karazhan hidden boss for the dragon mount solo.

Patch 8.3. I start my combo, the dude’s dead before i even cast the second pyroblast.

Another example:

8.0: A group of highly geared individuals attempt to kill argus on mythic difficulty. They die multiple times to aggramar.

Patch 8.3: Let’s invite 20 people for argus. Player B: No need. 3~4 is more than enough.

And then they wonder why people hate it. Skip one patch, and you’re basically as useless as a lvl 110 NPC in the next raid.

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Been saying for ages they they need to reduce the number of difficulties to combat the problem, but they think they would be shafting players if they do that.
I mean… in tbc there was only one difficulty. No one dropped the game cause of that. In wrath there were 2 difficulties. No one dropped the game cause of that.

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shadowlands gear starts at ilvl 100 blue gear but they all peaces has secodery statsh instead of azarite powers already in level 50 we can have even legendery.

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I heard about that secondary stat tax in Systemlands.
I wonder if in return to that will they reduce the mob upscaling based on our ilvl.
Otherwise the daily chores will be even more dull in the later patches.

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oh lel will be so easy to get ilvl 100 in shadowlands .

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only what i will say that gap betwen mythic +2 and for expample +15 should be bigger in loot drop and not a single level of m+ should give same loot , also raid bosses should not give same item level even on same difficulty alt least not all of them

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imho. i dont think the ilevel is all that relevent, ilevel has proven time and time again Inferior to borrowed power attached to them and secondary stats.

you 100% Can have a 420 Ring that is a bigger upgrade then a 460 ring.

Although i agree, there has to be a better way of doing this… this is mainly because of the PvE Requirements from gear etc etc comparitively… u have to remember. PvE Bosses hit harder then players and they’re designed to do exactly that.

you cant have one scaling… when bosses smack for 500k+ Dmg potientally. and a Player hits you for 80k and think that one scaling will provide in 2 fields…

and u could argue “Nerf PvE to not hit harder then Players then”… well then your going to remove the entire Skill curve to PvE but nullifying boss Mechanics. or u could argue vice versa… and every fight feel like a Mythic Nzoth kill.

PvE and PvP in every MMORPG… has never scaled on the same System successfully, ESO and GW2 two PvP focused games are still scaled in ALOT of their pvp content.

Ilevel doesnt matter… while we have secondary stats and borrowed power Uplifting Low ilevel gear to be bigger gains then higher ilevel gear. its been irrelevent in WoW for years now.

except you forget… Someonme who only normal Raids and does WQs are still a veteran Player, a veteran is determined by time Not how far they get.

this sadly alot boils down to

your in a Modern PvE Focused MMORPG. and the further they progress the game in a PvE Focus to increase Player engagement (although BFAs build to gain player engagement is horrific) the more this will backlash onto the PvP Community

because. say for example. They did Lower ilevel gains… and Mythic Azsara wasnt much worse then mythic Nzoth, you would litterally get players who just farm old gear for big upgrades and ignore the latest of every Expansion for ease of play.

not only this… u’d make taking breaks from the game more forgiving… and encouraging players to Unsub for lengths of time in breaks would simply be Agains tthe objective of the game itself.

FFXIV does this super well… but FFXIV oftenly sell 1 million copies and maybe hold a community of a very small % who actually stay subbed throughout a Expansion also.

theres a Reason why modern WoW still sells 5million and Maintains over 1mill Subs (in most expansions… we all know this isnt the case for BFA) while other MMORPGS generally Dwindle in active population after a month or two of a expansion launch.

and sadly . its because Every patch requires youy to come back to, where i can ignore FFXIV for 6 months and know it wont matter lol.

what they should likely do… is Just throw Resilience into the game for a expansion and see where PvP Engagement is realistically… they are against it sure. but at the end of the day why dont they just try it out… if the engagement falls out the sky undo it lol.

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True. I don’t think LFR and Normal even matter. I managed to full clear heroic Ny’alotha in 3 hours and I didn’t take 8.3 seriously at all. It was ezpz. Nobody enjoys doing LFR, it is a frustrating experience - the queues, the complexity of the fights versus players not knowing them, it’s annoying. LFR can work if there’s an incentive for experienced players to do it. In ArcheAge, every 55lvl character has a daily quest to carry a lowlevel through a dungeon, and every low level has a quest to be carried through a dungeon. I think this system is good.

I am against the entire m+ system, I hate it, but on principle I agree. But I think the difficulty difference between each new keylevel should be much more dramatic. Right now, +13 and +14 are more or less the same. But they shouldn’t be. And every new level should come with an increase in ilvl, both from the dungeon and the weekly chest, up to a cap, at which point only your chance to receive loot increases.

When people talked about having a pvp stat a few months ago, I was against it, but the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’m becoming convinced they’re right. I think versatility becoming a pvp stat would be good for the game. Obviously, pve needs to stay challenging in order for it to be interesting, but pvp should also kinda… feel good. Chipping away at someone’s health doesn’t feel good at all.

But that would be alright, no? Those who farmed old gear, they’d still be decent in current content, but the ones farming current gear will have some 20% advantage on them. Which is a good %, but it’ll still make world pvp fights and arena feel fun. I think one of the reasons why pvp is rather dead right now is just how many players have been completely left behind by Blizz. They have to be on the treadmill all of the time, just for a hope of catching up, but they never get to actually fight.

I like the analogy of pve being the training mode for pvp. Like you’re a fighter, but you still need to spend the time lifting weights, running, doing lat pulldown and all of that. This is pve. And then you just get to wipe the floor with your opponent. But currently, there’s too much time required to be spent in pve and in the end you just don’t have time to pvp, and you still feel like you’re behind the curve. It’s just too much…

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not really… i’d argue the bleeding of the PvP community came befor escaling… or the multi tiered tread mill of mass ilevel gains.

I’d argue the Start was simply when WoW rebranded itself a PvE Focused MMORPG.

when WoW started out. MoBAs werent as Big, Hero Shooters Werent as big, Battle Royales Werent as big. and within the design of this games they’re naturally built to Show Player talent Above RNG/Game Design.

in the Lack of these Other genres, WoW put together a strong PvP community, and it was able to easily cater between. PvE was in a much simpler time. with ALOT less involved which helped massively. and Removing the Ease of Access into pvp for PvE players werent that punishing.

then u had the Huge Storm of PvP focused MMORPGS and New genres of games which flooded the markets. which put blizzard in a much more complicated Stance.

they either keep pushing These Far smaller quantities of content to try push for balance. or simply pick one and Invest… they invested in PvE content bringing in TONS of Esport Related content and More surrounding its PvE Enviroments.

that was When WoW started Dying in a PvP Aspect. it was turned from Content for PvP Focused gear. to What u can laugh at ur friends doing on the side of your raid content.

and Yes. we all began WoW for different reasons. and at a time yes the game supported all those reasons and theres no reason for trying to demand to go back, but the games reached a Point where its obviously not gonna spin the wheel back.

And tbh… the launch of Classic Servers kinda Proved this is the way realistically, while people saw this as a Boon and a Huge community win… i always Percieved it as the cheap way out.

Instead of Turning Modern WoW back to what it was, they’re simply gonna Tell u to go play classic now… or go play TBC when that launchs and they’ll push WoW forward on the grounds of PvE Content and they’ll Just simply leave their PvP community to move to the Legacy server.

WoW Classic was realistically a win for blizzard… they release Recycled content with little to non Staff and freeze the games in time… while appealing to more Modern Gamers who want Retail. they Push a Esports surrounding PvE while creating one in a Older generation of their own game…

Then they’ll take the money the legacy server creates and Push it into Retail. Its a Great plan and it works out for the community… the problem is not every pvper in the game will wanna go replay TBC.

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Yes, the only reason to allow players to run the raids in LFR is so they can see the story. The easy solution to that is to stop resolving the story in raids. Raids can have their own narratives. FFXIV does that, SWTOR does that, GW2 does that, etc. Actually i can’t think of another MMO that does it’s main story through the raid.

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I would prolly like this change although I don’t think LFR opposes much problem anymore realistically. I’d go as far as tbh these days it’s likely easier to do a normal raid then a LFR raid now.

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Keep in mind that, by the looks of it, Blizzard is planning to do something about ilvl inflation, in the form of taking out a raid difficulty from the equasion (Heroic,) So we will only have LFR, Normal and Mythic raid difficulties.

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I really hate LFR, and the main reason is that it is a garbage way of experiencing the story. Getting a run on Normal is a much better experience. I think the main argument against LFR shouldn’t be that it is casualizing raids, as that’s kinda fine… it’s that LFR is a garbage experience where most runs fail, and when you have fights that require coordination, then just forget about it. For LFR to work, raid fights need to be designed in a way that doesn’t require a raid leader. Currently, Normal is easier than LFR.

Yep. That would be great. Have the raid connected to the story, but not be a part of it. The Alliance doesn’t get any story about Uldir, but that didn’t stop them from running it. But the downside of not having the story resolved in raids means that you can’t really have the big bad that goes down in an epic showdown against 30 players. I liked WoW better when it wasn’t always about the big bad, and I would really like that back.

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I mean… it can be. If we defeat the big bad in the raid but he escapes, weakened.
GW2 does that. It has a big bad as a world boss event but you finish it off in a solo story instance.

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