Issues with gear after the item level revamp of Dragonflight pre patch

Community General Discussion
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The item-level revamp that came as Dragonflight pre patch added Shadowlands to the Chromie time leveling system has brought some game breaking flaws.

What does the issues affect?

  • Leveling
  • Timewalking content
  • Twinking

What are the issues?

In terms of leveling, the item level rewards have become completely unpredictable. There are several screenshots flowing around of level 10 players receiving 194 item level gear. This is obviously a major balancing mistake. (Edit 18/11): This has been somewhat fixed, but now people instead recieve gear that has a level requirements that’s many levels above their current one.

Several dungeons, raids and world content rewards have not properly scaled in proportion to what seems to have been the intent. These include the following:

  • Gear that was already acquired has not scaled up (Items acquired from Old Raids, Vendors, Crafted Items, Legion Dungeon items & Azerite). This has an bad effect on levelers that have unscaled gear, but face scaled enemies
  • Azerite gear from Dungeons (Mythic) are missing 1 outer trait (Total of 4 now instead of 5 what it was before) after Phase 2 of Dragonflight Pre-Patch went live.
  • Old enchants like Crusader and Dancing Steel with item level ceilings have not been updated and are now essentially unusable since only bugged items drop at their item
    level range.
  • Items sold by vendors have not been scaled. This includes PvP gear and raid items
  • Crafted items have not been scaled and relics of the past need to be adjusted
  • Several Trinkets that spawn pets/allies (Including the heirloom one that spawns void tentacles) do single digit DPS, and are actually unusable. This is particularly a problem for leveling, since the void tentacle trinket is near universal among people leveling alts.
  • (old) gems are not rescaled

In general there seems to be no logic behind the rescaling. Some items are scaled, some not.

  • Hellfire Citadel has 4 scaled bosses and rest still have the old item level.

  • Siege of Orgrimmar was forgotten while most of the old raids were scaled.

  • World Bosses are not scaled

  • Some azerite items are not scaled - fx emissaries’ Azerite Cache still give item level 100

  • BoE items need to be scaled properly

  • Consumables need to be scaled (Flasks, Elixirs, Potions, Food, Sharpening / Weighstones, Weapon Oils & Augment Runes

  • Some old items have negative stats now

  • Some gear tooltips are incorrect - example being the trinket “Mr. Munchykins” giving 167 haste instead of the 244 that the tooltip says.

In terms of timewalking content, the patch’s item level changes have currently killed the majority of gear-optimization opportunities that existed. The general appeal of optimizing for timewalking content has been to acquire a ton of cool and fun gear and push your characters strength to the limit in this casual avenue of end game content. Getting this gear in the first place takes a lot of effort, and seeing the new scaling leave what has been earned in the dust as unusable low item level gear is not good. This also includes any old legendary items – them staying at item level 30-44 makes them useless in the new scaling that goes beyond 100 item level. Furthermore, the issue with gear drops being incorrect like Azerite items not providing every ring of power they previously did prevents much of the future gearing options unless they are fixed.

Why bother with these issues?

First of all, the leveling system’s rewards being a mess is a problem.

Second, these issues that are related to all Timewalking content matters to a lot of players. I can with certainty confirm that about 8.000 people from EU and NA are invested in this content since they’re a part of the Timewalking Discord – the number of people interested is of course far greater since not everybody is a part of a specific Discord community, and there are people outside those regions that play this content. Furthermore the server and community as a whole has continued to grow at a fast and steady pace in the recent year which indicates a growing interest in this form of end game content as blizzard also adds more events and raids to it. It will also affect people that already farmed gear to complete the mage tower challenges; even if it is disabled for now. In addition to this, everyone that did spend time preparing for “Herald of the Titans” is facing a char that has basically useless gear as all of the stuff they acquired did not scale up at all and is still at item level 35 (new item level for the achievement is 107).
To put it bluntly, the recent scaling changes to Timewalking and gear rewards has killed this avenue of end game content since thousands of players’ hard work to obtain rare and niche gear is wasted, and future gearing options, unless addressed, will also be undermined. It will simply lead to a loss of subscribers and the loss of a huge community that has built itself up around this alternative form of end game content.

Suggestions to fixing the problems mentioned above:

  • Gear needs to drop at the appropriate item level for your character’s current level.
  • Azerite gear needs to provide the same amount of options as it did prior to the patch, this means the following places should reward 5 power selections: Raid-azerite from Battle of Dazar’alor normal and upwards to Ny’alotha mythic, Emissary Azerite Caches, Warfront world boss and weekly quest azerite and mythic dungeon azerite should provide 5 powers.
  • Increase the item level ceiling of old and cool enchants that were previously capped at item level 50 to 150 or higher so that they are usable in the same way as before the patch and don’t become completely unusable.
  • Increase the item level of old legendaries so they are usable. With the way current scaling works, a level 17 would rather use a green quest reward than Shadowmourne.
  • It might be difficult to scale up all gear that has already been acquired (You were able to scale it down?), so the easiest fix to prevent timewalking content from dying is to keep its scaling point at item level 35-50 like before instead of 100+. It would be a further improvement to keep all timewalking events at the same scaling point since that would eliminate extra balancing requirements.
76 Likes
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Great summarized, this for sure need to be addressed.

7 Likes
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would be nice to know why item levels even had to be touched when it doesnt effect dragonflight content in any way

the system we had before was running and logical and now raids for level 30 drop gear thats way worse then normal dungeon loot for lvl 10s, legendarys for level 45s, which many people used for the mage tower to make it a bit easier are now worse then level 10 quest rewards

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I really hope this was unintentional and gets fixed.

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5

In Blizzard terms,that means ‘working as intended’

7 Likes
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Please blizzard let people have fun in your game.
Gathering items for TW is a niche activity of the game as gathering transmog.
These changes ruin this side activity.
Do not close possibilities of enjoying this game until it is reduced to Raid/PvP/MM+.

5 Likes
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This character is lvl 36.
And heirloom gear is iLvl 100.
Before 10.0 it become 100 only at character level 52.
Why Blizzard do this change?

1 Like
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I agree wholeheartedly with the need for actual balancing. In my case it’s about TW first and foremost. It’s an activity I find really enjoyable, and it has given me a reason to do older content that I may not have experienced when it was current, i.e farming items from old dungeons and raids.

I really think it would be a shame if this current balancing kills off a game mode that literally thousands of players enjoy, and I hope this post gets the attention it (in my opinion) deserves from the devs

4 Likes
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Surprised this hasn’t received more “likes” than it has already. Excellent post.

I sincerely hope these fundamental flaws get addressed ASAP!

3 Likes
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I think the problem is that these ilvl changes are overshadowed by other issues that happened after Phase 2 of DF Pre-Patch went live, and nature of the forums which is flooded often with not as important posts. But yeah we are trying to spread this info atm as much as possible.

All these ilvl changes were also overshadowed during Beta / PTR by other content that was being added in the new Beta builds. Even the MoP World Boss Evoker issues WERE KNOWN since alpha and they still didn’t do anything.

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Yes thanks for the great summary, wth Blizz? At least scale everything in the same way and not at random!

1 Like
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Something needs to be done Blizzard. Push on this matter!

2 Likes
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Since blizzard has disabled Magetower for an unknown time and the next timewalking event is set to be in January maybe they are aware that this has to be fixed before the next event.

It’s just that with the release of dragonflight and all the other known issues this might go unfixed for way longer then the 2 months they have given themselves.

The only thing we players can do in the meantime is to spread awareness and hope for the best.

3 Likes
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True, that timeframe does give some hope, but yea without spreading awareness this could be swept under the rug which would effectively let leveling, twinking and especially tw be completely ruined.

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I just wish Blizz didn’t ship this in such an unfinished state. There was no urgency in deploying it. I’m also on the opinion that this could’ve been delayed until a future stat squish. It is obviously a lot of work for very little result.

2 Likes
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I also just checked some alts that I havent touched in a while, to see how the rescaling has effected them, and some are in a nearly unplayable state.

My mage that did some quests during legion has almost no scaled gear, all the legion quest rewards are still at ilvl 46-49 which makes him severely undergeared for everything at level 45. Furthermore, the quest rewards from legion world quests are also still sitting at around ilvl 50, which makes them useless for any content above like level 10.

Imagine someone returns after skipping BfA and Shadowlands, to see their legion geared character be destroyed by mobs 15 levels beneath him, now that would kill the hype for dragonflight in no time.

5 Likes
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This is such a mess. I really don’t get why the old items had to drop in stats. But refarming the gear wouldn’t even be the biggest issue in the world, but the fact that enchants are useless above level 18 gear (which gives about ilvl 49 gear, at level 19 you get ilvl 52 gear) just makes no sense at all.

All item enhancements prior to Dragonflight should get a new maximum ilvl, at least to ilvl 200.

3 Likes
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Ahh blizz, you’ve done it again<3 , cya in 10.3 (or 10.2 wink) when you®ve made the game fun and playable
 as per usual <3

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lols cant even even beat BFA dungs as ilvl 270+ becourse bosses are scaled to level 60 with 2 mill hp no lego or tier sets works eader 


this level 60s are so weak without barrow power we need a ilvl 300 heart and azarite gear for BFA content :stuck_out_tongue:

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I really enjoyed Optimizing my Gear for Timewalking Dungeons/Raids. it is a Great Aspect of the Game for me and the Community surrounding it is even Better. i Absolutely Hope that Blizzard gives this some Attention.

TIMEWALKING GEAR MUST RETURN TO ITS FORMER GLORY !

1 Like