Let me say first, that i love scaling, even in this implementation while i would preferr full scaling to both ways.
The scaling however, has made some issues for my leveling process… I had to skip Yetimus in Hillsbrad because the toss makes it not possible. The Iceshatter in Dragonblight kills my demon and chases me, no time to cas spells or protect myself. Not many but few single named mobs that i can get past.
Would love to ask help, but in my realm (The Sha’Tar), there is novody anywhere. Allways i do /who, there is never anybody else.
Feels like the developers should revisit some of the bosses and tweak them keeping in mind, that we now have empty zones for days on end and nobody to help.
Did you had any issues on your leveling through zones?
Yep, and if you level up, it becomes stronger faster than you do, meaning you effectively levelled down, which means you cannot equal its power by preparing more.
Medium population RP realm and many have propably played too many times through them allready. Most are most likely on the BfA zones too and some playing Classic.
There are a couple of places where mobs in general do this, but I don’t recall one where a specific mob does. I went through Yetimus on my paladin. Had to switch to tank, I recall, but nothing specific about levels struck me.
Hogger is now easier at level 1 with heirlooms than at level 10, as I recall, but level 1 is an edge case.
Draenor at 90-91 is frankly broken, but I believe that has more to do with gear distribution than scaling.
Scaling is, to me, a vomit-covered, worm-infested, pustule of the devil, but I still don’t want to blame it for what it’s not - what it is is more than bad enough.
Oh. I understand. The thing is, that scaling seems to be just “Slapped” there without in-depth tuning of individual tweaking of certain quest bosses.
In GW2 or ESO for example, everything seems to be much better in balance. Normal mobs do some damage and can overwhelm you and boss types always have mechanics that can be countered with abilities.
I tried it numerous times as Warlock. It always tossed my pet so far it got unsummoned and then i got tossed away and finally to the death and i could not even summon a new demon, because i had to stand still and its hard to cast while flying.
Story would be different if CC would work, but they are immune. Could fear them away and continue after that.
About the scaling. I love it because in almost all cases minus few anomalies, it makes mobs feel like something. They dont die immediately so i can feel like i am really fighting, but the thing is made just half ways since most cases there is no risk of death involved minus few exeptions. WoW scaling needs retuning and rethinking so that it works well like it does in GW2 or ESO for example. ESO has best scaling i have ever encountered so far.
Ah yes. I agree. That’s something I’d like to see in WoW, too.
I remember the Pandaria rares fondly for their slightly terrifying presence when levelling, and as an early 90. They all had mechanics that made them possible, but definitely not easy - so you knew you had a shot, but also knew you were probably going to screw it up
To be fair, early Draenor quest bosses also share this characteristic. But you really won’t see it below Mists.
As I keep saying, I believe the primary purpose of scaling was so that Blizzard never had to touch the old world again when making changes. Customising quest bosses by hand would have interfered with that prime directive.
The jist of it is really simple:
When you level up, the mobs scale up with you.
When you level up, your gear doesn’t improve (unless you use heirlooms, but that should NOT be a default assumption)
The mobs are tuned to be appropriately difficult for your level and reasonable gear to match.
Since your gear did not upgrade, and the mob scaling assumed it did, your character levelled down.
The only times you really notice, other than noticing a general lack of growth, is in times like the OP. She says that it shouldn’t be so hard, which means what she’e really saying is difficulty bumps requiring you to grind some levels should not exist, at which point the obvious question is “Why even have levels if you never need them to defeat enemies?”
This is actually the problem with scaling. This is the root of everything that’s wrong with it. Everything is scaled to be an appropriate challenge at every level (other than the rare boundaries they put in), and if you’re better than Blizzard expects ten you get bored, and if you’re worse than Blizzard expects you to be, no amount of grinding or prep can make you overcome enemies.
That might be the case here. If you ask me though, i think they really should do something for the whole world to once again, bring everything as viable content with intact timeline, but i fear it wont happen.
If i think about this Iceshatter im trying to fight now… I dont have any utility to cleanse a debuff which eventually kills me and i cant fear it away and there is no instant demon cast like there was to replace dead demon fast. Classes are designed for roles in instances.
Sorry, you’re right - for the general case. I was using heirlooms for my tests, which kept me right on par (modulo the half-level-down, half-level-up mechanic).
But even in the case of having heirlooms, the OP’s problem occurs. Although her gear keeps up with the enemies, no amount of levelling will make the enemy she’s fighting killable to her, because it isn’t killable now. When she levels up and improves her gear, the mob just becomes equally stronger and we’re back to where we started.
Maybe a new ability will do the trick, but that dries up halfway through the game so…
I would also like this, but I have some sympathy for them with the timeline. I don’t think it’s possible, without some insane phase/shard separations by level, and maybe not even then.
Agreed. That’s a separate problem. When they did The Prune, they seemed to forget that classes should have full toolkits of their own.
Yep. Problem is that there are so many expansions and maps added with them and basically every xpack content should be tweaked to the future or something.
and the few tools a Warlock has for example. Those problematic mobs are always immune to fear or banish and if they switch targets by design, even the tank demon cant help.
And since zones are empty, i cant even ask gor help.
I found that the answer and only answer to scaling was to level with dungeons and then go back and do the content. I absolutely hate scaling nearly as much as I hate questing. I did use to be able to outlevel zones and then go back and do the tricky stuff. Now I have to level to 71 to cut thro 1 to 60 stuff cus I want and insist on one shotting everything.
And I follow that pattern all the way thro. If I am minded to bother with any of the questing content. But having done all of it so many times I just can’t stomach scaling. It takes way too long, I much preferred it when I was in control of mob strength relative to my own.
By the way I recently had to revisit at 71 the final part of the Sylvanas Silverpine questline cus although as a mage I was able to kill the Dwarf general who is an elite I couldn’t kill the Worgan guys daughter or should I say overpower her. Try as I might my three help were worse than useless. So I just leave them and stick them on the back burner and come back when I can one shot the stuff like I used to.
And as for the big guy you discussed I always just come back. Same goes for the two elites in the fortress just up the road. At 71 also I went back and finished Ghostlands and the 5 man boss cus I just have to get the rep for Exalted. Plus I had to take down the two big ogres. I’ve never been one for taking an age killing stuff. I do way too much of that in Tera, but there its at least fun fighting and not like here as a mage just standing there and taking it in the face while I cast. Where is there a Wrath when you need one.
By the way you are right… There are some real bonkers situations. I mean in the first part of Silverpine you are supposed to navigate Worgen elites in the castle middle of the lake who literally one shot you. I am told that they only appear when another player has triggered his escape from the top floor. But I have never been in there when they have not been active. The trick is to die on the top floor and ghost run there and reactivate your char and it will go to the cinematic where you are carried out past the elites.
Game is riddled with stuff like that. Easy if you play toe to toe but crazy bonkers in a restricted space as a mage.
I raised a ticket with this char cus I was trying to get to Level 120 without ever getting killed. It was ruined by a cloaked Level 91 Worgen attacking me in Deadwind in the Level 51 area when I was trying to get to the Pet Tamer. They said he should be yellow and wont attack unless you do. They are wrong and its happened to me more than once. Anyway… just level up and come back. Thats whay I do. Normally ten levels higher than the whole expansion cus scaling does that to you… Takes no time at all if you run a few dungeons.
Ti each its own. I greatly disliked when i outleveled a zone. Felt pointless to just stare at mob and they die
As a Warlock with Voidwalker, the Silverpine Dwarf and the fortress were easy as agro stayed on the pet and Durnholde challenge stopped at Infernus, which CC’d my pet each time and came after me. In that point i was basically a mage without even a buble to protect me. Warlock caan do amazing things, but when enemies tend to change targets and there are no countertools on my character, things tend to turn nasty. Still, these quest bosses are rarity and when they are on side quests like the Yetimus or Infernus or Similar, it does not matter but this Iceshatter magnataur in Dragonblight, is required to continue the story to the Wrathgate, and i do want to experience stuff in correct order.
A year back this was not a problem because there were always other players eventually in the same quest so we could do teamwork, but now there is nobody. Its almost like single player game most of the time
I’ve been playing solo since 2008 and done all these quests a gzilion times in what ever form. I have levelled all classes thro each of the expansions and done what they call Classic to death. I have seen many changes in this game but seriously if they hadn’t dumbed the game down in the first place there would have been no need for scaling. The game areas did use to work and the way that was successful was that you progressed your skill level to suit the mob strengths which progressivly got harder. But the joy in the original game was to pick your own fights and test your own strengths by taking on ever harder mobs. That was the choice.
Sadly they dumbed the game down and then made heirlooms the norm for all players. Scaling was introduced to assist loomers to make the game more difficult. I watched so many videos from players and sorry they were geared to the hilt and still complaining it wasn’t hard enough. And yet the game designer implemented the easist variable of all … the health pool. They just used a sliding formula that was linked to your level both for actual and gear. It progressively gets worse depending on the balance of either and it has nothing to do with skill.
For me the quests are easy. The mobs are easy. The challenges are easy. If you look at my character profile you will see what I do to try and make it hard. I am currently levelling a character in Ghostlands that is wearing an unkempt set of greys I got from Lynx drops in the starter. I refuse to change cus I want the challenge. As soon as I up the gear so does the mobs. I keep low and so do they. But right now at Level 13 I can fight any mob anywhere in the whole of Ghostlands. It was never like that. The zone was 10 to 20 and as a 10 you could not fight the mobs in what is the climax to the zone. And so by scaling they removed all the purpose to levelling. The stories in this game were about progression. About starting at one level and working up toward the climax. There is no climax cus you can fight anything anywhere in the zone that is not fun and its boring.
I play the game now using verious mechs to level. I try out different things each time. Of late I have been using dungeons to level which are super fast and very amusing as other players do the oddest of things, and that amuses me. BUT when I come out from a dungeon into any zone that I play and irrespective what blues I was gifted, or weapon or level I had gained I am always the poorer in the open world. Simple truth is that prior to entering the dungeon I could take the mob out with a fire, hotting up instant crit blast and pyro combined. I get better in the dungeon with improved stats and suddenly I am worse off against the same mob. That is the imbalance in the game. Time was it was not like that. There is a mechanic in the game that is scaling everything so the better your gear the worse the result. In simple terms you can never get better… UNTIL you hit the gear level at 120, not the actual level of character, and then suddenly it all changes. Thats cus they design the game for high end raiding and everyone else can go to hell.
I loved this game I really did. I loved the progressiona and I enjoyed being my own boss and fighting my own battles to suit how strong I felt. It matters not how you progress now cus the maths in the game is always working out your opposition on a base stat of health pool. You cannot improve and or progress to make you life easier. There is so much wrong with that its is difficult to explain unless you have played a lot of this game and others where progression is important. Hence the desire for many to play Classic.
As for population, in 2008 when I was in Shadowmoon there were no players to group with. There were no groups in Netherstorm I never saw anybody. I could level this game from 1 to 70 and really never ever group. I got so use to it I gave up in the end. And so I have learnt to leave difficult group stuff until I was strong enough later in the game. Later in the game now means, like I say ten levels beyond which ever expansion you play. Cus it takes that long to rinse out the nonsense of scaling to give you a chance. I don’t think about it now I just do it.
Again look at what I am wearing… it makes no difference what you have on. You can be naked out there. The game is scaling your level. The only variable is time. The time it takes you to kill something. And that is where I have a problem. The game is boring. It has become boring… and yet folk are now asking for TBC to be put back the way it was, and the Lich. The truth is just get rid of scaling and give me back my World of Warcraft… and then I’ll decide which mobs I can go fight. I want grey, yellow, red mobs and not orange all the time. It’s boring.
PS I did the dwarf its kinda easy to kite and let the three take the aggro. But the daughter was tricky cus she killed the help and I had no where to run.
Not to be rude about it, but it sounds like it works fine. They are group quests for a reason. Over the years people just happily soloed group quests as if its not a big deal, it still can be done with bfa content sadly
Yes there was. Before scaling i had to create alts to play with lower level friends or try to stay on the same level meaning, that i could not play that character alone unless i wanted the OP character with my lower level companion. With current scaling, i can do that to at least to some degree. If the scaling was proper full scale scaling where level is just a number that dictates what abilities you get and when, i could easily take my level capped favorite character and play with my level 1 friend without making it silly steamroll run.
Some people like it like it was where they can just go oneshot low level mobs when they are of too high level and other like it when mobs scale with you and you scale with them to stay somewhat at par so it wont be oneshot steamroll run with lower level areas.
Main reason i never got interest in getting loremaster was the fact, that after i did one chain or area to the end, no matter was it WOTLK time or any other pre-scaling xpack, the same level zones were just one shot stuff and thats it. Not fun at all. Now i can at least do it to level 60 with about same difficulty level and it feels more real than anything before. Only sad thing still is, that you cant just go and do what quests you like because scaling in vanilla zones stop at 60 and then there is the next bracket which i eventually outlevel as well. I do hope they someday make it so, that scaling is from 1 to level cap both up and down but at least down like in GW2.
Looms are best for keeping the transmog i want for my character to be in role which she or he is. That is RP reason. Stats seem to be exact same as quest rewards so looms dont give ant advantage on that point but they give the XP boost which is now nice, because otherwise getting new abilities and “talents” takes too long because there jusr are too many levels in the game.
I also hope that people who dont like scaling, will adjust to it or get an option to turn it off but in that case, there should be separate layer for those who aree without scaling.
World PvP would also be much more fun when everyone is at the same level considering gear and basic stats.
Group quests are fine, but they pose a big problem when there is a rare occasion that some mechanic makes it impossible to solo at certain classes. They should take every inch of skill you have, but things like Yetimus toss are just silly and classes should have some utility to counter these mechanics as well.
The thing is not in balance when in other quest and area, can take easily few elite mobs and tank with your pet but in other quest, a normal non-elite mob has mechanics that make it stronger than the elite one.
Anyway. Thus far there has been 3 mobs i can not kill. Its very minor amount but still somewhat an issue if you want to complete quests but realm is empty so nobody is there to help either.
Did i allready mentioned that i have tried /who for couple of weeks all the time i am in a zone? 2 weeks time and one day there was one other player. Out of /who listing, i have seen less that 10 players in these couple of weeks.
Why does it bother you, that other people can complete quests on their own. Well naturally there is an issue where some content may be too easy for you if someone else can solo stuff, but you could always use grey items or low level grey items to make it harder.
Aren’t you describing the new Party Sync there? Which is, or should be, separate from scaling in general.
It is entirely possible that some people like that. I’ve never met any of them, or read them post that, though.
I see two main reasons people object to scaling:
It slows combat. This may be what you were characterising as “one-shot”, but in fact was rarely one-shot. I remember a thread where, even at low level with looms and enchants, it took me at least two Frostbolts to kill one mob. But there’s no doubt combat has slowed generally - but that is not an effect of scaling. That is an effect of tuning.
Personally, I much prefer low-level combat in Classic, which is significantly harder again, but doesn’t suffer from the monotony of scaling. There is lots of variation.
It removes all feeling of progression. No matter what you do, no matter how much gear you add, or levels, Every. Damn. Mob. Is. Exactly. The. Same. As. Every. Other. One. There is no escape from the totalitarian grey goo.
I remember a game designer rhapsodising about the design of the Stranglethorns before scaling. As you enter from the North, from Duskwood, the mobs are immediately quite hard, harder then Duskwood mobs, but as you do your early quests there, you get a level, and some gear, and you can feel things getting easier and therefore making progress, and as you keep going south, you pick up more gear and levels, so that when you ride North again, for whatever, you can feel proud of what you’ve accomplished - that you are more than a match for these mobs that were so dangerous a few days ago.
That’s what scaling removed. It’s not about difficulty. It’s about a consciousness that you have improved, progressed.
On my first character, I had lots of trouble with the group quests in Hellfire (RIP). Was that a problem? No. I got an extra level, and went in again and again until I figured out how to do it. And I was ridiculously proud of myself. That extra level was key. On my first character, the Firbolg in Darkshore kept killing me. And every time I rode through in future, I made a point of returning the favour. When I first hit 60, my celebration was a flying tour of the zones where things had given me trouble, and I showed myself how far I had come.
