Scaling is a bit of a mess

Getting back into the game after a long time, getting used to scaling, it just isn’t really fun and it doesn’t really work.

You are the strongest the moment you create your character and you progressively get weaker every time you level up, enemies I killed at level 20 with ease are putting up way more of a fight at level 50 in Zuldazar for example, or how I accidentally did an Island expedition at level 25, which was too difficult but I made some progress, wanted to retry at level 60 but it was outright impossible now.

Then I unlocked a new race after doing the quests, started Shadowlands with a brand new character and the difficulty is trivial with everything dying in 1-2 shots, meanwhile I see a level 50 character in the same area, using all their abilities, healing themselves against the same enemy that my brand new character kills with ease.

Expansions relied on artifacts and azerite for power to my understanding, but there is no replacement, by the time you get HoA at level 50 it’s like ilvl 50… artifact weapons are also useless but it seemingly leaves a void where you don’t get other weapons as drops in those areas from what I experienced.

Places seem to have a cap on the ilvl of items you can get from quests and such, which doesn’t scale as much as the enemies do, and sometimes areas have really low caps of ilvl 50 for no obvious reason… I think I got normal drops in the broken isles and then low ones at the broken shore for some reason despite it being the next area.

It is disappointing that for most of the older expansions you’re literally playing for grey trash items that no longer serve a purpose and weapons and things that are irrelevant, even in their own expansions, and whilst I get they don’t want me to play older expansions, but you’d still need to get to level 60 or something first right?

But again the main issue is just the fact that enemies scale more than the ilvl does, at least that is my experience, but also a problem that many other MMOs solved by just giving out gear every 5 or 10 levels… like if you don’t ensure the world drops enough gear or quest rewards to scale the player along with the enemies it would make sense to give some gear at points that ensure the player has adequate gear to not have the experience get worse and worse over time.

Now maybe I’m wrong in these things, but this is my experience as a returning player at least.

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Even with Heirlooms that scale up with you this is an issue. I’ve leveled some alts to get the Allied Races heritage armour and I give them all the heirlooms and they’re killing stuff with one or two hits at level 15 but my 25 they’re needing 4 or 5 hits and by 35 it’s 6 or 8 hits then it kind of levels out and remains similar to this until max level when once you ding it’s almost like you’d entered a new game until you gear up again.

The sense of progression whilst leveling is more-or-less gone. There is some sense of progression at max level through gearing.

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Go play classic if you want progresion on leveling

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Lmao, what.

You’re supposed to get stronger as you progress through the game, whether it’s from gear obtained or levels.

A newly dinged 70 character is weaker than a lvl 60 in SL season 4 gear even though the lvl 70 will have a bit higher ilvl. It’s completely bonkers.

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^^ This. :frowning_with_open_mouth:

Meanwhile in Classic, while you begin as a weak homeless of sorts, you grow into a powerful caster or fighter on your way to 60/70/80.

Truth right there, because of the secondary scaling as well.

I remember leveling my main through the DF story (which I only did a single time…).

I got my first upgrade to my full 298/304 ilvl at the end of 67 in Iskaara, literally because I got an upgrade proc on it.

At the beginning I was literally speed with 20+% of all stats. By then… my highest was like 11% crit. The rest being 6 or 7%? :rofl:

The only reason my other toons didn’t feel weaker while leveling up, was because I levelled them with TW, with scaled-back stats, meaning no dropoff in power - I actually felt stronger as I gained levels, because of the talent points each ding.

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Totally agree with this! I miss that feeling of starting really weak and growing as you level.

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the worst part about how scaling work is there’s no way for you to understand if your class is a good fit for you until you hit at least 60. you don’t even get an initial idea until then it’s just bam bam and hoping that you can get a level10 in your group to solo the dungeon in 10 seconds :smiley:

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What you are experiencing is the dead spot between 50 and 60

scaling is done absolute poorly.
for example some bfa/sl rares have over 2m hp which is more than the current df rares have.
they aint gonna kill you, but its just a time waste on an undergeared alt.
bfa is like 20 lvls lower and with the current gear i should nearly 1hit those

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Scaling is worst thing happened to game.

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You should try level 10-15 characters soloing level dungeons. It’s completely absurd. Try this 5 levels later and you wipe on a single trash mob

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:100:

The devs saved themselves a metric TON of maintenance when they introduced scaling, because now they never have to do much to tune mobs across expansions with every new expansion. That makes/will make it easier/cheaper for them to carry on for more expansions without spending time on an ever-increasing maintenance surface. I appreciate that.

It also makes the Chromie Time mechanic easier. (Not possible - it could be done with separate expansion progression - but easier.)

But it ripped the heart out of levelling, and dealt a wound to max level world play.

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This is the main reason I don’t like Retail as much as Classic.

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