World Scaling is terrible. Weapons don't matter

Community General Discussion
41

We’re in agreement, but I think that the power increases are the cause of the tiers, rather than the symptom.

That is, I can see what you mean, but I wouldn’t say it’s such a big problem if the net difference between each tier is very low. If you have 10 tiers but the difference between each is only small that’s fine and gives people a path of progression, but if the differences between each tier is large then that’s where the huge differences between well-geared characters and poorly-geared characters comes from, and thus why scaling becomes (undesirably) necessary.

42

But if I can’t feel the difference between each tier, why even have those tiers? And if we don’t have the tiers, why have the difficulty levels in the first place?

Now, I’ve got to admit that I think there’s a pretty simple solution to this, but most people here aren’t going to like it. :stuck_out_tongue:

43

I clear waaaay more faster while questing in the open world now, than what I did when I dinged 120, by miles.

44

That’s because you’re outside the scaling range. It scales from 300 to 380, and then it gets easier.

Thing is, now you’ve scaled out of all open world content. There are no challenges left, and you really didn’t put in a lot of effort to get here; and that’s not meant to be a personal attack btw. I completely sympathise with why you did what you did.

45

The point is to try and get it back to those ‘noticeable but not laughable’ levels again like WoTLK. I know it will be hard to tell the difference between individual increments, but it could be possible, and even if not, some people would just be happy to chase the progression path and see their ilvl increasing, even if the increases are only drips and drabs.

46

I don’t think it stops at 380. Scaling did stop at … was it 850? … in 7.2.5 but I’m not sure scaling ends in BfA.

47

ye it stops much lower then 380. at 370 my 2 newest alts are already demolishing everything solo and one of them run around with 298 offhand…

48

Here are some notes I took on a couple of alts of the health of two mobs at various ilevels. I stopped a while ago - it might be interesting to continue the series to see what values are on more recent ilevels.

As you can see, though, it does not stop at 370.

Atrivax Lasher near Mind Controlling Plants: Vol’dun 30.5 58
60.7K @ ilevel 386.8
60.3K @ ilevel 384.9
60.3K @ ilevel 384.1
60.5K @ ilevel 385.8
61.0K @ ilevel 387.2
59.1K @ ilevel 379.5 ???
58.4K @ ilevel 376.2 ???
57.7K @ ilevel 373.2
56.6K @ ilevel 368.7
57.5K @ Ilevel 372.0
43.4K @ ilevel 278.6
43.4K @ ilevel 283.8
43.4K @ ilevel 287.6
43.4K @ ilevel 291.3
43.4K @ ilevel 299.6
43.4K @ ilevel 300.3 (298.9/300.3)
44.7K @ ilevel 307.1
45.6K @ ilevel 313.3
47.1K @ ilevel 321.3
47.8K @ ilevel 325.8
48.9K @ ilevel 331.3
49.7K @ ilevel 335.0
52.3K @ ilevel 348.4
52.9K @ ilevel 351.5
54.9K @ ilevel 360,9

Venomous Weaver Drustvar 67 55
52.1K @ ilevel 347.5
53.2K @ ilevel 352.1
60.3K @ ilevel 384.9
60.5K @ ilevel 385.8
60.7K @ ilevel 386.8
61.2K @ ilevel 388.3

(P.S. I think those two are “Standard Melee Mobs”, and will always be perceived to have the same health by the same character, like - sadly - most of the mobs in the world. :frowning: )

(P.P.S. I think the questionmarks are from when I got contradictory evidence to my hypothesis that mobs’ health scaled in a strict step function with every 5 ilevels. Or I could have typoed; I do that a lot. :slight_smile: Never got around to testing that properly.)

49

so more or less … 18k (40%) more hp while you do quadruple the dps (300%) (even more when bursting)

ye scales so much -_-

50

Before we get on to the new point you’ve raised, may I presume you agree that you were wrong about the scaling stopping at 370?

51

Scaling has broken this game. Those that support it do so generally from a relatively narrow viewpoint. They likely were not levelling to any great extent before the changes and probably dabble now but are kitted out fully in heirlooms.

The bigger issues of scaling reside the the way the game has been condensed, degraded, merged and generally ruined just so loomers can two shot stuff instead of one shotting everything. I mean who plays a game where the level difficulty is the same the whole journey through the game.

Sadly we lost Outland and Northrend and Cata and Pandaria and the later zones just became a boring grind fest. It is very easy to change the health pool on a mob to give the illusion of difficulty. Sadly doing that all day long for 120 levels is just mind numbingly boring. It aint fun.

So now I have completely abandoned the actual game of real open world Warcraft. I choose instead to play by dungeons and zonk to 120 in a matter of days. And why… cus its actually fun. Playing with four other people who take the load when it comes to killing stuff. Never really having the same experience twice and more important I can actually get some sense of satisfaction out of fast and furious gameplay that lets me forget just how ruined this game is.

The stark reality is that I can be a super hero in a dungeon and feel powerful and yet when I return to the open world of Warcraft I am a nothing, peashooting mobs until I get to item level 340. It really takes that long before you start to arc out of the scaling boring moronic tedious dreary mess this game has become.

I level a lot of characters and the op is right. It matters not a jot what you have. The game was destroyed to please bored loomers. I’ve seen their videos on YouTube complaining how easy it was to kill gnolls in Westfall. Well congrats on destroying the game for everyone else.

It will never be the same and what is so sad is that the developers have to release Classic, a game that was not even of their making, to give players the chance to enjoy the game as it SHOULD be played. And trust me scaling has nothing what so ever to do with zonal progression. This game has lost all zonal progression and made it a mellow yellow. The boring nature of the game play is driving so many dedicated players away. Such a shame.

6 Likes
52

you are not facerolling dungeons either - bosses now take forever to kill in low level dungeons - trash is slow and tedious too.

so not sure what are you talking about

also many people have no clue how bad experience they will have leveling up in vanilla.

been there dont that never again that was boring usless grindy mess.

1 Like
53

Apologies if someone has already said but what is the scaling based upon or a % of your ilvl and your character lvl ? Would it be better to use 110 stuff at 119 etc…?
I love doing Islands @ 110 as you can pull mob after mob as a tank without any worries what so ever but not at all at 119 with better equipment.

54

For scaling while levelling 110-120, very roughly you lose 10% of the effect of your stats every level, while the mobs increase in health, relatively. I actually have more detailed numbers on it somewhere, but that’s the gist.

That, plus any remaining Legion Leggos, is why a 110 can devastate whole zones with a single Heroic Leap in BfA, while a 119 may have to run from a couple of annoyed chickens.

2 Likes
55

Why is the answer to removing max level scaling to reduce the ilvl between difficulties and tiers?

Let’s give an example of what I mean. Lets assume the current scaling increases mob health by 0.5% for every 1% damage increase you get, when one ilvl is roughly on average a 1% increase.

Now we remove ilvl scaling and instead halve the ilvl increases past Normal Dungeons(which is 310, where ilvl scaling actually kicks in). The end result is this: Someone in full BoD mythic would be 362.5 ilvl instead of 415, representing a 52.5% damage increase compared to a 105%(do note actual WoW scales exponentially for main stat this expansion, so real BoD is even stronger than in our example)

So what does this accomplish? Raids are closer in ilvl and difficulty differences are far smaller ruining balancing as normal gear going into mythic is like heroic gear going into mythic, which means heroic going into mythic would be easier and would end up having to be accounted for. Reward increases are way less noticable in all content instead of just world. Soloing old content becomes harder.

But hey the important thing is that world content is finally fixed yay, now people are 52.5% stronger than mobs, instead of being 105% stronger but mobs have 52.5% more health… So the people who can use basic math may have noticed that the end result of removing scaling but reducing ilvl jumps in tiers is that, drum roll please, you are getting stronger than max level mobs at a slower rate than with scaling! Ding ding ding we have a pointless change that would ruin everything else just to slow down progress through gearing in the open world more, Genius!

Also no because main stat grows more with each ilvl, scaling will make you stronger than not scaling in a tier or two anyways.

ILvl scaling does exactly what the suggested reduction in ilvl increases sets out to do, but without destroying everything else. The only thing it does better is placate people who ignore math in favour of feeelings.

56

You need to apply the percentage increases to the base damage or healing before using them. It does make a difference. Not huge, but significant.

(BTW, I know that these numbers are not actually taken from the game. It might be interesting to see what the true effects are at various ilevels. Does anyone know how to easily set up a generic character at ilevel 300, 305, 310 and so on for simming, without feeding in every slot at every level by hand?)

But let’s go with the simplified model, and round numbers.

Let Base health of mob at ilevel 300 = 40K.

Let Base damage of player at ilevel 300 = 5K.

Then the TTK at ilevel 300 = 8 seconds.

Using current scaling guesstimate numbers:

Base health of mob at ilevel 415 = 40K * 1.525 = 61K

Base damage of player at ilevel 300 = 5K * 2.05 = 10.25

TTK = 61/10.25 = 5.95 sec.

Using non-scaling guesstimate numbers:

Base health of mob at ilevel 352.5 = 40K

Base damage of player at ilevel 352.5 = 5K * 1.525 = 7.625

TTK = 40/7.625 = 5.25

So with scaling, TTK is reduced by ~26%, whereas without scaling it is reduced by ~35%.

Remember that we are using a simplified model with unverified numbers. We really would need sims to have confidence in any of this.

But of course, not many people have 415. For, say, someone at 385, which is the max reward from world content, the table looks like this:

40 5 8.00
61 9.25 6.59 18%
40 7.125 5.61 30%

So a 385 sees only an 18% reduction in TTK with scaling, whereas a 342.5 without scaling will see 30%. Quite a difference.

1 Like
57

You do realise, I did not give you a mathematically correct equivalent right? I pretended the mob health increase is of similar weight to our power increase to make a point because the actual numbers I’d have to use would just be a jumbled mess the people I am arguing against would fail to understand.

Point is ANY reduction of tier ilvl increases scaling can easily simulate so why oh why male change to reducing ilvls instead of adjusting scaling considering the latter does not come with the massive baggage of reducing player strength.

But for arguments sake, divide baseline 310 mob health(again that is the base line, not 300) with baseline average DPS then multiple by 0.5%, you get how much mob health got to be increased per ilvl to simulate cutting ilvl increases in half.

Does not change the point people wanna reduce ilvl increase to the third of what it currently is which would be a FAR greater slowdown nor that scaling it will much sooner feel powerful than ilvl reduction thanks to main stat AND you know the oft repeated, it will not screw up everything else, line.

58

Yes, I added - twice! - that this is a toy model, not to be confused with actual measurements. Though I’m starting to get curious: I found the parameter

scale_to_itemlevel=600
#Used to scale all gear on character to ilevel 600 when simulating

in the simc docs, and I wonder if it still works …

No, I think my table of HP numbers above does establish that 300 is the baseline. Mob HP starts increasing above that.

I do indeed. And AFAIAC, scaling has screwed up so many things so far that there’s not much left to be screwed up.

59

I am busy trying to find the actual formula to calculate the multiplier required to identify what percentage mob health needs to rise to match my theoretical halved progression, but chiming in anyways.

Scaling perfectly replicates slowed progression without its baggage, the only flaw of it is that some people cannot overlook the dissonance between their ilvl and it’s effectiveness in world content, and somehow the solution to that is to slow actual gear progression to natch scaling and ignorant people keep thinking that would not completely screw over anything else despite numerous examples provided.

60

In scalling only secondaries matter, dmg and attack power is adjusted to mob at the same level, haste,crit is only what matters to kill them faster.