Item Stats and Exponential GrowthFollow

One of the biggest reasons for the massive stat inflation is Blizzard's over-riding desire to "protect" the green quest rewards you get at the beginning of every expansion.

Internally in an expansion, there are 13 (now 19) iLevels between tiers. Cross-expansion tiers have total of 151 waste iLevels since BC launched.

If tier gear was kept 13 (or 19) iLevels apart despite going from one expac to the next, gear from the Dragon Soul raid would be at about the level of ICC.

That's what I think Blizzard should do, compress the tiers so that from Ta - Ta+1 there is the constant 13 (now 19) iLevels no matter if those tiers are in the same expac or cross-expac.

This problem stems largely from the "gear = carrot" philosophy of the game. Progression is inevitably tied to larger and larger stats derived from gear. Eventually the gradient of the relative numbers (attack incoming compared to damage sustained) curves sharply. This can't go on indefinitely of course and corrections need to happen to keep the differential from getting out of control.

From what I understood from some discussions at Blizzcon this year, relative stat reduction is more likely than any other tactic to fix the problem. This would make out-geared content relatively less easy to plow through. But with that said, it's not like we'll notice it much in most of that content.

I am with you 100% Maz! I love being powerful enough to destroy older dungeons. It really makes me feel like I have come a long way in the game. That is why I never reach the level cap though. I get to level cap -5 levels and then spend the rest of my time in RageFire Chasm taunting things to try to kill me.

Therion I hear what you are saying. I derive happiness from the absurd notion that you had level 80 characters around with 50k HP and level 20ish troggs were still in control of Gnomeregan.

Maybe I'm off but hasn't Blizzard announced that with MoP the numbers will be reduced?
Thought I read something along these lines on WoWInsider.

While I agree with the sentiment that we don't need tanks with 1 mil HP, soloing older content will get harder. And I don't like that. Not one bit.

The monsters in the older dungeons will get weaker too, but for them the difference will be smaller than for a level 85 (or 90) from what I understand.

Edit: Looked it up and I was wrong. It isn't a done deal yet, but Blizz is thinking about it. Interesting link.

Edited, Nov 4th 2011 2:05pm by TherealLogros

If they squish together the ilevels of gear I think they will only do so for level 60-85 content. The rewards from MoP should be significantly better than the Cata items. Because, as GC explained, players want the itemupgrades to matter.

Edited, Nov 4th 2011 2:20pm by TherealLogros

Meh, I'd be fine with that.

Let me just pull a Marvin here, though, and note that we're talking about the same development team that was allegedly responsible for triage healing and the number-crunching and stat deflation involved.

After the Cataclysm "stat" rebalance I have zero faith in a complete overhaul.


The game needs it, however it will be beta product being released on live servers and then balancing for 6+ months again to get something that is workable. Especially with the dumbing down and homogenization of skill trees it seems like a little much. if & when they do go ahead with it my only suggestion is that they don't make players feel less powerful. My holy paladin in T10 at lvl 80 was able to pump out more HPS for longer and with bigger heals than my paladin at lvl 85. That was a joke.

[X] Item squish

I'd feel weird if it was like

Tank: We tanks have only 7 MEGAhealth max, so we need to touch the octagonal sperical tetrahedron buff-thingy over there, else that boss's MEGATON PUNCH will hit us for 2 OMEGAdamage which means instakill.

Also, our new DPS should stopping to slack. Doing only 5 RIDICULOUS-DPS on a tank&spank fight is a no-go, I mean, even our mid-tier DPS do like 2 RIDONKULOUS-DPS there, unbuffed.

Here's something for you to try:

1). Go make yourself a full set of Wrath crafted blues (most likely the PvP set), and also try to find a couple rings, neck and a trink from Wrath about the same I-level (175)
2). Get a weapon (or 2 if you dual-wield) from a Heroic Wrath dungeon
3). Try to solo Molten Core with that gear.

Looking at that chart posted on MMOChamp, they propose having Cataclysm gear reduced to about I-Level 150-175. Endgame Vanilla, however, is only going to have a tiny amount shaved off of its overall power (about 10%).

Ragnaros is going to be about 10% weaker, but yet, your own gear is going to get 60% or more of its power shaved off.

That's why a lot of people are very against this change. They realize the need to put a lid on the inflating numbers, but something else must be done to preserve Solo/Low-manning low level content, especially Vanilla since that'll barely even be touched by this new proposed squish.

Edited, Nov 6th 2011 7:20am by Lyrailis

Assuming the chart is reasonably accurate, Vanilla raid-gear will be nerfed by about 10%. Boss stats for old raid bosses could be nerfed to any value, since it's not current content.

Secondary stats scale with character level. The higher level, the more of a secondary stat is needed for a 1% increase. Since we level up every expansion, the values change, allowing them to deflate the secondary stats as they see fit.

They did this in Cataclysm, but they also messed with the base values of healing spells and our primary stats because of their flirt with triage healing. They wanted less healing output to balance out the reduction in incoming damage. Not a bad idea, except they forgot about the incoming damage part.

That's why I get twitchy when they start talking about revamping stats. The development team apparently suffered from an acute, but seemingly temporary, case of mild retardation last time they tried.

I thought you were specifically referring to how quickly secondary stats deflated as you leveled from 80 to 85, not the broad changes they made to the healing model. The big change coming up in MoP should be with tanks, since they're wanting tanks to worry less about threat and more about mitigation and survival. I'm sure there will be some healing changes (again) to go along with that.