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Item Stats and Exponential GrowthFollow

#27 Nov 06 2011 at 11:40 PM Rating: Good
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I'm all for the ilvl compression. Obviously, with ilvl compression would come a drastic change in mob healths as well so that at level 90, for example, you would percentage-wise still have significantly more health than a level 60 dungeon boss, and still do significantly more damage than a level 60 would to such a boss.

Right now the stats are just insane. What they did in Cataclysm literally blew the numbers through the roof. We went from ~5k tank health in Vanilla to about ~10k tank health in BC to ~35k tank health in Wrath to well over 175k health in Cataclysm. I'm just going with the numbers I'm familiar with, tanks in heroic gear/average raid gear.

My druid has 15 times more health than I did 15 levels ago. If you want to spread that across 15 levels that's like my druid doubled in health every level (obviously it happened in huge increments at 80 and 85, but just to give it an idea).

I still really don't understand why they made such a drastic change. They try and explain why they make changes in stats, and I understand that. But looking at the damage meters from BC to Lich King. Mediocre DPS in heroics went from about 600 to 1200. It doubled. Okay. Then we get to Cataclysm and they decided to triple it. We don't go from 1200 to 2400. We went from 1200 to 6000. And I'm talking about the average Joe in blues and greens.

I would much rather be dealing with numbers that are far easier to deal with. I don't mind losing 20,000 stamina as long as it feels the same. It may feel weird...but I don't really care. Scaling is so out of control now its a laugh.
#28 Nov 07 2011 at 2:30 AM Rating: Good
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I totally agree.
The Cataclysm changes seem to have completely missed that it was only a five level expansion. My characters all quadrupled in hp. I don't know why it was deemed necessary.

Perhaps it just got away from them. Its hard to get excited about an item with +1 stamina but the change from BC to LK was significant but not stupid. I've just taken a couple of characters across that boundary and the noticeable thing is that STA is much higher on gear. I am hanging onto several items from BC on my priest because so far I've not been offered anything with better INT although the quest rewards have 3-5 times the STA.

Crossing the boundary to Cata it rapidly becomes silly. Especially when you take on board that iLvl 272 items are equippable at level 77. So you can really overpower the tail end of Wrath. Again it looks like they were maybe going to let people start in Cata at 78 (the way you can start Wrath at 68) but decided against it when it was too late to change itemisation - or maybe its just a way to speed people through the last bit of Wrath.

I could imagine the dev team getting carried away with how excited people would be to have more hp than BC bosses. But then they have to add in the rest of the mix - incoming damage, enhanced dps etc that make it into a null sum.

One side effect is that dps differential from skill or RNG has become exaggerated. There are only the same number of buttons to push, spells to cast, abilities to use as there were. At least I don't think I've had any real additions to the ******* except more CD-juggling on modifier abilities. This really starts to separate the people who have their rotation/priorities sorted and those who are kind of winging it. While this is probably a very good thing at the raid level it does make even more of a lottery of normal groping.
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#29 Nov 07 2011 at 3:09 AM Rating: Default
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Mazra wrote:
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.

That's exactly what worries me. That they haven't really learned from past mistakes is making things worse. Most recent example is certainly the threat "hotfix" where it was absolutely necessary to buff threat generation (or nerf it, depending on how you look at it) yet still fail to deliver the whole survival deal that was supposed to go along with it. Not even a word on how THAT is supposed to fit in with the oh so meaningful talent choices and whatnot.

My initial enthusiasm and excitement about MoP is starting to fade fast already. I don't like having my wings clipped (which of course is going to happen again too, quite literally). If the current stat system is so out of control that they can only bring it back in line through such drastic measures, then maybe it's simply time to turn off life support for this aging patient.

As ridiculous as some of the numbers are, they're part of this gear-centered game.

The ability to go back and solo really old raids doesn't even matter. It's those people who tend to be one tier behind everyone else who get slapped. Top gear is becoming far more important than it already is - not the other way around as it might seem at first sight.

Right now I'm sensing a long, tedious grind. Not sure if I want to be part of that.

#30 Nov 07 2011 at 5:47 AM Rating: Excellent
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Cobra101 wrote:
My characters all quadrupled in hp. I don't know why it was deemed necessary.


The huge stamina increase was all about trying to rebalance and fix healers. Which is something that needed to happen. They also slowed down casting speed and increased mana costs. The goal was to create "triage" healing. Which in the end was a failed experiment because it existed in a heroic environmnent when Cata went live and disappeared by the time you got to Chogall and Nef and was nonexistant in HM content which was very much WotLK binary, either topped off or dead. They did some balancing, they were able to get a grip on things and the stats on FL gear were balanced for the new healing as were the bosses and things feel better now.


But the rebalance to healing both for pve and more importantly pvp is the sole reason for the huge stam increase.
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#31 Nov 07 2011 at 5:56 AM Rating: Good
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Slightly off-topic, but speaking of huge health pools, does anyone have a reasonable explanation as to why my Druid has less health with a stamina trinket equipped than a Warrior/Paladin without?

The difference is quite high, around the 20k health missing range. Fully buffed in a heroic, I usually have 180k health (w/ stamina trinket) while I've seen Paladins and Warriors in equal, or worse, gear break 200k (w/o stamina trinket).

I know health doesn't matter past a certain point, but it still seems like someone broke an equation somewhere.
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#32 Nov 07 2011 at 6:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kanngarnix wrote:
That's exactly what worries me. That they haven't really learned from past mistakes is making things worse. Most recent example is certainly the threat "hotfix" where it was absolutely necessary to buff threat generation (or nerf it, depending on how you look at it) yet still fail to deliver the whole survival deal that was supposed to go along with it. Not even a word on how THAT is supposed to fit in with the oh so meaningful talent choices and whatnot.

Blizz said they were pushing off the tank revamp until the next expansion, because they didn't want to redo (and potentially break) the whole system in the middle of Cata. The kind of changes they're talking about for tanks would involve whole new abilities, or radical changes to existing ones. Paladins are getting some kind of damage shield, and I can see druids maybe getting a CD that guarantees savage defense procs for a short time, for example.
#33 Nov 07 2011 at 8:38 AM Rating: Good
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All of the creep or inflation occurs at the end of expansions. Switching to 5-level Expacs will accelerate the problem.

I think they need to stop giving more stats (STR, STA, INT, etc) they need to start buffing specific spells or gear sets. Much like Set gear.

"Increases all DoT spells by 2%"
"Decreases the effect of all stacking debuffs by 5%"
"Reduces the casting time of all direct Heals"
"Increases all armor by 5% after being dealt a single hit worth X"


Etc...

#34 Nov 07 2011 at 9:04 AM Rating: Good
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Never mind, I fail at reading tooltips.

Edited, Nov 7th 2011 4:10pm by Mazra
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#35 Nov 07 2011 at 11:15 AM Rating: Excellent
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It seems Blizz is on a rollercoaster, changing one way, then flipping back the opposite way when the first change doesn't work out the way they wanted it to.

The vanilla to TBC transition involved a big gear reset. A lot of people complained, but in general it seemed to work.

TBC to Wrath, Blizz decided to skip the big reset. What resulted was people wearing their TBC epics until level cap. Hell, the first time I stepped into Naxx, I was still wearing a couple level 70 epics. You couldn't even think of stepping into a Cata raid with level 80 epics...it would be epic fail.

Wrath to Cata, they decided to go back to the big reset. Again, people complained because they were getting weaker. The other problem, though, is the stat bloat we're dealing with.

For MoP...I guess we'll see how Blizz decides to deal with it. They're kind of between a rock and a hard place of their own making. Personally, I think the squish would be the best thing to do. It would kind of seem weird at first, I'm sure, but we'd move on. After all, it's just numbers. As long as the relative strengths stay the same, it doesn't really matter how many zeros are in the number.

I remember playing pinball when I was a kid. Points were accumulated in 10s, 100s, with scores running in the 1000s. Over time, pinball machines started adding zeros and you'd end up with scores in the millions. The thing is, the game is the same, it's just more zeros.
#36 Nov 07 2011 at 3:33 PM Rating: Decent
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My question is would they go back down previous expansions and "squish" stats on everything else?

I for one like being able to solo alot of BC and wrath content (play a shadow priest). I go after old mounts i havent been able to get yet and sometimes just run through things for the fun of it. sure haveing 3 or 4 hundred thousand health(for our own characters) is a little much if the numbers keep on going the way they have. I just dont want to one day find out that the numbers have been squished for current content but i cant go back and do old content because its been left alone.
#37 Nov 07 2011 at 4:26 PM Rating: Good
Jallil wrote:
My question is would they go back down previous expansions and "squish" stats on everything else?

Yes. They have already said they would do this.
#38 Nov 07 2011 at 4:33 PM Rating: Good
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selebrin wrote:
Jallil wrote:
My question is would they go back down previous expansions and "squish" stats on everything else?

Yes. They have already said they would do this.


Starting with the level 60 raid gear. Everything before that was okay with relatively slow stat increase. IF they decide for this solution that is.
#39 Nov 07 2011 at 4:38 PM Rating: Excellent
Borsuk wrote:
All of the creep or inflation occurs at the end of expansions. Switching to 5-level Expacs will accelerate the problem.

I think they need to stop giving more stats (STR, STA, INT, etc) they need to start buffing specific spells or gear sets. Much like Set gear.

"Increases all DoT spells by 2%"
"Decreases the effect of all stacking debuffs by 5%"
"Reduces the casting time of all direct Heals"
"Increases all armor by 5% after being dealt a single hit worth X"


Etc...



The issue with that is that you end up keeping the same gear for the rest of your toon's life.

Look at it this way. My Shadow Priest is a DoT class, right? Well, what if instead of each tier being higher and higher stats, each tier was actually just gear with no stats but a set bonus that would, like you said, increase DoT damage, or haste, or something.

What if all gear was like that?

You end up in the awkward situation where there is one set of gear which is number crunched to be the best, and everyone wears that one set. Even when a new tier comes out with new gear, people would still be wearing the old gear.

WoW's progression model is based on newer gear having higher stats. This makes people want the new gear, which means they want to do new content. If people don't want the new gear, then the whole system falls apart.

The issue is that the stats have gotten too high, along with the healer screwup and massive stat inflation.

Honestly, I'm surprised that the major criticism of squishing the item levels together is that people would feel like they wouldn't be able to solo old content any more. I expected that it would actually be that people wouldn't want to feel weaker and start hitting for less.
#40 Nov 07 2011 at 6:48 PM Rating: Good
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I don't view it as a damned if you do & damned if you don't type situation.


It comes back to the issue that at lvl 85 in 333-346 ilvl gear my paladins throughput was dramatically less than it was at lvl 80 in lvl 277 gear. Our dps was similar at the time, mainly to poor balancing their numbers were lower than they were at lvl 80. That wasn't the case in TBC, where there was also a huge gear reset. Our numbers scaled & the content scaled with those numbers in a fairly reasonable way.


WotLK was its own aberration. It was a mix of lack of a gear reset and the fact that Naxxramas was extremely poorly tuned to the point where you could ignore the majority of fight mechanics even when you had just hit the cap.
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#41 Nov 08 2011 at 12:18 AM Rating: Good
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bodhisattva wrote:
WotLK was its own aberration. It was a mix of lack of a gear reset and the fact that Naxxramas was extremely poorly tuned to the point where you could ignore the majority of fight mechanics even when you had just hit the cap.


I know you and I are doomed forever to disagree on Naxx, but as an entry level raid I think it was a great idea. Naxx was the first time good ol' me, Mr. Cathy Casual (My name isn't really Cathy fyi) was able to experience raid content. The fact that it was so terribly forgiving was great. If they did it again my only suggestion would be to have another raid with a higher difficulty for the more skilled players (of which I am not one).
#42 Nov 08 2011 at 1:05 AM Rating: Decent
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ekaterinodar wrote:
I know you and I are doomed forever to disagree on Naxx, but as an entry level raid I think it was a great idea.

Exactly. There was a truly smooth transition between 5-mans and the first raid tier, something that has been completely missing in Cataclysm. With Naxx and heroic dungeons having the same item level, everything you did the moment you hit level 80 seemed to make sense right from the start. Completely different from Cata raids, where they found it necessary to shove the 346 heroic level in between and essentially created an extra tier.

What I didn't like about Naxx, though, is that it lasted way too long for its difficulty level. Ulduar should have come much sooner.
#43 Nov 08 2011 at 1:10 AM Rating: Good
Kanngarnix wrote:
ekaterinodar wrote:
I know you and I are doomed forever to disagree on Naxx, but as an entry level raid I think it was a great idea.

Exactly. There was a truly smooth transition between 5-mans and the first raid tier, something that has been completely missing in Cataclysm. With Naxx and heroic dungeons having the same item level, everything you did the moment you hit level 80 seemed to make sense right from the start. Completely different from Cata raids, where they found it necessary to shove the 346 heroic level in between and essentially created an extra tier.

What I didn't like about Naxx, though, is that it lasted way too long for its difficulty level. Ulduar should have come much sooner.


If by truly smooth, you mean you could do Naxx the minute you hit 80, then yeah.

I actually liked having to gear up through heroics before a raid. It made the raid seem more epic. In the first few months of Cata an epic was a big deal.
#44 Nov 08 2011 at 2:35 AM Rating: Decent
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The part that went wrong in Wrath was having epic drops in heroics. While the item level itself was perfectly alright, you just shouldn't see purple drops outside raids until later.

The did that part right in Cata, but they messed up on the item levels. Had they started Cata raiding with 346 purples, things would have gone much smoother and without hitting a brick wall.

I really don't understand what made them do this, other than truly stretching things.

In Wrath you went from level 187 pieces from normal gear to level 200 from heroics and Naxx.
In Cata you're getting 333 from normal dungeons, 346 from heroics, and 359 from your first raid(s)

So you're starting your level 85 career with a item level difference of 26 already, which apparently now is something that's biting them in the ***, even though it could have been so easily avoided.

Firelands would now be 365(378 heroic), with smooth transitions in between. You could still have the Trolls at 353.

T13 raids would be 384, the 5-man heroics 365, and normal mode 5-mans at 353, on par with the Trolls.

That's gear progression that makes sense and doesn't lose it's epic feeling when you actually get an upgrade. Yet it doesn't completely make your previous raiding efforts a complete waste of time.

4.3 dungeons will drop level 378 loot, exactly the same item level you get from the current raid. That's 45 levels from where you start at 85. Same situation as in Wrath at the start of ICC, except that there wasn't such a freaking mess in between.
#45 Nov 08 2011 at 2:45 AM Rating: Good
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Kanngarnix wrote:
ekaterinodar wrote:
I know you and I are doomed forever to disagree on Naxx, but as an entry level raid I think it was a great idea.

Exactly. There was a truly smooth transition between 5-mans and the first raid tier, something that has been completely missing in Cataclysm. With Naxx and heroic dungeons having the same item level, everything you did the moment you hit level 80 seemed to make sense right from the start. Completely different from Cata raids, where they found it necessary to shove the 346 heroic level in between and essentially created an extra tier.

What I didn't like about Naxx, though, is that it lasted way too long for its difficulty level. Ulduar should have come much sooner.
You both probably haven't raided Karazhan, have you?
#46 Nov 08 2011 at 2:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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His Excellency Aethien wrote:
You both probably haven't raided Karazhan, have you?
As much as it got old after running it for so long, Kara really was a beautiful starter raid. Had the game been on the 10/25 model at that point, it would have been an almost flawless transition from heroics to raids.
#47 Nov 08 2011 at 3:25 AM Rating: Excellent
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The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
His Excellency Aethien wrote:
You both probably haven't raided Karazhan, have you?
As much as it got old after running it for so long, Kara really was a beautiful starter raid. Had the game been on the 10/25 model at that point, it would have been an almost flawless transition from heroics to raids.


I still remember the first time I downed Prince.

I was top DPS and won a hat.
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#48 Nov 08 2011 at 3:36 AM Rating: Good
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Kanngarnix wrote:
The part that went wrong in Wrath was having epic drops in heroics. While the item level itself was perfectly alright, you just shouldn't see purple drops outside raids until later.


I liked what they did with the old Dungeon Set tiers. You'd run 5-man dungeons to get the blue sets and then upgrade them to purples through quests that took time, effort and gold.

It gave people a reason to run dungeons and then run them again later on for the quests. And it gave people something else to do than running dungeons until eyes pop out and aneurysms occur.
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#49 Nov 08 2011 at 4:01 AM Rating: Good
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Mazra wrote:
Kanngarnix wrote:
The part that went wrong in Wrath was having epic drops in heroics. While the item level itself was perfectly alright, you just shouldn't see purple drops outside raids until later.


I liked what they did with the old Dungeon Set tiers. You'd run 5-man dungeons to get the blue sets and then upgrade them to purples through quests that took time, effort and gold.

It gave people a reason to run dungeons and then run them again later on for the quests. And it gave people something else to do than running dungeons until eyes pop out and aneurysms occur.
I think it would be a good thing to bring this back, quests like that have actual meaning, are doable for even the most casual people, limit the amount of drops from instances as you don't need the blues and the epics to drop and it would be very cool to have a proper dungeon set again.
#50 Nov 08 2011 at 4:04 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kanngarnix wrote:
The part that went wrong in Wrath was having epic drops in heroics. While the item level itself was perfectly alright, you just shouldn't see purple drops outside raids until later.

The did that part right in Cata, but they messed up on the item levels. Had they started Cata raiding with 346 purples, things would have gone much smoother and without hitting a brick wall.

I really don't understand what made them do this, other than truly stretching things.

In Wrath you went from level 187 pieces from normal gear to level 200 from heroics and Naxx.
In Cata you're getting 333 from normal dungeons, 346 from heroics, and 359 from your first raid(s)

So you're starting your level 85 career with a item level difference of 26 already, which apparently now is something that's biting them in the ***, even though it could have been so easily avoided.

Firelands would now be 365(378 heroic), with smooth transitions in between. You could still have the Trolls at 353.

T13 raids would be 384, the 5-man heroics 365, and normal mode 5-mans at 353, on par with the Trolls.

That's gear progression that makes sense and doesn't lose it's epic feeling when you actually get an upgrade. Yet it doesn't completely make your previous raiding efforts a complete waste of time.

4.3 dungeons will drop level 378 loot, exactly the same item level you get from the current raid. That's 45 levels from where you start at 85. Same situation as in Wrath at the start of ICC, except that there wasn't such a freaking mess in between.

The final boss in a BC heroic dropped epics, too. Cata is the oddity in that regard.

10-man Naxx dropped iLevel 200 loot, but 25-man dropped 213. In Cata, Blizz opted to bump 10-man raid loot up to where they wanted 25-man loot, rather than nerfing 25-man loot.

Troll heroic loot wouldn't have been 353, because then it would be better than the 25-man loot (346 epics) that was available at the time.

What you're talking about would eliminate a whole stage of progression. If the raids were tuned for people in mostly heroic 5-man loot, most people would be looking at tier gear and some very marginal upgrades in T11. There just isn't much (if any) difference between similar iLevel blues and epics. Bloody Ornate Pyrium Breastplate vs Light Elementium Chestguard, for example. The other option would be to tune T11 raids for people in iLevel 333 gear, which might not have been a terrible idea, but it still leaves people that have run heroics extensively prior to raiding with few meaningful upgrades. There's also the issue that secondary stat allocations would leave heroic 5-man gear better than normal tier 11 gear.
#51 Nov 08 2011 at 10:33 AM Rating: Decent
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AstarintheDruid wrote:
What you're talking about would eliminate a whole stage of progression.

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Except that it was Blizzard eliminating that stage and moving it into dungeons instead. T11 and heroics should both have been 346. Firelands 365. Dragon Soul 384. The 25s would have been somewhere in between. For Naxx they put them 13 levels above, in Ulduar it was only 7, and ToGC had them at 13 again. Not counting oddities here, like the 10 man drops from KT in Naxx which were already higher in level than the rest of the raid.

Cata is just a major disappointment in regards to raids. We have THREE tier 11 raids and ONE tier 12. T13 as the last one is coming next patch. Yet the expansion is going to run just as long as Wrath did. No Ulduar. No Onyxia. No Ruby Sanctum.

You can turn this any way you want, but Cata was half an expansion sold at full price. Not necessarily when you actually care about the reworked Azeroth, but certainly in regards to it's end game. And with that background, moving a raid tier into the dungeons people are supposed to be running over and over for the entire course of the expansion just so you can save on the resources you'd otherwise have to spend on developing that tier is just pretty lame.

Said dungeon tier only having 7 dungeons that are actually new makes it even more obvious how much of a rip-off Cataclysm has been.

So yeah... hearing them talk about making significant changes does make some internal alarms go off because I just have to assume that once more it's for them to put more of my precious money into their pockets.

If they consequently and immediately cut all stats in like half - fine. But I don't want any more of the "this now, that later" crap. They couldn't be bothered to add dungeon journals for the lowbie stuff so far, so how am I to believe that they will actually adjust lowbie boss health to my nerfed stats?
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