Looking at players’ gear in Midnight Season 1, improved by upgrades, Voidcores, and powerful loot that became available in 12.0.7, we need to make sure that Season 2 is offering meaningful upgrades to players as they embark upon their journey through their preferred content.
Based on early PTR feedback, it’s clear that a 39-iLvl increase wasn’t quite enough to hit the mark there, so we’re shifting everything up 7 additional iLvls, making Season 2 rewards a 46-iLvl increase.
This update has been applied to the Curse of Ula’tek PTR today, and is now available for testing.
Our max ilvl in S1 is 293.5, or 293 with two Embellishments, so it’s 289+4.5 or 289+4.
Why +7 instead of +4 in S2, making our S1 gear less valuable than it normally would be?
it literally says it in the post: “we need to make sure that Season 2 is offering meaningful upgrades.” If your S1 gear is too valuable the S2 gear doesn’t feel meaningful.
assuming wowhead’s chart is correct, veteran 6/6 is 296 ilvl, and champion 1 is 292, so still lower than sporefall even with the bump. Historically Maxed mythic gear from the current tier is the same ilvl as the start of normal gear for the next tier. (For example, mythic undermine max ilvl was 684, and normal manaforge gear started at 684)
I really wish you all understood that replacing myth gear with tier 1 delves drops on the first day of the season does not feel good. We do not need to jump hundreds of ilvl per expansion I promise.
These numbers are insane. S2 adventurer gear being almost as good as S1 mythic gear is crazy. At this rate we’re going to have to start doing stat squishes mid expansion instead of every other expansion. You really need to tone down the vertical progression on steroids…
Even so they overshot the mark by a mile. Historically myth tier gear from the previous season was equivalent to champion in the new season. This time around S2 adventurer gear, or quest blues, are going to be almost as good as S1 mythic gear track gear, that’s wild and an insane power creep that’s gonna cause a whole host of problems down the road and even at the start of the season when even trash mobs in the open world would feel unkillable.
Was actually happy at the gear not resetting as strongly, needing to reset gear more than 39 ilvl seems a bit absurd to me and make it looks like getting the best gear is too easy and a more futile chase.
The bluepost isn’t going into details about how those seven points are getting added to the new system. It’s entirely possible that they’re distributing those additional points into the upgrade system so that the distance between Adventure 1/6 and Myth 9/6 are now seven points wider apart.
The easiest way to implement this would be to add single point bumps in the middle of the upgrade tracks, like at the 3/6 and 4/6 points where there’s no overlap. Adding a single point at the Vet level and two single point bumps at Champ/Hero/Myth will make the higher level gear more impactful - and make the enemies that drop it incrementally harder the higher up you get in the progression.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter how they implement it. The underlying problem is the early invalidation of gear from the previous season, the massive power creep of the new gear and everything that goes along with it. It’s the same long standing issue we face every time a new expansion rolls out and you get progressively weaker as you level instead of stronger. Once the next patch rolls out and everything gets tuned for the new ilvl values your hard earned ilvl 290+ toon we’ll get curb stomped by open world trash mobs that you could have 2 shot the day prior. Regardless of what their goal with these changes is, the result just won’t feel good.
My feedback is that for new players to jump into PVE and PVP will be met with sudden higher ilevel climb which may be harder for new and returning players to navigate.
The goal of Midnight is to make it easier for new and returning players to jump and play with friends, family, guild mates or go it all solo.
The ilevel jump to 7 levels just means those that are already geared will be replacing gear sooner. But for new and returning players they must jump into content that is offering this new gear as the ilevel jump is substantial.
Replacing all gear early in the season does not feel good given the shortened expansion cycle.
Personally, I strongly dislike this change, and it will dissuade me from doing .7 content going forward.
The reason I engaged with sporefall was to have a bit of an ilvl bump that would carry me through early season because the gear was effectively 1/6 heroic. By making the next seasons items 7 item levels higher, you have effectively put anyone in a worse position than this content not existing. This means I am effectively worse off than a normal patch.
I would love to see a change to raid gear where it worked similar to PVP gear. Have a base ilvl and then have it scale up in raid content. Higher tiers (LFR/normal/heroic/mythic) would scale to higher levels. Would help prevent the need for such huge ilvl increases. Could scale it in a way to raid gear only valuable for raid. M+ wouldn’t have to chase raid gear, and raiders wouldn’t have to chase m+ gear.
Exactly this. This change makes participation in any content until 12.1 comes out completely pointless as it will not give you any edge since S2 world quest gear will be better than anything you can get right now save for fully upgraded myth track gear, and even that will be obsolete after a few M0 dungeon runs.
