I don’t think you understood what they said they messed up on benthic.
They think they messed up by allowing it to be able to have sockets at all.
They didn’t realize till it was out in the wild that 425 with a socket benthic gear could out perform 445 mythic gear…
They regret that mythic gear lost value.
Read the whole thread. That’s what this is largely about.
Im replying to OP.
Ah yes, let’s make it so anyone who wants to start raiding is literally a carry for the first few weeks after they come in rather than letting them gear up through alternate paths and be viable.
All to avoid…what problem exactly?
TLDR, if the affixes had been on raid gear instead of pearl gear, the best gear for EP would have come from EP.
Tldr, if the gear didn’t socket it’d sim less than mythic
Remember Timeless Isle, and the 496 tokens that you could upgrade up to 535 ?
It’s a bit like Benthic. Except :
That’s catch-up gear. That brings your alt “right there” for starting normal, or maybe filling a slot normal doesn’t fill.
Benthic was BiS for Mythic raiding because of its affixes and sockets.
Yes, I have to wonder what issue you’re fixing. Benthic was a failed system. It was way too rewarding for what is essentially grinding the bottom of the barrel on the challenge ladder.
EP gear has affixes already. Look at Azshara’s loot table. Those affixes risked making some of this gear better than Ny’alotha gear, if they had not removed Titanforging (just like items from Crucible Mythic are still better than EP items).
A 2% damage flat increase on Abberations on a belt trumps any kind of stat increase of going from 425-445. It’s literally a 2% flat damage increase on a boss like Za’qul or Orgozoa.
The socket just adds on top of that.
Its possible the abberation benthics without socket may outsim all other 445 pieces.
This is not the case for all the other benthic pieces.
The Crit boots probably, maybe the gloves. The bracers probably not.
There is no question on the abberation belt. It literally was BiS for Orgozoa and Za’qul. Period.
There is no “squish”.
In the current design, you finish a raid tier monsters have N health, and you hit them for X. You move to the next raid tier, you still hit for X, but monster health is now N*2 (if, as you claim, dps doubles each raid tier). They make the monsters “tougher” by increasing their health. Each tier N increases, and X increases, eventually leading to absurd numbers, and requiring a squish.
In my proposed design, you finish a raid tier and monsters have N health, you hit them for X. You move to the next raid tier, and monster health is still N, but you hit these monsters for X/2. They make monsters tougher by increasing their damage reduction/mitigation. As you progress through the raid tier and gear up, the damage reduction is reduced, so you end up hitting for X again by the end of the tier. In old content you would hit for X*F, where F is a factor based on how much higher your ilvl is verses the dungeon. In this design X and N never change, numbers stay in a reasonable range.
Big numbers have already lead to repeated modification to the game: to shrink the numbers back down to a reasonable size. I disagree that “it’s just a number”, those were your words. I think the numbers matter, and smaller numbers convey information more efficiently, so we should strive to keep them small. Perhaps you aren’t familiar with the concept of “information density”?
Personally I don’t really agree with that, I found the game more enjoyable as an RPG when I had meaningful choices and multiple progression paths.
The current version of slam out massive amounts of catch up and gear is the same regardless of whether it’s PvP, crafted, raid, world content, or M+ is arguably designed more closely to a pick your hero system.
The only reason it isn’t already is because essences and AP are handled absolutely terribly.
Outside of that it is objectively the easiest time to swap and change between characters than it has ever been.
With the gear as well many forms of obtaining gear are simply redundant due to the catch up and the lack of distinction between gear.
There is no reason for crafted gear in the game because WQ gear is so much better, there is no reason for most PvP gear as unless you are 2k rated or higher you get better pieces from WQs, there is no point doing dungeons below M+ even when you first hit max level because again WQ makes them irrelevant.
I believe a system that allows you to progress in multiple contents has more to offer a player and also feels more like an RPG because you advancing more in area your character has developed skill into. Instead of “I killed 12 bandits 20 times now I’m more formidable against the enemy faction”.
I also think it would be less lobby like because it removes the need for hard catch up. Since gear levels grow slower there is less of a requirement to shoot out 30-60 ilvl upgrades from the same content as a way to bring players back into the game.
Instead they can largely continue to progress again from where they left off.
I don’t agree with separating gear makes it more like an esport, making it more like an esport would be making everything quicker easier and more efficient to get into. Having multiple gear progressions objectively makes moving to the pinnacle of another content require more investment.
Personally I don’t feel it’s ever really been raid or die, if you wanted the very best gear? Sure, but if you aren’t doing the content that requires the gear why does it matter, as long as you have yoir own progression system?
Having gear so accessible has ruined any form of progression system in the game really. New 120? Grind out WQs! Or alternatively if you are lucky, get carried through M+.
The gear is no longer the progression, instead it’s grind arbitrary numbers through AP by repeating the exact same content you have been doing since day 1 of the expansion release.
Yes, the progression system has been made significantly easier in Legion and BfA (Legion’s was a bit more reasonable) but has it been made better? I personally don’t think so.
I don’t dislike being able to rival raiding gear outside of raids either, don’t get me wrong, I dislike when the gear outside of raids is so easily acquired and good that it makes other forms of content obsolete for reward.
Were those pieces instead earned through currency, reputation, crafting etc I wouldn’t think the slightest of it. See Vanilla and TBC where some crafting pieces (which were rare and required difficult to obtain materials) were as good, if not better than the current tier of raid content.
I guess you do have a point on that, personally I play for feel rather than for numbers so I care more about relative strength to the released content rather than “are my numbers constantly climbing”
Honestly though, that goes with your esports comment as well really. Why are people caring more about the numbers that they deal rather than how the game actually plays itself?
I would say objectively caring more about how your strength is to an enemy is more of an RPG feel than “did my numbers go up against the next enemy I face” which when you start just talking numbers, isn’t the game now just a competition to get bigger numbers rather than kill dragons?
Dragons should always be the focus, not numbers, people just keep getting caught up in these numbers these days regardless of how arbitrary they are.
That’s literally what a squish is. Your idea to eliminate squishes is to have mid expansion squishes.
Yes, the problem is the shrinking, not letting it grow.
Integers are 64 bit all over now, we don’t hit the ~4 billion limit on 32 bit unsigned integers anymore.
And BfA is exactly that if you want it to be that, and provides more. It provides literally avenues to get the best gear that is neither Raids, Dungeons or PvP, it’s Raids, Dungeons AND PvP. All of them have tangible gearing paths leading to the best gear.
And that is different from Mists, for instance, how ? Hit 90, use a bunch of Timeless Tokens, get your free weapon/535 token from Timeless Isle, and then get carried through whatever content you want. Or in 5.4.8 : Just use Conquest Prideful gear that’s 550 and completely nullifies Flex raiding for anything but Tier and trinkets.
My main has been wearing Crafted pants since week 1 of EP. Still wearing them today.
What’s the issue ?
Forget measuring, just think of your Templar’s Verdict hitting a EP boss for 130,000 damage and then the same TV, powered by the same class buffs (Judgment, Inquisition, Avenging Wrath) suddenly only hits for 110,000 in Ny’alotha. That feels bad. That’s regression.
And for what ? What do you gain exactly ? Your raid gear is suddenly worst off for WQs and for Mythic+, you have to carry around 2-3 sets of gear and swap in and out every time you do different content… what’s the gain ? Where’s the fun ? Where’s the RPG in all of it ?
In Final Fantasy, if I get a sword, it’s good everywhere. It’s my new Sword. Why would WoW move away from tried and through RPG gaming mechanics to go to this “Every sphere of content requires seperate progression” and why does this fix the game ? What is broken that requires this ?
Handouts in video games are never a good idea its like feeding that wild animal you know you shouldnt do it , cause they will just keep coming back for more.
They aren’t tangible paths though really. WQ catch up makes 80% of those irrelevant.
Players who only want to do casual PvP literally cannot even hit base WQ rewards. Why does a trivial piece of content completely make all casual group content redundant? Heroics, casual PvP, crafting? There is literally no reason to do them in BfA, and doing them objectively hurts your progression, you don’t even get AP for it.
There are very much set things to do to progress in the best way in BfA.
Both of those examples are final tier content releases for an expansion, I expect catch up rewards to be available at that stage of the game to help people get back into the end game, what I don’t expect is similarly powerful catch up mechanics to be introduced in patch 8.0 or 8.1.
EP at least has slight value for a couple of pieces, which can’t be said for the first two content patches of BfA where it was completely irrelevant.
8.2 was too little too late for BfA, Benthic was also a reasonable addition until they screwed it with overvalued effects and sockets.
Reputation has still been terribly unrewarding outside of Allied Races, which seems to be the entire reason for it’s continued existence.
Not really, in WoWs original years amd many RPGs that is not something unusual. You see, most RPGs assume that enemies have stats of their own, they have armour, health, magic resistance and this affects how much damage you deal.
Stronger monsters typically had higher armour or magic resistance and thus you would deal less damage to them.
It makes sense in an RPG format for a sword to do more damage to a cloth wearer than a full plated knight. WoW removed those RPG elements for ease of play so now everything has set armour, and resistance and the only thing that scales is the health.
WQs would just be baseline gear for the patch, M+, raid gear, PvP gear etc would simply be better in their respective areas, but there would be no reason to swap down for WQs.
You would use WQs to build up your first set of gear up to the patches base ilvl and then progress from there. The gear rewards would be more for players catching up or new to max level.
Where is the fun? Being able to gather multiple armour sets that are better for different forms of content? Having a reason to do content so that you can progress in it because you have finished your progression through your main content focus? Longevity because you aren’t done with gear by putting in 2 hours a week, you choose to make your progression as long or as short as you like?
Sure gear swaps can be cumbersome, but todays game allows automatic assigning of gear anyway. Just have it so you can make gear sets and have them auto equip going into that content.
Take away the difficulty with using multiple sets while keeping the enjoymeny of building different sets.
Sure you do, there are various different weapons and armours that are more useful against specific types of creatures in Final Fantasy as well as other RPGs.
There aren’t too many true RPGs where they just flat out say this sword does +1 damage use this now. Most have weapons that are good against elementals or good against undead, or resist water magic etc.
Just look at PvP and you can see what is broken, what the best gear? PvE gear.
Everything is the same so the only thing that matters is higher ilvl. At that stage the only thing that is relevant is the content that rewards that higher ilvl.
If you are below 2k rating in PvP, to gear up for PvP you do WQs, or M+, or raids. You don’t do PvP.
Realistically the only thing you do unless you raid mythic is do a single M+ per week to get the best gear.
There is no real need nor point to doing more unless you are farming RNG which is stupid in of itself.
Having a single best way to gear for everything makes it the only way to gear for everything.
That is not good design.
Uh ? For one : WQ gear scales as you gear up. It stays reliatively close to where you are in terms of ilvl. You need to be ilvl 392 before 400 ilvl Azerite Emissaries show up.
After ilvl 390, it becomes a game of waiting on Emissaries to get the 400+ stuff (up to 415) which can take a very long time.
Casual PvP get 2 garanteed pieces of gear per week, even at 0 rating, starting with a Weapon that is 100% assured (a Weapon Emissary is not) and the base ilvl, regardless of your own gear level, is always 410. Random BG wins have a chance to drop 395 gear, again, regardless of your currently equipped ilvl. Higher than Heroic dungeons.
Funny, because 8.3 is dialing back catch-up from Benthic. And without Titanforging, it’s going to be actually harder to get new alts up.
The new catch-up gear is ilvl 400, sub-LFR level, sub-Mythic 0 level and cannot be upgraded.
Reputations not rewarding gear as been a player demand since Mists burned out everyone in patch 5.0 with Reputations locking Reputations and VP gear requiring Exalted.
Sure, but that’s quite a leap from “Only good while in this particular Dungeon” or even “While doing this activity”.
If a sword is +1, +3 vs undead, then I take it to mean all Undead. EP undead, PvP Undead, World Undead.
Also, by far, the majority of +1 swords in AD&D were just that : flat gains.
My definition of a squish is taking existing content in the game and adjusting down health and damage numbers. My proposed model doesn’t require such adjustment. It would seem that you have a different definition for “squish”, but it isn’t clear to me how you define it.
32 bit or 64 bit doesn’t matter when you are talking about a geometric progression. You’ll run out of 64 bits in the same amount of time it took you to pass 32 bits. You’ve exposed your lack of mathematical literacy. I guess I should stop arguing with you. You’ve proven you aren’t up to the task.
How does your model not require adjustment when you literally want to halve the health number of everything so that we go back to 0 and reprogress through the same scale in the next tier ?
You’ll have to scale down the whole game prior to that point to preserve player power. That is literally what the squish is.
It took us from Vanilla to SoO to run into issues with 32 bit integers. And those were signed, not unsigned, which is the reason Garrosh did not have over 2B health.
And in Vanilla, we did not start the exponential grade at the first value : 2 (2^1). Ragnaros already had 1M health in Vanilla.
So no, to reach the 64 bit cap, the game would take much more than the first 9 years it took to reach the 32 bit cap. Unfortunately, it is your math skills and knowledge of the game systems that are lacking.
When I said power about doubles, it’s not quite accurate, it’s not a flat x2, and thus not a flat ^2 exponential growth.
Halve the health number? No, I never said that. The health numbers stay the same. Literally fixed health throughout the entire game. All progression would be via armor reduction/mitigation. Ragnaros would have 1m health. Garrosh would have 1m health. If you fought Garros wearing MC gear… you would hit for 1 hp, and get hit for 10000hp (enough to 1 shot you). Really, it’s just trading HP inflation for armor reduction. Though it isn’t the same as “armor” exactly, because it would mitigate all damage.
You continue with this… signed vs unsigned buys you basically nothing in a geometric progression. The start of the exponential grade would be 1 (2^0). My math skills are, admittedly, not great, but you are proving that yours are worse.
So you admit that you’re argument is based on bad information. Geometric progression doesn’t require 2x. Even if it is only 20% increase per “tier” that is a geometric progression and the time to 64 bits is the same as passing 32 bit.
Regardless of all that. The root of my argument is about information density provided by smaller numbers. Smaller numbers provide more meaning in fewer digits. You have offered no counter to this argument.
Your claim is that unbounded numerical growth has no downside. When you hit for 20,000 damage, that last digit offers no meaningful information.
Information density is the core of my argument. Keeping damage and health numbers small and easy to read makes them convey useful information most efficiently.
… That’s even worse. So you’re like “Yay, 30,000 DPS against Ragnaros! But wait! 1000 DPS against Garrosh !!! what is going on ? My DPS keeps going down!”.
Basically, not a RPG.
Let’s go with absurd notions, I was at least giving you a chance starting the first tier of raiding at 2 health on a boss.
No, it’s based on a simplified explanation of WoW’s scaling. It’s easier to say “about doubles every tier” than try to figure out the precise number. It gives a good indicator of what “feels good” as power growth.
Uh, yes it does. 20,000 damage is 1 less damage than 20,001.
It robs you of granularity. If someone hits for 100. You can only ever increase their damage by 1% minimum. Whereas if they hit for 1000, you can increase their damage in 0.1% increments.