Extremely unpopular opinion: Leveling is bricked because of stat squish consequences

Community General Discussion
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Just a random unpopular opinion, as I write this topic knowing that this will not get adressed by Blizzard because nobody on retail cares about leveling anyway.

But seriously, up to Warlords of Draenor, the magic of leveling was due to the things that you sometimes could do to feel overpower, like heirlooms used to adress in some of the cases. Leveling a fire mage as an example, and enchanting your gear to have as much haste as possible to be able to cast pyroblast like it was a fireball was one of the magic things that brought leveling to life.

That’s the reason why, in my rumble opinion, Mists of Pandaria Remix was so fun and accepted by the community.

I tried this again in retail, like I used to do in old times, and came not as a surprise that every low level gem and enchant only gives you +1 of Haste, or Mastery, or whatever. And if you gem and enchant all of your gear, you will have a 3% overall stat increase.

Meaning that, in other words, no matter what you do, you will still have a 3 second cast spell, or dealing almost no critics at all. And not that this would matter, because all mobs in low level dungeons die within 10 seconds anyway. Theres no reason to gear, because you can be carried by other people, or a reason to farm better equips, because they are basically the same.

Leveling now is basically something to gatekeep endgame content. It is really sad to see that all the old content, like professions and such are basically gone and not worth anything.

Again, I’m only creating this topic to vent. Although this could be a easy fix, I don’t see a reason in Blizzard perspective for this “problem” to be adressed at all.

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Absolutely.

The leveling feels bad in DF and TWW. But it actually started in Shadowlands, that expansions leveling felt horrible.

It’s because of mob scaling. It needs to be removed. At least from the expansion continent. You can keep it for chromie time.

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personally I LOVE scaling.
Now, WoWs scaling sucks hozenrump…ESO’s is very good.
I dont want to one shot stuff that should put up a fight regardless of my level…and I dont want to be fighting a stinking BIRD for half hour either lol

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That’s something we could do. The thing is, like I said on the topic, it was possible to make leveling easier and more fun if you were able to farm certain weapons or gem/enchant your character. I remember having friends zerg down Naxx so I could gather equipments and make the next few levels easier to do.

That’s doesn’t happens anymore. Everything die within 5 seconds and sometimes you don’t even get to finish your frostbolt because you have 2% haste.

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Never got into twinking but I get the appeal, they actually have more permanence than any current power. I was sad when they decided to disable all legion artifacts, and it’s a bummer old time walking sets won’t be effective anymore.

These were unique ways to enjoy the game with minimal impact. I’ll say that PVP is another matter but I digress.

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I’m going to stay with the “surface” of your comments here, and agree strongly that crushing 60+ levels of gear into one indistinguishable blob is just terrible.

One of the high points of my Cata-era experience was farming a bunch of BiS level 30-39 quest gear for my hunter, then taking it into WSG for a remarkably easy Wrecking Ball. I apologize to a few dozen one- and two-shot victims in that BG, but you made me very happy and I’d send you a beer if I could.

This is something that just can’t happen now.

I don’t want to get started, so this is my minor contribution.

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I love leveling, but my problem is how stale leveling to max level becomes after a few toons.

I play a lot of alts, so I am always hunting for alternative route so it doesn’t become mundane.

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Stat Squish resulting in slightly less effect level 10 enchants is not really the reason I’d say it’s a poor experience.

It’s all scaling and general tuning by Blizzard.

We’re way too strong vs the content as a baseline, and the boost applied to lower level characters to compensate for them not having their proper kit yet is WAY too high.

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Not completely, yes. But all the old enchants/gems or everything that could go towards an alt now being completely useless is a downside.

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So what do you want blizzard to nerf the leveling speed so you can feel powerful longer? Whatever gear you get gets outscaled so fast nothing matters, and LV 1-70 takes like 5 hours at most depending on method. I got my LV 50 char from 50 to 80 and 585 geared with 4 t8 delves soloed plus black temple in 8 hours.

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Or overlevel content.

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I think this is the best leveling has been in WOW, it’s never been a “fun” experience at least at this point… it’s fast and efficient.

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As I said, leveling is just gatekeeping end-game content as of right now. That’s why its boring.

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Can’t say I feel a difference. Been using dungeon finder for leveling since like, MoP?

Exactly the same to me besides it being faster now.

Also, all of these things you suggested would require leveling to take longer. Which… I don’t think would fly well with majority of players, given how just 70-80 leveling time was increased and that almost blew up the forums.

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Inevitably when you do a stat squish, you’re compressing things together and making it much smaller which means certain things that felt alot more powerful might not feel as good now. So in that aspect I will agree I look at alot of gear now and I’m just like, what’s the point of this existing.

Now that said, part of the issue is that tuning also comes into play. Part of what was wrong with TBC timewalking this last time was the bosses were tuned decently enough, but many of the trash mobs were still hitting like they were at level 60+, meaning it was easy to get 1 shot by trash but not a boss. They get that sorted and the tuning is at least passable.

The problem I have with some of these proposals is that making leveling take longer does NOT automatically equate to better gameplay. I wholly reject the notion that time spent = good gameplay. I’ve seen plenty of games that are shorter that I’ve gotten a ton of entertainment value out of, and then I’ve seen some that are alot longer that are pure garbage heaps. Quantity of time spent in a game doesn’t matter as much as QUALITY of time spent in the game. If I can get both then great. If not then give me quality every single time. Because the entire purpose of a game is to have fun, and if you’re not having fun then why are you in the game? Personally I despised how long it took to hit max level in Pandaria at first. It felt like it just dragged and dragged and dragged for no reason and was just a slog. Now if you like that sort of thing then more power to you. I have nothing against folks that want to take their time. That said, leave people like me out of it that want to get to max level faster. You do you, I do me, both of us enjoy the game.

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its never going away blizzard makes money off boosts

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not really gone, this can be experienced for the most part in classic, one thing I liked about SoD , how the phases worked made professions quite meaningful, they enhanced the professions as well.

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Nah man, we loved it because you could level 10-70 in like 2 hours and skip all the boring crap that comes with levelling.

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Leveling and, honestly, the whole process of world scaling is WoWs single biggest flaw, in my entirely subjective opinion.

One of the most fun things about chasing the high tier gear and big stats and bonuses is seeing how far you’ve come and how trivial you can make easier content. You should look like a giant next to your friend who plays for an hour or two each week.
But blizzard, evidentially, does not want that.

So instead, leveling has you growing weaker as you level, particularly the last few levels before a milestone (eg: 77, 78 and 79).
While world content scales infinitely with your item level.

Technically, you eventually scale harder than the enemies do… but only kinda? Basically, if you’re outside of instanced content, your gear doesn’t matter and that… feels like crap. Honestly.

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Remix = waste of time.

1 Like