Introduction
Hidden among all the class changes is a very impactful change to the 1-70 leveling experience:
The item levels of leveling gear have been adjusted to be rewarded at an appropriate item level through level 70.
At face value, this is a great change - leveling will be smoother since item drops will scale better. But wait…
All leveling items will follow this high item level cadence except for heirlooms. Heirlooms still have the advantage of increasing their item level as the wielder levels.
As someone who has spent countless hours and (in-game) money unlocking and upgrading nearly every heirloom in the game, this statement worried me. I decided to test the item-scaling changes by copying characters.
My conclusion? If the item-scaling changes go live in their current state, heirlooms will not be worth equipping.
Breakdown
Here’s how items currently scale on the Beta compared to live. As you can see, Heirlooms are never better than Quest Greens awarded at the same character level. If this is intentional, it feels like a slap in the face to heirloom collectors.
| Level |
Live Heirloom |
Live Quest Green |
Beta Heirloom |
Beta Quest Green |
| 10 |
26 |
16 |
15 |
16 |
| 20 |
54 |
37 |
68 |
79 |
| 36 |
100 |
83 |
156 |
164 |
| 50 |
148 |
131 |
232 |
247 |
| 60 |
187 |
170 |
287 |
327 |
Proposed Solution
The power level of heirlooms should reflect the time and effort it takes to unlock them. Players who’ve upgraded, enchanted, and gemmed up full sets of heirlooms for their army of alts should feel like the time they spent doing that matters.
I believe that Heirlooms should scale as rare items do. This will ensure Heirlooms are not only worth equipping, but feel powerful - even without the massive %XP bonuses they’ve historically had.
Levelers and altaholics out there, I implore you to help me spotlight this issue.
5 Likes
On more notch in levels to 51 and 61 respectively likely see the heirlooms jump up considerably in ilevel. I’d be interested to see what they are then compared to the quest gear.
1 Like
Heirlooms already feel a bit useless if you’re questing. At best they feel like a fallback if you’ve gone a while without an upgrade in a certain slot. Heirlooms should be a bit stronger and have some other bonus considering how expensive it is to fully upgrade even one set.
4 Likes
I’m currently leveling three characters to 70 for TWW, and I have two on Beta for testing. Heirloom leveling is a far smoother and better experience overall. The consistent gear levels regardless of drops and the 6-piece gives a 60% reduction in rested XP lost from combat/gathering generally means I’m vendoring equipment drops. The Beta characters are a bit painful; last night I swapped out a 24-ilvl piece of gear for 180-ilvl. There’s also stretches when I can tell the gear is falling behind because I start to feel squishier.
If the changes stay in the game I’ll be annoyed by the change, but the two buffs mentioned above might mean I still use them.
2 Likes
IMO Heirloom items stopped being worth it once they took the EXP bonus away. I have like 60 character all over level 50. Once the pre-expansion event rolls out, I expect all of my characters that I have any interest in playing will all be level 70. Making the Heirlooms I spent loads of time and gold on worthless until the day a new class is added to WoW.
Let’s be real, those of us testing with any kind of decent gear in this BETA don’t even start replacing anything we are wearing until like level 78 or 79 which you can level to in a day. Making upgrading heirlooms in the future even more unlikely for me. Just log them in and start to accumulate rested. All your alts will need.
2 Likes
gearing itself doesnt really need to exist for most levels
theres like a dozen gear slots too many to care about
1 Like