Ilvl Squish. Nerfs are Never Fun, Buffs on the Other Hand

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Blizzard… BlizzAAAAARD…

Come on devs, you had the easiest dub in mmo history lined up. All you have to do is re-release Wrath and not screw with anything. Good intentions don’t always make your proposed changes the correct decision. Retail WoW has been proving that for nearly a decade now.

Exhales. Okay. Lets take a step back and examine the problem your proposed ilvl squish is trying to address, and then please afford me the luxury of proposing an alternative solution with historical precedent from original Ulduar.

The problem as you have described it, is that the power gap between Ulduar and ToC is so vast that ToC gear completely nullifies any desire to return to Ulduar after the release of ToC. You as devs feel the players want to experience Ulduar thoroughly during and after the phase it releases in and you’re looking for a way to make that happen.

Point, Counterpoint

The first identifiable issue with an ilvl squish is the impact it has on the late-game scaling for a number of classes/specs. Classic is a mostly solved game, the players that are most engaged with the game are making decisions about the class they’re going to play for a given expansion months or in some cases years in advance. Let me be clear - WE LIKE IT THIS WAY. We are mostly men in our early to mid thirties and we can’t handle uncertainty, it’s bad for digestion. Reducing the ilvl ceiling for the expansion is going to severely inhibit the late game performance of a number of specs that people are willing to wait an entire expansion to really shine on.

The second issue with an ilvl squish is one of time constraints. As a GM, I’m constantly trying to strike a balance with raid scheduling that pushes the guild towards our goals without asking so much of our raiders that we start to experience burnout. My guild has been very lucky throughout TBC in that we’ve had a very low player attrition rate, and I attribute this largely to the fact that we’ve been able to get every tier on farm very quickly, reducing the required amount of time from 3 nights to 1. My concern is that Heroic ICC is already projected to be a substantial difficulty increase over Sunwell, while also being a much longer raid. Most Classic guilds have never been stress-tested on protracted progression raiding, and there are even people in the Classic community who never raided at a high level in retail and don’t know what real progression looks like. Any changes to the more challenging end of WotLK could have disastrous consequences for the Classic community, as even Sunwell was a meat grinder for less robust guilds.

Solving Problems that don’t Exist

I’d like to anecdotally describe my guild’s experience with Sunwell and how Sunwell affected our interaction with the previous raid tier. It was 10.5 hours of progression from the time we first set foot in Sunwell until Kil’Jaeden died. We are by no means an amazing guild, we’re just a well-organised group of pretty good players. I bring this up because from the outset it was clear that there was no need for us to ever go back to T6 - we already had 90% of everything we needed from BT and due to itemisation Sunwell gear is vastly superior to that of the previous tier despite only being a 13 ilvl jump. However the allure of legendary items and the trinkets from Illidan have kept us clearing BT twice a week for the entire remainder of the expansion.

There are trinkets of comparable power in Ulduar that will most likely see us returning there (Mjolnir Runestone, Comet’s Trail etc) after ToC releases. Achievements and mounts are character bound, and right now there are people panicking about missing out on an Amani War-Bear on their 8th character. The Ulduar drakes are in my opinion some of the best mounts ever added to the game and they will definitely keep people running Ulduar well beyond its life expectancy.

Then there is the legendary mace. My guild is going to be completing between 6 and 8 maces over the course of the expansion. We understand that they are powerful enough to warrant returning to content that we get little other benefit from. I think this speaks to the core of why we enjoy Classic - we like the power fantasy. Bullying the content into submission has become an art-form and we will stop at nothing to optimise our experience to the nth degree. However, if Blizzard insists on doing something to extend the relevance of Ulduar then I have a middle of the road proposal.

A Better Way

Player nerfs are never fun. Buffs are always fun. In TBC Classic T4 and T5 raids were nerfed into the ground upon release of their successive tiers - nerfing the content is by proxy a buff to the player. An enlightened approach to addressing power imbalance in video games isn’t to simply push the top down, but rather to bring the bottom up. When ToC released in original WotLK, the devs increased the ilvl of Val’anyr to be in line with 25N ToC gear.

Rather than squishing the ilvls of tiers after Ulduar to flatten the curve, why not instead slightly raise the ilvl of Ulduar gear AFTER ToC comes out to extend its relevance. It wouldn’t have to be a lot, ilvl jumps in Ulduar are on half-step with the rest of the expansion and only move by +6, so just bump everything by +6 and that would:

  • Bring all 25man non-hardmode armour/accessories in-line with 10N ToC
  • Place all 25man non-hardmode weapons between 10N and 25N ToC
  • Bring all 25man hardmode Ulduar gear in-line with 25N ToC

For example:

  • 25man non-hardmode armour/accessories are normally 226 - bump them to 232
  • 25man non-hardmode weapons are normally 232 - bump them to 239
  • 25man hardmode items are normally 239 - bump them to 245

The same could be applied to 10man Ulduar as well, which would see 10man hardmode gear be only slightly behind normal ToC. This would serve two purposes, it extends the relevance of Ulduar beyond the release of ToC and it also nerfs Ulduar for guilds that are behind the curve. Personally, I’m in favour of Blizzard just leaving the ilvl curve the hell alone but if they’re going to do anything it might as well be a change that isn’t a massive nerf to the power fantasy of ToC and ICC gearing.

Pacing of the raid tiers and PVP seasons obviously matters. Given that the ilvl of PVP and PVE gear is in lock-step from season/tier to season/tier, decoupling them from phases causes more problems than it solves. That being said I don’t personally believe that there would be any inherent harm in having the seasons not be the same length. As long as the shortest season is long enough to run its natural course of gearing and laddering then I see no downside to having an uneven content cadence for Wrath, with Ulduar and ICC being given the lion’s share of screen-time.

I’m yet to encounter a single player who wants to spend more than 4 months in Naxx/ToC. Obviously there will always be some people who really enjoy those phases but on a whole they will most likely be the least popular stages of WotLK Classic. A phase cadence of 4 months / 6 months / 4 months / ICC+RS would see Ulduar get plenty of time in the sun as the relevant raid, and then coupled with retroactively buffing Ulduar loot would mean people will be enjoying Ulduar for the better part of a year.

Let it be.

This is something that I feel very strongly about. Substantially nerfing player power in any game has historically always been met with catastrophic blowback from the community. We’re about to re-experience the peak of WoW’s history, and how Blizzard handles WotLK Classic will determine many players’ future relationship with Blizzard products. Please, do not implement the ilvl squish - and to anyone who has read this far thank you for your time.

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I hope writing all that has been cathartic because I’m sure no one is reading it, specially no developer

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This post x1000

I might not be able to articulate myself that well compared to original poster but I agree with everything he’s written…

As someones who’s played all iterations of the game since vanilla, please stop trying to force changes onto us in a game that we want how it was back then. There is a reason people prefer classic to retail… and vise versa for some i guess…

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as you wrote 28 minutes ago on another post, go be toxic somewhere else lmao.

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I agree that changing end game scaling for people that are already locked into class choices isn’t a great solution.

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happy for u
or sorry that happened

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Blizzard been real quiet since this dropped

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Its midnight on the west coast on top of it being a weekend. You won’t likely hear anything from them until monday if at all.

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I do agree with almost everything brought up here.

1 small point I might add is the weird contradiction of enabling engineering for the first season of WotLK PvP. I understand the “idea” of recreating how Season 5 was. But as was ESTABLISHED in TBC classic with the Nigh-Invulnerability belt… It FORCES players to take a specific profession in order to play on the ladder. I feel like when we have LITERALLY tested this concept in TBC and found it to be problematic, only to re-try the EXACT same thing again is dare I say a bit insane.

Like you said, Buffs are almost always looked at in a positive light over nerfs. I seriously hope Blizzard takes the time to digest player feedback (at least wherever it isn’t simply rage) and reevaluate many of their proposals.

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Blizzard isn’t reading this buddy.

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First of all thanks for reading!

The Engi belt is an interesting case, prior to TBC Classic it was a super niche use-case in PVP. Then Elron crusaded for OCE to be segregated from NA PVP queues and all of a sudden farming honour became a nightmare hellscape in OCE. The engi belt saw a massive spike in PVP usage largely because it was one less piece of honour gear that OCE players had to farm. More people using it meant people inevitably found more ways to efficiently use it in certain comps/plays and before you know it engi belt was meta dominant.

That being said, disabling engineering tinkers in PVP isn’t necessarily a good solution. Disabling engineering just kicks the can down the road so to speak, there will be different meta picks for professions because every profession has perks. Imo if you want to balance professions for PVP the only course of action is to disable them all or allow them all.

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Engineering is different however, because the value of the different tinkers can completely counter certain plays. Where as the other professions only offer different stat increases (and a minor heal with Herbalism).

Every hunter will pull his hair out when he disengages only to have someone nitro boots after them. Which in turn, forces the hunter to use nitro boots. Someone having 1% more crit or SP doesn’t have that kind of an effect on the meta.

I am fine with them being used in non-rated content, but for rated PvP it does create an entirely new meta.

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Tailoring cloak enchants push more damage into burst windows, and JC is marginally more better than every other raw-stat profession. Additionally not every raw-stat boosting profession has access to the same stat combinations. There will always be meta picks.

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like I said, those are fine, more stats (even the tailoring one) are fine. They don’t fundamentally change the meta. But any ranged will 100% have to play significantly differently if people have access to boots or shield belt. That is why engi is so problematic.

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One of the more thought out posts and in my opinion a good post. So it will be ignored to make space for rage posts.

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One of the best posts made so far on this issue tbh… Your solve by bumping up the ilvls is so much better as well even if I’d rather see no changes, I’d take this x1000 over nerfing gear.

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The iLVL squish won’t make Ulduar better it will make ToC and ICC worse.

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Lmao Bobby Kotick is buying another yacht farming the tears from these people.

I hope they double down on every decision they made, seeing people write essays like this knowing nothing will ever change gives me hope that Blizzard isn’t taking any random feedback they see.

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the allure of legendary items and the trinkets from Illidan have kept us clearing BT twice a week for the entire remainder of the expansion.

There are trinkets of comparable power in Ulduar that will most likely see us returning there (Mjolnir Runestone, Comet’s Trail etc) after ToC releases. Achievements and mounts are character bound, and right now there are people panicking about missing out on an Amani War-Bear on their 8th character. The Ulduar drakes are in my opinion some of the best mounts ever added to the game and they will definitely keep people running Ulduar well beyond its life expectancy.

Then there is the legendary mace. My guild is going to be completing between 6 and 8 maces over the course of the expansion. We understand that they are powerful enough to warrant returning to content that we get little other benefit from. I think this speaks to the core of why we enjoy Classic - we like the power fantasy. Bullying the content into submission has become an art-form and we will stop at nothing to optimise our experience to the nth degree. However, if Blizzard insists on doing something to extend the relevance of Ulduar then I have a middle of the road proposal.

So, this is not an issue I feel terribly strongly about, but to pick at two points in here:

If I understand correctly, you’re saying your going to do Ulduar anway; that it remains relevant because of a couple Trinkets and Legendary items. That Blizzard is solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

I would counter that It’s going to feel pretty irrelevant every time you clear Ulduar and fragments don’t drop, or those trinkets don’t drop. While your running it anyway fishing for those particular drops, why would it not be good to have more decent gear that is just slightly under/slightly over the next normal tier? In my mind that makes Ulduar more relevant and appealing without making it more of a necessity to run at all. To me, this seems like an especially good thing when you consider ToC is just a 2 room raid.

Number 2: You’ve said,

Bullying the content into submission has become an art-form and we will stop at nothing to optimise our experience to the nth degree

I 100% agree, if Classic Vanilla showed us anything it’s that regardless of how easy the encounters are players will find ways to make their own difficulty and a flourishing competitive scene.

I don’t think they need to make the content harder. Finding new and interesting ways to speed clear encounters will fill any void in difficulty.

That said, the number I heard was a squish of 13 Ilevels. Is it that significant? The way they’re saying that Ulduar 10 player Hardmode gear will be slightly better than Normal 25 player ToC gear. That makes it sound like Half a tier maybe?

Regarding your proposed compromise fix:

A Better Way

Player nerfs are never fun. Buffs are always fun. In TBC Classic T4 and T5 raids were nerfed into the ground upon release of their successive tiers - nerfing the content is by proxy a buff to the player. An enlightened approach to addressing power imbalance in video games isn’t to simply push the top down, but rather to bring the bottom up. When ToC released in original WotLK, the devs increased the ilvl of Val’anyr to be in line with 25N ToC gear.

Rather than squishing the ilvls of tiers after Ulduar to flatten the curve, why not instead slightly raise the ilvl of Ulduar gear AFTER ToC comes out to extend its relevance. It wouldn’t have to be a lot, ilvl jumps in Ulduar are on half-step with the rest of the expansion and only move by +6, so just bump everything by +6 and that would:

That 100% would meet their first goal of keeping Ulduar relevant beyond legendary fishing. That would be a really nice delicate solution. However, it doesn’t meet the criteria of their second problem of reigning in some of the power-creep. Also, that would actually widen the gap between fresh or returning characters and consistant raiders as well as further trivializing Naxx and other forms of content.

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Why is power creep a bad thing? Some classes actually need that power creep while others don’t. In tbc my warrior is scales way more off gear then my mage. Like my warrior has to get hit expertise crit arm pen and some haste helps. My mage needs very little hit spell power crit and haste.

On my warrior there aren’t enough stats on gear to even get a comfortable amount of these stats that I feel I have the right amount till swp.

On my mage I felt like any upgrade would be fairly minor from the end of phase 2 on because the number of stats I needed to perform were so much lower.

If power creep is the problem then they need to address class scaling as a whole. I personally don’t trust the current blizzard devs to rehaul every classes scaling to be inline with what wrath was back in the day.