iLVL vs. Skill - Why does iLVL make That much of a difference?

Community General Discussion
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I have heard a lot of players saying skill is more important than iLVL, but I think skill can only get you so far before someone’s iLVL just trumps whatever you are doing no matter how skilled you are.

Take my iLVL for example, a mere 5 iLVL and I have some 10K additional health, just health, I didn’t take notice of the other stats I gained.

And when you look at the DPS between 2 classes with even a few iLVL difference it is insane, and this is just going off the sim bots. I mean not insane, but a few thousand difference means a lot over the course of a run.

But when the iLVL hits a certain point no amount of skill will save you, take fopr example the M10 I done the other day, we ran ToS with 4 of us and carried a 5th.

We had, Raider score the top tank and 2 DPS on my server (all form the same guild as me if you were wondering how I got them all together) and the four of us 375 or better iLVL, the last guy was some 20 iLVL lower at 357 iLVL.

Raid wise as a healer the other guy does quite well with their HPS, and since he has no real DPS gear we went is with 2 healers, and going into a 5 man with a Discipline healer made 2 issues, Disc are very good 5 man healing and with almost 20 lower iLVL he may as well just stood there such was the limits his gear put on him.

Like I said, he can raid heal very well and get some good numbers and perform perfectly in Heroics, but break it down to a 5 man and his HPS was not even 20% of mine and his DPS did not even exist.

I know iLVL does make a difference, but should just under 20 ILVL make such a difference that someone has almost zero impact?

Even recently I went to Gurabashi Arena, ran into a low level twink with some decent gear on the Horde so I was able to inspect him, problem is he was able to talk to me and man was he cocky. Fight started just before the chest and whilst he did something damage to me, it was pointless as once his CD’s ran out it felt like the wind was pushing me around, nothing, no damage, no issues and after a couple of hits he went down like a fat kid on a see-saw.

It just seems now more than ever that your skill level means nothing compared to what it used to be and a 5-10 iLVL difference could very well be the difference between an OK player beating a good player.

Couple this with how easy it is to get gear and if you get unlucky it could very well be the difference of you getting into a raid or not.

3 players I have seen on these forums, one admitted he had no raiding experience this time around and his armoury showed that, but also had a relatively high iLVL and another where someone, after around 6 weeks, had no Azerite drops from Uldir, whilst another got some Azerite gear early.

The first person with no Uldir Azerite admitted they went from top DPS early on to almost being kicked from raiding such was the difference the higher iLVL and Reorigination Array makes. The second person stated they went from last to almost top heals with just one Uldir Azerite piece.

TL;DR - It seems to me that a very little amount of iLVL and getting lucky with one item and maybe a good weapon drop just makes too much of a difference that skilled players, no matter how skilled you are, just cannot compete. anymore like they used to.

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There is some skill in gearing as well and it requires you to understand and do maintenance on your character every time you get an item you believe to be upgrade. Highest ilvl does not always equate to higher numbers.

Azerite gearing is a good example of this. You can go from a 970 to a 980 piece and still find the 970 piece to be superior depending on the traits of both items. Rings are another example, a 950 ring with a prime stat combination can be better than a 980 ring of your worst combination. You’re also vastly underestimating how powerful Reorigination Array is. You don’t wear the raid gear and have 1 of the neutral trait because its good, on the contrary, for most classes its mediocre at best. You do it because it gives you about 30 ilvls worth of a secondary stat a week, which is important this tier as several classes are hurting from the lower than average secondary stats we’re all packing.

That all said, how to play the class and skill make all the difference as well. You can give a potato as many rings, weapons and azerite you want, but its still a potato.

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I think you mean 350 iLVL, but I get your point.

Still taking note of that player I mentioned in our +10, no names given for reasons, does very good in raid healing with his 357 gear, but in that specific +10 were we purposely carried him doing the good old guild thing, his stats were that much lower than ours he probably could have died at every mob and boss interval and still gotten the carry.

It would have also impacted that we had some of the best in our guild and realm, but this guy can hold his own yet had no real discernible impact on the DPS or HPS meters.

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I think it’s more of a matter of class/spec, ilvl, and skill. The way things currently are in the game it feels like class/spec are usually what determines output followed by ilvl and skill that are close together.

Personally, i feel what determines an encounter/output should be ilvl = skill > class/spec, but the execution of that would be quite difficult because that might make all the specs too similar. Either that or blizzard would have to eat their own words and go back to MoP style class design where every class/spec could do just about everything, and that’s probably not gonna happen.

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Unless you’re a Feral Druid.

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warcraft logs dot com/reports/j39Jx4CtBfkKzn7V

This was my guilds raid last Friday, have a close look at Nineninefive and myself, he has always been about 5 iLVL higher than I have and look at those numbers, there is a fight here and there I get more DPS, more healing or both, it just depends on the fight.

But overall he almost always gets more DPS and Healing than I do, we are close to each others skill. When we both go as DPS in either raiding or 5 man we come out almost identical in DPS with him being that little bit more than me every single time. Even our Halo and Radiance healing goes off at almost the same time, I would record it if I could be bothered.

Yet, depending on the fight, when we both heal for the entire fight he almost always gets more DPS and heals than me, those 5 iLVL, they do make a difference and that is only 5 iLVL.

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This is an RPG, the quality of your gear is of obvious importance.

Skill is also of obvious importance.

The trick is to have quality gear and skill.

Skill > Gear up to a certain ilvl diff
Skill + Gear > Skill alone > Gear alone

Make sense?

To be clear, the difference 5ilvls on your character makes is huge. It means he has a hand full of items with higher int than you. The ilvl gap is also exacerbated in BFA because it doesn’t tell us how many of his items have sockets which are worth a ton of stats.

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They pruned all the classes down to pretty much 3 buttons - an instant low damage, a medium damage on a few second CD and a big nuke on a longer’ish CD. Mostly you’re waiting around for burst windows or procs to proc so you know which of your 3 buttons to press in what order.

So yes ilvl and gear matters, but not even in a meaningful way - mostly just as a stat stick. More secondary stats (especially crit and depending on class/spec mastery sometimes). iLvl is all we got until they close down wow and push everyone onto mobile because hey “you’ve all got phones dont you?!?”

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I get it, but to be clear, and that is my point exactly, how can 5 iLVL make that much of a difference? It sure puts your skill out the window unlike the days of old when 20 character levels was still comparable.

Looking at our gear I have 3 sockets to his 2 and our stats from the Armory go like this:
Me > Him
Intellect: 6,417 > 6,522
Stamina: 7,325 > 7,324
Crit: 22% > 24%
Haste: 6% > 10%
Mastery: 26% > 19%
Versatility: 5% each

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For disc priest it’s more knowledge about the fights and class. Like Vectis is a good example. The first raidwide damage is usually starts at 0:17 with immunosuppression from the add, followed by Contagion.

If you look at the comparison between you and the other disc priest

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/j39Jx4CtBfkKzn7V/j39Jx4CtBfkKzn7V#fight=19,19&source=7,1&type=casts&view=events&start=2568552,2568552&end=2602348,2602348

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/j39Jx4CtBfkKzn7V/j39Jx4CtBfkKzn7V#fight=19,19&source=7,1&type=auras&start=2568552,2568552&end=2590954,2590954&ability=194384&by=target

So from this you can see that while you both have a similar amount of atonements up,he waits to cast penance until the damage is actually out, and also has the advantage of Schism which is essentially on demand burst healing.

but also as the other posters have pointed out, ilvl/sockets matter a lot in BFA, as do azerite traits and a lot of other things out of our control and is a reason a lot of raiders are burning out. :woman_shrugging:

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From what I’m seeing of your guild, you have individuals who run 15s-18s carrying a healer,which generally isn’t a challenging thing to do on a tyrannical week. Couple in that your 3 Mythic+ carriers are playing great M+ classes. Long story short, its a combination of those players had an extreme amount of gear, but also had enough skill and knowledge of the instance that they could easily trounce it despite being a dps down.

Players like that generally have great management of their cds and can easily avoid damage that would otherwise force the healer to react. Low damage taken, means low HPS required (even lower when you consider that good Blood DKs are essentially self-reliant.), low HPS requirements means the class that tends to be able to react fastest (in this circumstance, Disc priest) tends to have the higher HPS.

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Item Level has always been a focal point of WoW, if you don’t have a good Ilvl then regardless of your talent behind a keyboard. You’ll always be trounced by a player that’s got a better Ilvl then you do in most cases.

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Ilvl = Gear

Skill = Person

Their is gear all over the game but there are very few people that can maximize the potential of that gear.

Does that help explain it a bit?

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Skill and ilvl both provide their own separate ceilings that are independent of each other, but combine for a sort of “maximum throughput.”

As an analogy, think of it like two people shooting a target with a bow and arrow. Person 1 is more skilled, but only has two arrows to fire. Person 2 is less skilled, but has four arrows to fire. If you told them both to hit the target twice, the first person might be able to do it more often than not, but would need to be 100% accurate to do so. Person 2 would only need 50% accuracy and could potentially hit the target more often if they are lucky. The accuracy is their skill ceiling, but each person has a different set of equipment to accomplish the task.

I understand that seems a bit unfair, but I think there is a bit of necessity to it in an RPG style game. Part of the draw is progressing in power, and that’s how it is even for pen and paper style RPGs. For competitive play, however, I understand the need for balance because you want an even playing field. I guess I just look at it the other way around, where I’m more impressed by a person with a low ilvl beating higher ilvls than marveling at the throughput of a guy decked out in mythic gear.

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Because your math is off. That 5 item levels is an average across 15-16 gear pieces with each piece being 5 levels better. Effectively that is a difference of 75+ points.

And how does someone get such consistently and significantly better gear 15+ times? It’s not from getting lucky once or twice.

It’s very significant.

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This is your daily PSA that you can’t fire an arrow as it is not a firearm. You can only loose or release it. Or if you really want to use modern vernacular you can shoot the arrow. :nerd_face:

Grammar nit-picking aside, better gear will always yield greater results given equal skill. I don’t think anyone will debate that point. I’ve seen people who obliterate other players up to 15 ilvls above them though simply due to spec knowledge. And fight knowledge matters even more than that. Some one who knows the timings of a figh perfectly and can maximize their cooldowns and trinkets will destroy someone who doesn’t.

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I think your mythic+ example is quite bad to show the difference of ilvl. Having two healers in a mythic+ won’t give you any reliable data whatsoever, since you will just end overhealing, and all the overheal will not appear on your HPS meter.

In general terms, you seem surprised at how much 5 or 20 ilvls matter, but gear drops by increments of 15 ilvls per difficulty, so 15 ilvls needs to be a significant amount. There’s nothing wrong with it.

The skill argument works mostly on the lower skill part. A bad player can waste half of their total dps by playing badly. But you need to be really bad to perform below someone with 20 ilvls less than you. The difference is not as big when comparing decent players, so just 5 ilvls will matter between decent players.

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Item level is just a simple to glance metric however there is a point where you simply can’t do something or do something efficiently with a low enough ilvl.

If you can top the DPS chart on Heroic G’huun with a 340 ilvl then you’re definitely awesome and by now should be on a Mythic raid team. However you’re a statistical outlier and the vast majority of players wouldn’t even make 10k at that ilvl with most making barely half that.

Of course with the way gear works right now it’s entirely possible through luck to walk into LFR G’huun with a 370 ilvl and have no freaking clue what to to do…

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Whats skill?? The ppl who are skilled making $ of playing aren’t posting here :slight_smile: