It really isn’t. There shouldn’t be a wide net of four difficulties to catch every niche of player, especially since they all have to have their own rewards for doing that content which creates a much bigger problem with game design and that being the fact at this trajectory we’d be requiring squishes every 2 expansions due to bloat.
Wrath you had two difficulties for the entirety, though pre 3.2 25 man was considered “Heroic” while 10 was Normal. Then Ulduar and Sartharian had optional hardmodes.
At the beginning you were getting like ilvl 200 stuff for loot on 10 man, at the end of ICC heroic 25 man you were getting I want to say 272 stuff. We go through that kind of jump in pretty much ONE raid tier now.
As I said, the bad game design is Blizzard having to constantly make the jumps ridiculous between tiers, and making catch up gear have enough of a floor that it completely invalidates the previous tier also in terms of ilvl. These ridiculous stat jumps work for a game like Diablo, not for MMOs. Even worse, a lot of classes are usually tuned around the beginning tier to feel good to play. We don’t have Wrath and before warriors where they’re trash at the start but with a bit of gear under their belt feel like gods because of how the rage system used to work.
At this point we are pretty much back to the ICC/ToC levels for gearing and item level gaps.
LFR drops the same item level as a M0 dungeon, and is not really part of the raiding gearing path. It’s more end game for those who only want to do queue content so from heroic dungeons to LFR.
ICC had 3 item level tiers each 13 item levels a part.
25H - 277
10H/25N - 264
10N - 251
Then the new ICC catchup dungeons were 232.
ICC even had the last boss drop stronger loot.
This pretty much aligns with CN and SoD where the 3 raid difficulties above base dungeons are mythic, heroic, and normal all 13 itrm levels a part.
Yeah, ilvl jumps were small early. Even scarier I remember a while back checking the item levels for MC and BWL and you were seeing literally like single digit ilvl differences. Band of Accuria off Ragnaros is 78. Prestor’s off Nefarian is 83. Mark of C’thun was 88, Gem of Trapped Innocents off KT was 92.
I specifically went for jewelry. Some items off KT are actually ilvl 89.
Throughout ALL of Vanilla, from the last boss of the first tier to the last boss of tier 3 there was 14 ilvls on their best items on loot table.
Normal Denathrius drops 207, while Mythic dropped 233.
Normal SoD is 233 at the end, with Mythic being 259.
We’re TWO TIERS IN and already at Heroic TOC or ICC item levels.
Every raid tier going by the same difficulty, it’s a 26 ilvl bounce (Normal Denathrius to Normal Sylvanas). Assuming we have two more raids which wouldn’t be unlikely we’re already going to start at entry Wrath ilvl, and end at Cataclysm normal 85 dungeon drop ilvl.
This is just going off NORMAL. Mythic is probably going to end at Tier 11 ilvl (first tier of Cata)
just curious, do you or have you ever raided mythic? i ask because an awful lot of people who’ve never done it seem to have very strong opinions about making it worse in some way
I think there is no way around it. People just won’t play unless they get a certain amount of improved “feel” to their play from the new gear. So it has to inflate at about the rate it’s inflating for people to “feel progress” and keep playing.
Being a heroic raider before mythic was a thing . i can attest to this reply , mythic ruined the general feel and flow of wow . I have never seriously attempted mythic progression but twice i ended a boss or two close of getting CE .
Would also like it to be toned down on all the difficulties , raid should have 3 versions
the casual for those who like to play but can’t for X reasons , which is LFR in its current form
the normal way to go about raiding , which would be normal
the competitive pve way to go about rading , which would be heroic
Yeah, that seems to me the way it should be, yeah.
Easy, Normal, Hard.
Why they felt they needed a 4th option is beyond me.
And, in the case of Mythic Dungeons, you had Normal Dungeons which were for the casuals who didn’t even want to try at all, you had Heroic Dungeons which were meant to prepare you for Normal Raid, and then if you wanted more, you went into either LFR or Normal Raids.
Now, we have M+. They had to nerf Heroic rewards into the ground, to the point it’s not worth doing anymore other than right after a new patch is released on alts, they got rid of the badge system so that you have no guaranteed rewards (35 anima just doesn’t cut it), and what it drops is easily found elsewhere.
But, the problem is, now there’s no meaningful 5 man content that can be auto matchmade. All the auto matchmaking stuff is just too weak to be useful. I once did my daily Heroic back in Pandaria when we had Badges of Valor. I would use these badges for upgrades on my alts that I just liked to mess around with a little.
But today, with there being no badges, and the Personal No Loot system being a thing, you can do 5+ dungeons in a row and not get a single piece of gear.
Just ToC/ICC item level style not the entire expansion. ICC went from 251 (10N) to 277 for (25H) for a gain of 26 item levels. The Lich King also dropped gear 7 item levels higher than the rest is the raid, dropping 284 gear. So if you want to count him ICC was 251-284 or 33 item levels by itself.
Shadowlands is built identical to ICC with LFR down with the dungeons instead of with the raids.
3 layers of raid difficulty each 13 item levels apart with the end 2 bosses dropping 7 item levels above the rest of the raid. It’s as copy and paste as you can get.
I think their biggest issue is how much of a item level change they have between expansions.
I “think” (not checking) mythic Ny’alotha gear was 130 after the squish. Going with that number I think heroic SL dungeons should either have also been 130 or at most 135.
Instead they are 171, which is about 1.5 raid tiers worth of change.
It’s cute that you view the world through such thick biased lenses. you can make comments about how awful the mere existance of mythic raid has been for you, but get all snarky when it’s pointed out that it works both ways.
The difference between you and me though, is I’m not coming to the forums wanting to remove your content.
I’m still waiting for the part where you tell me that LFR affected you (other than Dragon Soul).
Mythic has been around for at least what, 3 expansions now and it has still adversely affected those of us not interested.
LFR affecting non-LFR people was fixed very quickly. Mythic+ and Mythic Raids still being the bane of endgame 3 expansions later.
And heck, you can keep M+ and Mythic Raids if you can figure out a way to stop killing endgame for the rest of us.
But since it’s 3 expansions later and endgame gets worse and worse, we’re fairly sure that there is no fix and the only way to fix is to get rid of it entirely.
And I really like that Heroic and Heroic+ system. Just combine Mythic dungeons into Heroic, LFD Heroics drop keystones, which you must use LFG for, that way you could bump heroic drops up to M0 level.
As far as Mythic Raids, get rid of Mythic Raids, and and make a buff mechanic where you do something in the raid that makes the raid harder (like that dragon in wrath where you could try the boss AND his 3 dragons simultaneously).
With the advent of LFR and LFD, the quality of players went down. It was bad enough before then with baddies looking for Gearscore/playerscore. LFD and LFR have led to the lowest common denominator for players.