This pretty much. They keep doing squishes, but wouldn’t have to do them if they would just even out the power increase to a steady pace. Higher ilvl players would always have an advantage, but not an astronomical one.
What’s wrong with us progressing at a normal pace? To me, this is what makes the catch ups feel exhausting. I see what OP is saying clearly. It isn’t THAT there is a catch up that sucks, it’s that if you skip a patch, it feels like you may as well be a fresh 120 again, and in some ways, you’re really no further than they are because they can go out and get the same gear in about the same amount of time, and in a lot of content nobody wants an ilvl 370 player anymore than they want an ilvl 290 player, so it doesn’t matter.
I don’t mind the need for upgrading, but If I’m doing BGs, for example, and everyone is around 120k health, I take a break during a patch, then come back and everyone else is sitting around 180k-200k health… that feels unnecessary.
Maybe if we didn’t have twelve thousand levels of gearing to divide gear throughout it wouldn’t be such a big deal. I’m all for going back to just normal and heroic. Keep LFR but have it reward currency instead of gear that you can spend on normal raid gear at a slower pace than actual normal raiding.
Also, while I’m at it… bring back PvP gear stats like Resil or PvP power and PvP vendors. 