With prepatch for some reason SL/BFA mobs got 3x health. We were unsure if this was intended but it hasn’t been fixed AFAIK; and
The 11.0.2 changes for many classes (eg BM Hunter) amount to a 10-20% DPS nerf.
The thinking for (2) seems to be that “tanks don’t need healers and DPS are doing too much damage” such that current content is not fitting how Blizzard wants the game to be played. Basically, “you’re having fun wrong”.
Now tanks are currently the bottleneck for queueing content. Making it more annoying to play a tank seems like an odd choice. But remember, these changes affect legacy content too.
The big one is the 11.0.2 DPS nerfs. That affects legacy content too. Mythic BFA raids had finally become fully soloable before any of these changes. For some like Jaina it was mostly an issue of mechanics so it’s still soloable AFAIK. I’m not sure what the current state of N’Zoth or G’huun is.
Maybe BFA (and SL?) are finally getting legacy damage in TWW. Currently Legion is the last expansion with legacy damage and that happened what? 5 years ago at this point?
But why is TWW making SL/BFA content roughly 4x harder in TWW at level 70 than they were in 10.2.7?
Step 1. Apply change that requires player to spend more time.
Step 2. Deny a change happened don’t include in patch notes.
Step 3. Present to share holders X% increase in player engagement bump.
This is legacy content. Why do we care if it’s trivial at max level?
Everything in Legion now (and for years) has been one shot. Has that ruined the game? It’s always been the pattern that legacy content become soloable. For some reason we got stuck on BFA+ never getting this.
This is the argument/justification that needs to die. Legacy content should never be getting buffed, because it’s irrelevant to max level progression. It should be staying exactly the same and only getting easier as level increases. Never harder.
Also, getting to level 80 isn’t even going to make it easier. Players with beta access have already reported that reaching 80 and getting geared only gets us to where we already were at 70 in 10.2.7. Blizz just resets the clock on our characters every prepatch and folks like you handwave it away like ‘the new level cap will fix it!’
So the main issue here is that the devs stopped adding a legacy damage modifier to content from 2 expansions ago, with the explanation that a player’s natural power progression should be equivalent since there is no stat squish. In the last 3 prepatches there have been unintentional (?) spikes, where a previously max level character experiences a difficulty spike between 2-5x for various reasons (loss of borrowed power systems, scaling shift, stat squish).
This means the expected 5x increase in power at the next level cap is primarily regaining lost power. On the beta right now, people are noticing that level 80s are having the same difficulty soloing old content as the level 70s from prepatch.
This has accumulated up to this point. A level 100 in WoD wearing greens would annihilate Cata (2 expacs ago) raids in seconds, often one shotting bosses. End of patch raid geared 70s are currently unable to solo many BFA (2 expacs ago) encounters, and they all take minutes (not seconds).
I’m running the ‘Timewalking Legion’ and they have been really buffed. In past months going through those if you are really geared… you just run through fast. Not this week! I am noticing this in other areas too. I hate this! We focus on GEAR, GEAR, GEAR… you get better gear and then they buff the edit: content around you too!
What is the point of better GEAR if you can’t go back to the earlier content and be OP! I feel like this is ‘real world’ inflation. NO matter how much better your gear is, a month later it’s ‘obsolete’, only to get new gear and the ‘world content’ auto buffed at the same time.
I am really tired of INFLATION! It gets to seem pointless in my opinion. Edit: This is why remix was so fun… It’s like old WOW, when you go back to old content and run raids by yourself or quest quick for what ever reason.
What they should stop doing is adding the damage modifiers that make it so easy. You’re upset that they are rebalancing the buff you get in older content and it is not perfect when you are below max level. Then you wouldn’t be doing raids until they were 3 expansions gone, instead of 2 and certain mechanics would still cause you grief.
oh its very much intended. enjoy.
and i’ve a educated guess this isn’t EVER going to change since its likely tied to chromie time being scaled up to 70 when new expansion launches.
and WHEN did chromie time get introduced? THATS RIGHT SHADOWLANDS. which then they changed to have the starting point be bfa. which is why neither of those zones nor any subsequent ones will EVER BE COMPLETELY SOLOABLE. because the mobs in them will keep scaling with you.
so if you guys are hoping to EVER solo dragonflight during tww your gonna likely be in for a rude awakening.
Huh? BfA and SL don’t even have the legacy buff. But SL was starting to become soloable depending on difficulty/encounter/class as DF progressed, and BfA was becoming universally soloable, especially after 10.2.7 removed most of the mechanical roadblocks. 11.0 took SL all the way back into group territory and BfA basically has a gear requirement again, which won’t really change even at 80 because even getting raid/M+ geared at 80 will still have us looking weaker than we were at 70 in 10.2.7.
But thanks for doing that handwavy thing I was talking about that lets Blizzard keep getting away with this nonsense.
Actual answer: They smoothed the item level curve with the pre-patch, and in cases where the average ilvl went up (notably in the 40-60 range), the content automatically scaled up as well.
Yeah, I’m getting soured on the game again because of this. I can accept stuff like my haste and crit going down as I go from being endgame geared to leveling through a new expansion, but by the time I get to level cap again, even with those reduced secondaries, I should still be at least as strong as I was at the previous level cap, but preferably stronger.
But in modern WoW, not only are you not at least as strong as you were at the previous level cap after finishing leveling in a new expansion, you’re not even at the same power level after gearing up because they’re now artificially making us weaker in expansion prepatches.
All previous content should be tagged legacy, complete with mechanics nerfs, no more than 30 days after a new expac launches. This caveat is unfortunately needed thanks to weirdos who try and “gear up” on transmog runs (as crazy as it sounds).
“They have bigger fish to fry!” Part of this game is collecting. Put a couple interns on it.
