Crafted gear from previous expansions is about HALF the item level of gear for the same character level from other sources (e.g. quests and dungeons).
Why?
I understand that crafted gear from previous expansions is barely relevant as it is, as leveling is pretty fast and most people use heirlooms. However, heirlooms don’t cover every slot, and are outleveled pretty fast nowadays if you can’t afford the exorbitant gold cost of upgrading them to level 60. As such, crafted gear gave at least a bit of incentive to level up our profession skills from older expansions. I personally had a habit of crafting or purchasing an Azure Moonstone Ring for each of my intel characters, which used to give a whopping 21 intel at the same level where the heirloom rings gave half that amount in the primary stat, more or less. But nowadays, the heirloom ring (or any quest reward or dungeon drop for the same level) surpasses the Azur Moonstone Ring’s 4 intellect by a large margin because crafted gear has half the item level to begin with.
So again, why did Blizzard implement this strange design choice?
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pretty sure with every squish it was just overlooked each time and the difference has gotten worse and worse. they probably wont even fix it as like 1% of people levelling are using crafted stuff now.
heirlooms are useless now once you start dung grinding if you dont have rested xp. once your rested is gone the gear from the bags is better and pops out with higher ilvl and stats than heirloom at the same lvl
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It’s not a choice, it’s running out of time. It isn’t just crafted gear.
Last year during the pre-patch they decided they didn’t like the gear curve at lower levels and greatly tweaked a lot of gear up in ilvl. It is most obvious with heirlooms, but they also did some quest rewards, some boss drops etc… but not all, and no crafted gear. You can in fact go into mid-level raids like Cata or Panda ones and come out with a random assortment of ilvl gear from 40 to 120.
Ideally of course they would get this all smoothed out and I’m sure this would include crafted gear too. But you have to think about the gigantic size of the WoW database nowadays. Go hand check every item on Wowhead and see how long it takes you. They just don’t have people for it - so they run a quick script on key items they can think of and then go back to fixing the hundreds of bugs in current content that are always first priority.
Thanks for the solid explanation. What a pity, I used to enjoy crafting at all levels as part of the roleplaying journey. Hopefully we’ll see this fixed in less than three expansions’ time.
In general you always leveled faster than your crafting profession progressed. So in the past by the time you could craft the item you were past its item level. The professions were used more for alts.
This has been changed in some expansions were sometimes you could specialized and be able to make raid level items like a weapon the in the first expansion.
Tis expansion has been different in that you can make higher level items to fill in your low spots and they can be recrafted long term.
I thought with the crafted stuff from previous expc you were supposed to craft and use those relic things to boost the ilvl?
WELL, BOYS, I can’t believe I’m saying this but it looks like they fixed it!
Relics of the Past change the item’s iLvl and required level, going either up or down from the item’s default. However, prior to the latest maintenance update, they suffered from the same iLvl curve that other crafted items were already suffering from, where the iLvl was barely a few levels higher than the required level. (E.g. item level 47 for required level 45). On the other hand, heirlooms and most dungeon or quest rewards for level 45 were more or less around iLvl 100.
However, I was surprised when I logged in just now to see that relics of the past now follow the same curve as we were seeing with most quest and dungeon rewards. I’ve checked on a level 34 alt with a low leatherworking skill and a level 60 alt with a maxed out tailoring skill. For both, a relic of the past i sets the iLvl to 29 for 15 required, and a relic v sets the iLvl to 163 for 55 required. Furthermore, my Legion legendaries on the level 60 character were at iLvl 59 prior to the maintenance, whereas they’re now at around iLvl 170.
Well done, Blizzard!
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Thanks for the update Dinkywits. I agree they have made some decent progress on various QoL and consistency issues with this patch.
Hopefully they addressed some of the inconsistencies on item enhancements too (such as enchants that had a minimum character level to use but couldn’t be put on items that, because of the new curve, had too high an ilvl to put them on by that level).
I really think they should revamp the old xpacks crafting. They went and fixed all of the quests and dungeons for every expansion to work the same ilevel wise, I can’t imagine it would be too much work to do the same for crafted gear. It would be such a HUUUUGE improvement to QoL while levelling - something I feel is really overlooked these days - if you could craft gear to fix your gaps while levelling!!!
The easiest fix I could come up with that would make gear both relevant for leveling and for sending to low level alts; is to use the Chromie time walking system to alter the level of crafted gear on a character to that character’s current level/ilvl base the same way it changes from quests. The script is already in the game for quests just would have to be tweaked for crafted gear of its xpac. The only hick-up from a copy past would be it would make any item scale instead of based in the crafting level as well. so that would have to be fixed to maintain balance. This would make it if I’m leveling in TBC on a pali and go BS/Mining I could craft the Feliron set and use it for a few levels as I progress and then make other pieces later on till 60 theoretically. This would also make it so that gear could be used somewhat to start of new xpac (dragonflight currently). if made at 59 till replaced in the first few quests/world drops/ dung form current content.
The second fix would be for current xpac / max level char / or to craft anything when not in its “timewalking”, to be able to send gear to an alt. This would be simply using the Xpac prof lvl system as a curve per xpac to make an ilvl fitting of that item. To explain : the -1 xpac gear is most relevant as its gear is still somewhat useful for leveling within and even slightly after for max prof items into the next xpac, so you scale items made at the same arc point within the old prof use the same as that xpac’s item. example: if I craft a crafting lvl 300 classic, or a c-lvl 75 outland or a c-lvl 75 shadowland cooking item it would give roughly the same hp regen / well fed (if any) stat buff. same as 150 required classic or 50 WoD or 75 or 100 shadowland tailored cloth the stats / procs would be the same. - this would also be the curve used on anything that can be traded (as allready is setup with the AH) or sent through the mail.
These 2 changes would make items from old xpacs fully relevant and scale through time. Not just for the items but to go into the old worlds and farm mats ect. It would balance with every level crush or new xpac added. and give people a reason to do them other than for completing xmog lists, achievements. Imagine being able to hit 60 and go into the dragonflight with something on that you crafted from classic like the dark iron set. and not just from xmog.
I don’t know how hard it would be to implement but the components for both ideas are in the game just have to be tweaked and fleshed out. And would take a lot of programing I think. but its an idea…