In the past being slightly behind in ilvl meant you could still compete in dps.
In Legion and BfA ilvl performance disparity has increased fivefold, just 10 ilvls makes a huge difference in today’s WoW.
A 420 character is substantially below a 430 ilvl character in terms of performance
As if this wasnt enough, now you need to include essences, corrupted bis gear and legendary cloak levels.
A character that is 425 is beyond than just substantially below a character that is 430, has rank 3 essences, maxed out legendary cloak and multiple bis corrupted gear effects.
The disparity between performance and ilvl/grinding system seems to be becoming bigger and bigger each expansion and the intend is clear, blizzard desperately tries to create systems that will force people into grinding if they want to compete or they ll be left behind in terms of performance.
Game is trying to focus more and more on keeping players longer than creating fun systems and mechanics.
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It’s true that essences and ilvl can have a hidden measure, but ilvl is mostly within 1% a stat of gear. Theoretically, (all other things being equal), a player with say, 10 ilvls lower in well statted optimized gear could be as strong or equal to a player 10 ilvls higher with a sim. Oftentimes best gear 5-10 ilvls and getting your own custom weights such as with Pawn and AskmrRobot to create your class’s and spec’s and talents own stat weights can be great.
Its always been about gear.
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You are right that ilvl doesnt matter as much due to some stats/azerite etc effects being that much better even if they are lower ilvl, and that issue is only going to get worse considering some corrupted effects apparently can be worth more tahn 60 ilvls.
But I was talking in a general sense, a 10ilvl difference if we consider similar effects and stats can be pretty big in terms of performance.
This is new?
I seem to recall grinding something or hunting down gear since day 1.
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Difference is, the disparity is increasing every expansion, but yeah keep defending them no matter what
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Not defending anyone, just questioning this as a new problem.
No this is nothing new, the game has always been about chasing the brass ring when it comes to gear, however it also isn’t just about stacking item level.
Here, let me explain it for simple people.
There’s this order of things that gear matters but skill is also important, then slowly each expansion and each patch a developer moves further to the side of gear and grinding and less towards skill as they are mutually exclusive.
That change slowly results in a bigger and bigger overvalue of gear and less on skill, and since gear=time played, what is more valued is playing more than being skilled unlike the past where playing helped but didnt overshadow everything else.
Now it is all about grinding and not playing for fun. But you ll defend anything really because your mind like many others depend on the status quo while also being unable to notice slight changes in the status quo, which is why any major change causes such triggering for many people.
It’s a modern WoW problem
Somewhere in MOP when the stats got outta control is because devs decided we weren’t getting enough of a power increase from new item drops
Personally as a raider up until that point I’d never heard anyone say that ever, you could always feel your power progressing as you got stronger so that was a bit of a curve ball
Then came the first squish, then required a second squish after 2 xpacs after getting through like 4 expacs under the old Ilvl model with less incase scaling
The stats also changed a lot, after the hit and expertise stat was removed and versa was added there was no stat drain, also having straight damage modifiers really makes things slide out of control fast, for example with 10% versa a crit might do 55k damage, with versa at 20% your crits do 60k, and same for mastery (which can be a complete dud stat to a lot of classes too)
Needing 3rd party software to determine what gear is good is an atrocious way to design a game.
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My point exactly, hell for some time i agreed with Ion that higher ilvl disparity between ilvls is good because it makes the difference so much bigger and more obvious, but it is clear now that it has become a problem, especially combined with the multiple external systems that also punish you for not grinding.
In the past we needed just gear, now we need gear, azerite, ap, legendary cloak, corrupted gear effects
It really is getting out of control.
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Player skill is incredibly important, you can slap 455 gear on somebody who only does Normal and they won’t pull anywhere near the DPS or HPS of a Cutting Edge raider in the same gear.
It’s also why there are so many 3/8M guilds in the SAME GEAR as the 8/8M guilds, yet they can’t get past Ashvane.
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I can’t understand why anyone gives you the freaking time of day. You’re powered by Massengill.
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Probably because unlike many people I am able to think independently no matter my privilege, benefit, status quo or cultural influences as those things hold no sway over me unlike many people who are severely influenced by them and have their world view controlled by them.
Skill + Gear = Win.
Skill = Raises the maximum potential.
Gear = Raises the minimum potential.
Somewhere, there is an ilvl difference breaking point where the minimum potential of gear outweighs the maximum potential of skill (where the 100% parse players are doing less than the 1% parse players) but I don’t think anyone on GD is qualified to do the sim math to find that out.
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This isn’t a new issue. Skill does still matter at high end difficulty content.
But the whole gear chasing thing has literally been in the game since Vanilla.
It’s always been about gear.
This isn’t some new discovery in BFA. 
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Congratulations, you made the worse relation I’ve ever heard.
14 years ago, were you exactly the same as then?
Day 1 is different than current day and that’s what most people have complaints about.
Nobody is saying they dont’ want to grind gear, people are saying they dont’ want to grind gear that is endless and changes on a whim.
But keep defending Blizzard.
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From the day blizzard added different raid levels it’s never been about skill ever sinse. Plus this is something Korean MMorpgs and some free to play games have been doing for years anyways WoW just finally corrected itself.
Take a condescending tone, excellent way to make an argument.
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