wow Battle for Azeroth Mobs Scale to Item Level, Making Them Almost as Powerful as Shadowlands Mobs

[Starym 3,800]

 

If you haven't been back to BfA in a while, you might not have noticed that something weird is happening in the previous expansion, as players are noticing a lot of pretty powerful mobs basically everywhere. It seems the mobs scale to your item level, making them almost as powerful as Shadowlands mobs, as players are running into difficulty even soloing quest elites and similar.

You can find plenty more examples of player frustration with the system in the two reddit threads above.

Another factor to consider there is Azerite gear and essences. While both of those still work in BfA content, basically no player will have those equipped anymore, making the mobs that much more difficult, relatively speaking. Now that doesn't mean that the mobs are crazy hard or anything similar, but they do take quite a bit of time to handle, and it's really hurting the power-feel RPGs generally have. We're now 10 levels stronger and it's really not showing on previous expansion mobs, not to mention the item level increase within Shadowlands itself. When an elite quest takes you a long time to do, with some players even having trouble completing them and giving up half-way through, something's not quite right.

The issues carries over into BfA dungeons and raids as well, making it that much more frustrating, as the squish didn't really keep the same ratio of difficulty in any of the content. BfA mobs simply shouldn't scale past level 50 and the max item level for the expansion, 140.

What do you think about the item level scaling in general, whether it's related to BfA, older expansions or even Shadowlands itself?

[durdyenglish 298]

I'm surprised anyone has bothered to go back so soon, given the animosity the expansion universally received.

[Ulzorn 29]

2 minutes ago, durdyenglish said:

I'm surprised anyone has bothered to go back so soon, given the animosity the expansion universally received.

emissaries and paragons are still worth some gold,until next reset. wouldnt be surprised if that was the primary motivation

[johnnyd2 5]

jesus, between this and the Legion raids scaling being borked too, Blizz really needs to give legacy content a lookover tuningwise

[durdyenglish 298]

5 minutes ago, johnnyd2 said:

jesus, between this and the Legion raids scaling being borked too, Blizz really needs to give legacy content a lookover tuningwise

i agree, even if i prefer their focus be on tuning the current expansion for the time being.

[johnnyd2 5]

Just now, durdyenglish said:

i agree, even if i prefer their focus be on tuning the current expansion for the time being.

yeah, especially when their going around completing the nerfing of Draenor content gold and BFA paragon/emissary gold

[Senou 40]

To be honest, at this point I wonder what the *filtered* they're doing. When SL hit live, they released hotfixes just a few minutes before release which weren't tested. They re- developed bosses in the new raid over and over and couldn't figure out what to do so I wonder what the heck were they doing? From a developing POV I think SL is far worse than any expansion we had before (excluding BFA). Sure World first race is a big deal but what about the rest of the customer? Is our money somehow worth less?
Lots and lots of people always liked to do old content. Some even played just for that and all of a sudden it became a problem which resulted in a squish of numbers, yet again. Three times in a row blizzard messed up and three times in a row they hardly focus on the issue.
 

I made a forum post the other day, talking about numbers from a lvl 50 (130gs) character compared to a 60 (171gs) character and how little the pure stat increased and how much more you need for 1% total gain. We have almost the same amount of raw numbers but need thrice the amount of stats to reach a 1% increase. This is no problem? The new scaling is so bad that a lvl 50 player will crush your face while drinking coffee with one hand. Me and my friends tested this with multiple characters. The scaling is so fricking bad, that it probably would be easier if you could enter the raid on a lvl 50 character with Ny'alotha mythic raid gear.

I wonder how they try to explain that. I'm playing since vanilla and I played every expansion launch when it hit live and it never felt so bad before. I've never felt this weak shortly after a launch.

[Guest]

since I do not have SL nor have plans on getting it, I am finding that the mobs seem to be stronger than what they were before SL. As a result, the game is not fun,  and I have 3 lvl 50 to run thru BFA (and Legion).  Not looking forward to this.   What I don't understand is why the level re-scaling along with the armor squish?  Why have the armor raise up to the 170s or higher for just 10 levels?  As I have said before, if old is now new and new is old, I expect Elon Musk to put fins on electric cars.  🤪

[Mishmish 65]

I know some people want easy fast rep but its still easy, and frankly imagine the replayability we'd had if previous zones actually remained powerful. 

[Frogspoison 63]

9 hours ago, Mishmish said:

I know some people want easy fast rep but its still easy, and frankly imagine the replayability we'd had if previous zones actually remained powerful. 

If previous zones provided relevant rewards, great.

 

But BfA zones don't. This also doesn't only affect outdoors BfA mobs, but even instanced mobs as well - Including Horrific Visions. A big tale was when I was bringing an alt through a series of Vision runs (Fresh cloak and all), and upon hitting lvl 51 in the second vision run, most mobs gained roughly 2k HP (Essentially a 25% overall boost), Thrall gained nearly 20k HP, AND Thrall now counts as a higher lvl (Roughly 20% of my attacks where parried, missed, with a significant amount of glancing blows - Thrall also had heightened crit chance AND did crushing blows due to the new lvl difference)

 

Personally, it just helps to show how much BS ilvl scaling is - Ilvl scaling solved absolutely no problems, and has consistently brought in new problems.

[Bobbis 208]

20 hours ago, Senou said:

To be honest, at this point I wonder what the *filtered* they're doing. When SL hit live, they released hotfixes just a few minutes before release which weren't tested. They re- developed bosses in the new raid over and over and couldn't figure out what to do so I wonder what the heck were they doing? From a developing POV I think SL is far worse than any expansion we had before (excluding BFA). Sure World first race is a big deal but what about the rest of the customer? Is our money somehow worth less?
Lots and lots of people always liked to do old content. Some even played just for that and all of a sudden it became a problem which resulted in a squish of numbers, yet again. Three times in a row blizzard messed up and three times in a row they hardly focus on the issue.
 

I made a forum post the other day, talking about numbers from a lvl 50 (130gs) character compared to a 60 (171gs) character and how little the pure stat increased and how much more you need for 1% total gain. We have almost the same amount of raw numbers but need thrice the amount of stats to reach a 1% increase. This is no problem? The new scaling is so bad that a lvl 50 player will crush your face while drinking coffee with one hand. Me and my friends tested this with multiple characters. The scaling is so fricking bad, that it probably would be easier if you could enter the raid on a lvl 50 character with Ny'alotha mythic raid gear.

I wonder how they try to explain that. I'm playing since vanilla and I played every expansion launch when it hit live and it never felt so bad before. I've never felt this weak shortly after a launch.

Calling bullshit on that last line, if you've played every expac launch, then you know this is how it is every goddamn time. It's not new. The worst was BfA hitting 116 and losing the legion leggos, that was painful, but this time around it's not that bad. Bar this going back to legacy stuff in BfA, but that's an issue of the scaling infinite not having a cap. 

Growing in levels has always required more stat per %. Hence stat ench are so OP on hierlooms back before they scaled. 

[Senou 40]

On 12/6/2020 at 4:45 PM, Bobbis said:

Calling bullshit on that last line, if you've played every expac launch, then you know this is how it is every goddamn time. It's not new. The worst was BfA hitting 116 and losing the legion leggos, that was painful, but this time around it's not that bad. Bar this going back to legacy stuff in BfA, but that's an issue of the scaling infinite not having a cap. 

Growing in levels has always required more stat per %. Hence stat ench are so OP on hierlooms back before they scaled. 

Call it Bullshit all you want. I know what I did and what I see and if you cannot see the issue there I am sorry for you.

[Bobbis 208]

On 12/9/2020 at 2:32 AM, Senou said:

Call it Bullshit all you want. I know what I did and what I see and if you cannot see the issue there I am sorry for you.

Keep your sympathy it is not required, instead look at how the game works, and always has done from level 1-60/120, and then add how they changed it going into SL.

Lets look at haste, below is the latest version of the formula I can find for it, and as you can see, one of the divisions is player level, meaning as it increases, you need more of a stat per %.

= (1 + DiminishSecondaryStat(Round(StatRating(Haste), 0) / RatingConversion(Haste, PlayerLevel)) / 100) * StatMultiplier(Haste) - 1

Older iterations have been simpler to determine, 7.1 for instance had a flat 375 haste = 1% haste and ilvl inflation made gearing more meaningful to stats.

 

Now every expac adds 10 levels to gain, but doesn't improve the gear as quickly. A mythic Nya geared char wouldn't replace items until 58/59 from dungeons or quests, and even then they weren't massive increases in stats, whereas each point of stat is less effective. We've come from peak power potential, to averageness. Which is intended, it's a reset. It's aim is to give people a more level playing field as new comers and alts won't be mythic nya geared and will see a steady progression only from 1-60.

They're also trying to limit that power curve this time around, so that there's not such a huge spike each patch hence that DR added to stats so it's going to be a bit different this time around.

[Senou 40]

17 hours ago, Bobbis said:

Keep your sympathy it is not required, instead look at how the game works, and always has done from level 1-60/120, and then add how they changed it going into SL.

Lets look at haste, below is the latest version of the formula I can find for it, and as you can see, one of the divisions is player level, meaning as it increases, you need more of a stat per %.

= (1 + DiminishSecondaryStat(Round(StatRating(Haste), 0) / RatingConversion(Haste, PlayerLevel)) / 100) * StatMultiplier(Haste) - 1

Older iterations have been simpler to determine, 7.1 for instance had a flat 375 haste = 1% haste and ilvl inflation made gearing more meaningful to stats.

 

Now every expac adds 10 levels to gain, but doesn't improve the gear as quickly. A mythic Nya geared char wouldn't replace items until 58/59 from dungeons or quests, and even then they weren't massive increases in stats, whereas each point of stat is less effective. We've come from peak power potential, to averageness. Which is intended, it's a reset. It's aim is to give people a more level playing field as new comers and alts won't be mythic nya geared and will see a steady progression only from 1-60.

They're also trying to limit that power curve this time around, so that there's not such a huge spike each patch hence that DR added to stats so it's going to be a bit different this time around.

Good thing your brain works as intended... I guess. The issue is not the scaling itself but rather the amount of stat you get looking at ilvl 200 loot from nhc raid or similar compared to ny'alotha mythic raid gear or even +15key gear from 8.3. 
The fact that you need more stats per point as your level increases is obvious, duh.

[Bobbis 208]

6 hours ago, Senou said:

Good thing your brain works as intended... I guess. The issue is not the scaling itself but rather the amount of stat you get looking at ilvl 200 loot from nhc raid or similar compared to ny'alotha mythic raid gear or even +15key gear from 8.3. 
The fact that you need more stats per point as your level increases is obvious, duh.

It's aimed at being in line with the increase of Uldir gear on quest gear rather than the final raid... otherwise the stat budget remains the same and steadily increases with ilvl. Afaik the formula for that hasn't changed, but with that said Blizz have said they want to reduce the power curve of each tier/patch so we're not horrendously OP at the end compared to the beginning. Hence the DR on secondary stats are various choke points.