Heh, “since MoP” just means, “it’s better than WoD”.
I still don’t have Legion, so maybe I can’t really comment, but I still kinda like the idea of scaling mobs. But that may be because I got used to it when I took a break from WoW during Cataclysm to play City of Heroes, where scaling was already a thing. Granted, CoH was very different from Wow, mechanically, in that almost all of the “quests” (they were called “missions” in CoH) were basically solo instances, and those instances scaled to your level, to one degree or another. (Like, if you were a high-level character and did a low-level mission, the mobs in the instance would scale up to your level, but they would only have the abilities appropriate to their “expected” level. So if you were level 40 and ran a level 20 mission, you’d see level 40 mobs, but they’d only have abilities appropriate for a level 20 mob/character, scaled up to level 40 power. So there would still be some challenge, but you still had superior skills/more abilities, and thus an advantage.
That was tied in with the way player characters of widely different levels could “quest” together. After four years, I can’t remember the exact terminology the game used, but a low-level character could “sidekick” and quest with a high-level character. The low-level character would have only his/her low-level abilities, but those abilities would scale up in power. Alternatively, a high-level could join a lower-level character as an … “Exemplar” (hah, now I remember the term!) and would be powered down to the appropriate level.
Again, the mechanics were different from how WoW does it, but it worked.
Mister Rik, correct me if I’m remembering wrong, but that was only for instanced play, wasn’t it?
The thing about WoW’s new scheme is that it applies to the “real” shared world. Which means that the numbers being displayed are all fake. As I noted in my first post about this, a level 100 player and a level 110 player both fighting the same mob see different numbers for health, the damage they are doing, etc. so the mob is both level 100 and level 110 at the same time.
Don’t believe me? Go out and find someone who is a different level and ask them how much health a mob has; their answer will be different than yours. But if you both attack the mob, you’ll both be doing the same percentage of health damage to the mob.
In other words, a mob with 1,000,000 health to a 110 toon will be hit by an attack that does 50k damage, or about 5% of its health. The level 100 player will see a mob with 350k health and will use the same attack but only do 17.5k damage, which is 5%. The level 110 player will see 5% of the mobs health go away with each attack by the level 100 player. The level 100 player will also see 5% of the mobs health go away with each attack by the level 110 player.
Each is being presented numbers that match their level, but clearly at least one set of numbers is “fake”.
Mobs no longer have levels or health. “Skrilly Humpenstein is a level 110 boss with 12 million health” is no longer a statement that can be made in Legion, because the mobs change to match a player’s level.
As I said, that means you can no longer find yourself a bit under-level for a mob, come back after you ding and now “match” (or exceed) the level of the mob you want to kill.
I find this a detriment to my enjoyment of the game, for many reasons.
The biggest gripe I have with the scaling is that you’re always maxxed on aggro range, no matter what. There’s no riding by a pack of wolves that you don’t want to fight, and they’re going to daze you off your mount and force you into fights you’d rather skip. That’s annoying. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
As far as the difficulty goes, that’s only a problem until 110. You do a few world quests that award gear that isn’t complete shit, and you’ll eventually outclass most mobs again. It just takes a little bit more work.
Okay, I just played a game of Deepwind Gorge and saw this:
An Alliance Demon Hunter took our flag/cart. He went south and as soon as he was past the fence that surrounds our spawn area/cart cap, he jumped all the way to Goblin Mine.
I cannot even ride fast enough to keep up with him.
Later we had a monk take our flag and in less than 5 seconds, he was at their base capping. We lost the game because of this.
My point is that it shouldn’t be this way. I like it better when mobs and instances and quests have a defined level of difficulty, rather than “always just a little out of reach”. The point of leveling should be leveling, not getting to the point where you can begin to get the gear you need.
People become better at their job or hobby or any activity thru practice, and leveling used to reflect that; now it reflects nothing really. If the purpose of the game is solely to get gear, why not just do away with the current fiction of levels entirely?
This as been driving me crazy: has anyone else noticed that chat functionality is different?
Used to be, I could /i to talk to people in my raid or instance group (even PvP raids/groups) but if I wanted to have a private conversation with someone, I could hit /r to reply directly to them.
I could also /say something but next time I hit RETURN to type something, it would still default to /i.
Now, whatever the last “channel” I used is the default, all the time. If I reply to someone, next time I hit RETURN it’s a reply to that person. If I /say something before a BG, the default is now /say.
It’s really freaking annoying; I end up saying things in the wrong channels all the time because of this, especially when I PvP, which is constantly.
Has anyone else noticed this? Is it making you crazy too?
I thought most gear now had a multitude of stats and just didn’t use the ones that weren’t pertinent for your character. I hadn’t noticed getting quest rewards that I had no use for, but to be honest, I blazed from 100 to 110 very quickly and don’t remember all the gear that I got and disenchanted, sometimes within minutes of receiving it.
I’ll pay more attention now, tho, and report here if it happens to me.
Oh yeah, I got my 46th Honor Talent Point sometime last week, maxing those out. /yawn
It sucks that you can’t use all of them, that you have to make a choice in each bar/line of talents.
I keep hoping that Blizzard will go to EverQuest’s old Alternate Advancement system (AA points) where you had what seemed like an infinite number of talents to pursue, all of which subtly enhanced your character.
But I guess that would get in the way of Harrison Bergeroning us all.
I just went to Northern Barrens to try to farm a Kor’kron Supply Satchel, a bag with a 0.3% drop rate. I shot two guys, and the second one dropped the bag.
The mob will scale to match your level, but won’t scale to match your artifact weapon.
Yeah. That’s right. The level that matters is your artifact weapon, not yours. Stack on the traits and watch your DPS shoot up, your damage taken sink down, and your survivability (self-heals, etc.) skyrocket. And then pwn that critter.*
No, I’m not fond of that approach, but that seems to be the primary difference between success and failure. Not level, and not most gear. (Legendaries can make a difference, assuming you ever find one.)
Blizz has invested a lot of design intent on the whole artifact weapon thing. About the most important thing you can do, other than gearing up like mad in the best raids you can, is jam artifact power points into your weapon and research the artifact level thing like mad.
or not. Some critters are world raid bosses, and you’ll never be able to solo them. By design. Even I, hunter extraordinaire, have conceded this to myself. I’m hoping the scaling crap caps at 110; otherwise, it’d completely break the “soloing old content” tradition that’s sprung up.
Soooo…should I just keep my rings (including the WoD legendary) and necklace with INT instead of “upgrading”? I’d lose a bunch of INT, and not sure the secondary stats would be worth it…
Sooner or later you’re going to have to drop the INT neck/rings. Exactly when will depend on how valuable the secondary stats are relative to primary stats for your spec.
Yes, Oak, at some point you’ll lay aside your WoD uber gear. The main-stat goodness will come from other pieces of armor, and from the Artifact weapon itself. Jewelry will be strictly for secondary stats. (And stamina.)
In the case of my main, it took until level 105 before I put aside the WoD legendary ring, and I lucked out by finding a Legion legendary ring at level 109 (usable at 110) in a random chest.
Just wanted to post that I’m loving this XPAC. I more or less took WOD off and got back into it about a week before Legion dropped. My old guild is still active and I’m having a blast raiding with them. Last night we got 2 more bosses down so we’re 5/7 on heroic in EN now.
For the folks up thread worried about getting into mythics, just use the group finder and apply for every group that needs your role. You might get a few rejections, but in my experience you’ll find a group within 5 mins.
Also, it appears I’m in the minority in this thread, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the lore and I like how the quests send you into dungeons, mythic dungeons and even raids. At first the mythic dungeons were a little worrying because it was a little out of my comfort zone, but then I realized that was a good thing, and enjoy doing them now.
Your experience doesn’t match mine (dozens of rejections over two hours). Remember that next time you’re tempted to say anything that starts with “in my experience”.
I’ve gotten into a few mythics as a pickup in my guild, when they don’t have the personnel for their mythic+ progression, but that’s it. At least on my server group, it’s pretty cliquish and getting into J. Random Mythic is tricky.
Weird, maybe your ilvl is a little low? People can see your ilvl when you apply and people typically want 835 or 840 as a minimum for mythics.
Have you tried starting your own group? In my experience, if I start my own I’m flooded with applications, and again, the group is usually full in less than 5 mins. Both for regular mythics and the few keystone runs I’ve done. Maybe I’m just lucky, or my battlegroup is more active.
845 at the time. MM hunter, maybe we’re not very popular? I know I hate how the mandatory build has so much AoE that it’s hard to control trash pulls in tight areas, but my spec is my spec. If PUG leaders also don’t like the propensity of extra pulls, MMs may be quietly blacklisted. That’s the only thing I can think of.
Did not try founding a group, just because I’m not generally inclined to take lead on anything, but I can see the advantage of being in charge of recruiting rather than the victim. I’ll try that next time I decide I want to finish the quests I have on the books for Court of Stars. (I kinda really want the engineering quest.)
The difference in value between primary and secondary stats this expansion is not anywhere as disparaging as it was past expansions. 200 points between three secondary stats will outweigh 100 points in a primary.
I expect they’ll be some corrections made, as right now there are a number of top ilevel pcs that work out to be less valuable than lower Ilevel world quest rewards.
