The gear gap is now officially insane

#0 - Feb. 11, 2008, 4:01 p.m.

There are 2 hand swords with 625 DAMAGE, 75 stam, sockets, haste, and more stats

There trinkets coming that are better than most classes 41 point talent points that will change how some classes are played.

There are +healing maces that have 4 times as much healing as a high end lvl 70 5 man quest 2 hand staff reward.(500 vs 126)

There are ONE hand swords with more damage than most level 70 high end blue TWO hand weapon

A warlock in full season 3 and veterans will have double the health, double or triple the spell damage, double the armor, double the crit rating, and be near crit-immune to a fresh 70 warlock in blues/crafted epics/kara gear, all while taking even less damage from crits and dots.

How is warlock #2 suppose to even compete against warlock #1? It wouldn't matter how skillfully he plays, the overwhelming difference in gear makes it near impossible. Back pre-tbc a player in good blues and some crafted epics could compete against a raider/guy in full HWL gear and kill him if they played well enough. The raider/hwl's gear gave them a good 20-30% more stats, but that could still be overcome by skill.

But when the opponents have double the stats, and are stacked with game-changing stats that don't exsist pre-70(resil/haste/armor pen), and trinkets that are borderline new-abilities what is the average player going to do?

Catch up? Do arenas and lose over and over to teams of insanely geared people reseting their teams and selling them? Get 250-300 points a week and get ONE piece of gear a month? And before they get their set, a new season starts and they have to keep losing 10 games a week and keep farming bgs?

Go join a raid guild? Get kara attuned doing instances no one does anymore cause the gear sucks, then go to karazhan and get mildy better gear than their crafted epics/high quality blues. Then still be light years behind the end game raiders, and forced to go do old raids like ssc/tk and gear up a whole GUILD and then *maybe* see bt/mh/sunwell if their whole guild puts as much time into as needed.

and then finally be able to even compete with the end game raiders/arena farmers? ANd then the expansion comes out and it starts all over again?

I'm not arguing casual vs hardcore, though this is what that debate stems from. I am asking why the gear difference has gone up so high? Even a naxx geared player didn't have double the stats of a guy in blues/crafted epics/mc epics. not even close to double.

i used to raid when i teenager going to college, solely to play with my friends who wanted to try it and get those newly added epics. i quit raiding after bwl, it was just tedious and became more of a job than a game. i now work nights and i like leveling alts and i play in the mornings/weekends and have quiet a few characters, but in actuality my /played time is pretty low for someone who's been playing since release. some of my 70s are less than 10 days played. I hit 70 and feel the gear gap again and restart. I'm far from casual, I just don't like to raid and I don't like having to grind thru 10 arena losses a week on my fresh 70s against team selling arena farmers with twice my stats.

will WotLK be the same way? is that really how this game is going to end up? =|

i miss how it was the first half a year or so after release, you could obtain gear on your own without the need of dozens of other players or rerolling hte perfect class set ups for arena and being on top from day 1.

when the game was more about doing challenging dungeons with your friends and pvping for fun. now you do dungeons solely for gear, and pvp solely for gear. the games a gear treadmill where the carrot gets replaced every arena season/raid instance patch.

Drysc

#110 - Feb. 11, 2008, 6:57 p.m.

Q u o t e:
A warlock in full season 3 and veterans will have double the health, double or triple the spell damage, double the armor, double the crit rating, and be near crit-immune to a fresh 70 warlock in blues/crafted epics/kara gear, all while taking even less damage from crits and dots.

Well you probably shouldn't be fighting in PvE gear, you can run battlegrounds and get season 1 gear and go from there.

[removed for TOOMA)

Yes, if you're playing right now and you don't have any gear then you're going to need to play some catch up. Right now that's easier than ever.

Q u o t e:
Catch up? Do arenas and lose over and over to teams of insanely geared people reseting their teams and selling them? Get 250-300 points a week and get ONE piece of gear a month? And before they get their set, a new season starts and they have to keep losing 10 games a week and keep farming bgs?

Well if you're just playing your 10 games in PvE gear then that's what you can probably expect, yeah. Why aren't you grabbing honor gear at the same time though? It's fairly self explanatory how to catch yourself up, the gap between seasonal arena gear isn't huge, getting the honor items would give you an enormous boost.

Q u o t e:
Go join a raid guild? Get kara attuned doing instances no one does anymore cause the gear sucks, then go to karazhan and get mildy better gear than their crafted epics/high quality blues. Then still be light years behind the end game raiders, and forced to go do old raids like ssc/tk and gear up a whole GUILD and then *maybe* see bt/mh/sunwell if their whole guild puts as much time into as needed.

If you're coming into the game with nothing at this point, then yes, there's going to be a lot of catching up to do. You came into the expansion during the climax, t-minus X minutes until the credits roll, and you're going to have to catch up if you want to see the end. You don't have to of course. That's self explanatory.

In any case, you don't have to run Karazhan if you want to catch up to the end game. A good guild is going to power you through, they probably have all the gear they need so you'll get all the drops. You'll get geared well enough soon enough. However, a lot of those guilds still run Kara for the badges, which you should be collecting on your own, with your guild, wherever you can. Badge loot can be used to great success to help catch you up, take advantage of it.

As I said though if you're coming in late you're going to need to catch up, and that requires some creative planning to minimize the time it's going to take.

Q u o t e:
i miss how it was the first half a year or so after release, you could obtain gear on your own without the need of dozens of other players or rerolling hte perfect class set ups for arena and being on top from day 1.

I'm not sure what game you were playing but if you wanted anything beyond the lowest level dungeon gear pre-BC you either had to have 39 friends or grind your brains out in the battlegrounds. Now we have craftables worth crafting, badge loot that rivals raid gear you only need 4 other people to start obtaining, high-end epic PvP gear that you can slowly work your way towards whenever you want for however long you want, etc. etc.

Q u o t e:
now you do dungeons solely for gear, and pvp solely for gear.

Who does? Why do you have to do that? You can play the game however you want.

More than ever the game is actually open to everyone and their ability to get some items that may help them progress a bit more, compete a bit better, and see more of the content.

I'll disagree with your whole heartedly on your thread's subject. While yes there's stat inflation on items, which will continue to happen (people don't want side-grades or worse gear, surprise surprise), the actual gear gap, the invisible separation between players and playstyles, has been diminished substantially. I truly feel the game is in a better place now than it's ever been. It's open for you to take advantage of so many things.

Drysc

#149 - Feb. 11, 2008, 7:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
removed for TOOMA?

Talking
Out
Of
My
Ass

Drysc

#162 - Feb. 11, 2008, 7:19 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but the issue about battleground/honor gear is a sticky one for some of us. If you happen to be in a battlegroup with a really screwed up AV (I'm in stromstrike) earning honor is not nearly as easy as it used to be. Before 2.3 I averaged around 1-1.2k honor/hour, reliably, and almost all of it from AV. Now if you're in the horde you wait ~2 hours for a single AV match, if you're in the alliance you get in right away for like 25 bonus honor total from the match.

It's made getting vindicator's and S1 gear much, much more difficult if you aren't in an organized group farming pugs in WSG or AB or EoTS. And even those groups are often selective about who they take these days (resilience or other stat requirements just to get in a trade channel pug.)

Blizz has bent over backwards thinking of new ways for people to get gear and I appreciate it, but the BG/honor situation is kind of screwed up right now for some battlegroups.

Consistency of honor gains is definitely something we're aware of, and we're hoping they can be addressed through different means. The Alterac Valley changes in 2.4 should hopefully help, but a lot of PTR testing can help prove or improve that. The removal of diminishing returns from honor should also, I would assume, raise the honor gains quite a bit. Don't be surprised if that change alone bumps honor/hr back up and helps bring some people back into the games.

Drysc

#201 - Feb. 11, 2008, 7:36 p.m.

Q u o t e:
That's all fine. Any plans to deal with the Arena system?

There have been some discussions through the design team of adding some measures to help make the point/team selling much less desirable. Things like making a team take a rating hit when/if they add a new member, which probably wouldn't take effect until they play a certain number of games. Also the possibility of adding an additional point system that would track your uninterrupted time on a team for the end of season rewards. Both of these would deter anyone serious about competing for the gladiator rewards to add new people to their teams over and over or switch to another team. Of course they're just ideas at this point.

Drysc

#222 - Feb. 11, 2008, 7:45 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I actually agree with what Drysc said, except for the whole "credits about to roll" thing...

This about a year after TBC release, who here thinks WOTLK will be released before november/december this year at the earliest?

There may not be any more big patches before the expansion, but it seems a bit early to be handing out the "IOU 1 BT epic" cards now, there's a loooong time to go.

Oh well I didn't mean it like that, just that we're in the stretch now. There's likely to be a while before Wrath comes out, a lot of time for people to take advantage of the stepping stones available, and time to catch up and see whatever content they can. But you will need to catch up.

Drysc

#356 - Feb. 11, 2008, 9:56 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Nothing you say is what really happens and you know it, everything the Op said is pretty much the state of the game and ive been playing since day one and have multiple 70's. The expansion balances everything again is all, for a little while atleast. Unreal how man times your say "catch up" in your post. This is turning into EQ2 as far as new players go, go play that for awile and see how far everyone else is ahead of you and i bet you don't even try.

No, I believe that everything I said is in fact true. If you're limiting yourself then that's your decision, but the game is open more now than ever to helping people progress. It's a smoother transition than it's ever been. If you can't or refuse to see that then I don't know what to tell you.

Level to 70, ok done, you're probably keyed for a heroic or two just from that, now run heroics, get some badge loot, either run Karazhan or get in a guild that's already in ZA/TK/SSC. Leveling is probably the most difficult part of all of it, and you don't even need to form a group to do that.

There's nothing wrong with being a Karazhan-level player Lectro, but, you know that you can get better gear now, your entire guild can, and you can start moving into ZA, if you expand a bit maybe SSC and TK, and go onward and upward from there. If you don't have a lot of time to play then you have new gear you can get from Sunwell Isle, Magister's Terrace, new daily quests, etc.

There are ways to progress and leap frog past content that's no longer pertinent to the majority of people playing and progressing at 70.

Q u o t e:
Yeah, it is a little worrying knowing that gear will just keep getting better and better and there will never be any end in site.

Why?

Drysc

#378 - Feb. 11, 2008, 10:10 p.m.

Q u o t e:

But lets compare shall we?
A rogue in full BT gear fights one in S3 gear and we know how that will turn out.
Now that we established that, what is a person raiding for in the first place? If they want to raid to just raid more and more till they die, then thats fine, but most want to PvP and thats where it makes raiding a little less more interesting as it did Pre-BC.

Just pointing that out

We generally want PvE obtained gear to be used for PvE, and PvP obtained gear to be used for PvP. That's why the tier/season sets sort of keep up with one another.

If you remember battlegrounds pre-BC you would see someone in Tier 3 and run for your life because there was almost never a situation where you'd be able to take one down. What if you only wanted to PvP? You could never compete because the best items were only available to raiders. That issue is pretty much closed now with arenas and the season gear keeping pace with raid gear.

Now, the question is, how much crossplay do we encourage by giving PvP items in PvE or vice-versa? I think we're still kind of playing around with that.

Drysc

#380 - Feb. 11, 2008, 10:12 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Please forward these suggestions Drysc. I think WoW is doing a great job of providing alternative progressions for both PvE and PvP. However, your flagship ELO-rated e-sport hopeful Arena is suffering widespread and systematic abuse.

Will do.