Cataclysm gear...talk about item inflation

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Just saw some links to the Cataclysm gear. All I can say is, ROFL! 83 blues have more stats than heroic i277 raid content.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1841-Cataclysm-Item-List

Example:
Blightborne Warplate
Chest Plate
2756 Armor
+139 Strength
+239 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +12 Stamina
Item Level 277
Equip: Increases defense rating by 122 (24.8 @ L80).
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 122 (3.1% @ L80).
Equip: Improves hit rating by 69 (2.1% @ L80).

versus a Blacksmithing item:
Redsteel Breastplate
Rare
Binds when equipped
Chest Plate
3128 Armor
+268 Strength
+401 Stamina
Requires Level 83
Item Level 333
Equip: Improves haste rating by 178.
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 178.


And level 81 blue 2H weapons at 397dps, 200ish agi/str and 350ish stam + 150ish mastery.

If I'm reading things right, entry level 78-80 greens will be roughly equivalent to i232 badge gear, minus the bonuses. 78-81 blues will be closer to i245 badge gear and non-heroic ICC25 gear. And anything after 83 has no equivalent. Be interesting to see what JC gems look like. If it's similar inflation, you might get to 84 with your ICC25 heroic loot before replacing it with Cata blues.

[Pycno]

I love this, outgearing heroic mode raiders in my green quest items I got killing 10 murlocs or picking 15 herbs from the ground :)

[Selz]

Not to mention the 2h polearm :eek:

http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/55066/elementium-poleaxe/

[SaraiE]

This post said it all. I am not going to waste time doing heroic or try to do heroics. Just going to get my golds and lving my alts to max lvls and gather all the flowers for my future 30+ transmute alchemists.

SaraiE

[Monk3yv]

Simba is born, the cirlce of life continues!

[jimbobobb]

As far as I understood it, all old world content will have their stats adjusted. They're changing the game on a very fundamental level, and all items and content up to cataclysm will have to be adjusted to reflect that. So while it make look like your icc25 heroic items won't even get you to 85 now, once they are adjusted, they should be just fine until you replace them at 85.

[OzPhoenix]

Well, nothing too surprising there. The gear reset looks like it's more along the lines of Classic<-->BC rather than BC<--->Wrath, where lvl61 greens and quest rewards replaced Azerothian world epic drops.

For me, I'll continue farming Heroics because I enjoy gearing my Paladin team, and the Shaman team can wait until Cata to "pick up 10 herbs" for their ICC25-beating gear.

[Tonuss]

If I'm reading things right, entry level 78-80 greens will be roughly equivalent to i232 badge gear, minus the bonuses.
I saw that level 78 blue items were sporting an iLevel of 279, or just slightly above that of heroic 25-man ICC drops. It's hard to say just how close/far they really are, since the Cata items show the new way they are itemizing, and I am sure that they will re-itemize current gear when they put in patch 4.0.

Based on what Zarhym posted in the General forum, I suspect that they want to compress 10 levels worth of gear upgrades into 5 levels. And since there is also a whole new philosophy on itemization and whole new changes to many class mechanics (and the way they want PVE and PVP to work) I guess they decided to start the reset early.

It seems as if, unless you're at the very leading edge of raid content and gear, you'll be upgrading your items right from the start.

[Nejcha]

People can try to out gear us with level 83 blues. But we'll always have our achievements and titles to keep us warm while we reraid gear up.

I find it odd I hear this about wotlk too, but I used my t6/s4 when I first ran nax25/10 with out a problem, and all my first heroics.

Then again it took me less then a month for my shamans to to be in t7. Guess farming raids in BC payed off.

[Zub]

nothing new here:
- We have no clue how the current gear will adjust, so can't really compare item to item
- There is a stam/stats inflation on expansion gear.

right.
In the meantime, i'm just going to do what i find fun in-game, which isn't farming gold or badges, but simply so a few instances with my toons etc :-)

[Fiddlesticks]

My druid kept her T6/sunwell gear, and healed Naxx10/25 just fine as well.

When they readjust our current items the jump won't be "as big" but you're comparing an ilvl 333 to ilvl 277. That means a higher stat budget, along with it being halfway through the level ladder.

So hey.. if you get the same sense of achievement out of your gear for picking flowers.. or killing 10 murlocs that hard mode raiders get from completing some of the funnest fights designed by the blizz dev team.. then more power to you. There is no right or wrong way to play thing game.. so long as you have fun doing it and don't break the rules.

[Souca]

I think something that people are forgetting is that Blizzard doesn't want to see 85s running around in level 80 gear. While making that level 81 green a step up from your hardmode RS 25 might hurt now, having the next tier of level 85 raid instances doable in level 80 gear would suck even worse.

Gear can only scale up. There was a blue post about this a couple weeks back saying that to scale down would require level 1 chars to do less than 1 damage, so the number can only go up. I wouldn't be surprised to see tanks with 150k health and dps sitting in the 70k mark as Blizz has also said they want to grow health pools so that healers don't feel like they might lose a tank in a GCD if they heal someone else.

I know it's rare for me to not being saying the sky is falling, but I honestly feel like it will be okay ;)

- Souca -

[jimbobobb]

I think something that people are forgetting is that Blizzard doesn't want to see 85s running around in level 80 gear. While making that level 81 green a step up from your hardmode RS 25 might hurt now, having the next tier of level 85 raid instances doable in level 80 gear would suck even worse.



Huh? The first tier of level 80 heroics and raids was doable in level 70 epics, as countless people have already posted here. This will be the same with cataclysm. Your level 80 epics will be perfectly fine till level 85, and you might not replace some items until the 2nd level of raid content - this was definitely the case with Naxx - plenty of people were passing on items because they were barely upgrades or side-grades from their 70 epic sets. 81 greens will not be a step up from 80 epics, neither will blues. People looking at these items need to understand that they are retooling EVERYTHING - and that means that the gear you are wearing right now will be retooled and re-itemized as well.

[moosejaw]

I will still run heroics for badges so I can get the boa gear for speedy alt leveling. It will also keep me familiar with my team's setups, as I was really rusty after taking time off from boxing.

[daviddoran]

What I take from it is that I better level up my professions, so I can make myself some of this fancy new gear!

This will be the first time i start an expansion with a geared multibox team, so it should be fun!

[Tonuss]

Huh? The first tier of level 80 heroics and raids was doable in level 70 epics, as countless people have already posted here. This will be the same with cataclysm. Your level 80 epics will be perfectly fine till level 85, and you might not replace some items until the 2nd level of raid content
That seems to be the official take, more or less. I found the quote from Zarhym at mmo-champ:


Since we're only raising the level cap to 85 in Cataclysm, one of the goals is to pack as much content and gameplay as possible into the new 78-85 zones and dungeons. We don't want the leveling experience from 80-85 to feel as if it's only half of the content we've provided in the last two expansions. So, with that comes more substantial scaling of items and character power with each level gained. A level-82 character should feel significantly more powerful than a level-80 character, for example. There are some epic and legendary items from Wrath of the Lich King raid content which may take a while to replace, but chances are most of your gear will be replaced by the time you start running level-85 normal 5-player dungeons.
It wouldn't surprise me if some people are raiding the first tier of content while still using ICC epics and not replacing all of it until the second tier of raiding. It just comes down to how Blizzard tunes stuff. If they want for you to replace every last bit of iLevel 277 gear when you first step into an 85 heroic, they could do that, too.

I don't see it as an issue, with only one exception (legendaries). After all, what have players been doing throughout each expansion and the added content? Upgrading gear. Does it really matter that your next upgrade after ICC might be green or blue instead of purple? Why would it? If you're in a raid guild it won't be long before you're wearing purple gear again and upgrading it with more purple gear.

I do think that it takes the edge off of getting a legendary item. But I'm not sure what they can do about that.

Edit to add: On the other hand when you compare this:

Havoc's Call, Blade of Lordaeron Kings (http://www.wowhead.com/item=50737)
Heroic
Binds when picked up
One-Hand Axe
481 - 895 Damage Speed 2.60
(264.6 damage per second)
+84 Agility
+84 Stamina
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Agility
Durability 105 / 105
Requires Level 80
Item Level 284
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 56 (1.22% @ L80).
Equip: Improves haste rating by 48 (1.46% @ L80).
Equip: Increases attack power by 95.

To this:

Decapitator's Razor (http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/55043/decapitators-razor/)
Rare
Binds when equipped
One-Hand Axe
564 - 1047 Damage Speed 2.60
(309.8 damage per second)
+147 Stamina
Durability 90 / 90
Requires Level 81
Item Level 316
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 65.
Equip: Increases attack power by 65.
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 65.

Well...


This raises an interesting question- is the DPS on current weapons being modified for Cataclysm? That is the most important stat after all, for melee/ranged weapons anyway. The one on top is a drop off of 25-man heroic Lich King. The other one appears to be a weapon that blacksmiths will create while leveling their profession. I can't imagine that anyone would still be using Havoc's Call when they reach level 82, much less 85.

[Fuzes]

i dont think you will be able (or even want to) raid the 1st raidtier of cata with your icc25(hc) gear.
reasons : the stam ammounts on the items rise to the sky == the boss ae abiltys will do much much more dmg ..
: no/zero/nada mastery rating on old gear
: arp/spelldmg/ap replacement on items is ... erm .. crap (at the moment ... things change but for now 50% of the "updated" items are at one level with green items of the Tiger (int/agi anyone;D)
: the rating => % loss per lvlup is massive .. a buddy of me lost like 7% crit per lvlup ..



so ... YAY NEW GEAR INC!


i cancelled my accounts last month after hitting ~400k gold ... nothing to do anymore cuz i dosnt wanted to levelup more teams ... i guess the redone content will be nice enuff to level some toons solo again :D

[HTeam]

They really need to adjust their concept of what makes a PvP server. In the original game a level 60 could be taken down by 5 level 35's. This is no longer remotely true with even a few levels difference.

I feel like I'm stuck on a PvP server and the only "pvp" that goes on is some untouchable rogue ganking my noobs. I can participate by bringing my 85 and experience him emoting me for an hour.

Only vaguely related to gear inflation, but that's the only thing I don't like about these resets.

[Lyonheart]

All MMOs turn in to that. In EQ, players who have been playing, and still do, since release are Gods compared to anything under level cap.