Not looking forward to this...

[Multibocks]

Item Level Squish
The second solution actually involves compressing item levels, which is why we call it the “item level squish solution.” If we can lower stats on items, then we can lower every other number in the game as well, such as how much damage a Fireball does or how much health a gronn has. If you look at the item level curves, you can see that most of the growth occurs at the maximum character levels for the various expansions. This is because we keep rewarding more and more powerful gear to make the new raid tier and PvP season in an expansion reward significantly better gear than the previous one. However, those huge item level jumps don’t accomplish a lot once the character level has increased again. Very few players notice or care how much of an upgrade the Black Temple loot is over the Serpentshrine Cavern loot when their characters are level 80.

With that in mind, we could go back and compress the big item level increases that occur at level 60, 70, 80 and 85. The Mists of Pandaria gear would still grow exponentially from patch to patch, but the baselines would be a lot lower. Health could go from 150,000 back down to something like 20,000. The big risk of this approach is that players will log into the new expansion and feel nerfed… even if all the other numbers are compressed as well.

In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage.

I came up with an analogy -- even though I know logically that people drive on the left side of the street in the UK (we drive on the right side of the street in the US) and wouldn’t be surprised to see it, it would still feel really disorienting if I was driving in the UK and had to make a right-hand turn.

If they nerf us back to 20k health so I can fireball something for 800 damage this will prevent me from buying MoP. I like to feel powerful and soloing bosses is something I enjoy doing. I realize that this is only one of the proposed methods of fixing stat scaling, but I'm not looking forward to their decision. I have a bad feeling that this is they way they will go. Like I said, when I get new gear I want to feel like a badass, not imperceptibly better. Where is the fun in that? I wouldn't even bother upgrading from t15 to t16 if I knew that I had to pay out 10kg in enchanting costs for +10 int set total.

/rant off

[Lyonheart]

The bottom line is players like to "feel" like they are getting more powerful for their effort. It does not matter if the numbers get bigger over time.. its feels good. One day we could see " I just crit that guy for 1,000,000 Damage!" and so what?.. thats what you expect down the road.

[jstanthr]

if all numbers are reduced all across the board, your 1mil crit would do the same effective damage as your 800crit as it would take away the same overall % of the health of the mob, (the mob health would be reduced by the same curve) at least that is the way i understand it.

[Multibocks]

yeah but I dont want to hit for 800, not interested thanks.

edit: I want to be clear that I understand the principle of %health per spell. I am actually looking forward to seeing my tank hit 500k health or whatever, that is cool to me.

[valkry]

Could someone just make an addon to add a zero or two to each number in game if they do this change lol?

And TWINKS care about the difference between BT and SSC loot!! FFS!!

[MiRai]

I am hoping they nerf stats into the ground. Where we're at is completely ridiculous and it makes
absolutely no sense that I've got 1/100th of the health at level 60 that I'll have when I'm level 85.

[Multibocks]

I respectfully disagree. There is not much point in being 85 if you are not more powerful than a 60. Would it make sense for a child to come up and kick your ass? Not that sense and wow are relevant.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Could someone just make an addon to add a zero or two to each number in game if they do this change lol?

And TWINKS care about the difference between BT and SSC loot!! FFS!!

See, there's one of those areas where the Law of Unintended Consequences is going to bite them in the ass. There are a bunch of people that run old dungeons for twink alts or just for nostalgia or just to go blow things up that aren't the same old 5-man heroics they've been doing for the last 6 months. If they nerf things so badly that 85/90s won't be able to solo/3/5man old raids or roflstomp older instances the way you can today, they'll be disenfranchising a lot of people.

We'll see whether they consider that, or if they decide that Kung Fu Panda will draw in enough new people so it won't matter.

[EaTCarbS]

The only thing changing is the size of the numbers, not the difficulty of the game. If you're going to bitch and quit over something as stupid as this, then I say "good riddance."

[Kang]

I am hoping they nerf stats into the ground. Where we're at is completely ridiculous and it makes
absolutely no sense that I've got 1/100th of the health at level 60 that I'll have when I'm level 85.

If it's a straight percentage drop then you will still be 1/100th the health of an 85.

Either way it doesnt seem likely they will do this since the blue said it felt weird and everyone agreed. No sense alienating their player base.