Hey guys!

So, I've lately been playing WoW again in preparation for BFA. I posted another thread a few weeks ago, about how much I genuinely enjoyed levelling from 100-110 on both an Orc Warrior and a Human Rogue. I figure I should have both levelled to 110 so I can experience both sides of the story when BFA hits. I like tanking a LOT on my warrior, and being a sneaky fucker on my rogue is also very fun.

So, in the countdown to BFA, and because Octopath isn't quite grabbing me as much as I want it to, I've been thinking about levelling my BE Death Knight. I used to raid on her in WOTLK, and loved how it played.

But fuck ME is the levelling experience an absolute BLACK HOLE now.

About a month ago, I did a Dwarf Hunter from 0-60 and absolutely loved it. I liked how you could go anywhere and level wherever you want. As someone who's been playing since 2004, it was a good "greatest hits" way of levelling for me. I did Westfall>STV>Tanaris and some of my favourite zones. Then I got to 60-80. It was an absolute bomb. Slow as hell, boring as hell, and just an all out grind.

So I kinda gave up at 61, and went back to my aforementioned DK who was already level 85. I RACED through the pandaria content. With a combination of queuing as a tank, and the first area, I did 85-90 in 2 days. Then it was around that time when they re-introduced the stat squish, and it all changed.

An hour ago, I did a quest which rewarded a new weapon. I was excited. A new weapon, in a new expansion's content is meant to be exciting right? Wrong. Take a look at what the benefits of upgrading were:

0.4 DPS upgrade.

ZERO POINT FOUR.

How am I meant to get excited about that? I did the quest, equipped it (it looks fucking DIABOLICAL btw), so I had to get it skinned to something decent, then I got back. My core move now does an extra 4 damage a hit. On enemies with 9000+ hit points.

I hope this changes some in BFA, because at the moment, I don't feel strong. I don't feel powerful. I just feel like a baby with a wooden stick

I don't think this is a stat squish issue, it's just you having a decent end-game item from the last expansion and then doing a quest designed to bring new people up to speed. It's always been like that with new expansions. People who played the last expansion go in with their awesome gear, and the first few quests allow everyone else to catch up so the content can be designed around that gear. That way people who got epics etc from the last expansion don't just tear through everything, and new players don't get stomped because their gear is terrible.

Damn. I wish I could get into WoW and other MMOs. They just never grab me though.

I levelled through all of WOTLK on my hunter using the Black Bow of the Bretrayer because it was strong enough and it's ability meant I never ran out of mana and had zero down time.

In regards to the weapon shown, it's two ilvls higher and it's not like it was a particularly taxing quest. The real problem with levelling is between 60-80. Anything outside of that range is ok, but for whatever reason, unknown even to Blizzard, that range is totally borked.

@ares42: This doesnt appear to be from NEW content though, this is the old leveling experience looking worse?

I haven't gotten there with any new characters yet but I have heard that the leveling experience in WoD is pretty miserable right now.

@efesell: Ye, but he specifically talked about going from one expansions content to the other. It's just a holdover from when that expansion was the newest content.

@ares42: Yeah but unless you like had the top of the top of the line option from that old expansion the new ones are all designed to give you a substantially better weapon the moment you get started on the next. It sounds like that aspect has changed a lot but not necessarily the stats of the things you are fighting.

There are some really wonky power curves in 8.0 leveling. The 60-80 experience is excruciatingly slow and your character power compared to what it was before in the 90-100 range is a bit out of whack. The enemies seem to have a disproportionate amount of health in comparison to smoother level ranges. Once you hit 100 you suddenly become a golden god of power level in comparison.

Thankfully, there is a way to circumvent the 90-100 experience almost entirely, but it might be out of reach of new players or those without friends able to help out.

@jamjyo: The point of the complaint was that stats were squished inordinately on one side and not others making for more of a slog. They have successfully made all of your numbers smaller and more reasonable which as you've pointed out is a necessary thing.. but they have not managed to re-tune everything correctly to account for it.

Low level dungeons in particular right now are just ridiculous.

It's so slow now that it's hard to imagine me getting another character to max level through leveling.

I don't play WoW but didn't they admit somewhere in an interview that they actually did screw it up somewhere along the line and they haven't figured out how to undo it yet? I know I read that somewhere.

The Numbers go up even if it's 0.4 :D.

@jamjyo: Probably the latter not playing nice with the former? The scaling was fine before the new squish.

Stat squish is one of the few things I care about in this expansion.

@sombre: The Ilvl only went up by 2 points, so part of the problem is that it just wasn’t much of an upgrade. You got a 2% gain in dps for a 2% gain in ilvl, makes sense. Considering I just got a new weapon at 110 that only increases my dps by 9 for a 30 ilvl upgrade your .4 really doesn’t seem ridiculously terrible. It’s all relative.

Oh wow, I'm sorry to hear that the 60 to 80 experience is apparently now such a slog. I've leveled a few alts through that before the stat squish and it always went by really fast. Too fast, in the case of Northrend. I'd hit Borean Tundra and be level 80 before I was halfway done with the zone.

Truth be told, these stat squishes feel kind of necessary to keep the numbers and computing power needed from getting too absurd. I remember that Garrosh had to heal himself to full health about four or so times during his boss fight in the Siege of Ogrimmar because the game couldn't handle the amount of max health he was apparently supposed to have. They ended up setting him at the max health cap for the game and then just letting him heal to full over and over until he technically had the amount of health they deemed appropriate for the encounter. :-P

Necessary or not, though... I think the stat squishes remind me of why I like the Guild Wars / Elder Scrolls Online MMO design philosophy more. If you'll pardon me extremely paraphrasing commentary from the ESO team, "we're not going to raise the gear level above CP 160 because what's the point? The game is balanced around CP 160. If we raise the cap to CP 170, the game will be balanced around CP 170 and players will have to grind an entire new set of armor to hit... the baseline they are currently at. Then they'll get there and we'll up the cap to CP 180 in an endless loop of grinding and tedium. The numbers will get bigger and bigger, but the end result will be the same level of performance from your character. Nothing changes but an extra 0 on everything."

I know it's not for everyone, but I prefer grinding for cosmetics and armor motifs over grinding to hit a baseline that is ever-shifting away from me. I've binged on World of Warcraft the past week and a half (finished the Insurrection, Broken Shore, and Argus questlines, did all of the raid bosses in LFR save the sewer scorpion in Nighthold, saw the dungeons I had missed, got the arcanist manasaber and fox mounts, earned my flying ability in the Broken Shores, did the War of Thorns content, and just reached level 114 with 6/8ths of Drustvar finished). It's been fun, and I remember now why I have such affection for Blizzard's team that handles this game. They're a fun, silly bunch that know how to have a good time with absurdist fantasy fluff.

But, the stat squish serves as a constant reminder to me that level 120 will open up the endless, futile gear grind once more. Numbers will bloat higher and higher, and I'll get left further and further behind since I don't have the time to perma-binge on this. Eventually I'll be a LFR scrub again, mocked and belittled by a caustic player-base because I haven't ditched my wife, college, and my other hobbies to "git gud" by running mythic dungeons and heroic raids every day for hours on end. I'll be a second class citizen for the next two years until the next catch-up "War of Thorns" equivalent event and stat squish. *sigh* Then again, I've always been a second class citizen in World of Warcraft. Probably why I play in two to three month intervals and then quit for six to nine months like clockwork. It's a 14 year long cycle by this point.

Rambling off-topic, though. I'm sorry that you're getting stuck in the doldrums this patch. I hope the new leveling process speed doesn't leave you too ruffled, my friend.