Douglas

Okay, let's summarize some options for equipment:

1) Keep equipment, alter ilevel down to something appropriate, spend item budget in the same proportions as the real item, but with the lower level budget.

Example: a 68th level "of the eagle" green item ends up being precisely the same as, say, an 18th level "of the eagle" green. But the 20th level version of the "Wildheart Kilt" ends up with something like an average of 3 or so points per stat, ending up at about the same power level as "Leggings of the Fang".

(Personally, I like this one best. If you give each instance a target gear ilevel, it even lets you revitalize endgame content -- imagine turning on mentor mode once we're 80th level and going back to both regular and heroic Steamvault. They both set you to 70th level. But do they both get the same target ilevel for gear?)

2) Keep equipment, cap the stats you can obtain from them on some level-related formula.

Example: A 68th level "of the eagle" green item does not change, but regardless of what you're wearing, no more than maybe 12 or so points of intelligence will actually get added to your stats for any purpose. The rest is "clipped off".

(This is pretty easy for people to understand, I think. Might also be easier to code, since it could be implemented as a single debuff without complex formulas? Dunno, that's speculation.)

3) Issue new (edit: or "old", as per songster's suggestion) equipment. This one has come up in both "let people kit out their character" and "issue standardized equipment" forms.

Example: Are you a warrior who's going into deadmines? Regardless of what you're really wearing, when you zone in you'll be wearing "Defender Gauntlets of the Bear" with no enchantments.

(I think there's not much to recommend this one, except that, if the other options are too complex, this one would still be good enough to get the job done. This one can also work well with the various ideas people had to "checkpoint" characters rather than truly attempting to scale your current character down -- eg. "I have a 70th level warrior, so let me create a temporary 18th level warrior to tank for my buddy".)

Did I leave any out?

So, what about talents?