Does it? I can honestly say that I feel like there is a distinct lack of information about endgame progression at this point. We know about 60-70 and the beginnings of endgame, but no extensive endgame experiences have been put in place and repeated enough to get an idea of the real progression.


In addition to what's noted above, maybe this is an incentive to replace your stuff more often?

My point is: this transition time will make us happy at points, and irritated at others, but the same people who keep feeding us new 'game' have decided that this is how they want their game to progress. While I don't find it to be extra-smooth, I do find it to be enjoyable; I've got some confidence that endgame progression will find a way to be interesting, whether it's through set bonuses, raid-beneficial effects on raid gear, interesting procs, or something from left field.

Ok, but between 60 and 70, you're not going to magically get more crit rating when you level up.

No, but I'd expect to have at least much crit against 30's as I'd had when I was 30.

You do.

Let's say you have 70 critical strike rating at 60 for +5% crit chance. At 70, that goes down to +3.17% against other level 70s. But against level 60 mobs, you effectively have +50 weapon skill, which equals to +2%, for total of +5.17%.

The overall effect is that your gear degrades enough to counteract the power you gain naturally by the process of leveling. It's not a perfect system or anything, but what you proposed isn't any better, IMO. For example, against an uncrittable tank, what's the difference between your system and Blizzard setting the raid mob's crit chance at 10% instead of 5%?

It is a little strange for casters as well (and btw, I am having trouble reading this thread... being called "Cel" for the last eight years of gaming; Northerner just happens to be my posting handle for even longer) but it should all balance out again at 70 with new gear stabilization. The transitional time definitely makes for some strange situations though where levelling can actually decrease your relative effectiveness in quite real ways unless you upgrade to appropriate new gear. I guess the issue is that for those of us already in raid-level gear, there is very little in the way of equivalent gear for the 61-69 level range.

I have faith that it will be worth implementing in the long-term, even if the transition ends up being a little weird.

What did you expect?

Regardless of the discussion about the current system, I really do think that (quoted) is a vastly superior solution to the problem. Not only is is indefinitely scaleable regardless of interrim level caps, it also allows significant opportunity to design interesting bosses. One boss might have a higher crit and dodge rating, but a lower anti-crit rating (rogue-type boss). Another might have a high anti-crit rating (tank-type boss). I'm assuming the OP intended the generalization that this would apply to everything (armor, dodge rating, spell hit, hit rating, etc)

But more to the point of the OP, when you out level or outgear a boss, they would uniformly get easier, not harder. Gear and level progression would both lead to a very natural and intuitive feel for player progression vs the environment they are used to, and against the new content.

Why would it be superior when the current system is already indefinitely scaleable? There are mobs that have different set of stats like you listed in Live too. Postmaster, for example, in Strat (high dodge). Or those elite bugs in Silithus (high defense).

Maybe Blizzard should do it more often to make things more interesting, but that doesn't have anything to do with combat mechanics.

It is superior in a way that makes it immune to becoming obsolete every expansion. Currently blizzard is hacking the combat system to make it work for 60-70. This is clearly obvious in the Armor mitigation formula where there is now a contitional - if boss level > 59, the formula is different. This means combat scaling is special cased for 60-70 and is different from 1-60.
With the current approach, blizzard will have little recourse but to hack the system again next expansion pack, and the magnitude of the changes will depend on how much gear progression players have received in their time at the level cap.

The approach Arawethion suggested would be robust against this kind of mess. Boss skill level will simply keep pace with player skill level at all tiers and level progression. Divorcing the boss skill rating from its level number would allow an arbitrary amount of progression at any level cap, and still allow the progression to continue intuitively when they next raise it.

It's exactly like it was before 60.

You need 20 agility for 1% crit against a level 60 opponent. For a level 65 mob it's not 20agility/crit anymore. Same goes for rating. So when you level up from 60 to 61, you still have the same crit chance againt level 60 mobs, but your agility and crit rating don't have the same value against level 61 mobs anymore, therefor you see a decrease in crit chance on your tooltip.

Blizzard is hacking the combat system for 60 to 70, because they're rebalancing DPS across the board along with the HP change, not because there was anything inherently wrong with combat mechanics. Would you really argue that stamina itemization cost reduction is somehow wrong just because it only applies to 60+? How's the armor mitigation formula change any different from that?

Ok, I see where the confusion is coming from.

I'm not saying Arawethion's system is bad. I'm saying it's not any different from what we already have.

The current system already separates boss skill rating from its level number. The examples I gave before clearly proves it (higher than normal dodge on Postmaster in Strat; higher than normal defense on the elite bugs in Silithus). A level 70 mob might have 350 defense by default, but that's all level number does. Provide a default. Blizzard is free to set it to 400 or whatever. If they did that, the mob would have higher anti-crit. So what's the difference?

They don't do this often, but like I said, that's not a combat mechanic problem. That's an encounter design decision/issue.

Except as usual the system is extremely unfair to casters. Melee fighting downranked mobs crit more due to level difference, but this is not true of spells. Our crit permanently goes down as we level.