[BLOG] WoW 7.3.5 and My Thoughts On The New level Scaling

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Keyboardturner
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Joined: 03 Mar 2017, 12:29

[BLOG] WoW 7.3.5 and My Thoughts On The New level Scaling

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Let me start out by restating the title of my post: I like the current levelling system. It's very enjoyable, and it's been much more engaging. I'm levelling with my friend - he's a worgen rogue going assassination / subtlety and taking herbalism / alchemy. I'm a human warlock going destruction / affliction and taking tailoring / enchanting. We've levelled through Elwynn (yes we got his character out of the worgen zone to come to me), then through Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood, both Stranglethorns, then moved onward to Tanaris which is where we're currently parked.



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There's a certain level of balance between difficulty that draws attention that has to be had. The more difficult, the more attentive you must be. However, there are quite a few flaws currently.



The previous leveling system was next to no difficulty, and therefore required almost no attention. The less people paid attention, the less fun and engaging it was in general. What Blizzard has done according to this guy is that levelling time has been negligible while significantly increasing the options and variety. I like this, though I can't say I've kept such data of my own, so I can't vouch for the truth in this, but I'm willing to trust it with faith because that's science, and you can't argue with science and numbers. :P



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The current levelling system is not perfect by any means, but it's certainly been a step in the right direction. There are still a lot of things Blizzard need to smooth out on. Class abilities and when you obtain them is one thing I've noticed heavily. It's understandable to not have your full abilities starting out, but a lot of mechanics feel broken for an extended period of time because some core rotation pieces aren't available, and it just feels bad. My friend and I have been levelling a rogue and warlock respectively. His rogue in assassination spec seems to be heavily gimped by rupture not doing much damage and envenom being nonexistent so far (only eviscerate) until much higher level, although subtlety seems to do somewhat fine for the most part. My warlock seemingly has all their core rotation spells for both destruction and affliction (I haven't tried Demo and my friend hasn't tried pirate meme spec). Destruction's chaos bolt will usually deal about 90-100+% of a normal mob's HP, whereas affliction can usually get a good rotation off. The rest of Destruction's rotation has felt slightly lackluster, but otherwise nice.



The health and difficulty as well is a bit of another topic. Many people are going to have different opinions on it. I personally was levelling with heirlooms and found the pacing to be pretty alright. Pulling 10 things did feel like a threat, and I'd rather not have to spend an inordinate amount of time to kill 1 single mob like in Classic. However, I do think that things should start getting more difficult as you level. For example, Argus feels like a pain. I would never want that on a level 1-60. I'd rather have that for 110 elite mobs. Argus feels quite frankly fine in difficulty, and I like it the way it is. However, I also want things to become more and more difficult the higher level you get, that way it isn't the same fight, the same mob, the same difficulty the whole way through and then BAM Argus destroys your noob face because you didn't have 900 ilvl to be able to handle things on your own. I'm not saying to make Argus easier by any means, I'm saying to progressively make the levelling harder in small increments with every level to prepare a player for the higher end content. That's what levelling should be. It should be your time to train.



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Also on the topic of health and difficulty, I felt that "bosses" at the end of quest chains, like for Stitches in Darkshire, and the Bloodsail in Stranglethorn, and Redridge's dragon fight, all felt way too easy. They're supposed to be bosses, and we'd kill them as if they're an over-glorified regular old NPC. Those quest fights absolutely need to be much more engaging by increasing their damage slightly, increasing their health, and introducing more mechanics.



I personally feel there's a wide range of potential to re-introduce class training without making it mandatory - such that it would be a proving grounds-esque area in a major city, and the class trainer shows you the tips and tricks to using an ability in combat. They would essentially be class quests, much like the monk ones in the Peak of Serenity, however they would never be mandatory to learn them. Rather, they train a player how to use them, and perhaps maybe gives that sort of XP buff that you get for completing them, as well, maybe factoring in how many alts you have at max level or above the level of the character completing the quest, something like that to make it faster - but not mandatory - to level if this is your billionth alt (like myself).



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Another topic is professions. Levelling them has been a pain for my friend, with alchemy and herbalism. Tailoring and enchanting for my warlock have been actually pretty decent, but it doesn't feel rewarding. The amount of cloth we gather seems to be sufficient (level 40s so far as of typing this comment), and enchanting materials aren't completely obscure to obtain. I do feel that each "major town" should have profession trainers of all kinds and that there should be more ways to research new recipes by combining different materials together all willy nilly. Again, cooking massively suffers from this. You should be able to experiment cooking with any meat, and get a few recipes you'd otherwise get from a basic cooking trainer or something. Profession levelling and player levelling just don't have the same sort of balance and it suffers greatly, but there are methods that can be done to fix that in my opinion - and considering we can learn instant 800 cap and use materials from the broken isles / draenor from level 1, I really don't see an issue in this method either.



Professions also seem to be lacking in the department of providing worthwhile items if it's a production profession. Gear will almost always be inferior, potions will do next to nothing, glyphs are kind of in their own niche of things I guess, cooking may or may not be useful but you rarely can level it to use it. Again, if gear worked in a sort of banding levelling system, where it perhaps scaled to your level or scaled for 10 levels according to the type (1-20 for copper gear maybe?) like heirlooms, I think it'd be quite a bit better off and feel more worthwhile to take to ensure you have appropriate gear. Blizzard somewhat made amends to this by adding more items to quest rewards across the world so that you wouldn't have wrists from level 10, but that shouldn't deter the value having a profession should have.



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To note: I don't count bugs like the flipping of heroic and normal dungeon values as part of this. People are accounting that into "everything wrong with this patch." They're bugs. They're not the intended content of the game. This post also isn't necessarily me saying the level scaling is completely negative - I just feel there are still quite a few things to shape up, and there's nothing wrong with that. I want to give feedback to Blizzard to create a better game. In fact, I very much like this system currently. It's great so far. I love it. My friend loves it. We comment and observe all the time about how things are either difficult or easy. These are just the things I've compiled into a list of what I think has been done right/wrong.



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Uuna says hi!



~KeyboardTurner
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