Legendary - Massive MoP

[yeezy]

Unfortunately, Blizz is showing no signs of slowing stat inflation with crazy iLevel spikes. Just go look at some of the green MoP quest rewards. Right now, for example, the highest DPS melee weapons are in the 1000 DPS range (Tantacle sword is 1060.2 in the heroic version). But, level 85 BoE greens in MoP are doubling that number. Example:http://mop.wowhead.com/item=82215The numbers are just going to get more and more insane. The iLevel for that green is the same as Heroic DS drops... But the stats are double.

Afaik they doubled weapon dps across the board And changed the damage equations to balance weapon damage at low levels. That's not to say that scaling will not be absurd but the 85 greens in mop aren't 2x better than DS herioc epics.

[Valaras]

Its fine to disagree, but to blindly and blatantly ignore the facts is not fine. The fact remains that our gear selection has been remarkably diminished post-reforging in principle because iLvl, or total item budget, is largely all that matters. I understand that for some classes in some instances some pieces of lower iLvL gear is better ... but it's nothing like it once was. Even in WoTLK you could find iLvL 200 items that were better than nearly anything until heroic ICC ... and then of course there were different set bonuses and you wound up mixing and matching all sorts of varied equipment depending on the fight/situation. Now everyone is wearing the exact same gear, just reforged/gemmed to their flavor with the exception being 1 or 2 items that blizzard either didn't make upgrades for (capes ... like wtf) or made crazy good procs on (some classes 2 pieces, some trinkets).

Either way the diversity of gear used now is inarguably the worst it has ever been. It was highest in Vanilla (when things were just imbalanced ... hand of justice anyone?) and has slowly watered down since then to now where 90% of everyone is wearing exactly the same gear ... boooooooorrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnnggggggg.

I'm not ignoring any 'fact', our discussion is about reforging as a system and not about gear itself, isn't it? Don't mix the two up, I'm not arguing against having more gear choices... You also ignored all the things I said about why we prefer to have items with higher ilvl, which is not so much because of reforging, but because of how much more important the primary stats are compared to secondary.

The gear diversity has been lower because 10 and 25 drop the same loot and because of the fact that we have fewer bosses per instance. In Dragon Soul it's even worse because the only off-set pieces are the VP ones and maybe one per set. I'm not arguing about gear diversity here, I'm arguing why reforging is a good system. It doesn't mean that we cannot have more gear diversity + reforging to optimize it even better.

[Blackcurrant]

I'd slap a penalty on reforging as it was discussed before this current implementation went live. Make the stat you get 80% of the value reduced from the original stat.

I've been feeling that gear has been getting less unique in itself over the lifespan of Wow. Both stats and looks have been less connected to the items themselves making it feel more like +stat enchants than actual gear pieces. I would vote for imbuing the actual items with looks, stats and names that is all connected to give a certain item awesomeness. It's more fun for me at least compared to everything getting more interchangable.

One aspect of this, intended or not, is valor gear getting shafted come MoP. Instead of replacing gear with the insane speed of wotlk and cata you can tweak the gear you have, and thus increasing players interaction and connection with the items. I think this is a better way of creating a game world than juggling around too much with blunt mechanics.

[feralminded]

I'm not ignoring any 'fact', our discussion is about reforging as a system and not about gear itself, isn't it? Don't mix the two up, I'm not arguing against having more gear choices... You also ignored all the things I said about why we prefer to have items with higher ilvl, which is not so much because of reforging, but because of how much more important the primary stats are compared to secondary.

The gear diversity has been lower because 10 and 25 drop the same loot and because of the fact that we have fewer bosses per instance. In Dragon Soul it's even worse because the only off-set pieces are the VP ones and maybe one per set. I'm not arguing about gear diversity here, I'm arguing why reforging is a good system. It doesn't mean that we cannot have more gear diversity + reforging to optimize it even better.

Everything you say here is true ... I'm not disagreeing with you because it's true ... a part of our gear diversity issue IS how little content there is. That said even if we HAD more options, it still would be a wash because of reforging. Pre-reforging people used to wear gear from all kinds of varying iLvLs and instances because the stat distribution could not be perfected ... but now due to reforging essentially everything is the same ... all items are just a bucket of stats for you to assign however you find best. While no doubt this DOES produce a more optimized character (more DPS/HPS/TPS) ... it's less interesting.

I agree part of this is less content/drops and indeed part of it is the dominance of primary stats ... but reforging is another part of it. Even in WoTLK when there were tons of options for gear and secondary stats were much closer to primaries ... if we had been able to reforge we would have seen dramatically less gear diversity ... essentially iLvL would have reigned largely supreme and it would have been boring as today. Reforging is essentially just another way to wash away any identity/uniqueness from the game and ultimately I consider that a bad thing. Kind of like the setup now with portals to everywhere in Orgrimmar. Yes that's convenient/efficient ... but it's also ball-achingly boring.

[Valaras]

Hmmm, so having to go back to older content because your best in slot is in an older tier is a good model? I beg to differ, especially since it's very clear that once the new content is released, Blizzard does not want raiders to feel obligated to do the older content for gear. It might have fitted TBC and Vanilla because back then people did multi-tier progression and stuff, but not now. For me, there is nothing interesting about going back to an instance to get a gear piece that might or might not drop. It's simply frustrating and reforging allows you to simply optimize the gear that drops in the new instance.

To sum up, yes reforging might not be the most interesting and exciting thing ever, but it's a solid system that gets the job done. Your main argument is (and correct me if I'm wrong) "I'd rather have to choose between different pieces of gear even if they come from older content, than reforge". And I fail to see how getting a different item is more 'interesting' than reforging. They are equally uninteresting if you prefer. In the end it all comes down to one thing, minmaxing. And for me, having the convenient option to simply reforge the stats, which then leaves me more time to go to the relevant instance with the hard encounters, is better than having to go back to an older, easier instance.

[feralminded]

We understand each other perfectly then and I'm happy to agree to disagree. I personally prefer more content and I despise the current model (really the wrath model, although this xpac made it even more blatant) or invalidating content every 5-6 months. While I certainly think BC had flaws and would not want to go back to a full-on BC setup again I think blizzard would be best served to split the difference and keep a couple of tiers of content relevant at any one time. Due to the way gearing worked pre-reforging this was semi-true in WoTLK (you still farmed/pugged ToGC while running ICC for some trinkets and set bonuses). I think a hybrid design that would give us more relevant content without the obscene gating that we witnessed in BC would serve everyone best ... but that's just my opinion. All I know is that right now WoW is as narrow as it's ever been with the tiniest amount of relevant content we've ever seen and I hate that.