Squashing Player Power Creep

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Neechy
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Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Neechy » Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:03 pm

Thinking more about power creep and how the Kara40 weapon leaks are showing weapon dps already hitting a whopping 100.0. Hell, some of the Kara40 epic staffs already have better stats than Atiesh, the legendary 0.5 tier right before!

The issue I foresee is Kara40 / T3.5 using the benchmark of Might of Menethil (MoM), which is honestly a pretty overtuned weapon relative to previous tiers (see breakdown in latest post).
Vanilla devs likely made it as such because Naxx was the final raid of vanilla wow at a time when very few people ever got to clear it before it became more or less obsolete at TBC release.

Keep MoM benchmark as the power cap for all future weapons

I.e. 95.3 dps benchmark of current MoM would be the approximate power cap for end-game weapons whether that be T4 or T5.

How could this be achieved? By having a +5.0 dps budget max for weapons between raid tiers, and thereby +2.5 dps budget max for half tiers. So it looks something like*:

T1: Bonereaver's Edge: 75.88 (MC last boss)
T2: Ashkandi: ~80.0 dps (BWL last boss)
T2.5: Dark Edge of Insanity: ~82.5 dps (AQ40 last boss)
T3: Might of Menethil (MoM): ~85.0 dps (Naxx last boss)
T3.5: [Most Powerful 2Her]: ~87.5 dps (Kara40 last boss)
T4: [Most Powerful 2Her]: ~90.0 dps (Grim Batol last boss)
T4.5: [Most Powerful 2Her]: ~92.5 dps (Barrow Deeps last boss?)
T5: [Most Powerful 2her]: ~95.0 dps (Northrend raid last boss?)

*This is just an example and increments can be adjusted depending if T4 or T5 ends up behind the final raid.

What is good about this approach is that we will already know what the max power creep for players would be by final game, since we are using MoM benchmark as the absolute cap.

So MoM gets nerfed and, in the above example, T5 end-game weapon would be around as powerful as what MoM is now. And then weapons never have to break the 100.0 dps threshold.

These minimal increments may seem less appealing to players but you can bet your ass that players are still going to raid increasingly more challenging content for an extra +2.5 weapon dps.

And this way, with this amount of power squashing it keeps early raids relevant. If T5 weapon is only 10.0 dps more than T3, then there is still nothing wrong raiding Naxx to get MoM since it would still be a very powerful weapon.

The final end game weapon would be no more powerful than the 95.3 dps MoM benchmark. There would be a much more conservative approach to power increases between raid tiers that is more stabilizing and sustainable long-term. I have given the example of power creep with regards to weapons, but this of course applies to all gear. It ensures early tier items and PvE content stays relevant, and end-game PvE becomes more challenging.

One last note: this post was prompted in part by Jammyzz's post about R14 weapons being grossly underpowered relative to the effort required to obtain them. This approach would also solve that issue because future tier weapons do not continue to vastly outshine R14 weapons. I would also suggest buffing R14 weapons to either be on par with T3 power level or whatever the 2nd last raid tier ends up being (i.e. T4).

If you have more ideas to build on the discussion of power creep, please share.
Last edited by Neechy on Sun Feb 02, 2025 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My top 3 suggestions to dev team...
1. CC2 Sunk Cost Fallacy
2. Legendary items
3. Barrow Deeps Dungeon/Raid Complex

Akos1896
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Re: Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Akos1896 » Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:17 pm

Yes but your suggestion also means nerfing a bunch of current items to allow further growth.
While it can be a good thing, people would riot. Imagine guys running Naxx for a year and collect points just to get MoM and now... nerfhammer.

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Neechy
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Re: Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Neechy » Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:23 pm

Akos1896 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:17 pm Yes but your suggestion also means nerfing a bunch of current items to allow further growth.
While it can be a good thing, people would riot. Imagine guys running Naxx for a year and collect points just to get MoM and now... nerfhammer.
It basically requires most items to get nerfed. People can riot all they want that their MoM doesn't do +15.0 dps more than the legendary Sulfuras anymore, but at the end of the day, it still does more damage. Thus it is still worthwhile to raid higher tiers - it just keeps previous tiers more relevant. Ultimately, power squashing solves both PvE and PvP issues.
My top 3 suggestions to dev team...
1. CC2 Sunk Cost Fallacy
2. Legendary items
3. Barrow Deeps Dungeon/Raid Complex

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Gantulga
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Re: Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Gantulga » Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:26 pm

Buffing raid content's HP pools would also help.

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Zvyrhol
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Re: Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Zvyrhol » Sun Feb 02, 2025 9:10 pm

I like the idea of this post because it concerns the current problem and possible solution to the power creep. I think this post should be expanded to include power of all roles, not only melees and their 2-handers. Let's start real discussion here. What defines the power of each role and what stats should be adjusted to nerf their power?

I see 2 ways devs can choose. All these changes should be applied after Kara40 is opened.

First way - lazy fix that isn't perfect but relatively easy to implement. It doesn't nerf specifically raid items but rather everything.

Group 1: Melee and hunter.
  • Reduce the amount of Attack Power each Strength/Agility stat gives your class by 20%.
It's because Attack Power is the main stat of melee and hunters that increases their damage. I find this change easy because you don't have to fix hundreds of items to achieve the intended result, instead devs would only change the scaling.

Group 2: Casters and healers.
  • Introduce new "hidden" scaling coefficient to every spell that scales with your "spell damage" and "healing done" that reduces that amount by 20%.
These 2 stats are the source of power of casters and healers.


This method has 2 cons. First is that it isn't aimed at nerfing raid gear but everything in the game.
Second is that this method won't punish both groups evenly. If you play caster, you have 0 spell damage by default. If you play melee, you will always have some Attack Power from base stats. So if you are fresh level 60 caster with no spell damage, this change won't have impact on you. But if you are melee, your power will be gone from level 1.


Second way - fix that requires huge time investment but is perfect.
  • Don't change MC/ZG/AQ20/Kara10 gear and treat their item level as the base for other raid gear. (So it's T1 level)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in Naxxramas to current average item level of all items in BWL. (Naxx becomes T2 level)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in BWL, ES to be something between MC and Naxx level (T1.33)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in AQ40 to be stronger than BWL/ES gear but weaker than Naxx (T1.66)
This method is simply perfect - Naxx gear becomes current BWL gear in terms of power leaving space for T2.5 gear and T3 gear for Kara40 and Grim Batol. Only raiding gear is nerfed - that means PvP gear becomes relevant again.
The biggest problem with this method is that it requires a lot of work (I assume the stats would be changed manually). So hundreds of items must be changed to complete whole process.


Is anyone having better ideas?

Biteyou
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Re: Squashing Player Power Creep

Post by Biteyou » Mon Feb 03, 2025 12:34 am

Zvyrhol wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 9:10 pm I like the idea of this post because it concerns the current problem and possible solution to the power creep. I think this post should be expanded to include power of all roles, not only melees and their 2-handers. Let's start real discussion here. What defines the power of each role and what stats should be adjusted to nerf their power?

I see 2 ways devs can choose. All these changes should be applied after Kara40 is opened.

First way - lazy fix that isn't perfect but relatively easy to implement. It doesn't nerf specifically raid items but rather everything.

Group 1: Melee and hunter.
  • Reduce the amount of Attack Power each Strength/Agility stat gives your class by 20%.
It's because Attack Power is the main stat of melee and hunters that increases their damage. I find this change easy because you don't have to fix hundreds of items to achieve the intended result, instead devs would only change the scaling.

Group 2: Casters and healers.
  • Introduce new "hidden" scaling coefficient to every spell that scales with your "spell damage" and "healing done" that reduces that amount by 20%.
These 2 stats are the source of power of casters and healers.


This method has 2 cons. First is that it isn't aimed at nerfing raid gear but everything in the game.
Second is that this method won't punish both groups evenly. If you play caster, you have 0 spell damage by default. If you play melee, you will always have some Attack Power from base stats. So if you are fresh level 60 caster with no spell damage, this change won't have impact on you. But if you are melee, your power will be gone from level 1.


Second way - fix that requires huge time investment but is perfect.
  • Don't change MC/ZG/AQ20/Kara10 gear and treat their item level as the base for other raid gear. (So it's T1 level)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in Naxxramas to current average item level of all items in BWL. (Naxx becomes T2 level)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in BWL, ES to be something between MC and Naxx level (T1.33)
  • Reduce average item level of ALL items in AQ40 to be stronger than BWL/ES gear but weaker than Naxx (T1.66)
This method is simply perfect - Naxx gear becomes current BWL gear in terms of power leaving space for T2.5 gear and T3 gear for Kara40 and Grim Batol. Only raiding gear is nerfed - that means PvP gear becomes relevant again.
The biggest problem with this method is that it requires a lot of work (I assume the stats would be changed manually). So hundreds of items must be changed to complete whole process.


Is anyone having better ideas?
This would also require current raids scaled back to that same power level (so Naxx has T2 HP and attack scaling), which means pre raid BiS requires this scaling as well, as well as level 60 dungeons, and it just becomes a lot of work. We ultimately run into the same issue with PvP that we have now, we're just kicking the can down the road to Kara, GB and so on.

I don't have any better ideas. I think dynamic scaling of item level in BGs and whatever other PvP content is probably the only way to actually fix PvP, or adding damage modifiers for player versus player, neither of which is very straight forward. I've always thought there needs to be some sort of dynamic scaling to player versus player interactions, I'm not a fan of PvP interactions that favor the person who put in more time grinding pve content, that's just me though and that's part of vanilla. I liked Wrath PvP a lot due to there being an incentive to not use PvE gear (admittedly not perfect but still better than this shit show)

For PvE, who cares if you're clearing Naxx in GB gear like a cake walk? This is already done now with MC/BWL/AQ40 but people still do it. The new content is supposedly "really hard", and the rewards reflect that. I think it would put a very sour taste in any old or new players to just be working towards a power level we've become accustomed to in vanilla (or vanilla plus now, whatever you want to call it). Just look at how much people freak out whenever anything is nerfed.

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