The weapon upgrade is awesome and welcome. The issue was, it made all weapons previous to the expansion obsolete. Chase weapons will also be worthless. I did complain in Beta, of course it's like talking to a wall, in an empty room. I thought they should have gone back and at least upgraded the level 115-120 weapons. It's not the end of the world, but when you have a bunch of raid weapons for your main and alts, having to upgrade everything with T1 group gear or be way behind is annoying.
Because those raid drops which are actually easier to get than many group drops are supposed to be better! Just show up and do your 1 job while everyone else helps carry you. DB is fixing the melee disparity and everyone is clutching their pearls because filthy "groupers" have nice gear now.
Or you know, you can play the new expansion and actually get gear. Terrible that you might have to go out and get some group gear. Do you feel dirty touching type 7 gear? Do you need a bath?
Say what you want, raiders do put in more effort than casual groupers- they have a right to expect their hard earned gear won't be obviated by tier 1 field garbage in the newest expac. To a lesser degree this would be like you grinding out your evolving cloak and the tier 1 cloak in the next expac exceeding it by inconceivable margins. For those of you who don't actually raid, that's about the best comparison I can make.
You think getting a group drop, is harder to get than getting a raid weapon?? What world is that? I can solo any named, with my necro. I'm excited for the weapon upgrades and I will get new super buffed raid weapons again soon. My point was that they shouldn't have made last years raid AND group weapons stay like they were. It's a ridiculous step up in power, instead of a smoother curve. They should have buffed up the last expansions GROUP weapons also. Yes, I do think it is ridiculous to have a T1 group weapon MUCH better than last expansions T2 raid weapons, it's kinda a kick in the nootz, for people who put in time raiding. It used to take about 3-4 expansions for group weapons to even catch up, never mind blow away the raid weapons. Doesn't matter to me, you won't even be able to get a raid level weapon, because the chase weapons, are Raid weapons from last expansion, unless you play on FV.
I think the only real issue here is ultra rare weapons are near useless and tlps would have a little more class balance if they retro fixed weapon ratios from past 4 expacs or whatever. I'm all about these things as is evident. The fact that we're upgrading a raid weapon to a group weapon is irrelevant. It's just an upgrade. And honestly, it's kind of fun to get an immediate upgrade instead of having to wait a month or two to get it from raids (which we can also look forward to this year).
Yay further statflation! Itemization design has simply gotten more and more head scratching as the years go on.
So if your evolving cloak was surpassed immediately by tier 1 gear you would be fine with that b/c it's just an upgrade after all?
Yeah, my cloak would have had plenty of use in nos. Do you cry about lvl 70 raid items no longer being useful at 125? They served their purpose.
Regardless of previous expansion gear, tier 1 gear in any new expansion needs to meet the dps output of the tier 1 mobs. If that difficulty is higher, then the gear should be, ignoring previous expansion raid gear. New expansion raid gear would just be that much better than tier 1 named drops.
Some thing is definitely different in LS comparing to previous expansions: Damage/Delay ratios of group weapons is better by a sifnificant value than the best raid weapons from the previous expansions. A significant leap for DMG/DLY. Other factors is not affected as much: most of spells increased marginally, in-line with previous expansions increases, mobs hitpoint/damage output increased in-line, gear improvements like stats/HME/AC, consimables, effects, AA's - all are in-line, similar ratios of increase as from years past. But weapons dmg/dly is massive! LS group weapons across the board are much better than raid weapons from NoS. I understand the idea to boost melee dps, but it will definitely change class balance. I like melee characters, but I like my mages too. Perhaps my rogues, zerkers, rangers will see more use in LS.
They were coming up against a weapon damage limit, so they were increasing weapon dmg by a smaller percent than they would have wanted to ever year. My understanding is that the limit was fixed for this expansion, and the weapon damages were increased to what they would have been had the limit not been slowing down damage increases over the years. While the weapon ratios of group weapons in LS are currently better than the raid ratios in NoS, they have fewer other statistics (which most people won't care about for a weapon) and smaller procs. They're also not as good as the raid weapons that will be available in a month.
Yeah, that's the thing. They fixed the issue that was causing them to lower previous expansions weapons more than they wanted. So why not correct those previous weapons now also? Just seems ridiculous, to have such a massive jump suddenly, at 121, for any class that melees. It changes the whole class dynamic too quickly. I assume they are still planning on updating previous weapons also, but it would be nice to hear an official statement, on their intentions. I'm happy they upgraded the weapons though for sure and I guess it gives me something else to get, until the raids start, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
It's irritating to have to source them, only to replace them again with raid weapons in a month. It's not the end of the world, and it makes us feel good to know that our having real gear, instead of charity gear gleaned off of raiders groups rots, bothers you so much.
