PTR First Look at Shadowlands Level Squish

I'm feelin' chatty today -- look out! Near the end, this will become relevant to Swoops' original post.

Both Blizzard and twinks take the path of least resistance when it comes to game dynamics. Historically speaking, Blizzard does things en masse when possible e.g. disables legacy set bonuses, changes all gem sockets from particular colors to prismatic, instills level requirements on gear that didn't previously have them, etc. Something has to be pretty disrupting to make Blizzard nerf individual items e.g. Cata's Big Daddy 70s nerf, banning twinks for ilvl 180 gear.

Likewise, most twinks disappear when games don't pop consistently. Unless a bracket sees a source of fodder like f2ps, expansion capped PvPers, or levelers (when battlegrounds were combined), getting games to happen in a given bracket takes significant effort. Most twinks won't undertake that effort, and I can't blame them.

However, exceptions to fodder-fed brackets arise during every expansion. As @Chops noted, we see exceptions even now. There are several reasons why, and the one I want to focus on here is why people gear. While we hate the grind, we respect it. We respect the time and effort it takes to research a great gearset, then pursue it. We can be average players, and if there is one thing the duration of merged brackets reminded us, it's that most of us (myself included) remain pretty average players, and that's fine. Twinks demonstrate grit and creativity, and we respect that. Blizzard squishing levels is a big deal. Blizzard pushing access to expansions down to level 10 is a really big deal.

Assuming that Blizzard doesn't just scale everyone to 50 in non-endgame battlegrounds (logistically doubtful, given the chasm of available buttons between lower and higher characters and the increased playerbase of each bracket as a result of the squish), then SL's stat and level squish offers a fresh, exciting take on gearing out a twink. Certain choices of gear will matter. How you gem your gear will matter. How gear scales will matter. In short, tradeoffs will matter. To be sure, we won't see a gazillion choices. One or two pieces of gear (except for non-caster weapons) will rule every slot, for every class. But that always brought out the best in us. Twinks are the best min/maxxers in the game, and made the most out of small differences. Do you want the biggest stat stick, or socket gear that lets you stack certain stats, or proc gear?

This is why Swoops' post excites me. By keeping raid gear static for SL i.e. non-scaling, Blizzard showed us they will keep doing what they have always done. Blizzard's current approach to how gear scales in WoW will not change, beyond the level and ilvl squish. The list also shows us that no raid gear is going to land close enough to the top end of a bracket to automatically assume BiS, but players who want to retain the gear and their level may benefit enough from scaling to justify it numerically, not just pridefully.

Therefore, we have a solid headstart on gearing options for different brackets. We already know which gear has excessive stats for its level in the midbrackets and the mid-uppers. It's not a coincidence that certain pieces of the same gear showed up for 29s, 39s and 49s, and that 69s and 79s took an almost identical approach to gearing. When gear from the upper expansions gets squished into and combined with the lower brackets, we will see some additional interesting options appear (which will likely bring some pain in the ass grinding). We won't know enchanting ilvl restrictions nor how stats scale in battlegrounds for a few months yet.

When the first few twinks start gearing out in the (new) midbrackets, new gear discoveries and our beloved arguments about BiS will begin to bloom. This is the biggest change to WoW since Cataclysm, and "on paper", one of the most interesting opportunities for nutcase gear grinders. If Blizzard doesn't do the same thing in SL as they did in Cata i.e. make half of battlegrounds unplayable because of either technical issues or OP burst damage (both very real threats), than an increasing flow of new gear information could entice twinks to put some time into new characters and take on new challenges.
 
Will we get the return of Rise!?

Ain't gonna lie, I've been mulling it over for awhile. I'm hoping the level squish returns WoW to a TBC-like amount of variety at the lower levels, without the vanilla/TBC amount of needless complexity. Clearly a bunch of people love that complexity, as evidenced by vanilla's twinking subcommunity, but I can do without managing different resistance totems. Respect to the people who thrive on that.

While I don't miss the general toxicity of WoW players, I'm hoping the combination of vanilla's resurgence and WoW's age has simmered that down to some degree. @Sun got me into playing Archeage Unchained for a couple of months, my first MMO outside of WoW, and I'm grateful to Sun for that experience. Just like everyone told me about every other MMO, Archeage does some really neat things (naval warfare is really cool), and it just couldn't compete with Wow's more robust interface and technical consistency.

Also, (since I can't stop typing because I haven't written a guide in almost a month) a combination of luck and insanity might set me up with a headstart in SL. I poured a ton of grind into a 79 a couple of years ago, which should drop right into 29. The one and only time I pushed PvE hard was at level 90, which is looking like the premier raid tier for the 39 bracket. Two out of three midbracket twinks possibly well on their way to done? I'll take it.

I feel bad for 49s, 59s, 69s and especially 60s. Unless Blizzard goes back to splitting brackets into 20-24, etc. which I highly doubt given the ailing queue times of leveling battlegrounds when I left WoW a couple of years ago, those OG brackets' histories will fade into oblivion.

The one thing on my WoW bucket list that I never did, was make a video about how to do macros, from simple to complex. Macros can do so much in WoW, and I've yet to see a good video guide on how to make them. SL might make for an excuse to come back and do that.

When the SL prepatch lands, I'll probably fall down a WoWhead research hole, gear up a couple of midbracket twinks and maybe even update my f2p, and maybe finally do a video about macros.
 
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seems pretty nice for level 10 xd

https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1259857932059136002

anyone know if you can get level 10 relics? I hope not lol
 
scaling pics

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epic proc on his first quest item
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Artifact is undeniably overpowered... maybe it’s not scaled right though

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Starter gear is better than quest gear

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No idea on the level requirement of getting the quest for off spec artifacts.
 
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scaling pics

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epic proc on his first quest item
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Artifact is undeniably overpowered... maybe it’s not scaled right though

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Starter gear is better than quest gear

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No idea on the level requirement of getting the quest for off spec artifacts.

If any of that is active once SL goes Live, 10's will literally be the most OP non-Level cap Toons in the Game.

Hell yeah, revival of the F2P/Vet bracket. ALL OTHER BRACKETS ARE INFERIOR. But seriously, this is too good to be true, but I'm cautiously optimistic
 
Nah tbh sounds gay and lame af

None of your items will matter. Sockets and tertiary stats + artifact over anything. Biggest power gain coming from doing your first legion quests? farming legion greens for socketed gear?
Epic procs not even increasing stats of an item?

How many levelers won’t have the artifact and be much less powerful than others who start in legion

What about ftp, what if they don’t get to access legion questing

it’s too early to tell anything but I haven’t been excited for any of this
 
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Nah tbh sounds gay and lame af

None of your items will matter. Sockets and tertiary stats + artifact over anything. Biggest power gain coming from doing your first legion quests? farming legion greens for socketed gear?
Epic procs not even increasing stats of an item?

How many levelers won’t have the artifact and be much less powerful than others who start in legion

What about ftp, what if they don’t get to access legion questing

it’s too early to tell anything but I haven’t been excited for any of this
All the available pve shit looks rad as hell and even if pvp gets scuffed, this shits gonna be fun
 
Nah tbh sounds gay and lame af

None of your items will matter. Sockets and tertiary stats + artifact over anything. Biggest power gain coming from doing your first legion quests? farming legion greens for socketed gear?

How many levelers won’t have the artifact and be much less powerful than others who start in legion

What about ftp, what if they don’t get to access legion questing

it’s too early to tell anything but I haven’t been excited for any of this

Personally, I've never cared too much for levelers, even nowadays they're kinda just fodder. F2P already have access to Legion Content/Lands (They can teleport to New Dalaran), they are just missing BFA right now. But I am kinda concerned for healing in this bracket, pretty much every major class gets an interrupt at < level 7 (warriors,DK, mage, rogue, DH, and Shammies lose theirs), which may mean Rdruid healing is making a comeback, but they do lose swiftmend. But it is still a few months away so idk
 
We're getting artifacts? I called this shit a year ago. Let's fucking go.

Getting more and more excited for Shadowlands with each passing day.
 
Imagine if corruption is accessible and non-disabled. While it feels unlikely you never know(unless somethings been found already).
 
unpopular opinion but healers should be nerfed into the ground in 20s. Theyre too powerful by a factor of like... 12

yeah. I agree that they are pretty damn OP, but even with how OP they are, alot of people still refuse to play healers. And the levelers that do play healers don't even heal. So, while i do agree this is a healthy change for the bracket overall Im just a tad bit worried about the state of healing going into SL, and whether or not we'll just full DPS queues, but we'll have to wait and see
 
Imagine if corruption is accessible and non-disabled. While it feels unlikely you never know(unless somethings been found already).
You have to consider why some people only vet pvp, one of my reasons I stopped doing high end pvp was azerite and corruption. It's just fucking lame. I hope they don't ruin the vet bracket with that nonsense. Legendaries would be fucking sick, and class halls though.
 
Imagine if corruption is accessible and non-disabled. While it feels unlikely you never know(unless somethings been found already).

I doubt that corruption would be active. But yeah, the main reason I hated endgame PVP was because of corruption. What a lame RNG mechanic to have
 
unpopular opinion but healers should be nerfed into the ground in 20s. Theyre too powerful by a factor of like... 12
I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The nobody dies stall fest meta we have currently is terrible.
 

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