SCALED DOWN EPICS IN SHADOWLANDS

[Kirise]

Now, Im wondering about how scaling will work in pvp. (tbh i dont really understand it!)..

The way scaling works in instanced PvP, is that your gear stays exactly the same (other than heirloom gear), and your *base* main stats i.e. the main stats you have with no gear on, get a slight boost. Because leveling up (even temporarily) degrades the return on secondary stats, you'll see a slight loss in percentage values, even though the actual stats themselves won't go down. This makes sense, as e.g. 20 haste at level 29 doesn't give you as much as 20 haste at level 27.

Lets say the level 70 raid stuff comes in at very slightly worse than the dungeon blue items. Will the scaling of your stats from 27-29 make it overtake the 79 blue items in relative power?

It will not, but we're talking very small numbers.

Im torn now whether or not to level to 79 or leave it at 70. Iv only just started researching the 70-79 bracket and I'm hitting information overload!

You'll be in great shape either way. You can always level to 79/29 later on if you want, and farm the instance gear you want at that level. But the stat difference is so small (less than a consumable for your *entire* total gearset) that you may enjoy the pride of being an old school 70/27 over those last few stats. If you really want to min/max, consider that you can only do quests once, so if you haven't already done the quests for the overstatted gear, you'll want to save that for possibly going to 79.

The only real grandfathering issue right now is getting raid gear you want, and epic gems from heroic TBC dungeons. For some ridiculous reason, those currently require SL level 30 to run. I don't know why Blizz boosted those requirements to the equivalent of Wrath i.e. level 80/30, and hopefully that gets fixed in the future.

Also to keep in mind with such a small power gap, raid gear especially from sun well has better secondary’s for most slots and most classes. So make sure to map out secondary’s that work for your class to know what you should shoot for before shadowlands.

That's true at 70/27. At 79/29, instance gear surpasses raid gear. But to your earlier point, it's by such a small degree that things like procs, set bonuses, and other perks immediately surpass the stats difference. I haven't worn my Brutal Gladiator Gauntlets in years, but after the squish, I'm seriously considering giving up the two gems slots to get the +5 yards on shocks and shears from the PvP gauntlets.
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also is there a page with a list of BIS 79 characters I could look at to help me?

@villiansv 79 gear guide, while of course prone to changes for Shadowlands, still retains a lot of great info.

 

[Snipez]

Also the epic gear from tbc heroics will be unobtainable too right?

 

[Kirise]

Also the epic gear from tbc heroics will be unobtainable too right?

For now, that's correct. Access to TBC Heroics will disappear come SL.

 

[Blackberryy]

That's true at 70/27. At 79/29, instance gear surpasses raid gear.

The dungeon gear though in many slots lacks double secondary’s and in almost all cases, raid gear has double secondary’s with secondary’s seeming to be much better come shadowlands with how they’re scaleing formula is now

 

[Snipez]

yeh i agree, if i don't see haste/versa but ideally both, im not taking it.

 

[Kirise]

The dungeon gear though in many slots lacks double secondary’s and in almost all cases, raid gear has double secondary’s with secondary’s seeming to be much better come shadowlands with how they’re scaleing formula is now

Maybe caster shamans are an exception, but none of the secondaries on my Skyshatter nor other SWP raid gear surpass my instance gear at SL 29. Yes, there are two secondaries on my raid gear, but they often don't add up to equal the single secondary on my instance gear, and a portion of my instance gear also has two secondaries.

 

[Blackberryy]

Maybe caster shamans are an exception, but none of the secondaries on my Skyshatter nor other SWP raid gear surpass my instance gear at SL 29. Yes, there are two secondaries on my raid gear, but they often don't add up to equal the single secondary on my instance gear, and a portion of my instance gear also has two secondaries.

Well sure, mail classes have it the easiest since your gear is so well itemized. The desolation set is to good to pass up even at 70 and the legs at durnholde. This does not hold true for all of the classes though, you just have a great class for dungeon gear

 

[villiansv]

Maybe caster shamans are an exception, but none of the secondaries on my Skyshatter nor other SWP raid gear surpass my instance gear at SL 29. Yes, there are two secondaries on my raid gear, but they often don't add up to equal the single secondary on my instance gear, and a portion of my instance gear also has two secondaries.

All Mail gear is generally an exception. Dungeon Mail gear is notably better than Raid gear with very few, if any, exceptions.

Otherwise yeah in broad terms SWP gear can have a bit more secondaries but it usually loses in stamina and main stat. I still think main stat should be weighed roughly twice as much as secondary, so imo dungeon gear wins out. Also given the bursty nature of the bracket stamina is not that unimportant.
All this may change of course with SL, but in case someone was wondering why I barely have any SWP gear in the 79 guide - this was the reason.

 

[Snipez]

I rate hate and Vers a lot more than 1:2 vs primary stat. For priests anyway. But I guess it’s preference. I like the reduced cooldowns and the damage reduction. I’m always shooting for 30% haste. But it’s just personal preference I guess

 

[Kirise]

I rate hate and Vers a lot more than 1:2 vs primary stat. For priests anyway. But I guess it’s preference. I like the reduced cooldowns and the damage reduction. I’m always shooting for 30% haste. But it’s just personal preference I guess

Depends. While some of it is personal preference, we can definitely use throughput comparisons on each stat. For 79 resto shamans, int and mastery held about the same, int was maybe 15% better than vers, 20% better than haste, and 50% better than crit. Those raw numbers can really help make gear determinations. To your point, personal preference comes in when deciding whether to play a more "restomental" approach or straight restoration. The latter would want more mastery and vers, while the former will prefer int.

If Blizzard keeps the same stat balances when 79s squish to 29s, then 2:1 sounds spot on. Int makes much more of an impact in the lower brackets than the upper brackets.

 

[Blackberryy]

All Mail gear is generally an exception. Dungeon Mail gear is notably better than Raid gear with very few, if any, exceptions.

Otherwise yeah in broad terms SWP gear can have a bit more secondaries but it usually loses in stamina and main stat. I still think main stat should be weighed roughly twice as much as secondary, so imo dungeon gear wins out. Also given the bursty nature of the bracket stamina is not that unimportant.
All this may change of course with SL, but in case someone was wondering why I barely have any SWP gear in the 79 guide - this was the reason.

I am talking about not he prepatch my man, obviously for 79 your gear scales much higher than 70 raid gear making it very good and better than the raid gear in question. But in the ptr, the gear is barely different and you lose 6+ secondary’s in most places for 1 main star and 1 stamina

 

[villiansv]

But in the ptr, the gear is barely different and you lose 6+ secondary’s in most places for 1 main star and 1 stamina

Sure, in that case it sounds like secondaries could be more important than they are now, which can affect what is BiS. Still, given the stat squish, 1 main stat can still be quite valuable (currently 1% more main stat translates to 1% more dmg on live, I don't expect this to change). Guess we'll see, I don't like wasting time theorycrafting too much based on ever-changing PTR info.

Having access to both dungeon and raid gear and both of it being viable would make for even more viable gearing options, which is always great. Clear-cut BiS items, while easy to define and aim for, make for carbon-copy twinks, which can get boring.

 

[Snipez]

Depends. While some of it is personal preference, we can definitely use throughput comparisons on each stat. For 79 resto shamans, int and mastery held about the same, int was maybe 15% better than vers, 20% better than haste, and 50% better than crit. Those raw numbers can really help make gear determinations. To your point, personal preference comes in when deciding whether to play a more "restomental" approach or straight restoration. The latter would want more mastery and vers, while the former will prefer int.

If Blizzard keeps the same stat balances when 79s squish to 29s, then 2:1 sounds spot on. Int makes much more of an impact in the lower brackets than the upper brackets.

well numbers dont do the stats justice tbh. A lot of pvpers prefer haste as a stat because it allows them to make 30% more global cooldowns than people without (crude example). But the point is the advantage is not going to be decided in a sheet. You just get to make quicker decisions,and more of them during a battle.

 

[villiansv]

well numbers dont do the stats justice tbh. A lot of pvpers prefer haste as a stat because it allows them to make 30% more global cooldowns than people without (crude example). But the point is the advantage is not going to be decided in a sheet. You just get to make quicker decisions,and more of them during a battle.

The one issue I have with stacking haste this high in this bracket is that there aren't enough secondary stats to go around to get meaningful other stats. Some very few classes will benefit from high haste (resto druid comes to mind, maybe some other healers or spriest/afflock), but if you're talking about PvP you will want versa on them usually to survive the burst of dps twinks (who will 2-shot you if you have close to 0 versa, some beefy destro locks or mm hunters can also 1-shot you with cooldowns popped). And if you stack 30%+ haste (that's what, 300+ haste rating @79) you will not be able to get meaningful numbers for any of the other stats.

If you want raw numbers, my lock in sig, self-buffed plus arcane intellect and trinkets popped, can hit 8k chaos bolts on someone with 8% versa (4% dmg reduction). Without procs/trinkets you're looking at around 6k chaos bolts, and that's disregarding any other incidental damage from immolate, conflagrate and the followup shadowburn, or what any lock will usually do - chain 2 of these CBs one after the other. Other DPS classes in the bracket can pull similar burst. Haste won't save you from this. Stacking versa will.

In my opinion it boils down to - classes who benefit from haste also happen to benefit from versa, and stacking versa is better for them. I'm enjoying the 33% haste I have on my 111, but it's accompanied by 44% crit and 40% versa (111s have been absolutely crazy this entire expansion). At 79 the gear just isn't there to get anywhere close to such numbers.

In any case, I feel we just have different approaches to gearing so I'll leave it at that. If you like haste, or play in groups where you will have support/peels so you don't get globalled, or die in stunlock - go for it, you should always play what you enjoy the most .

 

[Protasius]

@Protasius You are correct on the 79 --> 29, I didn't realize Blizz was not using a linear scale. Also, it looks like they DID fix the Chromie Time / Xp Off issue, that is great news! It was indeed broken for a at least a week previously, but have just gotten fixed in the most recent patch.

Okay, so this is weird. My XP locked character was able to enter Chromie Time just fine, and was able to remove the XP lock, but while in Chromie Time, Behsten would not re-enable the XP lock (the chat window option was missing). After exiting Chromie time, Behsten again agreed to lock my XP, but once the XP was locked, Chromie would not allow me to re-enter Chromie Time.

So, basically, it works at first, but if you change your XP lock setting, it breaks.

Posted findings on this over here: https://xpoff.com/threads/why-you-should-level-before-the-patch-chromie-time-xp-lock-issues.94233/

I will be levelling all of my intended Twinks to the appropriate level before the patch to avoid getting locked out of Chromie Time.