SCALED DOWN EPICS IN SHADOWLANDS

[Snipez]

Hi,

Apologies if this is a stupid question, (I havent twinked in BFA for a long time!)

but.. Im busy making a 70 twink priest to scale down to the new 20-29 bracket.

Main question is, is it better to level up to 74, so the the items that scale with level (brewfest trinket, heroic dungeon stuff) scale down to a 29 level in Shadowlands, rather than down to a 27 level.

Also is it "set-in-stone" that 74 scales to 29? It would be a nightmare to scale to 30 after putting in the work!

Also, it looks like on the wowhead ptr, that blue items are coming out with better stats than their heroic counterparts, is this also happening on the PTR?

Thanks!

 

[irlsteven]

you will probably want to leave yourself a bit of XP room after the squish to account for picking up and completing the required breadcrumb quests for each expansion since you can't get most of them unless you are in Chromie time, which at the moment is mutually exclusive with turning your xp off.

im confused what are your saying here. are you saying you cant enter chromie time with xp off or that you can only get some quests if you xp is on?

 

[Snipez]

thanks for the info..very useful to know!

I also quite interested in how the level 100 items that 79 twinks are using, scale down. I think they're from timewalking BC dungeons, which is in a couple of weeks.

Do you know yet if there is difference between the scaling of random dungeon blue items if you get them at 70 or say ...75?

Its a bit of a minefield, but from what i'm noticing, you just want to max out sockets as the gear ends up being pretty similar.
[doublepost=1601571780,1601571711][/doublepost]Also, wowhead said that 74 scales down to 29 but on blizzard website it says that 79 becomes 29! would hate to get it wrong

 

[irlsteven]

If you are in Chromie time, you can't disable XP, and if you have XP disabled then Chrome won't let you select a timeline.

what???? i just tested it and xferd several toons with there xp off and am still able to freely choose timelines

 

[Snipez]

79 definitely does not become 29 after squish.

My currently level 72 character on live scales to like 100 exp away from 29 on the PTR. If you are currently level 74 on live, you are almost certainly level 29, and very close to 30 after the squish.

PTR is open to everyone, you can always hop on and test yourself

this is what blizzard sent me when i contacted them....

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/n...ving-with-the-shadowlands-pre-expansion-patch

are you 100% sure your 72 did not become 28?

*edit i missread your post* so it does look like 79 goes to 29, but might be risky to do it.

 

[irlsteven]

There are workarounds as long as you have at least some wiggle room with your remaining XP. For example, once you actually get to the scaled expansions zones, you can get/set your hearth there, port back to SW/Org and exit chromie time, turn your xp back off, and then use your hearthstone or the portal hub to get back to the non Chromie time version of the zone. Scaling is a tad different outside of Chromie time, but its better than nothing.

i mean there are quests on the bounty board to go to every zone you can pick up without being in chromie time. the ones ive tested have all worked the only weird one is outland you have to just take the port to shat then fly to helfire and run over to the dark portal to finish it. but i mean like i said im not even sure what is causing some people to not be able to enter chromie time with there xp off. every toon i transfer is able to get into chromie time with xp off without a prob

 

[Chops]

i mean there are quests on the bounty board to go to every zone you can pick up without being in chromie time.

can confirm, I did this last night with xp-off and it worked just fine.

 

[Kirise]

Going off that chart, its possible that 79s may some how scale to 29, but you will be like 1 exp away from leveling

I took my 79 to the PTR and turned on XP, and indeed I was literally 1 XP away from leveling. On live, I'm 3/20 bars in. I figure Blizzard put into place some sort of cap-per-level to translate old XP into SL XP. ...Which makes sense. Blizzard wants 80s to become 30s, and they don't want 79s to become 31s, and so forth. I bet a lot of 79s (and 99s, for that matter) will land on the 1-XP-away threshold.

I expect all 79s will become SL 29s. But yeah, don't turn on your XP when you become SL 29. You're a fart away from losing it all.

 

[Snipez]

I started gearing my 70 3 days ago. It’s been really easy to find people to run me through 70 raids, which was quite a surprise!

I really hope that there will be some activity in twink brackets in shadowlands. The gear obtainable will be pretty close to the squished stuff so maybe there’s hope that they will combine xpon/xpoff again.

 

[irlsteven]

the only way they merge xpoff/xpon again is if they go back to templates and i really dont see that happening

 

[Snipez]

the only way they merge xpoff/xpon again is if they go back to templates and i really dont see that happening

To be honest I’m so out of touch with how things work. Don’t they boost stats in bgs and world pvp based on who you are fighting?

 

[Snipez]

On another note, the trinkets with a proc, seem to scale pretty well considering the squashed stats. This is only based off wowhead Ptr, but if they’re correct, the proc trinkets and random set bonuses from crafted gear do look quite powerful

 

[villiansv]

To be honest I’m so out of touch with how things work. Don’t they boost stats in bgs and world pvp based on who you are fighting?

The way it currently works on live in BGs is your stats stay the same but your level gets invisibly boosted to max level of the bracket. For example I have a 93 rogue with 335 crit rating, which outside BGs translates to 35.74% crit. In a BG I still have the same 335 crit rating, but my crit percent is 33.58% (since I'm considered a 99, and higher levels scale lower from the same rating). This is necessary for things like Mind Control, which doesn't work on targets more than 1 level above you.

In WPvP there's no stat scaling that I'm aware of. Instead there's plain damage scaling and reduction (low levels do more dmg to high levels than normal, and take less damage from them). I outlined the exact ratios for 110/111s vs 120s in this thread - https://xpoff.com/threads/exact-damage-scaling-numbers-for-110s-111s-vs-120s.90545/ - there's something similar happening at all level differentials in WPvP but I don't know the exact formula.

 

[Protasius]

you can't get most of them unless you are in Chromie time, which at the moment is mutually exclusive with turning your xp off.

im confused what are your saying here. are you saying you cant enter chromie time with xp off or that you can only get some quests if you xp is on?

I'm XP locked on PTR and Chromie time works just fine. Maybe it didn't in previous builds, but it absolutely works, now.

79 definitely does not become 29 after squish.

It does though. 72-75 becomes 28 and 76-79 becomes 29. Regardless of what level you are at in those brackets, it seems to put you exactly 1 XP away from the next level. My 70 turned 27 with 32,479 of 32,480 XP required to hit 28. The bracket for 27 is 68-71, so this character was right in the middle of it.

So there's no advantage in staying 76, because you'll get thrown right to the top of 29, anyway. You have drop down an entire bracket if you want an XP buffer. But that really doesn't seem necessary, since Chromie is okay with disabled experience.

On another note, the trinkets with a proc, seem to scale pretty well considering the squashed stats. This is only based off wowhead Ptr, but if they’re correct, the proc trinkets and random set bonuses from crafted gear do look quite powerful

Be careful with that one. Some of wowhead's stuff is really off. But if you can find the trinket in the dungeon journal, you can verify it on PTR.
[doublepost=1601592225,1601591884][/doublepost]

The way it currently works on live in BGs is your stats stay the same but your level gets invisibly boosted to max level of the bracket.

One minor exception to this is that heirloom gear does scale up to the max bracket level. The rest of your gear obviously doesn't scale to level, so it stays as-is.

This is mostly a minor thing in current live BGs (the difference between 3-4 item levels in gear may be zero, or even lower stats in some cases, because of Blizzard Math(TM)) but it creates a massive discrepancy when you put 120s in the 119 bracket, because they get a full set of 280 gear while most 119s are much lower than 280 average item level.

 

[villiansv]

One minor exception to this is that heirloom gear does scale up to the max bracket level. The rest of your gear obviously doesn't scale to level, so it stays as-is.

Ah yes that makes sense, since heirloom gear scales to your character level.

 

[Blackberryy]

My 2 cents on the post, I tested to see the 79 scaled version vs the 70 scaled versions of the normal tbc dungeon drops to find that the new scaled versions were only 1 stat in each direction away. With the 70-27 scaling to 34 Ilvl and the 79-29 scaleing to 35 ilvl with the stats following the same pattern of + 1 in secondary’s and primary’s.


A note to consider on the heroic gear being worse than the normal gear, at the first patch of bfa the same was true and they fixed it a few patches later. So I’m assuming this is the same problem they will get to since it currently makes 0 sense. Well hopefully this helps!

 

[Kirise]

Edit: Additional question Kirise, how did your gear turn out? Is any of it scaling to an item level higher than 34 while not requiring level 30+? My gear from SWP/BT/Hyjal scaled between 32-34, so I am curious if there are better options available that either also have sockets, or outweigh the benefits of the socketed BC raid gear.

The answer turned out more complex than I expected. The short version is that for SL 29s née 79s, BiS remains mostly socketed TBC dungeon gear.

All blue dungeon gear went to ilvl 34. Blue battleground crate gear and epic dungeon gear went to ilvl 35. My Cudgel of Saronite Justice went to ilvl 35 (though the Battlemace of the High Priestess will once again become BiS thanks to its socket) and my crafted rings that proc'd blue, went to ilvl 36 (the green versions are ilvl 35). This last one got interesting -- two of the same rings saw different total stats.

One blue Jasper Ring of the Harmonious saw 5int/8stam/5vers/7mastery, while another blue Jasper Ring of the Feverflare got 5int/8stam/7haste/7mastery. The rings used to total up secondary stats very consistently, but now, it appears crafted gear procs are seeing the same perfect/imperfect versions in SL that people found happened to BG crate gear on the PTR.

27s (70s) raid gear stats are only very slightly behind TBC dungeon gear. I'm more concerned about 70s heroic dungeons not being accessible to 27s/29s. If the epic gems that drop from there get grandfathered, and Blizzard fails to scale those grandfathered gems, that could create a noticeable power disparity.

Assuming 79s/29s retain access (and they should) to overstatted quest items, Proc'ing those blue or purple will make them BiS for some classes.

 

[Snipez]

Thanks for the replies..very interesting!

Its strange that Blackberry's level 79 blue scaled to 35 and Kiris' went to 34.

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

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?

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!

P.s. Do you know how well the timewalking stuff scales? theres an event in 1 or 2 weeks time.

Thanks
[doublepost=1601642579,1601642543][/doublepost]also is there a page with a list of BIS 79 characters I could look at to help me?

 

[Blackberryy]

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?

Have not got an instanced pvp pop so not sure on the scaleing difference. 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.


For a best in a lot guide, there are armory’s but most are out of date, I would say the theorycrafting is hard to do definitively before prepatch, and that it’s just safer to try and farm as much gear as you possibly can from raids and dungeons atm, since it’s looking like raid gear will not b offered anymore in our bracket and that dungeon gear will still be better in some spots. All this relying on new expansion quests and dungeons possibly dropping better gear. But my advice is to do some farming now for what you think you’ll need for your class so you can avoid being “Not Prepared”.

 

[Snipez]

If anyone wants to farm heroics for each other I can return the favour. I have a badly geared 120 priest which should be ok to solo stuff.

gotta try and get some gems