The Ideal Level?

[Zly]

First, i know this is the 10's thread and i love being 10 but always looking to hit the sweet spot. This is from disc priest perspective and may not apply to other specs.

At 10 disc mastery does nothing as its based off atonement which we get at 12. Also picking up penance along the way at 11. This would greatly increase my heals due to atonement healing for 50% of damage and mastery adding another 50% to that(depending on how much we can stack/proc).

What i would loose is the roughly 0.06% per level scaling of secondary stats and whatever reduction in main stat/spell power happens per level. I don't have a good grasp of how much damage loss that is and how much loss in base healing before the huge bump and qol of atonement.

Thoughts on this and any info on damage/healing loss per level is appreciated.

 

[Dragpz]

I would say play Holy, the way that scaling works nowadays is that difficulty ramps up almost exponentially as you level up. From level 10 to 20 the Time-to-kill easily quadruples, even moreso if you are not gear-appropriate.

 

[DeLindsay]

If you don't want to stay 10 but not go all the way to 19/20 then I'd say the sweet spot is 15. You get Superior/Epic Craftables (at 14) and access to more Dungeons (at 15), some of which add more pcs to Dungeon Sets which give even more Stats.

EDIT: @Dragpz is correct. There are a number of Level 19 Classes that cannot solo Dungeons, while just about all Level 10's can, similar Gearing levels. Level 10 scaling has always been the literal sweet spot for Twinking but TBC/WotLK and now SL has the scaling to absurd levels.

 

[Emelia]

The scaling from 10-14 doesn't change much. 15+ tips scaling in a very bad way. (pve enemy hp/dmg and your own stat raios)

I've been running an 11 bear for thrash. I recommend you make 1 or 5 alts and test out base dmg and healing of spells until you notice a special spot for your class/spec. Remember at 15 more gear opens up but your ratios drop and the enemy hp in pve goes way up. So again somewhere 11-14 might end up best for some specs as opposed to 10 or 19 or 20. At 14 the first relic of the past is unlocked allowing a wider variety of gear while remaining within beneficial scaling numbers.

Alt farming Legion Boe: When farming Legion green Boe it is best to be 5 levels above your main to insure the best ilvl drops for your main. Example: My 11 bear gets ilvl 20 gear if a level 16 loots them. For 14 twink a 19 would be farming the gear. I am unsure as to what loot rules the Epic Boe's have. I'm just stating how the Greens work.

 

[Zly]

Thanks for all the info, really great stuff. Looks like i have much more testing to do before making a decision. I am guessing to test actual damage and healing at different levels they would need to be in heirlooms to keep gear the same. Then use another toon as a constant to monitor numbers since they appear different based on level?

 

[Warglave]

I'm just curious as to the "ideal" level to solo content... anything lower than X9 is gimping in BGs (not necessarily much but almost every instance it is) so the only thing that matters is PvE and WPvP (not gonna bother with the latter). Not a lot of group content that would matter at this low level, so all I'd factor is solo content. Any thoughts on that? Dungeon solo, best of?

Someone told me priest for that, working on it now... but since they nerfed everything my altoholic withdrawl is building.

 

[Dragpz]

I'm just curious as to the "ideal" level to solo content... anything lower than X9 is gimping in BGs (not necessarily much but almost every instance it is) so the only thing that matters is PvE and WPvP (not gonna bother with the latter). Not a lot of group content that would matter at this low level, so all I'd factor is solo content. Any thoughts on that? Dungeon solo, best of?

Someone told me priest for that, working on it now... but since they nerfed everything my altoholic withdrawl is building.

Pretty much any class with a heal, personally I prefer the hybrids, Druid, Monks and Pallies. Pally > Druid > Monk in my personal opinion. Shamans, Hunters and Priests are okay, haven't really tested Lock. 10 is probably the best for solo PVE content. What's interesting to note that Demon Hunters start with 100% riding, so if you finish the starting zone at 14, you'd be slightly ahead of the curve. The real issue right now is that Demon Hunters feel like crap to play

 

[DeLindsay]

Whenever I get time, I plan to make either a a 14 or 15 Hunter, maybe both, to see how it compares to 10.

 

[Emelia]

Thanks for all the info, really great stuff. Looks like i have much more testing to do before making a decision. I am guessing to test actual damage and healing at different levels they would need to be in heirlooms to keep gear the same. Then use another toon as a constant to monitor numbers since they appear different based on level?

if you have multiple accounts use one of them to record dmg and healing with a dmg/heal meter. The level of the recorder toon doesn't matter as you will see a change in numbers. However if you want to know what you're doing and not what a 50 sees than do have the recorder toon be your level 10-14.

Use the same gear on each toon
Looms will work fine as they will show the change in ratios for 2ndary stats.
take note of the average dmg, crit dmg and crit rate for each spell during each level
take note of cast times and dot tick times
take not if 1 vers is better than 1 mastery
take note of the mob hp
take note if it requires 1 more gcd or tick of a dot to kill.

take note how much each heal heals the recorder toon for
use your imagination to test more
just try to keep the gear the same among the toons for more accurate measurements (dont have one full gear and another half)

 

[Zly]

My thoughts exactly. 5 minutes on a target dummy and then healing dummy should be good. Thinking this will be relatively easy to do

But of course, in the end, Blizz will blue post about a week before the next pvp season saying something like "We made the decision to let you have fun in the pre-patch by disabling pvp scaling. We are turning it back on with tomorrows reset". They pretty much will be forced to with how broken pvp is at all levels right now
[doublepost=1603597211,1603574690][/doublepost]Results from testing 10, 11, and 12 on target dummies with a lvl 13 toon recording with details. All tests were done wearing nothing but the same 9 pieces of heirloom gear.

1)Damage dealing-Smite spam, Mind Blast on CD, maintain SWP for 5 minutes

Level 10- 39 DPS
Level 11- 34 DPS
Level 12- 38 DPS

This was confusing at first until i realized that the looms scaled up to ilvl 15 at level 12. At level 10 i had 44 stats plus 55 base(not including stam). At 12 i had 68 stats plus 57 base. So looking at DPS per stat. Side note: Wowheads scaler is incorrect for looms.

Level 10- 0.39 DPS/stat
Level 11- 0.34 DPS/stat
Level 12- 0.30 DPS/stat

2)Healing numbers- Flash heal spam until out of mana, roughly 3 minutes

Level 10- 161 HPS or 1.78 HPS/stat
Level 12- 137 HPS or 1.18 HPS/stat

3)On my 10 twink with 274 stats these numbers came out to 0.43 DPS/stat and 1.77 HPS/stat. So i feel like these numbers are pretty close to accurate. Just off a bit due to rounding errors and all stats not being equal to 1 as is the assumption here.

4)Applying these numbers to the move to 12 in my twink gear at 274 stats results in.

DPS at lvl 10- 120 DPS, at 12- 82 DPS
HPS at lvl 10- 485 HPS, at 12- 323 HPS

My takeaways are that with the current extreme amount of stats we have its not worth going to 12 to pick up penance and more importantly atonement for damage to be applied to healing. I say that because it would require around 150 extra stats to equal the level 10 numbers. As more of the gear we have now is unavailable this gap will decrease and then the move may make sense

Bonus for anyone wondering what these numbers look like to a lvl 50, DPS is 2.4k and HPS is 7.7k so pretty much on par with mythic raid numbers

Small print- Take this with a grain of salt
Edit 10-26: Applying these numbers(pre-edit) to my twink's gear was not accurate and so I realized I made several mistakes on above numbers and i am editing now. I didnt take into account the 41 primary stat and 5% crit which we have base at 10. Adding in the base stats made the numbers work so i feel pretty comfortable with these numbers