FEEDBACK: Post-Squish Legacy Content

The 6.0 patch includes the much-discussed "stat squish," linearizing the item power curve between level 60 and level 90 content, with the effect of bringing endgame damage, health, and stat values back to more sane levels.

To offset the effect of this change on players' ability to solo or otherwise do old content, we've made a change to the combat system that gives players scaling bonus damage and reduced damage taken when fighting enemies that are lower-level and from a prior expansion. With the sheer amount of content involved, and the number of special-case mechanics found in boss fights over the years, it's quite possible that there are some exceptions or quirks for which we've failed to account.

Please use this thread to discuss cases where you attempted doing old content that you were able to successfully complete on the live servers, and found it to be significantly more challenging (or impossible). Details of exactly which ability or abilities were doing excessive damage, and logs if possible, would be particularly helpful.

We're going through and making adjustments based on this thread, other feedback, and our own internal testing. Some of the issues were pure oversights; others reflect a loophole when it comes to self-inflicted or friendly-fire damage, for which we're working on a comprehensive fix.

I do want to clarify, however, that our changes are only intended to offset the direct effects of the "squish" and our goal has been to make sure that linearizing the item curve between item levels ~60 and 463 doesn't impact the ability to solo legacy content. That is not the same as saying that we guarantee nothing will change, period - we've made a number of adjustments to tank mitigation, healing, defensive cooldowns, and so forth. That's nothing new for an expansion, and in some cases, yes, that will make old content more challenging than it was in 5.4.8, especially for tank specs that could previously use Vengeance to great effect. But that has nothing to do with the item squish.

There is no specific intent or plan for when and whether anything becomes soloable. That's up to you.

We design the content to be appropriately difficult for the original audience at the appropriate level (whether that's a few players in the outdoor world, a dungeon group with a dedicated tank and healer, a full raid group, etc.). Over time, as player power grows through access to higher levels, more powerful gear, new talents, and so forth, content that used to require a group becomes soloable, organically. Some classes (tanks, those with better self-healing, those with pets) will be able to do it sooner than others, but everyone will get there eventually. It might take an extra tier, or even an extra expansion, but that's just the nature of how the power curve works. And if you can't solo something but are interested in a shot at a transmog item, achievement, or rare mount, you can always bring a friend or two.

We don't nerf old content specifically to make it soloable - we occasionally make quality-of-life changes when a mechanic (like Thorim's cleanup that reset the fight if the arena was unoccupied) is artificially preventing players who have the raw power to solo an encounter from doing so. But we don't go back and specifically make old content numerically easier.

I should have phrased my initial post(s) better. The intent certainly wasn't a blanket dismissal of concerns about new difficulties with soloing content that you can handle easily in 5.4.

Right now, there is a known bug (for which we should have a fix in an upcoming build) that is causing raid bosses (especially in Cataclysm content) to be more challenging for level 90 players than is the intent. There are also specific issues with encounters that we're still hand-adjusting (Gunship in Icecrown, notably). That will get sorted out. The overwhelming majority of players shouldn't see any negative impact to their legacy content experience when they go from 5.4 to 6.0.

The sole exception here, which is what I was clarifying, is that if there's an encounter that you can just barely solo as a tank spec on live today, it's quite possible that you won't quite be able to do so in 6.0. It's also possible that something you can solo comfortably today might be slightly harder in 6.0, but still doable. But that's because of basic changes to self-healing and the potency of tank cooldowns, and not anything related to our item or stat changes. And in any case, I'm talking about smaller differences here, not something like getting destroyed by Morchok when you can solo him easily on live, which is the result of a bug.