Just yesterday I was chatting with a guildmate who raised a question about the Beta and the statistics to which I replied that the balance that Blizzard was striking in this regard was simply magnificent. You notice a great scaling each level that you advance and each area that you advance with the objects that they give you. The monsters hit more yes, but you have more life and do more damage.
Ghostcrawler has spoken on the forums commenting on the same thing, in a post related to the hit rate philosophy, how players get more powerful and the way boss levels work.
Generally speaking, bosses get stronger as we progress through each raid level, causing players to hit new levels at once to stay on top. Bosses get stronger as you, as a player, grow in power, which makes all the sense in the world.
Are you ready for a great message from Ghostcrawler?
You are too focused on the blow itself.
This piece of gear wouldn't exist, but save me having to make 3 versions, consider this series of boots:
- Mission Blue level 83 with: 10 Attack Power, 10 Stamina, 10 Crit, 10 Hit, 10 Parry.
- Mission Blue level 85 with: 12 Attack Power, 12 Stamina, 12 Crit, 12 Hit, 12 Parry.
- Raid Tier 1 level 85 with: 14 Attack Power, 14 Stamina, 14 Critical, 14 Hit, 14 Parry.
- Raid Tier 1 level 86 with: 16 Attack Power, 16 Stamina, 16 Critical, 16 Hit, 16 Parry.
When you go from level 83 to 85, you still have the same amount of relative power with creatures. Why? Because creatures gain levels. His health increases so you need more Attack Power. Its damage increases and you need more health. Your chance to crit, hit, and parry is reduced so you need those attributes as well.
So far good.
When you start raiding, the boss levels are 88. This makes it a bit more difficult to hit him and all you need more on your team to stay on. No problems up to here.
Now let's look at the final piece of equipment. You go from a first level gang to a second level one. Bosses hit harder so you need more life. They have more health so you need more Attack Power. But the boss is still level 88 like he was in the first level. This means that you critics more than the previous boss because your crit increased. You do more damage to the harder boss than the easier one. You also hit him more (unless you hit the cap, which is most likely) and block him more.
We solved the problem of the Icecrown stop, inelegantly, by placing a "debuff." This basically allowed the creatures to scale with your level. We couldn't fix the crit or hit issues so players got more and more powerful and even reached the limit of those attributes (or got very close in the case of the crit). Just as players are often very concerned (and often rightly so) about not climbing with the team, bosses are not climbing with the team. All the issues that can occur to players when their damage (or healing or tanking) is not scaling was occurring with bosses. You were climbing very well on crit, hit and parry.
A different way would have been for level 2 bosses to be level 89 or 90 instead of level 88. Then naturally you would need more critical, hit and parry to deal with them. This makes intuitive sense but absurd things happen with the game because creature levels were never intended to be used in this way. For example, the boss would criticize and resist attacks. Even worse, it would be worse with the next tier of content. If Deathwing at the end of Cataclysm (Spoiler!) Is a level 93 boss, then what is the level of the first boss of the next expansion? Level 93? Level 90? Level 96?
Instead we are "tricking" the bosses to gain levels. We have not yet found the exact mechanics but imagine that they are level 88+ or level 88.3 or level 88 SKULL BAD SKULL. As you get more powerful and get better gear, they get more powerful… just like all those bosses you've faced while leveling up. Instead of hitting and critting the most dangerous enemies more often, your relative power always stays the same. You scale.
At the very least, it's nice to see how they're looking for ways that the system doesn't crash again on the last band.