The Midnight pre-patch is bringing World of Warcraft’s fourth stat squish. Item levels are set to decrease, reducing our primary and secondary stats, item levels and HP. Let’s take a look at what your character might look like after the patch on January 20th.
Item Level Chart
Comparing pre and post 12.0 gear, reddit user thejayvm put together a handy chart during the Midnight alpha.
Starting at Veteran 1/8 or Adventurer 5/8, item level increases are consistent with the current season, increasing by 3 for each rank. Midnight is decreasing current item levels by 560. Below veteran track, gear will only increase by 1 level for each rank.
You can check out the whole chart below.
Primary Stat and Health Squish
Your primary stat, stamina, and armor are being reduced by more than 99 percent. On live servers, health pools in the millions or even 10s of millions are going to be dropping significantly. A fully geared non-tank character will have somewhere around 150-160K HP, with exact values depending on race, gear, class, and talents.
Secondaries
Secondary stats after the patch are staying similar to where they currently are, but may not be exact due to the squish. A character with 25 percent haste for example will have close to that value on patch day, but could vary by a few percentage points.
It won’t be until leveling that the secondary stats will be weighted differently.
Legion Remix Characters
Legion Remix comes to an end just prior to the pre-patch. Your characters will be given a full set of 655 item level gear, equal to Adventurer 1/8. The squish changes it to item level 102, as confirmed by Blizzard. That portion of their WoW weekly post is found below.
WoW Weekly: Midnight Draws Near, Last Weekend of Legion Remix, and More!
When the dust settles and you find yourself returned to the main timeline in Azeroth, any Remix-specific items, equipment, and quests will be removed. Each transferred character will receive 2,000 gold and a set of item level 655 (102 after the squish) armor and weapons along with retaining any gold earned during Legion Remix.
Stats Squished for a Fourth Time
World of Warcraft previously saw three other stat squishes. Warlords of Draenor’s only reduced stats and not item levels. Battle for Azeroth was the first squish where we saw item level reductions, bringing down item levels from Legion where legendaries could reach level 1000.
Shadowlands followed Battle for Azeroth with another squish, but also decreased character levels and changed levelling as a whole. Item levels have been untouched since then, but just two expansions later, we’ve gained roughly another 550 item levels.
