Item Level too high

[Astarica]

I find that rampant inflation usually comes from poorly designed encounter. Let's say level cap gets raised to level 60 tomorrow and a corresponding amount of content/gear comes out. If we take the WoW model where things in the last expansion is more or less trivial when done in current expansion gear, then what kind of gear do you need? Well for one you probably need to be able to survive an Earthen Fury on Titan HM without destroying the heart, so that means everyone needs to have 12K+ HP, since there's nothing special about Titan HM that require it to remain non-trivial. And that'd be a ton of gear inflation to satisfy this. Without debating whether new expansion should trivialize the older one, if that's the path you chosen (and almost every MMORPG is on that path now), you have to be really careful with your design. A lot of time it feels like the devs just put a very large number (like Earthen Fury without killing heart) and say 'Nobody could possibly survive that', and then next expansion comes around and now suddenly you're expected to survive that due to player's expectation of older content should be trivial.

Of course, the solution to this is that Titan's Earthen Fury should just do 5000 damage unmitiigated by any ability, which renders it unsurviveable by anyone but tanks (so you'll still wipe), but we can easily imagine a level 60 party have say 6000 HP and just tough it out if they're unable to kill the heart for whatever reason.