What happens to our iLevels?

[Gunspec]

3.0 will be the same as WoW, but lots of people don't seem to understand what that means.

If you hit level cap in a WoW expansion (let's say level 70), and were only wearing the stuff that you got during quests (maybe ilevel 155), the gear from the beginning of the next expansion would be incredibly powerful (like ilevel 200 at level 71). However, if you hit level cap in the previous expansion, and then did ALL of the RAID and DUNGEON content as it was released, you would end the previous expansion at about ilevel 235.

The new gear at the beginning of the expansion only seems incredibly powerful if you were using a FRESH character who hadn't geared up over the course of the expansion.

In Heavensward, a FRESH level 50 player will be encountering gear of ilevel 90-100 right of the bat. That's a HUGE increase over their ilevel 55 job gear. But for anyone that has been running expert dungeons, World of Darkness, Coil, etc, the new gear will not be worth equipping until much later in the leveling process.