One of the concurrent issues in World of Warcraft is the Item Level which can be misleading to most specially now in Legion where Blizzard made a huge change in stats progression, making the impact of secondary stats a whole lot crucial in the overall output of your character. Today, we're going to talk about the flaw in the game's Item Level and how it can indirectly affect your character as a whole.
World of Warcraft Item Level
It's basically normal that people from LFR and any other premade groups to require a specific amount of Item level before you're eligible to join the raid simply because the game's concept somehow implies that the higher the item level is, the higher the damage output the character can muster. But is this really the case? Well, for those that have already played WoW for a long time now can clearly say that it is not - and today, we will be explaining just how loose the system of item level in the game currently is.
World of Warcraft Stats
Secondary stats (Mastery, Crit, Haste, Multistrike, Versatility) play a vital role in the character's damage output and should be tweaked depending on the talent of each specific character. As stated in the video down below, for example, Mastery is placed above Agility for Marksmanship Hunter when it comes to Stat priority which means that a higher item level with lesser (or entirely without mastery) is far more inferior than that of a lesser item level with the inclusion of the aforementioned substat.
Aside from this, gem sockets work independently from item level which could give you +75 of a substat (if you have a socket gem of course) for each socket. Therefore, it's practically inaccurate to say that the highest item level will give you the highest damage overall as your character's damage output relies heavily on its stats priority in which case, the secondary attributes play a vital role.
The Source of the Problem
Just like what BellularGaming pointed out, despite having a sufficient amount of knowledge and damage output that he and his character can muster during raids, it's still hard to get into premade groups primarily because of the community's perception with regards to item level and how they view it as a staple towards a successful run. But this issue is definitely not the players' fault as it's basically how the game and its community progress; therefore, it should be on Blizzard's end to take measures on how to "fix" this issue which has been plaguing the game ever since.
If you can remember, Blizzard introduced reforging back in Cataclysm where you can essentially convert an undesired substats into your desired one but it lead to a dull and saturated builds which was inclined to what's "best" on a specific character and therefore was removed to create diversity amongst the community. But regardless of its existence, the current issue about Item level still remains and there are no hints that Blizzard is taking any steps in fixing this problem.
Solution
The only solution, as of the moment, is for people to be aware of the stats priority of each class and be keen on how they build their character as they progress into the game. For those of you that are having a hard time getting into runs, the best and most effective way to get yourself into one is to find a guild for yourself. Aside from that, we can only hope that Blizzard will fix this Item level issue which has been a recurring problem in Legion.
