Stat squish The stat squish ( also known as the item squish or simply " the squish " ) saw many numbers within the game scaled down , including stats on items , player and mob health , and damaging and healing abilities . It was implemented in Patch 6 . 0 . 2 . The " stat squish " strictly refers only to changes made to items , but in practice the term is often used to encompass three related changes , which in combination acted to drastically alter numbers in the game . Because these changes were implemented simultaneously , for many the sum total of the combined changes is viewed as the result of the stat squish . The combined result of this was to drastically reduce numbers throughout the game , while maintaining damage and health proportions between players and creatures ; to make damage and healing less " spiky " and burst - oriented ; to improve spell and ability damage scaling and tuning ; and to make it easier for players to tackle lower - level content from past expansions . History . The concept was first aired in a developer blog posted on November 3 , 2011 , regarding the numbers in the game growing larger than envisioned over the course of WoW ' s first decade . Blizzard is now trying to scale back the power that item level provides to make the numbers a bit more manageable . Stat inflation began in earnest during " Wrath of the Lich King " with the development of hard modes and the insertion of a fourth raid tier sending item levels far higher than they were originally anticipated to reach by the end of the expansion . The stat squish was demonstrated in action for the first time to players two years later at BlizzCon 2013 , and went live with the " " mechanics pre - patch in Patch 6 . 0 , a few weeks before the expansion was released with the new content . Blizzard has stressed that the item squish will " not " affect the relative difficulty of killing any creature , or the ability to solo old content . As of Blizzcon 2013 they had yet to reveal how they will accomplish the latter , but an idea Ghostcrawler tweeted months earlier involved buffing high level players in low level raids to compensate for the reduced relative power . During a Q & A session , a dev said " If players could kill Gulp Frog s on the Timeless Isle in five seconds before the squish , it will take five seconds to kill them after the squish . " The squish will however affect damage and healing ability output more than player health , in order to reduce the importance of burst in combat . For example , a tank may find their health reduced from something like 1 million to around 400k health at the start of the expansion . This is intended to make combat less concerned with burst and quick reflexes . The issue . Over the course of five expansions , the power level jumps between tiers within an expansion have far outpaced character level . At the time , this made sense , as moving to a new tier of content should mean a jump in player power level commensurate with the creature power level in the new tier . In other words , a new tier of loot should always feel like an upgrade to the previous tier . Blizzard approves of large jumps between tiers , as they can tune raid encounters to be extremely punishing for cutting - edge raiders ( still mostly geared from the previous tier ) yet still accessible for other players who may not see the later fights or higher difficulty levels until they have grown much more powerful by obtaining current gear . This is all well and good , but nearly a decade has passed since the release of the game . The power level jump between Molten Core ( tier 1 ) and Blackwing Lair ( tier 2 ) , or even between " Wrath of the Lich King " and " Cataclysm " is utterly inconsequential in the era of Throne of Thunder ( tier 15 ) and Siege of Orgrimmar ( tier 16 ) . As a result of the successive power jumps , currently near the end of " Mists of Pandaria " , the average damage - specialized raider has more than 600 , 000 health ( more than most bosses in Molten Core ) and is individually dealing more than 240 , 000 damage per second ( nearly as much as an entire 25 - player raid attempting heroic Al ' Akir ) . Additionally , bosses have run into issues where their maximum health has grown too high . WoW stores health values in , which have a maximum value of 2 ^ 31 - 1 , or 2 , 147 , 483 , 647 . Ra - den , the heroic - only boss of Throne of Thunder , starts at roughly 1 , 500 , 000 , 000 health in 25 - player mode . As part of the fight , if players make mistakes his health could increase to the point where it would . In order to avoid repeating the problem , Garrosh Hellscream must heal ( from 10 % to full ) several times with a smaller maximum health pool than would otherwise be necessary . The table on the right provides an overview of the item level - vs - character level change over the course of the raid tiers of " World of Warcraft " . For the sake of simplicity , the table only shows the " normal " item level of most armor pieces and items in a tier . The table does not show Raid Finder , Flexible , or Heroic difficulties , nor Thunderforged / Warforged random drops , nor 10 - man raids which varied from 7 - 13 ilvls behind during Wrath , nor raid end bosses ' higher ilvl drops , nor Pandaria ' s NPC upgrades . It should be stressed that all of these give rise to considerable variation . By the time of the Siege of Orgrimmar items drop in no fewer than six different types ( RF , Flex , Normal , Normal Warforged , Heroic , Heroic Warforged ) and combined with the NPC upgrades , SoO gear ranges from 528 for stock Raid Finder gear up to 580 for 2 / 2 upgraded Heroic Warforged . As there will still be four difficulties in " Warlords of Draenor " this wide variation is expected to remain as well . The solution . Please note : While the item squish has already been implemented in the expansion ' s beta , precise numbers have not yet been recorded and may still be in flux . The numbers here represent projections from earlier presentations . Rather than having massive jumps between tiers in an older expansion , and from one expansion to the next , the plan in " Warlords of Draenor " is to flatten out the power curve . In all previous expansions ' tiers , there will be a minimal jump from one tier ( and one expansion ) to the next , and the effective power that item level provides will be scaled back . The current expansion will still have notable power jumps between tiers , just like before . From the " Pruning the Garden of War " blog post : Numbers . Prior to the expansion ' s alpha test , Celestalon tweeted that the " squish [ was ] applied across the board ( numbers about ~ 4 % of what they were ) . Except player health , which is at ~ 8 % . " As of July ' s beta build , many level 100 characters have around 250 , 000 health in epic ilvl 660 gear . Items with around 2 , 400 stamina in " Mists " will provide around 100 stamina in " Warlords " . Earlier information . Using the numbers seen at BlizzCon 2013 , the table below lists stats for a random level 90 gnome frost mage wearing similar PvE - focused item level 538 gear before and after the squish . Note that the stats are not exactly the same because the gear wasn ' t an exact match . At the same time , level 90 mobs drop from having 393 , 000 health to roughly 40 , 000 health . Main attacks ( like Frostbolt ) also fall from doing nearly 50 , 000 damage to roughly 2 , 000 .