Midnight Overview
Midnight Stat Squish
As the name suggests, stat squishes are designed to reduce the overall item level of player characters, which in turn reduces numerical inflation of player stats. The result? Numbers across the board decrease, including total health, damage dealt, healing, etc.
See, for example, this comparison of a currently geared Warrior in The War Within pre-stat squish and post-stat squish. Secondary stat numbers reflect closely, but the overall item level and main stats decrease.
Farm Old Content Now Before the Stat Squish Hits
With a stat squish on the horizon, now is the time to farm old content due to the instability of scaling and stat squishes.
In theory, content scaling works in a 1:1 ratio, but in practice, this is not so simple. Scaling throughout different content in WoW is not consistent, think of Timewalking, for example. With the amount of scaling changes that have happened to Timewalking, there have been instances of certain classes doing insane numbers of damage for seemingly random reasons. In other cases, Timewalking has been overtuned to the point where certain leveled characters simply couldn't complete content.
Another instance where scaling issues occur is with soloing old content (Looking at you BfA). We've had many instances in the past where certain content is no longer soloable once a stat squish occurs, and users have already reported similar experiences on the Midnight Beta. This Reddit thread makes mention of people no longer being able to solo certain content on the Midnight Beta.
drgn2009, on Reddit: "The only one ive done so far is the first boss in Sepulcher and its messed up. I can kill him <30 seconds in retail but takes over two minutes in the beta. So past xpacs are going to be messed up."
Of course, this content will inevitably get fixed once it's been raised to Blizzard's attention, but while we know the content is correctly tuned, now is the time to farm any mounts, transmog, or other rewards you might be hunting for.
