I have two level 270 characters on my roster. We can argue how or why PVE scaling happens, but, for whatever reason, be it level or performance-based it does happen.
For me, personally, the problem with PVE scaling basically boils down to 2 things:
1. My harder nodes scale to 300+, which essentially necessitates usage of my 2 level 270 characters on every one of those nodes. Or, I have to resort to highly exploitive tactics like Magstique or the current gimmick du jour. This makes many smart PVE players hold off on investing ISO in their characters. To me, this is bad for D3 as D3 should want players to want to use their in-game resources as much as possible, not hold off on using them. Seems like bad business for a player to be better off not using an in-game resource.
2. Because of this, despite having 60 characters on my roster, I’m looking at maybe 5 usable characters or less for most of the PVE nodes that I play. This leads to repetitive usage of maybe 2 teams and leads to me feeling like I might as well sell off most of my weaker characters. For every weaker 1*, 2*, or low 3* I sell, this effectively costs D3 money as it saves me HP on buying new slots for new characters.
My suggestion -
In light of the recent PVP boost changes which have led to a much more varied and interesting environment, why not make PVE boosts relative to the highest level character on a player’s roster? Or, alternatively, just improve PVE boosts overall, either greatly increasing the number of levels boosted or perhaps even using the same boost scale in place in PVP currently?
A 40 level or 30 level boost is a big deal when your highest character is 94 or lower. It becomes substantially less impactful when your highest level character becomes 166 or 270.
For example, if you have a level 270 roster, perhaps a 1* might be boosted 60 levels.
A 2* might be boosted 90 levels.
A 3* might be boosted 100 levels.
And the “big boost” character might be boosted 150 levels.
(side note - isn’t it time to have at least 1 boosted 4* in a PVE event?)
In this environment, it would seem much more worthwhile for players to keep all the characters on their rosters that they can. And, it would help avoid PVE burnout by offering players a different experience each PVE event. The player might still pass on the boosted characters, but, at least they had the option of using some other viable characters temporarily. We would still fight Dark Avengers over and over but at least our used teams might vary.
I suggest this partially because, God help me, I actually liked the Heroic… Primarily because I was using characters and teams that were never viable for me before. That was fun. Daredevil, Gamora, Mohawk, even Squirrel Girl, etc. all became vital parts of my roster for a few days and they interacted in interesting ways. I would literally never use these characters under normal circumstances because they are vastly inferior to the relatively few high tier characters on my roster.
Much like Heroics, this would also lead to players using other characters on their rosters, (I assume that’s the point of Heroics), but, in this scenario, the player would still have access to their other characters … It’s a “pull” versus a “push”. Nobody likes to be forced into something, but, if you give me an incentive…
Anyway, just an idea. I’m sure other forum users will have better ones, but, it just seems that this experience could be improved in some way.