Vanilla stats too complicated for retailers

[Eleccybubb]

Nothing wrong with it, I like it too, it's just that there are even fewer people there than in average zone on EK / Kali.

To be honest I see people a lot. Just my experience.

One zone you really don't see people leveling in. Silithus.

[Whiskra]

That tanks in vanilla reached defcap seems to be a very common misconseption, at leat in this thread. Getting defcapped was not that easy, the gear simply did not have enough defense on it, and the only way to enchant it was with Zul'Gurub enchants as a Warrior (14 def total) and an extremely rare Leatherworking drop from MC (9 def total, and you would sacrifice a lot better enchants if you used this enchant on each available slot). Defcap was however not as important as it was in TBC and later on, since the Warrior's Shield Block ability could have a near 100% uptime and pushed both critical strikes and crushing blows off the boss attack tables, which made Block% the least desirable stat for a Warrior tank (block value was also quite so-so but became very valuable in Naxxramas when Shield Slam was reworked to scale with it, which is also reflected heavily in the Naxxramas gear). This was a benefit that neither Druids or Paladins had, which is one of the reasons they were inherently inferior as tanks.

If you claim that your tanks back in vanilla reached defcap, they very likely did not.

[Deleted]

I don't know what you are talking about, stats where way more simple in vanilla than in later expansions.

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Stats weren't complicated back then, people were just far more retarded.

The only class that had to somewhat balance their stats was tanks. Pushing critical strikes and crushing blows off the table were basically the only important thing, and you mostly did that by stacking +defense skill.

I played a rogue and the amount of ignorance in the community was absolutely astounding. 95% of rogues (and warriors) had no idea that +weapon skill was fucking broken, to where it was by and large the strongest stat in the game from a DPS perspective. You couldn't remove glancing blows from the game, but if you had +10 weapon skill you could entirely remove the damage penalty.

I forget the exact math but glancing blows basically meant that 30% (this part I can't remember) of your auto attacks would never be able to crit, and their damage was always reduced by 30%. Having +10 weapon skill, against boss level mobs meant that your attacks could still glance, but it would effectively remove the damage penalty. Meaning that your auto attacks would do full damage. Considering rogue (I can't remember warrior damage breakdown, but it was similar) damage breakdown was over 70% auto attack, getting yourself +10 weapon skill effectively meant you would gain over 21% damage.

Weapon skill was rare, but people were also retarded. Before normalization (to a degree) people also didn't understand why weapon speed was super important (which is why Arcanite Reaper, and Barman Shanker were so strong).

Again, it wasn't complicated it was more that people had no idea what they were doing. You saw casters wearing that shitty itemized dungeon and T1 gear (before the re-vamp) that had zero spell power on it because it was rare/purple. When in reality you were better off wearing greens that gave stamina and +elemental damage lol. This part was pretty common though. You could tell people who knew what they were doing as far as gear goes because they stayed away from shitty itemization, and didn't wear shit just because it was purple. Hand of justice for melee was one of the best trinkets in the game for rogues and it was a level 51 or 53 drop from BRD.

I think you just hang out with the wrong people, almost all the things you tell was common knowledge in vanilla.

[Kantoro]

Don't Dumb the game down for dumb people™

[MasterHamster]

Tanks and healer gear today is dps gear with different stat weights, so while vanilla/bc stats wasn't hard to comprehend per se, the homogenization of stats is completely fucked. It's LITERALLY nothing but main stats + secondary. Removal of Spirit for healers was the final nail in the coffin for having stats have any depth at all, or real difference between specs/roles, other than as mentioned stat weights.

Just another slippery slope in terms of design.

[Meow]

Are the stats too complicated for retailers to sell Vanilla at a good price?

[Tojara]

I don't know what you are talking about, stats where way more simple in vanilla than in later expansions.

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I think you just hang out with the wrong people, almost all the things you tell was common knowledge in vanilla.

Please lol. I cleared almost all of the original Naxx and there were still people in my own guild who didn't know how or refused to believe how weapon skill worked. The alliance guild on our server Vis Maior was one of the few guilds in the US to actually clear Naxx, and their officer rogue played combat daggers and didn't use SND at all. He published a video of patchwerk when people thought that boss was impossible under the title of "No Gimmicks, all skill", then proceeded to play combat daggers completely wrong. If that isn't a testament to how retarded the general player base was (and that guild was actually very good), even at the top end, I don't know what to tell you.

So many examples of this shit, and I don't really care to go through them all. Weapon skill, %hit, better itemized blues, weapon speed and spell power. The shear amount of ignorance and retardation in Vanilla was wide spread if you cared to pay attention, and it's cancer plagued the player base from the top to bottom. You could tell if a healer was good or not depending on whether or not they could find the mana neutral downranked healing spell, compared to the idiots who spammed the highest rank and sat there being useless for the rest of the encounter.

Nobody is saying that Vanilla stats were hard. People are saying that there was a large amount of ignorance in how things worked and what you're suppose to look for. This is a combination of it being a lot of peoples first MMO and the lack of resources. I'm not really a Vanilla supporter, but there were more stats and far more confusing itemization in Vanilla. It's like the game purposely tried to confuse people back then, to the point that you could really fuck your character if you weren't careful. You can still do that today, but the game is far more streamlined and won't fuck your character that badly if you use the wrong stats.

[Thage]

This is just wrong.

Vanilla stats weren't difficult to comprehend at all.

This. Unlike some modern stats (like Mastery, for example), every stat in Vanilla did pretty much exactly what it says on the label. Block made you block better, resistance lowered the damage you took from the associated element, weapon skill made you better with that weapon, defense made you a better defender, spell damage increased your spell damage for the specified school, and mana per 5 seconds regenerated that much mana every 5 seconds. The stats themselves aren't complex, it's the breakpoints and soft caps a lot of less-savvy players didn't understand (and even then, like with WotLK's Armor Penetration, there were some stats like Hit where people just memorized a magic number to hit and went from there without really bothering to learn what the stat did in detail).

edit: That being said, there were some really fucking goofy design decisions in Vanilla, mostly through itemization if you wanted to play an off-beat spec. Stuff like level 40something mail gloves being best in slot for Fury warriors because of the weapon skill, or the fierce loot competition between rogues and Fury warriors because rogue leather was ridiculously well-itemized for Fury and DPS plate itemization was a joke until mid-WotLK (with Armored to the Teeth being a bandaid talent to lower rogue/Feral/Fury loot competition by encouraging Fury to pick up DPS plate, which persisted until Cata removed the 1 AGI - 1 AP conversion for warriors).

[Regalbeast]

You do realize that a ton of "retailers" also played Vanilla, right? This is such a troll thread

[Akka]

This. Unlike some modern stats (like Mastery, for example), every stat in Vanilla did pretty much exactly what it says on the label. Block made you block better, resistance lowered the damage you took from the associated element, weapon skill made you better with that weapon, defense made you a better defender, spell damage increased your spell damage for the specified school, and mana per 5 seconds regenerated that much mana every 5 seconds.

That's... just the exact opposite of reality. Today's stat are explicitely saying everything that the stat does, while Vanilla stat were on the contrary NOT being clear about their precise effects. Saying "weapon skill makes you better with that weapon" as an example of a supposedly explicit stat speaks for itself.

[Leetbeartank]

Sorry but if there was a choice of Paladin and Warrior, they would tell the warrior to be tank and the Paladin to go back in line and be a buffadin.

Basically what I just said...

[Heathy]

you get a bit more choice today, at least int stacking was the best option for healing iirc, more mana = more heals = longer time before oom.

these days you basically get to choose whether to stack crit/haste/mastery/vers each spec has a primary and secondary that are better than the other two but there is an element of balance involved. you didn't get enough gear to have much min/maxing options in classic you used whatever you got/won the bid for. some items lasted for a long time like the trinkets from the books in dire maul, the priest one had int and mp5, which was kinda bis for a while i think the only other one like it was the rejuv gem in bwl.

[nyc81991]

Not being optimized is not the same thing as being bad
I would argue the exact opposite in fact

Itemization was bad. Blizzard has stated that themselves in the past.

[bash the fash]

Literally every 'retailer' I know either hates that stats have been simplified beyond belief, or is utterly apathetic about it. Most retailers are in fact probably the same people posting shit like this, lol.

Nothing was complicated about stats in classic, outside of maaaaaybe defense/gaming the hit table.

[solarfallz]

Itemization was bad. Blizzard has stated that themselves in the past.

Blizzard has also stated that the game has improved over time.

[Alvito]

Retailers? Why does walmart care what the stats are mean in some video game?

How dare you sir, Walmart always cares!

[Eapoe]

Back in the day you had just for tanks the following stats: strength, stamina, defense, parry, dodge, weapon skill, block %, block value, resistance, etc. You had to balance the stats yourself and understand your items. You couldnt just go with the item with the highest level like in retail now.

Item and stats management is too complicated for todays retailers. Should they just simplify the stats for vanilla to be more accessible for retailers?

Yes. So very complicated to figure out what that magic % number is the game requires to allow you to hit/defend against other things. Just another thread to try and put people down.

[deniter]

Itemization was bad. Blizzard has stated that themselves in the past.

Was this the same Blizzard that introduced daily quests, dungeon finder, pet battles, garrisons, transmofgrifag, faceroll dungeons, linear story-telling questing, scenarios, flying mounts, toys, and class pruning to us?

I guess the itemization must have been horrendous, even frightening.

[Sarkol]

Blizzard has also stated that the game has improved over time.

Which it absolutely has. Vanilla was fucking garbage if we're comparing it to that.

[Raugnaut]

Lol, great example of the only role that actually had more than 2-3 stats to look out for! Altho it still wasn't hard as a tank: 1st prio is to make sure you're crit immune, after that get the gear with best defensive stats. For dps classes: get hit capped, get +spell dmg, get crit. holy crap!! 3 stats to balance the gear around?? Healers were the same: mp5 and +healing in whichever order you feel you need it, if an item has crit as well, great. Priests also had good use of spirit (not sure if druids did).

Yeah, these are very complicated.

Yea, druids wanted spirit so we could put a good innervate on the priests