Cataclysm Stats Changes, Masteries, Terrain Phasing

[Deleted]

Half the fun of having an upgrade drop is juggling gems and enchants and existing gear to make the most of it. Blizzard should stop trying to get scrubs into raids and realise that people who are so retarded they cant apply simple maths to a computer game probably dont really care about ArP or what it does.

[Bowen]

Blizzard - dumbing down their games since WOTLK tm

[bouddieehh]

im not too thrilled (yet) by the new changes as it wasn't hard to get defense rating or w/e... i really wonder how tanks will function in cataclysm as i didn't see anything about dodge / parry etc ;p

only time will tell whether Ghostcrawler remains hired or get fired ;p

[Swampmoose]

Paladin's name in the screenshot ;D

Totheground!

[Baaadum]

Awesome update. I'm SO excited for mastery talents. ;D Although, I think some passive talents like 50% crit damage increase aren't too bad.... it's just the small talents like 3% hit etc

It's really a bad thing. I am playing Wow since the begining ( with some pause ), and I love the Theorycraft.
By removing powerspell, armor penetration and some others things, they're destroying the math's fun.

I agree; theorycrafting is a fun aspect of the game and I hope these gear changes don't destroy it/make it pointless.

[DarkSpectrum]

Paladin's name in the screenshot ;D

Totheground!

He's also a ret pally without Seal of Command......

[Aldoran]

In the next addon after cataclysm there will be only one stat - 'superiority'. In PvP players with less superiority will automatically die. In PvE, if total superiority of your raid is more than boss's superiority - boss dies and you get loot. Other way you insta wipe.
This system will not be "too confusing and "mathy."
Hail blizzard!

[Nexus2089]

For both DK's and druids it will probably be early talents you spec into that decide whether your mastery affects tanking or dps

[Maerad]

Impressive how many ppl can be so resistant to new things ...

First of all - FORGET THE DAMN ACTUALL MECHANICS! Those won't work for cata anymore. Like the DPS/Tanktree for druids ... mostly it will go like the ice tree from dk's with tank, dual wield and dps talents. The more tank talents you choose, the more tank specific rates you get, same for dps, heal etc.

It's really not that complicated.

Then to the "simplyfied" stats - that's a good thing!

1. They can make better gear for specific classes - think about how boomkins QQ about the spirit on their gear (more crit > more mana regen > spirit wasted)
2. The gear is easier to identify for a specific class - spirit will be heal, str will be plate dps etc. - right now it's hard for a raidleader to decide, if an item is caster or heal or DPS etc. because he has to KNOW the classes using it. Like the mace from battered hilt - int, stam, haste, crit and spellpower - can be heal or caster dps
3. Easier for the ppl to rate the gear - without attackpower etc. you have an easier way to compare some gear. Still - if you want to use the max. out of your char, you have to do some theory, but it will help the new ppl to decide whats good and whats not.

Then to the "armor pen not mathy" ...

Armor pen SUCKS. Tell me right off your head what's better, +30 crit or +30 arp? Well, you can't ...

Easy example with my resto shaman - when I see gear with crit and another one with haste, I can easily decide "hey, I go for crit cause I already have a nice hasterating"

That won't work for armor pen ... if you want to know what's better, atk power or armor pen, you have to calc it out of wow. point.

Here's some small info I found about

Ghostcrawler delivers the formula for the Armor Pen cap in the following bit of pseudo code (I've cleaned it a bit for readability sake):

Let C be the Armor Penetration constant.

if ( level < 60 )
C = 400 + ( 85 * targetlevel )
else
C = 400 + ( 85 * targetlevel ) + ( 4.5 * 85 * (targetlevel – 59))

Thus where a level 80 mob is being attacked, C = 15232.5. For a level 83 mob C = 16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration is then: (Armor + C) / 3

A quick example, used originally by Ghostcrawler but extrapolated upon here:

Assume a level 80 death knight NPC (note: non player character) has 9729 armor. C for level 80 mobs is 15232.5. The Armor Penetration cap is (9729 + 15232.5) / 3 = 8320.5. At this point the game will choose the lowest of two values, either 8320.5 or 9729, to represent the most armor which can be ignored. We'll call this value X. So X = 8320.5.

A person is attacking with 30% Armor Penetration. The game will then compute the amount of armor to be ignored against the previous value X, which means the amount of armor ignored on our level 80 death knight NPC is 2496.15 (30% of 8320.5), which we'll call M. M is then subtracted from the death knight's actual armor, which means the attack goes through against 9729 – 2496.15 = 7232.85 armor present.

Just because something is highly complicated, it dosn't make it good. You should be able to decide ingame what's better for you and don't have to calculate it over some hours in a spritesheet.

As for the incoming HP, Heal etc. changes - just wait. Based on what we know for now, it's useless to speculate. Even Blizzard isn't sure about it.

[nablas]

¿Removing lots of stats from items? It seems that we will decide to upgrade an item just by comparing iLvl.

I like to have to take excel an simulate if my new loot improves my current gear.

In short future, we will have just one stat: POWER.

[Sartecho]

They've been wanting to get plate DPS out of leather and mail for a long time and it seems that they've accomplished that.

At the same time, they just created the exact same situation with healers. As a paladin, I've never wanted cloth or leather gear. Remove all MP5 and make me dependent on spirit... Guess what, looks like that cloth and leather gear is a whole lot sexier now.

[Pumps]

Stats changes and Masteries in Cataclysm
One of the biggest change introduced with Cataclysm is the simplification of existing stats.

Simplifying it may be a good thing, but they are doing it wrong.
It doesn't make it more understandable that intelligence equals spellpower - they shouldn't remove spellpower. Likewise that agility is instead of attackpower - this is just going to totally confuse the more normal players even more.

[Kaneiac]

I REALLY don't understand why people say they're dumbing down the game. They're just going back to the vanilla roots.

BC was the game that introduced a bunch of side stats (ArP, haste, etc).

Vanilla just had few simple tanking stats, few simple melee, few simple casting.

[Puntar]

Simplifying it may be a good thing, but they are doing it wrong.
It doesn't make it more understandable that intelligence equals spellpower - they shouldn't remove spellpower. Likewise that agility is instead of attackpower - this is just going to totally confuse the more normal players even more.

Yes, they should remove spell power as unique stat and make it like AP from Strength / Agility.

The only spell power which should stay like now are probably on gems and enchants with it

I always wondered why there is no attribute scaling for magic spells while melee and hunter ranged damage both scale to some extend from base attribute.

In that regard spellcaster in vanilla before spell damage/healing were implement had been either OP or underpowered.

[stonelizes]

I saw that warlock soul shard idea from a forum for like 5-6 mouths ago, pretty cool they added it

[LavaDuck]

http://www.pcgamerftw.com/main/wp-co...00x1200_v3.jpg

thats the full mag cover =]

Angry mob is angry! 8)

[emeral]

Yes, they should remove spell power as unique stat and make it like AP from Strength / Agility.

The only spell power which should stay like now are probably on gems and enchants with it

I always wondered why there is no attribute scaling for magic spells while melee and hunter ranged damage both scale to some extend from base attribute.

In that regard spellcaster in vanilla before spell damage/healing were implement had been either OP or underpowered.

Isn't that what they're doing? :S

[Daeren]

I like stat simplification, makes it less of a hassle with gear.

With the current system, you have non-stackable stats, and cappable stats.

At any given time, one stat will be the best (for example strength). Some stats are best until capped (hit, armor pen, expertise), and after that, they stop being useful. Ever tried balancing gear around 2 hard caps and one soft cap? And still, stacking means that one stat will still be best.

Sadly, I have to reevaluate the values of different stats with simulators every second upgrade or so.

And interesting stats...you can't buff haste for one class which isn't benefitting alot from haste without making it too strong for other classes. Same problem they encountered with armor pen, the difference between warriors, who are only using physical damage compared to mixed damage like DKs and palas.

[Stormdash]

I love all these stat changes. The only thing I'd love to see them do would be to take the AP change and say that plate wearers get 100% AP from strength/50% AP from agility, and leather/mail get 100% AP from agility/50% AP from strength. That way, while you still may get *some* plate wearers wearing leather/mail, you won't see it as much. Where it would really pay off would be that plate wearers could benefit more from agility weapons and leather/mail wearers from strength weapons -- particularly 2H maces and axes for druids or hunters, for instance.

Jewelcrafting will have to change a lot in the new stats, I think -- I'd like to see epic quality gems that add base stats and, say, procs of some kind in lieu of the ratings.

[Naoto]

Yet they are keeping expertise? so I have to juggle around my shit to be capped but tanks QQ and def gets removed? are they taking the piss removing arp and def yet keeping expertise which is a pain to cap? all they are doing is dumbing this game down even more, I liked it when you had healing and damage then they changed it to SP now they are removing SP? yet they keep imo the most retarded stat in the game, expertise, another reason why melee fails and they build this game around ranged.