Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

[Kryptiki]

I know what you mean. I think it might be a bit harder for a melee to kill a caster with this that it can already be, since not only can most casters manage to get away from a melee with movement spells(blink, demonic teleport, etc) and snares(frost nova), once a melee gets to the caster, their physical damage is going to be reduced by cloth armor also? Doesn't seem to be quite right to me. So far though, that's probably the only stat issue I have with the changes. Also, plate melee vs leather/mail melee... I thought their higher amounts of dodge from agility were what their mitigation was against plate?

I didn't even think of the agility issue. Although, the dodge gained from agility, per point, will be reduced, so that should come out to about even. I really only take issue with this stat change from a philosophical/theoretical point of view, I'm sure that my plate wearers will hit like a dump truck full of rhinoceri going downhill. Hopefully.

[Brookes]

Under the new system, all stats will be useful the more you have - just like crit is now. However, tanks must be un-crit'able and the only way to do that was to hit 535/540 in defense. So instead of saying, "you must get defense to 540 and then take stats you like," you can now say, "take what stats you like." This just makes it a lot easier to guarantee you're at the right defense score at any level without having to calculate it and constantly balance the stat at each level. In short, it just makes gearing tanks (especially at levels 1 - 80) less annoying.

No more tank getting 1 shot on hard modes because he didn't think only having 537 defense would come back to haunt him.

[treebus]

One thing that bugs me is the change to how tanks will become crit immune by stance/presence/aura/bear change. This will mean if a tank dies in a raid, any of the plate dps or druid will change form and tank stuff? I did not understand this change personally, would like anyone who understand it better to explain please

This also concerns me... hopefully bosses will hit hard enough that the lack of avoidance/(not as gimped but still slightly)gimped health pool is unhealable pretty quickly. Keep in mind though, that currently bosses only crit 5.6% of the time anyway. A dps would on average take 18 hits before getting crit... depending on the boss this can be as long as 43 seconds. In your experience, how many times have you survived a boss for 43 seconds with tanks dead and a dps holding aggro?

[Raith]

Anyhow, my question is why Shadow Priests aren't included in this spirit-hit conversion.

Because they'll share gear with mages and warlocks? The reason balance and elemental have this conversion is because there will only be healing leather and healing mail, so to make it DPS gear the healing stat which is useless for them (spirit) will become a dps stat. Shadow priests won't need spirit gear.

[Leowyld]

I am hardly an expert on stats because I don't raid or PvP. That said, I find many of the complaints in this thread to be ridiculous. Complaining that they are streamlining and simplifying the design? By all means, Blizzard, you should be trying to make things more complex and esoteric. If making WoW more accessible somehow damages your self-importance and sense of elitism, maybe you should rely on something other than a game to build your ego.

P.S. Removal of weapon skill is awesome!

[Evert]

World of Retardcraft.

For those who never remembered number 540 we remove defence.
For those who never remembered where to learn polearms, we remove weapon skills.
For those who never remembered where class trainer is and can't understand what RankWatch whispers to them, we removed spell ranks.
And of course, for those tanks who can't decide should they gem stamina or dodge, we reduce stamina on tank gear so we would all gem stamina.

Now we finally make this game so ridiculously easy, every imbecile can look smart.
And, see, how many people in these 10 pages are exalted with changes. Probably had hard time remembering 540 defence...

For those who enjoyt a cap that removed 99% of the possible tanks, and made the queue time as DPS for any HC 20 mins.
For those who enjoyt killing mobs in the VH because you needed to train a freaking pole arm skill. (lucky for my 3 year old brother enjoyt the clicking..about needing brains)
For those who enjoyt returning every lvl to a class trainer and spent your money for a freaking training.
And of course, for those tanks who all gem stam in WoLK, you can still gem stam..who cares, your tank

Now we finally give the game sense, by making gear use able for more then one class..o no wait specc.
And, see, how many people in these 10 pages are add war with changes. Probably had hard time remembering 540 defence...

[Jonkheer]

i love how everybody is wining about the changes. I am excited for the new system.

[DrgnDancer]

For those who never remembered where to learn polearms, we remove weapon skills.

You're completely right. I know I just LOVED it when I got my fancy new axe and realized I hadn't ever trained axe skill (cause rogues just got he ability a few patches ago), and I got to go train it. Took about thirty seconds. Then I spent the next 3 hours killing the same #$%^#&$# 5 or 6 skeletons in the Crystal Song Forest 12727846278468326745382678 times until my skill finally hit 450. God, that was fun. Especially since I turned off all my buffs and only used auto-attack. Otherwise it would die faster and not give as many chances for points. I suppose I could have wandered around killing other stuff for the sake of variety, but that would have take even LONGER. Yeah, we should totally keep weapon skill so everyone can experience the thrill of killing mass numbers of trivial creatures for hours on end, watching a number slowly creep up to 450.

[Brookes]

Because they'll share gear with mages and warlocks? The reason balance and elemental have this conversion is because there will only be healing leather and healing mail, so to make it DPS gear the healing stat which is useless for them (spirit) will become a dps stat. Shadow priests won't need spirit gear.

I would think so, blizz has been going on about how healing will be less effective with regards to the bigger health pools, as such that it will take more than just a quick spam to get someone topped off. If this is the case then someone who's defense capped, yet still taking 50% more damage than a nontank, won't last very long

[treebus]

No more tank getting 1 shot on hard modes because he didn't think only having 537 defense would come back to haunt him.

I've had this discussion with our MT before, and we decided to let him run a few points under cap. In the particular example we determined that over the course of the fight (I think this was Hodir), he had a 96% chance of being crit zero times. If we happened to end up in that 4% and wipe, well crappy luck, oh well. (I think this was to eek out some more damage/threat to beat the HM timer, but it was a long time ago, I don't remember details)

Now, on limitted attempts I'd never say that was OK

[Laritrus]

OMG The healing priest is going to have as much health as a tank! That ret just went all Righteous Fury Sword and Board and totally tanked Rag (because they do so much damage without a 2H). Everything's been dumbed down and now there's no difference between a Mage and Warlock! Everything is awful after this announcement and WoW is no longer going to be anything good again ever! ::cries in a corner::

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail.

The question that is the answer in today's Final Jeopardy is... What are Talent Points, Alex? You mean the tanking tree might have tools that make a tank more attractive in the role than a holy pally with righteous fury up? Warlocks still might be different than Mages through dotting and other abilities? Everyone is not the same because the brand new talent trees removed of all the "filler points". The long and tedious decisions that may be gone from gear now, may be present in speccing now as they should be filled with many different useful abilities that you may not be able to grab all of. Not to mention Path of the Titans and how that will effect each different spec in each different tree. I bet there will be 0 complexity through that.

WoW has become so dumb now because all mana regen for all healers comes from Spirit? Really? How about no... relax. These stat changes are just a small small piece of a big puzzle filled with changes. You will find your complexities and uniqueness in classes. They will have a few more ways to achieve this now, don't panic that they decided against having gear stats as one of these.

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture

[Kaedalmael]

I didn't even think of the agility issue. Although, the dodge gained from agility, per point, will be reduced, so that should come out to about even. I really only take issue with this stat change from a philosophical/theoretical point of view, I'm sure that my plate wearers will hit like a dump truck full of rhinoceri going downhill. Hopefully.

Oh, I get the theoretical/philosophical point, too. I was just also inputting what I thought it would/could do mechanics-wise.

[Brookes]

I've had this discussion with our MT before, and we decided to let him run a few points under cap. In the particular example we determined that over the course of the fight (I think this was Hodir), he had a 96% chance of being crit zero times. If we happened to end up in that 4% and wipe, well crappy luck, oh well. (I think this was to eek out some more damage/threat to beat the HM timer, but it was a long time ago, I don't remember details)

Now, on limitted attempts I'd never say that was OK

Turns out steelbreaker hardmode crits hurt.

[Bethrezen]

Just curious, why? And no this this isn't meant to be sarcasm.

Better change than no change, or else the game does become boring. Weapon Skills removed means I can actually level alts again (only have 2 80's), Defense removed from gear = more stats from gear to take it's place, block and parry changes are actually interesting, armor changes. There isn't anything really that I can gripe within that blue post, except the suggested armor differential between plate, mail, leather, cloth, which makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I don't know what the fuck all the naysayers are doing wrong to be griping about the game/suggested changes, but the game itself is still very fun to me, and challenging in some aspects (Hard modes lul!), PvE and PvP Arena. Only thing I wish they'd somehow bring back from vanilla is a grind of some sort. Farming, rep grind, -SOMETHING-.

[Raith]

A question regarding parry.

Say a boss hits me for 1000 and i parry it, it's then down 50% to 500. What if I then parry again? The boss hits for 1000, 50% for the first parry and 50% for the second parry. Will the second parry cause a further 50% damage reduction bringing it down to 250? or will it stay at 500?

[Kaesebrezen]

Because they'll share gear with mages and warlocks? The reason balance and elemental have this conversion is because there will only be healing leather and healing mail, so to make it DPS gear the healing stat which is useless for them (spirit) will become a dps stat. Shadow priests won't need spirit gear.

Who are the "better" hybrids?
The ones who can respec with just one button, without getting a new gear set.
Or the ones that have to get a whole new gearset first to even be able to press that one button?

It's not about gear, it's about hybrids.

[Brookes]

A question regarding parry.

Say a boss hits me for 1000 and i parry it, it's then down 50% to 500. What if I then parry again? The boss hits for 1000, 50% for the first parry and 50% for the second parry. Will the second parry cause a further 50% damage reduction bringing it down to 250? or will it stay at 500?

Maybe if you hit some time paradox where you can parry the same attack twice. Until you master time traveling I doubt that will work though.

[Verazh]

but what about spells like fell armor that increases your SP with spirit and molten armor that increases crit rating with spririt... will that be changed into int aswell?:S

We can only assume, and I feel quite certain they will. We already have a change coming to Life Tap.

[Raith]

Maybe if you hit some time paradox where you can parry the same attack twice. Until you master time traveling I doubt that will work though.

Read parry again, it says you stop 50% damage of the inital attack and then 50% of the next attack. Parrying twice in a row isn't so unlikely.

[Kryptiki]

Oh, I get the theoretical/philosophical point, too. I was just also inputting what I thought it would/could do mechanics-wise.

What are your feelings on RP/Focus/Energy regeneration increasing with haste?

edit: post script

p.s. that's the change that ACTUALLY scares me.