Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

[Giratina]

Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.

I hope Shamans get a decent hp boost. I'm so tired of the healer having to babysit me.

[Shamslam]

For 5.5 years now, yes.

Duh, how could I forget...this is WoW's community we're talking about. :P

[Malthurius]

I feel that this is all being taken a bit extremely, these changes may cause a lot of imbalances during Beta, and the beginning of launch, but balance is sure to be restored to what it is now and better as the expansion goes on. From what I can see, some of these changes allow the player to get gear based on the way the play, to their styles. I can kind of see an attempt to remove the ideal of "There is a cookie-cutter spec for everything" mentality; which I'm glad for.

Reforging, Path of the Titans, the removal of percentage increase talents; they all seem to support a philosophy of customization/individuality between characters. Unlike now in WotLK where you get smashed for not having this talent that increases your damage by 3%, or stacking haste gems as a Death Knight (Yes those are horrible things to do now, I know). Cataclysm, as I see it, will make those, a little more acceptable, especially the talent bit, since those won't exist anymore, and haste will hasten resource recovery for Hunters, Rogues, Death Knights, and Warriors.

As long as I can see a possibility for balance, I can't see how these stat changes can be worse than what the stats are now, really.

[Jaqen Hghar]

Hahaha.

Sweet, I'll get to tank in dps gear! Healers don't care about running oom and I'll bet *anyone* that they won't care about running oom after the rating conversions.

Hence, we'll be tanking the everything in WotLK in 4.0 in dps gear.

Awesome.

Because avoidance has absolutely no effect on tanking, right?

[Shamslam]

I feel that this is all being taken a bit extremely, these changes may cause a lot of imbalances during Beta, and the beginning of launch, but balance is sure to be restored to what it is now and better as the expansion goes on. From what I can see, some of these changes allow the player to get gear based on the way the play, to their styles. I can kind of see an attempt to remove the ideal of "There is a cookie-cutter spec for everything" mentality; which I'm glad for.

Reforging, Path of the Titans, the removal of percentage increase talents; they all seem to support a philosophy of customization/individuality between characters. Unlike now in WotLK where you get smashed for not having this talent that increases your damage by 3%, or stacking haste gems as a Death Knight (Yes those are horrible things to do now, I know). Cataclysm, as I see it, will make those, a little more acceptable, especially the talent bit, since those won't exist anymore, and haste will hasten resource recovery for Hunters, Rogues, Death Knights, and Warriors.

As long as I can see a possibility for balance, I can't see how these stat changes can be worse than what the stats are now, really.

Pretty much this. Cata changes will actually bring so much more diversity to the classes. Do you stack Int/Agil/Str, or stack haste to lower time between attacks (however that is working)? You've got the required talents, go have fun with these remaining 5-7 on whatever you like. Reforging/Mastery/Path just speak for themselves, all allowing a somewhat unique take on your character's stats. I just can't understand how any of this can be bad.../shrug

And honestly, this should make balance so much easier. Blizzard won't have to worry about nerfing 1 of 8/9 stats on a class to bring them in line, now they can just simply tweak a mastery/spell w/o worrying about how it affects so many stats.

[Kwickslash]

This seriously disgusts me. They want everything available to everyone and everything to be easier. Its fun deciding what gear to get and what might be better. I don't want to automatically look at gear for 2 seconds and be able to say, "That is better, 100% sure, no questioning it." Stats in this game are not complicated. I'm sorry, but if you think that it's complicated, then your bad, or have never talked to anybody about your class. I knew what I needed of my stats and what was good before any patches usually come out, or right after a patch.
If anything, this is making the game LESS fun imo...

Because gemming for ArP in basically every slot and rolling on gear with more ArP as a combat rogue (replace ArP with haste if mutilate) or gemming completely Int as a (HL) holy pally were really complex and exciting decisions...

Most classes and specs prioritized one stat after attaining necessary caps anyways. Not to mention they are also making hit and expertise caps harder to reach and introducing mastery and changing haste to have a more noticeable effect.

Explain to me how they are making it less fun when they basically had several stats that did pretty much the same thing. And then explain to me how the haste change for example is less fun in actual gameplay (where it matters) than say spending 5-10 minutes with wow minimised checking it on a spreadsheet or RAWR only to find the gear you rolled on and won against someone who needed it really wasn't an upgrade.

ArP was basically AP scaled differently, Haste increased autoattack (so exciting!) damage and a proc rates (which have an ICD anyways), AP was basically strength or agi without crit rating, parry, etc, etc, etc.

Gear choice will be just as fun with less of the bullshit. End of.

[Spacelord]

Hmmm. I went through 12 pages and only saw a handful of comments on the tanking changes. As a tank myself I have noticed some possible issues with the new changes. With the removal of Defense and increases in stam across the board it seems like tanking might be possible for non-tank-specced plate wearers. A few people mentioned the possibility of being uncrittable designated to the relevant tanking talent trees and also the shortage of tanks for randoms as an impetus for these changes. Are there sources for that or is it pure speculation? I haven't really done any research into the xpac so I wouldn't know. Thanks.

[loftus]

i've currently been off and on (mostly off) of wow for the past 6 months or so. i was hardcore about 2 years ago, then with WOTLK i became slightly less hardcore and became more of an average player, then i went casual, and now i renew my account every 3 or so months, play for a week then close it again.

the gear thing was really making the game a headache for me, with too many stats being too all over the place.

Reading this post, which sums up changes like:

mastery
haste change
more health for everyone
no more stupid 'weapon skill'

among others, make me 100% sure im gonna pick up cata when it comes out just to see what its like. it feels like vanilla, BC and WOTLK were blizz testing stuff and cata is gonna be like, 'this is how we want the game to be' and to be honest, i think its going to be brilliant.

For now ill leave my account de-activated... roll on cata! 8)

[Rayleigh]

This shit just makes the game so much easier for the 10 year old players who destroy the game. Clap clap clap Blizzard, GJ once again.

/agree

[Shamslam]

Hmmm. I went through 12 pages and only saw a handful of comments on the tanking changes. As a tank myself I have noticed some possible issues with the new changes. With the removal of Defense and increases in stam across the board it seems like tanking might be possible for non-tank-specced plate wearers. A few people mentioned the possibility of being uncrittable designated to the relevant tanking talent trees and also the shortage of tanks for randoms as an impetus for these changes. Are there sources for that or is it pure speculation? I haven't really done any research into the xpac so I wouldn't know. Thanks.

It was mentioned a few times in one of the threads on gen forums a while back, talking about how it would be easier to find tanks in Cata. The thing is, it really depends on the difficulty. If ilvl boosts the same way it did in LK and/or heroics are a cakewalk, it would be entirely possible for some DPS to tank an instance. I highly doubt any random DPS DK will be able to walk into a raid though and be like "its cool I'll put frost pres on" and be able to tank it. I see avoidance/block/dodge becoming even more important stats. That and a tanking spec would give you more masteries that are tank-ish.

I do recall Blizzard mentioning that bosses would probably hit harder since stamina would be through the roof, so I see the tanking stats as being mandatory for anything halfway difficult tbh.

[Arandmoor]

Gearing now is NOT interesting. Sure it may be complicated, but people just make spreadsheets. What I hope to see more of in cata is: "Because of my current gear setup, haste is better for me than crit". Now I get too more pieces, and suddenly "With those upgrades, expertise is now my best stat". That would be an interesting system. Stack ArPen to cap then stack agi... that's not an interesting system.

Getting rid of a stat (SP) that scales directly with ilvl is not dumbing things down. Getting rid of AP when every class always wants Str = X AP = Y Agi at all levels of gearing is not dumbing things down.

It may be that the game is simpler in Cata, it may be that it's more complicated. The information in this blue post isn't enough to say either, but I'm inclined to believe it will be more towards more interesting at the very least.

Yes. Although, I'm hoping that the gear stat changes move us away from "You gear this way because it is THE best DPS for your spec" and more towards "You gear this way because you play your spec THAT way".

Take rogues: All rogues want Agility. If you stack crit you can compete with rogues that stack haste. Both of those rogues can compete with a rogue that stacks Mastery, and all three of them compete with rogues that stack all three to some degree.

The Mut rogue that's packing a SP weapon because of "lolnaturedamage" gets laughed at and all is well with the world.

[Malthurius]

Quote from: Poonboy on March 02, 2010, 12:34:49 am
This shit just makes the game so much easier for the 10 year old players who destroy the game. Clap clap clap Blizzard, GJ once again.

/agree

If I could interject... aren't there already 10 year olds playing the game? And making stat changes makes the population of 10 year olds go up how? And wouldn't making the game easier make those 10 year olds better and more tolerable? Your logic is flawed, next idiot?

[Shamslam]

If I could interject... aren't there already 10 year olds playing the game? And making stat changes makes the population of 10 year olds go up how? And wouldn't making the game easier make those 10 year olds better and more tolerable? Your logic is flawed, next idiot?

/shake hand

Sort of on topic to this post...In my 4 years of WoW, I always preferred (pre)-teenagers to older adults. It was always the adults who would bitch and moan first, and (for the most part) the lil kids would just roll with it and play this game the way it should be...as something fun! Isn't that just crazy!

[Malevolence]

ITT: people with 2nd grade reading comprehensions.

[Kwickslash]

You say these changes "disgust" you, but you don't realise what this means for Blizzard. Along with the talent tree changes, they can successfully balance classes in a much more exact way. They can tune one stat without it create a cascade of implications for other stats.

This 100% correct in every single way. See spirit and ArP (before 3.3) changes.

[Malthurius]

For sake of space, I won't quote, but the guy 2 posts above me has got the idea. Simplification of what stats you want shouldn't be a huge factor of the game itself and how fun it is. Would you rather:

A. Take out a spreadsheet for every piece of gear that drops, and have extreme balance issues every time Blizzard changes a class and all those complicated stats change the stats making the class OP/Nerfed unexpectedly.

B. Not have to worry about gear as much and enjoy the game, and leave more time for blizzard to make content, in-turn allowing for more "fun".

In short, gear choice shouldn't be a part of the games difficulty, that just sounds outrageously stupid. The difficulty should be in the action it's self.

EDIT: The guy below me has the picture.

[kisain09]

among the rage in this forum about dumbing down warcraft your all forgetting one very important thing. they're reducing / wiping out theory crafting and the numbers game that warcraft has become and returning it to its glory days of content being the main focus not how much arp you have or how much def you have. for me this is a welcomed change and i cant wait to go toe with the new and improve encounters come cata

[Fenixhart]

...You mean....I won't have to have EJ Bookmarked as a prerequisite to being a raider anymore?


HALLELUJAH!

[Caradinist]

Also there was a massive spike of gear when Ulduar came out (the blue posters did pride themselves on this fact) in an effort to offer more choices and more variety, despite the fact what was then and what it still is now is basically this:

"Out of the sea of gear that is available, no matter how much of it blizzard makes, there is only one that is the absolute best for you"

Honestly, with the Path of the titans and Reforging becoming available to customize your playstyle by toying with your gear, rather than just simply reaching boss 6 out of 11 because boss 6 MIGHT drop something, and you guys think this is the end of the world?

Well, take solace in knowing that they think Trinkets are a major part of playstyle customization, so there will always be one that will be best for your class.

[Deleted]

I like it, every bit of it.