Spirit -> Hit in Cataclysm

[kabshiel]

In Cataclysm, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids will share gear with Restoration Shamans and Druids and thus have Spirit on their gear. Blizzard's solution is to give these specs a talent that will convert Spirit into Hit Rating. Does anyone else think this is a pretty terrible idea?

Hit is already a confusing stat. Go read the official forums: every day there are a ton of new posts asking what the Hit cap is for a certain class/spec. Now imagine having to also figure out what percentage of your Spirit is giving you Hit and how much Hit you need from other items. The large portion of the WoW community that doesn't read the forums or Elitist Jerks is going to be totally lost.

Hit is a stat you want to cap, but not go over. Essentially having hit rating on all of your gear is going to be problematic and difficult to balance. If Blizzard makes it so Spirit gives too much Hit, you have wasted stat points. If it gives too little Hit, they'll just wear cloth and get their hit more efficiently elsewhere. Also, managing a few items with large amounts of hit rating like we do now is much simpler than having to manage every piece of gear you have in order to stay at the cap.

I'm also concerned about the item budget. Unless Spirit costs almost nothing, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids will have far less Haste/Crit on their gear than any other caster class.

Obviously we're going to have to wait and see on this, but all signs point to bad.

[Ishamyyl]

Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

Take this into consideration, too.

[Karnige]

Hit is a stat you want to cap, but not go over. Essentially having hit rating on all of your gear is going to be problematic and difficult to balance. If Blizzard makes it so Spirit gives too much Hit, you have wasted stat points.

I think with the new changes you won't really have to balance much now. Hit cap seems almost impossible to hit they are saying.

[Alzagor]

I personally think this forces Balance Druids and Elemental shamans to get LW as a profession. Blizz already stated that they wanted to do something about us wearing cloth, so we will most likely have to reforge all our spirit gear so we won´t be overcapped all the time.

[Annarion]

If you think that Blizzard hasn't considered all of these things and taken into account things like item budgeting and comparative stats compared to other classes in the same role, you've got your head up your ass. Most of the WoW development cycle is consumed in balancing talents and gear so that all players of the same role (in this case spell dps) are as close as they can be, with hybrids getting taxed slightly.

The only complaint I have is that any leather with spellpower is still druid only, just like mail and shamans, plate and paladins.

[kabshiel]

Obviously we don't know how this will play out, but I'm just trying to get some possible concerns with the new system out there. Elemental and Balance itemization have been very problematic throughout this last expansion, so players have every right to scrutinize these major changes and be a little skeptical.

If the new hit cap is almost unreachably high, a lot of this won't be an issue. That would create its own set of problems though: a lot more misses and hit rating being worth even more than it is now.

[Seragan]

I think this is more aimed at introducing a heavier hybrid tax while maintaining Hybrid-ability. It will be much easier for two specs to use one set of gear and thus more roles available in game.

Think about it, Blizzard are all about opening up the game to everyone. This will just mean more healers who can dps and more dps who can support real healers. It also gives a good stepping stone to those looking to change spec from healing -> dps without having to regear their character.

This is an amazingly awesome change and I want it nao!

P.S. in regards to being over hit cap, there will probably be DR where, you cannot actually hit the hit cap without having a hit ring or w/e. Also, this would probably mean better gear scaling at higher content levels (i.e. DR is relative to boss tier, etc) and thus no wasted stats.

[MrKnubbles]

If you're worried about the spirit->hit talent causing you to have too much hit, simply put less points into that talent and spend it on another talent to increase your damage.

[jontaxe]

In Cataclysm, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids will share gear with Restoration Shamans and Druids and thus have Spirit on their gear. Blizzard's solution is to give these specs a talent that will convert Spirit into Hit Rating. Does anyone else think this is a pretty terrible idea?

No, I happen to think it is a great idea.
Currently resto and elem want the exact same stats in (almost) the exact same priority with the only 2 exceptions that elem wants hit and resto has some use for mp5. It's dumb to have two sets of gear so similar to each other and yet so useless to the other spec. It's even dumber when only 3 specs (resto pally, resto shaman, elemental shaman) can even equip mail SP gear. Elem and resto should have been sharing the same gear sets since WotLK day 1, if not earlier.

Any speculation about item budgeting is meaningless without knowing anything of the new talents (or even how they plan to budget stats.) Imagine a cloth piece with 100 SP, 50 crit, 50 haste and 50 Hit for locks/mages (because they don't use spirit). Then imagine a mail piece with 100SP, 50 crit, 50 haste and 50 Spir for resto shaman, but elemental has a talent that says "Spirit increases your chance to hit by 1."

I can't wait. I already heal the daily heroic in my elemental gear w/ a resto spec. Soon I'll be able to do it without jerks from Laughing Skull giving me attitude about it.

[Araun]

just think of it as converting all the hit and mp5 on your mail gear atm to be converted to spirit 1 -> 1, then imagine a talent in the elemental tree that converts spirt to hit 1 -> 1. there you go, should be the same. you just need to see how much spirit you have on your gear like you have to see how much hit you have atm. it's not that hard really.

[BigGann]

I stopped reading after the "hit is a complicated stat" comment. You need 17% hit, always. If you get 3% from talents, you need 14% from gear, if you get 3% as a raid buff, you need 11%.

There are a ton of topics everyday because people refuse to think for themselves and want everything done for them.

[Kenickie]

I actually think it is a great idea. For one if the gear didnt share stats than elly shamans and balance druids would have noone to share gear with as well as resto druids and resto shamans. This would make for a lot of wasted gear and a lot QQing by other classes saying that they have to share gear with two + class/spec combos and shamans and druids can easily gear up. Another great benefit to druids and shamans is that all you basically have to do to switch from an elemental shaman to resto is to change specs since your gear should equally work for both (as I understand it spirit will be good for hit for dps and mana regen for healing). Makes these two classes a lot more flexible than some of the others. Right now I serve as a DPS for my guild that occasionally heals. I have to get two seperate sets of gear to accomplish this given that hit is wortless for resto and MP5 is worthless for elemental, however now I will have a stat that covers both depending on spec (personally I would not QQ cuz this is OP and realy nice). Now the only thing I can see blizzard may want to take into consideration is doing a similar set up for priests, otherwise all cloth gear with spirit on it will be worthless for any spec/class except healing priests. Just my thoughts anyone else seeing these benefits or am I just getting too excited.

[Ake]

to the OP, any reason you feel the need to post this filth in mutiple areas?

[Celestial476]

So you're posting this same thread in the class forums? Why not just the Cataclysm general or something?

[TheSineLaw]

Im pretty sure there doing this simply so that ele/lazerchickens won't need to rely on cloth for there hit, if they were to put hit on half the mail/leather gear that would just get annoying like spell plate.

[kabshiel]

to the OP, any reason you feel the need to post this filth in mutiple areas?

I posted it in both the Shaman and Druid forums because, shockingly, it's about both Shamans and Druids and I doubt most people read every post in every single forum on this site. I didn't post it in Cataclysm general, because I felt the issue was best discussed by people who play Shamans or Druids.

I'm also not sure why my post is "filth". If you don't agree with me, tell me why. Plenty of other people have managed to disagree and be civil about it.

[Celestial476]

I posted it in both the Shaman and Druid forums because, shockingly, it's about both Shamans and Druids and I doubt most people read every post in every single forum on this sight.

Fair is fair I suppose, I do not believe the post is filth, but I don't agree either.
I don't think the Spirit to Hit will be as bad as it seems, it might be rough around the edges in the beginning like all new things Blizzard tries out, but hopefully it will get a quick fix if found to broken.

I personally think it will be nice not having to balance pieces with hit on it if I can just expect there to be a little bit of hit added onto everything.

[kabshiel]

I stopped reading after the "hit is a complicated stat" comment. You need 17% hit, always. If you get 3% from talents, you need 14% from gear, if you get 3% as a raid buff, you need 11%.

There are a ton of topics everyday because people refuse to think for themselves and want everything done for them.

Did you test and figure out the hit cap on your own or did you read it on Elitist Jerks or the some other forum? Now imagine that you're one of the many WoW players who don't read those forums. Hit is not a terribly transparent stat at the moment, which is why you constantly see people asking what the hit cap is. I'm not suggesting Blizzard needs to design this game for the lowest common denominator, but I do think that if their intention with these stat changes is to make "stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting", then Hit was the wrong stat to choose for this conversion.

[conscript]

In Cataclysm, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids will share gear with Restoration Shamans and Druids and thus have Spirit on their gear. Blizzard's solution is to give these specs a talent that will convert Spirit into Hit Rating. Does anyone else think this is a pretty terrible idea?

Hit is already a confusing stat. Go read the official forums: every day there are a ton of new posts asking what the Hit cap is for a certain class/spec. Now imagine having to also figure out what percentage of your Spirit is giving you Hit and how much Hit you need from other items. The large portion of the WoW community that doesn't read the forums or Elitist Jerks is going to be totally lost.

Hit is a stat you want to cap, but not go over. Essentially having hit rating on all of your gear is going to be problematic and difficult to balance. If Blizzard makes it so Spirit gives too much Hit, you have wasted stat points. If it gives too little Hit, they'll just wear cloth and get their hit more efficiently elsewhere. Also, managing a few items with large amounts of hit rating like we do now is much simpler than having to manage every piece of gear you have in order to stay at the cap.

I'm also concerned about the item budget. Unless Spirit costs almost nothing, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids will have far less Haste/Crit on their gear than any other caster class.

Obviously we're going to have to wait and see on this, but all signs point to bad.

I imagine that the hit stat is going to be more understandable in game. Rather than the tooltip simply listing X% chance to hit it may have an X% chance to miss line, which immediately makes it more understandable. I am intrigued by their statement that it will be harder to hit end game mobs. That makes an incredible amount of sense from an end game mobs should be stronger and smarter standpoint. I just wonder how they are going to display the concept of the growing hit cap without players having to rely on finding the information on a message board.

Blizzard has yet to get Balance and Elemental itemization correct so I am hesitant to put too much faith in them to get it right in Cataclysm but I am going to reserve my judgment of the system until I actually see it in play.

I stopped reading after the "hit is a complicated stat" comment. You need 17% hit, always. If you get 3% from talents, you need 14% from gear, if you get 3% as a raid buff, you need 11%.

There are a ton of topics everyday because people refuse to think for themselves and want everything done for them.

And I suppose you are one of the groundbreaking pioneers of the game who test out how much rating it takes to get hit capped against mobs by running thousands of in game tests. I'm sure you read it on a forum or learned it from another of the thousands of out of game sources just like almost everyone else who plays WoW.

[Hypernetic]

I'm cut/pasting my comment from the duplicate thread here, because I like you shamans better than the smelly druids =D.

I don't see how this is any different from an elemental shaman using a resto piece with mp5 on it now, other than instead of being a completely wasted stat, it gives you hit rating. Equipping a piece of spirit gear when you are already hit capped could be thought of the same way as being over hit cap with DPS caster gear on. To clarify, don't equip stuff with spirit on it if you are capped, just like you wouldn't intentionally stack hit beyond cap.

Would you rather them make it so spirit does nothing for elemental? I don't understand the point of this.