Conclusions from today's released information.

[Sativaspirit]

Lets see how and where it goes come Cataclysm

As long as there is no blue post similar to the one some time back, which went something along the lines of "The new weapon stats didn't work out as we had hoped"...

[Hegar]

You clearly haven't bothered to think this through. From the looks of it, i'd say cataclysm gearing will be much more complex than anything before.

At the moment, too many classes have a stat that trumps everything else by a significant margin.

Gearing my resto shaman:

Does a potential upgrade have haste? No? /pass. Yes -> Does it have more haste? Yes -> /roll. No -> /pass, unless it means swapping out some Mp5 for Crit, and then only if the haste loss is minor.

That's not really very interesting, and a lot of classes follow a similar pattern, just with ArP instead of haste.

Gearing for pretty much every spec at the moment involves cursing when a peice of gear drops either: Without the one stat you are looking for (usually Haste or ArP) or with the one (sometimes two) that you are trying to avoid (ArP, regen stats, or stats which are super easy to cap).

With things like scaling hit and crit caps for different tiers of content, and making sure that there is not one stat which trumps all others, gearing will be a much more intelligent process.

The different ratings will still have different values for different specs, but when those values are closer, you'll have to look at every stat on a piece of gear, then look at the values you already have, and look at how close you are to any caps that might be in effect for your class.

From what I've seen so far, gearing in cata looks like blizz will really live up to the Less Complex More Depth they are going for. I really look forward to the dynamic, ever-changing balancing act that gearing appears to be in cata.

[Nikoll]

[Grimmer]

Conclusions from this shitspawn of a thread: OP is a master of the strawman fallacy.

EDIT: Oh, and slippery slope.

"THEY'RE GIVING US MORE STAMINA? WHY DON'T THEY JUST GIVE US GOD MODE WHILE THEY'RE AT IT, MIRITE GUISE? LOL"

[Gilgemesh]

I think the stat cleanup is a great idea. This will fix the gear disparity several hybrids are seeing. This will also fix some of the wtf gear drops we're seeing. It will result in better gear drop rates, as there will be 2 kinds of leather, 2 kinds of mail, 2 kinds of cloth and 3 kinds of plate. Right now, we have 3 types of leather/3types of mail/3 types of cloth and 4 types of plate.
This means better designed gear, with better looks, because they don't have to make 15% more gear that is crap to all but 2 specs, and some that is mostly crap for several specs. This also makes balancing classes easier, as they will have predictable stat scaling on gear. The only people I see that will get slammed by the changes are the plate classes that wear leather.

overall I see a more stable system with more optimized gear, because every class will benefit from all the stats on their gear.

[DaLeetPawner]

By level 95 the following will happen:

- No Armor quality (Cloth, Leather, ...) All armor will all be wearable by all classes.
- Every piece of gear will be reduced to say +#Mastery +#Stamina +#Gem slots
- Weapons are the exception to this. They will have either Strength, Agility, or Spell Power in addition to Mastery, Stamina, and Gem Slots.
- Tier sets will become one set that changes its set bonus depending on what class is wearing it.
- Talent trees will be the only determining factor of whether you can Tank, Heal, or DPS.
(Basically the end of all gear decisions)

Mastery and Reforging honestly seems like blizzard's easy way out of itemizing.
For the love of god I hope it doesn't end this way.

:-X

No it wont end up this way. If they did that they had to be as crazy as you to think that

[Ecthellion]

LOL awesome pic

[Gron]

I fail to see how less statistics can mean more variation, more options for the player. However we should not speculate - we will find out later this year.

[wolfwood888]

we dont really understand the system at the moment so you cant complain in all honesty you dont know what stats will be good for you in cata.
the only thing that strikes me as odd is the parry change 50% damage reduction on 2 attacks, however thats if the 2nd attack lands so basically they're changing parry from 100% chance to avoid an attack to possible just 50% damage reduction on next attack and if the next hit isnt dodged/block or miss then you reduce the next attack by 50% aswell. to me this makes parry look even less desirable then it is now. But as I said we dont know.

I think, don't know, that the damage reduction from parry will still take effect if the attack is blocked. The whole point is to lower tanks hard avoidance, and give them more mitigation. From what they have been saying we will only have ~20%ish dodge in cata, and only 5% chance to miss, making parry only slightly worse then dodge, you will mitigate ~88% (50% from the first attack, and 75% for another 50%) of the damage dodge does, which, due to diminishing returns, is about what it does now point per point, AND it will make incoming damage MUCH more smooth, which is a good thing.

I approve.

[bahumut5]

I'm interested to see how this will work out though. To me, this seems like a "welcome" balancing ...uhm... test?
Anyway: It will most likely mean that players will be able to "choose" their loot a bit due to the low amount of difference between gear (With the exception of Holy Paladins if I read the blue's right).

[LeperHerring]

The OP must play one of those classes that has never seen a piece of gear drop thought "OH OH AWESOME!.. oh crap.. it's got armor pen.. /pass"

So you'd prefer every piece of gear to have optimal stats? How boring would that be... Reminds be of the LK dagger with ArP; even with ArP it was still BiS for mutilate but so many OCD kids cried on the forums that Blizzard was forced to change it.

[coolaide2]

I think, don't know, that the damage reduction from parry will still take effect if the attack is blocked. The whole point is to lower tanks hard avoidance, and give them more mitigation. From what they have been saying we will only have ~20%ish dodge in cata, and only 5% chance to miss, making parry only slightly worse then dodge, you will mitigate ~88% (50% from the first attack, and 75% for another 50%) of the damage dodge does, which, due to diminishing returns, is about what it does now point per point, AND it will make incoming damage MUCH more smooth, which is a good thing.

I approve.

Will armor mitigate before or after the parry mitigation and what was more confusing to me was that if you parry an attack the next attack could be dodged could miss you or could be blocked (I doubt you can block AND parry an attack though thats just a hunch.) I didnt see where they said we'd only have around 20ish dodge % I probably didnt read it right and still havent heard if they're changing the DR on parry to be equal with dodge. Personally I prefer it as an avoidance though now it seems its just become a better version of block (in cataclysm.)

[sleepyb]

OP talks about itemization being made easier for the devs, as if any of us players enjoy seeing MP5 Plate or +spirit leather drop, and being useful for only 1 *spec* out of 30.

Cata itemization sounds like a big improvement. But definitely a big change as well, and will take some figuring out and getting used to.

[EmeraldBalance]

One thing I'm interested in seeing work out is since spirit will now be used to translate into hit for boomkins and ele shams, will we still be seeing leather tier gear for boomkins that have spirit? Or will they have hit? I guess I'm just worried that even though Blizz intends to make spirit a desired stat for boomkins/ele shams, that spirit will still stay an undesired stat...Oh well, we'll see how it works out cuz we dont know how the spirit=>hit thing works.

Any thoughts on this?

[Izhara]

So you'd prefer every piece of gear to have optimal stats? How boring would that be... Reminds be of the LK dagger with ArP; even with ArP it was still BiS for mutilate but so many OCD kids cried on the forums that Blizzard was forced to change it.

Guess what? Now that crying won't happen. If you don't like the stats, reforge it.

[fishface]

My conclusion from this post is that this shit is bananas and people whine too much.

I personally think the changes add a lot more depth than people realize, especially with reforging. People whine and whine 'oh but HASTE SUCKS FOR ME BAWWWW' when Blizz has been saying they want to change things so haste is beneficial for everybody, making it an interesting decision between, say, a piece of gear with hit and crit, a piece of gear with haste and crit, or perhaps that piece of gear with hit and crit having some of its other stats reforged into haste.

That's exactly what I was thinking. It annoys me when people whine (and whined back in bc about +heal turning into +spell) about this sort of thing. In cata theirs going to be actual choice and with reforging a potential for people to choose they're playstyle. That's what always amused me about WoW's 'customization' at the moment it's a bit of a farce because most players always customize themselves in the same way (or get flamed for not doing so).

[Jaqen Hghar]

Please get off my interwebs, Herr OP. I mean, seriously, it's not like you can have more possibilties with flexibility...