agility in cata

[dkiller21]

will shaman finaly be getting a 2:1 ap ratio for agility like we had with str back in vanilla/tbc? if anyone in beta could answer this that would be fantastic

[Feiht]

Its already been announce that for agi users 1 agi will equal 2 AP just as 1 str does for plate wearers

[Omanley]

it was also announced that plate gear will get a little more crit rating, because of the melee crit aspect of agility, which will be lowered though. so it´s kinda like with hunters in vanilla.
i dunno however how good agility will be in comparison with mastery and haste though.

[Redshirtdude]

Agility will be the stat we gem for, followed by haste/crit. Mastery is actually one of the stats we're not going to be gemming for, as it only increases a small part of our damage. Maybe for spelldmg pvp burst? But I'm certainly not going to let a piece of equipment go just because it has mastery on it. Besides, you can always reforge.

Agility will give us a small amount of crit, 2 AP per point, 1 SP per point, and lastly some dodge. (With the new MQ at 50%, 1 AP will be equal to 0,5 spell dmg for enhancement.)

[Radux]

While Agility is probably a really solid option for gemming, I believe it is a little to early to speculate. We aren't positive what the gear looks like at 80. What I mean by this, since Enh and Hunters are the only class wearing +Agi mail, my guess is that there will be a lack of Expertise. Also, hit needed will be scaling per tier of content. So assuming hit and expertise are easy to come by, I can totally see that Agility will be the 'go to' stat.

EDIT: Hi Feiht.

[Feiht]

Keep in mind that nothing is final yet. I still expect to see a change in our Mastery talent...hopefully...please.../whimper

I believe the stated intent is to make the mastery affected talent the one by which they can easily scale class performance to work out the balancing issues. As such i find it unlikely that Ours will continue to be so mediocre...

[dkiller21]

sweet i must have missed readin that thank you

[Barky]

even while we dont have really high mastery, im pretty sure that they will make us use Lightning Bolt as our go to spell for Maelstrom 5 stacks, LvB will turn out to be the spell we cast if FS is up and you want an instant crit for the 9% melee crit. SS debuff + Mastery will probably outweigh the bonus 20% to fire damage spells from FT Unleash Weapon from our offhand.

at least in the later gear levels anyway.

[Omanley]

well dont forget about blizzards statement that they wanted to give enh/ret something to make haste better, when they mentioned it affecting energy/focus regeneration.

you think it´s possibly primal wisdom? as our melee attacks increase with haste, i could see some kinda "soft melee haste cap" comming along, at which point we generate enough mana through autoattacking to never go oom even without shamanistic rage.

that aside, agility is a high contender for our gemmed stat in cata. in comparison with pure ap gems we used during early wotlk, agi will provide a small amount of melee crit AND they will scale with kings as well. with a lowered/removed icd of wf, i could however see an increased value for haste... hmm so hard, or rather impossible, to tell.

[Redshirtdude]

Note that lowered/removed WF hasn't occured yet. I guess all we can do is sit and wait for later iterations (hopefully with less talent costs - I'm looking at you, static shock, earthen power, frozen power and totemic vigor!!) before we can make any more judgments about enhancement.

But I do believe Agility will be our gem stat.

[DeWumpus]

well dont forget about blizzards statement that they wanted to give enh/ret something to make haste better, when they mentioned it affecting energy/focus regeneration.

you think it´s possibly primal wisdom? as our melee attacks increase with haste, i could see some kinda "soft melee haste cap" comming along, at which point we generate enough mana through autoattacking to never go oom even without shamanistic rage.

that aside, agility is a high contender for our gemmed stat in cata. in comparison with pure ap gems we used during early wotlk, agi will provide a small amount of melee crit AND they will scale with kings as well. with a lowered/removed icd of wf, i could however see an increased value for haste... hmm so hard, or rather impossible, to tell.

If I remember correctly didn't blizzard say, 'Haste no longer increases attack speed, it increases casting speed for spell casters and for melee it will increase their resource regen rate. We will give Enh Shamans and Ret Pallies talents that will allow them to use haste to regen mana'.

Then I remeber seeing this on the blue trackers

Excellent question. It isn't a talent, but Seal of Truth (Seal of Vengeance) will tick faster with haste and
Judgement of the Wise's periodic mana energize will tick faster with haste. A Ret paladin with enough haste might have enough mana to throw out the occasional Consecration, while a fresh 85 might not be able to afford it often.

Haste is already really attractive for Enhancement, especially with Maelstrom Weapon, so they are probably fine.

This is confusing to me as If Haste no longer increases Melee Attack Speed, then it is not going to affect our mana regen or our Maelstrom Weapon stacking speed.

Can someone clarify this for me?

[Fornaw]

well dont forget about blizzards statement that they wanted to give enh/ret something to make haste better, when they mentioned it affecting energy/focus regeneration.

you think it´s possibly primal wisdom? as our melee attacks increase with haste, i could see some kinda "soft melee haste cap" comming along, at which point we generate enough mana through autoattacking to never go oom even without shamanistic rage.

that aside, agility is a high contender for our gemmed stat in cata. in comparison with pure ap gems we used during early wotlk, agi will provide a small amount of melee crit AND they will scale with kings as well. with a lowered/removed icd of wf, i could however see an increased value for haste... hmm so hard, or rather impossible, to tell.

Hard to say what, if anything, will be changing to make haste more attractive. As of right now the stat conversions suggest that they are undoing the 3.1 melee haste buff, which makes haste significantly less attractive. Beyond even that the rating conversions at 85 are really really painful compared to what they are today. Think 4x as much of a stat to get the same percentage out of it. That alone makes the attack power portion of Agility a much stronger stat, since it has always been 14 AP = 1 DPS.

[Barky]

well dont forget about blizzards statement that they wanted to give enh/ret something to make haste better, when they mentioned it affecting energy/focus regeneration.

you think it´s possibly primal wisdom? as our melee attacks increase with haste, i could see some kinda "soft melee haste cap" comming along, at which point we generate enough mana through autoattacking to never go oom even without shamanistic rage.

that aside, agility is a high contender for our gemmed stat in cata. in comparison with pure ap gems we used during early wotlk, agi will provide a small amount of melee crit AND they will scale with kings as well. with a lowered/removed icd of wf, i could however see an increased value for haste... hmm so hard, or rather impossible, to tell.

Well isn't our melee haste affected by Mastery at the moment? If I remember correctly (so I may be wrong, feel free to correct me on this) our 3 masteries are Physical damage, Melee attack speed, and Nature damage. That would suggest that more mastery is going to mean more mana with primal wisdom which would suggest we wouldn't need to gem haste, most likely Mastery and Agility, and hopefully Mastery won't be a red gem

personally i'd like Mastery to be a blue gem :P

[Leafen]

Barky: They remove every mastery but the last one.
My guess is that we get a fixed percentage increase in AtS if any at all