With reforging and gemming (mostly) gone, will frost be dominant in PvE? (WoD)

[Silent Earth]

Fire, like other crit-based specs (Balance, Fury), has always been fairly gear-dependant. Even with reforging, it took a decent amount of gear for the spec to come into its own. I suppose the concern that, with reforging gone, the time it will take to reach that point could be longer is a valid one, but it's really too early to say. Hopefully, with Blizzard's new focus on making all secondaries at least somewhat valuable and the addition of things like Enhanced Pyrotechnics, there won't be as much of a gear discrepancy as we're used to.

Also remember that all enchants are secondary stats only now, and gems (which I think are also only secondaries) will give much more of a benefit than they do currently. Even if you only have 2 or 3 slots on all your gear, that's potentially a lot of crit (or mastery, or multistrike, or whatever you might want).

[mrgreenthump]

Fire, like other crit-based specs (Balance, Fury), has always been fairly gear-dependant. Even with reforging, it took a decent amount of gear for the spec to come into its own. I suppose the concern that, with reforging gone, the time it will take to reach that point could be longer is a valid one, but it's really too early to say.

Also hit is gone.. So you don't need half your secondary stat budged to just hit the boss anymore in the start of an expansion.

[Silent Earth]

Also hit is gone.. So you don't need half your secondary stat budged to just hit the boss anymore in the start of an expansion.

Very good point. That will definitely make an impact, especially at the start of the expansion.

[FayrenPickpocket]

I mean, reforging served as a good backup plan for less than optimal pieces, but now most people will probably try to find gear for their spec and pay attention to BIS. Right now, a lot of people take gear just because it's a higher item level than they have, but I feel like with the removal of reforging, an arcane mage will go "Oh, this piece has versatility and crit and is 665, but it would be replacing a mastery/haste piece that's 655. I better just keep the old piece."

And Enchanting is going to allow flexibility in stacking the secondary stats you want.

[Charge me Doctor]

I don't think that. Fire definitely won't have same amounts of crit chance, but with addition of permanent-old-combustion to fireball, non-crit streaks will be rare thing to happen. Also Incineration, Critical mass, Molten Armour it's fine.

[Karon]

Very good point. That will definitely make an impact, especially at the start of the expansion.

But instead of Hit ther are now Multisrike and Versatillity that will take up some secondary stats. So you will need really good dropluck (or time for farming) to get your gear with crit + second best secondary stat on your gear.

[Deleted]

I checked my character.
I only have 893 rating reforged INTO crit. This is because almost all my items already have Crit on them so I can not reforge to Crit much.

I have 2 items that do not have Crit at all:

- HC WF neck from Shamans (hit + haste)
- HC ring from Galakras (hit + haste)

and from those 2 items those 893 crit rating reforged come from.

Once reforge is removed Hit will also be removed from game. Hit will be replaced by some stat that does not exist on item.

Ring from Galakras upgraded 4/4 have 1013 Hit rating. That will be replaced by Crit.
Neck from Shamans have 1221 Hit rating 4/4 upgraded. That will be replaced with Crit.
Values above are in current state but once replaced hit -> Crit values will change as at same item items will be squished.

So, by removing reforging I will loose 893 crit rating. But at same time by removing Hit I will get 2234 Crit rating (current values) so basically my Crit will actually increase.
This mean that negative effect of reforge removal will be compensated by Hit removal at same time.

But also it really depend how will items in WoD be itemized, above calculation is for current items after 6.0 changes come.

Of course, there are changes in gemming but that I personally didn't check much how it will be changed.

[nickseng]

I checked my character.
I only have 893 rating reforged INTO crit. This is because almost all my items already have Crit on them so I can not reforge to Crit much.

I have 2 items that do not have Crit at all:

- HC WF neck from Shamans (hit + haste)
- HC ring from Galakras (hit + haste)

and from those 2 items those 893 crit rating reforged come from.

Once reforge is removed Hit will also be removed from game. Hit will be replaced by some stat that does not exist on item.

Ring from Galakras upgraded 4/4 have 1013 Hit rating. That will be replaced by Crit.
Neck from Shamans have 1221 Hit rating 4/4 upgraded. That will be replaced with Crit.
Values above are in current state but once replaced hit -> Crit values will change as at same item items will be squished.

So, by removing reforging I will loose 893 crit rating. But at same time by removing Hit I will get 2234 Crit rating (current values) so basically my Crit will actually increase.
This mean that negative effect of reforge removal will be compensated by Hit removal at same time.

But also it really depend how will items in WoD be itemized, above calculation is for current items after 6.0 changes come.

Of course, there are changes in gemming but that I personally didn't check much how it will be changed.

IIRC, Celestalon also said that Enchanting will be mostly secondary stat in WoD, so you might want to take account of your int enchants.

[Komati]

There is the possibility of trying to obtain gear that's best for your spec. You know, if you're fire mage, try to get gear with crit, if you're arcane get gear with whatever arcane needs.