Extreme Dump Stat, good idea or bad?

[nothingsjim]

I think everyone here understand what "Dump Stat" means, it's basically a stat so worthless you won't invest any points into it. In WoW terms, it means we avoid equipment with that particular stat like a plague, unless it's on a crucial piece of Set Equipment.

It's okay (And necessary) that some stat is better than the others, but for some classes, this is taken too extreme. Haste on Sin/Sub Rogue is one example, my Rogue's Mastery/Crit/Ver sims between 22-30dps per point, and haste at...10.7dps per point. It's so extreme that I am still using my 900 Crafted Ring on my Rogue, because the 945 one I have is a haste ring.

It's not just Rogue either, Fury Warrior and Crit is another example. My fury warrior's Haste sims at 36dps per point, while Crit at...13.4dps per point.

I am pretty sure there're other classes with similar situation, but I don't have accurate data because I don't play them.

Do you think it's a good design that Dump Stat can go so extreme? I personally enjoy stat weight between 70% of each other (Arms Warrior, for instance), so that most of time, an upgrade is actually an upgrade instead of having to having to stick to much lower ilvl equipment (Not counting Unstable Arcanocrystal ofc).

[Ihsatakar]

Some classes have dump stats, some don't. It's a product of each class using different mechanics to achieve the same result (DPS.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Different gear should be better for different classes.

[Nikkaszal]

I mean, its a tough call balance wise

Classes have dump stats not because those stats are necessarily *bad*, but because the way they are designed inflates the value of other stats.

Take Frost Mage for example. Frost gets rock solid for crit up to the "shatter cap", outweighing even Int because of the way the spec is designed around Shatter. Haste is next up because more haste = faster Frostbolts = more Glacial Spikes. Versatility is flat damage, not bad but lower down, still 2nd prio after Haste once Shatter cap is reached.

Then you have Mastery. Looks alright on paper - increases your Icicle damage, which is a decent chunk esp with fat Glacial Spike crits, and increases your Water Ele damage which is basically a waste because Lonely Winter is the go-to for raiding. How are they going to increase your desire for Mastery? They can't just tune it up and leave everything else as-is, that just adds more damage for Frost. Devalue crit and haste? Suddenly raiders find their current gear doesnt reach shatter cap and damage goes down. Redesign the Mastery? Now you have to redesign the class and balance out a ton more talents and spells...

And then a new expac rolls around, everyone starts gearing again, suddenly stats are out of whack because the last retune was done at the end of the previous expac when everyone was in BIS gear.

Honestly... it just happens. And I think people just have to live with it. You still using an old ring, thats just some bad luck on loot for you.

[Socialhealer]

seems fine for warrior, you raise crit value they get too good, since it's all about bursting within battlecry and using the trinket to lower battlecry CD, why should crit be massively buffed for them? that just makes them overpowered.

[Razion]

Gross. I hate useless stats.
Especially when I waste all my good luck on a very rare world boss. Get nothing for up-tenth time, use a token for a re-roll... finally get something, for the first time, it massively upgrades to a high ilv -- oh boy, I think to myself prematurely -- BUT OH NO it has a TON of one DUMP STAT. Like, DANG would that piss me right off.

Maybe in a universe where all the gear you obtained ever was all account-bound like in Diablo with the chest so you could send boss-drops to your alts if they were actually useless to you.

Otherwise, maybe if your goal is to make everyone completely rabid with hatred it'd be a fantastic idea.

[Radaney]

Pretty impossible to avoid.

[Zelk]

tfw intellect is your dump stat

[Gharld]

As an ele shaman its always been an interesting balance of crit, haste, and mastery (or multistrike back in WoD) but I just fucking hate Versatility. I dont care if it sims better than another stat, I (as a casual) would rather vendor a 930 Titanforged item with versatility than replace something 910 with the other 3 stats, because those other 3 at least are noticeable.

Now I can somewhat understand Vers being more attractive for a class whose mastery is "oh you do more fire/holy/w.e damage", but I still feel that they cut the wrong stat from WoD -> Legion. Multistrike should have stayed, and Vers removed, and I say that as an ele shaman whose mastery became absolute shit when they introduced multistrike. But atleast with that crappy Mastery you would shoot more damaging crap pebbles, rather than what feels like extra stam + primary stat.


Edit: My hatred for Vers may have derailed my thoughts from the topic at hand. Somewhat to what I said in the first paragraph, it kind of sucks having to choose between a drastic ilvl upgrade vs preferred stats, especially if the higher ilvl items has your worst stat(s). The tricky part overall would be making all stats "decent" for every spec, while also not removing what uniqueness remains to each class/spec ie. crit being such a core part of Fire mages (not a hardcore fire mage player, so all I know is crits = more pyros so I assume more crit is always better). Now if only they kept reforging, so atleast you could turn a "meh" piece of gear with good ilvl into something at least appealing to some degree. But no, having to reforge was too much work for us players.

Edit 2: And on a further note, say they brought the secondary stats more inline with one another and dropped Vers, we would be down to only 3 secondary stats, from the ~6 (its been awhile : / ) we had pre-mastery. Trimming some of those was fine (jesus fuck the math involved with armor pen), but they've reached the limit where if they trim any more we may as well just be like our order hall followers and have ilvl and thats it. Tough stuff for sure

[tuesday the paladin]

Right now in my ret gear haste is well above the rest, but strength, mastery, versatility, and crit all are simming within 5% of each other. And haste is only a fair bit higher (~35%) than the rest because with a few more percent I'll reach a breakpoint were I'll get another finisher in each judgment. If i was to get a couple more points of haste to reach that point it'd drop down to my least valued stat being about 15% below my best stat.

For a while survival hunters were trying to balance all their secondaries. (IDK if thats how it is any more, I dont play the spec on my hunter anymore) While that design sounds novel it led to some annoyances like having to juggle similar ilvl gear and gems/enchants around to accommodate a new piece of gear with different stats. It could get tedious to balance upgrades than it is to just avoid one stat like the plague. Not that I think that's a better design either. However if stats were truly balanced I'd expect the goal of balancing all stats to probably be the expected gearing strategy. It sort of removes those 'hell ya, I just got a big upgrade with a lot of my favorite stat' moments. But on the other hand there really wouldn't be any of the opposite cases where you get a really big ilvl upgrade but can't use it due to crap stat allocations. I think the better scenario lies somewhere in the middle, where classes do have a 'favorite' stat, but it's not head and shoulders above the rest. This middle-ground approach could perhaps be even harder to achieve than either end.

[Piesor]

As an ele shaman its always been an interesting balance of crit, haste, and mastery (or multistrike back in WoD) but I just fucking hate Versatility. I dont care if it sims better than another stat, I (as a casual) would rather vendor a 930 Titanforged item with versatility than replace something 910 with the other 3 stats, because those other 3 at least are noticeable.

Always depends what you are up to. Most people just care about raiding, especially about SIM DPS. But that's just part of the game. And you don't even need to raid anymore for the best gear. My 7.3 DH Tank is at 741 ilvl now, all he cleared (once) was ToS normal. Versatility is an extremely valuable stat imo for solo content, high mythic+ and in open pvp situations, especially for hybrid classes and tanks.

There are even extremly effective versatility based builds when you start to think outside the box. I run an extremely entertaining and bursty crit - versatiliy build with my feral for example. And to receive healing and damage reduction in addition to the high amount of +dmg is just great and pushes survivability through the roof.

[nothingsjim]

seems fine for warrior, you raise crit value they get too good, since it's all about bursting within battlecry and using the trinket to lower battlecry CD, why should crit be massively buffed for them? that just makes them overpowered.

It's less about "Buff Crit" and more about "Balance the Stat".

A balanced stat should look like (For Sin Rogue) Mastery/Crit/Agi/Ver/Haste = 30/27/26/25/20. Sure, Haste is still bad, but it isn't that bad. Currently, my rogue's stat weight comes out as...

Mastery/Agi/Ver/Crit/Haste = 29.14/25.19/23.89/22.56/12.35

Ya, Haste barely worth half as much as the my second worst stat. This is what I mean by "Extreme" dump stat, some stat will be better than others, that's cool, but when it's this extreme, it's not cool.