Why does versatility exist?

[Smellyflute]

As a resto druid, I spent half the expansion avoiding vers, and now in the latter half, fitting it in within gear upgrades. It isn't the flashiest stat, but I personally like it. It increases my raw healing while increasing my defense. Because of the way that the other stats work within Resto druids framework, it isn't something that you stack, but something that becomes mathematically more appealing as your other stats become more balanced. If you don't have enough crit/haste/mastery, those stats shine, but once you do, vers becomes very attractive, point for point. After changing my gear per the wisdom of the logs, I went from something like 4% vers to 14+%, and the difference was absolutely noticeable for survivability. As a squishy class with skill based survival cd's, this was a godsend. This meant I could survive aoe dmg while displacer beasting out of it, or could commit to my Wild Growth + running away + rejuvs strategy without having to cancel my Wild Growth and self healing before group healing, which has a big impact on my numbers.

From a design standpoint OP, what would you change? Or what do you dislike specifically?

[Gaidax]

Versatility is a fine stat, quite a few specs value it and it comes with a defensive property.

[Polarthief]

Because if they only had 3 stats, people would get their BiS items and quit early, according to blizzard of course.

I'm not even joking, that's their ideology, though having only 3 stats would be pretty low. We used to also have Spirit, Hit/Expertise, Defense/Dodge/Parry/Bonus Armor, and probably some others my brain is forgetting at 3:30 am, all at various times through the expansion. Now we just have 4 and at least 1 stat would have to be pretty boring. TBH, Mastery is even more boring than Versatility for some. It's just raw damage in most cases instead of damage, healing, AND DR.

Regarding Multistrike, in a way, it is basically a second version of Crit, and I can see why they removed it.
Also if you remember Readiness, it got rolled into Haste for some classes and specs.

[Dastreus]

Eh, I like vers better than dodge and parry rating. Flat out damage taken reduction. It also gives a damage boost. It really helps DPS classes that actually like vers, some small measure of increased survivability. I main assass rogue atm, and vers is tied with mastery as first, with crit riiiight near there, and my rogue can take it well. Not to mention, it's a fun stat in pvp, due to survivability.

[Deleted]

Holy Paladins are built around critical strike, and then Restoration Shamans, both Priest specs and Mistweaver Monks get a lot out of it as well. It all comes down to understanding your toolkit and how damage goes out on your group. It's also not at all a wasted stat for some tank specs. Once your survivability is good, you want to focus on damage to help your group kill things as quickly as possible. Crit is often the second best stat for that.

I know that some healing specs benefit a lot from it, what I was trying to get across is that it's an unreliable stat. Haste, mastery and versatility gives you a reliable output, you know exactly how much that health bar is going to move if you cast a certain spell. Crit on the other hand is not, the persons health bar could move by a certain %, or twice as much, it's impossible to plan for it and sometimes it's going to cause overheals as a result (overflow was a pain for many healers because of this).

It's similar for self healing tanks, my soul cleave could end up healing for twice the amount, so should I wait with using it or use it anyway with the risk of overhealing? It's not a stat that you can really work with due to its nature of being completely random. A DPS seldom cares if an attack deals twice as much damage, that's rarely wasted. From a design perspective healers and tanks would benefit more if crit was either reworked for them or turned into something else that is not random.

[schwarzkopf]

Haste - same as it is
Crit - Sam as it is
Mastery - For some specs it should stay the same, but for those where it's a flat damage increase, it should be reworked to do something more interesting
Versatility - Removed
NEW* Impact -

If you want your new whacky Impact, you should remove Crit and keep Mastery.

Crit is already about bigger bangs on RNG, Impact seems to fill that niche pretty much the same way.

[Alextros]

NEW* Impact -

So you want Cleave back more or less?

[Anjerith]

If you don't like it, thats fine. As a tank, I like it just fine - and since I am what keeps damage dealers from taking naps on the ground --- I feel my opinion matters at least a tiny, tiny bit.

[Pua]

Most defensive stats from the past have been just as boring, but have been limited in usefulness or downright confusing.

Honestly?

I didn't think tank gearing was boring. I enjoyed the differences between block chance and rating (particularly in Wrath, when block rating increased Shield Slam damage), dodge, parry and defence rating; I never once found it confusing. They all did different things but, unfortunately, so did bosses - and when higher tuning became necessary due to more complicated mechanics, suddenly these differences started to cause all manner of different problems. Good luck trying to tank Anub'arak's burrowers with a tank that couldn't block, for example, or completing Mount Hyjal without a paladin and his Holy Shield tanking.

Sure, those things were possible - but much, much harder.

The answer to the question in the OP is pretty simple, though. Versatility is easy to tune. It's why versatility is still in the game while multistrike, due to its often unforeseen interaction with other abilities and talents, isn't. The former is easy to tune while the latter is hard to tune because it's interactive and players will find ways of getting more from it than is intended.

Ultimately, a poster above (@Tornwar I think) makes a good point about haste and critical strike rating - they're easy to understand, and should essentially result in the same DPS increase when all other things are equal... Just as they never are, hoho. But at least they provide a choice for players to decide whether or not they want their attacks to be faster, or want them to occasionally hit harder. Multistrike works like this, a little, because it provides players a choice of whether they occasionally want an extra attack for free.

In simple theorycrafting terms, however, all will have break points where talents make their value drop from a cliff. Versatility doesn't have this problem, depending on where the diminishing return threshold starts to kick in.

Funnily enough, the argument for dodge and parry to be merged into avoidance was that they did roughly the same thing - but so does versatility and mastery. They both effectively provide a flat increase to damage, healing or tanking without anything in the way of real interaction. They're both boring because they're both designed to be universal, and one is typically only better than the other when talents are taken into account.

For me, however, we're possibly past the point of no return.

Multiple gearing choices were fun, until you ran out of space to store it all or your +fire damage slot finally dropped when your mage wasn't in the group. Garbage stats were never fun, but reforging was designed to alleviate that. Reforging didn't work because people want to equip gear when they earn it, while hit and expertise meant a new piece warranted a full reforge. Gem slots were cool until players realised that the socket bonuses were typically worse than just pumping in your best stat. Enchanting provided an opportunity for further gear customisation, until the argument was made that it was just another impediment to equipping a piece of gear and choices got whittled down to asking Mr. Robot.

Now, we're in a world (of Warcraft) where gearing is made boring and colourless because there's really no way to complain about it. If a piece of gear is good you equip it, and if it's bad you shard it.

In the end, the only way out of this Black Morass of drab dullness is for the designers to return to the drawing board and decide what they want gearing to look like. Do they want multiple options that players enjoy experimenting with and can customise for their own play style and enjoyment (which is hard, and the community will fight against) or do they want few options that are easy to balance and players won't be ostracised for?

We know what they've chosen. And it's one of the reasons people like me are #waitingforclassic while unsubscribing from the retail experience.

[Jurani]

If you want your new whacky Impact, you should remove Crit and keep Mastery.

Crit is already about bigger bangs on RNG, Impact seems to fill that niche pretty much the same way.

You keep saying crit is all about RNG but what about specs where it impacts gameplay like fire mage or destruction warlock?

[Pua]

You keep saying crit is all about RNG but what about specs where it impacts gameplay like fire mage or destruction warlock?

There are protections in place most of the time, particularly for high-quality players (which most, admittedly, aren't).

And it's not really RNG... I mean, technically it is of course, but a 25% critical strike rate will still roughly net you 25% critical strikes from your spells. Sometimes it's higher, particularly when raid buffed, sometimes lower when you're all alone; but each of those activities scales in difficulty and importance, so it's not so bad.

[schwarzkopf]

You keep saying crit is all about RNG but what about specs where it impacts gameplay like fire mage or destruction warlock?

I see you are starting to get my point..... good for you

[Sparklelord]

Vers does the same thing as Primary...that's why it should not be in the game

I was unaware that primary stats gave flat out damage reduction. The more you know I guess

[thebigman154]

I was unaware that primary stats gave flat out damage reduction. The more you know I guess

just make it only give damage reduction and a only tank stat and gg

[Thage]

Doesn't really excuse it if FFXIV is doing it. Both games have a useless 'why bother' stat. The difference being atleast FFXIV innovated with Direct Hit where as WoW decided Multistrike was like ArP in the sense that it was 'too mathy'. Tbh if they just balanced multi-strike around the exponential scaling dynamic it had with crit and throw crit damage onto versatility and you have a fucking game.

I still have no idea why in FF crit gives you both crit % chance and crit damage, when clearly crit damage should just be on determination.

I think the main issue with Armor Pen and Multistrike is that it was easy to master but few players really understood the underlying mechanics--they just knew "Get lots of this for good things." Blizz tends to prefer when it's the reverse--easy to understand the underlying mechanics but tricky to execute masterfully.

[Sparklelord]

just make it only give damage reduction and a only tank stat and gg

but then tanks would have a useless stat on their dps gear. The stat is fine, clearly a positioning issue.

[elaina]

I think you mean Multistrike.

I agree, Versatility is fucking worthless. I facepalmed when it came out, and I headdesked when they got rid of multistrike and KEPT Versatility. So fucking stupid.

#NeverForget

Multistrike didn't really offer much new with crit around, but at least the concept was way cooler than Vers. I miss it too honestly. Granted I also played specs that favored it thru all of WoD.

[Sail]

Honestly, as crazy as it sounds I really want Blizzard to add a ton of stats. Just flood the player with new options to build and redesign their play style continuously. Where you are just always thinking about what could be done, what could be better, but never really knowing. That is what I want.

[yetgdhfgh]

Blizz needs to bring back the old stats to make things interesting again

things are so boring now with just Crit, Haste, Mas and Vers

We need to bring back the old hit cap and other interesting stats like arp and that one gives a chance to do another damage but i forget what its called.

[Deleted]

Vers just feels like they didn't want to cut down to 3 stats but couldn't think of anything interesting.