The expansion-long secondary stat yo-yo has to stop

[Wilfire]

It's always the same thing every expansion

Day 1 - you feel like shit because you lose considerable power each level with your secondary stats tanking into oblivion
Tier 1 - you continue to feel like shit because your secondary stats are low across the board
Tier 2 - you recover a lot of your former secondary stats and your class actually starts to feel okay to play
Tier 3 - probably the perfect spot as far as secondary stats go
Tier 4 - your secondary stats grow into absurd quantities to the point some of your fundamental class mechanics break

Both Tier 1 and Tier 4 secondary % are horrible.

Please, Ion. Just make a flatter growth curve for secondary stats but make them start at a higher baseline level. No one likes playing their class when it feels like it's handicapped. Or when it's so absurdly scaled that you are just mashing buttons with no thought.

As an example, in this expansion (and I play a hunter) Frenzy management in Uldir was terrible because of the long cooldown on Barbed Shot and low extra Barbed Shot procs. It was so bad to the point it was distracting you from actual boss mechanics because dropping your stacks equated into a huge dps loss.

Now in Ny'alotha, thanks to stupid amounts of crit and haste you can basically ignore the existence of Frenzy stacks because you can just hit Barbed Shot on cooldown and still maintain 3 stacks >90% of the time.

Just find a sweet spot for secondary stats and keep them floating around that number. No need for wild swings from 10% crit at the beginning of the expansion to 50% crit towards the end.

[CrawlFromThePit]

I'm still nowhere near my 70% haste set from Legion...

But yeah it's ridiculous how things change too much in both ways. There should be new stats in new xpacks so instead of making the existing stats go full retard the extra budget would be split with more stats so everything could stay at a normal level.

[arkanon]

The issue as i see it:

Each expansion is its own story, where we start of dealing with low level minions, and even the bosses are 'low tier' bosses, and by the end of the expansion, we are challenging gods. To try to make it believable that we are challenging these gods, two things need to happen - our dps needs to be 10x what it was at the start of the expansion, if not even more, and we need some silly magical item to defeat this god.

It has created a situation where my character feels LESS significant than ever before, and is simply a contractor helping the NPC's defeat the boss. It honestly reminds me of the Fast and Furious franchise - the first few lacked realism, but still felt grounded in reality. Then they felt the need to continually "push the envelope" and new we have tanks, flying cars, submarines, and cars jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper. As the meme goes, next they will be flying space cars around fighting an alien invasion.

It seems the gaming industry learns nothing from the film industry, or, the continued success of those franchises instead encourages them to keep going further and further.

Personally, i would love a return to a more grounded reality, which might allow them to streamline stats a bit better over the coarse of an expansion, and allow some power increase without directly impacting the flow and playstyle of the classes.

[Schizoide]

They actually addressed this in BFA. Secondary stats scale very poorly with itemlvl in this expansion. Case in point, the Snakebite Recurve bow.

https://www.wowhead.com/item=159637/...rve&bonus=1477

Itemlvl 305, 93 crit (1.29%)
Itemlvl 455: 178 crit (2.47%)

So that's a whopping 150 itemlvls, a full 10 tiers, and you only get 1.18% crit. Now of course there are 15 slots so that adds up, but nothing like previous expansions where you could actually cap at 100% crit! Compare that to how agility scales with itemlvl; in the same 150 itemlvls it only got 85 crit rating, it picks up a whopping 475 agility.

A lot of the problem here is that it is of course influenced by the RNG and you remember the poor RNG times from early in the expansion, because it felt bad. And that's true. It's easy enough to fix that without de-scaling secondary stats further. Rather than scaling that barbed shot proc on crit %, scale it by, say, three times crit % with an internal cooldown.

[Gref]

I kept playing as arms whole expansion switching to fury from time to time for raiding reasons as people mocked and ridiculed me for playing as arms.
now finally, my haste is on a level where I can colossus smash the target again while test of might is still active and keep it up.
It is a huge difference. It was impossible to pull this of before but now possible. its ridiculous if you ask me. I enjoy it, but I don't think it is a good design. Why should I have to endure all the mockery previously?

[Natureseer]

It's always the same thing every expansion

Day 1 - you feel like shit because you lose considerable power each level with your secondary stats tanking into oblivion
Tier 1 - you continue to feel like shit because your secondary stats are low across the board
Tier 2 - you recover a lot of your former secondary stats and your class actually starts to feel okay to play
Tier 3 - probably the perfect spot as far as secondary stats go
Tier 4 - your secondary stats grow into absurd quantities to the point some of your fundamental class mechanics break

Both Tier 1 and Tier 4 secondary % are horrible.

Please, Ion. Just make a flatter growth curve for secondary stats but make them start at a higher baseline level. No one likes playing their class when it feels like it's handicapped. Or when it's so absurdly scaled that you are just mashing buttons with no thought.

As an example, in this expansion (and I play a hunter) Frenzy management in Uldir was terrible because of the long cooldown on Barbed Shot and low extra Barbed Shot procs. It was so bad to the point it was distracting you from actual boss mechanics because dropping your stacks equated into a huge dps loss.

Now in Ny'alotha, thanks to stupid amounts of crit and haste you can basically ignore the existence of Frenzy stacks because you can just hit Barbed Shot on cooldown and still maintain 3 stacks >90% of the time.

Just find a sweet spot for secondary stats and keep them floating around that number. No need for wild swings from 10% crit at the beginning of the expansion to 50% crit towards the end.

they intentionally made secondary stats scale extremely poorly this expansion for that exact reason. i dont think you really know what youre talking about (i mean youre talking about bm hunter "mechanics" distracting you lol)

also, the end of the expansion is when youre supposed to be overpowered and exceptionally strong.. thats kind of the payoff for the time spent grinding the gear.. if it wasn't for the heart of azeroth our secondary stats would be dumpster level thanks to azerite gear inexplicably lacking them completely.

[Alduin]

Well the issue with this expansion is not really the secondary stats. It is rather the system surrounding them.
During leveling legendaries from BfA and the tier sets were so extremely powerful you basically hold until they "wore out" - with the sole exception of you getting head, shoulders and chest BIS azerite traits.
Azerite traits from the start were waaaay to powerful (yet freaking boring) - but none of the beta feedback was worked into the system. This resulted in a really weird first raid tier with people rather using M+ max gear than raid gear and stacking traits 3 times. Some changes were made even during progress e.g. like the warlock nerf. Yet secondary stats were somewhat crap.
In mid BFA suddenly the stat weights changed (a lot) - both due to new traits, trait nerfs and overall gear level. Still they introduced certain mechanics and traits - especially within Uu'nat progress that made certain azerite traits and powers simply overpowering all the stats.
With EP suddenly stat weights became incredicle popular and out-weigthing primary stats. With a 50stat gem you simply could catch up 20-30ilvl worth of stats. And thanks to trinkets and azerite powers together with the EP gear suddenly crit/versa became BIS stats even for classes that went haste/mastery since the beginning of time (see affliction warlock).
Currently we have a situation were stat weights just went through the roof. Rogerbrown (during Nyalotha progress) once stated that eight secondary stat gave him a value of around 10-12 (3-6times higher than any other class weight).


Sadly there is no way to currently understand what part is even BIS for you anymore. Ion's statement on high ilvl gear should always be an upgrade somewhere during WoD/Legion - well that was not the case for BFA. You basically have to sim every item to somewhat understand if it is an upgrade or not. And even then they might change effects suddenly (like corruption gear) on pieces you just threw away a week earlier.

I personally rather miss the times of WotLK on that. You knew how armor piercing was working (pretty much linear), you knew when haste outscaled and crit became important or you simply preferred spirit as healer. The current game has not much to do with RPG anymore. It's a "grab and hope it scales" system with to much complicated interactions and interferences (like Echoing Void used by blood dps)....

[GreenJesus]

Lol imagine complaining about how hard BM hunter is to play. Oof. I agree that secondary stats started way too low in BFA though. If they actually remove titanforging it might be possible to not have to set secondary stats so low at the beginning.

[apples]

imagine complaining about character progression in an rpg

[VinceVega]

While yes the end of each expansion feels weird i really like the power curve you get at the start of an expansion.
Also... it is basically a two week window after which everything is back to normal.

[cparle87]

Lol imagine complaining about how hard BM hunter is to play. Oof. I agree that secondary stats started way too low in BFA though. If they actually remove titanforging it might be possible to not have to set secondary stats so low at the beginning.

I don't think it has anything to do with titanforging. You know how the whole thing works with you need X amount of a stat to get 1% of something at a certain level, then you need more to keep that same 1% as you level up? Back in the early days (classic-Wrath) you actually had situations where you'd hit the crit cap or cap other stats and that led to some weird things. So starting with Cata they MAJORLY ramped up how much you need for 1% so you get nowhere close to it. Sadly that also means we end up with way less right when we first hit cap.

[callipygoustp]

Character development, in this case power development, is one of my favorite parts of the game.

[Shaetha]

That doesnt need to equal bad game design though.

Yeah, but it's not bad game design. It's just design inherent to the format. Some people like it. Some don't like it. Either way it's the equivalent of complaining about getting wet when you go outside in the rain.

OT: This expansion is when you decide to whine about this? Really? This expansion, where the final patch secondary stats have never been lower, and the scaling of them has never been slower.

[Aphrel]

Ive been worried about this exact thing for a while now. It would be absolutely awesome if they somehow at least let us keep a realtivly high haste and crit level from the start (as these often are more noticable than vers/mastery).

Ppl where whining about the game feeling like shit when we went from Antorus to uldir. Well, i think alot less ppl wouldve whined if classes felt like they do now.
Firemage feels absolutely amazing to play atm, im dreading losing all that haste, my beloved lucid dream essence, mechagon bracers and blastermaster traits going in to shadowlands...

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, but it's not bad game design. It's just design inherent to the format. Some people like it. Some don't like it. Either way it's the equivalent of complaining about getting wet when you go outside in the rain.

OT: This expansion is when you decide to whine about this? Really? This expansion, where the final patch secondary stats have never been lower, and the scaling of them has never been slower.

Well, we still remmber how early bfa felt, and tbh i dont think the game as ever felt so bad. And that was mostly because of extremly low 2ndary stats values combined with added gcd on cooldowns.

I for one doesnt want a repeat of early bfa class rotations.

[yamix]

I like secondaries being stupid high near the end, makes you actually feel stronger. Base numbers inflating helps, but lots of haste or crit feels more satisfying.

[Zarithras]

Just make a flatter growth curve for secondary stats but make them start at a higher baseline level. No one likes playing their class when it feels like it's handicapped. Or when it's so absurdly scaled that you are just mashing buttons with no thought.

I hard disagree with you here.

Pre-WoD, secondaries mattered a lot for specs, and it was so fun. For example, going into ICC and capping ArP really enabled a lot of builds, like Fury and Combat. Or getting enough crit to make Fire playable / really really good in Cata. Or getting enough crit in MoP to enable machine-gunning Stargsurge on balance druids in MoP. Or getting enough spirit on any healer and getting yourself mana neutral in dungeons.

Having those kind of breakpoints and intense scaling kept classes/specs so exciting throughout an expansion. Without a noticeable increase in power, what's the point of getting ilvl? Do you really want your spec to feel the same (or close to it) for 2 years during an expansion? How boring.

Fire mages are a current example of this kind of scaling. Fire was a dead spec in 8.0 and 8.1. When essences and the Mechagon bracers were introduced in 8.2, the spec came online. Now, Fire is the most played spec in mythic raiding, and sees much more participation in other areas of the game. People love to find these niche setups.

That said, I do agree that there's an issue at the start of an expansion. BfA had the absolutely worst leveling experience, but primarily due to the loss of the artifact weapon and legendaries. It wasn't that annoying in prior expansions, especially pre-WoD when you kept all abilities and gained new ones when a new expansion came out.

[Sofo1]

they intentionally made secondary stats scale extremely poorly this expansion for that exact reason. i dont think you really know what youre talking about (i mean youre talking about bm hunter "mechanics" distracting you lol)

also, the end of the expansion is when youre supposed to be overpowered and exceptionally strong.. thats kind of the payoff for the time spent grinding the gear.. if it wasn't for the heart of azeroth our secondary stats would be dumpster level thanks to azerite gear inexplicably lacking them completely.

pfft do you know how fun it was to play my firemage at the beginning of legion?

[Tsamane]

They do need to reset every expansion as much as it sucks. If it didnt, we would be at Crit, Haste, Mast, and Vers, armor, caps already, which imo would suck more as we would stop feeling more powerful.

[Puri]

They tried it out in Legion, where even in starting dungeon blues you could get easily get 50% crit and equivalent in other secondaries. Secondaries then grew very slowly, although with the influx of primary stats the relative value of secondary stats once again grew exponentially over the xpac.

Imho this system worked pretty well, that didn't give you the feeling of being powerless when the xpac started and you went from end gear to greens, and yet it still lead to secondaries being strong all the way. I have no idea why they didn't continue that system in BFA.

[Video Games]

Its the reason why i raid so no thanks