76 Diminishing Returns in Secondary Stat Ratings

[Cosmic Janitor]

It may make it more complicated, but not more meaningful. Previously, you knew that getting a dope haste/mastery piece (for instance) was always going to be good for you. Now, no single piece matters. You'll be keeping a bunch of pieces in your bags with all different secondaries and every time you get a new item you'll just sim everything and wear whatever pops out. The items could literally not have any name and it wouldn't matter.

I don't think just stacking a single stat and only looking for that is a particularily meaningful choice either. In general I doubt there are alot of meaningful choices in WoW if we are honest. I would say constantly having to shuffle your gear around will be more involved though. Not that I think that is particularily good either, but I think the issues are less along the lines of nebulous meta goals like "meaningful choices" and such and instead more practical in nature, like it being impossible to guess what constitutes an upgrade and essentially simming yourself to death.

[Mozu]

I don't think just stacking a single stat and only looking for that is a particularily meaningful choice either.

The meaningful part of this is knowing what gear you want and working towards it, and knowing it won't be made obsolete after some arbitrary threshold is met. Getting a piece with high *good stat for you* feels a lot better than not caring about stats at all (or caring about them equally so ilvl is all that matters) past a certain point. At least in my opinion.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The meaningful part of this is knowing what gear you want and working towards it, and knowing it won't be made obsolete after some arbitrary threshold is met. Getting a piece with high *good stat for you* feels a lot better than not caring about stats at all (or caring about them equally so ilvl is all that matters) past a certain point. At least in my opinion.

It's not like you will be swimming in secondary stats before x.2 anyway. You can easily stack your two best stats for a while before the diminishing returns become an issue for you. You can also hunt for that one piece that balances your stats perfectly. I will acknowledge though that specs that could go for haste will probably not get the awsome fast paced feeling down the line - sadly.

[Mozu]

It's not like you will be swimming in secondary stats before x.2 anyway. You can easily stack your two best stats for a while before the diminishing returns become an issue for you. You can also hunt for that one piece that balances your stats perfectly. I will acknowledge though that specs that could go for haste will probably not get the awsome fast paced feeling down the line - sadly.

This is somewhat true, although the "item that balances your stats perfectly" changes every single time you get a new piece with different stats, so that point is actually not true. Still, you're essentially saying "the game will still be fine until this system is active." That's more of an argument for it to not exist.

[Gaidax]

This is somewhat true, although the "item that balances your stats perfectly" changes every single time you get a new piece with different stats, so that point is actually not true. Still, you're essentially saying "the game will still be fine until this system is active." That's more of an argument for it to not exist.

As if people that supposedly so much care about chasing BIS don't already have prepped top gear choice they snipes off community resources.

Let's not be dishonest there, shall we? People that give a damn know what they get in return for every potential upgrade.

[Accendor]

Yay, another punishment for high end players. You got nice gear? Would be a shame if something happened to it.

[Gaidax]

And that's especially true about haste, back in the day when there was no partial ticks and shit we knew very well our haste breakpoints after which you'd simply go for the next stat down the line.

Let's not make some shocked face here, as if it's some rocket science that totally going to leave us helpless.

You will have that shit mathed out and presented in TLDR format as usual.

[Keldion]

I can't imagine how this would be necessary unless Blizzard is trying to cover their asses for another confluence of endgame systems.

[huth]

Would be nice if it was still displayed in-game, because it just causes confusion when different specs need wildly different amounts of rating per % while other secondaries are the same for everybody.

I still don't get why they removed it. It made conversations about mastery much simpler, and mastery buffs were just "5 Mastery" instead of constantly shifting amounts of rating. It's not even like they changed the system, it just doesn't get displayed anymore. There's a reason base mastery effects are nearly always divisible by 8.

[exochaft]

I still don't get why they removed it. It made conversations about mastery much simpler, and mastery buffs were just "5 Mastery" instead of constantly shifting amounts of rating. It's not even like they changed the system, it just doesn't get displayed anymore. There's a reason base mastery effects are nearly always divisible by 8.

Former WoW devs have discussed this in their own forums/channels. The reason they shifted from stats like % crit to crit rating is because it's easier to balance and tune the numbers under a ratings system from the developer side of things. The general consensus from the same devs is that there is a big downside to the system: it's confusing and less intuitive for the players, along with some more in-depth game theory issues that arise from gearing using a ratings system. Simply boils down to the change was made to made dev's life easier.

[Gaidax]

Former WoW devs have discussed this in their own forums/channels. The reason they shifted from stats like % crit to crit rating is because it's easier to balance and tune the numbers under a ratings system from the developer side of things. The general consensus from the same devs is that there is a big downside to the system: it's confusing and less intuitive for the players, along with some more in-depth game theory issues that arise from gearing using a ratings system. Simply boils down to the change was made to made dev's life easier.

The issue with direct % was already apparent in Vanilla. Things like gloves with +2% crit from AQ and so on - it was really hard to step up the game from that, what would you give after that? 3% crit? 5% crit on items?

That's why rating was introduced pretty early.

[Super Kami Dende]

Good change, will be far easier to balance across all specs if the expected Stat gains can be figured beforehand.

- - - Updated - - -

Yay, another punishment for high end players. You got nice gear? Would be a shame if something happened to it.

Lmao "Punishment" goddamn you guys love hyperbole. It's a fucking videogame.

[Gaidax]

Lmao "Punishment" goddamn you guys love hyperbole. It's a fucking videogame.

Dem "pro" players threatened by return of stat softcaps, such punishment, unbearable!

[Hctaz]

And that's especially true about haste, back in the day when there was no partial ticks and shit we knew very well our haste breakpoints after which you'd simply go for the next stat down the line.

Let's not make some shocked face here, as if it's some rocket science that totally going to leave us helpless.

You will have that shit mathed out and presented in TLDR format as usual.

Yes but gear shouldn't need to be "mathed out"

I know nuances like the haste breakpoints in Wrath were not exactly common knowledge, but I'd argue in Wrath you got the best of both worlds versus now. In Wrath, gearing was a puzzle that needed to be solved and, once it was solved, it was presented as a BiS list. If you weren't somebody who cared about running sims or mathing out optimal paths then you just went off of the BiS list. If you were somebody who was interested in that stuff, you could sim if you wanted or you could come up with gear combinations by hand and compare the values with where you needed them to be.

With the way the system works now, the DRs aren't an actual hard cap the same way that the haste breakpoints were. If haste is your best stat then it MIGHT continue to be your best stat for a while even after DRs kick in if they aren't effective enough at bringing down your stat weights. It also might not. It might not be your best stat after the first DR, or the second DR, or the third DR... and there's no way to really know any of these things unless you physically sim it out for yourself. We might go back to a time where BiS lists exist again (which would be neat versus hoping to get lucky with some RNG bullshit), but I'd argue it's less intuitive than it was in Wrath. In Wrath you knew that X stat at Y value became useless unless you could take it to Z value. That's a pretty easy puzzle to solve compared to now.

[Tradu]

Former WoW devs have discussed this in their own forums/channels. The reason they shifted from stats like % crit to crit rating is because it's easier to balance and tune the numbers under a ratings system from the developer side of things. The general consensus from the same devs is that there is a big downside to the system: it's confusing and less intuitive for the players, along with some more in-depth game theory issues that arise from gearing using a ratings system. Simply boils down to the change was made to made dev's life easier.

That's not really what happened with mastery, though. Mastery still has the same conversion from rating to points to %, the points step is just hidden, which is confusing when comparing between specs(you can more or less directly compare 30% crit to 30% crit, but for mastery that doesn't work) and makes mastery's rating -> % conversion look more confusing than it really is. It has nothing to do with moving from % stat on gear to rating on gear.

[huth]

Former WoW devs have discussed this in their own forums/channels. The reason they shifted from stats like % crit to crit rating is because it's easier to balance and tune the numbers under a ratings system from the developer side of things. The general consensus from the same devs is that there is a big downside to the system: it's confusing and less intuitive for the players, along with some more in-depth game theory issues that arise from gearing using a ratings system. Simply boils down to the change was made to made dev's life easier.

You're missing the point here. Originally, the UI displayed "Mastery Points" that the rating converted to at a fixed rate for all classes. It no longer does that, even though the underlying system still works exactly the same. It also saved us from having to explain that any changes to base mastery conversion automatically result in a scaling change.

What you're talking about is completely unrelated, as Mastery wasn't introduced until after ratings.

[Wuusah]

It surprises me that people think this will have any impact on anything in the game. Right now the only reason why we have so many secondary stats is corruption, essences and azerite traits. With SL Blizzard stopped giving us stat rating from borrowed power traits. Some of the old stat rating powers are even reworked into flat percentage powers (like the dh eye beam haste buff).

UNLESS Blizzard plans to give us a ton of secondary stats in later content patches, this will be the "big impact" of this change:

[sephrinx]

Diminishing Returns is a garbage system and needs to go. It's absolutely ridiculous.

[Yayeet]

Don't worry, it will be gone by the second tier, once they realize how problematic it's going to be to balance certain specs that need those thresholds to become viable.

[Gaidax]

Don't worry, it will be gone by the second tier, once they realize how problematic it's going to be to balance certain specs that need those thresholds to become viable.

Yes, because clearly we're gonna be running around with 100% haste/crit/matery/vers in 9.0/9.1.

This shit, even if it becomes an actual "problem", will be the earliest a problem of 9.2 and even there it would be edge case.