76 Diminishing Returns in Secondary Stat Ratings

[Natureseer]

well look at this as an oportunity for them to make more inetresting trinkets,like cthun tentacle one,make it do some decent dmg,today trinkets like that are crap because seconderie proc trinkets are so damn insane....this will hopefuly balance it where both are fairly close

also i rly hope ilvl can finnaly matter more,ofc there will be items where one with haste will be better than one with mastery for some classes even if the ilvl is 5-10 higher....but when items 50 ilvls higher are a downgrade.....its silly

on the first point, id argue that trinkets that improve/change the way you play are more enjoyable than something like an uncontrollable pet that does flat damage.

on the 2nd point, i agree, but dont you think the better avenue would be to actually improve the functionality of certain secondary stats that are undesirable for various classes, than to simply nerf the value of the best stats, and force you into the others by default?

[deenman]

on the first point, id argue that trinkets that improve/change the way you play are more enjoyable than something like an uncontrollable pet that does flat damage.

on the 2nd point, i agree, but dont you think the better avenue would be to actually improve the functionality of certain secondary stats that are undesirable for various classes, than to simply nerf the value of the best stats, and force you into the others by default?

well they dont have to just be random pet spawns for flat damage,feel free to insert any kind of effect you like

regards to the 2nd point,i dont rly think they can do that where multiple stats have equal value or funtionality,people focus on their strengths and what scales best for them,even with this diminishing return it wont really stop people from stacking their best stat,it just means that it wont scale to astronomical levels like 50%+ base crit
and MAYBE instead of using an item 50-70 ilvls lower just because it has ''x stat'' wont be better than other +50-70 ilvl items

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I'll probably be torn down for saying it but hit and expertise was the best thing for controlling gear, it allowed to not use heavy DR by throttling the stats.

it helped sure,but those stats were booring and just mandatory inconvenience,i guess another thing they could have done instead of DR,is simply buff how much dmg the main stats give you,but dunno how much that would have to be to be better than permanent crit chance or super haste

i wish they would just bring back reforge,it would make nerfing the scaling on these stats atleast feel better

[arandomuser]

it seems impossible to hard cap your stats unless they add some kind of corruption system again lol

[Denso]

Meh, not really an issue until like 9.2 or 9.3.

At release we'll be running around with 3% haste, 1.7% versatility, 4% mastery and 0.69% crit anyway.

[Sithalos]

I feel like they're doing this because of the crazy shit corruption is doing to the game, but corruption is being removed, so now they're..double fixing it? I don't really get it.

Outside of the corruption circus, this only really hurts specs that hard focus into one stat. Specs with more balanced stat weights are mostly unaffected.

[Gref]

i think this is a good change. I am arms warrior but i am so fed up with stacking haste and nothing else.
I remember myself playing with gems-reforging. Think it was better. and there were some caps you would try to reach.
I do not know, I am not an expert on this kind of simming stuff but I believe it is a nice change although it will hurt me.

[Nevcairiel]

This only really hurts specs that hard focus into one stat. Specs with more balanced stat weights are mostly unaffected.

Actually it should help those specs, because if they are underperfoming they can get buffed, without risking them to be too OP due to scaling, since that is limited now.

Ultimately that means gearing for those specs is then easier, since you no longer have to blindly focus on one stat.

[Gaidax]

i think the idea behind the change was good, but the way they are implementing it is bad and the 25% limit is way too low.

this significantly weakens any secondary stat based proc, for example trinkets.

They can always add more stats to these trinkets to compensate, so that's hardly an issue, unless you are approaching the hard cap.

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I think the change is good, especially for haste-loving specs. I really hate it when I have so much haste that I drop under minimum GCD and it messes the spell queue flow. I'm glad it won't won't be a thing anymore.

Overall it's nice to have other stats being a thing, except for that "big one".

[Tojara]

Right now I pretty much stack crit on my DK and have +35% (without any critical amplifications at all). This is with very optimized gear with enormous amounts of crit on it, and sockets with crit in every single slot. I'm literally missing one slot of gear (belt) with native critical strike on it, and outside of some very slight modifications, I might be able to hit 38 to 40% critical strike at the absolute maximum.

Generally speaking, getting 25% of a single stat (except haste, which costs less rating per %) is pretty hard, and is something that we would generally achieve at the end of an expansion, or with really good gear in the second last tier. Basically what I'm saying, is that on the surface, this change doesn't really change a whole lot.

That's on the surface though. If this includes temporary procs or systems from an expansion, that's where this change can cause some harm, and be pretty stupid in my opinion. When this change goes live I'd get far more value changing a couple slots around on my gear and changing my gem choices to something that isn't critical strike, simply so it's not touched by the diminishing returns at all. This is fine (IMO). Again, where this becomes bad is if temporary procs or things like essences which give secondary buffs are also hit with the diminishing returns as well. If you only have to re-balance the gear you have on with enchants/gems or different pieces of gear, well that's fine, if you have to start taking into account trinket secondary procs or expansion defining systems.. well that's where it gets kinda stupid.

Using my current example re-balancing my stats isn't that bad (and in the majority of cases, for nearly every class, as you increase one stat, the chances of another particularly strong stat for your class usually eclipses the main stat that you were initially stacking). However, it gets dumb if temporary azerite abilities like swirling sands proc (that give crit), or overwhelming power are hit with these DR values.

That's my only issue with the system. Some people in this thread are completely blowing this out of proportion, but equally, there are some that can't see some inherent design flaws with this system either. For most, reaching 25% of a certain stat (from your gear alone) is pretty difficult in the early to mid points of an expansion, and even if you could, it's very likely that another stat is equally as strong, if not better than the one you typically want to stack (true for a lot of classes, if you don't believe me check your sims). Where this system sucks is if you have to start throwing certain trinkets out the window (considering that the proc might be diminished if you have too much already), or potentially swap soul binds simply because you start running into heavy diminishing returns with a certain one (I don't know if there are binds that give secondary stats or not, but there are certainly azerite traits and essences that give loads of secondaries).

Again, won't be an issue you generally run into until maybe the end of 9.2, or 9.3. Not a fan however if it's tied to expansion features or even temporary proc effects like trinkets.

[Nnyco]

Are trinket procs or similar effects like azerite stat procs also affected by this, or is this for the base value only?

Yes, if a trinket gives you, lets say 1000 crit, it will be affected if your crit goes above 25% from rating(keep in mind that rogues for example have passive 10% crit, which would not count).

[Natureseer]

regards to the 2nd point,i dont rly think they can do that where multiple stats have equal value or funtionality,people focus on their strengths and what scales best for them,even with this diminishing return it wont really stop people from stacking their best stat,it just means that it wont scale to astronomical levels like 50%+ base crit
and MAYBE instead of using an item 50-70 ilvls lower just because it has ''x stat'' wont be better than other +50-70 ilvl items

i think they can but theyre choosing a lazier option. maybe instead of limiting peoples chearing choices even further, they should just make every spec of every class have a stat template like they did for pvp an expansion or two ago, and then your gear does nothing but increase your base stats by a small percent. because thats the direction they are going with this change.

[Mozu]

Band-aid changes like this just make gear choices even less meaningful.

Just remove stats from gear already if you don't want people to have builds based on stats. Have a giant ilvl number on the piece that drops and nothing else and be done with it.

[Verdugo]

I feel like they're doing this because of the crazy shit corruption is doing to the game, but corruption is being removed, so now they're..double fixing it? I don't really get it.

Blizzard loves double fixing shit and breaking it by doing that. After MoP they removed hit and expertise, which was good but then they also removed reforging so they fucked up again.

[Hinalover]

How does this work for stats like Arms Warrior Mastery where it's inflated into the hundreds of percent without having barely any mastery gear?

Ok so Mastery is different from other specs where Mastery Rating gets converted to a hidden Mastery value. From there each spec multiplies this mastery value by a percent. For example Arms Warrior have a 11.2% multiplier to this mastery value. This change affects the mastery rating to mastery value and only the mastery from mastery rating. Each spec gets a baseline 8 mastery value. So for arms warrior, you have a 8 * 11.2% = 89.6% baseline mastery percent. But for this change once you hit 25 mastery value from mastery rating (280% for Arms Warrior (369.6% if you factor in the baseline mastery percent)) you will start getting taxed.

[Hctaz]

I'll probably be torn down for saying it but hit and expertise was the best thing for controlling gear, it allowed to not use heavy DR by throttling the stats.

Nah I agree. I dislike hit and expertise rating, however.

One of the reasons they decided to change the Classic stats into ratings was to prevent a situation where a piece of level 60 gear was better than level 70 gear because it gave 2% chance to crit and 2% chance to hit when starting level 70 gear was like 1% crit and no hit. That isn't an issue now as they have shown that they can take a percentage based thing and either reduce its value over time with new levels or just turn it off once you reach a certain level.

I'd say they should bring back hit and expertise, make them percentages on gear either following whole numbers or half numbers (so either 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. or 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, etc) and then give classes chances to be dodged, parried, or miss again.

I totally agree with your assessment though. Hit and expertise stats have hard caps on them, but getting more hit and expertise is still exciting because you can allocate those points into something else. Like... if a piece of gear from T1 is budgeted to have 1% hit and 50 crit rating and the next tier has a piece with 2% hit and 35 crit rating you're like, "WOW! I can use a piece that has 100 crit rating and no hit now because I'm still capped!" So you're still gaining meaningful upgrades but it's just a reallocation of stats and not necessarily a hard increase in them like it is now.

I also think there's some aspects of puzzle solving with hit and expertise that are interesting as well, but only if they remain as basic values that you don't have to simulate to find a solution. Classic WoW has this aspect because hit increases only come in increments of whole percentages. 1%, 2%, so on. It's really easy for you to experiment with gear because you don't have to go through every single combination of gear to find out which pieces allow you to hit as close to 267 rating (made up value) so you're not overcapped... I think that's the reason why hit rating became unfun, and it only got worse with reforging when you had to literally pop back out of the game to run a calculator to determine how you should allocate your reforge to optimize your character.




On the specific topic of this change: Doesn't this defeat what they've been trying to accomplish with gear since Legion? Well, caveat to that statement: It feels like a bandaid fix for classes that, despite numerous attempts at balance, stack one secondary stat higher than all others while simultaneously being a nightmare to classes which had already achieve a pretty decent balance of secondary stats. Maybe it isn't as bad for balanced classes as I'm thinking, but it feels like it defeats the purpose regardless. Their goal is to make item level be the defining factor on whether or not a piece of gear is an upgrade, but this obfuscates that process. If you get 25% haste rating now suddenly the value of 1 haste rating is lessened? How do you quickly determine if a piece is truly an upgrade when one piece doesn't push you over any DR cap but the second one does? Would you not have to go out and sim it to see if it's truly worth it?

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Blizzard loves double fixing shit and breaking it by doing that. After MoP they removed hit and expertise, which was good but then they also removed reforging so they fucked up again.

Also this. LOL

Blizzard has always had really knee-jerky pendulum swinging tuning knobs with aspects of the game.

"Reforging is bad because you have to use an addon to simulate hit and expertise caps whenever you get a new piece of gear, so we removed Reforging."

"Also we removed hit and expertise rating because having to simulate caps on hit and expertise rating is bad."

Me: "...wait a minute."

[unbound]

Another hot take - is stacking really a bad thing? I think it's kinda fun. They do have a huge problem with haste and how it affects too much about gameplay for many specs, but other than that, stacking seems fun.

Ultimately, yes.

Not disagreeing that it's fun...but it's a short-term fun. After the initial rush, you slowly realize things are becoming boring. If you are smart, you will realize it's because of that stacking. If you aren't so smart, it's boring for unknown reasons.

Long-term enjoyment comes in the form of challenges...ideally, in the form of challenging content and not in the slider scale type of infinitely repeated content.

This is why WoW has about 10% of the playerbase it had at peak.

[Mozu]

Agreed with what you said about hit caps and puzzle solving.

If you get 25% haste rating now suddenly the value of 1 haste rating is lessened? How do you quickly determine if a piece is truly an upgrade when one piece doesn't push you over any DR cap but the second one does? Would you not have to go out and sim it to see if it's truly worth it?

I think their ultimate goal is to get people to balance all secondary stats equally. Full-stop. I just don't understand why they think that is a good gameplay design though... "Oh, I hope my next piece has any secondary stats as long as it's roughly equal to all my other ones!" Yes, that will certainly make getting gear awesome...

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Ultimately, yes.

Not disagreeing that it's fun...but it's a short-term fun. After the initial rush, you slowly realize things are becoming boring. If you are smart, you will realize it's because of that stacking. If you aren't so smart, it's boring for unknown reasons.

Long-term enjoyment comes in the form of challenges...ideally, in the form of challenging content and not in the slider scale type of infinitely repeated content.

This is why WoW has about 10% of the playerbase it had at peak.

Yeah, hard disagree with essentially everything you said. It's this type of logic that motivated the current demise of class design in favor of "challenging content." It comes as no surprise that no matter how challenging the content is, the game is awful if the vehicle you experience that content with (your character) plays like ass.

Stat stacking has always been fun for character development.

[CrawlFromThePit]

after reaching 25% received from gear of any secondary stat, it will now take increasingly more rating to increase another % of that stat from your gear.

This means that if you have, let's say, 40% haste without Corruption, when the pre-patch comes, you'll only have 38% haste.

This penalty is as follows:
From 0 to 25%, there's no penalty.
From 25% to 34%, there's a 10% penalty.
From 34% to 42%, there's a 20% penalty.
From 42% to 49%, there's a 30% penalty.
From 49% to 106%, there's a 40% penalty.
You can't get more than 106% from gear rating.

To illustrate how this works, let's assume 10 haste rating gives you 1% haste.

• The first 250 haste rating you get will give you 25% haste, no penalties.
• After that, increasing your haste to 260, will only give you 25.9%, because any haste rating beyond 25% has a 10% penalty.
• This 10% penalty means you'll need 350 haste to get 34% haste, instead of needing only 340.
• Increasing your haste to 360, will increase it to 34.8%, because any haste rating beyond 34% has a 20% penalty.

Very good change IMO.
Quick question, what about Mastery? It goes up differently for each spec because some have just a shitty mastery that needs to reach insane % to be taken seriously, are these specs just getting fucked or is mastery diminishing return calculated like case by case depending on the spec?

[Hinalover]

Very good change IMO.
Quick question, what about Mastery? It goes up differently for each spec because some have just a shitty mastery that needs to reach insane % to be taken seriously, are these specs just getting fucked or is mastery diminishing return calculated like case by case depending on the spec?

Read my explanation here (4 posts up)

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post52587657

[Relapses]

This change is clearly aimed at fixing the unpleasant feeling players get when they roll an "upgrade" that isn't an upgrade. Personally, I think they should stop trying to solve these player-created issues and just bring back Reforging. /shrug