Is it Time to Bring Back Primary Stats?

[cparle87]

Enhancement shamen desired strength pieces for the increased attack power. Additionally, there is zero affect on morale when personal loot is involved. 25 people out of 40 might roll for the Mageblade, and maybe 3 of them get it. That's how personal works.

Enhancement shaman could technically go with either depending on what they wanted. 1 str gave 2 attack power. 1 agi only gave 1 attack power but also gave crit.

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No.

There's literally no reason to. All the reasons you built main stat was changed to secondary stats.

Agility = Crit
Strength/Intelligence = Current Main Stat (Attack/Spell Power) since Mana is now a static amount

Haste has never been a main stat ability, and Stamina is just an item level increase. If they could make the main stats interesting despite having secondary stats that cover ALL of their bases, maybe, but there's really no reason to when there's already stats that cover that situation.

I always thought there was some imbalance cause agi dps and casters got crit from their primary stat while str dps didn't. I was hoping they'd even things out, and they did... by taking it away from agi and int.

[cparle87]

There SHOULD have been, but all this ended up really doing was:
>Agi classes built more attack power on gear (Or armor penetration, because that was better than attack power at the time)
>Str classes built more crit on gear (Or armor penetration, because that was better than crit at the time)
>Int classes didn't get spellpower from their main stat until Cata - During that time, they double-dipped getting spellpower from Spellpower and Int, and crit from both Int and Crit. (But they removed the spellpower from all gear but the weapon, so "double dipping" in spell power was minimal at least.)

It took them quite some time to balance everything out - Especially once Agi and Int started double-dipping into crit and attack/spell power, which was only limited insofar that attack/spell power was only present on weapons at that time. Ultimately though, it wasn't until Crit/Expertise was removed that all three main stats were made fully equal, which makes sense given that Int classes needed significantly more Hit, Rogues/Enh Shaman needed more hit due to dual wielding, and most classes had their expertise at least partly taken care of by talents.

(Inb4 someone calls out me saying they took time to balance it out. "BuT tHeY sTiLl HaVeN't BaLaNcEd It!1!!!11!!")

I personally thought they were inspired when they set it up so hybrid melee like ret and enh also got spell hit from their expertise, allowing them to remove melee miss, spell miss, and dodge all from two stats.

[kranur]

Having the bis list for plate class consist of mostly leather was not a good design lol.

[Accendor]

it would be a little....awkward with personal loot,in the past warriors wanted a bunch of leather,agility gave crit and other usefull stats,attack power more than str actualy gave atackk power...or armor pen

my holy pala in wrath had less plate than any other armor type lol

personaly i think they should just make primary stats do more...and different things,and have it be differently budgeted like with secondaries

Ah yes, I too remember the chain boots with +int that were BiS for fury warriors in wotlk

[Rusken]

The main problem IMO is it creates another level of optimisation and just makes things more convoluted.

Gear was homogenised and item level was made the "go-to" indicator for player power to help new players understand the game better.
It's a whole lot easier to think "I'm a Warrior, I want plate armour with strength on it" than "I'm a Warrior, I want some plate armour, but mostly leather armour because it typically has better DPS stats on it, also those mail boots have hit% I need those, let me sim my character to optimise performance."

In the end it doesn't really matter. The community would very quickly figure out what is best and then everyone would just use the same gear much like they do in Classic, much like they do now, and have for the entirety of the game's lifespan. Ask yourself this; If you could choose between an item that gave you 100 strength, or one that gave 50 strength and 50 agility, which would you take? The answer is "The better one" and which is the better one? The one that gives you more DPS. All you're doing is adding the illusion of choice and confusing a lot of people at the same time.

It's too late to go back to Vanilla days where some pieces from some dungeons would arbitrarily have higher or lower stats than others in the same dungeon. "Item Level = Main Stat" is now the foundation for gearing characters and the game as a whole is better for it, your "interesting choices" come in the forms of Rings, Trinkets, Necklace and secondary stats.

[Jonnusthegreat]

I'd argue it was never interesting in the first place. It just gave us an optimisation problem that most people would just plug into a convenient calculator and otherwise not really worry about, and the lack of Expertise and Hit reduces it to what's basically "reforge worst stat to best stat" with little thought involved.

The reforge bots of hit and expertise caps were the true problem with reforging. Without them, reforging would serve as another 'bad loot protection' mechanic. Instead of people thinking that they've gotten another shitty haste/crit item, they could still gain some versatility. Once ignored items can come back to the bargaining table.

[huth]

The reforge bots of hit and expertise caps were the true problem with reforging. Without them, reforging would serve as another 'bad loot protection' mechanic. Instead of people thinking that they've gotten another shitty haste/crit item, they could still gain some versatility. Once ignored items can come back to the bargaining table.

No, they'll still be ignored. The margin between good and bad would at best be a bit smaller, but more likely people would just get pickier.