Stats Are Different Now

[Korobus]

As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.

The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.

Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.


What You’ll See on Gear


Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.

Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.

Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.

Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.

Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.

Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.

Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.

Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.

Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.


Being Removed from Items


Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.

Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.

Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.

Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.


Going Away Completely


MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.

Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.

Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.


What Else You Should Know


Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.

Changes to Existing Gear

As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.

If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
A lot more Stamina.
All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.

If you are a healer, expect to see:
A lot more Stamina.
All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.

http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tracker/us-forums/23425636414-cataclysm-stat-system-changes.html#0

Thought I'd post some info for the possible 2 people that still play WoW.

Thoughts?

[Desheep]

Currently: if I want to play a class then I have to go onto forums, spend HOURS researching which trolls are the ones who know what they're talking about and which are full of s****, then finally find myself a recommended set of armor.

If these changes let me roll a warrior and just equip whatever I find without worrying about being gimped, then I'm happy. If all it does is piss everyone off without making anything easier, fael x 3.

[Wavemaster Elk]

Currently: if I want to play a class then I have to go onto forums, spend HOURS researching which trolls are the ones who know what they're talking about and which are full of s****, then finally find myself a recommended set of armor.

If these changes let me roll a warrior and just equip whatever I find without worrying about being gimped, then I'm happy. If all it does is piss everyone off without making anything easier, fael x 3.

Amen.  I hated Armor Pen, I hated Haste, I hated all that s****.  I like being able to look at the upsides and downsides without crunching numbers.

[Kaye-]

Armor pen is the ONLY stat that made little sense because of how it works with armor, which is to exponentially increase your dmg.

Everything else made sense.

Of course, even with the changes, hit may be confusing because it matters on what level of content you're up against. However, providing that hit isn't some stupid easily reachable cap, then it should be fine. Basically, if I'm about 50% geared from a tier, I should be hit capped. Then if you're 100% geared from a tier, you should be half-way between that tier and the next, and so forth.

But that's just how I'd design it. Haste is still going to be annoying unless they let it affect GCD for rage classes too that are GCD bound, like arms >_<

[guimontag]

i feel like they're kind of blanding it up, but no big deal

[Korobus]

Being someone that doesn't currently raid at the moment and am leveling a huntard to get it done; What does haste currently do to the physical DPS classes? It seems to me that it would mess up shot rotations for me (Excuse my ignorance if that's not the case I can't raid yet.) As kaye said, it seems to just get cluttered when you have to wait on GCD to be your "real" haste.

What did weapon skill accomplish? I've seen the stat but have never had to really worry about it as a Resto druid.

I'd really like to see what they have in store for spirit, MP5 was annoying to stack at times.

[Kr@cked]

The last I heard Survivalist hunters loved haste (and some armor pen), and MM hunters loved armor pen (maybe a little haste?)

Both can get up to 50% crit or so.

As for melee classes, shamans love haste (in fact all 3 specs love it), DKs love Armor Pen in general, Warriors love Armor Pen, Ret pallies love haste. No idea about teh rogues. I think one spec was based mostly on envenom and poisons, so didn't need much Armor Pen, but like haste and hit???

[Korobus]

Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of MM hunters but I can see how survivalists could like it. Armor pen, hit (until cap), Agility with some crit mixed in were the stats I kept hearing for MM.

[aRHpositive]

No more defense kinda feels like more tanks drooling over DPS armor. But I dunno anything besides being a druid tank, so I might be wrong.

Also, there'll be a lot of noob tanks in entry level heroic dungeons in lvl 85 due to defense cap requirements being lifted. But this is a good thing because everyone is being so harsh about tanks and they always want a top-class one while they can finish the raid with a mediocre tank too. Now, noob tanks have a chance to learn.

These are the thoughts of a player who never played WoW in high-end Raid instances. Criticize accordingly.

[Kr@cked]

Well, dodge, parry and block will still be on tanking armor. So that much shouldn't change, and tank gear will probably still have moar stam/bonus armor. Unless the player is dumb or in dire threat troubles, shouldn't be a problem.

As for defense cap req being lifted, I personally always look at my tank/healer's gearing/spec. If it's completely retarded (like, 71 into Prot Warrior, for example), I give them one wipe. If they're actually legit, I give them 3. Any more wipes than that and I'm probably doing a favor for a friend.

[Wavemaster Elk]

No idea about teh rogues. I think one spec was based mostly on envenom and poisons, so didn't need much Armor Pen, but like haste and hit???

Mutilate (Assassination) has a higher hit requirement than Combat and dislikes Armor Penetration.  We also use more Haste for the buff from Envenom to cause more damage.

Combat on the other hand loves Armor Penetration and has a lower hit requirement.

[Korobus]

A few updates right after the fact have gone up.

A breakdown of the stats for each class
Think about it like this:

DPS cloth: Int, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (mage, warlock, Shadow priest)
Healing cloth: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy and Disc priest)

Melee leather: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (rogue, Feral druid)
Spellpower leather: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Balance druid)

Physical mail: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (hunter, Enhancement shaman)
Spellpower mail: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Elemental shaman)

DPS Plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (Fury, Arms, Retribution, dps DKs)
Tanking plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Armor, Dodge, Block, Parry, Mastery, Expertise (Prot, Prot and tanking DKs)
Healing plate: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy paladins)

There will be exceptions. There might be some spellpower cloth with no hit or Spirit that healers and nukers may want. There will likely be Elemental tier sets with no Spirit. Jewelry and cloaks will be more class agnostic than actual armor pieces.

I wrote that quickly, so hopefully I didn't mangle anything. 

Is there an advantage for wearing your proper armor type?
There is a small Mastery bonus for wearing "your" gear. So a Balance druid who takes cloth will be essentially giving up free stats. Sometimes that may be worth it to them (just as sometimes it's worth it for a Resto druid to take that piece of +hit gear), but often times it won't be worth it especially if it's an upgrade for you.

Reforging
Think of reforging like enchants. It's not that you take a piece of gear and turn it into whatever you want. You pick up specific scrolls with specific conversions. We haven't decided on them all yet, but I imagine crit -> parry is not something you're likely to see. Maybe we'd do hit -> dodge for the tank who is full on or doesn't want hit. Maybe we'd do block -> parry to help DKs benefit from more plate.

Rest assured that we're not going to promote a system where Prot paladins want dps plate for tanking more than tanking plate. Part of all of these changes are to discourage behavior like that. We don't want to recreate it immediately in a different form.

How will bosses require more hit rating over the tiers in Cataclysm?
We’re not sure yet how bosses will “level up” in subsequent tiers. The general idea is that currently you need a specific amount of hit and after that hit becomes worthless even though more hit goes onto higher level gear. Furthermore it creates odd balance problems when you are critting and avoiding the most powerful bosses by more than you did the earliest bosses (because your gear keeps getting better while they just get more health and damage).

Haste in Cataclysm
Haste will basically remain the same for casters. It is changing for melee classes, however. Haste will also allow melee classes to recover their resources more quickly, effectively letting them hit their buttons more often.

The change to haste for melee dps is "in addition to its current affect".

Spellpower from intellect on weapons: Will it use the item budget or current system? (Source)
Spellpower will still count on the weapon item budget.

Plate armor values vs other armor types
Plate will still possess much more armor than cloth, the difference just wont be as significant as it is now.

What's the point of being a tank with these changes?
Tanks will have much more health and armor with gear, enchants, gems, and talents. From gear they'll also be getting mitigation stats such as parry and dodge (when applicable). Don't worry tanks will still be tanks, and dps/healers wont be able to fulfill that role anymore than they are able to now.

Why will melee DPS have close to or more health than tanks?
We take gem budgets out of the most attractive stat on a piece of gear, in order to avoid anything with sockets always trumping similar gear without sockets. As such, socketed tanking plate has less base stamina but with gems, you’ll almost certainly end up with more health than dps classes.

Will spell penetration still exist?
Spell Penetration will still exist on PvP gear.

The Block changes -- are they to prevent trivializing old content? (Source)
Yeah, that is sort of the intent. We don’t like that block allows certain tanks to trivialize older content. Older content is always going to be easy, but it was a little strange that warriors and paladins could literally take no damage with enough block while DKs still took some damage. Stats need to scale and this one wasn’t.

Non-plate armor values
Cloth won't have as much armor as plate. But maybe it will have half as much armor as plate instead of one fifth as much armor as plate (or whatever the ratios end up being at higher levels).

Really, cloth isn't the issue, since cloth wearers have spells to buff their mitigation. Leather wearers are the ones who end up the most fragile. Mail would be bad too except that shaman can use shields when needed and hunters typically don't get hit by melee much. We just want to bring things a little closer to each other. It's easier to establish a baseline for how hard a particular attack should hit for when one dps spec isn't literally four times as survivable as another.

Stamina will be king in Cataclysm for tanks
Once upon a time, being a "mana sponge" was a scary thing. Nobody (esp. druids) wanted to be the meat shield that had huge health pools but drained the healers dry. When mana matters, avoidance matters more too. I'm not saying parry will ever trump Stamina, but perhaps Stamina won't trump parry by quite as much as it does today.

Holy paladin itemization
Holy paladins are still a special snowflake with regard to gear. We have explored alternative solutions, ranging from them not wearing plate to somehow getting spell power from Strength, but we don’t like any of those designs better than just having Holy paladins wear plate.

The problem with the current stat system
The problem we have with current stats is that some are good and some are terrible. To use the Resto druid for example, crit isn't useful because so many hots can't crit and haste isn't useful because so many hots can't be hasted (and talents provide generous cast-time reduction already). To use another example, some mages are very near the crit cap to the point where a trinket that proc'd crit (or even a free crit) would be less attractive that one that proc'd haste. It's not that crit is bad for them. It's just that they have too much.

The problem is that some stats are twice as good as other stats. If crit was slightly better than haste, you'd take crit given the choice, but still wear haste.

How does this new spell system work with summoned items?
There won't be a way or need to cast the lower level spells. If you're just worried about losing the flavor of croissants vs. strudel, we're keeping that. At some point you'll just start making the better breads.

*Quotes are from blue posts regarding questions to changes on WorldofRaids Blue tracker*

A few of them had some pretty good answers, thought I'd add a few of em.

[ætherine]

No idea about teh rogues. I think one spec was based mostly on envenom and poisons, so didn't need much Armor Pen, but like haste and hit???

Mutilate (Assassination) has a higher hit requirement than Combat and dislikes Armor Penetration.  We also use more Haste for the buff from Envenom to cause more damage.

Combat on the other hand loves Armor Penetration and has a lower hit requirement.

And tends to stay out late on the corner turning tricks...

.. of the trade!  I couldn't resist,.

Just had a discussion about Marks Hunters and ArP with someone, much to their dismay.  Made them almost quit their Hunter.  So glad Paladins don't have this problem (O WAIT).

[Korobus]

Didn't think aeth would come back from the grave for this thread.

grats

Edit: Found something nice as well. Talent tree masteries!

Quote from: Eyonix

Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.

One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “…and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.

There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage’s rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just “6% more damage” and is the kind of talent we’re trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.

As we get closer to Cataclysm’s release, we’ll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.

Holy Priest

For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:

Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.
Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


Discipline Priest

For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:

Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.
Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


Frost Death Knight

For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:

Damage – Improves your melee and spell damage by X%.
Haste – Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents.
Runic Power – Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


A couple other things to note: Currently, we’re not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm’s release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.

We’ll have more details to share about these and other changes we’re making in Cataclysm in the future, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums

[guimontag]

catacylsm sounds a lot like diablo2 now