Armor Pen Gear Carry Over Into Cataclysm

[Eravian]

I can't help but noticing that a great deal of the dps gear dropping currently has vast amounts of Armor Penetration on it. While Armor penetration is a very useful dps stat (although as my only primary dps toon is a DW Frost DK, so I'd personally like it if 3/5 t10 DK loot wasn't Crit/ArP :-P ), I also see people talking about their ICC gear lasting them into Cataclysm raid content.

My question is, with ArP going away in Cataclysm, what's happening to all that ArP on our current gear? Are they just dropping it? If so, that greatly reduces the itemization value of our gear. Are they replacing it with something? If so, what?

I was a bit baffled why, after talking about how they're going to remove it, they proceeded to stick it EVERYWHERE.

Anyone heard anything about this?

[Kazeyonoma]

a lot of stats that are disappearing will merely be scaled down with the new Mastery stat.

[Muffin Man]

Look to what happened to all the paladin tanking gear at the end of TBC.

All that intellect and some cases spell power converted to strength and other stats.

I didn't play a Paladin back then, but it was great as a Warrior who suddenly got all this new gear to play with .

[Akolon]

a lot of stats that are disappearing will merely be scaled down with the new Mastery stat.

Yes, it will surely scale down, but I do not think this is caused by mastery. Blizz wants to get rid of ArP and the most simple way to do this is by not changing the ArP mechanik at all but simply increase the needed amount of ArP rating per percent ignored armor by an insane amount.
So when cataclysm hits, all your ArP gear will be still working the same way as now. However as soon as you are levling up to 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, the amount of ignored armor from your 80 gear will be very small so that you will be forced to replace it with new (probably blue) gear from cata-dungeons.

And those items will have stats from the "str, stam, crit, haste, hit, expertise, mastery" pool.

[Dreador]

Yes, it will surely scale down, but I do not think this is caused by mastery. Blizz wants to get rid of ArP and the most simple way to do this is by not changing the ArP mechanik at all but simply increase the needed amount of ArP rating per percent ignored armor by an insane amount.
So when cataclysm hits, all your ArP gear will be still working the same way as now. However as soon as you are levling up to 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, the amount of ignored armor from your 80 gear will be very small so that you will be forced to replace it with new (probably blue) gear from cata-dungeons.

And those items will have stats from the "str, stam, crit, haste, hit, expertise, mastery" pool.

Any of the stats that are going away will go away or be replaced on *all* gear. Look at the weapon skill -> expertise or the full agi -> half agi/half ap, they don't phase the gear out and make it obsolete, it changes.