Cataclysm Stats Blue Post

[Ion]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...25636414&sid=1

Of quick note:

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.

There's, obviously, a lot more (including no more weapon skill, defense being dropped on existing gear and replaced with block/dodge/parry). Definitely interesting...not sure how I feel about the changes, as a tank, quite yet. Caster changes are even more nutty and it's especially confusing for real hybrids like shaman and druids who have caster and healing specs and only one set of gear for both (caster mail/leather).

[Reev]

I think that looks very very interesting. Also makes parry a lot more attractive to me. It mitigates almost as much damage as a dodge, but spreads it out more. The downside is that the second "charge" can be eaten by a dodge, a miss, or another parry, but the upside is that it'll smooth out damage far more than full avoidance. In other words, as a healer, I'd be much happier to see my tank take 2 10k hits than dodge a hit and then take a 20k hit. Also makes the stat more interesting in general I think, since it'll be different from dodge in a significant way for the first time.

Block also looks a lot more appealing to me. With all these mitigation stats being tossed around, I imagine unmitigated hits are really really gonna hurt in Cataclysm. I like the changes.

[Eravian]

I'm actually more curious about the places where it says:

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.


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.

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.


So if health levels and armor levels are nearly the same between dps and tanks, and armor is being lessened, it's looking like tanking may just be "generate lots of aggro while wailing on the boss," unless the damage they're dealing is so ridiculously high that you need all that damage reduction found on Block, etc. to adequately survive.

It'll be interesting to see how they balance the Protection tree for a lot of classes to make it worth taking over hybrid or just dps specs.

[ae0n3]

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.

that means i can't switch to Battle and Shatter while tanking the boss

[Sark]

So Mastery for tanks does what exactly? Two choices are probably a percentage damage reduction or health increases.

I am not sure I like the Mastery model to be honest. I think it will encourage tanks to put every single talent into the tank trees because that will give them the most mitigation. Same with DPS - any talent points into other trees are a dps loss so it seems to me that it will discourage people from picking talents from different trees (unless they are splitting their talents between dps branches of course). This seems like it will translate into talent builds that are much less interesting for all but the pure dps classes.

Maybe they will have a cap on the mastery you can gain from talents (ie. 51 points or something)?

Also it is not clear to me how this will work for Feral druids and DKs who have talent trees that do dps and tanking.

It seems like the unhittable problem will still be in effect though. Reaching 100% dodge/parry/block will still be a huge goal for most tanks. I wonder if they will extend the upper tier raid mobs are harder to hit/crit to also have then be harder to dodge/parry/block as well. Its interesting that I remember them saying at some point that they felt that scaling up the raid mobs in this way was something that they didn't want to do because it wasn't very fun, but I guess after two straight expansions where they miscalculated gear scaling for the later tiers has convinced them otherwise

[Muffin Man]

I think there will be a cap on mastery bonuses from talents. But even if there isn't. Then that opens a lot more opportunities for spec customizations and knowing your class.

If you're someone who throws all your points into the tank tree for max hp/dr then you'll miss out on utility talents (and possibly tanking talents like how most tank classes have tank talents in multiple trees). So even without a cap there's incentive to spread your points out. I think it'll be fine.

Unhittable will be an interesting goal. It looks like the generous rating conversions we've had on block rating are going away (gut instinct). I wouldn't be too surprised to see a DR curve put on it as well. Since as written it's pretty good.

Hopefully the larger health pools and smaller boss hits will give them more room that even if they end up adding more tiers of gear they won't end up with Earthwarder's Radiance when it comes to stat scaling.

One of the things I wonder is if hit capping as well will be something that just won't happen until the latter tiers of content. They say some contradictory things (hit will be harder to cap now, but at the same time spirit -> hit classes won't have +spirit buffs taking them over the cap either). It would be kind of cool to have to struggle to reach the hit cap, since that makes gearing less of a pain as players and as item designers. For example, I currently have 2 pieces of gear with expertise, they provide 91 and 52 each. Another piece of expertise gear like that and I'll be stuck way over the cap.

Also, them moving hit from yellow to blue could be a clue that they want to encourage socket bonuses (by giving you a blue socket alternative rather than buffing socket bonuses).

My take/hope is that there's just more flexibility in what you do spec/gear wise and so far I'm quite excited about the changes I've seen.

[Heladys]

I'm actually more curious about the places where it says:

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.


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.

I was working myself up to a frothing anger on those two points until it hit me... in a way this is a step back to Vanilla, when a boss could actually look at something other than a tank without instantly dissolving them to a red stain on the floor.

Remember mages pulling off the tank in MC, and running around screaming for the boss to be taunted off them? Now all they do is go up like a roman candle. If we plate wearers (and yes, druids too) can still clearly tank far better, but it means the occasional "oops" at least in early raiding isn't a death sentence, then maybe it's not so horrible a change after all.

Dunno. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt for a bit, I think.

[mavfin]

Unhittable will be an interesting goal. It looks like the generous rating conversions we've had on block rating are going away (gut instinct). I wouldn't be too surprised to see a DR curve put on it as well. Since as written it's pretty good.

I wouldn't be surprised to see 40% avoidance total considered 'good' or 'high' in Cataclysm. That will avoid the whole scaling and 'Radiance' issue, and smooth out tank damage a bit, too. I bet the ratings will hit pretty hard on avoidance totals.

A random thought: parry in the new state could be used as a tool to balance block vs non-block easier than two full-avoidance abilities, couldn't it?

[Eravian]

I just wonder if the whole stamina and armor equalizing isn't going to create a whole headache of problems in PvP that will resound throughout all of WoW. I have no problem with raid members not getting one-shotted by a boss if stuff goes bad, but at the same time melee dps already has a heck of a time killing cloth wearers that can bubble themselves. If they have bubbles, similar health pools and armor levels, and ignore armor with their attacks, I can see a whole lot of Arena-inspired complaints coming down the pike.

(And I like Arena as a warrior too, so that concerns me a bit as well. ;-) We'll have to see how it plays out.)

[Mhoram]

Is anyone else seeing this?:

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.

This is something this game's needed for a long time.

[Khordam]

Block also looks a lot more appealing to me. With all these mitigation stats being tossed around, I imagine unmitigated hits are really really gonna hurt in Cataclysm. I like the changes.

With all they've said about hits being smaller, mana management for healers becoming more important, and in the same vein wanting to see us fight in PvP "in a constantly wounded state", I'd rather imagine that yes, we can take individual hits, possibly even strings of unavoided hits, without much trouble at all. The big deal, I believe, will be to avoid or mitigate enough damage for the healers to keep up in the longer term, i.e. with their mana. Undergeared tanks might not die to one-shots any more, instead, their healers may simply be OOM halfway into the fight. And that, to my mind, sounds very interesting.

It seems like the unhittable problem will still be in effect though. Reaching 100% dodge/parry/block will still be a huge goal for most tanks. I wonder if they will extend the upper tier raid mobs are harder to hit/crit to also have then be harder to dodge/parry/block as well. Its interesting that I remember them saying at some point that they felt that scaling up the raid mobs in this way was something that they didn't want to do because it wasn't very fun, but I guess after two straight expansions where they miscalculated gear scaling for the later tiers has convinced them otherwise

GC alluded to bosses maybe getting a form of expertise at higher tiers some time back. I think that's what we'll see: Not just higher hitpoints and stronger individual hits, but stronger overall stats on bosses in higher raid tiers. That is to say, they'd gain some hit, some expertise, some avoidance, some ... you get the idea. Let's hope they won't gain crit just to mess with us!

[Arikak]

I'm actually more curious about the places where it says:

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.


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.

I'm super concerned on what this will mean for PvP. Both your standard PvP and PvProt.

Obviously not knowing how these changes will be implemented can be sketchy but just off the top of my head:

Melee classes will be at a serious disadvantage to all ranged classes (less so hunters) because of the ability of magical damage to by-pass armor. Currently the health advantage for plate wearers and stuns and combat drops for leather wearers etc help even the playing field between the the class meta types. This distinction disappears with nearly equal health pools and closer damage mitigation from Armor.

Unless resilience lowers magic damage more than physical things look, well, borked. Not to mention completely hosing world pvp.

PvProt is looking pretty scary as well. I know its probably not their highest concern but how am I ever supposed to kill someone with near my same lvl of health with my far inferior damage? No number of prot tricks are going to save me from a mage with 50k hp or even 40k.

Just some thoughts.

I do like a lot of the other changes. I just don't see armor being brought closer together and I definitely see them needing to boost protection health levels.

Oh and switch the mechanics for block and parry. Then we're set.

[Caric]

On first blush I have to say I am liking what I am seeing. Simplifying stats doesn't simplify the game, just takes something that is inordinately confusing and really puts it into a form that is easier to digest.

[gacktt]

Going to be funny seeing every cloth/leather/mail class get almost equal stamina to plate while retaining their range, cc, superior firepower andsuperior defensive abilities. Oh you mean for tanking? well the new changes are good in a way that balancing leather/plate stamina and changing the stamina scaling of bears and tanks might end up with us actually having equal EH with them for once.

[Muffin Man]

The big deal, I believe, will be to avoid or mitigate enough damage for the healers to keep up in the longer term, i.e. with their mana. Undergeared tanks might not die to one-shots any more, instead, their healers may simply be OOM halfway into the fight. And that, to my mind, sounds very interesting.

You know, this has actually happened a few times to me in LK. Notably the first time we did Beasts hardmode. The raid just took so much damage and the tank health was so spikey that the healers were struggling to keep mana up.

We actually came pretty close to wiping b/c of it. It was definitely a new twist and a sort of soft-enrage timer (dps harder or stay out of more fires!).

[TomHuxley]

PvProt is looking pretty scary as well. I know its probably not their highest concern but how am I ever supposed to kill someone with near my same lvl of health with my far inferior damage? No number of prot tricks are going to save me from a mage with 50k hp or even 40k.

The GEAR is going to be closer together in terms of stamina (and to a lesser degree armor), not the talents/mastery part. Tanks will still have more HP than a mage by a huge amount, it's just not going to be reflected in the gear itself, and this would include PvProt.

This is part of their solution to making everyone have more HP, to make burst less of an issue in PVP (as well as to tank survival in raids). I'm sure they have some ideas for melee vs casters in PVP, but overall I think they've made their case that it will be more fun if strategy comes into play rather than 15-25 second DPS zerges.

[Arikak]

The GEAR is going to be closer together in terms of stamina (and to a lesser degree armor), not the talents/mastery part. Tanks will still have more HP than a mage by a huge amount, it's just not going to be reflected in the gear itself, and this would include PvProt.

This is part of their solution to making everyone have more HP, to make burst less of an issue in PVP (as well as to tank survival in raids). I'm sure they have some ideas for melee vs casters in PVP, but overall I think they've made their case that it will be more fun if strategy comes into play rather than 15-25 second DPS zerges.

That's a good distinction. I wish they would state that this is a relative to gear not total health pools. Just to clarify because it's not obvious. And so we actually know that is their actual thinking.
*Edit: Eyonix cleared this up.

Though I still am still concerned how plate wearers/most melee are going to fare against casters, if you aren't a tank. Since they will lack the stamina modifiers that tanks enjoy. Unless those talents are found high in the protection trees.

Which brings up another interesting tangent. If they are trying to encourage plate wearing classes to be able to tank without a protection spec (a path I do not support in any way) what are they going to balance 5 mans around? Arms warriors with a shield in Def stance or Prot warriors with their stam multipliers and more mitigation? Balancing around the former would most likely make 5-mans stupid easy for real tanks, just like Wrath.

[Leucifer]

Going to be funny seeing every cloth/leather/mail class get almost equal stamina to plate while retaining their range, cc, superior firepower andsuperior defensive abilities. Oh you mean for tanking? well the new changes are good in a way that balancing leather/plate stamina and changing the stamina scaling of bears and tanks might end up with us actually having equal EH with them for once.

You hit the nail on the head with your first sentence.

It's already fun watching a shadow priest DoT the crap outta me and run..... then if I do catch them..... they bubble and laugh as I crumple into a heap.
Now, we're going to nerf my armor.... give them more health..... and keep them with all their wickedness?

Does Blizz hate plate-wearers?

As for bear tanks, biggest health pool I've seen recently on a tank was a bear druid. 50k+.

[Arikak]

It's already fun watching a shadow priest DoT the crap outta me and run..... then if I do catch them..... they bubble and laugh as I crumple into a heap.
Now, we're going to nerf my armor.... give them more health..... and keep them with all their wickedness?

Does Blizz hate plate-wearers?

My concerns exactly!

As for bear tanks, biggest health pool I've seen recently on a tank was a bear druid. 50k+.

This sort of thing should be greatly diminished come 4.0.

[felhoof]

Heh. I hit 50k in caster form the other night. Others are well above 50k normally in caster form and above 70k in bear.

Though I hope that this is reined in like they did armor.