Cataclysm Stats Blue Post

[Chamenas]

I dont think they will make this into a talent but instead tie it into the stance. I imagine Righteous Fury will have the -25% to healing that Divine Plea has to balance it out. The others seem fine enough that the trade to uncritable will make you lose damage output.

PS to everyone who thinks being uncritable being tied to a stance is retarded look at druids with survival of the fittest talent. This is already some thing in game, like everything new try it out before passing judgment.

Perhaps my post was wishful thinking then. Despite what you say, I do not enjoy the thought of DPS being able to switch to being "uncrittable" at a whim. No, I'm not afraid that DPS will be taking my tanking spots. Let me address that real quick too, because far too many people are whining when there's nothing threatening here at all.

I admit that I too groaned a bit at the changes, and became scared for the Tanking role. However, DPS classes won't be able to Tank. They'll still have less HP, little to no avoidance, and often lack the CDs needed in order to get them through iffy spots. A particular highlight here is avoidance. Despite Blizzard potentially reducing how much avoidance we get overall, I think they intend to make it a bigger Tanking stat category than it was before. i.e. They intend to make avoidance THE distinguishing stat for Tanks. As a previous poster mentioned. Maybe every plate DPS will be able to take a string of hits without dying if they go uncrittable, but in the long run, it sounds like their healers will go OOM from lack of avoided hits.

Back to why I don't like uncrittable tied into a stance by default. I feel that such things will only put more pressure on me to get a DPS spec. There's already a lot of pressure when I want to join PUGs and I say "I don't have a DPS spec" or I look at the guild apps and they want to know what DPS spec I have for my offspec. Is it selfish for me to not have a DPS spec on my Tank? I guess it is, but I don't enjoy melee DPS and so I wouldn't want to give up the versatility I have in two Tank specs in order to pick up a DPS spec. At least, for now, most people can live with the fact that I don't have a DPS spec. However, in Cata, if uncrittable is simply tied into a stance, a lot more people might be looking for their "off off Tank" (in say, 25 mans) to simply be a DPS that switches stance, since they often do little tanking anyways. Ideally this would be a Tank that can go full Tank if the raid requires 3 actual tanks, or DPS when it doesn't. That puts more pressure on me to get a DPS spec, since it's already hard to find a spot in a raid for a Tank, it will be even more difficult when they have even more reasons to want me to have a DPS spec.

They ended up feeling that this would be a mandatory plate/druid talent which was going against the grain of "fun" talents in Cataclysm. And as per a previous post i think DKs' and Druids' mastery will be tied to stance just like being uncritable.

That was the major reason I mentioned the mastery route. It seems that Blizzard wants to shy away from Mandatory talents, and such talents would be mandatory. Though, on the same coin, Druids and Shaman will HAVE to put talent points into hit rating. Which means mandatory talents will still be quite prevalent. Not to mention that I'm hard pressed to believe that they'll find enough balance that certain stat choices won't simply be better from a min/max standpoint anyways. But I digress, we haven't seen the fullness of those changes yet.

[GronkerLonker]

I played a Warhammer trial a while ago and there are some nifty concepts I would like to see implemented in WoW too.

One was, that tanks cold build up a massive damage potential if they were ignored in PvP and the healers they protected were attacked instead. That's a nice way to give tanks a PvP role I think.
But since this has nothing to do with this thread, here's what else I thought of as a goo idea:

You get automatic stat improvements by speccing deeper into a given tree. So say you would put 5 Points in a defensive tree so you would get a 20% boost to your armor. This example is completely made up I must confess, as it's been a while since I played WAR and I only played it briefly. But I think that was the general idea and a nice way to factor these passive bonuses in.

In WoW it could look somewhat like this:

1) Every talent is assigned to one of the roles: tanking / healing / dps

2) For every x points in the given role group you get a passive bonus

So there would be a minimum of points you would have to spend into a talent group to have a decent performance, but what (of the active and funny talents) you choose is completely up to you.

Given this is pretty much simplified and requires a lot of work from people knowing much more about game design than me...

[Warwench]

People are blowing all of this WAY out of proportions.. the sky isnt falling and it will be fine. Different, but fine.

change is good, WoW is getting pretty predictable and boring, changing things up like this is great.

I bet GC was wincing as they put up that posting thinking "damned if we do, damned if we don't" about sharing that information... knowing full well the screaming "sky is falling" chaos it would create on the forums as people try to form incomplete thoughts with incomplete information and "theorycraft" with no real solid numbers to go with.

[Eravian]

I believe that the same thread mentioned that crit immunity would be gained by swapping into Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury, Bear Form, or Frost Presence. It didn't say anything about needing talent points for it, for those that were wondering.

[Belak]

From the description of Dodge, Parry, and Block, I had a few take aways.

1) Unless druids have massively more armor or health than the other tanks (which has been another issue in the past), the fact that their only form of avoidance is Dodge is going to make them VERY spikey to heal compared to the other tanks.

2) Block and Parry - is there any chance that BOSSES will apply these new mechanics as well? Tank damage isn't stellar, but you could end up with expertise-capping causing a major difference in your threat output. More major than currently. You get the idea.

[mavfin]

From the description of Dodge, Parry, and Block, I had a few take aways.

1) Unless druids have massively more armor or health than the other tanks (which has been another issue in the past), the fact that their only form of avoidance is Dodge is going to make them VERY spikey to heal compared to the other tanks.

Since this is all speculation anyway, they could make savage defense block 30% damage, just like the block mechanic. So, you'd have two dodge/parry/block tanks, a high armor dodge/parry tank, and a high armor dodge/block tank. 'High armor' meaning 'about the same total armor as the shield tanks' Then they just adjust the numbers to where they all mitigate the same amount of damage, just in different ways.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't be surprised to see a total dodge/block/parry/miss number of 40% to be considered high in Cataclysm. I bet they'll turn those dodge/parry/block rating numbers up quite a bit. Oh, and by the way: I don't see anyplace we're going to get 9% miss like we do now. There won't be any def. Wouldn't be surprised to see 20% total dodge/block/parry to be normal in the first tier. No more 50% avoidance coming out of the first raid.

[Chamenas]

I believe that the same thread mentioned that crit immunity would be gained by swapping into Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury, Bear Form, or Frost Presence. It didn't say anything about needing talent points for it, for those that were wondering.

Right, but they never said it wouldn't be a talent improvement on the stance. Looking at it logically, simply making those stances give crit immunity creates problems, most especially with Righteous Fury as it does nothing to hamper healing or damage done by Paladins. At least for Ret, you would imagine threat issues would make most people shy away, but you'd be very surprised. As for the other stances, you run into the issues I mentioned before. Groups and guilds requiring DPS specs from Tanks for fights where they need something like an off-off tank. It's something plenty of people do now, and it can be very frustrating. It will only get worse if crit immunity requires no talents or mastery and only a simple stance change.


That being said, I have another issue to address that I'm seeing far too much of in this thread.

These changes are not "dumbing" down the stats.

I think a lot of people are getting complexity confused with intelligence, and it's causing issues. The stat system as it is right now is quite complex with a variety of stats that the various classes use, however, each individual stat has little depth to them. Thus, even though quite a few of the stats end up being "mathy" to figure out their value, once their value is figured out, it's not terribly interesting to make decisions with them. This "mathy-ness" is what some people seem to think is the smart value of current stats. However, even though it does require a bit more thinking to figure out the value of these stats, there are two problems with considering this to be the value of a stat:

1) Exclusion: Some people just don't like math. Some people just want to play a game. Sure, they know they need to make decisions, and they want to make decisions, but they don't feel that they should have to figure out formulas and run numbers just to find out if a particular stat is "good" for them. Thus, the "mathy-ness" is necessarily excluding people from the process of selecting what gear they want. It's not that they're dumb or don't want to make decisions, they just don't want to remember complex formulas for 5 different stats.

2) Single-dimension: Since most of the stats right now do only one thing, their value is relatively inflexible. Once someone does figure out the various formulas associated with finding caps, optimal effectiveness, etc... they share it with the rest of the community who doesn't want to do that and the stat-code becomes "broken" as it were. You see some classes gemming all strength, others gem almost all armor pen. Tanks gem almost entirely for stamina. Even if the formulas behind the stats are complex, the stats themselves aren't really all that deep, and once figured out, they're applied very mechanically and with boring consequence. There's really little decision on what stat might be better for you, because usually there's one stat that you want to stack.

With these things in mind, we come to the suggested changes. Now, keep in mind that, with lack of information, we're obviously going to be somewhat worried. Sometimes things are suggested and then not followed-through on entirely, and what you get is a half-ass result which is lackluster and completely defeats the purpose of the main idea. In any case, what it seems that Blizzard is trying to do is not to make stats less meaningful. Rather, it would appear that they want to make stats more meaningful. How? By increasing the depth of each stat and what it contributes to a player's character, you make the stat more valuable in more ways than one. When stats have that sort of depth, they can't simply be boiled down to formulas and easily weighted against one another for effectiveness. At that point you can begin to create stats that require synergy with the proper balance of stats to obtain the desired result. There are, however, problems that can result from this:

1) Not enough stats: If they over-simplify it and reduce the number of stats too much, then you really won't have much in the way of stats to choose from. Everything will simply be 1 stat still, because that 1 stat does everything. That would, in effect, be "dumbing" down the stats, and it's something that Blizzard must absolutely watch out for as they design the stat changes in Cataclysm.

2) Vague value: Another issue that can occur is when stats have more than one value, it becomes extremely difficult to determine their relative value to other stats. While one part of the stat may become useless at a certain point, another part of the stat might be absolutely essential. Logically speaking, the value has diminished. However, if you absolutely need the other part of the stat, then you have to carry the dead weight on the stat with you. This makes it difficult to value stats. This can be a good and a bad thing. It does help avoid stacking of one stat, if you avoid the problem mentioned in the point above. But it also creates the problem of unclear value at which stats should be weighted, making decisions a bit muddier and unclear. While players certainly want to make decisions, making the decision path unclear will be unpleasant and frustrating for many players. Especially ones that look to others for advice on how to improve. One of the biggest positives of the current stat system was that although the stats were "mathy", there were plenty of resources available to "decipher" the stats and help people make decisions. If stats become to vague in their value, then none of those things will be useful and a large part of the community will be missing. Many players may end up feeling lost.


Still, on the whole, I think the stat change can be very good for the game, and I'm looking forward to it. I do hope that Blizzard keeps their promise and vision of making the individual remaining stats deeper, as that will enrich the game, not make it dumber. The game will be much better off when and if stats become more of a balanced team, working together.


On that topic, but deviating a little. With the larger health pools, I'm hoping the avoidance does become more of the defining tanking stat in Cataclysm. As someone mentioned earlier, a proper amount of avoidance could be what helps stop healers from going OOM too early. But something else that could make avoidance more interesting is to apply multiple benefits to each stat. I had some basic ideas, and I'm certainly curious as to what others might come up with:

Dodge
- I don't think people will like my suggestions to dodge, as one of the treads on the grounds that Parry is now walking. But when you see one of my suggestions to Parry, I think you might forgive me!
1) Dodge's main value remains the same. Your percentage of Dodge x1 Dodge Value to completely avoid an attack, resulting in 100% mitigation of its damage.
2) Secondary value for Dodge, x2 your Dodge Value chance to mitigate ONE incoming attack by 50%, creating a sort of "glancing blow" effect.
3) Third value for Dodge, x3 your Dodge Value chance to gain a buff which increases movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds. Particularly useful on kiting fights where you might want an enhanced dodge value anyways in order to avoid the big hits that force you to kite in the first place.

Parry
1) Parry's main value is changed. This change is, however, what Blizzard came up with: you have x1 Parry Chance to mitigate the next two attacks by 50%, the second attack is still susceptible to dodge, miss, and presumably another parry effect.
2) Parry's secondary value is an extension of the first. x2 your Parry Chance to mitigate the next three attacks by 25%. This results in a total mitigation effect of 75% over three attacks, slightly less than the primary value, but nice nonetheless.
3) Parry's third value is a buff, like Dodge. x3 Parry Value to gain a buff which increases the damage of your next damaging skill by 100%, lasts 5 seconds, or until you use a damaging skill. This gives Parry a sort of crit-like value for Tanks, helping with threat. Think of the concept like a counter-strike after the Parry.

Miss
1) Miss' main value remains the same. Undiminished chance x1 Miss value to completely avoid an attack, resulting in 100% mitigation.
2) Miss' secondary value, much like dodge, is a x2 Miss Value chance to reduce the damage from an incoming blow, though, only by 30%.
3) Miss' third value is x3 Miss Value chance to gain a buff which temporarily increases your dodge value by an amount for 5 seconds.

Block
1) Block's main value is changed as per Blizzard's suggestion. I believe the avoidance aspect is now gone, and a successful Block reduces damage by 30%?
2) Block's secondary value would be a sort of "half-block" reducing the damage of one attack by 15%, x2 Block Value chance to do this
3) Block's third value would be a sort of "advantage-situation" gain represented by a buff which increases Parry by a certain amount for 5 seconds.

[Kazeyonoma]

Lets keep the whining and QQ to a minimum.

If you guys want to discuss the changes and what not go for it, but saying things like "Blizz hates plate wearers" is not gonna be tolerated. This isn't the WoW forums, if you want to QQ about changes we know NOTHING about yet, go there, and enjoy a temp ban if you want to post it here.

Discussing the potential changes, and how there may be work arounds (like yes, block rating is a concern for DKs, but like others have said, you can re-forge) are good ways to spark interest and topics to further our community. Mindless drivel like "zomg this is broken" does not enhance anyone's view of the game or it's future, it's just blatant whining.

[Chamenas]

Lets keep the whining and QQ to a minimum.

If you guys want to discuss the changes and what not go for it, but saying things like "Blizz hates plate wearers" is not gonna be tolerated. This isn't the WoW forums, if you want to QQ about changes we know NOTHING about yet, go there, and enjoy a temp ban if you want to post it here.

Discussing the potential changes, and how there may be work arounds (like yes, block rating is a concern for DKs, but like others have said, you can re-forge) are good ways to spark interest and topics to further our community. Mindless drivel like "zomg this is broken" does not enhance anyone's view of the game or it's future, it's just blatant whining.

QQ, you're so mean

Edit: Discussion of the positives that can come of the change are okay too!

[Ion]

Well...great to see all the ... wait, no it's a bunch of mindless whining. Thanks for that...that's totally what I wanted when I posted this thread.

My main worry, as an enhancement shaman, was that they were going to "fix haste for melee" and break it for me (since it's already my best stat), but they actually addressed that concern in the thread and said they are going to make it even more betterer.

As for my tank, I was worried that the changes are going to be a bit difficult to adjust to, but truthfully we don't know enough about what they're doing and they DO seem to be aware of the problems that they could be creating if they don't do things right...every response seems to be "yeah, we've thought about that already". Which is very good to see.

I'm more curious about how mastery will work, honestly, than anything else...they mentioned that you get a mastery bonus for wearing "your" gear...so as an enhancement shaman rogue gear will probably look pretty attractive (especially since expertise will almost certainly be basically non-existent on mail gear as it's a worthless stat to hunters), but I'd lose that mastery bonus for using leather instead of mail. Is that "small bonus" in mastery really a big deal? It's less of an issue, I expect, for plate wearers...nothing else has strength so nothing else will be attractive. Definitely looking forward to more info on mastery and why it's a big deal, though.

[Vrekgar]

I like the chages they have outlined. It solves the problem with tanks outgearing content, it solves the problems they have with avoidance inflation, it solves the spike damage problems certain classes experience.
Plus it makes the defineing characteristic between DPS and Tanks is increased mitigation and somewhat higher health.

[Chamenas]

Plus it makes the defineing characteristic between DPS and Tanks is increased mitigation and somewhat higher health.

But that's the things, neither of these will likely be defining characteristics, since they will both be brought closer to plate DPS (including mitigation). The difference between Tanks and plate DPS will be defensive CDs (which I hope they introduce more of) and avoidance.

[Lowseven]

OK, Let’s face it half the reason we play this and other silly game like it is to figure out the system, and beat the others guys to the answer.


Blizz is giving us an overhaul, and new system to figure out. The QQing is not needed, praise is. Let’s face it just continuing the arms race will if not already get boring.

Turn the game on its ear, and let me start over. That way, I get a new system to figure out with old friends, rather than starting a new game with people I may or may not know.


I say Rejoice.

[Eravian]

What I'm looking forward to is seeing the new talent trees, etc. It's really funny on the WoW forums to see the people complaining about how these are going to effect X talent or Y ability, despite the fact that Blizzard has mentioned they're completely overhauling the talent trees as well.

What I'm hoping for (and this is a hope, not something that I'm expecting) as a warrior are more moves that take advantage of our mobility, and even more mobility in the future. The Heroic Leap that I heard was in WotLK beta would be cool, and I was thinking it would be neat to have the ability to do that Rolling Throw that Mokra does in ToC... throw the enemy, than charge them and land a blow. People would likely only use it for PvP, but that'd be okay. =)

As for the changes, as I mentioned before, I'm looking forward to see how it's all going to work out. Maybe I'll like it, maybe not, but if the changes end up being as big as it sounds like they're making them, it'll definitely be interesting. It'll be almost like "From the makers of WoW comes WoW II: Cataclysm."

From what we've seen so far, I could foresee some potential headaches (like the potential PvP issue I mentioned earlier), but as others have said, at this point it's too early to tell. I do share peoples concern with tanking being less Prot specific, but I think a lot of it plays into the mentality of class over talent trees - warriors, death knights, druids, and paladins are all "tanking" classes, regardless of whether they use a 2-handed weapon or a sword and shield - the difference is that some focus more on their defense while others don't - those that do will be "better' tanks, but the others can still be a tank class... although I do wonder if they'll try to limit those classes dps output a bit to compensate the pure dps classes, especially since they're making tanking more viable for even non-prot spec tank classes. Time will tell!

It would actually be kind of interesting if they got rid of multiple talent trees entirely, and just made one massive tree that has chains, etc. to different parts. That way you could still make it so you only got to choose one of three "ultimate" talents from a certain playstyle, but would have lots of versatility up to that point... although that wouldn't work well with the new mastery system at all.

[MellvarTank]

QQ Paladin in my peanut butter?

Really, not enough info to even form an opinion. Block, Parry, and Dodge changes all look great.

[Reev]

But that's the things, neither of these will likely be defining characteristics, since they will both be brought closer to plate DPS (including mitigation). The difference between Tanks and plate DPS will be defensive CDs (which I hope they introduce more of) and avoidance.

Yeah, I don't think this is true. Tanks will still have much higher HP totals, much higher armor totals, and much higher avoidance and new mitigation totals.

What blizzard said is that on the GEAR they would be reducing the difference between cloth, leather, mail, and plate stamina. Tanking gear may have slightly less stamina than the others because it's made up for by gems. Right now cloth armor has something like 5% of the armor that a tank has. Bringing those closer together doesn't mean that cloth wearers will suddenly have 35k armor. If they brought cloth armor from 2k to 10k, leather up to say 15k and mail up to maybe 20k, that would fit Blizzard's comment on "closer" but it doesn't mean they can tank.

On top of that, different specs will be getting different scaling bonuses. I would imagine that a protection spec is likely to have some rather large stamina modifiers.

[Bashal]

On top of that, different specs will be getting different scaling bonuses. I would imagine that a protection spec is likely to have some rather large stamina modifiers.

Yes. I would imagine actually putting talent points in the prot tree will yield better results for tanks, as it does now.

I mention that because I read a couple posts (maybe not this thread, but a parallel one here on tankspot) with people getting all out of shape about the stances/forms giving crit immunity. "amg anyone can tank".

If crit immunity is all that is required, then lemme just go grab some resilience gear for my shammy and tank festergut, kk?

[Libicocco]

If we remember way back in the days of Blizcon, they did reveal some of the Mastery bonuses - though I assume they are subject to change. They revealed Paladin as one of their two classes. A retadin specced 0/13/58 got a -3% to damage taken and +3% to health simply from having those 13 points in the prot tree. +2% block amount as well - I believe this was the part that one would increase from having the "mastery" stat on gear.

I would guess that a protadin who had 4 times as many points in prot than said retadin would have bonuses that are 4 times as large. So something along the line of 9% less damage taken and 9% more health just from point distribution alone. Then there is the completely reasonable assumption that there are talents in a class's tanking tree that actually help one tank.

With talents working this way, retadins will only put points into prot when there's something there that they want more than their melee damage mastery bonuses. Likewise protadins will only take ret points when it's worth giving up -damage +health bonuses. 9% is a pretty conservative assumption - 12% or more might be closer. That's a lot of difference from spec alone - and for the sake of this difference, it doesn't matter WHAT the talents are.

So I'm just completely not concerned about DPS warriors and retadins.

Still very curious about how they're going to do DKs.

[Zyffyr]

"Anyone can tank" is sorta their design goal for NORMAL mode 5-mans (well, when you read Anyone as "any member of a class that has Tanking as option to spec into"). Heroics and raids are still supposed to require real tanks instead of "DPS guy in Def Stance"

Crit immunity is only a very small portion of what it means to be a real tank.

[Chamenas]

Yeah, I don't think this is true. Tanks will still have much higher HP totals, much higher armor totals, and much higher avoidance and new mitigation totals.

What blizzard said is that on the GEAR they would be reducing the difference between cloth, leather, mail, and plate stamina. Tanking gear may have slightly less stamina than the others because it's made up for by gems. Right now cloth armor has something like 5% of the armor that a tank has. Bringing those closer together doesn't mean that cloth wearers will suddenly have 35k armor. If they brought cloth armor from 2k to 10k, leather up to say 15k and mail up to maybe 20k, that would fit Blizzard's comment on "closer" but it doesn't mean they can tank.

On top of that, different specs will be getting different scaling bonuses. I would imagine that a protection spec is likely to have some rather large stamina modifiers.

Then it would have to differ from the trend as it is now. i.e. talents would make up the majority of your armor or hp increase. Right now, stamina and armor gains from talents, while significant, aren't really that major. But that's because gear makes up a major portion of the difference. If they're closing the gap on gear, then they necessarily have to widen it in talents, but aside from the mysterious "mastery" system, they haven't really suggested that they're going to do that. It's certainly curious and we don't have a lot of information on it right now. I just remember some quote from a Blizz rep saying they wanted avoidance to mean more, even if they didn't want the values to be larger. And avoidance will be the defining stat on Tank gear...

We can speculate, but we can't give the answers.

And to be clear, my comments about DPS and Tanking aren't related to Main Tanking or even Off-Tanking, but, rather, to Off-Off-Tanking, something which usually does not require a very strong Tank in the current system, hence why most people often debate on bringing 3 Tanks to 25 man raids. Usually they bring a 3rd Tank that can switch into DPS. But since DPS is usually high enough, that's not always a requirement. If they close the gap, it could very well be possible that they ask the 3rd Tank to be in a DPS set and spec, but in a Tank stance. Which would necessarily mean as a Tank you would at least have to have both. Some don't see it as a bad thing, it worries me. I'm not going to QQ or cry about the end of the world over it though. It wouldn't ruin the game for me and it hasn't happened yet, so what can I honestly know?