#dev watercooler

New Post: Stats in Warlords of - Draenor

Blizzard released a new Dev Watercooleraddressing changes to secondary stats in Warlords of Draenor. In Warlords gear will have secondary stats and they will also have minor stats. Minor will be random and not guaranteed to be on all gear that drops. This is Blizzard’s way of creating a perpetual carrot for you to keep chasing, as you search for the holy grail of greaves. The entire list of…

Last night some gems about Mists of Panderia were dropped on a Dev Watercooler, and there was some pretty interesting Hunter specific things there.

The first big topic they discussed was Hit and Expertise.

We still think having stats that can be capped is a good game design. Rather than focusing solely on stacking your best stat, you have to decide how valuable it is to hit your target before you go back to stacking your best stat. However, we are making some changes.

Hit and spell hit will no longer be separate stats. The hit stat negates melee miss and spell miss.

Expertise will negate dodge and spell miss, then parry.

Expertise will be listed as a percentage, just like hit, instead of having an intermediary stat.

We are normalizing hit with expertise, so that 1% of each stat will require the same amount of rating.

We are normalizing melee and spell hit, so that spell hit is equal to miss plus dodge.

Against an equal level creature: 6% spell miss, 3% melee miss, 3% dodge, 3% parry (from the front only), 3% block (from the front only).

Against a +1 level creature: 9% spell miss, 4.5% melee miss, 4.5% dodge, 4.5% parry (from the front only), 4.5% Block (from the front only).

Against a +2 level creature: 12% spell miss, 6% melee miss, 6% dodge, 6% parry (from the front only), 6% Block (from the front only).

Against a +3/boss level creature: 15% spell miss, 7.5% melee miss, 7.5% dodge, 7.5% parry (from the front only), 7.5% block (from the front only).

Ranged attacks will be able to be dodged. Hunters will benefit from expertise and will have it on their gear, which will also allow hunters and Enhancement shaman to share gear more easily.

So here's the way I see things working -- given the fact that our minimum range is being taken away, and we're going to be able to shoot things from within melee range, we're effectively melee characters with a much bigger range -- making it necessary for us to have Expertise on our gear, as well as normal Hit -- just like most melee.

The bonus to this is it's going to be much more important to weigh out stats to determine which one is more important for your character.  Hunters have largely had it too easy to hit 8% hit and just forget about it, unlike other melee classes that care about Expertise, or even casters that have to get a ridiculous amount of hit.  Now we'll also have to worry about Expertise and how that will impact our ability to hit the target -- to me this is incredibly fair and balanced.

This does pose an interesting situation though... the itemization for Hunters will be shared directly with Enhancement Shaman for armor, and with Rogues, Enhancement Shaman, and some DPS warriors for trinkets and rings.  Not so different than we have now, but there will be no clear "this is best for hunters because they don't need Expertise."  Gear will have more competition.

They also got into how Criticals are handled...

All spells and abilities will crit for double damage, baseline. There are a few exceptions where crits can get larger, but the default is x 2.0 for everyone.

This means that Enhancement shaman spells and rogue poisons will crit for double damage. Rogue poisons will also use the melee hit chance.

This sounds a lot like Enhancement Shaman are going to be a serious force to be reckoned with.  I also like that there's a standard for a crit going forward.  Much of a Hunter's damage in the past has been reliant on luck -- for how big those crits are.  Now there's a baseline, which should result in more consistent numbers.

What do you think of these adjustments?