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BlizzCon 2013: Major stat and item changes
Three major changes to stats and items have been announced in the official Warlords of Draenor FAQ. They are: Hit and expertise will be removed New stats will be added, including Cleave and Movement Speed New armor itemization will allow easier sharing among classes Warlords of Draenor FAQ Q: Will you be making any changes to what Stats are available? One of our goals for Warlords of Draenor is to make the act of finding and collecting loot even more exciting for players. With that in mind, we're adding some fun new stats to gear, such as Movement Speed and Cleave, which gives you a chance to do extra damage or healing to additional nearby targets. In addition, we'll be retiring a few stats that players don't find very enjoyable to manage, such as Hit and Expertise. We're also making improvements to armor itemization that will make it easier to share armor pieces across classes. We'll have more details to share as development continues. source We also want to note that the item squish is active on the Warlords play stations at BlizzCon. More on this tomorrow at the systems panel, according to Cory Stockton.
LotRO's Wardens get grace period to adjust to stat changes
Lord of the Rings Online's Wardens are understandably nervous about the big stat changes coming to the class in Update 10. To help clear up any confusion, Turbine's posted a dev diary crunching the numbers and outlining how the change will roll out. The big change is that the Warden's primary stat will switch from might to agility, and the class' primary form of avoidance will switch from blocking to evading (although the Warden's shield will still provide plenty of the former). As a result, one block-based trait is being reworked to feature evading, and the devs are looking for ways to beef up Wardens' mitigations now that might is no longer a primary stat. Because the change will impact Wardens who have stocked up on plenty of might gear, Turbine is offering a lengthy grace period to allow the class' players to start switching over to agility gear while keeping both might and agility as primary stats. The grace period is said to last the full length of Update 10 and perhaps longer.
EverQuest II Game Update 64 revamps Qeynos and PvP
Although EverQuest II's Game Update 63 is only a couple of months old, GU64 is already hot on its heels. But instead of adding new content, this update focuses on revamping features already in-game, most notably the city of Qeynos, open-world PvP, and battlegrounds. Besides the much-anticipated opening of Qeynos by consolidating zones, the bulk of this update is focused on improving the PvP experience both in and outside of battlegrounds. One key aim is to make "player skill [be] the biggest deciding factor in PvP combat, not gear." Changes in store for the PvP-minded are stat adjustments, consolidated open-world and battleground tokens, enhanced open-world PvP as well as battlegrounds, and adjusted crowd control mechanics to better balance the classes. You can listen to the devs discuss the changes related to PvP and the battlegrounds in Sony Online Entertainment's latest community webcast or read more details in the announcement. These changes hit the test server on Tuesday, June 26th, and are expected to go live in the next couple of months.
Lichborne: The effect of the new stat changes on death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. We're still a couple of weeks away from the dam burst that is the Mists of Pandaria press event, but in the meantime, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted a new Dev Watercooler. He listed some stat changes coming in Mists that, while ostensibly not as complicated as those in Wrath, still hold some interesting and possibly major implications for class balance in the coming expansion. Let's dive right in and see what they mean for death knights. Blocking takes a week While it doesn't directly affect us, the blocking changes will certainly shake up the tanking hierarchy that we're a part of, so it's worth pointing out that the usual single roll combat table for dodging, parrying, or blocking a hit is gone. Instead, the chance to block will be calculated only after the dodge and parry chance is calculated. This essentially means that being unhittable is gone. You can't just stack to 102.4%. Of course, death knights and druids have never been able to do this, but they will now be joined by the shield tanks.
Ghostcrawler explains stat changes in Mists of Pandaria
As promised, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, the Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, has returned to the official WoW blog with an explanation of stat changes in Mists of Pandaria. Here's a quick rundown of some important changes, with the full blue post after the break. Spell resistance is gone, and so is spell penetration. The chance to block will be handled by a separate combat roll for each attack that is not avoided. Resilience will be renamed "Defense (PvP)" or possibly "PvP Defense." All players will have 30% base Defense, the same way all characters have some base Stamina. All spells and abilities will crit for double damage, baseline. Lots more after the break.
Spiritual Guidance: Raid-ready 4.0.1 shadow priesting in 10 easy steps
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, your shadow-specced host Fox Van Allen copies Dawn Moore's latest column word for word and pastes it into Auto-Tune. After all those sour, holy-flavored notes are removed, what comes out is better than anything Jason Derulo could ever hope to achieve: priesting, perfected. If you're a regular reader of Spiritual Guidance -- and I hope you are, because it's your page views that give me my special, magical powers -- then you know how excited I've been for patch 4.0.1. I've been beating it over your head for weeks. Well, I can't tease you with it anymore, because that fabled new frontier of shadow priesting is finally here. It plays an awful lot like a new season of your favorite sitcom: entirely recognizable as that which you love, but with a few new twists. In patch 4.0.1, you create massive numbers of copies of yourself simply by moving around, your shadowfiend is on a variable timer and Betty White is your new anthropology teacher. (Change is confusing sometimes. Roll with it.) With the way everything just changed overnight, it's all too easy for a shadow priest to feel in over his head. Worry not, though -- the magnificent (though self-aggrandizing) Fox Van Allen has you covered with a comprehensive, ten-step checklist to get yourself raid re-ready for 4.0.1. New stat values, new gemming guidelines and even new enchanting info -- it's all here, and it's all after the break.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for DPS death knights
We've known for a while that we were getting some pretty sweeping stat and gear changes in Cataclysm. The other day, the blues over at Blizzard put together a nice little post that outlined all the big points of the revamp. As you might expect, there are a few changes that DPS death knights are especially going to want to watch out for. Let's take a closer look at the changes that are most likely to affect the DPS death knight.
Ghostcrawler: "Players are going to freak when they see Cataclysm gear"
Ghostcrawler responded recently to a post asking about stat growth on items, and the results were pretty interesting. The player asked if Blizzard had any plans to cut back the stat growth on items before we reach +2000 spellpower, for example. GC had this to say: "They're just numbers. We don't think it starts getting scary until the human mind literally has trouble processing the digits. If your new staff has 152,420 spell power, well, yeah that's a mouthful. But if your new staff has 4000 spell power, the only thing that can really be freaking you out is that 4000 is just a really big number compared to the 100 spell power you might be used to. Automobiles used to cost hundreds of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars too.... :)" Well, sure, but what about in Cataclysm? With all those stat changes you guys talked about at BlizzCon, there has to be some surprises on the way when we see our first glimpse of Cataclysm gear.
Cataclysm: "Almost all items are going to have to change."
So, wait a minute. If Strength on leather gear is going away in Cataclysm, how are feral druid tanks going to be itemized? Ghostcrawler's got it handled. We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes. Ghostcrawler, you machine, you. First you tell us that all of these stats are just plain goin' away in Cataclysm, and now you give us specifics? Such an industrious crab. But how is this change going to be carried out? Turns out he's got something to say about that, too.
