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Tertiary stats and that pesky bag space problem
I think it was really nice of Blizzard to cook up a way to fix our bag space problem with the toy box and primary stat conversion. Recognizing this, I propose a way to make it even worse. I'll start with a story. There was a brief period on the Mists of Pandaria beta where the combination of the feral 4-piece PvP bonus, the Feline Swiftness talent, and a run speed enchant resulted in the glory that was the 132% speed bear. I could run around the first boss' room in Stormstout kiting a howling pack of monkeys before the DPS even made it up the stairs, and zooming around Pandaria's countryside was equally fun. Run speed's value was obvious and it was a bummer when the PvP bonus no longer stacked with Feline Swiftness. So now that run speed, cleave, and "multistrike" are on the table as randomly-generated tertiary stats to be found (if rarely) on gear, I'll be blunt: I want enough cleave while healing that my Rejuvenation will hit, if possible, the people in local hospitals. I want enough cleave while tanking that Thrash will run out of targets in the game, physically reach through the computer and smack the people who don't read raid chat instructions in LFR. I want enough run speed that I can cap the Warsong Gulch flag before the match even starts, triggering a singularity that will cause time to fold in on itself. Here's the rub. Knowing that tertiary stats are going to be completely random and also rare, the only way I can stack any of them to a useful level is to hoard whatever pieces I can find and create specialized sets for them. It'll be great to free up all the bag space currently devoted to our offspec gear, but how long will those bags stay empty with the siren call of a "speed set" or a "cleave set?"
Warlords of Draenor: No primary stat gems
Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig has been tweeting recently about the changes to gems coming in Warlords. We already knew via his previous tweets that gem sockets on gear are very likely to appear by random bonus in the upcoming expansion, but what he's clarified today is that primary stats, so strength, intellect and agility, will no longer be gem-able: @Ady_Mx There are no more primary stat gems. Only secondary stat gems. - Celestalon (@Celestalon) December 29, 2013 This, as he also mentioned, relates to the gear changes in Warlords meaning that gear needs to be usable cross spec. Gems won't change between specs, so they would need to be secondaries only. He has also confirmed that tertiary stats won't be gemmed. What does this mean for Jewelcrafters going forward? Red gems with primary stats have always been the strongest sellers as demand for them is so high. It's possible that it will result in more even prices across the secondary stats, but we'll just have to wait and see. And while Celestalon hasn't confirmed this, it seems likely that primary stat enchants offering +intellect, +strength or +agility might also disappear, resulting in necessary changes for some profession bonuses. With the new gear system, secondary stat enchants, which are already the vast majority of enchants, make the most sense. As far as tertiaries go, he does mention that movement speed may remain on boots, but no further information was offered.
Scattered Shots: Mining Celestalon's tweets for hunter information
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing new stats and the potential for hunter spec differentiation. We're still patiently waiting for the Warlords of Draenor beta to get some more concrete information on hunters, but in the meantime we've had Celestalon to poke and prod on Twitter. Celestalon is a Technical Game Designer on WoW and has been very forthcoming with technical information regarding classes and the new gearing system in Warlords. We've learned a few new bits of information such as how new secondary stats will work and some vague plans for their intentions with the hunter class. If you missed the BlizzCon hunter recap post, be sure to check it out before we dive into the newer stuff. The replacements for hit and expertise You may have heard how hit and expertise are being removed from the game in Warlords of Draenor. I was very happy when I heard about this, but at the same time wondered if gear was going to get too simple since they're also removing reforging, and having less gems and enchants on gear. The good news is, those two wholly uninteresting stats are being replaced by 3 new ones, and if you've been raiding Siege of Orgrimmar their functionality may already be familiar to you.
The Light and How to Swing It: Paladining at BlizzCon
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Wow, what a weekend. Not only was the convention a lot of fun but it was great to meet fellow paladins and non-paladins alike. Most of my time was spent meeting people, watching panels, and playing demos. Amidst the chaos I didn't allocate much time to mulling things over, how the proposed changes in Warlords of Draenor would affect how I, and so many other ret paladins, approach the game, so now that I've had a decent night's sleep and my liver is mostly alcohol-free, I'm spending my day off in blessedly quiet reflection. We didn't see much of any class discussion this year, and unless I missed an entire panel there wasn't a single paladin-related question throughout the entire convention. There are some big questions that it would be nice to have answered, like the permanency of holy power, the relative weights of our stats, the deletion of the warlock class, etc. We did get a few overall changes, changes that will affect ret in turn, so let's see how some of these could impact our day-to-day facesmashing in Warlords of Draenor.
