A discussion about stats

Community General Discussion
22

Not gonna happen, making haste not affect the gcd would mean that it’s a dead stat for any spec that isn’t a caster, or a class that relies on energy, and personally, i would rather have haste reduce the gcd in that case also, and instead increase baseline regen, although there is still the problem that you would run into the baseline regen not being enough to counter the haste you have, leading to downtime, which isn’t good, but i guess it’s improvable, it could just increase both but then it would probably become too strong, but hey, for most energy classes haste is not simming well, so i guess they could try. Afterall, if you think about it, why doesn’t it decrease the gcd on energy classes? In classes where it does decrease gcd, it also increases your resource generation, so why is it not the same for energy?

It’s good that it actually changes the gcd. But hey i guess to each their own.

They could reduce the gcd from 1.5 with no haste to something a bit more reasonable, i personally do not have trouble following the rotation even at 0.75 gcd, imagine if the base gcd was 1 sec, and you could reduce it to 0.5, i would like to try it just to see how insane it would be.

23

As far as I am aware haste does increase baseline energy regen, by 1% per 1% haste. Unless this was changed. This is exactly why haste has to reduce the GCD for for energy classes because otherwise you can’t make use of the extra energy quickly enough. Being able to use an ability once every 1.5 secs doesn’t cut it when you factor in all the other ways energy is refunded, your dumps come out too slowly. Particularly when you use a GCD to not spend energy as that means you’re now sitting on extra energy. Haste Sims poorly for many energy classes simply because the difference is negligible with most of their kit and the other stats afford better returns, not that haste is in itself poor for them. The fact all energy classes are mobile is also a factor as reducing cast times to increase mobility isn’t necessary.

I agree the stats could use work, mainly mastery.
Crit is ok, it’s an RPG staple, but I agree, more interaction beyond the double DMG for some classes would be welcome, as for those without, it feels pretty dull and usually only Sims better because you get more bang from crit for your buck than other stats, assuming mastery isn’t a default pick and haste has no special interactions.
Example being sub rogue. Crit yields better returns than versa per point, and is better than mastery because mastery only affects a portion of your dmg, whereas crit affects all of it. Haste is low prio for sub because of azerite traits that bring it for free. Without this trait haste is actually subs best stat as a final first prio.

Mastery is just really dry for many classes, and often does what versa does, but is limited by spells. SPriest is a good example, as is affliction lock. It’s just a damage boost that doesn’t affect your fillers. So of course other stats are generally better in most typical scenarios. It only changes for lock in situations where you have no time for filler due to high cleave dot uptime.

These specs need a mastery review, badly.

I believe SL is making mastery learned at level 1 for most specs, thankfully, I never got why it’s level 78 either, or remained there at least. Some classes (like brewmaster) essentially rely on it existing in base form to become equal tanks, so prior you feel very half baked.

It’s really wierd because ele shaman get their mastery mechanic early but their 78 mastery stat threshold allows them to improve it occuring, whereas brewmaster don’t get the whole stacking dodge thing until 78, despite it being fairly key to how they manage AA damage, even if they don’t prio mastery especially.

1 Like
24

I don’t think there is a problem with the stats.

Crits and Haste are pretty ‘‘standard’’ stats in most MMORPGs, do things faster, and crit more often.

Mastery is decent, but it varies wildly if its good or not, mastery usually improves the ‘‘fantasy’’ of the class but if Blizzard balances the classes stupidly and the fantasy isnt the correct way to play then mastery is just a worse version of versatility.

Versatility is pretty nice, it scales a bit too good though, if i recall their original stance on versa was that it was supposed to be this ‘‘cover stat’’ that you were never sad to see on a piece of gear but not overly excited over either, it was just a thing that everyone could benefit from whenever, as to make all gear a bit more lucrative.

Multistrike is the only stat i wish they kept though, it was fun, because Multistrike & Crit accomplish the same thing but in different ways, and thats fun, some classes like Mages or Hunters want crit because critting synergises with some spells, other classes like Enhance with Windfury would want to hit twice instead of once with dobule damage.

25

I have a problem with Haste.

Mostly because you ALWAYS NEED IT to make gameplay fluid, leaving you with not enough points to distribute to your other stats.

It’s a meaningless stat. If every class is fast, then no class is fast. Just lower the GCDs to 0.75 by default and you suddenly have a much more stable game to balance other numbers by, with one less MULTIPLIER…
I’d much rather spend the points to hit harder (mastery) or take less damage (versatility) or just to crit more often. Or have a chance to get some tertiary stat instead (like Speed or Leech)

Especially early into the expansion, when you have basically no secondary stats on your gear, getting to GCD haste cap is a nightmare and more often than not a folly, as you may hit fluidly, but you still hit like a WET NOODLE

26

I gotta disagree, just because there aren’t problems, doesn’t mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t be improved, if we look at it objectively, most stats are pretty boring.

I agree on your multistrike point. It was a cool stats, especially if the double hit also reduces cds or procs things, based on your spec.

27

Well they are just stats, what do you want ‘‘Rainbow mega death lazer superstar’’ 18% chance to do a twilight devastation?

They’re just stats, blizzard has done a fairly good job at them. You have enough ‘‘exciting’’ things through talents and whatnot as is, stats just need to act as the base of your toon.

28

Well, i think they should be more. not the stat itself, but the spec itself, crit versa etc are fine, the problem is how they work with the spec. They could and should have some more interactions.

29

Well then your problem is with class design not secondary stats

30

More or less, but then, this has to do with stats also, so that’s the title i made, afterall what should i have wrote? " a discussion about stats and how they interact with specs" that’s way too long, titles need to be concise, and this discussion is mostly about stats.

31

Like Versatility should be a “meh” stat, not really good, but not terrible. Problem is, some classes have mastery SO DUMB (and occasionally even the synergy between stats is so bad), that versatility ends up being the good stat (or even BEST). And it’s generally easier to find versatility than mastery.

Shining example being SV hunter, where versatility is outshined only by haste (as with most melee dps specs), since mastery increases damage at the same rate as versatility, but versatility increases ALL damage, while mastery only 2/3 of abilities, and provides damage REDUCTION as well (which is always great on a melee spec).
Then again, one would say that if one or two stats effectively become GARBAGE, you can at least stack the remaining stats higher.

32

I honestly dislike versa, it’s fine if it stays but i do not think it should be the go to stat for pve dps. It should be mostly a pvp stat.

In short, it should sim lower than other stats, but useful for tanking or pvp, in my opinion.

I really dislike it being the best stat. Especially after essences it became better and better.

But then it would lead to a problem where pieces with versa are not desired at all, so maybe it should be just removed, and instead make a pvp stat. it’s boring anyway, and they can just make classes more easier to survive on to account for the loss of versa.

33

Fair enough.

Regarding the garbage feeling at the beginning, ideally, it should be made such that it doesn’t feel garbage at the beginning, but still feel more powerful towards the end. That could be done by tuning the environment in a such way that at the beginning of an extension, you don’t really need better stats, but towards the end you do.

That’s more or less the case already, but taking your idea in consideration, that would mean that towards the end of extensions, more interactions with the stats appear.

Anyway, a lot of the class gameplay feel very bland right now. So, yea, more interactions would be a good thing.

34

That would probably be bad for the sake of a continuous expansion, if things just change in the middle. also, again you are not losing anything, it’s just perceived, but think about this objectively, let’s say that you have an option between:

  1. No interaction and no stats so the specs feel just garbage.

  2. Some interactions, no stats, so you feel like you are missing out, but the actual gameplay is better.

I take the second, they could even mitigate this problem by increasing secondary stat gain, so it stacks up in % faster, afterall they demonstrated with corruption that they don’t really care about getting ludicrous amounts of stats, which is fine, what matters is how it feels to play, and secondary stats actually change the feel of the rotation.

At the end of the expansion you would probably get close to 80% secondary stats in some cases, but honestly, so what? Is that a problem? If it is, why? Because scaling? Well, secondary stats already scale to basically being double the damage of primary already, so who cares at this point, to make secondary stats not scale above primary they would have to completely change how they work, which would suck. And what do you actually gain? Compared to what you lose? You lose on the fact that you may get a higher piece of loot that is not worth it because bad stats, but that is a balancing problem which would get reduced by giving specs better interactions with stats, and what you gain is ludicrous amount of stats that actually make your rotation more enjoyable.

I think people get to stuck up of points to actually think about solutions to make things better sometimes. Especially devs.

35

Sure. But I think that if you want to be able to renew stuff (*), you need to make it so the interactions are not only between your character and its stats, but also your character, its stats and the environment he lives in.
For example, have a boss that does (or stop doing) something special when he gets crit so many times. Or… I don’t know really. The problem right now is that stats are very bland and there’s basically only 4 of them (secondary stats), so it may be very hard to think of boss features that plays around them.

(*): renewing stuff is probably important because without renewing stuff your class would basically play more or less the same and after you got used to it, it could feel very bland, only requiring muscle memory

36

That a nice idea in general, but probably a bit too hard to implement, like the mob would get staggered after a crit or something like that, i don’t know, they would have to rebalance a lot of things.

37

Higher interactivity with crit would also even out “best” stats. It’s a novelty to play a spec that desires crit, because so many stack haste. Exceptions are largely those that come with frontloaded haste in their rotations, or are lucky enough to spend their resource quickly enough already.

For the rest, haste feels like “soft expertise”, regarding how you need a certain amount of it to feel functional. Instead of technically allowing your damage, it allows it anecdotally by making the rotation have minimal “waste”, and allow the fluidity feels nice, it really does suck if you’re a spec that heavily relies on haste to feel playable, like arms Warrior.

It’s a difficult balance however because if you make all specs fluid pre haste, what does it give for non casters? Reduced Cooldowns?

Good to see crit is being doubled down on for sub in SL via the Find Weakness interaction.

38

I don’t think you realize how important it those stats are in order to create a smooth gear progression system.

I completely disagree with you saying haste is the only fun stat.
I have enjoyed crit stack specs in the past, but my favorite stat to stack is often mastery.

39

The only fun stat? when did i ever say that, please quote me on that because you will not find it.

What i said is that haste is the only stat that makes the spec generally better universally because of how it works, that’s completely different from “the only fun stat”

Also, what even is the point about a smooth progression system, you are talking about stats are needed on gear to make gear feel meaningful? Ok, no one was disputing that.

40

No it is not. You’re saying there is only generally one fun stat, and generally speaking crit and mastery are boring. That is why you singled it out.

41

Ok dude, whatever you think. Your proposition here that it’s not that different is ludicrous so i’m just gonna cut it here.

Also you already modified the argument from your original point, because i called you out on it, so…