I had a math teacher in High School named Mr. Wilder. The guy was the biggest douchebag who frequently cursed at us and made us laugh. He knew math was boring as piss and over complicated and downright a pain in the taint and we loved him for that brute honesty. He taught me one thing that year above all else, the KIS method to life. Keep It Simple (stupid).
Keep it simple (stupid) is an amazing philosophy that I feel can benefit WoW tremendously. Cataclysm isn’t just revisiting the old world and making it brand new, it’s also streamlining the aspects of this game I despise. A lot of stats are going bye bye which means less stupid loot drama, less spreadsheet what-the-fuckery, and hopefully less emphasis on the ePeen “Best in Slot suck my Cock” mentality that seems to be the only thing I ever see in raid groups:
Stats changes in Cataclysm
Agility, Strength and Intellect all need to be of about the same value for their respective target classes.
I don’t want to shut down all speculation on the topic, because it’s interesting stuff, but do keep in mind that if you think you’ve noticed a horrible, glaring flaw based on the limited info we’ve released, chances are it’s something we’ve already discovered and / or discussed.
We already know as I reported back in August that there will no longer be spell power, attack power, defense rating, MP5, or armor penetration (thank god) in Cataclysm at least on the gear. Defense is also being completely removed and Stamina is being inflated on gear to compensate for a lot of these stats. Essentially you’re going to need hit rating, haste (which is going to affect resource generation as well now such as energy and focus), expertise, and mastery (which will affect your talents and your role).
Getting rid of Defense in Cataclysm
The reason we want to do away with defense isn’t because it is a “cappable” stat. Hit is interesting in that you need a certain amount but no more and have to make gear choices accordingly rather than just gemming and enchanting your best stat everywhere and using the highest item level piece that drops without other considerations.
There are several reasons to get rid of defense:
1) It’s a confusing stat with its “cap” that isn’t really a cap.
2) It contributes to avoidance inflation.
3) It’s not of the same value for all 4 tank classes.
4) If you have a bunch of dps that can’t hit, you’ll probably just progress more slowly. If you have a tank that can be crit there’s a chance you can’t progress at all.
5) It contributes to tank scarcity. Ideally an Arms warrior should be able to go Defensive Stance and grab a shield to tank a 5-player dungeon (though not a raid). When every dps warrior (though the same is true of all tank classes) needs a full set of tank gear to tank even easy heroic content, it’s harder to fill your Dungeon Finder groups.
I’m just happy that it’s still going to be interesting to pick and choose and solve the puzzle of gear options but at the same time it’s going to do away with the overbearing push of “YOU MUST GEAR THIS WAY OR QUIT THE GAME BADDIE” that most elitist jerks swear by. The folks that started elitist jerks were a bunch of adults with lives that had very limited time to play the game due to a lucrative career in law (courtroom). So they wanted to maximize their success with what little time they had to play – now, it’s become nothing more than a cudgel the assholes of the game use to swing around and belittle those that they feel most threatened by. The original noble ideal of just being good at a game by using your brain has fallen to the wayside and that is pretty damn sad.
With this mild simplification of the stats I feel a lot of the math is being replaced by an actual game again, and I love it.
As a rogue, I enver really understood the whole concept of having different sets for different specs, until I started playing a DK and realized that if I wanted to tank, I needed to ahve one specific set all gemmed and enchanted for that, and if I wanted to DPS, I needed another. This has always been retarded, and if they remove that aspect of the game, kudos to them.
On the other hand, I dont hope they oversimplify shit too much – as the Blue says, if you just stick your main stat in every gem, that isnt really fun anymore, part of the fun in gearing up is customizing your stats a bit. It gets ridiculous when you ahve 3 different sets, but at the end of the day what makes your toon unique is the decisions you have made in how to customize your shit, its makes you feel unique and its stops you from feeling you are in a cookie cutter gearset, let alone spec.
That beig said, I doubt the epeening of BiS gear will ever stop, you will always have gear from Hardmodes that people will kill each other twice over jsut so they can lord it over other people, or feel better about their little virtual world accomplishments. Fortunately if you are in a decent guild with healthy-minded people, you wont ever need to interact with epeening retards in orgrimmar parading their lapiz-lazuli colored special edition frostwym drake they got from killing arthas 20 times in a row without breathing once during the whole encounter and a hand tied behind their backs.
I don’t mind having to get gear for tanking and for healing etc, but it’s pretty fucking annoying that you have to literally min/max every-single-aspect of your character just to compete with the demands of a lot of players that might be carried more than they think.
I am just happy that they are for once making things a little bit less stressful and annoying and a bit more fun.
Especially the mind numbingly, bash my face into the keyboard, experience I had while leveling my first toon to 60. Though it did work, my head still hurts darnit!
Also, thanks for the news about elitistjerks.com, never knew that they were just lawyer dudes looking to maximize time. Personally I would just go with the RaF feature and hope for more Heirlooms wist occasionally playing this game with a headache.