This is a follow-up to my last post, to try to focus on what I think is a rather important point. I want to start establishing an idea that I think will eventually spread through the Balance community as people start to better understand Cataclysm gearing (and how it's different from WLK). That idea is that, as the title indicates, the hit cap is no longer important.

What do I mean by this? Basically that gear-selection decisions will almost always be made without the hit cap in...

• Hamlet

This is a brief explication of an issue that's been coming up more and more as we near Cataclysm, which is that people need to change their intuitive understanding of how to think about the hit cap and gear around it. The major change is the addition of Reforging.

The main focus of this post how you go about your quick mental evaluation of gear. Obviously if you're using a computational gear optimizer, it will spit out the right result regardless of how well you understand these...

• Hamlet

(Prelim: as usual with my WoWmath posts, I'll try to summarize the results at the end for people who don't care about the mathematical arguments. Skip to "Conclusions" if you don't want to read the whole thing.).

[top]Introduction

As most of people have noticed by now, the requirements for the Chaotic meta gem (+3% to crit bonus) on Cataclysm beta is now "more blue gems than red gems." This is awkward to say the least, especially given the new Cataclysm stat...

• Hamlet

As I've mentioned before, occasionally I sent feedback via e-mail to devs at Blizzard. I'd been a bit quiet on WoW issues for a few weeks, but I finally put together a full summary of my current thoughts on Resto. Here's what I wrote today:

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Finally got to do some raiding on the beta since the last Resto changes. In brief I'd say things are bit better than I thought, but the main issue I outlined in the last email (Rejuv and mechanics that rely on it...

• Hamlet

I got back from Blizzcon yesterday. It was my first time there, and generally a great time. I tweeted occasional things that happened, but I'll try to remember a few highlights.

The big draws for me were socializing and watching the Starcraft. I don't think I did too much that was specifically WoW-related. As people who know me at all can probably imagine, I knew I'd find the Q&A sessions to be frustratingly inane, and there was little hope of substantial new information with...

• Hamlet