Wasn't a good portion of those manuals spells? I'm also afraid the AD&D 2.0 ruleset is one of the most complex combat mechanics out there.

Try explaining to someone on the street what the fuck THAC0 is in 1 or 2 sentences :p

I actually think the rating numbers are quite intelligent, because every time I've looked into them, for fully utilized stats (crit is fully utilized for mages, rogues, warriors, etc - but is *not* fully utilized for warlocks or spriests, for example) the itemization budget is fairly accurate in terms of absolute value. 3 of one rating usually equates to as much DPS as 3 of another rating.

Stats don't necessarily fit into this equation (although for melee classes, agi seems to, and for classes that get 2 AP/Str, str seems to), mostly because caster classes don't really derive direct DPS from stats.

That said: every time I've played around with crit:hit conversions or scrit:+dmg conversions, a ~1:1 ration in itemization budget versus DPS gained is what I've seen. The numbers are very much *not* arbitrarily selected.

My point is I would prefer to have a 1:1 rating number for 1% effect, and hide the 1:1 ratio in itemization budget. I care not for the iBudget, and I think fewer people care about the item budget than whether it's 1% or 1.5% spell hit. I'd take ease of readability and a hidden item budget any day.

What I think is being missed is the average user isnt min maxing, nor do they want to. They just want to be more powerful. When most people on say the WoW offical boards ask "is this better than that?" They dont want the theroycrafted math behind it, they dont want the spreadsheet telling them well if you have a perfect rotation on cooldown with x lag then this will result in more y. They just want to know what is better than another.

All the stats work like this, its never worse to have more of a stat, never does more agility make you worse.

Its only when doing cross stat comparison does it break down. Is 3 stam and 4 agi better than 50 armor and 2 defence?

Is 3 crit rating better than 4 agi?

These are the questions that are harder to answer, and what thousands of users across boards like these continually debate.

Problem is there is not black and white answer to those questions, much less one that could be put on a tooltip.

Im not sure how Blizzard could answer these questions for the end user, who for the most part doesnt want to know, they want to collect a set that looks cool that has good numbers. The sheer volume of people who have no idea how AP converts from stats is mind boggling.

We are a subset, we are the hardcore, the people who get asked, "Hey guys which is better for me X or Y" because some small part of our brain gets pleasure out of figuring that stuff out.

But I dont see how blizzard could comunicate this clearer to the end user without confusing most of them.

I know when I spout off theorycraft reasoning to people I often can feel their eyes glazing over and not listening. People dont want to think, its a sad state but most people would prefer if they were able to go here is x here is x +1, x +1 must be better, Ill use that.

You missed my point.

You know how we all have our own little AEP-style systems?

At least for DPS, ratings are very close to an AEP style system - one of a given rating will generally provide as much *real* benefit as one of another rating.

I could care less if X rating is 1% hit or if Y rating is 1% hit, as long as 1 hit rating is roughly equal to 1 crit rating in improvement to my character - I'll take the ease of comparison over the ease of calculation any day.

They failed miserably when judging the stats though.

From their perspective: 1 defense rating = 1 dodge rating = 1 parry rating
From my perspective: 1 defense rating = 2 dodge rating = 4 parry rating

This makes items with lots of especially parry but also dodge usually very underpowered.

Blizzard has always overvalued Parry because of it's swing reset and how powerful that can be in PvP (not to mention the special abilities attached to it) They also look at Defense as a universal stat, it's not just for warriors you know, and they can't really create a "defense for warriors/paladins/shaman" and a "defense for everyone else" without creating new items for all of them. As far as average mitigation goes, defense starts out better than dodge, then becomes worse after crit-cap.

Except that this isn't necessarily the case. After running fairly extensive simulations of fights of all kinds of durations, I've come to the conclusion that 1 spell crit rating is worth about 0.65 spell damage, while spell hit rating is worth about 1.27 spell damage.

Of course, this is based on my current amount of crit/hit/damage, etc, and as those change so will the relative balance of power of any given amount of spell crit rating, spell hit rating, and spell damage. They're by no means equal to each other; spell hit rating is twice as powerful as spell crit rating for me right now! And if you look further down the road of course, at the hit cap hit rating drops to zero value.

Have you every tried to explain the theory of item levels to your average wow player?

When Rebirth moved from a fully arbitrary pricing system to a ilvl/slotmod pricing system, I spent about a week learning about item pricing on blizzards end so I could provide a reliable dkp pricing from my end. That's okay- it was a self assigned task and pretty enjoyable.

But taking it out of the officer forums and presenting it to my guild... this was back in late December of 05 when item level formulas etc was just starting to filter through RnD crowd enough that the more hardcore actually knew what you were talking about when you said slot mod, and -frankly- it was like trying to explain the concept of the number 10 to a computer that only understands 1 and 0 independently. It took weeks for people to stop asking wha tI considered fairly basic questions and long after that- I still bet there are a few people who simply don't care about the math and are jsut happy to know that X costs 10 and Y costs 14 and someone balanced it fairly.

A lot of the things we take for granted as common knowledge, or even semi common knowledge, are pure mystery and more likely to confuse your average player than help.

Why is this item level 115 and worse than that item that's 110. Well because the 110 is a well itemized epic, and the 115 is a poorly itemized blue. Then you start to get into the concept that greens/blues/purps have different point allocations to work with, and it's all modified by what slot it is on your character page.... all of this is WAY beyond where most players *want* to look.

Hell, I asked a player once what their average dps was at their gearing level (trying to make a value judgment on the fly for their spec) and they replied with "I hit things for.... um... like 1000?".

In the end, the majority of people in guild are happy to be presented with a price and to know that there is some higher power out there (officers) making sure that that price is fair.... or to listen to the theorycrafters chat in vent/guild and gleen from the conversations- not how to value things independently, but what is "best" without the legwork.

There's simply too large of an information base atm for the game to consolidate it into an encyclopedia of knowledge. I'd count myself as pretty damn experienced about the theory of itemization, caster itemization in specific, *basic* caster theorycraft, priest healing/dps mechanics/theory/application regarding raiding/5mans/solo, raiding guild leadership, and getting a decent start on mage mechanics/theory/application.

I could spend hours teaching a brand new to the game priest things about their class they never knew they wanted or needed to know. Put me on a warlock and I can teach them basic caster/dot mechanics but very little about thier class specifically, and if you send a rogue to me about anything game related- I couldn't help them find their way out of a paper sack- but I could tell them where to start looking for info.

All of that though... and I still know more about warlock and rogue mechanics than your average WoW player will ever WANT to know for themselves.

That's part of the reason- imo- that they moved to a rating system. More is better right?!?! Easy enough for your stupid consumer to compare. 20 hit rating or 15 crit rating. 20 > 15 Eureka! It's not failsafe- but it takes some of the guess work of the balance of %s away when blizz can let the stupids know- 20 of this is probably equal to 20 of that, regardless of the % that they are.

It also gives them the chance to make flashier numbers. 14 crit rating sounds better than 1% crit. 20 int, 20 sta, 1% crit... or 20int, 20 sta, 14 crit rating? Bigger numbers are always better. Mudflation at it's finest- without the pesky increase in power!

One thing I always thought was partially responsible for the rating system was that it was kind of hand in hand with the socketing system. I think sockets without the ability to do parry, dodge, crit or hit (unless they had gems that were just 1% crit / hit / etc) would be a bit weird.

I think its pretty much just a matter of time until we see Ratingbuster in the base UI.

I always thought of it as reducing the 100% cap. Since people want more (and get more) stats all the time this was a way to avoid people hitting the 100% cap.

In the eyes of the "common user" an increase of 0.2% would be worth passing but a 5crit rating is not. This way blizzard can flatten out the increase of gear.