Douglas

I don't see that as much of a barrier to this, though -- if they're really changing things so tankadins use the same tanking gear as warriors, I wouldn't expect a protection paladin to have any int or spi or spellpower or mp5. None at all. They'd need to swap out their entire gear sets anyway. So, if you come into this accepting that as as given...

(That's the downside. The upside to sharing gear with the other two plate-wearing tanking specs should be obvious...)

 

Malleus

I think that question can be adequately answered by the technicians of the Elitist Jerks Radiophonic Workshop:

*tiptoe tiptoe tiptoe*
*clank clank clank*

The main problem I see with homogenising Shaman mail is that as has been said, Eles don't need much in the way of MP5 but Restos need oodles of it. Either Eles have to be nerfed to need more MP5, or Restos need a talent that multiplies their MP5.

Which brings me to a concern about the whole homogenising idea. WOW has for me always been about the breadth of the game. There's always something new to look for, the joy of getting a new piece of loot that lets you try out a different play style. Homogenising the loot and putting the play styles in the realm of talent speccing would remove that variety, and WOW would become Guild Wars with a monthly fee. Now, I love Guild Wars - I played it to bits before I began playing WOW - but I wouldn't pay to play it because it isn't deep enough.

My worry is that once raiders get their optimal gear, there'll be nothing for them to strive for and they'll leave for lack of interest. We're already seeing it as guilds clear the raid content then go on hiatus until WOTLK, but it'll happen a lot faster if farming gear is no longer important. And the longer these people stay out of the game, the greater the chance they won't return.

 

Cryic

A more elegant solution would be to have LW / BS workers be able to "transmute" armor types up and down. IE: A blacksmith can "add" Earth Elementals etc to a piece of mail and make it plate. The item would get an armor bonus and thats about it. The reverse could happen if a LW where to take a piece of Plate and craft it down to mail. Or from Mail down to Leather.

Could run with this idea and have basically any armor piece get crafted up or down. This would solve a lot of the loot problems in itself, and would actually fit into a fantasy setting quite nicely.

 

Pounce

It would seem to me that placing Holy Paladins in mail would be an entirely unworkable solution.

Its a step backwards for itemization and returns us to the early days when paladins simply could not find decent healing plate. Holy Paladins are healers designed around plate; presumably Blizzard has accounted for that in their design and implementation the class. To then ignore it on itemization would be like balancing Retribution assuming the healing power of someone specializing in Holy, e.g. "We can't give them more DPS because they can already land 7k Holy Lights". This would not be fair to Retribution. It's possible Blizzard could simply rebalance the Holy tree for mail, but it would take away some of the Holy paladin's unique place in the game. Whether or Blizzard has fully made use of the healer-in-plate paradigm is a separate issue; removing plate entirely ends further development in that area. Moreover, it's a sloppy solution that simply replaces an itemization problem with a class balance problem. I'd rather have to shard an item now and then, if it means preserving a valid playstyle option. (I believe, the same problems would occur if you put Shamans in plate.)

I'm also not a fan of AP->Spell Power conversions because it seems to be founded on faulty logic.

Paladins are not a melee-based class so much as they are a class with two melee trees and a caster tree. Their caster tree is Holy and it specializes in healing; healing paladins aren't interlopers in an otherwise perfect system, but full partners in the class (this is and should be true for all of the "big three" paladin roles). I don't really want to get into an argument about how Blizzard advertised paladins or whether they should be frontline fighters, because that's a debate best left to the official paladin boards (if you're brave enough to visit them).

Whatever the marketing angle, the reality is the paladins do have a caster tree. Even if you aren't fond of healing (or Holy), it does the class no good to ignore that fact. More to the point, it would seem more appropriate to make a Spell Power->AP conversion than the other way around, considering that all paladin playstyles can make use of +dmg (some more than others of course) but only one makes legitimate use of AP. It would be easier to up Retribution's reliance on +dmg and simply grant them the much needed AP->dmg conversion talent, rather than restructure the other two trees around AP. It's also probably too late in the game to completely overhaul paladin mechanics to make AP useful to all trees and it strikes me as a bit clumsy to implement a talent in Holy and Protection to convert AP. Making it an innate ability introduces so many balance problems that I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. While it's possible to rework paladins like that, it would be a fairly monumental task, especially considering all the retroactive changes that would be necessary for some legacy gear.

I do agree that homogenizing +heal and +dmg into +spell power might yield some positive benefits, and I don't think Blizzard needs to go much further than that. Yes, some items will still get sharded, but that's how the game works. Blizzard will never perfect the loot system such that every item will be looted and useful. Even if they did they could never account for different group compositions or distribution systems that alter which class gets loot and how frequently. Streamlining the looting system should not be taken as a reason to uproot and completely redesign classes; at that point you're fixing a plumbing problem by tearing up the entire foundation of the house. I don't think loot rot is that severe of a problem.

 

Kaizen

If I follow this topic correctly, you all are trying to find a way to homogenize gear so that several classes can use the same pieces, thus reducing worthless raid drops that eventually turn into a shard or at best someone says "Eh, I guess I'll take it." Also reduces the amount of time spent farming instances for items that just wont drop.

The best fix I have heard for this problem I believe (as in I'm not positive) is something they're doing in WarHammer Online. Each boss drops a "bag", could be a head or heart or bone or something else to fit in better with the lore. This could be turned in to an NPC who has available what could be considered the boss' loot table. Which ever player gets the item can redeem it for any item that npc offers or just gold.

That would be a good fix without limiting gear options. The question is, would the devs want to do it?

 

Douglas

The thing is, the way things are shaping up, it looks like the only characters who are going to benefit from int, spi, mp5, or spellpower on plate at all are Holy paladins. It's looking like it might be the case that ret and prot paladins no longer need (or even are able to use) any of those stats in any amount at all, and we know warriors don't need them, and it's looking like Death Knights don't need them.

So, if that does turn out to be the case, then holy paladins are interlopers of a sort -- they are the only characters in the game who want any caster stats on any armor tougher than mail at all ever. Hence the perceived problem.

 

flyingtoastr

Out of curiosity, do you play a paladin? Like, actually play one?

You have to melee as a pally. We don't have any spell casts that can take the place of an autoswing. We are based around a melee combat system regardless of whether or not one of our trees is designed for healing (Healing =! caster by the way).

No, we do not have a caster tree. We have a healing tree. The healing tree's combat mechanics still require you to run around beating things to death with autoswings.

And you haven't been reading. We're not talking about an AP > SD conversion in the holy tree, we're talking about a redesign of the class so that everything has an AP scaler instead of a +damage scaler. Every spec would use Strength as its primary stat and all our abilities would gain additional damage from AP (instead of the crap we have now). I encourage you to go look at the DK abilities, they are exactly what we're talking about.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

SanSul

Blizzard already has this system in place, with tokens. Every class gets gear specifically designed for them. Some of the gear sucks (Retribution Tier 6), while others are fairly decent/excellent.

Random loot is put in place to ensure the instance is used more then once by most people. It also makes gear harder to get and thus increases the gears value. I remember before badge loot utterly destroyed Heroic instance loot tables, that there were quite a few rare items from Heroics that people heavely desired for raiding.

The main issue really is there are far to many specs and gear sets for them to create, and its filling up the loot tables. Healing priests have little use for High spell crit healing maces, and warrior tanks have no use for spell damage tanking plate. Paladins particularly got the most gear of any class in the expansion designed just for them. This is no longer the case.

You can very very likely expect to see absolutely no healing plate drops whatsoever anymore. Instead you will have a plate item drop usuable immediately by a Ret paladin, arms/fury warrior, shadow/blood deathknight. Tanking gear will be immediately usable by frost deathknights, prot paladins, and prot warriors. However if the Paladin is a healer, he will need to take that melee piece of gear and turn it into an NPC to get the healing version.

HOWEVER, the best option is to make tanking melee gear THE healing gear for the Paladin. This is done by having a talent that converts strength into +healing. Crit into spell crit. And hit into mana/5. Its extremely simple to do and is just a balancing game with numbers, but they all scale with each new piece. This way there is not a SINGLE piece of gear designed only for one spec of one class.

 

Douglas

They're already doing it -- this is exactly what the token system is (cf. "Gloves of the Fallen Defender"), and is very similar to the badge system in a lot of ways. They've been experimenting with this as far back as, what, Zul'Gurub? That's patch 1.7, back in September of 2005, nearly three years ago now.

A lot of people are very strongly opposed to making this the only, or indeed main, manner in which loot is distributed.

 

Thanaomira

Something I've been musing about is: could the devs tweak stances/auras/runes to change the effect of homogenized gear? This then sidesteps the problem of requiring a respec, and as a given, avoids the problem of requiring multiple gear sets.

This idea came to me when I was doing rampant speculation about what Runes might do and how they could be setup to change your current gear from "this is good for tanking" into "this is good for DPSing". From there, I was pondering blue-sky stuff like

* Defensive Stance: Str turns into +defense and less AP; Agi turns into more armor. Zerker causes Agi to generate more crit and less armor. Battle might be the 1:1 version.

* Add a Healing aura for paladins that converts Str -> +healing; modify other auras similarly to warrior stances. Add cooldowns to certain auras if aura twisting is overpowered.

This would help keep (at least) the plate-wearing classes distinct: warriors can swap from tanking to dpsing with a stance change. DKs might need to be out-of-combat to change runes (baseless speculation on my part). Paladins can start cranking heals (!) with an aura change mid-combat, but possibly with a (6, 10, 30, 120) second cooldown.

 

Pounce

This is true, but I'm not sure it's an intractable problem. Because they are the only spec/class combination that requires a particular balance of stats, they can't expect as many options to be available. Because healing plate and healing mail drops will cater to a very specific audience (Holy paladins and Resto Shamans respectively), their stat balance can be very precisely tailored. They won't have a lot of choice when it comes to their armor drops, but that's basically how it is now. Professions could add a couple additional items if that was required, but in any case, I don't think it's much for the loot system to bear.

From my preliminary understanding of Blizzard's homogenization drive, the idea was to bring certain specializations closer together rather than pigeonholing everyone into a certain stat distribution based on class. By that I mean, where possible, limit the need for wildly different stats. An Arms Warrior and a Retribution Paladin can now share a lot of similar gear (which they do anyway), but that doesn't mean an Arms Warrior should have to share gear with Protection Paladin. Where no loot synergies exist currently, say between Resto Shamans and every other spec/class combination, no homogenization is possible. Remember, by homogenizing loot on some levels (e.g. Arms-Retribution) the loot tables will be streamlined by a certain degree, which is the intended goal. I don't think Blizzard ever intended to fully homogenize all loot, because that could cause more problems.

Full homogenization could work if an extensive rewrite of the game mechanics was on the table, but I'm not sure it would change much worth changing. I'll admit the idea of having very general stats has a certain appeal, i.e. critical strike rating, hit rating, power, haste, all for both melee and spells. Base stats could be handled through talents, so that Holy Paladins get their needed Intellect through conversion and mp5 through abilities. The problem for me is this new evolution of WoW would be far less interesting in a way. In the end it's only workable if you change some game fundamentals and who knows what new problems you'd create with that.

My main is a paladin, so I guess that counts as actually playing one.

It seems your definition of caster v. melee depends solely on damage dealing, which is a valid way to define it, I suppose. The reason I define healing as a caster role is simply because in raids I'm casting spells, and the only time I engage in melee is to refresh Judgements (which I can sometimes leave to our Retribution Paladin). If healing isn't a caster role, and it certainly isn't a melee role, than it leaves healing in a no-man's land in terms of semantics.

I have been reading and if I wasn't clear, I apologize. There are two options I saw presented, one with a Holy talent for conversion and one with an innate conversion. The problem I had with the innate conversion is that it requires a complete rewrite of 2 of the 3 class roles to bring it into alignment with 1 of them. STR does nothing for Holy and it does very little for Protection (and nothing other stats can't do better). While making every tree operate on STR could work, it seems like an awkward and Retribution centric fix. That said, it would make it easier to itemize for all plate wearers, but I wonder how that would impact on Retribution's balance. If STR could be converted into spell power, and thus healing power, I wonder what effect this would have on a Retribution paladin's ability to heal themselves in a PvP environment. Not saying it's a huge sticking point, just a passing thought.

I've looked over the DK abilities and they are certainly interesting, but how similar do we want the two class specializations to be? Obviously they could be differentiated through abilities and foci, while having the same underlying itemization and mechanics. I'm more inclined to form a simple and elegant solution to the problem at hand, i.e. wasted loot, rather than homogenize itemization and mechanics in one move. In the end it depends what Blizzard really wants to fix. The best overall solution I've seen is the idea that DPS plate drops can be traded to a NPC for +spell power plate, as it addresses the problem without upsetting any of the current balance.

I guess my objection isn't that the idea couldn't work ever, just that it might not work with the game we currently have. Remember, Blizzard has been stumbling towards a unified view of what a hybrid should be for some time now, and slowly they've been getting there. I'm hesitant to encourage a complete reboot of the system this late in the game, especially to address a concern much more easily handled through another method. A loot conversion NPC is relatively simple and doesn't require any game balancing; changing the base mechanics of a class in such a drastic way might backfire in a lot of unexpected ways.

 

Zaphid

Druids already have this to some extent but because it requires swapping gear so you are effective in other forms, it's balanced with the rest of the game. If every class could do these things, it has very big potential to end up in a clusterfuck especially with PvP. And the dps classes would whine out loud if it was actually useful without respecing

If something came from this discussion it's the fact that if Blizz does something like this, people are going to cry about 0,01%s of coefficients instead of just shutting up and waiting for the right item to drop. The amount of items shouldn't be cut in half, just thinned so with some kind of badge and sunmote system, everyone has a chance to cover ~80% of their slots with equipment just for them

 

Cuer

Lots of new info in Blizzcast 3, which just came out. It has multiple interviews with Jeff Kaplan, with WoW questions.

A general response about progression/gear/balance:

And some interesting thoughts about future tokens/BoJ type gear at level 80:
Interesting stuff all around!

 

Balancemoon

It is kind of, all those clasess were designed with their armor class very much in mind. Why do you think cloth uses each have up to about 4-5 crowd controls they can employs from slows, to polymorphs/mind controls, fears, shields, pets, coils etc, because they have weak armor, as you go each successive armor class up, the number of ways of keeping distance or managing agianst hit from avoidance is lessened, in leather you got druids with roots/cyclone rogues with stuns/gouges you've gone from 4-5 in cloth to 3-2 leather, get to mail, you're down to 2-1, shammies only have slows, hunters pet +trap, finally plate users have very little, with what they get quite limited with long cooldowns.

I very much like the gear system at the moment, Priests/Warlocks/Mages use cloth, Druids/Rogues in leather, Shaman/hunter in Mail and finally Paladins/Death Knights/Warriors in plate. They don't have to make any leather user where cloth or mail user upgrade to plate, there so many ways of making loot more rewarding and fairly distributed, and relevant and also reducing the complexity without damaging the diversity. Remember in beta how Druids/Shaman/hunter could use reinforced leather, they later upgraded Shaman/Hunters to mail after 40, and downgraded druids to leather, but gave bear form the 360% multiplier to compensate.

 

flyingtoastr

Healers heal. Caster means you cast offensive spells in place of melee attacks. When a holy pally "DPSes" (I use that term losely) you're still meleeing. Our class is a melee hybrid, why is it so difficult for people to grasp? You've been playing it for 70 levels, you should know this by now.

You're still missing the "big picture" here. I'll explain.

Death Knight tanking abilities will scale with AP.
Warrior tanking abilities will be scaling with AP.

Death Knight DPS abilities will scale with AP.
Warrior DPS abilities will scale with AP.
Retribution pallys already scale better with AP.

7 out of the 9 Plate specs are AP based already. I think everyone is pretty much agreed that prot pallys will most likely be getting a conversion of some sort to make tanking gear similar, leaving only Holy pallys to scale off the archaic spell damage system. This isn't some random thing I'm pulling out of my ass, Blizzard is clearly attempting to consolidate gear types to make itemization easier and loot tables smaller.

And yet, because one spec runs off a different mechanic there will have to be abilities that cater to that one spec (again I'll use Consecration as an example). If you did make all our DPS abilities scale with AP to help Ret pallys Holy pallys would be screwed and vice-versa. So we're stuck in this "in-between" state where half our combat system scales with one set of stats and the other half scales with the opposite. Its been this way since they removed Holy Strike and its pretty apparent that something needs to be done.

How do you fix it? Make Holy Pallys melee. Make us combat healers. Make us the masters of deflecting damage rather than just pumping throughput (once again, Blessing of Sacrifice could be one of the most incredible abilities with a few tweaks). Make us scale off melee stats so we're not the only people using one item (a piece of armor that can be used by one spec of one class out of 30 is bad, see Boomkin leather boots off RoS). It fits with the original description of the class (melee hybrid with secondary healing capabilities), fits with lore (the Paladins in Warcraft III didn't /dance in the back) and gives us a unique role in the game that we've been so desperately missing.

Yes it is a very sweeping change to the class, and I'm nearly positive they wouldn't do it, but this is all academic anyway.

EDIT: We demand visible librams too!

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Alerian

This whole gear conversion concept is really an entirely different topic at this point, as much fun as it might be to re-hash it out for a dozen pages or so.

Back to expansion talk, I found this Kaplan quote from Blizzcast 3 to be particularly interesting:

Far too much of the gear is far too similar. Differnet visual styles will be much appreciated.


The LW drums debuff will be a good change for raiding going into LK. As it stands now, way too many folks in my guild (and I'm sure in others' as well) are forced into LW just to stay competitive in PvE dps. Constant drums is great, but it does feel incongruent to have an entire guild of LWs.

 

Logio

Looks like we will see unique looks again for PvE & PvP armor. Good News

 

Pounce

I don't think it's difficult to grasp, it's just a semantic distinction that gets lost in the realities of gameplay. For example, when farming or soloing I do spend some time hitting things (although as Holy I generally just bunch mobs up and consecrate them down), so I'm not denying there's a heavy melee component there. But in raids, I rarely melee at all. This might be a design flaw, but by any realistic measure I am casting for the majority of the time I'm raiding. I'm willing to concede the point though, since when it comes to damage dealing we depend on melee interaction whereas a Shaman or a Druid can get by on casting alone.

I don't disagree with your fundamental point, only with the opportunity costs involved. Consolidation or homogenization of gear isn't an all or nothing proposition, as there are many degrees and approaches to it. The real problem in this case isn't so much a matter of loot (although it's connected to loot), it's what you discuss in the passages below.

This is a genuine problem for paladins, but it's only partially related to streamlining the loot system. Because what you're suggesting doesn't just change the items we use, it changes our role; we go from being capable main healers to secondary healers with other non-healing responsibilities. This may fit some people's view of the class, but not others. We've solved the loot dilemma, but created a problem for paladins who love healing but now find they are suboptimal for the role. It's possible to design a combat healer like you describe without alienating people who love to heal, but I think Blizzard has been trying (unsuccessfully) to bring paladins around to that end and it's not due to itemization. Paragons from Guild Wars has been brought up as a good example, but now we're just reimagining the class from the ground up.

If Blizzard wants paladins to be backline healers if they spec Holy, they have to itemize around that reality and it gets messy if they try to jury-rig melee stats into the mix. I'd be curious to see (and fantasize) about what paladins could be like with more melee oriented mechanics, but in the end, that has to be Blizzard's vision too. If they just want to fix itemization and not paladin mechanics, my suggestions and thoughts have to lean in that direction. Although I'll happily muse about what paladins could have been elsewhere.

In short, if Blizzard wants fewer wasted drops they have several options, not all of which call for class or spec reboots. A tweak here or there can facilitate the core goal of streamlining itemization, but there's a certain line they cross when the project becomes something else entirely. Consolidating DPS plate is one degree of streamlining, whereas consolidating all plate (while noble in intention), is a mission of a completely different magnitude. I'm not against it, as a rule, I'm just not optimistic about their ability to do it at this point in the game. Something like an AP->SD conversion for Ret would likely be a conservative but workable solution at this point. I trust Blizzard can handle something as straight-forward as that.

On this we can certainly agree!

 

Hildegard

Why not solve some conversion problems with inscriptions. Also sockets and socket bonusses could become much stronger. So you have one piece of gear with lets say int, stamina, spirit, plus heal/damage and some sockets. So every caster could add the stats they like. Same thing goes with enchanting. With more possibilities a lot of the issues could be adressed.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Pounce

When I first heard about socketing I assumed this was the direction Blizzard would take it, but as it turned out, socketing proved to be much more about fine-tuning than gear sharing. It would be nice to see professions play a larger role in shaping itemization, be it through crafting or enhancements of some type. For example, you could have rather generic plate drops itemized only for stamina and give players the opportunity to turn it into DPS, tanking or healing gear through gems or kits. Based on how socketing works currently, I'm not sure it would be effective without reworking some of its mechanics or adding a new type of socket. Inscription doesn't seem like a likely possibility since, from my understanding, inscription applies to spells and abilities, not to gear.

If something along these lines was implemented it would provide for some benefits beyond tightening up the loot table. Makes one wonder why Blizzard chose to implement sockets on such a limited basis to begin with.

 

Hildegard

Regarding Inscriptions you could include some conversion talents. "Inscription of Concentration - gives you 1% of you intelligence as spell hit rating" or something like that.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Chul

I've noticed people talking about spell hit being 100% useless on healing gear which would mean homogenised gear between casters and dps would lead to unused stats. While that is currently true, Blizzard could easily change the mechanics for healers to use +hit.

Rather than a complete heal "missing" or being resisted, instead it could heal less. In return, the heal could heal for ~5% more so it is currently balanced. Then if healers get +hit gear on their items, they'll heal for more so it's not wasted. And since +hit is cheap (or at least for physical +hit, I assume it's the same for casters), healers wouldn't mind the odd +hit. With a +hit cap of say 5% for equal level, then it wouldn't unbalance the system too much by forcing healers to stack a cheap stat.

e.g.

Heal spell A heals for 1000 using current mechanics
Heal spell A heals for 1052 using the new mechanics

Currently, a healer with heal for 1000 every time using spell A.

A healer using the new mechanics with +0% hit heals for 95% of 1052 or 1000.
A healer using the new mechanics with +5% hit heals for 100% of 1052 or 1052.

 

Fiola

The point of AP->spell scaling isn't to force paladins out of healer roles. It's so that paladins (and other plate wearers) can share one set of gear and scale ALL parts of the class with one set of stats. A useful side effect is that a Holy paladin won't be toothless in melee. and that Ret/Prot paladins can utilize the "healing hybrid" part of their class.


There would need to be many talents/baseline abilities thrown in to make it work - some way for mana pools to scale on gear with no int, some way for mana regen to scale on gear with no mp5. But the required changes are feasible and would remove the need to itemize healing plate just for Holy paladins. As noted before, Holy and Prot plate have nearly no stat overlap, and two sets of specialty gear for one class is un-necessary. Also, if spell and physcial hit/crit/haste are going to be merged together, then crit/haste melee gear will synergize very well with Illumination and other deep Holy talents.

The alternate proposal to make Holy/Prot paladins share one set of caster plates require conversion talents/abilities to make it work as well. (int/SD -> defense, or defense -> mp5/etc) Both "solutions" require conversion taletns/abilities, but the AP scaling solution provides a more universal and longlasting "fix".


All that said, this is just player musing. Hopefully the Blizzard solution addresses the core issues.

 

Siddown

I think a Shockadin would argue that the majority of their damage (burst anyways) comes from JoR, Holy Shock, Consecration and Hammer of Wrath, all of which are offensive spells and scale with Spell Damage. I, for one, am interested in when the Paladin talents/abilites come out, until then, it's not even worth guessing what they'll do.

 

Pounce

I think you'll find that there are large sections of the paladin community that do not consider Shockadins a valid spec worthy of any consideration. Whether they are right or wrong is a conversation more suited to another thread.

I'm curious to see the Paladin and Shaman skills/talents because both of these classes have so much unexpressed potential. The Burning Crusade did much to expand hybrid classes and I hope WotLK builds on its legacy. While many hybrids might not be fully satisfied with the status quo, we'll have a better idea if Blizzard has been listening to the criticisms and suggestions in the coming weeks. Hopefully they'll develop an elegant solution that will address all the concerns without upending the apple cart too much.