All they would need to do is to add spelldmg/atkpower vs humanoid targets to pvp items and lower their base damage. That's it. Sure, there are some humanoid bosses, but hardly enough to make the weapons an issue in PvE.
It was brought up before and there is a simply reason against this:
The old wow 'everything for everyone' principle. The same way pve content gets nurfed to kingdom come over time, all those kids out there would be pissed if a guild spending countless days in pve instances would come out with a few weapons that actually do more damage then the stuff they get for a few hours per week.
Exactly that gear gap came up during nax, when the raiding guilds were pulling further and further away in itemization. Blizzards response: Rank 14 gear for everyone.
I was hoping the resilience stat would finally fix this and there would be a clear line between pve and pvp gear. Unfortunately weapons were excluded for obvious reasons, namely: CRIT FOR 46234623 OMG OMGOMG. If pve players would do more dmg vs non pvp targets then pvp players, the whining would commence immediatly, as there are just infinitely more pvp players then pve, due to serious pve just taking a shitloads of time per week.
And for that same reason, more pvp players then pve players, it's gonna stay like that.
'A lot more people run around in Arena gear then in high end PvE gear and they want to be able to have cool looking weapons that do lots of damage too.' is essentially the answer you are looking for, Praetorian.
What I find odd is the inclusion of things like spell hit on the caster arena weapons. It suggests to me it was delibarate to encourage PvEers into the arena.
What really hurts PvE is that blizzard seems to regard the most desirable weapons as real "trophy" items that it puts only on signature encounters deep in the instances in rare supply.
A straight-forward fix would be to make weapon tokens drop from a slightly wider range of bosses which would help make PvE weapon gearing a bit friendlier. It would also let Blizzard painlessly introduce some weapon types not seen to give more variety.
For example:
Token for "Axe of Pwnage" drops, you turn it in for:
Make weapon gearing a bit simpler and give people like Shaman a bit more variety instead of always carting around a healing mace or dagger. Of course you would just recycle the artwork for each of these (maybe some color difference or glove difference or something).
I can't say the same for casters although I assume it would be truthful to some degree, but when you are comparing the DPS of melee Arena Weapons you have to think of the resilience and sometimes larger armor (mage/warlock gear). The damage loss from resilience and armor (-12.5% crit, 25% crit damage, however much from +armor) is very substantial in PvP.
Why change the system now? PvP weapons have always been very good for PvE. The HWL weapons were the best until Naxx with a couple of exceptions. The same is true for the some of the Merciless Gladiator Weapons.
I don't think the problem is how good they are, but how easily obtainable they are to get.
I think DPS should be the same on items of the same level regardless of origin, but the stats themselves should be further changed. The PvP daggers for example could have a bit less ap, hit and crit, but trade that for some bonus armor, higher resilience, and maybe a special effect like 3% snare/root resistance.
That doesn't really solve the problem, though. An ilvl 136 Merciless Gladiator's X, even if you take some extra AP and +hit or whatever, is still going to be strictly superior to anything short of Vashj/Kael loot for PvE purposes, whereas any other Merciless Gladiator's piece is something you wouldn't wear for PvE if you had Prince/Gruul/Mag-or-better in those slots.
There isn't really a precedent for taking white DPS off of melee weapons in order to add anything besides spelldmg. No reason it couldn't be done the same way, though. The spelldmg change accomplished its goal of allowing a caster's weapon slot to carry similar weight relative to armor slots as a melee weapon slot did.
Since, for normalized attacks, 14 AP isn't quite as good as 1 DPS, you'd have to be careful with the tradeoff. Conceptually, though, the white DPS on your weapon is a bonus just like any other, and should fit the weapon's intended use (for people who don't believe this, it's a lot more intuitive if you look at it in the case of caster weapons).
You could probably get away with not lowering the base white DPS at all, and simpling not spending any points on DPS stats like crit beyond that, but that leads to less interesting weapons.
The flip side of the coin, however, is that weapons are very important to the DPS of a number of classes. As a rogue, and certainly one of these classes, I am very appreciative of the ability to be able to get these weapons in a non-random way.
One of our rogues is currently a mace spec rogue only because he doesn't arena much and could not get a [Talon of Azshara] (switched from swords to maces). Our Dagger rogue is currently building up arena points for the [Merciless Gladiator's Shanker], because he is currently swinging a [Heartrazor] since he wasn't there for the single [Fang of Vashj] drop.
I agree that it's an odd convention. The ability for me to get raid-capable weapons without raiding seems slightly out of whack, but at the same time, I'm thankful to not have to depend upon a random drop to improve my toon's raiding ability. If arena gear replaced all of my hard-earned PvE gear, I'd be pretty annoyed. Hell, I'd probably be annoyed if weapons actually dropped for my guild...but they don't.
Anyhow, I understand the issue, but it's not all bad.
Isn't the reason the Arena weapons are popular is because you can get them without having to rely on the luck of the drop and don't cost DKP?
If the model for weapon drops was like Prince on 1 or 2 bosses in the Tier 5 and 6 content with one drop slot dedicated to weapons/ranged then the idea that you could rely on PVE weapons to upgrade your raid would be viable. Especially if there were two tiers of weapon gear in the instances. On from a free kill type boss and one from a end-boss.
Right now, the luck of the drop means some guilds would have significant advantages over others because of loot streaks. We've seen exactly seven weapons drop from SSC since starting in 6/22/2007. In that 2+ months of time you could easily earn the arena weapon equivalents for everyone in the raid.
And what are you going to do about the hybrids? Right now its very popular for the hybrids in my guild to get a damage or healing piece form PVP and get the other from PVE. Seems to me Arena gear is doing exactly what they intended. What I don't understand is why do they stick with the model of making weapon drops so rare compared to other gear?
I wouldn't like a simple itemization solution that just excludes the pvp weapons from raiding in the same way as the other arena gear, actually...
I didn't forget how much grief rare weapon drops caused for our guild back in the days (Chromaggus being the first and probably the worst culprit), although we had 10+ Grand Marshals in our rooster. They are just so damn important for your performance.
That doesn't really solve the problem, though. An ilvl 136 Merciless Gladiator's X, even if you take some extra AP and +hit or whatever, is still going to be strictly superior to anything short of Vashj/Kael loot for PvE purposes, whereas any other Merciless Gladiator's piece is something you wouldn't wear for PvE if you had Prince/Gruul/Mag-or-better in those slots.
I think that is true for most things, but it is not true for main hand swords for rogues. Prior to the buff it is getting in 2.2, the [Talon of Azshara], off Morogrim, is superior to the [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer]. I suspect the same is true with regard to the [Talon of the Phoenix] in comparison to the [Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper], although I haven't explicitly taken the time to plug it into a spreadsheet to check.
I think one of the problems is that PvE weapon drops come from the RNG, and guilds can simply get "unlucky" for a long period of time. Since weapon upgrades are (potentially) the biggest DPS increase for physical dps classes, meaning rogues/warriors/hunters, will do whatever is necessary to acquire better weapons.
Enter Arena weapons, which are VASTLY more attainable than their PvE equivalents due to not relying on a crappy RNG and having enough DKP to win it. The fact that S2 weapons are as good as, or often better than, T5 drops only compounds the problem.
Blizzard changing the Arena weapons to be equippable only when you have X rating on your Arena team is the wrong way to fix this. The main difference will be that raiders who don't really care about Arena will have to be on a high-ranked Arena team in order to use the weapons they have purchased, spending EVEN MORE TIME on an activity they may not value or enjoy.
What Blizz SHOULD do, alongside PvE weapon buffs, is simply add "weapon" token drops as an additional drop from all T5 bosses. Combine 20 weapon tokens for the T5 weapon of your choice, but keep the RNG also. This would allow players to get weapons over time even if the drop they're after doesn't appear.
The flip side of the coin, however, is that weapons are very important to the DPS of a number of classes.
What exactly does this mean? Since they added ilvl-based +dmg/heal to weapons (a very long time ago), weapon slots are comparable across all classes. When your DPS is low because your weapon is a few ilvls too low and has a low damage range, mine is similarly low because for those few ilvls I'll lose a large amount of +dmg.
So for all classes, the weapon slot is somewhat more significant than any single armor slot. This actually makes the most annoying slot in which to have PvP stuff interfering with proper raid item progression.
If you want a PVP only damage stat, why not:
"Ignores XXX of your target's resilience"
Put this only on weapons and it has the effect of increasing your DPS in PVP, and depending on cost, maybe enough to make them worth it without being worthwhile for PVE?
I explicitly was asking about Season 2 caster epics vs the two directly comparable ones (Fang of the Leviathan and the Nexus Key) - the PVP ones are just plain better for PVE. His response was kind of shady on it though - stating that you need hit for PVP and Stamina is good for PVE.
If you want a PVP only damage stat, why not:
"Ignores XXX of your target's resilience"
Put this only on weapons and it has the effect of increasing your DPS in PVP, and depending on cost, maybe enough to make them worth it without being worthwhile for PVE?
I like that much better than the typical "AP against other players" suggestions that are typically thrown around. That would justify lowering the base dps some, as it would still outpower pve weapons in pvp if given enough resilience penetration.
Healers of course would need some other bonus, ideally something like bonus resilience to the targets you heal, similar to the relics that do the same. This would have some effect in pve, though quite minor of an effect.
If you want a PVP only damage stat, why not:
"Ignores XXX of your target's resilience"
Put this only on weapons and it has the effect of increasing your DPS in PVP, and depending on cost, maybe enough to make them worth it without being worthwhile for PVE?
This is actually a pretty good idea as long as they don't get carried away with it. I don't expect Blizzard to ever retroactively redo existing weapons, but the prospect of, say, 102 DPS 1h weapons and casters weapons with +250 dam/heal from arenas in the next season is worrisome, rating requirement to use them or not. But a season 3 weapon that's identical in terms of base DPS to the season 2 version but also has "resilience penetration" or whatever would be interesting.
I think the key is that there's nothing wrong with the weapons being "worthwhile" for PvE. They shouldn't be garbage. But they also shouldn't be completely on par with items from the same tier of raid content, let alone better (as is the case with Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade vs. anything pre-t6).
What exactly does this mean? Since they added ilvl-based +dmg/heal to weapons (a very long time ago), weapon slots are comparable across all classes. When your DPS is low because your weapon is a few ilvls too low and has a low damage range, mine is similarly low because for those few ilvls I'll lose a large amount of +dmg.
So for all classes, the weapon slot is somewhat more significant than any single armor slot. This actually makes the most annoying slot in which to have PvP stuff interfering with proper raid item progression.
I apologize, I didn't mean to imply that this wasn't the case. The weapon slot is the most significant slot for virtually any class, with regard to pure damage dealing or pure healing power. That said, I believe a rogue going from, say, a [Malchazeen] to a [Merciless Gladiator's Shanker] is going to be looking at a larger percentage damage boost than a caster going from a [Nathrezim Mindblade] to a [Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade].
If I'm incorrect about this, I apologize...I admittedly know far less about caster itemization than I do about rogue itemization.
Some of the pvp weapons split their stats in a pretty decent manner for pve. Without doing extensive maths, I suspect that the physical weapons which split ap, crit, and hit end up being much better than just using item budget on one or two offensive stats.
Many PvE weapons are itemized horribly, while the PvP weapons all have the same, well thought out stats.
"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted. "So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know." "And what is that?" asked the man in black. "I'm not left-handed."
Many PvE weapons are itemized horribly, while the PvP weapons all have the same, well thought out stats.
And yet, at the same time, the stats and speeds on PvE weapons already counter the PvP weapons in many instances. Talon of Azshara and/or Blade of Infamy will hands-down outDPS the MG's Slicer as a mainhand weapon, even in current form, despite the fact that Talon has a lower white DPS.
To fix the problem, rather than removing white DPS for the sake of stats like resilience or stamina, they should continue to add "Special abilities/procs" and/or on-use abilities for the sake of PvP.
Resilience has proven itself to be a very solid stat for PvP-efficacy, but there are few hard counters to it.
Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade Version Kyt-2.0:
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Dagger
18 - 113 Damage Speed 1.60
(41.2 damage per second)
+28 Stamina
+18 Intellect
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell hit rating by 12.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 20.
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 187.
Equip: Chance on successful spellcast to lower target's resilience rating by 75 (2% proc-rate).
The PvP-set glove abilities (Deadly Throw on the Rogue set as an example) have shown themselves to be very effective ways to improve PvP effectiveness while at the same time limiting their use in PvE-Progression.
I've also seen items with cool on-use abilities shown to be very effective ways to circumvent group limitations or other such things (For example, a guild that I had apped at one point used the Decapitator's on-use ability as a way to pull in an environment with very few available misdirections at one point).
Yeah, you hurt the PvE-ness of the dagger by a fair bit, but you gain something cool in trade rather than "Oh, great, more resilience/stam."
That said: The biggest reason that most Rogues use the S2 offhand is that it happens to be a 1.50/1.40 macefistsword/dagger offhand available before BT/Hyjal. Given the weak "DPS/weaponspeed" ratio for Rogues, if you were to lower the S2 MH to even 88DPS but maintain the current speed rating or improve it to 1.4/1.3, you probably wouldn't see huge widespread complaints, especially if you were to add something new and cool in the mid.
That being said, 2 more weeks before I can get rid of my fucking Edge of the Cosmos for a good weapon. Fuck Morogrim, Fuck Netherspite, Fuck Kazzak, and fuck the difficulty of deciding to switch from Scryers to Aldor pre-Exalted because you happened to underestimate the damage difference between swords and daggers when you chose your faction.
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
The PvP-set glove abilities (Deadly Throw on the Rogue set as an example) have shown themselves to be very effective ways to improve PvP effectiveness while at the same time limiting their use in PvE-Progression.
Fun fact: Those gloves are really useful in at least one BT fight where you need to interrupt a caster who can sometimes have a persistent AoE effect dropped on her. (But yeah, your overall point certainly still holds.)
I think attainability of items for weapons slots was something that a lot of people had trouble accepting. The weapons from BWL and AQ40 (non-elementium crafted) were notoriously rare for my former guild in particular. Offering weapons through a reasonably balanced system is fine, but it was smeared a bit when everyone was dropping their season 1 points at the start of season 2 for weapons that were superior to anything in the teir5 zones.
Adding rating restrictions to the weapons is only a band-aid to be sure, but it at least stops the bleeding until a long term fix can be implemented (if it's even being planned). Seeing the start of s3 and people (again) dropping the past seasons points on weapons that are even better than their already superior season 2 weapons is irrational to say the least. A lot of people complain that the arena gear looks like teir gear, or they are 'welfare epics,' but the only thing that really bothers me is that points carry over to the next season.
Arena weapons should have an "Anti-DPS" stat that basically lowers the DPS of attackers weapons, and lowers the +damage from attackers spells. It should be itemized exactly the same as the DPS of weapons currently.
Tanking weapons would need to be re-itemized to utilize this stat along with the current stats used.
I just think the fact that people can get somewhat close to T5 equivalent in all pieces, not to mention the look, is pretty bogus. Grinding out your 400 pts a week is no where near as arduous as raiding to get the T5 tokens and so to reward even the weakest of players just for 10 games played seems very unfair. So to make the weapons very very close to the raiding equivalent is really just diminishing the accomplishment of downing the bosses that give the real gear. Pre BC if someone was wearing full dreadnaught you knew they had done some very cool things and there was no substitute. they had that awesome looking armor, stats far beyond all other armor and nothing that compromised it as unique and special.
I think for this discourse to progress we should "throw out" the argument that people would instead need to "PvE to PvP".
Those who have time only for PvE will have very nice offensive stats, but in my experience be bludgeoned by those who PvP because of Resilience.
Those who only PvP again will be disadvantaged only against those who have time to do both - but surely this is the only right and correct way things should be. If you raid full time and can get a Dagger with 10 DPS more but 20 stamina less, you should be able to take that choice.
Slightly reducing the DPS on the weapons to below their PvE equivalents while buffing defensive stats, or else adding "Armaments" for weapons as an alternative path to upgrades, would both be reasonable solutions to this problem.
08/28/07, 11:50 AM
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