I guess we could see some unique equip/use effects outside of trinkets and weapons. Only recently in the BC, we're seeing ring and amulet procs. So theirs still a lot of other items that could get procs potentially.

The belt is still naked, enchant-wise, so they could independently develop a new mechanic for the belt -- maybe Hit Recovery (see D2) which would work to counter pushback? Or something similar to the new shaman Toughness with reduces Snare Duration or Snare Effectiveness? Or an extension to Surefooted?

The BC saw 0 elemental weaponry, which was rare but still itemized in Vanilla WoW straight up to the Thunderfury. I still think it would be interesting to see some melee weapons, ranged weapons (or ammo), and some items gain +elemental damage, like +4-5 Fire Damage on Hit. And elemental damage enchants like to wrists or gloves.

The meta slot provides a lot of customization similar to the trinket slots. Will we ever see the meta move to a different slot? Or meta configurations beyond Meta + 1 Gem for Head?

There is a lot of room for gem itemization: we still lack +armor gem (that scales with Bear form). Obviously, they could also add Armor Penetration and Melee Haste Rating.

Shoulder enchants could use a huge overhaul, even if they use existing stats, there is much to be desired than the 4 standard configurations in the BC.

Vanilla WoW also briefly experimented with Absorption/Flat damage mitigation. This stat has yet to be seen on many (if any) items. Sorta like a universal shield block value (that applies to all attacks, see Earthen Elixir).

I don't think we'll see any energy regeneration procs (and probably no rage ones either) due to how amazingly they scale (see Feral 2/5 T4).

Beta had a pretty hilarious arcane damage dagger from vendor. They removed that after people realized it let rogues ignore all armor.

To stop people 'ignoring' stats, you can always do what crit does.

The first percent is much better than the 50th, so to neglect crit entirely would be stupid. But when you crit is at 80%, its relative value to your dps increase is far less, so other originally sub-optimal stats would start to be better than crit. Basically, one big crit vs AP debate, but for ~5 stats.

Armor pen and haste dont really follow the crit rule, though.

Yeah I remember seeing some funny duels with it. Although, full elemental itemization is silly (since it completely devalues armor penetration as you stated). I'd like to see something like 75% Weapon Damage + 25% Elemental Damage.

I should point out, having mused about this one frequently, that the comparison is asymmetrical. For armor and armor penetration, both do good for you without the other person having the counter, since everyone has some armor; if I stack armor, even if you don't stack armor penetration, it's good for me (though perhaps not an optimal strategy), and vice-versa. For spell resists and spell penetration, though, the same doesn't hold true. Unless someone is wearing gear for it, the average amount of resist is not enormous; it is possible that I will be wrong in this assertion (I don't play in Arenas), but I would be willing to believe that the proper counter for something like Prayer of Shadow Protection or other resistance buffs is just to dispel them rather than build up spell penetration.

There's the fundamental discrepancy; if I stack spell resist, yes, it forces the casters to stack spell penetration. But if I choose to eschew spell resist, then the spell penetration on their gear is nothing but wasted points. Granted, if you're just sticking "Equip: +5 All Resistances" on all of the arena sets or something, that will basically force the issue. But players won't seek out massive resist/penetration gear because, unlike crit/resilience or armor pen/armor, its worth is dependent entirely on what the other player is doing.

It would be fun to see the belt slot enhancements given to engineers as a sort of "utility'' upgrade; not totally wacky things like chickens or rockets, but somewhat offbeat things, like a small% spell reflection, or the chance to proc a small shield when hit.

Bringing back the random or flat resists on PvP gear would be interesting. I remember when I was grinding to GM on my hunter, I was wearing all the shadow resist pieces from T1 and T2 and filling the remaining slots with the Marshal gear. This made my worst enemies, UD SP's and Warlocks, a joke. Not that I would like to see that again, it would just give casters some more itemization options. Although I guess, if melee and healers started floating around +50 all resists, PvP would need a different spell resist ruleset, so players with 0 spell pen wouldn't be so disadvantaged.

The belt enchant could also be a potion/elixir storage. This seemed to work relatively well in Diablo. And we already have craft-specific bags. However, this would really devalue the Potion Injectors.

Also it was to make PvE healing less twitchy. I remember spamming cancel-heals on Chromagnus and Twin Emps, trying to find that nervous balance between keeping him topped off and running OOM. It seems to take the tank an extra couple seconds to drop in most cases and a single big heal is a smaller % of the tanks total health.

I can't find the link right now, but during the flurry of interviews around the WotLK announcement and promotion, Kalgan stated that they wanted to move away from having the "of the..." item extensions on blues/greens that were "best stats for a class" powerful, during the start of TBC. We can probably expect generically itemized gear with the random extension drops, with the actual designed pieces given the stronger useful stats, again.

It will be interesting to see what takes the spot of Haste and Armor Penetration, as the "let's toss this on all the gear" stats for the expansion.

Odd to see a druid suggesting this as we would gain absolutely zero benefit from such a weapon (claws...). On the other hand it would make armor penetration less desirable for rogues/warriors/etc - just as it is for ferals at the moment.

I think there was a rogue talent called Shadow strikes in the TBC beta which allowed rogues to do 10% of their weapon damage in shadow damage. It may have been a joke or made up by someone though but nevertheless I think it was pretty neat idea.

I think Blizzard could add some elemental weaponry into game via Blacksmithing profession. Call it imbue or something else but idea would be the same as with enchants but made by blacksmiths since they aren't that huge money makers later into expansion after most boes start to fade down compared to raid/pvp gear. Ideally these imbues would stack with enchants and arent that expensive but neither cheap to craft so minmaxers would chance these depending on fight(well maybe not, would add one more timesink preraid to gather mats for different fights again.).

Edit1: They could also work like mana oils etc. at the moment but I like the idea of permanent chance more myself.

I'm reasonably certain it was also part of the rebalancing to encourage healers to use higher ranks of heals. Downranked heals are still more efficient in general now than the higher ranked heals, but typically their throughput is now too low with the new health and incoming damage tanks have. Even after the initial downranking nerf I only switched to using Heal (3) instead of Heal (2) on my Priest in pre-TBC content, but that amount of downranking no longer works with the new health totals.

If anything, they'd introduce a mechanic to make lower rank spells benefit less from haste, similar to how they currently benefit less from +healing.

Edit: Quoted wrong post

Hm, I don't think so. +320 spell haste makes all your heals 20% faster, 20% more powerful, low and high rank heals alike.
Lower level spells get less absolute HPS from HPS than higher level spells because they're weaker to begin with.


Say, +2300 healing used to add 2k healing to about all spells from "Heal 2" to "GHeal 7".
Making H2 cost 205 mana for 460+2000 healing, and GH7 cost 805 mana for 2590+2000 healing.

So, +2300 doesn't even double the effect of GH7, but makes H2 more than 5 times as strong.
Both spells gained the same absolute HPS from +healing, but low level spells got a vastly higher relative HPS, which was rebalanced in 2.0.


For your example, if you take GH6 (2424+2000 healing, 750 mana, 5.656 hpm) and GH7 (2590+2000 healing, 825 mana, 5.563 HPM), level 63/68 spells at +2300 healing.

It takes ~7.5% haste to make hasted GH6 the same HPS as unhasted GH7.

That's ~120 spell haste needed, which has the same cost as +264 healing, which would boost GH6 by 6.2% and GH7 by 5.7% HPS and mana efficiency.


Spell haste is pretty powerful for pure throughput and high levels, but +healing provides better HPS and HPM if you start downranking.
Haste has the benefit of "making that heal land before the death" and it's one more stat, so items with haste and healing can be better than those with pure healing due to how item budget works.

I can't really see it becoming more powerful than other tools to warrant a change.

Am I the only one that finds items like DST, (and Hand of Justice in Vanilla) to add more flavor to the game? While I like raiding as much as the next guy, it's nice for items like these in lower instances to exist simply because not everyone knows how good they are. I can't count the number of people that I've met that would actually replace the DST with something from a higher instance because not everyone is a min/maxer and some don't realize it's value.

I for one would welcome more of these kinds of items, because it's nice to find upgrades in unusual parts of the game.

Whats unusual about T4 content? What you're saying is that because some people don't know anything about items and or min/maxing that justifies best in slot items to come from several tiers lower in progression when the higher tiers of progression items of the same slot are bad.

I just don't see the flavor, at all. TLC was flavor because it had amazing synergy with AM in 2.2->2.3 that took alot of testing/theorycraft from players to figure out. DST is stupid and overpowered.

Yes I do think that because some people don't know anything about items and or min/maxing that justifies best in slot items to come from low tier places. Is it gives people in T6 content a reason to still go to Gruul. After nothing but BT/Hyjal all week I would think a nice easy Gruul run would be a relief, and the prospect of an upgrade is an added bonus. I don't remember much whining about Thunderfury being the best dps/tanking weapon in the game in Vanilla. True DST isn't a legendary item, but it also isn't a weapon.

Amazing items in lower level content could also be one of Blizzard's ways of throwing a bone to the casuals: "Hey you can't get best in slot for every item but you can get an awesome trinket!". Why does it matter where you get your upgrades, as long as they are upgrades? DST has a relatively low drop chance as well, so not everyone casual running around is going to have one.

Well i certainly hope DST isn't still the best melee trinket in WoTLK, as I think that would be a bit much. I think Hand of Justice is the perfect example of a DST-like item in Vanilla. Caster trinket itemization is something that desperately needs fixing.

Yes it is, and it's stupid. The fact they had to nerf both TLC and DST is more evidence of them just not realizing how good the items are, not that they thought oh these casuals guys can get amazingly good stuff. I don't mind gruul, I do it twice a week for DST to mains and once on my alt for some random epics. Coming back to lower tier content shouldn't be because of incredibly good items, should be for actual flavor or stashable items (read: Magtheridon/Onyxia bags, head turn ins, gems) not low chance drop rate on overpowered items != flavor.

To each their own, items like these have always existed and I'm beginning to think it's not because Blizzard is too dense to realize that they are good. I sure wouldn't run Gruul weekly just for a bag, I didn't do it with Onyxia, but I would do it for a nice trinket. I still fail to see why people raise such a fuss over it? Is exclusivity that important? I could see if it dropped every run, but as mentioned before it doesn't. Maybe Blizzard should just make it legendary, I doubt people would complain then.

I would do this just slightly different.

Bosses drop loot specific to their dungeon/faction. Bosses drop tokens too. Final bosses would have their drops plus one token which can be redeemed for any set item which the dungeon/faction is rated for. This way if items come from a similar faction but different dungeon you can get it this way. By set item I would include weapons, trinkets, and armor - it would be up to Blizzard to group them.

The (all so unoriginal) twist is, the first item is 1 token, each additional item however costs more tokens. Probably 1,3,5,5... With the first one costing one your guaranteed an item of your liking on the run provided your their for the finish. Beyond that you got to work more for it. The fixed final price rewards those members who are part of the farm team working others up.

The problem with token based systems is that the item selection has to expand over time otherwise people end up with yet another faction item sitting in the bank.

Actually, this seems to be a common misconception. The formula does NOT penalize high stats by making them more expensive relative to ilvl. It penalizes stacking your stat distribution on one stat.
The misconception arises because the formula exponentially increases each stat to the 3/2 power, so within a given item, you can get more points by spreading stats. However, after you add up the stat values (after exponents), you raise everything to the 2/3 power, thus counteracting the earlier increase.
Like for the "of the monkey", at vanilla level 62 - (18^(3/2) + 18^(3/2)) ^ (2/3) ~= 28.
At TBC level 81, (using agility twice) - (24^1.5 + 24^1.5) ^ (2/3) ~= 38
38/28 ~=1.35, 81/62 ~= 1.30 (within rounding error and the fact that they don't assign partial stats to items, so ilvl is only approximately the value)

So there's no reason that they can't keep just increasing ilvl. Doubling ilvl doubles all stats, assuming you do no internal stat reallocation.

(This is based on the latest formula I found at wowwiki, which looks like I remember it from 1.5 years ago, so it should be the same as before TBC)

If you're looking at Blacksmithing, it could work as a different kind of weapon stone, adding the suggested benefits as a temporary affect that stacks with enchants while not seeming overpowered.