Ever since I saw the stats for the Doomcaller set, I've been wondering why there was spell resistance reduction instead of the typical spell crit or spell to hit. Now, my guild just now started their first Naxxramas attempts and we've yet to get passed the Twin Emperors so I haven't been able to get any Doomcaller's yet.

My question is, were the spell resistance reductions added to the 2.5 sets with Naxxramas in mind? More specifically, have any of you noticed an advantage to accumulating a certain amount of -resistance?

I can see why priests, shaman, paladins, and druids, to a certain extent, would wanttheir tier 2.5 set for leveling up during the expansion, but I don't see Doomcaller or Enigma as being particularly desireable for leveling or PvP except for the slightly better stats. Especially since the Doomcaller 5-piece bonus is a useful raiding bonus (15% mana reduction for Shadow Bolt) and Naxxramas brings a new tier of armor which would be much better to level in. This led me to believe that Naxxramas would have fights against bosses with 75+ resist that would allow the pieces of tier 2.5 with -resistance to get some use.

This was my initial theory as well. But then they put some penetration on the tier 3 sets, which are min/max'd for pure raiding. Explain that one.

We're missing something about penetration or Sapphiron has frost resist?

If Sapphiron has frost resists, then the meagre - to resists you get from your class sets wont help - you'll either have to change to fire, wear 5 piece Enigma for the stacking bonus, or hoist a full set of - to resists gear. I'm guessing most mages would go fire... :)

And yes, all the parsing currently available shows that there is nothing that can affect that base 5% level difference on partial resists. Seems strange to have *two* different level based resist rates on mobs, and makes me suspect that actually, the designers either aren't aware of the issue or they think - to resists is working on the live servers when it clearly isn't.

I haven't poured over the stats for other classes, but as silly as it sounds, given these sets "should" be min/maxed, my bet goes with:

1. Purposefully wasting stats for some classes, or
2. Itemizers haven't really talked to designers since the AQ items were designed.

I, generally, hate -resists, but its situational, just like anything. I always thought the reason they stepped away from +resist gear was that it wasted stats and was situational. In a year and a half, we've taken the huge leap, now for only casters, from +resists to -resist which both have the same attributes as far as a player is concerned.

WTB more thoughtfulness with caster stats.

Honestly, I think they're running into a wall sorta here. You can only stack so much of one stat before that stat detracts so far from the value of that item (we all know how ilevel works). Casters basically want one stat: +dmg. So, they had to find something. This is an alternative stat that doesn't increase agro (like +crit), but I just don't see the benefit unless there really are some resistance heavy fights in Naxx or in the expansion. Sapphiron could easily be one, but why put that on the set pieces? Thats one fight... I thought we learned that stats useful for one fight (ragnaros or vael) otherwise waste stats on "general purpose" sets?

Edit: Ok, reviewed a few of the sets. Its much less prevalent than it was with the AQ sets. In such small numbers, these -resists aren't really useful unless coupled with other -resist gear (at least in my mind), but they do have a more "general purpose" feel to them in smaller numbers.

I think it's pretty clear that there's a bit of a disconnect between the class designers and the itemization team. (See thick qirajihide belt. I wish I was the druid the itemization team seems to think I am) However, we should remember the itemization for aq40 and most of naxx happened before the mage review, so I'd expect their sets to be a bit of a bizzaro fit post review.

All that aside, I do have the feeling that the instance developers look at a raid and say "give me 3 t2 warriors, 2 t2.5 warriors, 3 t2 priests, 2 t2.5 priests, etc" as their starting place, and design encounters accordingly. That explains the way raz has MC (which your 2.5 priests are better set for) and patchwork has healer hell (for your t2 priests). I don't think they design the itemization with an encounter specificly in mind (outside of the density of certain stats), but I do feel that the dungeons take the items that already exist as a baseline to get the job done. People killed huhuran in maraudon loot. It wouldn't shock me if the developers have a better version of thottbot/ctprofiles/alla up and can just tell it to "Max NR pls" then look at stamina and go from there.

To restate it, I don't think it's "gear is designed for the instance" but I do think the instance is designed with the last 2 tiers of gear "in mind" if you will. So I wouldn't be suprised at all to find stuff where the -resist matters. Curse immune mob (ala teremus) go?

I can easily design an encounter that maximizes that gear, I don't think blizzard is blunt with it, (Far from it, they've done a very nice job of subtly rewarding you for taking your medicine--see weapon skill vs 63/62s or +hit on raz as non-obvious bonuses) but I wouldn't be shocked to see a good use for it. Off the top of my head, I seem to recall a few aoe encounters in the abom wing where the enigma set bonus might apply...Similiarly, aoe is a pretty good example of a situation where you won't have COE or COS up on the mob. Maybe that's the intent for the -resist? It's hard to improve aoe, maybe this is blizz's sly effort in that direction.

I should probably grab lunch now =P

Mob resistance is static, but your chance to miss against them increases with level(and not in a linear fashion).

Btw, if CoE/CoS/CoR isn't the first spell your locks are putting on absolutely anything that's receiving DPS, you should slap them silly and give their loot to balance druids >=P

Papa,

Those partial resists are due to the level difference. It's been gone over a few times here, but basically - no matter what debuffs o what gear you have, you will always have that 5% partial resist rate on level 63 mobs. Nothing you can do about it. And if you didn;t have your - to resists gear on, and CoE wasn;t on the mob - you would still only have that 5% resist rate, because 99% of mobs in the game have 0 resists.

It's depressing how utterly useless the stats is outside of AE'ing the gauntlet, where the whelps have random high resists, and killing Molten Giants. You shoudln't be looting tier 3 gear so that you can kill tier 1 trash mobs 0.1 seconds faster.

After reading through the relevant threads it is not entirely clear if this 5% loss of damage due to unavoidable level based partial resists also corresponds to some kind of loss with binary spells. The poster of the thread on the official EU wow forums speculated such but no testing was done. Just from clearing trash mobs in general I do not feel that I am getting anywhere near a 5% resist rate with frostbolt. Can anyone confirm if this has any impact on binary spells?

Also an interesting aside, my winter's chill debuff seems to get resisted much more often than my frostbolts.

couldn't you beast lore maexxna to see what kind of resistances a naxx boss has?