It's probably going to decay with an inverse of level. See Mo's post.

The stuff Tseric said about spell crit rate had nothing to do with your target. Does it work differently for physical and spells? After sacrificing some rabbits and crag boars, it seems like my crit rate on very low mobs isn't particularly high.

My earlier assessment was silly though - each class has their own amount of expected int/agi/whatever, so making a ratio for each class would be somewhat silly.

It will be interesting to see how they handle +weapon skill items. Does a talent like weapon expertise become less valuable as you level up, or does an item like death's sting become a great offhand even at level 70? Taken a step further, are the edgemaster's handguards going to see a resurgence at level 70 raiding (assuming similar crit/glance mechanics)?

That is an interesting question. "weapon skill rating"?

According to a trusted source, his Death's Sting was changed to have weapon skill rating in the Alpha.

That has the interisting effect of making the +weapon skill talents more powerful at lower levels than higher levels. From a paladin perspective could result in strange optimal levelling talent specs. Heres a potential example:

Level 1-55
10 points holy then going up ret tree.
Level 56-60
10 points holy then prot for +10 weapon skill.

That ignores the other dps losses from ret, but if one could do it without 70% healing interrupt and grab SoC instead or do it 10 levels earlier than that means potentially the first level one could increase weapon skill is level 46. From level 46 until level 70 is 24 levels for scaling to come into effect.

+1 weapon skill could be worth only .175 weapon skill at level 70 if it functioned like that so i would expect even if items have weapon skill rating talents will be flat weapon skill or will scale as level increases.

Otherwise tuning the paladin talent for level 70 would result in 571% relative effectiveness at level 46.

And i wouldnt be surprised if other trees have +weapon skill available much earlier than level 46.

I was interisted more in how it would work if they did rather than the likelihood of talents being converted into the rating system.

When they are not converted there are still interisting questions do do with +skill non rating mods becoming much more powerful depending on how many items there are going around with +rating. Thats the racial mods and the talent mods.

An interesting question just occurred to me.

I know it's dangerous to speculate, but does anybody know if the target-level-dependent rules for things like chance-to-hit, chance-to-crit, and the like have been changed? I could imagine that they might also tweak those rules in order to keep the effects of rating-decay from being quite as significant. (i.e. perhaps because you've levelled up, you're ~7% weaker in all of your bonuses, but that's offset by the base increase you get for being higher level?)

I hope you dont mind me bringing this up here, but with this talk about these changing rating mechanics stopping crit/hit etc spiraling out of control, I was wondering if there had been any changes noticed with regards healing.

On my paladin, under the assumption that i manage to attain my ideal gear set from naxx before the expansion comes, when fully buffed with a couple pots and warmth of forgiveness 'use' etc, then it will be possible to hit +1000-1200 healing and close to 200m/5s. Whilst attaining the perfect gear in time pre expansion may not be possible, all healers will have very high +healing and mana regen non the less.

Whilst the current rating changes will degrade as they are levelling up, it currently appears to me that a healers gear will be far more resiliant to the levelling process.

Then when it comes to end game raiding in the expansion, dps/tanks etc will be spending the extra ilevel points they get to reach the same crit/hit percentages they had at their peak at level 60, whilst the healers ilevel points will further increase their +healing and mana regen.

Thus has anyone noted any changes to counter the spiralling healing stats the way spiraling dps stats is being countered.

Spell crit wont scale up as fast with rating as it would without which has a big impact on illumination and inspiration.

Apart from that there is the socketable items and a 50% bonus to stamina on post expansion items. But perhaps every item in the game will get 50% more stamina, i dont know.

Damage for l70 abilities seemed to get a larger boost than healing l70 abilities but i could be wrong. Have to wait and see how pvp gear plays out since it doesnt matter in pve how much people heal for, the encounters are just tuned around it.

Or healing buffs are used as effective boss nerfs down the track ala priests paladins druids shamans all getting buffs in talent changes. I felt priests got the most in slow heals becoming effective but that also came about the same time as the mana conserve nerf. Druids got amazing utility with swiftmend. Paladins got some more crit which makes a big differance for us. Shamans got some better regen a few efficiency increases like the 18% more on healing waves on this target buff and chain heal got useful but im not really sure how much of a buff it was.

Its easy enough to make a lot of gear obsolete by having some sort of 6k aoe damage every 30 seconds type ability in a fight you just cant wear your old gear on anyway.


Think of spiralling +healing as you put it being more akin to +ap stacking on a fury warrior. But they both end up being class cannon types in pvp to a large extent.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Crit and hit spiral out of control because they're worth as much at 60 or 70. But your 1000 +healing and 200 mp5 aren't worth as much at level 70 because people have more hp, are taking more damage, and you're casting higher rank spells which use more mana (which will certainly be true if +dmg / healing have diminishing returns on low level spells almost immediately as is rumoured. Suggesting that +healing and mp5 are scaling out of control is like suggesting that strength is.

Am I missing something?

Two things on +healing...

1- There's a rumor that the minimum spell on levels that get a full boost from +dmg and healing gear is being increased. Possibly to something like level 40 or level 50. This will eliminate the current player's infinite healing.

2- A player's hit points is going to increase dramatically. Most characters will gain something like 50% or more of their current hit points as they get to 70. Healing for 4K or whatever becomes possible now.

Mendoze, i think you mis-understand my post a little. Crit and hit spiral out of control because they would be the same at 60 s they are 70. With the new mechanics, rogues etc will have to spend more ilevel points to get their crit/hit at 70 to what it was at 60. Healers on the other hand will be able to divert these extra ilevel points into additional +healing / mana regen on top of what they had at 60. Of course increases in stamina and bosses hitting harder will mean higher rank spells needed and thus more mana consumption, however with the current game mechanics, with spiraling +healing and mana regen, healers would be able to de-rank their spells a couple of levels and spam heal for large amounts with little mana costs.

So I think a comparison to spiraling strength is slightly off, however if it is true about lower level spells suffering more from the amount they are effected by +healing then this should successfully counter the spiraling +healing and mana regen problem.

If there's a weapon skill rating I wonder if they're gonna change Human/Orc racials.

They're exceptionally nice now and would automatically become even more powerful in BC heh.

With this nerf to the crit/hit/AP functions, wouldn't it make sense for people to go more for Proc weapons?

This isn't to say that a Kalimdor's Revenge is going to out-class a MoM, but the debatable weapons, like a TF with some of the weapons coming out in Naxx - this would dip the favor toward the Thunderfury? .50 Crit .50 hit and some-odd AP on an Ibilis and Castigator looks a lot less impressive than an armor-ignoring 300 Nature damage proc.

The whole point is that with the gear, AP and abilities available at level 70 the 300 damage proc will look a lot less impressive.

that brings up a good point khalim.

currently item's are currently balanced (point wise, and state wise) where 1str = 2ap.

obviously as you level to 70, strength will decrease in it's dps value (but not ITEM value).

what will happen to item point's then? will strength become cheaper on items? (doubt it)

from the screenies it's clear there isn't an AP rating, so does this mean that at level 70, str will be horrible as an AP mod (i.e it will cost double the price of AP on items, but won't give double the AP) on warriors / paladins / shamans and feral druids (compared to flat out AP).

interesting.

Er. Why will Strength decrease in its DPS value, exactly? Strength still gives 2 AP per point of strength (for most classes, obviously rogues are still getting screwed.)

At level 60 1 str gives 2 ap (or 1 for 1 for rogues) but was this the case when you were level 30?

As I understand it the higher the level the more str,agi, stam etc that you need to get the same benefit? So by the time we are level 70, my helm which gives me 30str and thus 60 ap at level 60 will now give me less AP?

Thus my logic is that if your helm gave you 60AP instead of 30str it has better longevity as you level because straight AP doesnt seem to be getting rated. Does this make sense of am I missing something obvious?

Sounds logical, but is there really a "rating" for strength => AP?
I don't think so. Imagine one levels from 59 to 60. With the same items and therefore same strength he would suddenly drop in AP, which I don't believe does happen (well, at least at the moment).
Though I would like to hear someone with real knowledge.

Last I checked, AP was excluded from this calculation. It's just a straight 1:1 (or 2:1 for the luckier classes) regardless of level.


ETA: I should correct myself in saying that your level does appear to affect your base AP, as one would expect--of course my level 60 is naturally beefier than a level 2!--but not the str/agi:AP ratio.

I've checked this before, Attack Power is always a constant 14 attack power = 1 DPS. And Strength/Agility always give their same contributions to Attack Power regardless of your level.