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

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.

Why would you think +skill talents will work any differently than other talents? +Crit % talents are still +%, +hit likewise, talents don't seem to be converted over to the rating system.

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?)

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?

No you're not missing something. He chose a bad analogy. Which does not apply.

Because +crit, +hit, +dodge ... are kinda absolute in a sense, that they are inherently capped. They all have to fit in one (capped) hit-table - dictated by a chosen combat mechanic.
To illustrate this, one has only to look at how "+hit" works. The miss chance when dualwielding against higher level mobs (+3) barely scratches 25%. So having +25hit IS hitting the cap. (Almost) No point in aquiting new gear with +hit on purpose if you are past that.

The same could not be said of AP, +HEAL, +DMG, +Mana/Health REGEN ... as these are relative to your or your enemys stats. There is no max cap which you can hit. These stats already are degrading as content advances because the referance point (e.g. players health, your mana bar, ...) is changing on the way.

So Blizzard had no choice othen than to bring the absolute stats back in line to relative stats, by making them degrade with player level. So in effect at least make them somewhat relative.

I know, nothing new to that. Just wanted to put it in (hopefully) another perspective.

regards

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.