Of course I can't find the post, anymore, but blue clearly confirmed that the rate at which players' health will progress will exceed the rate at which their damage does. I'd asusme this is a pretty clear indicator of that. I get more wet over the expansion with each new bit of information.

:quagmire:

Looking at the quest rewards from there, the item budgets are absolutely perfectly spent and very symetrically aligned.

Sure Step Boots (Leather): 32 AP, 16 Agility, 24 Stamina
Jade Warrior Pauldrons: 16 Str, 16 Agility, 24 Stamina

Not only are the ilevels really high, but they couldn't have spent them better for those pieces, particular for rogues by giving AP instead of strength.

Just to elaborate slightly on agi/ap for rogues...

Generally speaking, the itemization formula is class independent. Stats cost the same on items regardless of class. While this may not normally be a problem (as you won't find, for example, int on rogue class gear), there is an issue as strength, while a strong stat for warriors (or even melee shaman) is a weak stat for rogues. Effectively, you end up with rogue items paying the same price for strength as warrior items do, but getting half the benefit from it. So, instead, rogues want raw AP on gear, as AP is cheaper in the itemization formula, and even a better deal than agility. Of course, due to the exponential nature of the formula, you don't want to be overloaded on a single stat, and agility is the second best expenditure of points for a rogue, so ideally you want gear heavy in AP/agi. As said above, blues that are AP/agi based (e.g., Cape of the Black Baron, Bracers of the Eclipse) are hard to replace with epics that tend to be agi/str based, as agi/str is considerably less effecient for increasing rogue damage.

I am, though, somewhat surprised we didn't see a deep combat talent with +15/30/45% of strength added to AP for rogues... but then again, the talent trees are still in flux, and the current 41 point combat talent is rather lacking.

Crit strike rating is Blizzard's way of not having every melee class wind up w/ 50% crit at the expansion.

It's a new form of rating crits, hitpercentage, defense percentage etc. It'll allow for more and better scaling so we don't end up with 50% crit and 25% hit as itemlevel budgets go up.

This system effectively scales your rating vs the opponents rating and level. It's a bit basic and I don't have the formulas yet, but I believe 16? critrating was equivalent of 1 crit.

There's another thread currently going about the new rating system: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=8300

It will be interesting to see how they re-tool current end game items with % crit on them.

Will they *all* be reduced equally to similar values? Or, for example, will a Ritsynn's Ring of Chaos have more Crit rating than an Azuresong Mageblade?

Blackhands has gone to about 26 crit rating IIRC, so that looks like its about 13 rating for 1% crit at 60 (assuming they arent changing the power of that trinket)

Edit: Must L2spell

I'd guess that existing items will be converted over based in some way on the required level. So EOTB will be given a rating that would give a L58 player 2% spellcrit. This rating will be something less than 2% equivalent for a L60 player and much less for a L70 player.

Have anybody played with ilvl spreadsheets and these items ? From green items with lvl requirements it seems that stamina is now twice as cheaper as any stat. With modifed stamina value it seems that blue quest rewards is ilvl 70.

Edit - Now more interesting thing. A value of 185 fits very well for spell crit rating. Current value of spell crit is 2600. 2600/14~185.7

I'd imagine each item will have its respective ratings tailored individually. I can't really think of a reason for them to give any of the currently existing items rating values that would alter its effectiveness at level 60.

edit: I had not considered the fact that almost every current rare item is under level 60, as far as use requirements go. I wonder if these items will be changed to reflect effectiveness at level 60, making them more powerful in the 50's when they're obtained.

If stamina becomes cheaper on item budgets it's a pretty nice buff for everyone but especially for the warlocks who can lifetap. I will be dissapointed if int and/or spirit are not rebudgeted in the expansion.

lol, sorry that caption made me laugh.

Oh goody, the trend of +dam/healing with mana/5 appears to be continuing. /sigh at so much of my iValues going to a stat I really don't much care about.

The whole shift to critical rating versus flat percentage was expected but I'm still a little scared of the mechanic, given that the whole point of it is to reduce crit-ratess in general or at least to prevent them from inflating too much. Of course though, the most interesting bit is the group rested experience bonus business and I can only assume it is part of the mechanic designed to encourage grouping for exp from 60-70. I still figure the AE group thing will work out best overall but it's nice to see we'll at least have an excuse to hit up the mid-way content.

You gain a "group bonus" percentage of experience earned already. It's nothing new at all.

That has been in the game for a very long time already...

The thing that makes that screenshot interesting is apparently they got 1200xp for killing that boss..

process that for a second.

TWELVE HUNDRED XP!

Thats crazy.

Confirmed that players health will progress will exceed the rate at which their damage does? You mean they will increase relatively equally, right? I can't see how any unbalanced scaling would be a good idea to throw at us again.

While this mechanic has been in the game since release (I think it was in Beta too), I guess some people haven't leveled a character in groups in the recent past.

I can understand forgetting that small bonus you get, especially for people that only have one main character.

The main issue with AP/Agility items (and by extension +dmg and +school items, or +str and +AP) is that they make maximum usage of the ilvl formula. From the point of view of the player, the only upgrade is either a minor item upgrade along the same line, or a massive upgrade that is ineffeciently statted.

I think most of the items in MC (plus Kazzak) that were statted that way took Tier 2.5 or higher to be a clear upgrade, and were close to Tier 2 overall.

Do we have any idea how much XP it will take to get from 60 to 70? 1200 might be small potatoes compared to quest reward xp and small mob grinding.

That might be normal, I know a 59 gets around 300 xp for killing a level 60 mob, but I don't recall the normal boss xp amount, but I would guess that is about right.