Seeten

We had a Night Elf Rogue in our guild abandon his tier 2.5 4 piece DD rogue and buy a Human Rogue in slightly worse gear (2/5 DD) for the +5 skill.

Its borderline ridiculous.

If I were Blizzard, my fix would be to add equivalent +weaponskill as tanks have +defense.

I'd deal with caster issues dps wise seperately.

 

Mist

Or he could have changed to daggers? Nothing makes me angrier than people exaggerating problems.

 

snape

I don't think there's a DPS Caster issue really. o.O

We don't have an equivalent of weapon skill. Our spells don't "glance". If you look at the highest level of gear in both cases (as Cop, Mist, and I mentioned earlier), melee will always have 5% to dodge vs. them, and casters will always have partial resists vs. +3 mobs that amount to roughly a 5% decrease in damage.

I don't think that needs to be addressed, it's just there. As long as one mechanic is in the game, the other is fine, except Hunters should suffer a similar penalty too (as they are not casters nor meleers with glancing blows).

Note - this is about Weapon Skill. Don't go comparing +spell hit gear to +melee hit gear, because in both cases, at the highest level of gear, you will miss (or resist) 1% of the time.

 

Sticks

There wouldn't be nearly the problem with +skill if it were itemised like +spell hit - putting +1 on multiple pieces of gear for a moderate ilevel cost. Not to mention reducing +skill from racials down to 1 or 2. However, getting rid of the benefits of +skill entirely breaks dps warriors and rogues. The cost of +skill (and overall itemisation of it - something that can be done easily in bc since raid gear can be tuned purely to pve encounters) needs to be fixed rather than it being ditched entirely.

 

◊ Quigon

I think most people are saying its overpowered - when its ilevel budgeted drastically less than equivelance in AP and crit, then its not balanced properly by definition. You can complain all you want about real world situations, but making crit cheaper on ilevel or AP, or countless other adjustments can compensate for tuning skill back to where it should be for itemization budgets. This is why the itemization is so poor - and why blues are so good relative to epics later. So itemization is directly related to the bugginess of the stat, and thats what people mean by bugged/overpowered I think. The other argument is its not bugged and we need to see more +skill on purples, but I think its obvious why we rarely see that at this point.

 

• Maestroquark

+Weapon skill was maybe too cheap for its effects, sure. But look at the end result -> Rogue were still in heavy competition for top spot. Take away the glancing problem, factor in what is so far the outlook in all classes, and we won't even be in competition anymore.

Which brings you back to the age old question: why a Rogue? It gets harder to answer that every time a change like that is announced or discovered. I can see no way for us to remain viable if this change is not compensated in some way. I also see no evidence of that coming.

What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?

 

◊ Kalman

Like I said, +spellhit gear is the counterpart to +skill. In both cases, a purely level-based 12% differential is observed. The 5% base vs equal level mobs is actually probably the counterpart to dodge damage reduction.

And with 25% +hit, you will *not* miss 1% of the time on autoattacks. Don't spread false information; this has been tested.

 

Mist

They fixed the problem of it being too cheap, if you look at the ratings conversions any +skill item got nerfed by 1/4th at level 60, I believe.

 

◊ Quigon

Then all they need to do now is put more skill in the game on higher ilevel budgetted items. And then things are "fixed".

 

LadyVex

I think that if the skill is so important you're willing to wear blues over other things it should be addressed. And it doesn't look like it will be by itemization.

It's hard, I feel, to say something is overpowered in pve content, because anything overpowered on the pc end helps benefit your raid.

And no, hunters shouldn't suffer similar penalties; our damage is already sub-par (at least currently). A change to shots either parrying/dodging etc would ultimately result in us getting some kind of a boost in other areas in order to make up for the fact we'd itemize differently, and no one wants that.

Really wish people would play other classes before they try to impose class changing mechanics to them. -.-

 

Glaurong

Weapon skill isn't now and has never been overpowered. Melee dps classes need the mechanic to mitigate glancing blows or they fall way behind ranged dps classes.

It has, however, been too cheap in the item budget by an order of magnitude since glancing blows were introduced.

For the same costs as 10 of any stat (like STR) you can completely remove the negative effects of glancing blows. That is just rediculous. If 10 Str could improve your dps by 12% that would be equally broken.

Maybe this change is leading up to one where you have to have much more weapon skill for glancing blows to do 100% damage. Hopefully better weapon skill itemization would follow.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

snape

If you're at the hit cap, how much do you miss?

 

Antiarc

You don't, IIRC.

 

snape

Nope. All I said is that since meleers have 5% of their attacks dodged by default (no chance to remove them), and if DPS Casters have 5% of their damage reduced via partial resists (no chance to remove them vs. +3 targets), then Hunters should have a similar mechanic. In other words, you <couldn't> be itemized out of this, it would just be static, just like we face.

I realize Hunter damage is less than other classes, I think this is what needs to be addressed primarily - but balance says that you should face some sort of non-removable damage penalty just like everyone else.

 

LadyVex

It's also possible Emeraude is correct, that glancing blows in general will be changed considering the level of mobs relative to us will be slightly larger. (I believe it was said, 74 and 75 level bosses?)

At this point you'd either just want to change the whole mechanic altogether or itemize it on a large part of your gear, which means reducing other stats.

Conversely they could just make weapon skill less useful and then make glancing blows be reduced via AP as an additional "strikethrough" score or some such.

./shrug I reserve any real thoughts, bad or good until I see all the changes. Kinda seems pointless speculating when we're not even sure it's a real change. :P

 

Mist

You don't miss, but you still have to worry about dodges, and blocks and parries if you can't get behind the mob.

What they probably should do is get rid of glancing blows entirely, or nerf them down to a total 5% damage loss, and then have +skill much more siginificantly increase hit, crit, and reduce chance to be dodged/parried/blocked.

 

Antiarc

They could just remove the concept of glancing blows and give mobs -hit based on the level differential (well, more than the 0.2% per level it's at right now).

That'd kinda mess up tanks unless they itemized tank gear with a lot of +hit or +skill, though.

 

snape

I'm quoting this b/c it's pertinent. So you DO miss 1% of the time if you're at the hit cap, and I wasn't spreading false information. You may get DODGED 5% of the time, but that's a non-removable penalty (just like DPS Caster's non-removable partial resist penalty).

 

LadyVex

It's not really logical thinking to say because one class has it another should. Hunters have always been told we've been balanced around our pets, and no where more than Naxx has that absolutely been proven. In this way, we are dependant upon glancing blows/dodges/parries etc just like melee classes.

 

Fellwraith

It's not an additional stat to add to damage. It's analogous to caster's +1 to hit. We just happen to have 1 +sword item and 4-5 +dagger items. Probably the only reason he's wearing the mugger's belt is because it's the only item with +daggers that doesn't screw up his set bonuses.

1)If you look at a single target, sustained dps fight against a level 63 raid boss can you honestly tell me melee dps is overpowered today? Look at the sustained dps thread here. The "extra lever" wasn't causing class balance to get out of wack.

2) Did Blizzard add the +skill talent to rogues last talent review because they didn't know what it would do? Given how the rogue community explained why a talent like this was so desirable, I would expect they knew full well what the consequences would be.

3) What's the point of the new warrior +skill talent if this change is real?

Either this is unintended, they've royally screwed up class balance, or there's a mechanic they still need to implement to balance it out.

 

Antiarc

Snape, where are you getting this "You miss 1% of the time with autoattacks if you're at the hit cap"?

It's been tested. You don't.

 

snape

I don't play a melee class. I <thought> this was the case, and ... I think you said this yourself earlier in response to my query? And by "you miss 1% of the time" I mean specifically how many times, on average do you see "Miss" over the mob's head?

And here's your quote:

Unless by "you don't", you mean "you never miss".

And if this is the case, i.e. you miss 0% of the time at the hit cap, then I don't know why the person who responded to me first got all up in arms, because if you miss 0% instead of 1% it lends MORE credence to my original point.

 

Glaurong

Why do all classes have to have analygous dps mechanisms? It's easier to tune but it sure is boring.

Also be carefull what you wish for, if your guilds hunters start missing 5% of their tranq shots (moreso now that you will probably only have 2 per raid) bad things will happen!

EDIT - To clarify, at least as a hunter if you are at the hit cap it is impossible for you to miss. That is why they added in the "failed" mechanic for tranq shot.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

snape

The non-removable damage penalty proposed could be a glancing mechanic, not a miss mechanic.

 

Antiarc

That's exactly what I meant. You asked "How much do you miss?" and I replied "You don't (miss)", implying a 0% miss rate.