• Arawethion

Very little. The most significant impact of Ratings was to nerf level 60 crit/hit/defense/etc. gear for the long-term. Something that needed doing, do be sure, but when I first heard about Ratings, I thought they would be a lot more than that.

As we saw in WoW 1.0, Blizzard did an outstanding job of tuning the scaling from 1 to 59. Things like level-based Rage generation, level-based Agi/Crit ratios, and the increasing skill vs. defense counterpoint allowed for smooth balance all the way up to 60. At 60, however, the sudden disappearance of the level curve as a balancing guideline caused a lot of the issues we've discussed to much. For example, all three of the balances mentioned above broke down.

The same thing seems to be happening again in 2.0. Carefully crafted systems govern the progression from 60 to 70. But then what? Crit chances will start increasing without bound again. Ratings will stop scaling downwards. Tanks will be uncrittable after N tiers of progression, and thereafter.


Complaint #1: Ratings will make the nature of progression at 70 precisely identical to what it was at 60, but with bigger numbers involved.


Complaint #2: Even the 60-70 scheme is kind of weird. All other things being equal (including the target), why does my crit chance go down as my level goes up? This makes no sense.

------------------

I won't develop this fully, but here's example of something that could have been better.

--Level never plays directly into any combat computation.
--Everyone (players and mobs) has a crit rating and an anti-crit rating. The crit chance of a given attack is based directly on ratings of the attacker and defender, and on nothing else.

When I get a new piece of gear, my crit chance against all targets increases. When I progress to a new raid zone, my crit chance against those mobs is lower than it is against the mobs in the previous zone. When we progress to a new zone, tanks start getting critted more often.

They're so close. Crit Rating and Resilience Rating exist. But they're wasted, because they just normalized based on level (a constant) into exactly what we have now. Heck, even the weapon/defense skill system was almost good enough, except that they decided they had to be tied to 5*level.


Basically, they didn't realize that the fundamental problem the first time around was that the system was so dependent on level, which makes the leveling curve easy to design, but is just not conducive to good level-cap behavior. Separate the notion of level away and make everything based on some set of stats (which can be obtained by levels or by gear), and good balance can persist through an arbitrary amount of progression.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Nurru

Ratings allow them to fix scaling from 60 to 70 on gear (hello Blackhand's Breath) while also giving the ability to diversify itemization by allowing modifiers such as "+1/2 crit" and "+1/3 hit" on new items. Taking both factors into account it's a good change. Without the former I'd see no reason to ever replace my Mish'undare or Neltharion's Tear, which hurts itemization as people already have powerful items in those slots that are hard to replace without mudflation.

In the respect of scaling efficiency, that aspect of scaling just feels like a bandaid to make 70 gear appealing. It isn't something I'd concern myself with at 70, even if it does make some of my prior gear less effective. I'm more concerned with how much resilience is given to mobs personally, aside from that it feels like things should balance out at 70 and be back to the old progression. I don't deem that sort of progression a bad thing.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• Arawethion

Those are both good changes. I just don't think Ratings meet their potential to make the game's combat design better.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Nurru

Admittedly, I entirely missed the resilience concerns somehow. Edit inc.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• Maestroquark

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. From 1-59, progression is driven mostly by levels. At 60, it's driven completely by items. Ratings mean TBC will have the same, 60-69 will progess by levels, and 70 by gear. The end game remains the same, the middle game remains the same, and meanwhile we won't have 90% chance to crit on Backstabs at level 70.


This is my one complaint, and I've been saying it since way back when I played D2 and my block rating when down when I leveled up. There's a very, very easy solution, though. Level still is directly in the computation, but use target level. This already happens in many cases with miss/dodge/hit, etc, but does not for Ratings or Base Stats.

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

 

◊ Cathela

I think the intent is that if Blizzard holds to the one-xpac-per-year-from-now-on plan, there won't be enough time at level 70 for this to become a huge issue. The problems you cite have a lot to do with the fact that the raid game has been stuck at 60 for almost two years now.

Yeah, it really should be based on the level of the target, either directly or indirectly (as in the system you suggest.)

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Glaurong

Judging by the added level caps on a bunch of abilities they are offsetting the uncritable/crushable tank by increasing mob levels as we move through tiers.

Expect Illidan to be 80 or higher.

Weapon skill will be affected similarly.

To a small extent it is based on the level of your target, but that is only based on weapon skill and the exact way that works isn't clear yet.

Flat +.1% per skill or +.1% of your total crit rating. Or something completely different, since apparently they are trying to make weapon skill a premier dps statistic (and what I mentioned will clearly not do that).

It is now and has always been there to push you into new gear as you level, as well as check mudflation.

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

 

• Arawethion

Okay. How will this affect resist rates (both spellmiss and level-based partials)? Glances? Tank mitigation? You can't just jack a guy's level up because you want to mess around with crit rate.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Cel

This is a terrible misconception. Your crit chance does not go down as your level goes up.

Lets say you have 20% crit on your tooltip @ level 62. When you level up, it now says 19.5% crit (estimating numbers... I know it's not exactly right).

If you were to go fight a string of level 62s as your new level of 63 with no gear upgrades and ran a combat log parse, you would find that in fact your crit has gone up ever so slightly. Why? Stats increase by a few pts every level, naturally. So now you have something like 20.1% chance to crit a level 62.

Why does your tooltip say your crit has gone down? Well.. it doesn't actually say that. It is now comparing your crit rating to mobs of your new level, 63. If you were to fight level 63s as a level 62, you'd see something like 19.4% chance to crit. Now that you've leveled, your chance to crit a level 63 is 19.5%.

The tool tip changes what it measures as you level. Your crit does not go down.

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell

Alpha is recruiting... go go.

 

JoltColaOfEvil

Are you basing this from the tooltip? Because that only ever compares your chance to X against a mob of the same level as your character. So of course going from level Y to Y+1 with no gear changes will see a reduction in things like chance to crit.

 

Glaurong

It does in fact go down Cel. The changes you notice are mostly a result of weapon skill differences. If your scenario were the case a lvl 60 would have near 100% crit rate against lvl 1 mobs, which isn't the case.

The amount of raw agility/int/rating per absolute point of crit increases as you level.

Honestly Ara I have no idea. I would assume gimmicks for the dps classes.

Maybe they added restrictions like http://www.thottbot.com/beta?sp=25596 for shits and giggles but somehow I doubt it.

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

 

• Arawethion

To above two posters:

I understand that, currently, the apparent 0.2% drop in crit rate when you level is because the tooltip is recalculated against a mob with 5 more skill.

However, there is a very real (though small) loss in crit chance as well, due to the increase in the Agi/crit ratio when you gain a level.

Ratings simply amplify this affect, as now, when you gain a level, you lose gear-based crit as well as Agi-based crit.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• Karakas

That's not entirely true.

It's only true in terms of weapon skill vs. defense crit%. The game, however, does not recalculate your crit% vs. lower level mobs by adjusting your crit% based on your target's level's coefficient.

Easy way to test this: in raiding gear, your crit%, calculated using level 1 crit/agi terms, will be much higher than what you would observe if you actually went and attacked level 1 mobs.


EDIT: lol @ 3 posters posting the exact thing within 1 minute.

 

Nurru

Perhaps I misunderstand, but you've just proven your crit relative to your level does in fact go down. So at 70 his crit on an equal level mob will have gone down a fair amount from his crit at 60 on a lvl 60 mob. I believe that is the common complaint.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Glaurong

Cel was assuming the crit rate against a 62 has not changed (would still be 20.1), only against a 63 has it dropped (to 19.5%).

Unfortunately this is not the case. Your crit rate against a 62 will be 19.5% + (0.04% * weapons skill difference)

In this example 19.7%

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

 

Apate

Does it? I can honestly say that I feel like there is a distinct lack of information about endgame progression at this point. We know about 60-70 and the beginnings of endgame, but no extensive endgame experiences have been put in place and repeated enough to get an idea of the real progression.


In addition to what's noted above, maybe this is an incentive to replace your stuff more often?

My point is: this transition time will make us happy at points, and irritated at others, but the same people who keep feeding us new 'game' have decided that this is how they want their game to progress. While I don't find it to be extra-smooth, I do find it to be enjoyable; I've got some confidence that endgame progression will find a way to be interesting, whether it's through set bonuses, raid-beneficial effects on raid gear, interesting procs, or something from left field.

See you, auntie.

 

Liand

There really isn't. Get naked and record your crit chances whenever you level. You'll find that it stays pretty much the same. You forget that you get more agility as you level to offset the increase in agi-to-crit ratio.

Like Cel pointed out, your crit chance isn't going down. Your gear is just getting worse. For example, you're level 30 wearing all level 30 greens. If you use the exact same gear at 60, why would you expect to have the same crit rate against level 60 mobs?

 

• Arawethion

Ok, but between 60 and 70, you're not going to magically get more crit rating when you level up.

No, but I'd expect to have at least much crit against 30's as I'd had when I was 30.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Liand

You do.

Let's say you have 70 critical strike rating at 60 for +5% crit chance. At 70, that goes down to +3.17% against other level 70s. But against level 60 mobs, you effectively have +50 weapon skill, which equals to +2%, for total of +5.17%.

The overall effect is that your gear degrades enough to counteract the power you gain naturally by the process of leveling. It's not a perfect system or anything, but what you proposed isn't any better, IMO. For example, against an uncrittable tank, what's the difference between your system and Blizzard setting the raid mob's crit chance at 10% instead of 5%?

 

Northerner

It is a little strange for casters as well (and btw, I am having trouble reading this thread... being called "Cel" for the last eight years of gaming; Northerner just happens to be my posting handle for even longer) but it should all balance out again at 70 with new gear stabilization. The transitional time definitely makes for some strange situations though where levelling can actually decrease your relative effectiveness in quite real ways unless you upgrade to appropriate new gear. I guess the issue is that for those of us already in raid-level gear, there is very little in the way of equivalent gear for the 61-69 level range.

I have faith that it will be worth implementing in the long-term, even if the transition ends up being a little weird.

 

Glaurong

Something else worth noting, In TBC that 50 weapon skill could be worth considerably more than 2% crit.

I guess you also kind of need to break this discussion down into: crit from crit rating, crit from weapon skill difference, crit from agility (balanced with new agi / lvl)

They all change at slightly different rates and collectively they cause your crit rate to decrease (albeit slowly) against all level of mobs (with the current 0.04% crit / skill).

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

 

TL-Seria

What did you expect?

 

Whiteknight

Regardless of the discussion about the current system, I really do think that (quoted) is a vastly superior solution to the problem. Not only is is indefinitely scaleable regardless of interrim level caps, it also allows significant opportunity to design interesting bosses. One boss might have a higher crit and dodge rating, but a lower anti-crit rating (rogue-type boss). Another might have a high anti-crit rating (tank-type boss). I'm assuming the OP intended the generalization that this would apply to everything (armor, dodge rating, spell hit, hit rating, etc)

But more to the point of the OP, when you out level or outgear a boss, they would uniformly get easier, not harder. Gear and level progression would both lead to a very natural and intuitive feel for player progression vs the environment they are used to, and against the new content.

 

Liand

Why would it be superior when the current system is already indefinitely scaleable? There are mobs that have different set of stats like you listed in Live too. Postmaster, for example, in Strat (high dodge). Or those elite bugs in Silithus (high defense).

Maybe Blizzard should do it more often to make things more interesting, but that doesn't have anything to do with combat mechanics.

 

torrent495

I don't really see the problem. Things will be fine again when the next expansion comes and the level cap is raised (again), which certainly will be before March 2009.