It's not a bad thing. It's a very, very good thing. If rogues and druids get the same benefits from the same stats, there is no method to relatively equalize them apart from mucking around with talent returns. If down the road devs find that rogues are scaling 10% faster than druids, they've removed every tool they have to fix that scaling to wherever they want it to be. If, however, they can make equipment that's always going to be preferred by one class or the other because it plays more to their stat point multipliers, it's possible to buff one set of gear relative to the other without making it attractive to the other class.

Take a hypothetical Tier 7 piece of armor. Due to talent synergies, weapon scaling and the like, Rogues are 25% ahead of druids in Tier 7. (While being only 15% ahead of them in Tier 6, which is the desired amount.) They can't simply muck around with talents, because things are balanced in Tier 6. They have two choices: Nerf the rogue gear, or buff the druid gear. Whichever is appropriate depends on where the benefits are coming in. But if both classes use the same gear, there's no place to insert small tweaks to fix up the differential as desired.

In general, it will always be a lot easier to fix power differentials through incremental itemization change than through incremental talent changes. Talent changes hit all level ranges; item changes can be specifically tailored to noted level/progression ranges which may have problems.

Not to derail much, but I think that was Blizzard's intention. Feral gear was scarce pre-AQ and consequently the performance of Ferals (especially DPS) was nowhere where it could have been. Imagine this scenario and then Malfurion's Blessed Bulwark drops. Which class would it go to if it was not heavily skewed in the Druid's favor? Definitely not to the Druid. But alas, this is a thing of the past. Ferals got extremely well PR (exaggerated as well obviously) so issues of not considering letting a Feral roll on gear that benefits not only him but "real DPS" classes should be a thing of the past - and with that drops a la Malfurion's Blessed Bulwark.

But that is exactly the problem: when a it-may-as-well-be-a-class-item that is clearly aimed at a specific talent spec like Deep Earth Spalders or MBB is saturated, it isn't good for anyone else. The reason why items like the Lifegiving Gem and Drake Fang Talisman are so valued is not because they are irreplaceable or particularly exceptional, it is because they are desired by multiple classes and they are useful in a wide variety of situations. Once MBB is on all your druids, who is it good for? Is it better than a Nightslayer BP for an unlucky Rogue at the bottom of the loot list? Who else besides an elemental shaman would ever want DES? By designing items that are appealing to multiple classes but still "best" for one we don't see the over-saturation of loot before the zone is farmed out. If the MBB would have had a better combination of str, agi, and AP it would be perhaps not quite as appealing to druids, but would be a better item for rogues as well.

I want to state that I think these items should exist in complement to class items, I am not suggesting all items be designed in this fashion.

I can't say, I haven't been in raids in the burning crusade, so I don't have a solid idea of rogue damage compared to other classes in raids with top end gear. Nor do I have a solid idea of the utility of rogues in high end raids.

If there's a high amount of highly magic resistant monsters then rogues may very well come out on top.

Do I think that other classes with a physical DPS role and different "utility" should be able to approach rogue DPS such as cat druids, fury warriors and enchancement shaman? Yes.

Though, if raids continue in the same vein as they were in vanilla WoW where most rogue utility is wasted, then I think there is a problem. Rogues have a lot of tools at their disposal, the big issue isn't that other classes can equal them doing damage, the problem was most of rogues abilities in the past, would scroll up IMMUNE.

Why bother changing strength then. Strength's only benefit to a rogue is 1AP, to boost it to 2AP would make it exactly equivalent in item budget to AP. If you're never stacking the two together on leather, then why make the change at all?

To other classes, strength has a higher benefit, on a warrior, paladin or shaman it gives 2AP and increased block value. To a druid it gives 2AP in bear, caster and moonkin, and 1AP in cat. It is only a secondary stat for rogues, and I don't see why this is a problem. For a rogue, hunter and cat druids the primary composite stat is agility.

I suppose it comes down to the next point.

I don't see the differentiation as a bad thing. We already have armor classes to differentiate items a bit. But consider a strength/stamina ring drops, you will have bear druids, prot warriors, possibly paladins who want it. Adding another class to the mix doesn't help matters much. Other classes/specs like enh shaman, cat druids, fury warriors might want it but wont get as much benefit as the primary 3.

Assume an agility/ap item drops, then you'll have rogues, hunters, cat druids who want it. Other classes like enh shaman, ret pallies, fury warriors might want it but don't get as much benefit as the primary 3.

Assume a agi/str item drops, you'd have feral druids, enh shamans, ret pallies, fury warriors all after it. But for a rogue, it would be better for him to get the agi/ap one. In fact, a cat druid wanting to maximize DPS would want the agility/AP one as well.

There's not a massive amount of leather strength gear going to waste at the moment. Sure, they didn't maximize stat allocation for rogues on deathdealers. Yes, you could have had more AP if they had given you AP instead of Str.


Here's my point I suppose:

Could it be possible that Blizzard doesn't want you to have that much AP? Because if they did, they could have given it to you. To me it seems they kind of gamed the item values of the set a bit by adding strength to the set instead of attack power.

They have done this a lot before in other sets, adding stats that don't directly help you. I mean, your shadowcraft gloves have +10 spirit on them. Why would you put that on the items unless it was just to lower other stats.

They've gamed other items pretty much the same way. Dungeon 2 armor for instance takes a massive drop in item level, though you don't see it through the standard interface since they were rewarded as a quest, just so that they can make some of the items purple without having to give the stat allocation of a purple item.

I believe that the fact that strength is on your items is not because they screwed up, but because they wanted to give you half as much AP using the same item budget.

I believe if tomorrow magically rogues got 2 AP from strength, that blizzard would want to fix items by doing something stupid like adding spirit to them in order to lower your AP gain from the newly overpowered str/agi hybrid armor sets.

This argument was viable in 1.0, where there were a tiny, tiny handful of items with AGI and AP on them, and, because this double-dips the itemization formula where AP is concerned, these items were ridiculously good for rogues for their item level.

Now, though, Blizzard seems to have abandoned that concern, and tons of items have AGI and AP, and the itemization consequences are exactly the same as though they were itemized for STR and rogues got 2 AP per STR.

I agree with the general notion that all of the classes should want something a little bit different to clear up loot disputes. That said, rogues are so generic right now that there is no specific rogue loot?

For mail items Agi/str or RAP/Spell damage will divide the hunters and the shaman.
For plate items int/+healing etc will separate warriors and pallies.
For leather there is no distinction for the rogues. The best rogue loot is also great druid loot and in many cases good hunter loot, shaman loot etc etc.

It would be nice for the rogues to have something to focus on but they have painted themselves into a corner in some ways.

Perhaps they could make rogues focus on some of the other nice but underused bonuses, like Haste Rating. If, for example, they gave rogues a passive 50% boost to any haste rating items then it could be made a viable avenue of gear selection for them.

Agility would still give more dps for a buffed rogue, not to mention, the armor/dodge bonus from agi you still get. It would however give a nice little boost to unbuffed/pvp rogues due to base strength.

If Blizzard is going to give +agi/ap/crit/hit loot in TBC, there is no reason why they should not make this change. The reason it was there to start with was because they did not want rogues scaling past everyone, but if they give them the same thing through +ap itemization, it defeats the purpose. Also, making this change will not in anyway make rogues scale faster than other classes, but it will give them a bump up in their base-line dps.

Reasons not to would be: DPS warrior/feral jewelery would be more hotly contested with rogues. Not as much incentive to create +ap jewelery for hunters and hunters will feel itemization shortcomings for a while. A change like this would cause extra programming.

I actually did a search on Thott and found a whopping 3 Feral DPS items that used their item budget on DPS only. Either I suck at searching (Level req 60-70, Ilevel 80-200, Str>9, no quality limit) or there really are only 3 items. I still don't know what to expect as Feral DPS gear at level 70. Hybrid all stats stuff with +Heal, Bear/Cat hybrid DPS stuff or real DPS stuff? Knowing that is also important for the discussion because if Blizzard designed all items Rogue and Druid friendly the Druid would gain alot of more gear choices with dedicated and specialized DPS gear. I know from experience that specialized Bear gear with the modifiers as they are currently in game would be overkill (atleast pre-Threat nerf were additional Bear DPS could have been considered wasted). Same may apply to specialized Cat gear and current modifiers but like I said, I am more a Bear Druid so I might be off.

For those interested (Druid item on the left, same Ilvl Rogue item on the right if applicable):

Zierhut's Lost Treads Edgewalker Longboots
Feet Feet
219 Armor 219 Armor
+32 Strength Red and Yellow Socket
+26 Agility +27 Agility
+30 Stamina +25 Stamina
Requires Level 70 Equip: Improves hit rating by 10.
Equip: Increases attack power by 38.


Windslayer Wraps Cobrascale Gloves
Hands Hands
191 Armor 191 Armor
+36 Strength
+20 Agility
+30 Stamina +33 Stamina
Requires Level 70 Equip: Improves hit rating by 17.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 25.
Equip: Increases attack power by 44.
Requires Level 70


Gloves of Ferocity
Hands
141 Armor
+23 Strength
+20 Agility
+21 Stamina
Requires Level 60

When they changed the hunter agi:rap ratio, wasn't one of the stated reasons a desire to make itemization choices easier? I interpreted that to mean makign it possible to create one item that's the same for both hunters and rogues (as most agi/ap/crit/hit items now are). I think that's rather dumb, but if that were the case, now changing rogues to be the ones getting double AP from a stat just complicates the matter more. And puts rogues in the same category of potentially massive AP that hunters were pulled out from.

Definitely want to include these as an example of cat optimised gear: http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15198

35 str
20 agi
21 stam
20 AP

Won't have shown up in your search since it's a quest reward and therefore has no listed required level.

Hmm, curious, but doesn't the feral armor sets you can get solve the itemization problem? Although I do get the point of the argument of wasting loot, your eventually going to go to a point where you'll see it anyyways, and can't avoid it. Although it wouldbe nice for us to just et 2 str from armor, blizzard just won't do it.


Although it would be a really good idea for prevention of loot wasting, now that I think about it :P.