I thought that it would be useful to start pulling out the various random discussions of 2.3 Patch Notes (updated 4:25 CST) into separate threads of their own. (Given there are already discussions about shaman changes, warrior changes, warlock changes, stop casting etc.)


As a rogue I'm most interested in the change/addition of Expertise. There's already a good post in the patch notes thread so I'm just going to quote it:

Thanks to david0925 for the quote.

Even though there is still no firm word on what the exact changes are regarding WepEX and mace spec, I think that it would be useful to see what people are thinking regarding the change. One question that I'm trying to wrap my head around is how expertise will play into the +hit game. I've always been combat so the necessary +5 weapon skill was taken care of before I even knew of it, because of that I've always simply thought of weapon skill as just a different stat for moving up to my hit cap (perhaps erroneously). Will expertise now change that or will it simply be that +hit increases your hit and +expertise lower's their dodge so both are eating away at the same thing, just from different ends. Post your own questions as well, my goal here is mostly to separate out the rogue/expertise conversation before the patch notes thread runs away with itself.

As an example...using weapon skill.

5% dodge
30% crit
65% hit

With expertise...(using 10 expertise from the talent):

2.5% dodge
30% crit
65% hit
2.5% miss

You can now add +hit rating to reduce the miss back to 0. So, overall, it's a way to make every single attack a hit or crit, without having to worry about dodges. And, once the dodges are negated, so is the parry chance, meaning attacking from the front is fine (except for blocks).

At least, that's how I THINK it'll work.

This new mechanic seems to be simplifying what Weapon Skill was intended to do all along; as lordbalkoth said, a way to ensure that every attack is either a hit or a crit.

I can only imagine that they'll be reducing the effect of the Weapon Expertise talent, ("In a few cases, talents have been changed to other effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise") as 2.5% increased chance to hit (decreased dodge) is enormous for a raiding Rogue. I suppose the ultimate result of this change will increase the value of current +weapon skill items.

You mean because they will now be +expertise items? I was under the impression that the stat would be essentailly the same as the weapon skill stat, so I'm not sure how the change will make these items more valuable.

Also, you could be right that they are nerfing it. However, the way that it stands now WepEX is more useful to a raiding rogue than even a full 10 expertise would. 2.5% from expertise versus 3.5 from 10 weapon skill. (Assuming I'm reading this post correctly)

If there's a straight conversion from skill to expertise, here's how my back-of-the-envelope calculations turn out for comparing hit benefit to dodge benefit for a human sword rogue with some skill gear:

(the last is assuming expertise is not weapon-specific)

So just considering hit and dodge, small amounts of expertise are not near as good as skill, but larger amounts pull ahead after the 16th point. Expertise runs into a hard cap at 20 points against same level mobs (5% dodge) and at a little less than 23 for boss mobs (5.6% dodge)

Skill also gave some crit and some other bits we never quite nailed down, while expertise also reduces parry (which I suppose will help when I'm farming). Sklll reduced my hit rating cap to 290 - losing it means my hit cap jumps up to 363. So I'll probably be going back to the hit gems instead of the agi gems I've slowly been converting to.

The racial bonuses of dwarves and trolls for guns and bows respectively are being changed from +5 weapon skill to +1% crit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a nerf when fighting bosses (level 73)? Before, chance to miss was calculated differently if your weapon skill was within 10 of the mob's defense skill. As a result, dwarves and trolls gained an extra +3% to hit (in addition to small amounts of +crit) when using their specific weapons against boss mobs. This works out to about 48 hit rating. Replacing that with 1% crit (22 crit rating) hardly seems balanced, since HR > CR for anyone not at the hit cap.

Actually I think it's probably to fix the issues weapon skill has more than anything.

I suspect it's supposed to work as stated, it turns dodges/parries into hits (rather than into misses).

It should be noted that you need 15.6 expertise rating to drop dodge by 1%. That's very close to the 15.8 hit rating you need to reduce your chance to miss by 1%, so for melee dps attacking from behind they have very similar effects. Tanks will also reduce there chance to be parried so it still makes more sense stacking it than hit rating. Attacking from the front is still not ideal even with capped expertise, because you can still be blocked, which will reduce your dps a tad.

Assuming that a mob has 5.6% chance to dodge and 5.6% chance for your attack to miss, you need 87-89 or both ratings to always hit when attacking from behind.

I wonder if they'll itemise or give feral tanks expertise, looking at existing items the situatin is better than it was, but non of the high-level existing items with a weapon-skill on them are druid tanking items per se, but several of the rogue armour items could be used instead of the shapeshifter signet.

A quick eyeball of the numbers shows that ~16 weapon skill rating = -1% dodge (and -1% parry if you're in front). That's comparable to ~16 hit rating = -1% miss.

So for melee DPS, weapon skill rating has about the same weight as hit rating. However, for tanks, weapon skill rating is twice as good as hit rating.

It does mean that the amount of hit most melee DPS will find useful is going to increase, as weapon skill/expertise talents and abilities no longer overlap in function.

Unless expertise also applies to yellow attacks, in which case 2.5% over all damage is better than 3.5% over white damage.

Yep, essentially, they're further nerfing Troll racials. Also, the weapon skill gave a small amount of crit, further making the compensation racial for the change less significant. I'm not sure why they're hell-bent on making Troll racials pathetic, but it seems to be a goal of Blizzard.

I would have tought more with -dodge going directly into +hit.
I mean, 350 WS, no hit capped.
5% dodge
30% crit
60% hit
5% miss

Old WS, 360 WS
4% dodge (supposed)
31% crit (supposed, may be 31)
63.5% hit
1.5% miss

New Expertise, 360
2.5% dodge
30% crit
62.5% hit
5% miss

That 48 hit rating you mentioned what it is/was for the troll and dwarfen ranged weapons-racial, is likely the same what I've heard in the german WoW-forums ( LINK ) from "Gekautes" (a player known as someone with real knowledge, not just half-knowledge like myself ). So if he is true, the upcoming hit cap for rogues with Precision and Weapon Expertise would be 356...


Can anyone confirm this?

I'm still a bit baffled why "points" of expertise are converted to -dodge/parry at a 4:1 ratio after already going through a rating conversion. The fact that the rating conversion is around 4:1 already made me first think that 1 expertise = 1% dodge/parry, and I've still not completely shaken off that feeling.

While this might be a nerf for melee dps classes that use less-than-fifteen weapon skill rating, as a caster class I'm very excited by how much more threat my tanks will be putting out.

There aren't two conversions, skill rating to expertise rating is 1:1, expertise rating to -dodge/parry is 4:1 (at 70). It makes perfect sense.

You can also wonder why 1 point of Defense skill doesn't reduce chance to be hit/crit and increase chance to dodge/parry/block by 1% each and the obvious answer to both questions is: it would be too much. It's really not relevant or important.

From my personal perspective (Druid tank), while the numbers and calculations are all really interesting, I don't know if Expertise is going to be significant for us from the itemization point of view. Two relevant items that currently give Feral Combat Skill ([Earthwarden] and [Shapeshifter's Signet]) are low ilvl, so you drop them as you start progressing into the 25 mans. The ring specially is not even angled at tanking to begin with, so you give up fair amounts of mitigation for it.

Now, if they make Expertise a generic stat (as opposed to Dagger Expertise, Sword Expertise, Feral Combat Expertise etc) then we have a few more options, the Hydross shoulders and the Vashj belt are two that I can remember. But again, Rogue items are mostly not optimum for tanking mitigation-wise (though there certainly would be value in keeping a few such items around as part of a high-threat set).

So, the values of Expertise for tanks really is quite obvious, but unless they itemize it for Druids, it's not going to be of much consequence, compared to Warriors who get weapon skill (and hence Expertise in 2.3) on a fair few weapons, and a pair of gloves as well. Here's hoping ZA has something in store.

Expertise Cloak of Expert Expertness
Back
350 Armor
12 Agility
30 Stamina
Equip: Increases Expertise Rating by 20.

Yes, things are converted twice:

3.9 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise = 0.25% dodge/parry reduction.

Just like:

3.9 Weapon Skill Rating = 1 Weapon Skill = X amount of miss reduction based on target level

Also, it's not a melee nerf in any sense of the term. We may be losing 3.5% hit from the Weapon Expertise talent, but we're gaining 2.5% dodge reduction that applies to both white and yellow damage.

I ran a few very basic numbers and found that I stand to see up to a 1.9% increase in DPS. Keywords in that sentence are "up to" since the particular WWS log I used contained an inordinate number of parries.

Don't tanks usually develop different a set for high threat and a diff set for high mitigation? It would seem that druids have the leg up in a high threat set given that they can always grab a rogue piece or two.

not exactly.
[Gauntlets of Enforcement]
[The Brutalizer]
[Mallet of the Tides]
Orc Racial +Axe
Human Racial +Swords


I suppose you can't leave out:
[Gloves of the Searing Grip]
if they make it all just an expertise modifier instead of a weapon specific one.

Still unsure exactly how to take this change as a rogue.

Hm, at first i was thinking that expertise was simply weapon skill. But this looks quite interesting.
I wonder why weapon skill is being removed though, it's not really overpowering compared to other stats.
It is inbalanced in itemisation though, some items have dagger skill, while they have no sword skill, or no mace skill.
I'm curious which items and skill will all be affected by this change.

Multi weapon skill Items
[Belt of One-Hundred Deaths]
[Grips of Deftness]
[Gauntlets of Enforcement]
[Scaled Greaves of the Marksman]
[Gloves of the Searing Grip]
[Edgemaster's Handguards]
[The Eye of Nerub]

Weapon skill Items
[Shoulderpads of the Stranger]
[The Brutalizer]
[Mallet of the Tides]
[Fang of Vashj]
[Earthwarden]
[Shapeshifter's Signet]
[Circlet of Restless Dreams]
[Aged Core Leather Gloves]
[The Hungering Cold]
[Death's Sting]
[Maladath, Runed Blade of the Black Flight]
[Anubisath Warhammer]
[Obsidian Edged Blade]

Blue weapons : http://thottbot.com/?f=w&name=&quali...=&c3=gt&v3=&e=
Blue armor : http://thottbot.com/?f=a&name=&quali...=&c5=gt&v5=&e=

The nice thing, i suppose, is that you can now combine weapons that give +mace, and +dagger skill into a single skill which will benefit both weapons.

It's not being removed so much as replaced with a much more streamlined and transparent stat serving much the same purpose.
The patch notes mention that certain items will be receiving stats other than expertise rating to make sure they don't have stupid-large amounts of it; I can only assume that these multi-skill items are the ones they are referring to. All of the explicitly stated talents use Expertise as a general term, not a weapon-specific term. This does leave me wondering about rogue Mace Spec and weapon expertise though... either gut and redesign Mace Spec, or else "expertise while wielding maces" and "expertise while wielding swords, daggers, and fist weapons."

Racial bonus was never designed to be as overpowered as it was. From a hunter point of view, Dwarfs and Trolls have had a very large advantage over other races for far too long now. I very warmly welcome this evening out.

I was hoping that Belfs might be considered for a more PvE orientated racial bonus. Being a really good enchanter doesn't help me much when fighting Kael, 3% hit would be nice though ^^.

It didn't say exactly whether or not weapon skill rating of specific types(i.e. axe skill) will be changed to just plain expertise or not. So it could be axe expertise skill etc. We will only know when the PTR comes back up.