Most likely yes.
Perhaps some other stats will be added to compensate the item values.

I'd be happy with the streamlining though, it's always been a rogue grievance that some items are only useful for dagger rogues, while sword rogues have to choose different armor pieces. At least Pre-TBC.
Now there aren't that many items that suffer from that anymore. Shoulderpads of the stranger though..

I just visited the PTR and want to clearify some things:
The human/orc racials won't give expertise or expertise rating.
Orcs get 1% crit with axes and twohand axes
and humans the same with maces/swords.

Items which had weapon skill before, just have expertise rating on it.
No axe, dagger oder whatever specific expertise.

I just came back from the PTR.

Trolls racial become a +1% crit with bow / throwing weapons.

I cheched [Scaled Greaves of the Marksman], ranged weapons skill rating was switched with a +16 or a +17 ( I don't remind exactly ) Hit Rating.

Marguerite

Posted this in the huge 2.3 thread, but re-posting this here:

Made a level 1 and used some UI mods to check out the talents for expertise as a rogue. The Weapon Expertise talent is 1/2 points for +5 / +10 Expertise (doesn't say rating) so it looks like it's a straight 1 for 1 switch from skill to expertise as far as the talent goes.

Mace Specialization (rogue version) is now 5 ranks, each rank increases mace critical strike damage by 1% and 1% chance to stun for 3 sec. It looks like the Expertise talent is now universal and not based on weapon type, so the old +2 skill per rank was changed to 1% crit damage bonus.

It always was 5 ranks,
But that would make maces pretty strong if it can be combined with WE.
I doubt they'll keep it that way, or they'd have to add something to fists, swords, and daggers.
Doesn't seem very balanced if it stays the way it is.

Perhaps they could add a 1-5% bonus to poison proc chance on swords, ignore armor on daggers, reduced disarm time on fists.
Well, that's all just speculation and wishful thinking.

I don't think maces would be overpowered that way. They are going to be a viable PvE choice and clear the way to go for PvP. And ofc it will make Rod of the sun King, the best SS weapon, before Azzinoth maybe?

Anyways on topic now, i used the DPS spreadsheet and just entered -70 skill rating so i reached 0 ( i had 70, talents, shoulderpads of the stranger, Fang of Vashj, which results in 17 weapon skill increase). Then i altered the Buffed DPS tab's Chance to dodge to subtract the 17*0,25% chance to dodge, from MH,OH, and Backstab hit tables. That resulted to a DPS Loss of 20 something.

Ofc I assume that fang of vashj and the shoulderpads of the stranger will have 21 and 10 weapon expertise rating, which i hope it will not be the case. The only thing that can be done, so we dont have a loss of DPS is change the stats of the +weapon skill items to something else more usefull. Can any1 from the PTR check some +weapon skill items and let us know what the new stats (if any) are? The fact is that the Weapon Expertise talent which will give 10 Weapon expertise instead of 10 skill rating got a bit of a nurf.

Note that I posted that maces gives 1% per rank increased critical strike "damage", not +1% crit per rank.

Meaning, with maxed out mace specialization, a critical strike with a mace will deal 205% damage instead of 200% damage (before other modifiers like Lethality etc).

Are you sure it will work this way? Because I myself am not able to tell from the description whether the "critical strike damage bonus" will work like Lethality or like the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], where the bonus damage is added before the 200% damage increase.

Hmm, that would be interesting.
Could you post a screenshot showing the difference between fists / maces?

Here you go, I screenshotted the talent, direct from the 2.3 PTR

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9835/macesml7.jpg

Draw your own conclusions how it works

EDIT: Wording on fists is exactly the same as it is on live

Although the benefit for yellow damage will be quite limited. For combat rogues finishers cannot be dodged, and other dodged specials give a 75% energy refund.

However dodged specials still do no damage, generate no CP and cost a GCD so reducing the number of dodged specials in all combat, not just PvE and not just from behind, is a buff.

In another thread on here someone has stated that after 10 points of Expertise skill DW Melee DPS is better off than they were with 10 points of Weapon Skill. This makes sense because there does not appear to be a diminishing returns curve with Expertise like there is with Weapon Skill.

As Expertise is only capped by the dodge%/parry% of the target Expertise > 10 Skill is worth having as long as it does not require you to drop hit rating at all.

As I mentioned before, I ran some really basic numbers on all of this. I used this WWS log: Kelestre - WWS

55 dodged Sinister Strikes (3%) and 317 dodged melee attacks (4%) seems worth eliminating to me.

As I also mentioned before, I had an inordinate number of parried attacks that night, partly due to my getting lazy on Void Reaver.

The numbers I ran used the following assumptions:
- Weapon Expertise will provide 10 Expertise (which we now have confirmed is on PTR)
- I used 5% base dodge and parry, so versus level 70 mobs

10 Expertise would give me 2.5% dodge and parry reduction, so I took half of my dodged and parried attacks and multiplied it by my average damage (for both Sinister Strike and white attacks) to find out how much damage I would gain, on average, if those attacks landed.

I then found that 52.3% of my total damage was dealt to trash mobs (70-72 mobs), so I increased my miss-rate for 52.3% of my damage by 1%. Then I increased my miss-rate for the remaining damage by 3.5% (for boss mobs).

For Sinister Strike I gained a total of 39328.8 damage
For white attacks I gained 59144.8 damage (101670.4 gained from adding in the dodges and parries but 42525.6 now lost to misses).

I impress once again - these are extremely rudimentary calculations. I did this just to gain a very very basic picture of what this change would entail. Regardless of being such basic numbers, I think they still show us that there is the potential for a gain in damage rather than a loss.

There are two basic things wrong with my numbers (and a good 50 more complicated things wrong with my numbers :P ) :

1. The inordinate number of parries. If we look just at dodges then Sinister Strike gains 25282.8 damage and white attacks gain 34704.8 damage.

2. We've always been told by Blizzard, though I don't believe anyone has fully tested it, that Weapon Skill reduces your target's chance to dodge and parry your attacks. The WWS log seems to agree with this as the percentage of dodged attacks should be 5-6% not 4%. That means the change from Weapon Skill to Expertise won't result in a 2.5% reduction in dodge and parry but a bit less (1.5-2% I would think).

Given those factors I feel we could still see a boost in damage, and at the least we should break even.

If you're interested I can post the full details on my very basic numbers. Have I mentioned enough that they're very basic numbers? :P

I don't entirely agree. If you exchange 16 Hit Rating (1% Hit) for 16 Expertise Rating (4 Expertise or 1% dodge reduction) then you should see a slight increase in damage as long as the Expertise doesn't push you over the cap. You white damage would remain unchanged, since while you lose 1% Hit you gain 1% dodge reduction. You also, on top of that, gain 1% dodge reduction for your Sinister Strikes.

In short, WER would be worth "more" AEP than plain hit rating would. (in theory)
Depending on your current hit rating ofcourse.
And whether you have suprise attacks already or not.

Also interesting, if your WE is capped, you'll no longer really "need" suprise attacks for your finishers other than for the +% damage to sinister strike.

Unless you're trying to finish on a pvp target.

True, for PvP the WE cap would probably be a lot higher.
Especially when used "against" rogues or warriors it might be a pretty strong stat.

I wonder how much gear will be carrying this stat, and whether it'll affect PvP at all, since weapon expertise doesn't either.

A miss is a miss, a dodged attack can be turned into a hit by Expertise.
Sorry, I know that was an aphorism but sacrificing hit rating for expertise rating only maintains the status quo. In order to improve your damage the easiest way is to stack Expertise Rating without sacrificing hit rating.

What I meant was that having both is better than sacrificing one for the other.

It is easier to get Expertise Skill over 10 without sacrificing hit or AP than it is to raise hit rating with ES at 10 for an equivalent increase.

I am already seeing people saying it is better to get enough hit rating to avoid special misses then go for Expertise to reduce dodge/parry and then go for hit rating again. That kind of assumption, at least for Dual Wielders, is utterly wrong.
For 2 hander and weapon/shield it would make sense to go for Expertise after you have reached hit cap, dual wielder hit cap has now shot up out of reach except when Imp FF is on the target.

The elephant in the room is "why". Why change weapon skill to Expertise?

The key in my view is that the old version of weapon expertise scales weirdly. The first 5 points are horrendously overpowered, the next 10 are kinda-OK, and after that it sucks. They've replaced that with a stat that scales perfectly normally and transparently with increasing amounts - suggesting to me that this is a prelude to including significant amounts of it on future gear.

Next question: is it going to be targeted as a PvP or a PvE stat? It might be that they're looking to make a PvE-centric stat to include on raid gear to make it less desirable in PvP. Alternatively, they may be looking for an offensive PvP-centric stat to slap on all the arena weapons and make them less desirable in PvE. It's not clear to me which way it will end up going, if either.

Clearly it will be most use against targets with high dodge/parry. In PvP that's rogues and feral druids. In PvE, that's raid bosses.

I think it has uses for both. In fact I'd say the change makes the Weapon Expertise talent better for PvP than it is now.

I feel that it will probably get used in PvE more than PvP, but I think that will only be because we'll see the stat on more PvE items than PvP items.

We won't know until it's properly tested, but i'm close to 100% sure that weapon skill in the current patch has zero effect in PvP.
Thus i'm wondering if Weapon Expertise will have any effect. (I hope it does)

I agree with you here, Weapon Skill was truly arcane and was probably treated as a thorn in the side of anyone who had to work on balance issues.

Expertise is simple. It effects 2 abilities in a linear and therefore easy to predict manner.
In marked contrast to the disclosure by Blizzard about how Weapon Skill/Rating works we have an immediate and unequivocal explanation of the mechanics of Expertise.

There is already what I would call significant amounts of Expertise (Weapon Skill) gear now. This is being reduced where Expertise makes no sense as with Ranged Weapon Skill.

Expertise is a change to the PvP landscape.
It is a parallel skill to Resilience, reduces dodge/parry where Resilience reduces crit chance and damage from crits. Combat Rogues will able to perform better in PvP than they were before, at least as long as dodge/parry is not below the Expertise rating of the Rogue. 2-Hand PvPers also get a boost. Presumably Fury warriors get help from this too if anyone still plays them.

I think expertise will replace weapon skill completly. (I think!)

Since they changed the human and orc racials from weapon skill to crit it may be accepted that every item that currently has weapon skill will get expertise instead.

If you reduce the dodge and the parry chance you do not increase your miss chance! Just remember the attack table. The parts that were taken from dodge and parry just got smaller, thats it. They may be even brought to 0 with enough expertise.