I apologize if this has been brought up before; if it has, I haven't seen it.

What are the major obstacles preventing merging the melee and spell crit/hit stats? They applied this to Taunt mechanics already, and as I've been thinking about it, I haven't really been able to arrive at good reasons why they *shouldn't* do it. It would make itemization quite a bit more straightforward for hybrid classes, and improve a few of those random issues involving non-caster, non-hybrid classes still having skills that the game considers to be spells (Thunderclap, Arcane Torrent, etc.).

I can think of a few relatively minor issues that could require balance tweaks, like enhancement shamans receiving a crit chance bonus following a shock crit, but certainly nothing that couldn't be worked out easily enough. The benefits appear to outweigh the drawbacks. At least on the issue of hit chance; the argument for crit chance is a little shakier, but I can't see a very strong reason not to treat that the same way.

So what am I missing?

The only thing I can think of which you've missed is that currently the amount of spell hit rating you need for 1% hit isn't equal to the amount of hit rating you need for 1% hit. This isn't particularly tricky to work around though; if Blizzard would want to keep the same balance between the two types of hit it could just use the same rating with spell hit gaining from it at a higher speed.

Yes, that was an implicit assumption I made as far as balancing the contributions of the two. Certainly up to the developers to decide on those numbers.

Yes and by the same token, please make a [Recipe: Haste Potion] for casters. (or rather, that change would make the item usable by casters)

I think an argument could be made for haste as well, but it definitely affects a much smaller set of skills and classes. Enhancement shamans and Protection paladins won't make terribly much use of spell haste (but still will to some extent).

Anyway, this would be a useful change if they're serious about normalizing itemization goals across classes.

Allowing our melee haste to lower the GCD would be pretty useful.

The classes that deal damage both with magic and attack power have 1 type of attack completely gimped due to the mechanics. Look at ret pallies doing 90-95% of their damage from physical and enhancement shamans didn't exactly do a lot of their DPS from shocks before they got AP->spell dmg conversion (and even after...).

Most likely in the long run either the hybrids will be set to 1 type of attack, have 1 stat benefiting more than 1 type of attack (like the enhancement shaman AP->spell damage talent), and/or have itemization fixed so that it either buffs only your actually strong attack or at least have its itemization points that are used towards the weaker attack give significantly more stats (for example if they made gear with both strength and spell damage have a lot more stats/itemization points per item level).

Merging spell hit and melee hit to one rating would definitely be a step in helping hybrids use all their abilities and not "oh we can do 5-10% damage by burning a lot of extra mana on some weak attack".

But then again I don't see much point discussing those things, blizzard seems to choose what they see fit and take massive testing at the expense of the customers over actually predicting what the results would be first...

You're exaggerating for an unnecessary point. The current mechanics, at least for hit chance, are requiring two separate stats to do exactly the same thing, which generally just means that one type of hit is totally excluded from itemization (except for paladins, who awkwardly get stuck with both spell and melee hit on their tanking gear).

For more complicated conversion scenarios, Blizzard is certainly free to include talents that serve some specific purpose, like the shaman AP->spell damage conversion. It doesn't make nearly as much sense to have kludge talents like "convert X% of melee hit into spell hit", because frankly that sort of thing is just going to make people wonder why it isn't that way by default.

Although you said you think this change is unnecessary, you just listed a fairly large number of skills that would benefit from it. You're suggesting that things that are very obviously spells should use melee hit, which is obviously going to be confusing to uninformed players. You're also suggesting something that isn't useful to shamans, who actually have a viable casting angle, and ignoring issues that will probably affect the death knight class as well.

As I see it, merging melee and spell hit is a no-brainer. The only thing that's up in the air is whether to apply it to crit, and to other stats.

How would that match up? Would the hit rating needed for spell hit-cap be the same for DW hit cap or non-DW?

Changing crit to match up makes certain specs gain more than just "mechanic fixes". Melee hybrid classes would suddenly have a huge crit chance on their heals for example. All of the gains from such a change would be on gear currently with melee hit. I can't think of a caster who would gain from having melee hit (Firestone warlock go go!). I think I agree with the poster who said there should be fixes to the mechanics of the skills/spells themselves. Make all warrior and hunter abilities work with melee stats. Give Melee Shaman/Pallies a talent that works like the AP->Damage conversion for hit. That seems to make more sense that completely changing gear itemization for many classes that will see no difference.

Though having all of my abilities work on one hit (as an alliance ret pally) would be super-special awesome, I would rather see them just fix mechanics. Making physical class' abilities work with only physical hit rating, make spell classes' abilities work exclusively on spell hit. The only hairy section would be for classes like mine where we have abilities that are used by two specs; one spec that uses spell hit and one that uses melee hit. This could be worked around by a simple talent though.

Let's speculate a bit on the % of extra hit you become hit capped at level 70 against a raid boss.
Your average, 2 handed weapons require 9% hit from gear
Your dual wielding attacks require somewhat above 20% hit from gear. (I don't have the exact figures, and I'm sure they vary a lot)
Ranged attacks also require 9%.
Spellcasters are not a realm I'm familiar with, but I seem to recall both 9% and 16% figures brought under discussion (please, feel free to correct me).
Healers, I would assume, require no spell hit for heals (again, not even remotely sure).

Of course, talents help to modify individual hit requirements amongst classes and specs, leading to quite a variety of hit caps.

Already, the hit and spell hit is distributed on gear that more than one class will use (hunter/shaman mail; warrior/shaman axes, rogue/warrior swords, warlock/shadowpriest/mage cloth, etc). Basically, several classes have access to the same loot pool to choose their hit cap gear. While this means some have more choice than others, everybody already prioritizes choices based on other more meaningful proprieties. For instance, [Halberd of Desolation], which is often shoved aside by MS warriors, even when they're not hit capped.

Now, let's assume for a second that all attacks would now be based on a single attribute (accuracy rating, if you like), that works as hit rating for melee attacks and spell hit rating for spells. Would this really change the gearing choices available to other classes? No. [Madness of the Betrayer] still wouldn't go to a shadowpriest or warlock. Nor would [Ring of Captured Storms] go to a rogue, no matter how hit starved they'd be. Ideally, all that would happen should be the removal of annoying resists on a thunderclap/earth shock/feign death/seal.

Of course, under that assumption, Attack power and Spell damage would still be individual and separate stats; likewise, physical and spell crit; attributes like strength, agility and intellect would still govern different classes or roles.


Also, off topic, but on a similar note, I believe physical and spell haste could be merged into a generic 'swiftness rating', and benefit all abilities equally (as in lowering the global cooldown for all abilities). It's not exactly a far fetched idea; after all, Bloodlust/Heroism does just that - it grants everyone a speed increase. And Blizzard have already taken one step int that direction, by making haste and spell haste use the same rating scaling; however, I feel they've only done the job half way, and a reduction in global cooldown for physical abilities would make haste a viable option for more specs and classes, as opposed to a niche stat, that you get as a perk from a major upgrade.

The problem with haste affecting Melee is the effect it has on rogues (and Cats). There is a cap on the spell haste ability to reduce the GCD - it cannot be less than 1 second. If Melee haste had the same effect, Rogues would gain no benefit. If not, what does the cap become? Does it affect all melee? I.E. they implement haste such that a Rogue caps at .5sec GCD (which would be horrendously overpowered). Does a Warrior also cap at .5 seconds, or at 1 sec? If it's the former, a Rogue gets to use specials twice as fast, a Warrior only 1.5 times as fast. The latter, and Warriors jump to 3 times as fast.

It would stand to reason that rogues and cats would have a 1/1.5 = .667 sec. GCD cap. However, if we're already considering haste affecting the melee GCD (as it should), you might as well go the whole nine yards and impose uniform time compression.

Okay, so the cap for Rogues and Cats is .667 sec. How do they get it? Melee haste reduces swing time by the same amount for all classes, does it do the same for GCD reduction? If so, Rogues cap out earlier than Warriors. If not, it has less effect for a Rogue than a Warrior point for point.

Also, I like the idea of uniform time compression, but I doubt Blizzard would ever make it happen.

Well, in this purely hypothetical scenario, even haste as it is increases swing speed (though we often say that weapons have a speed in terms of time, I'm speaking of speed as swings or effects per unit time; e.g. speed of a car = miles per hour, distance per unit time) by a uniform percentage.

In short, I said .667 sec. because, for a rogue or a cat, it would take the same amount of haste to reduce the GCD from 1 to .667 sec. as it does for anyone else to reduce their GCD from 1.5 to 1 second.

Again, just so we don't give somebody somewhere who doesn't read very closely the wrong impression, this is all purely hypothetical. I'm hoping the bold letters will be enough, but you never know.

Right there is exactly what the issue is. Protection and Retribution Paladins are caught in a nebulous world between being a melee class and a caster class, and our abilities have some wonky stat feeds as a result. Just to throw a few examples out there:

• Judgement of Righteousness is subject to spell-based resists, but Seal of Righteousness only works if your melee attack hits.
• Righteous Defense has melee-based failure, but appears to be subject to the spell hit cap like Warrior Taunt.
• Judgement of Command crits based on your melee crit chance, but hits based on your spell hit chance.
• Hammer of Wrath is only improved via your spell damage, but crits based on your melee crit chance.

It's rather buggered up, to say the least. Of course, I don't necessarily think that merging stat feeds is the correct answer; rectifying the core issues that cause these inconsistencies is the proper solution. It would certainly fix the problem, but it would probably create other unintended problems in the process.

Righteous Defense was formerly based on spell hit, however, like the Warrior and Druid taunts it now relies on melee hit.

It is rather poor as a threat stat. Of the frequent abilities a Protection Paladin might make use of, only the JoV 5-stack hit, JoR/JoV, possibly the 1st Consecration tick, and possibly Holy Shield rely on spell hit. I say possibly Holy Shield, because it is difficult to track due to its peculiar language in the Combat Log and the consequential effect on WWS parses. It should also be noted that resists of Consecration are currently under debate on the maintankadin forums. It would seem the resist messages are in fact a remnant of old coding, and that Consecration may not be miss-resisted at all (though it is subject to partial resists.) Here is the thread in question if you are interested in pursuing it further: Maintankadin :: View topic - Consecration first tick resist in question?

It's hard to pinpoint am objective value for spell hit until these issues have been clarified, but for most Protection Paladins, it's not something worth going out of the way to stack. Unfortunately, Blizzard loves to put spell hit on Paladin-oriented tanking gear. In most cases, these itemization points would be better spent on pure Spell Damage or Avoidance/Tank-oriented stats.

Any WWS report I pull shows no full resists for anything but the first tick of Consecration, Exorcism, and Judgement of Righteousness. Holy Shield is pretty enigmatic because it doesn't log properly, but I've never noticed any full resists. Even if spell hit does affect Holy Shield, it's still beyond worthless; you'd need to be doing something ridiculous like 1850 TPS before it even starts to compare to spell damage, and expertise and melee hit are still both better.

And that is why I refuse to buy the new badge gear for my tanking kit.

Actually, from a purely mechanical point of view, merging the two might make sense.
The thing is, to me at least, it doesn't when going beyond mere mechanics.

Hit rating is physical, it's about accuracy, skill at arms, superior eyesight and the like.
Spell hit, however, is some rather undefined mystical property that, in my mind, doesn't fit into a generic hit rating, especially since spells do not miss, but are resisted.
I suppose you could consider fireball, frostbolt and other single target spells to be similar enough to ranged attacks that the same principles might apply, but what about arcane explosion or frost nova?
How does that go together with, say, improving one's chance to hit an enemy in melee oder to put an arrow through somebody?

If you want to be completely role-player about it, then melee hit and ranged physical hit should be two different stats, because the ability to swing a sword effectively is very different then the ability to shoot an arrow accurately over long distances.

And you could certainly make the argument that greater coordination and sense of space dictates whether a caster can accurately shoot a fireball at something.

It's all about concentrating and focusing, in my opinion. Interpreted like that it works for physical and magical abilities alike.

Why would merging spell/melee hit into one stat have any effect on the rating required to cap?

No, they would cap at the exact same point. The initial GCD speed has no effect on the amount of haste rating needed to hit 50% haste.