Going Forward: Cataclysm Discussion - Page 9

Anaram · 04/12/10, 6:57 AM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

This is a brief excerpt of the sort of thing I've been thinking about lately, but the basic upshot is that what we've seen thus far with respect to the Eclipse mechanic isn't enough to build a deep rotation that involves moving around to various places on the scale. We need to see what other mechanics they put in before we have any idea what the result might look like.

I don't think the idea is really to move around much, you probably just seek out some spot on either side and try to stay there without flowing over. That isn't to say that it'd be completely impossible for there to be significant movement on the slider depending on how much various spells actually move it and when they move it.

This said, let's just assume following rules: All spells except starfire & nature's torrent moves the slider 5%, including non-damaging spells. Nature's torrent moves the slider 20% and starfire moves it 10%. The maximum is 20%. Nature's torrent is on a 10 second cooldown. This would appear to build a situation where you would want to constantly oscillate from one end of the spectrum to the other.

For example at 20% you'd refresh moonfire, then cast wrath to take you back to 20%, then go with Starfire down to 10% and use Nature's torrent to flip to the 10% at the other side. Then you'd follow by another starfire to get to 20%, refresh insect swarm and throw a wrath and restore back to 20% with starfire. Then you'd just alternate wrath & starfire until arcane torrent cooldown was ready at which point you'd flip over.

Anyway, this is just to point out that it is *possible* to tune the mechanics such that you'd actually move between lunar and solar, it's just a matter of allowing the slider move fast enough that it's possible to leap over the 0% area entirely. If the slider moves very slowly then it seems fairly obvious that there's not much point in going from one end to the other given the mechanics currently known.

Ogbar · 04/12/10, 3:30 PM

I think the spirit as regeneration for trees (are we still trees?) and hit for moonkin is still an interesting piece of the equation. And leads me to a very odd conclusion, regen cap. This is old news but I'm just now examining it and would like to hear others thoughts. How much gear the two specs will actually share is debatable tier gear, jewelry, cloak, and weapons will probably not be shared but there will still be a reasonable amount of shared gear. If we assume blizzard won't be inflating hit to ridiculous levels (as after cap it becomes useless) then it can be expected that spirit won't inflate as much between gear tiers either. This suggests that mana regen from gear at the first raid tier won't really be that far off from mana regeneration in later content.

That makes me think that spirit based regen is going to be more closely tied to mana pool size, and given how blizz wants to simplify stats and make them less mathy a flat % of mana pool regenerated per spirit seems even more likely. It could lead to some very odd gearing choices, we'll already be picking from combinations of mastery, crit, and haste but in addition there will be a "regen cap" we will be looking to maintain. It might vary from raid to raid, but i'd expect there will be an agreed upon regen number for each tier that will be geared around. It has repercussions in encounter design too, when using "out of mana" as the soft enrage timer designers will be able to assume a given regen number for all encounters.

In other thoughts despite comments the previews actually look like blizzard is moving the healers more into their niches. Shamans have more AoE, holy priests versatile, disc on tanks, and from the little we were given druids as "stabilizers".

Jone · 04/12/10, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Ogbar

If we assume blizzard won't be inflating hit to ridiculous levels (as after cap it becomes useless) then it can be expected that spirit won't inflate as much between gear tiers either.

Actually, GC has said that increasing the crit/hit/exp cap between raid tiers is something they're considering to avoid issues like the current high end, where only the uncappable stats are highly valued.

dukes · 04/12/10, 5:03 PM

The problem with making the hit cap un-reachable is that it introduces a lot of issues with spikiness of DPS, along with annoyances of other effects not being realised because of missed spells such as debuffs that are applied per application/with application of damage. Statistically you may have a 1% chance of missing, but you could easily end up with 5% missed damage on a fight due to irregularity of hit chance. I just dislike the concept of not being able to cap hit considering the implications it can have on a lot of other things (other than it just being REALLY ANNOYING to constantly see spells miss).

• Adoriele · 04/12/10, 5:14 PM

Originally Posted by dukes

The problem with making the hit cap un-reachable is that it introduces a lot of issues with spikiness of DPS, along with annoyances of other effects not being realised because of missed spells such as debuffs that are applied per application/with application of damage. Statistically you may have a 1% chance of missing, but you could easily end up with 5% missed damage on a fight due to irregularity of hit chance. I just dislike the concept of not being able to cap hit considering the implications it can have on a lot of other things (other than it just being REALLY ANNOYING to constantly see spells miss).

Come on, you're smarter than this. While it's statistically possible to get 5% miss over the course of a fight when you've got 1% miss chance, it's unlikely and you'll have plenty of fights where you're at or below 1% miss to make up for it. 'Easily' is the completely wrong word to use there. As well, GC has said that they'll make taunt unmissable; I'd be very surprised if, by making 100% hit unreachable again, they don't change most utility spells to be unmissable as well.

That said, I'd still prefer to see 100% Hit as reachable as it is now. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by making Hit get diminishing returns as they've proposed.

dukes · 04/12/10, 5:25 PM

Yes I understand that 5% miss when you have 1% miss is statistically far less likely than getting 0% miss, but when it happens on a fight that is already tight on DPS then it's rather annoying, and perfectly likely to happen. The way it screws up rotations and other effects just amplifies the effects (it may even be 1% miss chance means you end up with 3% lost DPS due to the way procs/eclipse/etc work or something).

GC has said that increasing the crit/hit/exp cap between raid tiers is something they're considering

Re-reading the comment about caps though it does sound like they're going to do something like 5% hit cap for instance#1, 10% hit cap for instance#2, and 15% hit cap for instance#3, so you have a goal each time and it's reachable but the goal is moving to allow for better itemisation/etc. It sounds like a more interesting implementation than just making an unreachable goal from the start. Would be interested to see the source though to make sure the wording is meant in that way, rather than just setting a goal that is always unreachable.

Anaram · 04/12/10, 5:48 PM

Unless I'm mistaken hit is still also needed to not have a risk of crowd control periodically breaking and to hit counterspell etc. Anyway, I'd expect hit to remain a cappable stat, anything else would just be an unnecessary annoyance.

Krag · 04/12/10, 6:09 PM

From the Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

I don't expect hit to be much harder to cap than it is now (or maybe rather was at earlier tiers), simply due to the fact that I doubt reforging, gemming and enchanting hit everywhere would be intended. I think ratings like mastery, crit and haste are the ones that will be much harder to cap along with probably the defensive stats like parry, dodge and block where I don't think they want the huge avoidance numbers nor people hitting the diminishing returns too hard.

Comment touching on the moving targets for hit (Hit rating in Cata wont be fun):

As I've said, it doesn't really work that way though. Say you need 300 hit (using arbitrary numbers here) and your tier set provides 250 hit and you get the rest from gems and jewelry. Everything's cool. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 230 hit. No problem. You get rid of some of the gems and jewelry. Now a new patch comes out and your tier set has 240 hit. Now you curse Blizzard every time an item drops with hit on it.

In short, later gear has more of the same stat on it. When the stats are easily capped, the larger pools become hard to work around. I compared it today to playing Tetris with really large pieces. It's hard to make the puzzle work.

(I expect the first example hit rating from tier set was supposed to be 220.)

Fallenangel · 04/12/10, 6:51 PM

Originally Posted by dukes

Yes I understand that 5% miss when you have 1% miss is statistically far less likely than getting 0% miss, but when it happens on a fight that is already tight on DPS then it's rather annoying, and perfectly likely to happen. The way it screws up rotations and other effects just amplifies the effects (it may even be 1% miss chance means you end up with 3% lost DPS due to the way procs/eclipse/etc work or something)..

Crit has much the same damage variance. In fact, if a fight is tight on DPS, you can view variance as good, not bad. If you need 100 dps and can do 90 with 0 variance than you'll never beat it. Add variance and you can get lucky.
These are all very minor issues since they will balance out within the raid, but the DPS effect per-se is really nothing to complain about.
That said I do expect hit to be cappable early on and I do think you're meant to gem it in the first tier, along with hit on such like first tier vendor items (unlike a final tier one...). The problem they're describing is that the tier gear has a lot of hit and it comes in bigger chunks. This can be remedied by having more stats on items in later tiers - as in, 4 at the start and 5 later on with a better spread. Interestingly this was not done at all in WotLK unlike TBC.

Amonfana · 04/13/10, 4:30 AM

For me the interesting part will be seeing, if the conversion ratio for spirit to hit will make spirit worth the same itemlvlpoints (is that the word I am looking for?) as hit, or if Moonkin will avoid spirit items to get raw hit.

Or even the other way around, Moonkin could end up seeking out spirit gear.

Starfox · 04/13/10, 6:51 AM

Originally Posted by Amonfana

For me the interesting part will be seeing, if the conversion ratio for spirit to hit will make spirit worth the same itemlvlpoints (is that the word I am looking for?) as hit, or if Moonkin will avoid spirit items to get raw hit.

Or even the other way around, Moonkin could end up seeking out spirit gear.

They will probably just make the talent resemble the exact ration for spirit:hit you would get for the same itembudget, else we'd either use all spirit-gear or all nospirit-gear.

Kazzuk · 04/13/10, 9:32 AM

Originally Posted by Duilliath

Even so, I don't see the problem. Rogues have Rupture (which they might actually want to use for a change) and Poisons. A decent portion from Warrior DPS comes from bleeds. It's been mentioned in several previews that "HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit". Ramping up the scaling for all classes and then specifically shutting out a class that depends on DoTs for a large portion of its damage seems just a wee bit counterproductive. Furthermore, giving the ramping up of energy through haste, a larger portion of our damage will most likely come from Shred and Bite, seeing how there's little point in refreshing Rip too early.

It is a recursion issue, Ghostcrawler specifically said they did not want something that was the result of a crit to also benefit from crits, the issue most likely being one of a crit causing a bleed causing a crit... causing a bleed... etc.

Erdluf · 04/13/10, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by dukes

Yes I understand that 5% miss when you have 1% miss is statistically far less likely than getting 0% miss, but when it happens on a fight that is already tight on DPS then it's rather annoying, and perfectly likely to happen. The way it screws up rotations and other effects just amplifies the effects (it may even be 1% miss chance means you end up with 3% lost DPS due to the way procs/eclipse/etc work or something).

They may also decide to make the hit cap reachable, but not quite optimal, at least when first entering a new tier. They've done that before. It is often true for cats. It has occasionally been true for Balance (entry into Kara required <600 SP, but gemming to reach the hit cap wasn't optimal until about 750 SP, if I recall correctly).

The RNG from 1% miss is comparable to the RNG from Starfire's base damage range, and much smaller than other RNG effects (crit%, big infrequent procs like balance 2t10 or 4t8, number of times I have to move).

They can always give critical cooldowns (taunts, cc's) an improved chance to hit (baked in, talents or glyphs).

klüger · 04/13/10, 4:58 PM

I dislike the spirit-hit thingy just from the fact that _all_ our armorpieces will have spirit(hit), and lots of it. They are gonna have to make hit very expensive itembudgetwise or demand a lot of hit for us not to be hit(no pun intended) by this.

Dw0rkin · 04/13/10, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by klüger

I dislike the spirit-hit thingy just from the fact that _all_ our armorpieces will have spirit(hit), and lots of it. They are gonna have to make hit very expensive itembudgetwise or demand a lot of hit for us not to be hit(no pun intended) by this.

There will most likely be some added advantages baked into spirit. Such as regen (spirit being the new [old] mp5), spellpower and the like. Of course we are not going to know until there's more information out there but it appears to be the way it is going.