Main stat, stamina, first secondary, second secondary

Community General Discussion
1

Main stat, stamina, first secondary, second secondary

Almost every single piece of current gear in the game follows this pattern religiously. It is boring. Can we do better?

(and yes I saw this in a video, you probably did too)

2 Likes
2

Unfortunately, it’s being carried over in Shadowlands as well. While I don’t agree with all the sentiments of the streamer you heard it from, I do agree that some gear at least should perhaps be more unique and memorable. It certainly sounds more fun than what we currently have.

That being said, I personally think that stamina being tied to armor makes no practical sense. Food buffs yes, but armor? Idk.

3

I am so bored with these stats it hurts me

Crit damage
Armour/spell pen
Elemental damage conversion
Cooldown reductions
Defensive stats
Leech

Anything damn it

3 stat gear, 1 stat gear, gear with no stam but more budget

Hit even damn it

4 Likes
4

Despite being a steamer I watch, I don’t share this opinion.

I don’t care what my gear does. I care what my character does.

Having to farm, and play a gimped version of my class repeatedly until I get that one piece “loot” I needed to actually play the game properly is unfun and stupid.

You seem to have forgotten the legendary acquisition of 7.0.

Gear with this kind of unique attributes are little more than an extra talent point should be acquired reliably, through a short grind. Which is what shadowland is doing.

1 Like
5

Naz loot stood out due to the extra effects it provided. There was a Naz world boss bow that comes to mind - it had no /min/max damage value, just a single value and i remember asking guild chat if it was a broken tooltip - it was a weapon that didnt have random variable damage!

Then we went back to basic gear with corruptions - so boring.

6

I think we can do better.

7

It is easy to balance and fits very well with the Diablo style game that WoW has become now. If you want unique loot, you need to play Classic.

8

It depends what you consider better. Also even with more stats does it end up really being a choice or does it simply remain a sim?

Personally I like breakpoint stats like hit rating and expertise as a thing but apparently they make the game “too complicated”.
I honestly think the whole corruption system was an interesting look at different interactions between gear and stat options.

I think there is definitely very much a potential for things like flat stat % items or crit damage % etc stats in game in place of normal secondaries (as opposed to as a bonus stat on corruption pieces), as well as of course static gem slots.

I think it would be interesting if you could get an item that does 3% cleave damage making all your abilities cleave 3% of their damage to an additional enemy for example.

Realistically these would work in conjunction with standard secondaries as simply replacing all gear with ~22% cleave damage might seem like a great idea, but since you don’t have any secondary stats the actual base damage you are doing is so low it’s not advantageous.

So instead you would be aiming at a mix of secondaries to boost your characters output, and then some of these additional pieces to either add that cleave to your abilities, or multiply your highest stat by a % of something, perhaps even hybrid damage conversion making you deal a % of spell damage etc.

1 Like
9

people are gonna sim no matter what, that’s not an excuse to have boring loot. yes, i want items to matter. i want stuff that’s cool enough to be memorable. they’re going in the right direction with scarcer loot, but it’s still boring.

as far as some stats being useless, i think that’s fine. look at d2. one of my favorite games ever, one of my favorite loot systems ever. and tons of the best items had some modifiers you didn’t care about. not everything attached to an item has to be useful in order for the item to be attractive.

2 Likes
10

Let’s go back to the days of gear with multiple sockets. Lower the stat budget if necessary, but give us sockets to customize the secondaries we want.

Or reforging, I’d take reforging back, too.

3 Likes
11

As of shadowlands with ratings having thresholds of power, even simming might mean less and that it becomes a case of ‘higher ilvl = always better’.

12

Wasn’t that their stated goal pre-BfA? And then they introduced a bunch of gear with traits that could make a piece 15 ilvl lower an upgrade.

1 Like
13

I’m not too sure. Outside of mastery (which honestly they should fix because how it currently works is stupid) the rating threshold is actually quite large.

Most players won’t hit it until at least second tier and probably then only when stacking a specific stat. That being said the initial DR probably isn’t super likely to cause much change to priority, of course later ones will.
But then it’s a case of is haste at 70% effectiveness better or worse than vers at 100% effectiveness which honestly isn’t going to be an easy thing to solve for most players.

I’d like for ilvl to be a more definitive expression of player power but I’m not 100% sold that it will be.

That’s also not mentioning the obvious elephant in the room of on-use trinkets which by nature really badly interact with the new stat DRs and realistically you will not be getting 100% value out of them at all.

Yeah, that was the aim with primary stats and granting less secondary stats in general.
It didn’t really work out so I guess Blizzard said bugger it and decided to mess around with a fun social experiment lol.

14

I never said they hit the mark - but with caps to secondaries it will severly limit the amount of stats that can be aqquired. Simming will be a thing but it wont be a case of i need this secondary as a main stat and fill in the rest with whatever.

A better explanation - as you get more and more of a single stat, the value of that stat reduces (it never did in BFA) so you hit a point where you dont want anymore of ‘that stat’ and chase others. The flow on effects are any ilvl upgrade will offer slightly more value if the ‘main secondary threshold’ has been reached.

Detailed Explanation

In BFA, secondary stats grow linearly. This means that if you increase your haste rating by an X amount, you’ll always increase your haste gained from rating by Y%, no matter how much haste gained from rating you have. In Shadowlands, Blizzard seems to be moving away from this model. adding penalties similar to diminishing returns to Crit, Haste, Versatility, and Mastery . Note that for Mastery, we are talking about Mastery Points instead of percentages, since every class has a different conversion of Mastery Points to Mastery%.

This penalty is as follows:

  • From 0 to 25% , there’s no penalty .

  • From 25% to 34% , there’s a 10% penalty .

  • From 34% to 42% , there’s a 20% penalty .

  • From 42% to 49% , there’s a 30% penalty .

  • From 49% to 106% , there’s a 40% penalty .

  • You can’t get more than 106% from gear rating.

15

I’d love to start seeing gear with varying rates of stamina. HP pool normalization is such a boring aspect of modern WoW. I’d like to see gear pieces with no stamina or negative stamina in return for higher damage stats, interesting procs, resource regen, etc. Let people choose how glass cannon-y they want to get.

1 Like
16

While I think he made a good point to a certain degree I also disagree to a certain degree. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with simplified, formulaic, gear. It is easier to balance in the grand scheme of things across a broad spectrum. On the other hand, I do see where he was coming from in terms of memorable/impactful pieces. I couldn’t tell you any of the pieces of gear any of my characters are wearing off the top of my head but I can still, to this day, remember getting Perdition Blade on my Rogue.

I think the argument that gear has become so standardized that it is stale is a valid argument. When every piece is designed to play it safe it really detracts from the impact of getting a specific piece. Like, for instance, while Shadowlands loot format is moving into the right direction and BiS lists will be more manageable I don’t think that makes the gear itself memorable. A good example, for me, of a piece that will always be memorable is “Hatebringer” from The Underbog in The Burning Crusade.

Two handed mace, good stats, three sockets. It felt like a very powerful two handed weapon, getting that weapon was memorable and felt good and it was just a piece of Dungeon Loot. Heck, even Ion when explaining modern loot ideology points out Dragonspine Trophy because it was a weighty, memorable, good piece of loot.

I agree that the homogenization of equipment, outside of Trinkets and sometimes weapons, does create less memorable and less exciting/impactful loot. It’s kinda a side effect of the dev teams strides to make it so iLvL is king. The removal of different weapon speeds, the formulaic design of equipment and stat distribution, it all does add up and take away some of the flavor of gear.

On the other hand, the simplification of equipment is easier to balance and work with. I know people like to meme on this games balance, but if corruption has shown anything it’s that deviating too much from that formula can have catastrophic levels of imbalance through procs or uniquely distributed stats and such. A lot was different back then.

So, honestly, I agree to an extent and disagree to an extent with both sides of this situation. In many ways the game has certainly lost bits of flavor by taking a much safer route with equipment design. That’s not to say that stand out pieces of equipment do not exist at all in Modern WoW. Things like Razor Coral for instance is a great example of a piece of very valuable loot that does have a memorable impact for those who get it. The problem, however, is that it’s much less frequent and once again is relegated to trinkets and sometimes weapons thus leaving 80% of your gear as merely being stat sticks.

I would not mind seeing a shift back the other way a bit, to see gear that breaks those molds a bit more. I mean, I have not hid the fact that I really with TBC style sockets and socket bonuses would return for instance.

3 Likes
17

Complains about stat gear currently

also complains about hit rating and expertise

1 Like
18

What? You think food has a more practical ability on the amount of hits you can take over armor?!

1 Like
19

Practically speaking, the amount of hits you can take should depend on the amount of armor stat you have, which is already present in the game, and counts towards your physical damage reduction.
Stamina in the real world is used to denote how healthy you are, and in game it increases your HP. This means that if your body is untrained, it won’t matter how much armor you wear; you’ll still have the same amount of Hit Points.

That’s why it makes sense to me. If you eat the right kind of food, you will temporarily feel more healthy and have more stamina. Armor? No.

1 Like
20

Stamina in the game directly correlates to the amount of hits you can take. Stronger armor is significantly more reasonable to help with this aspect than food. When you eat a grape, you don’t get the ability to absorb 2 more punches to the face. When I have a helmet on I am able to take more punches to the face. Armor value itself should reduce the amount of impact, which it also does by providing an extra layer between you and your attacker. As armor fatigues (you lose health in game), you then become vulnerable to strikes that kill you. I will concede that armor and stamina make it more redundant, but food having a larger impact on your ability to take hits? Absolutely not.

1 Like