Secondary Stats: The Illusion of Choice

Community General Discussion
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I wanted to open a discussion about secondary stats—Mastery, Haste, Versatility, and Critical Strike—and how they often present an illusion of choice rather than true customization. While these stats theoretically offer ways to tailor our characters to different playstyles, the reality is far less flexible.

Here are some key points to consider:

1. Forced Into Meta Stats

For most classes and specializations, there’s a clear hierarchy of “best stats.” Whether you’re raiding, PvPing, or Mythic+ running, it’s almost always a single stat or two that dominate. If you deviate from these meta stats, you essentially nerf your character. This means that players who want to experiment or choose stats that feel thematically appropriate to their character are punished for doing so.

2. Lack of Real Variance in Builds

Secondary stats should, in theory, allow for different viable builds, but that’s not how it plays out. The “best” stats are so heavily weighted that every other option becomes irrelevant. This lack of diversity in viable builds removes a layer of meaningful choice from the game.

3. Secondary Stats Create a Trap for Casual Players

Casual players or those who don’t min-max often fall into the trap of picking “incorrect” stats because they may not know the meta. As a result, they unintentionally underperform, which can feel disheartening. The system doesn’t provide much flexibility for players to prioritize “what feels good” without severely impacting their character’s effectiveness.

4. Encouraging True Customization

If secondary stats are meant to provide flexibility, we need a system where the gap between the “best” and “worst” stats is much narrower. Balancing secondary stats so they’re closer in power would give players more freedom to experiment without feeling penalized.

5. Potential Solutions

  • Rebalance Secondary Stats: Narrow the performance gaps so that all secondary stats have competitive value for every class and spec.
  • Stat Swapping: Introduce a system that allows players to redistribute secondary stats on gear, empowering them to experiment with different setups without losing out entirely.
  • Scaling Secondary Stats: Create diminishing returns on stacking one or two stats, encouraging broader distribution and incentivizing hybrid builds.
  • Completely Get Rid of Secondary Stats: Basically this would allow for more balancing on actual classes/specs rather than the stats they can/can’t receive.

At its core, World of Warcraft is an RPG, and secondary stats should be a way for players to customize their characters and experiment with different playstyles. However, the current system limits creativity and forces players into cookie-cutter builds. Let’s work towards a system that rewards innovation and makes all stats feel viable.

I’d love to hear what other players and the dev team think about this issue. Are there ways we could make secondary stats more meaningful without punishing off-meta builds?

Thank you for reading,
Farmerdan

3 Likes
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Just wait until you learn you don’t have to play “meta”.

6 Likes
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A lot of the issue is that: Mastery is a terrible stat and haste shouldn’t have been introduced.

Haste used to be simply faster GCD. Then people whined and it became mp5/energy Regen/cdr.

Because of that, it’s often a really strong stat, and overall tuning is balanced around it. Such as Paladin and WW monk.

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Goodluck getting into high-end groups with your dps/healing lacking by 10-20% since you don’t have the recommended stats.

2 Likes
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Its also s1. Haste tends to be strong due to new xpac and stat scaling.
Like that feeling at lvl 70 in your 500+ gear. And that same gear at lvl 80.
Everyone being 5% haste or so as a fresh 80. You almost have to go full haste until a certain ilvl and you begin hitting those soft caps.

My dk for example. Being a lvl 80 unholy during early access was painful. Terrible rune regen. Very low apm.
Now being above 600, less is going into haste now Ive hit those thresholds and more are going into other stats.

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This is like the first time in a decade WW wants haste lol.

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On the flip side, there’s a neat thing that happens if I’m playing several alts of the same class, get them up to the same gear plateau and because each of them ends up with different stat weights, it sometimes becomes blindingly obvious even to me that one setup is better than another and I learn something.

As long as people aren’t complaining about content I’m doing being too easy for them and trying to get the difficulty increased / rewards nerfed, I usually do ok. Usually. Shadowlands may have been an exception where the sum of all the suboptimal choices multiplied together to make even basic world content unpleasant.

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Yeah you not gonna be able to make it to where all secondary stats are truly equal. Just let the min-maxer nerds work they magic n gear accordingly if you wanna min-max too.

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Whats next?

There is an “illusion of choice” with your dps rotation, and due to that all dps buttons should do the same dps per button hit?

2 Likes
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Not exactly, DPS rotations change per/fight, group, spec, and dungeon. Secondary stats don’t really change, except for maybe whether your doing PVP or PVE. Then you are railroaded into specific stats.

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my secondaries often change on the build within my spec.

which means if I wanted to optimize my secondaries change in value on different fights within a single raid.

they definitely change if I change specs.

1 Like
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I’m not really interested in making them equal. They are more or less meaningless overall since most people feel and are obligated to choose the best stats regardless.

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My secondary stats prio is not the same for m+ as it is raid, it’s almost the opposite.

2 Likes
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This already exists, it typically just doesn’t matter much early on in the expansion because the values things start to DR at are quite high.

Also worth mentioning is that secondary stats are valued relative to eachother. The more of something you have, the more valuable everything else becomes relative to it, which provides more balance to stats overall barring a few specific specs.

It is rarely, if ever, correct to put the same 2 stats on every single item. You will most likely want some balance of all 4, especially from the second patch onwards.

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So it makes sense to have a set for every spec and a set for every type of content (mythic+, raid, PVP) above 620 gear? That could ultimately be an average of 9 different gear sets or more that need to be at an adequate item level.

How is that reasonable at all?

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Well you aren’t getting full bis for a long time, by the time you do, good chance you have those sets on the side.

I do.

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Your argument might hold more water if you were correct in your assumptions. Crit is typically fire’s worst stat because the spec has enough sources of critical strike from its own mechanics.

Then there’s this

Above certain levels, secondary stats have diminished returns. As the expansion goes on, Fire Mages will have a nice spread of Haste, Versatility, and Critical Strike while generally avoiding diminished returns.

1 Like
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It’s just an example. I could literally delete that sentence, and the post would hold the same merit.

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And if this is irrelevant? Not to mention, what if you are mainly a solo player? Your “priority stats” might vary from when you are trying to ‘get into those high groups’. And some classes have massive variation on what the primary stats are, based on their class. I mean, the primary examples picked were a pure caster dps and a two-spec healer caster. I seriously doubt a druid has all four specs needing the same two stat priority, and a quick check on IV shows:

Guardian - V=H=C for dps, H->V->M for surv
Balance - M-> H → V
Feral - M & C are even > AGI
Resto - get out your calculators…

All classes are like this, except maybe mage who is three variants of the same (caster DPS). And I’d love to see how few folks are out there with full 639 ilvl gear in ALL of the exact stats with ALL of the gem sockets with ALL of the perfect gems and ALL of the perfect enchants.

Folks love to talk about META, or “recommended stats”, but it’s a constantly moving target. You aren’t going to take the right ‘secondary stats’ if you can gain 10 ilevels, for example.

Perfect stats and gear setup, it’s a ‘target’, IF, and this is a big IF, your goal is perfection. But it’s hardly ever going to happen.

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I will be honest, if a piece of gear is good and has my best secondary I’m like sweet, if it’s good and doesn’t I’m like alright. Hasn’t been a problem yet.