Revive & Rejuvenate: Information released about stat changes for Cataclysm

Tuesday, 2 March 2010

Information released about stat changes for Cataclysm

You may have seen links to the recent blue post from Eyonix on the stat changes coming in Cataclysm. If you haven't, go read the full text of it on Big Bear Butt's awesome blog or the original forum post, then make sure to come back here. BBB also discusses what the changes might mean for Bears. Done? Let's continue.

Update: World of Raids has posted a summary of the responses from the Blues to player questions about these planned changes. Interesting reading!

I don't want to talk about the changes in detail, as they haven't given us a lot of specifics yet. In addition, these changes will come in before Cataclysm (probably a patch 4.0 or similar), but that is still a loooong way off so we don't need to worry about it just yet.

I will, however, attempt to summarise for Trees and Moonkin.

Spellpower will be removed from armour, and instead we'll get it from Intellect. Weapons will still have spellpower. They're not removing spellpower completely, just not itemising specifically for it on armour.
Healers will be the only ones to use Spirit on gear, apart from Moonkin and Elemental Shaman. This means we will still be able to use healing gear for offspec, which is very useful. I also like that there will be more of a delineation between caster and healer gear.
Druids will get a bonus from wearing leather armour over cloth. I like this idea a lot, especially since they took away the ability to roll need on cloth.
Mp5 is going away. No great loss for trees!
They are improving lower level quest rewards, making more of them caster leather. To be honest this has been a long time coming. As someone who has recently leveled up, I can say that I wore cloth pretty much the whole way. It would be really nice to turn in a quest and have something other than caster cloth and agility leather to choose from.
Moonkin will get their some of their hit rating from spirit. The changes for Balance Druids seem a bit complicated, but from the way it sounds at the moment it's going to involve calculating a sliding hit cap depending on your spirit, and the level of content you are at. I foresee spreadsheets.

What does this mean for now? Not a lot. Well, if you're in a raid and an item drops that's a sidegrade or slight downgrade, and no-one wants it, you might as well take it and bank it. You never know what might end up being an upgrade once the stats are switched around. A similar thing happened to me before patch 3.0. My guild at the time was in Mount Hyjal, and no-one understood why a shadow priest would want to roll on a necklace with +Fire damage on it, but after patch 3.0 it became +spellpower and a huge upgrade for me.

Of course it's still development days and all of this could be gone by the time the Alpha starts. As a first batch of released information about the expansion, it's interesting to mull over!

PS. Image at the top is from the awesome wallpaper collection at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/media/

Spellpower will be removed from armour, and instead we'll get it from Intellect. Weapons will still have spellpower. They're not removing spellpower completely, just not itemising specifically for it on armour.
Healers will be the only ones to use Spirit on gear, apart from Moonkin and Elemental Shaman. This means we will still be able to use healing gear for offspec, which is very useful. I also like that there will be more of a delineation between caster and healer gear.
Druids will get a bonus from wearing leather armour over cloth. I like this idea a lot, especially since they took away the ability to roll need on cloth.
Mp5 is going away. No great loss for trees!
They are improving lower level quest rewards, making more of them caster leather. To be honest this has been a long time coming. As someone who has recently leveled up, I can say that I wore cloth pretty much the whole way. It would be really nice to turn in a quest and have something other than caster cloth and agility leather to choose from.
Moonkin will get their some of their hit rating from spirit. The changes for Balance Druids seem a bit complicated, but from the way it sounds at the moment it's going to involve calculating a sliding hit cap depending on your spirit, and the level of content you are at. I foresee spreadsheets.