Project Lore

Here are The Rockstars Of The Day Note: The below information was covered as part of our Live Blogging & Tweeting during the show.  But the information is simply too important to be glossed over.  Here are the major gameplay changes in one convenient, to the point package. I love math, but the number crunching in World of Warcraft has become incredibly complex lately.  To the point were it can become very difficult to decipher which piece of gear is best for one's spec.  I'm not referring to weighing just a few extra crit to a couple additional attack power.  I refer to the complex matrix of attack power, crit, hit, expertise, agility, armor penetration and stamina that Solidsamm has to worry about on a daily basis.  Then there are some statistics that overlap, Spirit and Mana per 5 seconds, or the stats that are damn near impossible to figure out without Blizzard's help.  It's because of this that Blizzard has decided to reorganize the core statistics, merging the overlaps, dropping some from gear or abandoning others entirely.

• Attack Power - AP is being removed from gear, and replaced with Agility for most classes (Druid, Rogues, Hunters, Shamans).  It's unconfirmed, but assumed, that plate wearers will gain AP from Strength.  We'll be receiving 2AP from each Agil/Str point.  One panelist stated that the side effect is that plate wearers will no longer want to steal "lesser" gear.
• Haste - Haste will no longer increase the speed of one's attacks.  Instead it is going to increase the rate of resource generation (energy, rage, runes, focus), excluding mana (see below).
• Spell Power - Spell Power is being tossed in with Intellect "to make it (Intellect) stop sucking".  Wasn't that a side effect of Intellect back in vanilla WoW?  I can't remember.
• Mana Per 5 Seconds (Mp5) - Like Spell Power, this stat will be merged with another, Spirit.  Spirit is to become the catch all statistic for mana regeneration.  Following that logic, every mana user will be given a Meditation type spell for situational regen purposes.
• Armor Penetration - The fact that Blizzard had to outright explain this stat, in detail, eludes to its confusing nature.  All you need to know is that it'll be gone when Cataclysm drops.
• Tanking - There's actually a pair of changes for the tanks out there.  Most importantly the Defense stat is getting booted from gear.  Instead, tank capable classes will cap the needed statistic via talents, like bear tanks.  Block Value is also taking a walk.  Let's not confuse this with the change made to blocking an attack.  A blocked attack will mitigate a percentage of the damage.
• Stamina - "GONE!" Obviously the panel was joking.  Stamina isn't seeing any direct changes, but the designers believe it will be a more level HP pool after all the other changes are put in place.  I believe it was Ghostcrawler that put it as "no more plate HP envy."

There are many players out there claiming that Blizzard is once again dumbing down the game, but I just don't see it that way.  As evidenced by the details above, most of the categories that are disappearing are being merged into another statistic because they were redundant.  Agility has always given Attack Power, so why have them be distinct points on gear?  Spell Power has always been a caster's AP, so the same logic follows. Tanks still need to worry about picking up the right talents to be defense capped, so that isn't any "dumber." The only changes that I can see as a dumbing down of WoW are the removal of Armor Penetration and the merger of Mp5 into Spirit.  That being said, Mp5 effectively is Spirit, just in an incredibly convoluted (quadratic equation fun time!) form.  And as I stated a few times already, ArmPen was drastically misunderstood until it was explained. I'll have follow up post(s) for other major changes later this week.  If there is anything specific you want us to go into then leave a comment here, @ProjectLore, @iTZKooPA or for one of the other bloggers.

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I got into a bit of an argument with Death knight tank in a PUG raid the other day that make me realize that tanking stats are often misunderstood. This particular tank was convinced that Stamina was the end all be all of tanking stats and that nothing else mattered. This is of course far from the truth, but it got me thinking.

With the introduction of a new tanking class, and the supposed tank shortage in general there are lots and lots of people playing a tank for the first time.

If that’s the case then there lots of people who need to understand tanking stats so that they can gear themselves to be the best tank they can be. With that said I have decided to do a series of blogs discussing the major tanking stats and saying what they mean. Hopefully this will give tanks and non-tanks alike an understanding of what tanks are looking for, and what to look for in a tank!

Today I would like to talk about the stat that everyone is talking about. Defense!

Defense

What is it? Defense is the one that you probably hear the most about. The reason for this is likely because it is the first major cap that up and coming tanks need to hit at level 80. Defense’s role is twofold. First it determines the level at which a mob can critically strike you. Secondly, it adds additional value to your avoidance stats (I'll get more into that next time).

How Much Do You Need? The reason that 540 is the defense cap is because when you reach 540 defense you can no longer be critically hit by a level 83 mob, and by level 83 mob I mean a raid boss. For every level you take off the mob, you can take 5 points off the max required defense rating to remain uncritable. If you are only running heroics then you really only need 535 defense because the highest level mob you will see there is level 82. If you want to be uncritable against a level 80 mob the you really only need 525 defense.

That being said if you want to raid, you need to push crits off the table. So your number one gearing priority needs to be reaching 540 defense.

You probably noticed during the leveling process that the higher your level, the less defense rating you are actually getting from your items. This is because defense scales with level, and you will need a tremendous amount to make sure you are at the cap at 80 if you are still leveling. Think ahead! Crafted gear is a great place to find defense for reaching that cap.

What is The Real World Raid Application? So we’ve pushed crits off the table, but why is that important? When you take a crit you are taking 200% damage. This is very high spikey damage that is unpredictable and hard to heal through. If a crit gets through and you are not topped of (or even sometimes if you are) you will likely die. Raid bosses can often hit for upwards of 10k on plate, it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out doubling that damage is very bad. If you die the raid wipes and you are an unpopular person... please resist the urge to blame the healers.

So there is a taste of my first Tanking 101 column. This first one is pretty basic, but please let me know what you think. Next time around I will be covering Avoidance, so stay tuned!

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