Project Lore

Haste can sometimes be a hard stat to measure. Not being the mathematics whiz that some of my fellow WoW players are, I honestly couldn't tell you the difference between a spell that takes 2 seconds cast and another that takes only 1.9. Sure, I can generally assume that the latter will lead to more damage somewhere down the road, but does that make it worth gearing for as opposed to other stats that might have a more immediate or obvious effect? Like sand through an hourglass, so are the raids of lives... Well, Ghostcrawler and the rest of the Systems team has a plan to make Haste a more marketable stat than it ever has before: allowing it to effect "Heal over Time" and "Damage over Time" spells. According to a recent post on the official forums, this implementation would decrease the time between ticks on an individual cast, allowing the effects to be felt more frequently. For instance, let's say you know there's going to be some consistent damage coming in and a player is at very low health. You cast a HoT in hopes of keeping him alive, but the damage kills him in-between ticks. In this case, Haste might have saved him by ticking sooner than the damage did. Of course, this may present another problem, as GC points out:

"This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we're not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case."

So what's their solution? Instead of forcing the changes on players, toss Haste-increasing effects onto Glyphs, so they can choose whether or not it makes sense for them to make use of it:

"For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we're not sure how we're going to resolve those yet. For Shadow Word: Pain, we are likely to rename the current glyph to Glyph of Mind Flay, remove the old Glyph of Mind Flay, and increase Mind Flay by 10 yards in the base spell."

It should be noted that these changes are NOT guaranteed! This is just a concept that the team has been tossing around for a little while, and apparently they've stumbled across some new technology that actually allows them to do it. If they come to pass, though, they'll most likely be available for testing in an upcoming build of Patch 3.3 on the PTR. We'll be sure to keep you guys posted, but in the meantime, do you think that allowing Haste to affect HoTs and DoTs would help or hurt your performance in-game? Perhaps it should only be applied to damage-boosting glyphs so that the stakes are lower for healers?

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...