Excellent recap, thanks! It might be worth mentioning that bonus armor increases the attack power of all tanks thanks to the Bladed Armor passive. It's not just an Effective Health bonus.
The only reason I'm hesitant about WoD at all (even though I have the pre-order lol) is because these tertiary stats sound a lot like how Diablo's gear works. Not only do we have to pray anything we can use drops, but now we have to pray that item has our favorable stats + augmentations on it? They increased the chances something will drop that you can simply use with this all-inclusive idea of 'plate is plate, no more int-plate and str-plate' etc. Which is wonderful! Now, to receive the best-in-slot with these tertiary stats and augmentations you have to hope that piece of armor has:1. the highest ilvl available (e.g. warforged)2. your favorite tertiary; out of however many possibilities there are for that item. It does appear they limited that to a single tertiary type per slot (bracers can have lifesteal, gloves can have cleave etc.). If that's true, it drastically helps our odds!3. a bonus gem socket on it! Getting all three of those in your favor sounds like a 0.00001% drop chance for a single piece of gear to me. Multiply that by all of your equipment slots and nobody will reach "best-in slot" before the next expansion! The whole reason I don't play Diablo is because I'm a perfectionist and there's just not enough time in one's life to get the best gear possible with that model. I know, I don't need the best of the best to play and succeed in the game. It's just so demoralizing knowing there's a better version of what you just got, for the same amount of effort, and you'll just have to try again next week.I just hope I missed an important memo somewhere that proves me wrong.
Am I the only one here that think they're really squishing out the fun of looting during leveling? With this kind of squish, leveling to 90 will be like leveling from 10 to 15 now.. "OMG, a dagger that gives me 1 more agility! Such OP, much wow" Imagine all the in-game mayhem when someone finds an item that has 2 more strength than what he has :D. Yes, I'm being really sarcastic right now, but I'm just very curious about the leveling process with such low numbers.. Okay, a stat-crunch was needed, but really.. from 4k to not even 200 as is shown with some items here? I'm feeling like I could take on Illidan stormrage like that ony my 90 dk with lvl 1 gear as a matter of speaking..or will this new gear even prevent me from soloing him since the numerical difference is pretty much zero from 70 to 90 gear..?
@Pragmatic soul, this is about gear changes, not about why you're not getting better gear. I think you're in the wrong forum. Besides, complaining on wowhead isn't going to get you what you want, it's only going to detriment people who read comments. Anyways about the gear, I'm glad it's going down finally. I was getting so tired of seeing thousands and thousands of damage. It seems like it will be back down to wrath level again where people were more evenly matched and the gear just made you just a tad better. Also I really really hope they shy away from putting another timeless isle in the next expansion because that gears item level might have been 535 with the upgrade token but the stats on it were complete crap compared to a 528 from SoO. It may have gotten you a higher item level than people who didn't have those pieces but it didn't reflect on dps. It was just a cheap way of getting into LFR and being carried.
"We are not dumbing the Game down"
"Bonus rolls will be more intelligent in Warlords and take items you've recently gotten from rolls into account."This is the single best thing I've seen in all the notes. If this means I don't get the same trinket I'm already wearing 5 weeks in a row, I'll be thrilled.
Multistrike better give a lot more proc/point than crit or else its a useless stat (for most classes). It's essentially watered down crit that can also be based of crit but not proc any abilities that function via crit (explosive shot, extra secondary resource).
I'm very nervous about the changes to crit, specifically that intellect and agility no longer add to it. Giving agility users and extra 10% crit chance helps them somewhat, but what about intellect using damage specs that are crit dependent like boomies or fire mages? Aren't they kinda getting completely screwed by this change as it is written here? Maybe I'm missing something, but when I put my boomy into the tool to show me what his gear will look like in warlords, his crit change percentage dropped like a stone. This will kill boomy dps, and boomies can't afford to be nerfed, they are already average at best in any fight that doesn't allow multi-dotting.
My rogue mastery is at 80.00% and guess what im going to lose it all!
Now I see what they've lead with so much fore-warning and explanaition about the squish. That is a pretty shocking difference.The new scaling reminds me of pen-and-paper AD&D, where +1 was "Ooooo!" and a +3 was "Oh crap, I'm a naughty dwarven god!"
So will we do less dmg now and dont be able to solo-farm old raids for stuff we need/want? will the mobs and bosses kill us?
Where do I see the damage?