Player's Perspective Gaming

While seeing some of the changes as much needed changes to the game, I can't help but notice that come Cataclysm, the entire game will be changing. Again. From the looks of things, since they are going back to the old world and making it new, it is almost as if they are making the new stats, similar to the old ones. Kind of making the mechanics of the game now, somewhat like the way the game was when it first released.

But others have said that this is a way for them to take what they couldn't do then or what they hadn't thought of, and make it happen now. While some of the changes are for the good, others wonder if some of these changes will "break" the game.

I thought I would take a couple of parts that affects tanking and melee classes and bring them into the light a little bit more.

• Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
• Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.
• Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth
• Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.

Basically, this means that tanks will be taking a huge hit. While raiding now, it is common to see a normal tank with 40k health minimum. Now, at level 85 raiding, While you will have 55,000 health, a healing class and the rest of the raid will be very close to your amount of health at near 50,000 (these are not set in stone, merely a rough guesstimate number)

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:

• No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
  
• No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
  
• You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
  
• Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

What this means to tanks and all other classes is that there will be a huge health increase with the gain of stam on everything. Pair that with the removal or altering of all the other stats, will definitely make it more interesting. The PvP resilience change will have people turning their heads again. I was NOT a fan of the introduction of resilience, and I still am not. What used to be "May the better player win" is now "May the player with shinier gear win."

I will be posting a little bit more on random stats and changes as I see fit, but for now, here is the link to the full post for details on healers, DPS, and full stat and class changes.