Cataclysm Guide to Mastery and Stat Changes
As most of you know, panels from last year’s Blizzcon and posts from the official forums have discussed about the major changes brought about by the latest World of Warcraft patch, CATACLYSM.
These major changes also affect the most familiar character stats like Defense, Intellect, Armor Penetration and others; these stat changes were designed to make the stats easier to understand and to make gear choices a little bit more interesting. As these changes will surely have a huge impact on how stats work and relate with one another, let’s take a look at what’s in store for the players and the rationale behind it before Cataclysm arrives.
Stats in Gears:
Stamina – Non plate wearing characters will have more stamina than before. Health pools between plate wearers and non plate wearers will be a lot closer.
Intellect – Intellect will now grant spell power and will also provide less mana than before.
Haste – Haste becomes more attractive to the melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly.
Block Rating – Block is being redesigned to scale better; meaning blocked attacks will hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block.
Parry – Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will hit for 50% damage (if they hit). Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the enemy’s attacks while Parry avoids only 50% of the damage from two attacks while Block prevents at least 30% damage from one attack.
Mastery – This is a new stat which allows players to become better at whatever makes their talent tree cool and unique.
Armor – Even though the way Armor lessens damage hasn’t changed, the Armor stat has been rebalanced to compliment the changes in Cataclysm. As a result of this stat changed, Armor will go down slightly. Blizzard is also changing the way other armor types lessen damage; in this case, plate won’t offer much more protection than leather, mail and cloth.
Resilience – This stat will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players.
Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise and Critical Strike Rating – These stats will still appear on Gears.
Stats Removed From Items
Attack Power – This stat will no longer appear on most items as a flat value; it will only show up on some process.
Spell Power – This is another stat which you will no longer be seeing on items. As mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. The only exceptions are the caster weapons which will still show the Spell Power stat.
Armor Penetration – Even though this stat will no longer be displayed in items, Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.
Stats Removed Completely
MP5 – MP5 will be removed from the game completely; Holy Paladins and Restoration Shamans will benefit from Spirit.
Spell Ranks – Spell Ranks will also be removed. All spells will only have one rank and will scale with level.
Defense – Defense is removed from the game entirely; Tanking classes should expect to be uncrittable against critters just by using Bear Form, Defensive Stance and Frost Presence or Righteous Fury.
Mastery Updates
New information has been released in the WoW forums regarding the Mastery System. According to Eyonix, Blizzard wants to accomplish 3 things with the new system:
- Give players more freedom in stat point allocation
- Simplify talents that try to do too much
- Adds new stat to high level gears that makes you better at your role.
In the coming patch, players will be expecting bonuses specific to the tree such as:
- First Bonus: Increase damage, healing and survivability
- Second Bonus: Raise a stat desirable to players (usually found in Gears) such as Haste or Crit.
- Third Bonus: Completely unique to the tree. Bonus will benefit from the mastery rating found on high level (level 85) Gears.
These are just some of the stat changes that will be implemented in World of Warcraft’s new patch, Cataclysm.
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