Pandaria Stat Changes

Ghostcrawler has posted a Dev Watercooler about upcoming Stat Changes in Mists of Pandaria.  Here are some reactions.

Spell Resistance

No more spell resistance. Pretty much the culmination of many years of moving in this directions. In the beginning everyone had to collect Fire Resistance sets for Ragnaros. Then only the tank had to collect resistance sets. Then maybe only one or two pieces for one or fights. And now none.

I'll kind of miss it, even though it was a lot of running around for a single fight. And then, finally completing your tank's set and watching him leave for another guild was terribly annoying.

Paladins also lose our Resistance Auras. However, Aura Mastery has been changed to reduce elemental damage directly, so we won't see any great change.

Hit and Expertise

I really like the linear nature of increasing hit requirements. Previously, there was a large step between +2 levels and +3 levels, especially for casters. This invariably caused issues with people learning to raid.

I like the consolidation of spell hit and hit into one stat. It's a lot simpler and straightforward. Same with the normalization of Expertise.

Being able to dodge arrows is also a welcome change, and having Hunters being able to use expertise will make gearing them and shaman a bit easier.

Casters using Expertise to reduce spell miss is a little bit weird. But it does give them another stat to play with. It's interesting that there's a slight difference in Hit and Expertise between casters and physical. Casters need a combination of Hit and Expertise that adds up to 15%. Physical needs 7.5% Hit and 7.5% Expertise.

Block

The double roll is actually how The Old Republic handles block. This probably makes block a lot harder to cap out, especially with diminishing returns. It may also devalue block, depending on how it's calculated. If 20% block means that 20% of hits are blocked, compared to 20% of attacks being blocked, that means that as you add more dodge and parry, the number of blocks goes down.

Update: Theck has a really good critique of the new block, with actual math demonstrating the point above.

It's also interesting to note that abilities like Shield of the Righteous now guarantee that the next hit will be blocked.

Resilience

Resilience is now becoming two stats: a PvP Offense stat and a PvP Defense stat. It's interesting that they are explicitly calling out the stats as a PvP stat. I do hope it cuts down on the number of tanks in PvP gear.

This is somewhat similar to the The Old Republic model, only they use a single stat for both sides. Having two stats might make tuning a little easier. Like if Blizzard wants PvP to speed up, they can reduce the value of defense, or increase the value of offense. Plus it gives two stats to play with for gemming.

The two stats will also be free in terms of cost. But the PvP item will be a slightly lower ilevel than the PvE item. But the PvE item will lack the two PvP stats. So gear will look like this:

PvE Item
100 Str
100 Sta
100 Haste
100 Critical

PvP Item
90 Str
90 Sta
90 Haste
90 Critical
90 PvP Offense
90 PvP Defense

So the PvP item is strictly worse in PvE, but is pretty close, and not as bad as PvP stats are today. And the PvE stats lack the Offense and Defense stats to really function well in PvP.

Conclusions

I think the PvE changes are pretty good, smoothing out the game and making it more intuitive, while giving classes more stats to play with. As for the PvP changes, they look good, but we'll see how they turn out.

The problem with PvE/PvP gear is that Blizzard wants the low end to be able to use either armor in either setting, but wants the high end to strictly use the relevant type. That's a pretty hard goal to hit.