Lol spell power

| Monday, October 25, 2010
With the recent changes to stats, I've been thinking a lot about gear. Again. And vanilla. Of course. For me the most noticeable change has been spell power going away. Suddenly all the caster gear looks like pre-BC blues. Heavy on stats but not a secondary in sight. Intellect reigns supreme.

Klepsacovic and Troll Racials are Overpowered make no claims about the usefulness, either relative or absolute, of intellect. The phrase "intellect reigns supreme" is not to be taken as advice. Please consult with your personal Elitist Jerk before taking intellect supplements or altering your stat weights. The opinions contained in this blog are purely the personal opinions of the blogger Klepsacovic and should be taken as an indication of the overall stance of the blog Troll Racials are Overpowered.


I'm waiting for "of the eagle" gear to start popping up.

The writer Klepsacovic is speaking in a metaphorical sense and is not implying that he is suspending all activities until the "popping up" of "of the eagle" gear.

Lawyers...

As usually happens, my train of thought hit one of those splitter things and cars detached and went all over the place. Some crashed. Another ran through a crossing with no gates, killing several other thoughts which were out for a leisurely drive.

I forgot what I was saying.

Panda? Puppy? Pierogi? Pumice! Oh right, gear. See, I had it all along.

Sets are fascinating to me, and a huge challenge. If the set bonus is too strong then off-set pieces are undesired, causing problems in most loot systems. But if they're too weak, then set pieces also cause problems. But if a set was just as strong altogether as a non-set 'set', then why bother with the set and coordinating? Perhaps non-set loot is just there as filler for slots with no set or to fill in while building the set. But that's obviously not true. Some sets are good, some aren't.

Thinking about vanilla also made me think of not just what gear or stats we went for, but that very idea of going for gear. I can't remember the last drop I used. Okay tanking weapon from ICC10. But before that? I'm covered in badge loot. It's not that the RNG hasn't made offerings, but I have my badge loot already, my sets and bonuses and 264 when the RNG in ICC10 offers me 251 and who wants that? A couple weeks ago my mage was thrilled to get a couple greens off mobs in Borean Tundra.

Speaking of which, would blues be more 'legitimate' if they dropped in raids? ZG and AQ20 both had blue drops in them. They weren't trivial places, so a person could have some pride in their blues. My shaman was glad to get Zulian Scepter of Rites and Gloves of the Tormented. Blues! Can you imagine raiding and being glad to have a blue? Oh sure, he had some epics. He liked his 'welfare epics' of The Unstoppable Force and Don Julio's Band. They were expensive! At least I enjoyed Alterac Valley, since getting exalted was a long process (I've done it on at least a half-dozen characters, I loved that place). Oh but the blues, I used those two! Cloaks and necklaces and even a belt. Who cares if frost resist wasn't a particularly useful stat?

3 comments:

Syl said...

They're turning back the wheel in many ways, yes. not just the stat-heavy items, but overall the simplification of stats and talents, the (supposed) changes to healthpools and mana management, the (again supposed) changes to epic gear.

I guess it's the old story about experimenting for a while and then reverting to older values and arriving where you started. it's not a bad thing, the journey is usually required in order to understand what can be done better but also what wasn't actually broken - maybe they can find a middle way to approach some of the core issues of the game in Cataclysm. the theme of the expansion is a comeback of sorts too, so it all comes together nicely. we'll see. ;)

Nils said...

the journey is usually required in order to understand

Of course, there are some people like myself, who knew from the beginning that making every reasonable level 80 item epic, would not be the answer to our prayers.

Perhaps I am just too smart for this planet :)

The Gnome of Zurich said...

Really, stats don't seem much simpler to me than they used to.

the only things they got rid of are spellpower defense and armor pen. And they didn't even really get rid of spellpower. You still have it on some items and on enhancements/enchants, and you need to know it to know how hard your spells will hit. You are just getting it from intellect now.

It's certainly a lot easier to gear a tank now, but other than that I don't see that much has changed in terms of complexity.

I do very much like the gear approach for shamans where I can use the exact same gear set for ele and resto and be pretty close to minmax, as spirit is probably the second best stat for both specs now (ele gets hit, and resto gets Mp5 in combat), so my shammy is looking set.

spirit is back to being entirely useless for arcane mages though.

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