Friday, February 8, 2013

What If: They Added New Secondary Stats

In another what if post we will delve into secondary stats.

First things first, we remove the unneeded secondary stats.  No more hit or expertise.  Lets face it, if you can not hit a dragon the size of a house standing right in front of you, you would not be a hero.  As such you surely should not have even made it to some epic battle because if you can't hit a 10 story dragon there is no way you would make contact with the first bear you run into and it would maul you to death and your young career as am adventurer would come to a quick and brutal end as a pile of twisted bones and blood and torn flesh.

Another stat going the way of the dodo for this what if is spirit.  It is not needed any more.  As spirit is converted to hit for some classes and not others it is not balanced to begin with and being we are removing hit we need to remove it as well.   Healers would receive their mana regeneration from intellect and get a passive boost to regeneration as is.  Lets face it, the complexity of healing should be from knowing what abilities to use and when to use them, not from spending the whole fight saying you hope your mana holds out.  So mana regeneration and spirit really need to go away.

Lets get to some of our what if new secondary stats.

Flanking:

Now all classes will have a tank ability.  Flanking would be like a second dodge but for each spec it would have a different side effect along with the damage avoidance.

For tanks, when you flank an attack it hits the attacker back for 50% of the damage that would have been done to you.  For damage dealing casters and hunters, it would increase haste by 20% for 6 seconds after you flank an attack.  The flank ability would need to transfer to pets for the pet classes of course, so they could still take use of it.  Melee DPS would receive a cleave action single target ability for the next 3 seconds hitting all targets within 8 yards for 20% of the damage done to the main target by a single target attack, if no secondary target is hit by the flanking cleave they would receive a shield that protects them for that 20% and it would last 20 seconds. And lastly, for healers, when you flank an attack your heals for the next 6 seconds will be increased by 50% and have no mana cost.

To make flanking useful in a questing, raiding and PvP environment you would also be able to flank magical attacks and AoE effects.

Could you imagine the desire to stack it for healers so they a healing boost?  And would they?  Would melee favor it for the fact that it effectively works as a heal when doing single target and a DPS boost when in multi target?  Who knows.

Immersion:

A new secondary stat that increases the ability of your signature ability by 5% per 1% of immersion you have. After you get 10% immersion you receive only 1% increased ability from your signature ability per 1% of immersion.

For a Disc priest it would be penance, for a survival hunter it would be explosive shot, you know the drill, you know what your signature ability is.  Would a warrior want to get to that 10% immersion to get 100% avoidance from shield wall?  Sounds like a holy crap thing but would it be worth it.  Would increasing the damage of explosive shot be worth not taking crit which would effect everything?  I am sure theory crafters would have some fun with this one and would have what they call soft caps on when it is no longer worth having immersion.

How about they create some secondary stats that do not come naturally on gear at all but you can reforge into them?

Speed:

I could see some PvPers wanting to turn a little of their other stats, even more so if it is an extremely poor secondary stat, into speed for when doing some PvPing.  The speed stat would stack with other speed modifiers.  Like if you have 10% extra from the speed state, effectively moving at 110% run, and have a 50% speed boost cooldown you would get an addition 55% and now move at 165% speed.  Could you imagine stacking speed and moving as fast as, or even faster, than a ground mount?  That would be insane and quite honestly would be something I could see myself actually using reforging while leveling.

I would reforge into speed because other stats do not matter while leveling.  Leveling is easy enough as is but a little speed boost never hurt the process any so I would gladly add some speed on my gear while leveling which would also mean it would be the only time I had ever even considered reforging anything while in the leveling process because let face it, who cares about stats until you stop leveling and they start to matter.

Luck:

Yes please.  Another stat that doesn't come on gear but you can reforge into it.  I would create a second set of gear just for grinding.  Skyshards in the vale, rare drops while out in the world. that stupid mount in UP that has still eluded me with over 500 attempts.  I would gladly create a second set of gear just to increase to luck of the drop rate of rare items.  I would go around finding every piece of each item for every slot and picking the one for each slot that has the highest secondary stat that I could turn into luck just for farming.

I could see many people doing the exact same thing, having their farming gear, all boosted out in the most luck secondary stat they can find.  I am drooling over the idea just thinking about it.  That mount will be mine even if I need to get to 30% luck to increase the chance of the rare items to drop by 30%.

I am not sure I would like the idea of new secondary stats on gear naturally.  Removing hit, expertise and spirit is a no brainier and should be done but do we really need other secondary stats?  I don't think so.  However, I would like the utility secondary stats, like speed and luck.  Stats that will never come on gear but you could reforge into them if you wanted them.  They are for utility only but they are something I would consider using.  I would love to see those new secondary stats added.

How about you?  What would you like to see if they added new secondary stats or would you even want them?

10 comments:

  1. Don't want them. Just get rid of hit/expertise/spirit/dodge/parry.

    Everybody just uses dps stats: main stat, stam, haste, crit, mastery.

    Haste should always increase resource regen and decrease cast times.

    Crit should work for offensive and defensive abilities.

    Anything else that's needed should just come from the base stat or mastery.

    I've never liked that tanks/healers have to use different gear than dps.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It does make thing more right and wrong, choice wise, having some of those things. They removed the ability of people to spec wrong because they did not like things being like that, I wonder how far behind removing simple math type numbers like hit and expertise are.

      If I remember correctly, not so long ago ghostcralwer hinted at the possible removal of them both some day in the future.

      Delete
  2. ooh, weird idea - why not just have STAM, DEX and INT? Pretty much that is all needs. And the different races have a basic STAM, DEX, INT and the players have 12 points to add to whichever one of the three they want too.

    STA = health and str
    Dex (the same as AGI) = crit, agi.
    INT = int, spirit (if needed)

    As far as haste - that is a practice skill. Same with Mastery - one has to practice to get mastery of something for example - to master a weapon, one practices with it, sleeps with it and even give a name-mine was Susan. What's sad, is that I name my daughter after a M-14.
    :(

    I like your "what ifs"!

    PS- I have seen people miss the side of a bldg with a shotgun. :(

    add to your ideas about "flanks" - the target size, front, flank, and rear - good ideas, and a computer can handle all the msth needed, but attacks should take in account - target size, which direction you attacking them (flank, rear, front), and elevation of the target(are they on higher ground or not).

    ok, not much sense, different ideas poping up but I am going to go with it.

    Like your what if's!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, have a few more what if ideas, might flow with it as a theme next week and continue them if no other things side track me.

      Simplifying stats just to make the gearing up process easier is something many people have talked about for a long time. I can see it happening actually. Maybe even next expansion. They seem to change everything ever expansion now anyway.

      Delete
  3. I like the idea of a secondary stat that doesn't naturally appear on gear...in fact, I propose that spirit be that stat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spirit would fit for that idea of secondary stats that do not naturally come on gear. Perfectly even.

      Delete
  4. I hope that bad winter storm misses you! And if it doesn't, I hope you and your family is only minor affected by it. Take care GE!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was no big deal in NY. Nothing different then a normal snow storm we have seen a hundred times before. Thanks for the thoughts.

      Delete
  5. When you said luck D3 came to mind. We had MF gear sets and switched it in at the kill. Anyone not doing this was 'doing it wrong'. I thought it was not fun at all. Blizz thought it wasn't fun either, so they made the Paragon system. Personally, I find this game has moved too much into the 'have enough time and you win' area (even raiding) as it is.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is the luck version of the game. As long as luck is a factor everything will be there for the person willing to grind it those most.

      With wow you can not switch gear but I guess that it would somewhat be the same. Although I had more mounts, pets, rare drops, etc in mind. Not so much for people like me that can't seem to get the weapon no matter how many times I am there. lol. Although it would be nice to ditch that luck factor too. Have an out clause. Sometime like if you kill a boss 20 times you get to choose what you want from it. The game saying, sorry we screwed you for 20 weeks, here, take what you want.

      Delete