Blizzard's Lost a Great OneFollow

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This.

Blizzard is trying to move away from Addons-Required, and for good reason.

How good is a game when you are required to download things written by third parties just to be able to participate? That means the game isn't very well designed. Imagine if Skyrim had a boss so powerful that he was impossible to kill unless you downloaded someone's mod that put an overpowered weapon/armor/spell in the game or something like that.

WoW needs to stand on its own with no third-party addons. And they're getting pretty close to that point now -- old addons are being written into the game by default (power auras, many raid warnings, dungeon/raid journals, maps inside of instances, rare mob icons appearing on minimap) and the fights are being tailored so you don't need DBM to tell you everything.

If the game were designed properly, you should be able to do everything in the game with nothing but the stock UI. Now of course this means no "one button mounts", no information about gear on other characters, and the stock UI which I've heard a lot of players say is "ugly as sin" (though I don't mind it), etc. Those are just QoL things that Blizzard might or might not include in the game.

Really wish Blizz would get onto a simple One-Button Random Mount, though. I mean that is so basic.... maybe someday they will.

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Well said.

I always wondered "why do they bother designing this stuff if someone is going to make a third party addon that'll do that for you?"

I've been a heavy addon user by my own standards, but I probably used less than many on this board. I was never the "must tailor my ui to be perfect" type. I mostly looked for the simple QoL changes.

That is my overwhelming complaint. Each expansion was like a new game. Classes were drastically changed to the point that they were often unrecognizable from the previous expansion. During some stints, classes would change drastically from patch to patch. I don't care so much about the nerfing and the buffing, but how it was done. Having to fundamentally relearn how to play my character I've had for years was getting annoying. Changes? Yes. But relearn? I had enough of it.

A lot of the changes make the class more interesting, though!

And of course advances in technology (new stuff they add to the game's engine) allows for more interesting play.

Think... I don't know, Ret Paladin.

Back in Wrath of the Lich King, Ret was a Yawnfest -- a computer could do it. In fact they had addons telling you what buttons to press when. How did that go... something like... Judge Crusader Exo Judge Crusader Exo Judge Crusader Exo or something like that? Oh wait, there was consecrate too.

Or how about Cataclysm Arcane Mage? Now that's something to laugh at. The "Two-Button Mage" where you literally only had 2 abilities with the occasional 3rd button to press now-and-then.

Those are very boring playstyles. MoP Arcane Mage is at least a little more interesting with the Bombs and the need to dump Arcane Power stacks, at least. Still simple, but at least there's a LITTLE more complexity to it.

And Ret Paladin, well, it got spruced up quite a bit, it is no longer 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 like it was before, especially if you take Divine Purpose for a little mix-up.

Yes, you need to "relearn" some classes sometimes... but usually changes THAT large only happen when there was something "wrong" with the class in the previous expansion that they couldn't quite figure out how to fix (Cataclysm Warlocks going into MoP, Demo got a lot of good changes which drastically altered the playstyle in a good way).

And some people LIKE re-learning their classes; it makes the game feel a little newer and more fresh if they're not using the same abilities and rotations for 3 years+.

Edited, Nov 29th 2013 7:10am by Lyrailis

The whole having an arcane mage and a kitty in the same raid was a good dichotomy, just for balancing out the universe at the very least.

Simple rotations don't really bother me much, they allow a development team to concentrate on making a more dynamic encounter. The less time you have to spend watching your CD timers and procs the more time you can spend on fight mechanics and the like. Fighting the boss instead of fighting with the global cooldown or something. There's only so much complexity the average person can deal with before getting glassy-eyed and standing in something.

Also, the constant parade of various secondary stats is amusing. Which ones are we adding and dropping this time?

Also also, some of us had a lot of fun playing Warlock in Cata, then change...

Edited, Nov 29th 2013 7:28am by someproteinguy

I kinda like Mastery.

Every class gets a passive ability that is boosted by a secondary stat found on your gear. A neat idea, though I think some classes could use better masteries (Arcane Mastery is ridiculously awesome, Ret Paladin Mastery is 'meh'.. Blood DK's mastery is hilariously good, etc).

The idea behind Mastery is an awesome one; they just need to make more classes have more better mastery passives. But then if they do that, then everybody wants to stack mastery instead of just a few people. Meh.

Either way, the Stat Itself is a nice idea. ArPen, though.... eeew. *shudder* That's the last thing we needed, another Hit/Expertise-type stat.

I don't mind them adding more secondaries, assuming said secondaries are actually interesting and don't have "caps" that you're expected to reach before you do anything else (that's why Defense/Hit/Expertise was stupid).

Edited, Nov 29th 2013 1:55pm by Lyrailis

Every class?

I know some classes had Mastery as being pretty important, but I didn't think that was true for *all* (or, well, 'pretty much every' as you said) classes, though. But then it has been awhile since I really cared about secondaries; I'm not trying to gear craft alts for SoO or anything.

Edited, Nov 29th 2013 4:41pm by Lyrailis

Yeah, it along with Haste has such a profound effect upon your performance.

Lately I've just been stacking Haste and then Mastery on all of my characters. lol. I don't care about a 1% chance to miss or a 3% chance to be dodged/parried. I do care about my Energy regenerating faster, Crusader Strike being usable again sooner, and my stuff hitting for more damage, though.

That and Timeless Isle gear loves over-capping you on Hit/Exp anyways. Most of my craft alts are well over the hit cap without even trying. I'm reforging out of Hit every chance I get and I'm still over cap on some of them.

Edited, Nov 29th 2013 8:01pm by Lyrailis

That sounds to me like more of an issue with UHDK's mastery than mastery as a whole.

But back to your point of mastery as a lazy way to balance stats - I disagree. Blizzard has multiple times this expansion tweaked other stats without messing with mastery. For example: Mistweaver monks. Haste and Crit weren't being valued enough, so Blizzard made Crit generate more mana for Mistweavers, and Haste give 50% more benefit while in Serpent Stance. The end result is making secondary stats more valuable without messing with their mastery at all. Even after some mastery specific buffs, it's still the weakest stat for them.

Haste and Crit don't just increase speed and Crit chance. For most classes, they have a secondary effect unique to the spec that Blizzard uses to balance the stat for that spec, rather than tweak the rate of return. Are these unique effects really so much different from mastery and how that stat does unique things for every spec?

man you guys know way more about these stats than i think anyone is supposed too I just go stab stab cast kick punch slice headbutt spin etc etc till mob is dead :)
well not really :) anyway this is all interesting reading actually it puts a lot of light on mastery which i didnt really know about. It makes you rethink how to reforge your stats...

I think it's a fundamental break in the core value of stat progression when you can just stop making gear with an intent for balance and instead just go ahead and change the effect of the gear on the player directly.

I think it's built into the structure of the game, of a vertical progression model, that gear needs to make you stronger over time, that your growth in strength needs to be comparable across classes, and that you can have measurable yardsticks by which to gauge your progress. When you're playing a Mistwalker and you have a certain +% mastery, I think it's a serious issue that switching your spec, alone, is going to break your conception of vertical progress. Because you don't have a measurable marker of where you were in the past. Because you now take 6x the mastery to increase by 1%.

Furthermore, there's an honesty to the value of gear and stat balance by holding each class to the same standard of stats. You might not use each stat in precisely the same way, but they're still having the same basic effect. The mechanic that governs crits is generally the mechanic that governs everything that makes crit more valuable for one class or another (namely, it's generally the event of landing a critical hit).

Same with hit. While our hit needs might change by class, the effect of hit is comprehensible. I understand, fundamentally, why I want hit. Why someone else wants hit. When it's me vs. someone else rolling on a piece of gear, I fundamentally understand what they stand to gain from the piece.

And I really, REALLY worry about a game that breaks stats into class-distinct pieces.

I mean, are you honestly comfortable with there being stats that are completely unique to specs in their influence? I mean, it's obviously so much easier to balance them that way, so why bother with anything else? We're now losing hit and expertise, which pretty much leaves us with haste, mastery, and crit for the known secondaries.

Do you really have no problem with the idea that they would just completely remove the defined impact of those stats and go a mastery route? That it might take a Mage 100 haste to go up 1%, but might take a Warlock 570? That a DK could get 1% attack speed for 70, but a Shaman needs 498?

That really, really bothers me. Because it makes gearing up so freaking arbitrary.

I sometimes tend towards a more scientific style of thought, wanting things measurable wherever possible. And the idea of a stat system that doesn't even bother to be uniform completely alienates me. It makes the entire process of gearing up feel so controlled and arbitrary.

Now, obviously gearing IS controlled. They don't just drop stat increases onto things at random. But when there's a standard every class is being held to, there's an assurance that you're getting SOMETHING of a sandbox experience.

That experience goes away when Blizz can just so carefully tailor the effect of stats on you that what you pick up barely even matters.


And to be 100% clear, some of this is clearly tinfoil hat stuff. It's also the position I've had since Cata, and I feel really quite reaffirmed in it with the stat conversations of WoD. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if things like cleaved were given unique conversion ratios by spec, and I honestly just wouldn't be interested in gearing up that way.

As it is, I scoff every time I have to take mastery. Because I freaking hate it.