Farewell to Cookie Cutters?
I wanted to take a moment and expand on a subject I touched upon briefly in my previous post outlining the new changes coming next year with Cataclysm. I realize we have, at minimum, a year to wait for the new expansion and there’s a couple of raids in between now and then; however, I wanted to attempt to get a discussion going because I’m honestly curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
There was a blue post a few days ago that caught my attention regarding the stat changes and the accusation that it was over-simplifying everything:
I find many of these arguments to be elitist. This is not a “catering to the casuals” issue. This is an issue that even some of our most educated and math-savy players could not make gear decisions without the help of external tools. We’re much less concerned about more casual players because the specific choice of upgrade will mean less for them (skill outweighs the contribution of stats for all but the absolute best players) and they often choose pieces based on things like art over stats.
I’m talking about very hardcore raiders who no longer could eyeball a piece of gear with any degree of authority. I might believe that some very few of you are so proficient with the math as to be able to eyeball the stats, but I think you are vastly overestimating the number of players who can or do. Remember, the formula to convert armor penetration into damage was so complicated that we had to take the unusual step of actually spelling out how it was calculated.
With this change will you still have to make hard choices about upgrading? Absolutely. Will there still be quasi-religious debates about which neck is best in slot for a given spec? Of course. Will you still need to understand the mechanics to make the best choice for your character? We think so. One of our overall design philosophies for WoW (and Blizzard) is to be simple but have a lot of depth. Some people mistake needless complexity for depth.
Meanwhile, we think there is a lot of benefit of getting rid of problematic stats like defense and accomplishing things like letting casters improve by focusing on throughput over mana pool.
Here’s the breakdown.
After Cataclysm, there will be multiple things that will effect your output as a tank/dps/healer:
- Gear (and, with that, Gems, Reforging and Enchants)
- Build (with Glyphs)
- Professions
- Mastery
- Path of the Titan
Right now, you can go to any number of popular websites and find THE build and gear setup for your particular class that will make you the best you can be. If you follow X template, you are the best. Period.
I think this has led to the issue that the Blue mentions above when they say that players are getting to the point where they memorize a list of BiS and go for those items to the exclusion of everything else because someone told them it was the best. It’s taken the thought out of gearing and balancing. I realize a lot of this had to do with the vast number of stats we have to balance to achieve and optimal level of performance, thus the “over-simplification” of stats in the upcoming xpac.
Does this mean cookie cutter specs and BiS lists will go away with Cataclysm? I don’t think so but my hope is we’ll have a couple of lists instead of one list. Something like:
“If you went with X Path of the Titan and Y Mastery, then here’s a BiS gear list for you, but this is purely dependent on your reforging and profession buffs.”
And so on. This means a helluvalot more theorycrafting coming from the think-tanks, which is all well and good and, yes, I will still read it all. But here’s my hope.
I hope that, with the vast number of combinations of Paths, Mastery, Builds, Reforging, Gear combinations, Gems, Enchants, Profession Buffs and more, people will start to make their own choices. The simplification of stats allows for this and even encourages it. There is a whole new glyph system with your chosen Path; a whole set of Mastery tools for your build; possibly new Profession buffs to correlate with the stat changes; and more. What I’m hoping is that, instead of Cookie Cutter Spec A being used by every Enhancement Shaman in a progressive raiding guild, you’ll have something more akin to the “Top Ten Enhancement Shaman Systems.”
But I want to know your thoughts on it. Do you think we’ll still have set in stone cookie cutter specs for everyone or do you think a significant change is coming? Is this good or bad?
