Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Reforging > Gemming

I would like to express how satisfied I am with the new Reforging system. It gives me a serious maths-boner.

With every gear upgrade you literally have to solve the equivalent of an algebraic equation to find the most efficient way to forge your gear to hit all the relevant caps and have the best combination of DPS stats afterwards. It's the kind of thing that I fully expect someone to create a mod to automate, where you enter your stat weightings and it tells you how to reforge optimally. Which will be a bit of a shame, because I had a lot of fun using an physical A4 notepad and pen to jot down notes while minmaxing my Warlock last week. Though I shudder a bit when I think of how complicated this equation would be for non-DW melee classes who will have both expertise and hit to contend with.

The best thing about this change is that it takes the pressure off gems to reach stat caps. Reforging will much more efficient and effective at hitting those numbers exactly, so your gem sockets can be better used to stack the non-reforgable Primary stats. So this change will probably negatively affect the market for gems, as they lose their previous place as the easiest [if not only] way to fine tune your stats, though straightforward gemming is going to be a really helpful thing for most players.

There is one more diatribe I would like to get out before I post, which is that Spirit really should not be a Primary stat.

No system in the game treats it like a primary stat any more; it shares its stat budget with "green" stats, Kings doesn't buff it, there's no restriction to reforging it, it is equivalent to mp5 for healers and equivalent to hit rating for others, and is basically inferior to primary stats for any class of any spec. When I see Spirit on gear, I have to try to visualise it down with the other green stats to get a sense of the item's value.

With this new re-working of the game to focus back on primary stats, I'm really disappointed that Spirit is still included as one. It's a green stat dressed up.

Yes, this is the kind of thing that irritates me. I am that type of person. Nerf my class if you must, but dammit the stats must be the correct colour. I also propose we rename it to Spirit Rating and make the number on the item three or four times removed from the actual benefit, just for congruency. =)

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