Possible Spirit Change

[Quark]

What if spirit was given an attribute that worked as a counter to crit%? This would operate in a way that amassed spirit would serve to reduce the crit% of attacking foes, thereby reducing potential damage dealt and inversely affecting survivability. It might be something that takes effect solely in PvP.

Discuss.

Besides the fact that it makes no game-style sense at all ... I dunno. I'd have to see it in action. At least spirit would have a use PvP after this.

[Zarathustra]

My question would be just how much spirit would decrease critical hit chance by 1%, and how this compares to Defense. I would also ask why this is a necessary change to protect cloth, and whether the more heavily armored classes will be able to decrease spell crits against them in a like fashion.

This would benefit Priests, Mages, Druids, and to a much lesser extent Paladins. Warlocks would still have no way to reduce their chance of taking a critical hit. It seems a kneejerk response to clothwearers saying they're getting one-shotted with ambushes, mortal strikes, and aimed shots. As if mages aren't already deadly using an invisibility potion and running into groups to do some Arcane Explosion spamming, now they can't be critted because they've got high spirit?

Bad idea. And that's coming from a Druid with nearly 300 spirit.

Addition: If they really want to see this abused, I'll simply try some PvP in Dire Bear form with 10k armor (subpar feral gear and zero feral talents), increased hitpoints, and a rather decreased chance to take a crit because of my high spirit.

[MongoJerry]

Nah, just increase the defensive stats on items in general. Have more stamina on gear, maybe +defence on cloth items, +dodge%, etc. The problem is that offence has just increased in power way too much compared to defense. I should be able to last as long in my tier 2 epic priest gear versus a tier 2 epic warrior as I did when we both were wearing tier 1 blues.

[Sheep]

I was frustrated by having to choose whether I wanted to use "Feral gear" or "Caster gear" when I was playing my Druid. My idea for consolidating the two was to have spirit give a bonus to feral forms. Thus, it would be an all around useful stat, which still had to be balanced with other form specific stats.

Besides, lore-wise, don't Druids transform using their strong will? This being the reason they could simply transform out of polymorph instead of enjoying the grass, as I understood it. A strong willed person can be described as "spirited." ;)

[Frag]

Nah, just increase the defensive stats on items in general.  Have more stamina on gear, maybe +defence on cloth items, +dodge%, etc.  The problem is that offence has just increased in power way too much compared to defense.  I should be able to last as long in my tier 2 epic priest gear versus a tier 2 epic warrior as I did when we both were wearing tier 1 blues.
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Frankly, if you're wearing Trancendance & he's wearing Wrath, just

/point
/laugh
/rofl

And he'll run home crying because he looks like Rhino MegaMan redux. :D

~Frag

[castille]

How about something that actually falls in line with spirit?

Like every 100 points of spirit = 1% regen in combat? Like a crit percentage, but it actually rewards you -- not much, mind you, but at least a little bit.

[Lissa]

How about something that actually falls in line with spirit?

Like every 100 points of spirit = 1% regen in combat? Like a crit percentage, but it actually rewards you -- not much, mind you, but at least a little bit.
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Personally, I always liked the idea of Spirit increase Healing/Damage. Say every 10 points of Spirit you have you get +1 Healing/Damage (or maybe +2 Healing/+1 Damage).

Higher spirit means you should be able to focus your energies into your spells better. Making someone else crit because you have a higher spirit makes little sense to me.

[Ashkael]

Having spirit reduce the chances of getting a critical strike on you is ridiculous. This idea was proposed by Tseric on the mage forums as a means to help with mage survibability. What they don't realize is that such a change will hurt mages even more, since NO mage focuses on spirit for PvP, and most of the caster DPS gear has NO spirit on it. Not to mention this will nerf mages even more against clases with high spirit such as certain priest builds and druids.

The idea is just ridiculously stupid. If they ever implement this change, they would have to revise all the DPS and PvP cloth armor to add heaps of spirit to it. But no, they won't do this. Instead, they will add all the DPS cloth armor with heaps of spirits on a new 80-man instance that will come in patch 2.5 or something. As things stand right now, as a mage you need to stack spellpower gear to be able to remain competitive in terms of damage output in PvP against epic'd out oponents. Of course, when we do this we have to sacrifice stats because let's face it: DPS cloth gear is gimped on stats due to the formula Blizzard uses to budget mod allocation to gear (spellpower takes up a significant amount of this "budget", leaving no room for stats).

All Blizzard needs to do to fix the countless number of mages whining about survibablity is to sit down and fix their retarded caster itemization. Why is it that classes such as hunters/rogues/warriors get stuff with Crit and Attack Power AND stats on top of that? Why can't the Ring of Spellpower have intellect and stamina? Why does the Robe of Volatile Power have LESS stats than a Dreadmist Robe? Blizzard seriously needs to sit down and fix caster itemization once and for all. But we all know this won't happen, they will keep on adding even MORE new modifiers (such as spell chance to hit, and more recently spell penetration which is bollocks) to further complicate the itemization issue and dillute the root of the problem even more.

To put it simple, the idea of spirit decreasing your chances of getting critted will complicate the HUGE caster itemization problem even more. It's a horrible idea.

Personally, I always liked the idea of Spirit increase Healing/Damage.  Say every 10 points of Spirit you have you get +1 Healing/Damage (or maybe +2 Healing/+1 Damage). 

Higher spirit means you should be able to focus your energies into your spells better.  Making someone else crit because you have a higher spirit makes little sense to me.
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It would make more sense to me to have Intellect have a positive impact on the damage your spells do. After all, Mages and Warlocks are not born with a default knowledge of elemental and demonology magic, they have to learn it. So, I think it makes more sense that the more intelligent you are, the better you are at dealing damage with your spells. By the same token, Spirit should have a positive impact on healing spells and maybe, just maybe, make spirit give a chance of preventing spell interruption.

[ima_nerd]

Until I played my Priest to 60, I ignored the caster itemization issue. Once I started getting my ass kicked by epic'd out physical damage classes yet I was still able to hang with epic'd spell damage classes I really noticed it. The damage increase a Warrior gets froma Spinal Reaper upgrading off an Arcanite Reaper is absolutely ridiculous compared to say, a Mage upgrading to Azuresong Mageblade off a Rod of the Ogre Magi. The best balance between the classes occurs somewhere in the low 50s. Physical classes can start getting nice weapons while casters still have new ranks of spells. Once you hit 60, it's all over for us squishies.

[TheLuminaire]

Until I played my Priest to 60, I ignored the caster itemization issue. Once I started getting my ass kicked by epic'd out physical damage classes yet I was still able to hang with epic'd spell damage classes I really noticed it. The damage increase a Warrior gets froma Spinal Reaper upgrading off an Arcanite Reaper is absolutely ridiculous compared to say, a Mage upgrading to Azuresong Mageblade off a Rod of the Ogre Magi. The best balance between the classes occurs somewhere in the low 50s. Physical classes can start getting nice weapons while casters still have new ranks of spells. Once you hit 60, it's all over for us squishies.
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This could possibly be massaged somewhat by the new spellbooks found in Ahn'Qiraj. I don't know the specifics on what spells get new levels, or even the damange/healing/costs/ect on those spells, but I'm hopeful that it will help.

I notice the same thing playing with my Priest. Geared evenly as I am, in mostly blues, I can fight well against most classes. Melee classes with epics will dominate me no matter what, but I've toppled tier 2 mages and warlocks without much more effort than casters at my own gear-level.

*Edit* to make a note towards the actual topic: Changing spirit to make crits less likely would not help me survive more against well-geared melee types. The majority of my deaths are not to one, or two shot crits, it's just to the overwhelmig amount of damage that they can deal. I agree totally with Mongo on this one, I should have the same chance of survival in my epics as they do in theirs. More spirit would not help.

[Legedi]

I think the most obvious why to fix squishies from getting PWNED by physical attacks would be to increase the armor on their items. It seems totally logical that if a physical class can gain 100% damage from going from level 50 greens to 60 epics than cloth classes should gain 100% armor from the same upgrade.

[Concillian]

How about something that actually falls in line with spirit?

Like every 100 points of spirit = 1% regen in combat? Like a crit percentage, but it actually rewards you -- not much, mind you, but at least a little bit.
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I think they're trying to find a way to make spirit more useful in battlegrounds. They've designed BG so that your mana regen rate is not terribly important. You either die and respawn in <30 secs with full mana or you or you'll be working together with a mage to provide you with water since you're going in and out of combat.

As it is, spirit gear is nearly a complete waste in PvP, I'm not so sure that extra regen while in combat will change that fact, seems like more of a PvE raid boost than a PvP boost.

[Rinnhart]

This could possibly be massaged somewhat by the new spellbooks found in Ahn'Qiraj.&nbsp; I don't know the specifics on what spells get new levels, or even the damange/healing/costs/ect on those spells, but I'm hopeful that it will help.

Except they gave rogues and warriors new skill ranks as well- we're back to the itemization issues.

I notice the same thing playing with my Priest.&nbsp; Geared evenly as I am, in mostly blues, I can fight well against most classes.&nbsp; Melee classes with epics will dominate me no matter what, but I've toppled tier 2 mages and warlocks without much more effort than casters at my own gear-level.

I'm begining to see alot of the difficulties caster classes experience with melees as being part itemization, part (mostly) poor class design. Caster classes have the deck stacked against them in all regards except that their primary damage is not effected by AC, and large amounts of resist all simply don't exist.

*Edit* to make a note towards the actual topic:&nbsp; Changing spirit to make crits less likely would not help me survive more against well-geared melee types.&nbsp; The majority of my deaths are not to one, or two shot crits, it's just to the overwhelmig amount of damage that they can deal.&nbsp; I agree totally with Mongo on this one, I should have the same chance of survival in my epics as they do in theirs.&nbsp; More spirit would not help.
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It might. We don't really know without trying some of this out under real game conditions. I don't think any kind of mitigation increase should be turned down, at this point.

[lfd]

This could possibly be massaged somewhat by the new spellbooks found in Ahn'Qiraj.&nbsp; I don't know the specifics on what spells get new levels, or even the damange/healing/costs/ect on those spells, but I'm hopeful that it will help.

Priests get new ranks of greater heal, renew and prayer of healing. Good luck using those to increase your PvP survivability :)

[TheLuminaire]

Priests get new ranks of greater heal, renew and prayer of healing.&nbsp; Good luck using those to increase your PvP survivability :)
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Yeah, I'm overjoyed already. :wacko:

[Hannibal777]

I think the most obvious why to fix squishies from getting PWNED by physical attacks would be to increase the armor on their items. It seems totally logical that if a physical class can gain 100% damage from going from level 50 greens to 60 epics than cloth classes should gain 100% armor from the same upgrade.
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Fireball damage at level 50 is 449. (average)

Fireball damage at level 60 is 638. (average)

At 60, if you are full blues and adding + spell damage, you can get +150 damage easily. So if geared up,

Fireball damage at level 60 is 788. (average)

Do you see a 100% increase in spell damage right there? Caster get the same kind of power increase as the melee-er. Physical attacks ignore armor, almost, on squishies. Just as spell attacks ignore armor, (not many people have full resists), for the melee-ers.

The main line of defense for both are essentially stamina. I will concede though that stamina increase does not match attack power increase for both types making first attack much more important.