Patch Changes

[Lissa]

from the games in game descriptions and web site information:

Strength (STR) - Adds to your Attack Power, Damage-Per-Second (DPS)(except for Rogue/Hunter). Strength does not affect Critical Hit chances at all. Strength does not improve your chance to block, but rather the amount blocked when you succeed. This amount is determined in part by Strength (and the other part by your shield).
Agility (AGI) - Agility will greatly enhance the chance to score a critical hit for Rogues. Agility will enhance the chance to score a critical melee hit for all classes (critical spell damage is determined by Intelligence). The amount of the bonus is higher per point on Rogues than other classes. Agility affects dodge. Rogues get more Dodge per point of Agility than other classes. Agility adds directly to Armor Class.

added imphasis to sections that pertain.

The Strength rating would be beneficial to preists with as much as I have observed them ending up doing melee fighting as such. I am unsure of how much a Warlock at higher levels would benefit from this but do realise that it would be of little use to the mages who will typically just be trying to get off quick spells even if being meleed.

In a similar vien the Agility rating is used to directly add to the Armor Class rating of the target and the AC rating is in turn used to factor the amount a damge reduce per physical hit on the target, making this usefull to all the classes. Also with dodge being used to totally avoid a blow altogether, increasing this is useful to all the classes. Then again in a manner useful to the priests would be the increased chance that they will get critical hits when they do have the melee protions of their fights.

I know that this may drastically changed what you were wearing at the time, but it does not mean that these changes are a complete disaster for your priest character. You will just have to look for replacement items more to what you want if there are not to your liking. Now if all the items that are available to use at those levels are heavily biased in the same way such that you rally do not get such a choice, then there will be a problem. And that may end up being the case based on some of the responses from the development team on the main boards.

The Strength rating would be beneficial to preists with as much as I have observed them ending up doing melee fighting as such. I am unsure of how much a Warlock at higher levels would benefit from this but do realise that it would be of little use to the mages who will typically just be trying to get off quick spells even if being meleed.

Except, the Priest isn't doing more their damage with their melee weapon. Most Priests use Pain to do most the damage (as it is very reliable when it lands to do a good amount of damage) and the melee weapon is mostly bonus damage while waiting for the first pain to wear down.

Warlocks and Mages would never use the strength as both would be using spells in some way (Warlocks using spells to keep their minion up, get their DoTs going, and syphoning off mana and health from the target and Mages just generally blasting away).

In a similar vien the Agility rating is used to directly add to the Armor Class rating of the target and the AC rating is in turn used to factor the amount a damge reduce per physical hit on the target, making this usefull to all the classes. Also with dodge being used to totally avoid a blow altogether, increasing this is useful to all the classes. Then again in a manner useful to the priests would be the increased chance that they will get critical hits when they do have the melee protions of their fights.

For AC, the Priest is going to use Inner Fire to buff their AC (Inner Fire on Ori right now is giving her an increase of over 700 AC, Agility won't even come close to that). Likewise, Warlocks and Mages will do everything in their power to not allow a mob to get to hand to hand with them. So, again, Agi is mostly useless for these classes (and as I pointed out above, Priests do most of their damage while soloing using Pain, not their weapon).

I know that this may drastically changed what you were wearing at the time, but it does not mean that these changes are a complete disaster for your priest character. You will just have to look for replacement items more to what you want if there are not to your liking. Now if all the items that are available to use at those levels are heavily biased in the same way such that you rally do not get such a choice, then there will be a problem. And that may end up being the case based on some of the responses from the development team on the main boards.

Actually, the stat changes to the items isn't that big of a change to the way I play as a Priest. The change in HW:S is far more drastic a change for Priests that the stat changes on some items (I've learned to cope though with spamming of Renew on myself, basically my health doesn't go down much with that spell up and working unless I have multiple mobs on me).

The thing that just gets to me is it seems like the item designers just weren't thinking when it came to some of the quest cloth items that only Priests, Mages, and Warlocks would actually use (other might take them, but more likely to sell or disenchant). If it is a quest item and it's cloth, the primary attribute should either be Int or Spi, possibly Sta, but definitely should not be Str or Agi.