Itemization

[Quark]

That's a good point, but then you'd never be able to enchant your hat (or you'd be blowing the cost every time you respecced, which, especially with the new ZG enchants, pushes the cost of respeccing up 300+ gold - essentially a ban).  Not that I don't see this idea as a workable adaptation of the system, but it's far better to fix the system.
[right][snapback]88863[/snapback][/right]

They have a fix for the lose-your-enchant bug in testing, I believe. They said it should be in 1.8, assuming nothing goes wrong with it. Why not fix both issues? :)

[Lissa]

That implies that there is some sort of multiplicative effect. Other than the weapon speed (a stat independent of DPS) serving as a multiplier for instant attacks, there isn't a multiplicative effect with weapon stats and attack power dps.

When a warrior has a 40dps 1h, they likely are getting ~60 dps from attack power. So 100dps regular attack damage. getting a 50 dps weapon with no change to attack power takes them to 110 dps regular swing damage, a 10% improvement, not the 25% improvement it would appear to be at face value.
[right][snapback]88909[/snapback][/right]

The thing is, the stat boosts that you see on the class sets for the Warriors and Rogues gives that boost to MAP which in turn gives a boost to DPS. Casters don't have anything like that.

One of the suggestions I saw on the Blizzard boards to actually make Spirit more interesting and useful for Casters was to give a +1 damage/healing boost per x amount of spirit (someone was saying someting like 1 damage/healing per 5 to 10 points of spirit). This alone would go along way to making people seriously considering Spirit again and it would make it a useful stats for Warlocks and Mages (at present, there is absolutely no reason for Warlocks to have spirit and little reason for Mages to have it).

[Warlock]

For a single stat, the maximum bonus is linear - the ^1.5 inside the sum and the ^2/3 outside it cancel.

Assuming a full set of gear designed by a player able to pick exactly the stats and mods wanted so long as the item stays within the budget, caster gear still looks good to me. They don't get weapon damage, but every other slot gives more and there are a lot more non-weapon than weapon slots. Unfortunately players don't get to design items. Hopefully there will be plenty of +damage in future additions, I agree that adding Int/Spi after reaching 'enough mana that you won't run out' is pointless.

While recognising their power, I don't like the effect +single school items (and single element focused talent builds for that matter) have on gameplay. It's simply more interesting to use several spells in rotation than to spam a single spell. Shadowbolt is probably the worst offender, since using it with talents can proc a bonus to it's next four casts.

I don't know what to think about potential Spirit improvements. I like the stat on my Druid thanks to Innervate; If I respec I'll need to throw out most of my healing gear - without Innervate, Druids actually gain less from Spirit than other casters. It's useless on my Warlock. I'm not sure whether I would use it on a Mage - 45% regen while casting is pretty nice and I've been musing about trying a Spirit focused build with one.

[ink]

Nice post, that.

Hyzenthlei is obviously our kind of guy :)

I'm not trying to nitpick his work, but to be useful to us statfreaks here, one could suggest a few
improvements.

For one, the weighting base for boni should definitely be STAT-boni. Not only because the
numbers will be a little nicer (see below), but also because to be scientifically sound in a
comparative measurement, one needs to use the most-measured value as the meter for
all others. +stats is of course the most frequent bonus on items. If one wanted to be
100% correct, one should probably base on +Strength, as Blizzard MIGHT change the
relationship between stats (e.g. most players consider spirit vastly inferior to other stats,
perhaps Blizzard does listen and gives spirit an 0.5 SEB or something). For the moment,
this doesn't happen though and it's much easier/better/more precise to use the additional
measurement data one gets by assuming all stats have a 1.0 SEB.


Here is Hyzenthlei's weighting list with an SEB (stat-equivalent bonus) unit.
Strength = Agility = Stamina = Intellect = Spirit = 1.00 SEB
Attack Power = 0.50 SEB
Ranged Attack Power = 0.40 SEB
+%To Hit = 9.5 SEB
+%Crit = 13.9 SEB
Armor = 0.096 SEB
Defense = 1.00 SEB
Damage Shield = 3.1 SEB
+%Dodge = 10.9 SEB
+%Parry = 15.7 SEB
+%Block = 5.7 SEB
+BlockValue = 0.65 SEB
x/5 hp regen = 2.8 SEB
x/5 mana regen = 2.4 SEB
+%SpellCrit = 11.3 SEB
+%SpellHit = 10.9 SEB
+AllSpells = 0.83 SEB
+Healing = 0.43 SEB
+Fire = +Frost = +Shadow = +Arcane = +Nature = 0.69 SEB
+Holy = 0.91 SEB
Fire Resist = Frost Resist = Nature Resist = Arcane Resist = Shadow Resist = 1.00 SEB

I got this list simply by dividing his values by 230 (and rounding to two significant figures).
Note that I do NOT know how many samples he has for each value, therefore I don't
know how to round exactly. Someone would need to run the numbers themselves with
this scaling to find out, for example, if it's really 0.096 for armor or simply 0.1 (my guess).

Hyzenthlei didn't mention what he used to get this data (even though someone actually asked
this in the thread :), but I assume a programmer could do this with a little script-programming
(perl, I guess) and the data from thottbot.

One would need a LOT of data to try and find out the actual rounding employed by the
Blizzard item creator program. OTOH, it seems as though Blizz sometimes changes items by
hand, which would make this impossible.

Oh, I should mention that with the given SEB values, the ival is different from the one given
by Hyzenthlei.

ival = || stats_i ... || _1.5 = Sum_i( statbonus_i * statmod_i ^1.5 ) ^ (1/1.5)

Therefore, his prediction formula needs to be changed, as well:

ival_prediction_green= (ilvl * 0.53 - 4.3) * slotmod [SEB]
ival_prediction_blue= (ilvl * 0.62 - 1.83) * slotmod [SEB]
ival_prediction_purple= (ilvl * 0.71 + 4.9) * slotmod [SEB]

As an example, the Circle of Applied Force would have an actual ival of 30.8 SEB and a predicted value
of 31.4 SEB.

Later,
ink

[Professor Frink]

I'm confused.

Look at the ivory wands -- generic green ilvl 51/req level 46 wands, come in four basic flavors:

+17 to x spell damage (including +17 holy wrath)
+26 healing spells
+6 - 7 to a single stat
+4 - 5 each to two stats

this would make me think that +spelldamage is 0.35-0.41 SEB (including holy)
and +healing is 0.23-0.27 SEB, nowhere near the 0.69 +spelldamage/0.91 +holydamage and 0.43 +healing SEB values quoted above.

Is the statmod for the wand slot known? i don't see it in the blizzard post.

***

My long suffering shadowpriest recently rode out to Azshara to deliver the Ichor of Undeath, resulting in being offered the quest to kill the new sunken temple boss and take my choice of three rewards. One of them in particular seems pointless:

Woestave (blue)
Wand
68 - 127 Shadow Damage, Speed 1.90
(51.3 DPS)
+3 Stamina
Equip: Increases damage done by Shadow spells and effects by up to 11.
"Woe to those who oppose."

Thott tells me this is an ilvl 52 item, the same as the quest level.

Compare to my current wand:
Ivory wand of Shadow Wrath (green)
Wand
41 - 77 Arcane Damage, Speed 1.40
(42.1 DPS)
+17 Shadow Spell Damage
Req. Level 46

Thott says ilvl 51 (req level +5)

Why is woestave so much worse? Back of the envelope it doesn't seem like +3 stamina should cause -6 shadowdamage, particularly with the quality and ilvl advantage.

But there is an even better headscratcher (via thott rather than personal experience):

Pyric Caduceus (blue)
Wand
66 - 123 Fire Damage, Speed 1.80
(52.5 DPS)
Req. Level 48
Equip: Increases damage done by Fire spells and effects by up to 13.
ilvl 53

vs

Ivory Wand of Fiery Wrath (green)
Wand
41 - 77 Arcane Damage, Speed 1.40
(42.1 DPS)
+17 Fire Spell Damage
Req. Level 46
ilvl 51

+2 ilvl, green->blue, no other stats in the way, and it loses 4 fire spell damage.
Not even a rhyming quote, on the off chance that costs points.

I see the following possibilities to explain this:
1. Thottbot is wrong, those items don't drop or have different stats.
2. "Equip: Increases damage done by X spells and effects by up to Y." is not the same as "+Y X Spell Damage", either in effect or point cost.
3. Blue wands, across the board, have a hidden +wand damage stat (explaining their higher DPS), which costs points--more points, in fact, than they get for going blue. This may be a Blizzard design decision to deter using wands as an extra stat slot.
4. itemization works nothing like these posts describe, at least for wands.
5. I am terribly confused.

Anyone know which is the case?

--frink

[Kevin]

Wands are weapons. The posts say that weapons don't appear to follow the same rules as armor and to apply them at your own risk to weapons and trinkets.

[oldmandennis]

Wands are weapons.  The posts say that weapons don't appear to follow the same rules as armor and to apply them at your own risk to weapons and trinkets.
[right][snapback]90160[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, I think the fact that the blue wands have ~20% more DPS might be your answer though.

[Quark]

Bump for some updates / random thoughts:

If you are looking at an item in thottbot, add "&hyz=1" to the end of the link.

Ex: http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=36327
- becomes -
http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=36327&hyz=1

The formula is shown in Thottbot, then, with a few bugs here and there ...

Spell Penetration helps somewhat counter the issue of +damage for casters compared to +damage for melee. Casters now have more than one stat they want to stretch to extreme. Supposedly, Spell Penetration is the same cost as Resists.

Theory question: Spell Penetration will not (once fixed) reduce resistance below zero. CoS/CoE will now provide damage bonuses instead of negative resistances. Did Blizzard get it right, and apply Penetration before CoS/CoE?

My upgrades to epics recently have seen a pretty big decrease in AP, due to MC not using +AP once, while the best blue Rogue gear favors it. It's kind of ironic that every time you see +strength on Rogue gear, you can think "Blizzard's deliberately making AP more expensive by using str instead of pure AP".

Another observation that has changed due to patches/experience:
+to hit% should definately be higher than +to dodge%. With the +hit cap removed, melee damage for Rogues and Dual-wielding Warriors can improve much more with +hit.

[oldmandennis]

This formula needs to be redone based on what was said at bliz con. The devs gave specific number of 14 for crit and 12 for dodge. If that doesn't make stats 1, I'll eat my hat. The final forumula needs a tweak from /100 to *2 to keep everything else lined up.

All the other stats need to be looked at, because they are almost certainly some roundish number. I've done this by hand with a few of them, using data from thott and a modded version of that spread sheet. I'll make it availible, if anybody cares and knows a good place to host files.

Before I got bored, I worked out satisfactory values for attack (2/3), defense (2.5) and spell crit (18). Armor might be .1 or .13, I couldn't get the numbers to come out satisfactoraily. Resist might be 13/10 or 9/7.

Just guessing based on the previous work,

Ranged Attack Power 0.5
+% To Hit 11
Damage Shield 3
+% to Parry 16
+% to Block 6
+Block Value 0.5
x/5 hp regen 3
x/5 mana regen 2
+% Spell Hit 13
+All Spells 1
+Healing 0.5
+Fire 0.75
+Frost 0.75
+Shadow 0.75
+Arcane 0.75
+Nature 0.75