Zereissen had an interesting point on how WotLK will change hybrid classes. Now that crit on items applies to both melee and spell attacks... well...Feral druids with 20% crit on starfire? Boomkin with 25% crit in cat form? Ret pallies crittin those emergency heals? And them damn judgements?
And more importantly... shammies... who are really the only class that need to deal both magic and physical damage. Specifically enhance shammies. When I run recount on unbound in enhance spec, she's dealin about 20% of damage shock wise.
Then there's elemental devastation, a talent so friggin useless I'd take wand spec over it. Its in the elemental tree... and it gives ya a minor hike to melee crit when you crit with a spell.
Since enhance shammies crit on shocks about every horde EotS win, well... thats not real useful. But if enhance shammies start getting +crit to spells as well as start stacking int for the new int=ap talent... things will get interesting. Also there's a new shammy spell that can auto crit.
This also radically screws itemization. Before, given a choice between +crit and +agil, I'd go +agil. It now takes 22 points of +crit to gain 1% melee crit fer a shammy. And 25 points of agil, which also give armor and dodge...
However, come Wrath of the Lolking, this changes. +crit will affect spells and melee... and shammy agility based crit is gettin nerfed into line with hunters... i.e. 40 points of agil for 1% melee crit.
Shammies are gonna start avoiding agil like mages avoid spirit, and dwarves avoid baths.
I can't help but think that this is all to make deathknights viable. Since they have to be able to crit with magic and physical attacks in pretty much the same way enhance shammies do. God forbid the flagship class of the new expansion be unviable... and if that means givin shammies a break... well, we'll just nerf the hell outta them some other way! like, um makin shamanistic rage so useless we'll go back to speccing nature's swiftness again. Oh, hey... they did!
2 comments:
Um, the Agi->Crit conversion rate was changed because Agi now gives shammies 1 AP as well
Yeah, like SmokY said:
As of the latest patch notes for beta - strength now only gives 1 AP instead of 2, and Agility gives 1 AP now instead of 0. So, Agility will still be a viable stacking stat because of the AP buff.
I think that at least, to start end-game with the current beta talents, Agi/crit->Int->Str->AP will be the order of stat itemization. Who knows if Blizzard will keep to this though.
The hardest part of itemization for gear at entry raiding levels in Burning Crusade was Blizzard changing gear to have Stam, Int, sockets, and straight AP and crit in order to keep mail items viable for either hunters or shaman (leaving out the strength and agility). Who knows what they'll do with lvl 80 mail gear, but if they keep to the patch notes, shaman and hunters can only hope that they put stam, agi, int, and sockets, plus maybe a bit of extra AP on there. Completely dropping the strength itemization for shaman seems the direction.
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