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Q u o t e:
Couple of things:

1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear. :)
2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat.
3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at.

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How about some damn hit rating on mail caster gear then, huh? Or is that a "oh you guys can just work up to getting hit capped next raid" too?

As said above though, certain specs benefit more or less than others with Haste/ArPen.... for example from the plate class I'm currently playing

As a DW death knight ( 0/32/39 ) haste is actually a desirable stat for me. And frost/blood death knights benefit significantly more from haste than unholy.. etc.


Also I found it really distressing earlier today:

I had picked up a pair of leather gloves from a heroic, didn't bother enchanting it or anything, figuring since it was just leather and I was raiding I'd replace it soon.

Then I get my 7.5 glove token, which makes me really happy, buy the gloves, check my stats and gem for crit and enchant for expertise ( my expertise was terrible at the time ) .. then I check my stats and I realize that this upgrade ended up being

+3 AP
+.2% crit
-27 hit rating
+1 expertise
+34 stamina

I mean, an upgrade is an upgrade.... but I'm just a tad confused why blizzard sees fit to dump half a plate pieces' budget into stamina.

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Q u o t e:
For casters Haste reduces their GCD and that works for them because they are more constrained by their GCD. Melee on the other hand doesn't really feel limited by the GCD. We are mostly waiting for either more of our resource (Energy is the specific case I am thinking of atm) or the cooldown, or proc, to come up (more apparent for Ret Pallies and DPS warriors).

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Haste is really bad for some casters for similar reasons to melee--waiting for cooldowns. For example, once the CoH nerf goes live, haste will be an absolutely god-awful stat for holy priests (and like plate, cloth is loaded with the crap). It's also bad for DoT/HoT-based classes. Haste is really great for classes that spam spells that aren't on cooldowns, but is pretty bad for the others.

Haste really needs an all-round buff to all classes. Make it cause HoTs/DoTs to tick faster, and make it lower the cooldown for abilities with shorter cooldowns (10 sec or less?), please.

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Q u o t e:
Couple of things:

1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear. :)
2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat.
3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at.

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Q u o t e:
I honestly dont think the discussion can continue without GC clearing up for us what place Tier Gear is inteded to hold in the grand scheme of things.

Personally? I believe it should be the best if not close. I mean its designed specifically for you with class specific specials. For it to be subpar would make it a total waste of effort. Why not just make more non class specific armor and put those bonuses elsewhere?

But theres also a strong and logical argument that the tier gear is meant to run alongside off pieces and its up to the player to choose wether stats or set bonuses will yield a greater return. That also makes perfect sense.

So until we know how good its actually supposed to be, who knows =/

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I honestly think with how they claim wrath is meant to be itemized.. it will be close, but not the best, and it will come down to deciding how much tier gear you're willing to equip based on set bonuses, etc. etc.

Haste is ok for rogues. Not super. (hint: have haste impact energy regen)

Armor Pen is a piece. Starring in Master piece of poop theatre.

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Q u o t e:


Haste is really bad for some casters for similar reasons to melee--waiting for cooldowns. For example, once the CoH nerf goes live, haste will be an absolutely god-awful stat for holy priests (and like plate, cloth is loaded with the crap). It's also bad for DoT/HoT-based classes. Haste is really great for classes that spam spells that aren't on cooldowns, but is pretty bad for the others.

Haste really needs an all-round buff to all classes. Make it cause HoTs/DoTs to tick faster, and make it lower the cooldown for abilities with shorter cooldowns (10 sec or less?), please.

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Ya, I know what you mean, but I didn't want to get too far into caster mechanics. I am not anywhere near as familiar with them as I am with melee. Casters in general have one spec that at least gets a solid benefit from the stat. Most melee classes really don't get much from Haste with a couple exceptions such as a DW DK.

On a side note, Enigma...isn't that a guild that was originally on Shadowsong?

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Q u o t e:

But theres also a strong and logical argument that the tier gear is meant to run alongside off pieces and its up to the player to choose wether stats or set bonuses will yield a greater return. That also makes perfect sense.

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I seem to recal Ghostcrawler stating this at some point. Tier > * isn't meant to be the foregone conclusion it used to be. This not only leaves players with more options, it diminishes whining when people go "gloves from X boss are better than tier, zomg buff tier"

GC's point went over a lot of people's heads. It seems they are fully aware that current gear is missing stats people want, like hit or expertise or crit or str or whatever else anyone wants more of. What he was saying is that the B-level stats like haste wouldn't be replaced with those things, because of how they want current gear to perform. We're essentially complaining about how poorly itemized Karazhan loot is, because this expansion's Naxx = last expansion's Kara.

For all the complaints about how horrible the current gear is, it's not stopping anyone from killing things. And they need to avoid the reverse problem where items are so perfectly itemized at the start to where players are reluctant to let them go. It's not necessarily better to go "meh" at something that is supposed to be a big upgrade but is only a slight upgrade, or worse, no upgrade at all -- for example, if I'm hit capped now from perfectly itemized gear, and the next tier adds more of the same stats, then some of those pieces are going to add more hit that I already don't need.

As for haste and armor pen being pretty lackluster, they've said here and elsewhere that they are aware of how bad the stats are for certain classes, in terms of benefit per point. They've also said they are talking about how to fix it. I'm not sure what more we can ask aside from "do it faster," which historically doesn't get us anywhere.

Like I've already quoted... This should end this discussion if people would read it.

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Q u o t e:
Couple of things:

1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear. :)
2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat.
3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at.

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Q u o t e:
Like I've already quoted... This should end this discussion if people would read it.

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Not really. The last point about how they know ArP and Haste are pretty bad stats and are looking to change them to be better lends itself to very good discussion about what it would take to make them worthwhile stats. It also gives a situation to discuss the current short comings of the stats. The debate of what makes ArP and Haste bad and how to fix them to be acceptable stats is perfectly fine.

Granted I think there is no reason to debate poor itemization policies. People think tiered set gear is supposed to be the best you can get, which is wrong. I cannot count how often I see people sitting in Dalaran in 5/5 Valorous when they passed up the best in slot offset gear to get it. The must think this is the BWL and MC days when the set was the only right way. Granted there were far fewer offset choices in those times.

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Q u o t e:
Couple of things:

1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear. :)
2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat.
3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at.

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1.) So wait... Season 6... as in PvP Arena? So for the Stats i WANT in PvE you are telling me to PvP?

Whoa... i'm confused...

2.) Obviously ;)

3.) I sincerely hope it's something you are looking at, haste is just plain awful. I lost a lot of hit rating moving from my heroic epics to my tier gear... and thats just sad since heroic epics are supposed to prep you for naxx...

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Q u o t e:


Unless the piece's name is orange, gear should almost always be a choice. Even if you are jumping up a tier you may be dropping some stats in order to increase others.

Gearing up is one of the most interesting parts of the game. Deciding whether you want X or Y is supposed to be a tough decision. We make no guarantee that everything that drops is an upgrade for you, even set pieces.

Building the most optimal set of gear for your particular spec is also one of the things that lets more expert players demonstrate mastery of the game. If the set pieces were always better, that wouldn't happen. In fact one of the reasons we made sets smaller (not 8 pieces or whatever) is so players could still undertake the challenge of completing them without also getting in a position where they were very reluctant to upgrade again.

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Speaking of orange gear... why is blizzard so quickly to dismiss legendary gear? Thunderfury? Now it's a mere cosmetic. Why not have continual quests to keep these items actually useful in the game and have them level up? If the hand of rag had a level 70 and level 80 quest chain i could do, I most certainly would start organizing that and would certainly give me something to do in my higher levels then waiting around for raiding days ;)

Gearing up is one of the most important parts of the game, and thats why I say again... why is my supposed lower gear becoming more useful than the tier gear? You can't possibly use the argument that you dont want everybody to look the same... if that was your excuse, why do 22 pairs of plate shoulders share the same graphic at level 70+?

Building the most optimal set of gear SHOULD be the tier gear. Why else would you dangle set bonuses infront of our faces? If i hear "you think you can have your cake and eat it too?" im going to punch somebody lol. I HATE that phrase, what good is cake if i can't eat it? :p

Tier gear should have at least important stats, even if they are dispersed. It's pretty bad when only 2 pieces of tier 7 have hit, and combined they are less than the leggings from utgarde keep

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Q u o t e:

Speaking of orange gear... why is blizzard so quickly to dismiss legendary gear? Thunderfury? Now it's a mere cosmetic. Why not have continual quests to keep these items actually useful in the game and have them level up? If the hand of rag had a level 70 and level 80 quest chain i could do, I most certainly would start organizing that and would certainly give me something to do in my higher levels then waiting around for raiding days ;)

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Given what he's *just* said about how important they view gearing up, do you really think they want people using level 60 weapons at level 80?

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Q u o t e:


Unless the piece's name is orange, gear should almost always be a choice. Even if you are jumping up a tier you may be dropping some stats in order to increase others.

Gearing up is one of the most interesting parts of the game. Deciding whether you want X or Y is supposed to be a tough decision. We make no guarantee that everything that drops is an upgrade for you, even set pieces.

Building the most optimal set of gear for your particular spec is also one of the things that lets more expert players demonstrate mastery of the game. If the set pieces were always better, that wouldn't happen. In fact one of the reasons we made sets smaller (not 8 pieces or whatever) is so players could still undertake the challenge of completing them without also getting in a position where they were very reluctant to upgrade again.

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I agree it makes the game more enjoyable. Crunching the numbers on gear (even stuff I may never get) is an aspect of the game I really like.