Ghostcrawler explains hit scaling in Cataclysm

[Adam-Savage]

Removed

[Anansi]

I'm not really sure what GC is saying there. It sounds like he doesn't want people to be able to cap things like Hit and Parry.

[Gimlion]

I don't think that's what he wants us to do. He wants us to actually need the extra Hit/Parry, etc on higher tier gear b/c we WILL need it. I think it makes perfect sense, but I'm a math guy. Basically, as you get into harder raids, the bosses 'level up' thus meaning the more hit/parry you need to get capped against them. For example, Tier one Bosses require 200 hit to be capped. But once you hit the second tier, you require 215 b/c the bosses are more powerful. The gear has the extra hit you need, so relatively, you will be the same power as before (all compared to the bosses), but in an overall sense, you will be stronger.

In the simplest terms I can think of: As you get stronger gear, bosses get stronger too.

T1/B1=T2/B2

T= Gear Tier, B= Boss tier. It will all be relatively equal between raids, while appearing that you are growing stronger.

[Nimizar]

The trick to remember with hit is that, unlike other combat ratings, it has a hard cap.

Stats that work in a "more is better" fashion scale just fine - AP and SP make DPS hit harder, but mobs (including bosses) have more health. Stamina gives tanks more health, and SP means healers hit for more, but mobs start hitting much harder.

Parry, dodge, block, crit, haste, mastery - Blizz have adjusted the scaling on all these to give themselves plenty of head room for them to increase as the later raid tiers are released. To make up some example numbers, perhaps if we start the first tier of Cata raiding with 25% crit, we might have something like 45% crit by the time expansion is over (Blizz have said they don't want combat rating effects to get as high as they did in Wrath, but there is still a lot of room for them to grow even if we don't see things like SV hunters with 70% crit unbuffed ever again).

That form of scaling won't work for hit, since Blizz want us to be able to reach a 100% hit chance. However, if they can't give us more hit as later tiers are released, it screws up gear scaling, since the gear system is balanced around a certain number of stats being of interest to each spec.

So, for hit, they're going to simply give bosses (and possibly normal mobs) in later tiers a higher than normal chance to be missed by players. Over the course of the previous tier, players will likely reforge away excess hit rating, replace hit gems and trinkets with other stats in order to remain around that tier's hit cap. Once the new tier comes out, min/max players will revert those reforgings, add hit gems back in and/or swap back to using hit trinkets. That last option is likely to be most preferable, since you can easily swap them out again when going back to farm older content.

Avoidance for tanks and mana regen for healers are also interesting as stats, since they're about longevity in new content. When healers running dry on mana is a potential cause of a wipe (as it was in the BC days, and as it still is in Wrath for severely undergeared healers), then those stats become interesting in later tiers. The damage scaling will be such that, in later tiers, healers will need to use their expensive heals more and more, so they'll need higher regen to compensate. Blizzard have indicated that they will be giving later tier bosses the equivalent of innate expertise rating, to counter the avoidance stats of the tanks so they can increase the damage taken by tanks without making it spikier (as with Sunwell Radiance/Chill of the Throne, more hits getting through means the individual hits can be made smaller). The interesting thing about these caps is that they're kind of "soft capped" in that, once your group DPS, tank avoidance and healer regen are high enough that healers are finishing fights with substantial amounts of mana left, increasing them is more about providing more room for error than anything else.

The fact that the hit rating needed for progression can be "wasted" when farming older content just brings DPS in to the same position as tanks and healers, where excess longevity doesn't really help much with farmer older content.

[Bellatryx]

I'm not great at math so trying to figure out anything about damage is basically over my head.

I just shoot things and look pretty.

[Anansi]

Ok, I believe I understand now, thanks guys. I've been a bit concerned about Hit given that Hunter have lost the Focused Aim talent which was an excellent tool for balancing out Hit rating. Without that, I was wondering how we'll manage Hit outside of Reforging which is limited and gemming which is annoying (I hate gemming for Hit).

[Elvirra]

I'm not great at math so trying to figure out anything about damage is basically over my head.

I just shoot things and look pretty.

(same here. )



Kitairra


P.S. But I'm trying to learn,ok?..lol!