#0 - March 24, 2009, 5:51 p.m.
Q u o t e:
1) We want warriors to wear plate. We balance around warriors wearing plate.
2) Because of the way certain warrior mechanics work, leather is attractive.
3) One of these mechanics is AP being overvalued compared to Strength.
4) This change was to try to shift more value back to Strength.
5) Warriors are balanced around wearing plate. When warriors wear leather and do too much damage, then they end up getting nerfed. But really this is a symptom of #3, not anything players are doing wrong.
6) If you wear plate and don't do enough damage, we'll buff you.
7) We realize this change lets Arms off the hook... for the moment.
8) We like both the logic and gameplay of classes being able to wear armor besides "theirs." It's nice if a paladin uses healing cloth that is an upgrade for them and might otherwise be sharded. It's nice if a warrior can use a rogue item if they have nothing better. But honestly, sometimes we are pretty close to just restricting classes to "their" armor and not "their" armor plus all "lesser" armors.
9) I know you might drool over stats on another character. But that's not the way we balance. If we gave you plate with Spirit and Stamina on it, we would change warrior mechanics to make those numbers useful. You may say "If I wear the gear I am supposed to wear, I'll be terrible." We say "If you wear the gear your'e supposed to wear, you'll be balanced." We made a similar change to Feral druids lately, because they stacked AP at the expense of everything else. It was too good a stat and led them to make choices based solely on what gear maximized their AP. Sound familiar?
10) If you think your damage is low, bring that up in these forums. But say "Our damage is low." Don't say "We need leather."
Ok. I do understand this change and on one level I actually agree with it. As a warrior I would rather wear plate than leather. As a warrior I would rather be balanced around us wearing Plate than cherry picking leather or mail gear. The thought of equipping mail gear with Int on it and it being better than Plate gear makes me sad in the pants.
I think moving to totally barring warriors from wearing leather is a mistake. For leveling or fresh LV80 warriors, being able to equip leather is and should continue to be a stop gap until something better in a plate version drops. There are also itemization gaps for a fresh 80 that only leather fills. Things like a lack of any epic reputation vendor bracers.
Ok, so lets look at making Plate worth equipping over leather. That is the core issue on the table.
Your point #10
10) If you think your damage is low, bring that up in these forums. But say "Our damage is low." Don't say "We need leather."
I have to ask you which is it? TG was nerfed because BiS warriors wearing leather and mail are ripping up the charts. Then its we balance you around plate, so we made this change to make leather less of a benefit and bring you into balance. So...wearing plate is Fury DPS now balanced, or is Fury DPS not balanced until TG is nerfed hard and we are wearing inferior plate further nerfing damage?
We have never said we NEED leather. We have stated repeatedly we wear leather because in many cases it is superior to plate. For example. The Chest from Maly I am wearing. There is no ilevel226 DPS Plate Chest in the current game. If there was you can bet I would be after it instead of this one. At times you, the Devs, force us into leather due to itemization gaps in the loot tables. Sorry but that is a failure on the part of your loot tables.
Now lets look forward to Uldar. Have a quick look here for a comparison of our 25 man Naxx gear and the 25 man Uldar gear currently on the PTR.
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f177/47365-t8-set-discussion.html
The key point of the thread I linked is :
So using Corbusier's SEP, the T8 set is a 35.92 SEP gain over T7, assuming you're not expertise capped. If you're expertise capped it becomes 19.42.
That is a very very minimal gear upgrade over the previous tier and no wear near what the Shirts of Uberness or whatever they are called would give us for testing purposes. Those shirts give +8 all stats and like 130 to ratings. With our T8 gear we LOSE 130 crit rating, not gain it. So if you are balancing warrior Uldar DPS performance around data wearing those shirts, well it will be wrong. As the T8 gears stands right now, I will pass on all of it until the other people who share my tokens are geared out as they will see a much bigger benefit from it than I will.
Second, the biggest stat increase on warrior DPS plate from T7.5 to 8 is stamina? Really?
