What do WotLK-stat gems become?

#0 - May 5, 2010, 9:08 a.m.

As we know, some stats that have existed in WotLK and previously (spell power, attack power and armor penetration) are being eliminated from gear once 4.0 drops. It's been said that gear with those stats on them will be recombobulated to account for the Cataclysm itemisation goals, but what about the gems? What are the spell-power, attack-power and armor-penetration gems becoming that I have already equipped?

My guesses are that SP gems are becoming intellect (which gives spell power), and if so, will likely be changing colours to yellow and breaking our meta gems (I'm crying a river over that).

The AP and ArP gems are more complicated, though, since the DPS classes that currently use these stats will be split among agility and strength. There seem to be a couple ways to go about this. First would be to just convert the gems themselves into another gem disregarding anything else, which would be simple (AP->agility seems safe, since strength-based classes should not be gemming AP anyway).

The second is to convert them based on the max armour class of the player using them (leather/mail->agility, plate->strength). Of course, gems that aren't equipped (such as those on the AH or in players' inventories) would need to be converted into something, but that doesn't seem to me to be as important as equipped gems.

Mostly, this is just curiosity. I've been wondering if I'll have to regem everything or if we'll be accommodated in this area.

Ghostcrawler

#24 - May 5, 2010, 5:39 p.m.

Some gems will change. Armor pen gems will be going away. Some gems are changing color. At the moment we think we'll probably keep current attack power and spellpower gems, though if you are a min-maxer it's possible you'd be better off changing to Agility or Intellect.

Because some gems are changing color, you may gain or lose some socket bonuses you have now. In general, not many players take those very seriously so hopefully it won't be a big issue. It's possible you might have to do something to keep a meta gem bonus.

We'll try and announce all of the changes (though you'll probably get all of the info out of the public beta too) in plenty of time that not too many folks will be surprised when the changes go live.

It's not ideal to change existing gear on players obviously, but given the scope of the Cataclysm changes (including changing so many stats and talent trees), there is going to have to be a little bit of relearning. In this case it's really only an issue for the short window in between when the new rules go into effect and the Cataclysm itself (opening up new zones, level cap, etc.) actually occurs.