I hate math.
Are you hearing me, Blizz? I freaking hate math.
Yeah, I know my job makes me do lots of it, that’s fine, they bloody well PAY me to do it.
But I got some loot drop for me in Kara last night, coupled with loot I got from Kara last week that I still haven’t been able to equip ’cause of Defense rating issues, and as I crunch the numbers on different gem loadouts, weighing the value of a +12 Agi enchant against a +12 Stamina enchant for boots, +8 Agi gem versus +12 Sta gem, etc, it suddenly occurs to me.
This shit ain’t fun.
Let’s break this down a bit.
- Playing the game? Fun.
- Chatting with friends while clearing trash? Fun.
- Pondering leet loot drops that MAY happen? Fun.
- Playing your class well? Fun.
- GETTING the leet loot? Fun.
- Spending 30+ minutes juggling numbers to figure out how best to use the new loot? TOTAL FAIL.
Le sigh.
Look, I understand. I get the picture. Blizzard has things designed so that, if you’re serious, you have to put some effort and thought into how to get the most out of what you get. And I know they have item level rankings, etc, in a supposed attempt to help us.
And I appreciate that Blizzard gave us sockets so we can have a solid baseline of gear, with some wiggle room for customizing.
But damn it, the gear has so many different stats that are all important to one damn thing or another, and it seems clear that Blizzard is designing it with the idea that we all know the math, and the formulas, and how stuff likie +Defense and Defense Rating and Agility and all this equates to Dodge and Critical Strike Immunity and what have you. Well, I’m calling shenanigans.
The only reason we have any of the core math to work with is from PLAYERS that do in-game analysis of how the stuff actually works IRL, and then reverse-engineer the math.
For the serious player that spends tons of time all over the internet researching his gear, looking for a way to get better, okay. Thank god for players that do that research.
But what about the poor damn players that think that all they need to know to get the most enjoyment from their game is freaking PLAYING it?
Can someone, somewhere, tell me how a player that sits down, fires up WoW, plays a few hours and then logs off is EVER going to know that a Bear Tank at level 70 needs 415 Defense to be crit-immune to level 73 bosses? Or that bosses in end-game are even RANKED at level 73? I look at the boss portraits, and those look like little SKULLS to me.
I’m dialed in now, my sad little life has me so into the game that, yes, I sit on my ass writing a blog about playing it, and constantly browse websites looking for info that might help me play better, or at least have a better idea of what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.
But come on, guys. Let’s have a little reality check, here. I’ve looked all over WoWWiki, Thottbot, WoWhead, Elite Jerks, and I’m just not seeing where any of the core math we use on how stats work actually comes from Blizzard. It’s all inferred from actual playtesting by the players themselves. And all the theroycrafting on how stats works, and why, comes from the players.
But our itemization from Blizzard seems based on the idea that we just magically KNOW this shit. And once we get it down… they start changing it up. Almost as if, nah, couldn’t be… they want to keep the players that raid end-game constantly off balance and refiguring gear and stat importance.
Just, damn them.
Okay, rant over. Now I get to go back to fiddling with socketing my Gloves of Dextrous Manipulation.
Hmmm… [mutter]…. gotta socket and enchant the Gloves before I equip ‘em…. if I put one +8 Agi gem in and one +12 Stamina gem in… but Agi is worth more for Mitigation, while Stamina helps brute Survival… hmm… is it better to increase Dodge to avoid a blow entirely, or increase base Health to help absorb the ones that get through? Is a +8 Agi more valuable on average than a +12 Sta? Maybe I should go with two +8 Agis, and to hell with socket bonus. Oh shoot, wait, I got Zierhuts’ Lost Treads last week, as soon as I get a Ring of Unyielding with the Defense Rating to cover what I lose from Heavy Clefthoof Boots, I can equip em… but I’m going to lose a lot of Stamina when I switch out the Heavy Clefthoof Boots, maybe I should take two +12 Stamina gems on the Gloves to compensate…. But then I could get also the +12 Stamina enchant on the boots instead of the +12 Agi I was intending…. but the +12 Agi is just solid WORTH more than +12 Stamina on a point-by-point basis….
DAMN IT!!! I need a beer…. or better yet, a bottle of Captain Morgen and a two liter of Coke, it’s gonna be a long night….
Entries (RSS)
November 21st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Completely, totally, utterly sympathize and (mostly) agree BBBB.
The part that gets me is not so much the complexity of the stats. That does irritate, but let’s be honest - there ARE people out there that figure it out, and most of us playing are pretty internet-savvy and it’s all pretty easy to find. It may not be easy to understand, let alone actually apply to your gear, but it is pretty easy to find.
But I definitely agree with the changing stats and approach on Blizzard’s part. I’ve been playing just under 2 years now and they’ve changed underlying stats twice on me now. I understand that a complex game “may” require complex stats, but don’t go changing them as soon as I get used to them. Geez.
Anyway - there are some good resources out there and I’ve been toying around with trying to put together an easy to understand overview of our critical stats, what they mean to us, and some simple tradeoffs. Not sure if I can really make it that simple, but I may give it a go.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Gah, I know what you mean. At least know that you aren’t alone. All the time I wonder things like “is X crit better than Y spell damage?” and “is X spell damage worth giving up for Y stamina”. It’s hard to make the right choice.
It will say that its probably the hardest for the tank IMO, since you have the uncrittable restriction hanging over your head at all times.
/comfort
November 21st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Okay so I’m weird, I absolutely love numbers. Probably it’s because my job doesn’t let me play with them enough (programmer, I get to throw numbers all around but never do anything interesting like, say, multiply them). That’s not to say I don’t see where you’re coming from though. Calculating theoretical numbers like survivability and mitigation is fine to leave to people who like theorycraft, but there’s no reason Blizzard shouldn’t be giving us a hand with the solid, real numbers like chance to be crit by bosses.
If you really get fed up with it, just throw all the combinations into Rawr and pick the one that gives you the biggest total with your most common raid buffs. There’s such a thing as “close enough”, and I doubt your fellow raid members will fault you for being off by a quarter of a percent of dodge.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I used to numbercrunch alot in the past aswell, i made page full calculations which some of my classmates loved (altho they likely just scrolled down to see the conclusion).. the formula’s were stuck in my head and i could calculate dps improve on gear on the fly (sadly others knew that aswell >.>).
But since TBC i’ve given up on that… i got a rough feeling but i don’t do hours of research to see if an item is 0,04dps beter.
On the other hand i do play this balance game on my Warrior; saving up on defense so i can swap some gear without it later on… i’m still keeping track of my gear but at least the calculations are less complex.
But then again, numbercrunching is what sets the best apart i suppose
November 21st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I hate math too. /hugs
November 21st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Heh, try being a Prot Paladin - I think they have it worst of all
I personally enjoy the theorycraft side of things, but I definitely understand people that don’t.
In general though, as long as you understand the basics (meeting minimum DEF, etc) and know the reason for your decision, you’ll be fine.
Happy Thanksgiving all!
November 21st, 2007 at 3:50 pm
You must go download and install the addon:
RatingBuster - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/4991/
It does all of this for you and used with equipcompare makes it simple to see if something is an upgrade very very quickly.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:12 pm
What really gets to me isn’t the really the base stat changing, it’s the gear that blizzard seems to be changing stats on.
My main is a hunter, where agi was the best base stat. That’s great, especially for those who love playing survival. The only problem is… unless you arena or farm Tier gear, agility is nearly impossible to find on a drop. Why is this? It’s because Blizzard decided to make mail dps drops work for both shamans and hunters (where shamans value strength and hunters value agility). The compromise… give the gear +stam and +int along with straight up +crit and +AP. This robs hunters who value +agility.
It also goes for crafted items, which is what really gets me… I could see making some drops as I mentioned available for both shamans and hunters - who doesn’t prefer handing out the gear compared to DE’ing it. But, honestly, the ebon netherscale set doesn’t HAVE to be +stam and +int - people CHOOSE to craft them, they’re not random drops, why not just make 2 sets - one with +Strength and one with +agi?? Let people choose what they want to make with their crafting professions.
And now, Blizzard is doing things like going away from basing bonuses on base stats, like the new druid changes from strength to AP.
It’s almost like blizzard is making the base stats worthless now, and people just go for +damage, +crit, +defense etc etc.
/endrant
November 21st, 2007 at 7:39 pm
hehe, I completely agree with BBB. For a while I total dig doing all the math to maximize my warlock’s gearing, socketing, and enchanting but I just won’t have the energy to spend that much time on the same type of analysis on my alts. I’m going to take the easy road and just BG with my alts, where it really doesn’t matter if you die a billion times as long as you take out some f00lz along the way to the GY.
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:58 am
While I feel for you here, I have to disagree on a personal level. I’m one of those crazy people who loves digging into the math of things *points to my comments on Of Teeth and Claws’ post regarding idols.
I have to say, though, trying to stay uncrittable is a pain and a half. For a while, I was questioning whether the new heroic chest would be an upgrade for my last piece of heavy clefthoof. Then the debate abruptly stopped, as I realized that in order to replace the HC chest, I’d have to jump through about 1000 hoops to stay uncrittable (I’m currently sitting at 2.65% crit reduction from gear).
I may revisit the idea at a later date, but for now I’m saving up my honor for the level 70 PvP trinket (for tanking Nightbane with, I can currently do it with 1 priest as I own the old level 60 one). Maybe after that I’ll start working on the PvP season 3 bracers, if I decide that those plus the badge chest are better than the badge bracers plus heavy clefthoof chest.
A point to ponder: I was a bear tank in raids since long before warriors got unseated as the undisputed “sole tanking class”.
Back then, any bear tank that knew what they were doing had 10-15 bonus defense, and thus had, at minimum, a 5% chance to be critted on each swing, with a high probability of chain crits. Those who tried to stack defense to hit crit immunity were about as useful as a warlock tanking Maiden, as they were easily crushed by their low stamina and armor, or ignored completely due to their lack of any threat generation.
My point? Uncrittability, along with other benchmarks like minimum mitigation and health pool, is something thats pretty much required for any serious raiding tank. But most people, especially those casual players you allude to in your post, dont get to that level of gameplay (Guess who never got to see anything past late Molten Core).
You dont need ideal stats to tank normal instances. Hell, you dont need them for heroics. As long as you have a decent idea of what is good for you in general, you can tank for a good long time without issue.
Oh, and FYI, while I do know all the numbers for mitigation, etcetera, most of my gearing decisions are made from the gut, instead of from the calculator. The only two hard numbers I pay any attention to, in general, are 2.6% and 35,880.
Any decisions that need to be made that dont rely on those two caps, I either decide using vague numbers (My HP pool is too low, I should go for more stamina) or gut instinct (I have enough stam, I’m going to put an 8 agi gem in that socket since that benefits me in both of my feral forms).
My apologies for rivalling your original post in length *chuckles*
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:20 am
Hi BBB,
I totally agree with you on the fact that Blizz should publish the formula straight ahead, and not have the players reverse engineer. An option to toggle it in the spell tooltips and on the paperdoll or something would do.
After that, there is still the decision about enchants, gems, or switching item X in favour of item Y. This is the fun part of it. You may finetune your gear to your palystyle, prioritizing the magic numbers that need to be met.
As a hunter it is not that hard. But now I am at a point where most upgrades may compromise my hit rating, so the tradeoff between big white DPS and the chance to blow them into the void and lower DPS guaranteed to land on the target are a major concern.
And then there is still the socketing-philosophy. Some people don’t care about socket colors if they can just put in brute DPS of any kind. I do socket according to the given colors, which in turn gives me a more balanced paperdoll.
Picking up MP5 may let me DPS longer in a 15 minute fight. More stamina may allow me to survive my own errors, or the errors of other’s…
So the bottomline is: Blame Blitt for not providing the maths straight out. But if you even consider a full blown paperdoll resocketing after every drop, I would conclude that you are so deep into it that you must have fun doing that!
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 am
I wrote a recent post about this increasing complexity of customization, where I argued that this complexity is getting out of hand. I think that your solution of more transparency along with standard stat conversions would be a great start.
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:52 am
For tanking, +12 stamina > +12 agility, ergo +12 stamina > +8 agility. Stacking stamina gives healers more space to play with. In addition Bears get a huge boost to pure stamina (+25% bear form, +20% from HoTW), so you’re really shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t go for that. About the only time I’d use a shifting nightseye (+4 agi, +6 sta) is if I cared enough about the socket bonus.
If you’re having problems with getting enough defence rating, get yourself some PVP gear such as the bracers and belt.
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 am
“For tanking, +12 stamina > +12 agility”
Quite a sweeping generalization, and one that is not always correct. If your healers know how to cancel-cast, that 12 agility is (after kings and the like) approximately 1% less incoming hits actually landing on you, which for a person with nearly 50% dodge such as myself, is approximately 2% fewer landed hits. 12 stamina, on the other hand, is a bit less than 200 HP, which reduces damage you take by 0, but gives you a very small bit of additional damage buffer.
If you die in fights because your healers just aren’t able to keep up with the damage, then you are correct, the 12 stamina is more important. If, however, you’re dying because your healers are going OOM, or you’re NOT dying, then the 12 agility gives you much, much more, as that extra 200 HP isn’t going to make a lick of difference.