Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for warlocks

With that in mind you will want to know what gear to aim for, what stats give the best for each talent build and who else is going to try to deny you the items you know to rightfully be yours -- "The name is in purple - everybody knows that means the warlock gets first choice!". Well, I'm certainly not about to tell you, I have no idea. Frankly Cataclysm is still too far off to know. That said, we are starting to get some real good clues, so we'd better start investigating.
So, what have we heard that we care about? There have been a lot of changes to the melee stuff but from what I can see we're still not going to be able to stack up on melee gear, fit it to a demon and get them to do all the work while we sit back and sip drinks with little umbrellas. So what are the changes we're interested in? Here's a breakdown from Adam's post yesterday:
- Stamina -- Non-plate wearers will have a lot more.
- Spirit -- Only found on healing gear.
- Intellect -- Grants spell power.
- Spell power -- Only on weapons, and just to make them clearly a caster item.
- Gem Color -- Few stats changing. Hit will likely become a blue gem (it's yellow now).
- Reforging -- You'll be able to reforge gear to customize your stats -- 50% of stat X can become stat Y. Restrictions apply (no Stamina->Strength, for instance).
Spirit - The lock's love affair with spirit has been somewhat torrid and is already getting boring. Life Tap is about to spurn her with patch 3.3.3, in favor of a more fulfilling stat and we know that Fel Armor is only using her to get even with other classes. Spirit becoming a healer-only stat should have little direct impact on us.
That said though, it opens up the whole debate about regeneration. This is something we simply don't worry too much about. Other DPS casters look to get 20-25% of their mana returns (during a boss fight) from regeneration, whereas we get none. No change for us then but does this mean that other classes are going to be getting similar resource mechanics to locks? I certainly hope not. I'm not big on jealously guarding abilities, but when something as class-defining as the Life Tap mechanic gets shared, I think that's a step too far. No reason for that to happen though, more abilities like Master of Elements might be the way to go.
Intellect - Ok, well, this is the biggie. Again, with the way locks are able to make use of health (and therefore healers) to keep casting, despite hugely expensive spell costs, we haven't needed big mana pools and so never needed to get gear with intellect. Come Cata we're looking at having our bread-and-butter stat (spell power) sourced from INT. So we're going to end up with bigger mana pools as a direct result. Sure, more mana equals less tapping, equals more casting, equals more DPS. But this is the mage model and honestly, anything that makes me more like a mage is a bad thing. I'm not saying the dropping of spell power in favour of INT is all bad, I just have some concerns.
Spell Power - This being the tool to prevent fights over weapons seems odd, sure, if that dagger has Mp5 on it I'm not interested but healers use spell power too, so I don't see the distinction yet. When a healer is gearing for throughput, they'll be after the weapons we need but with no fear of DPS sniffing around their spirit laden goodies. Hit versus regeneration is still a better distinction between DPS and healers but hit is notoriously bad for weapons because of their high stat value.
Gem Color - Nothing too exciting here, moving a primary stat (something people want more than anything else) to blue is going to be a good thing for attaining socket bonuses, hit makes sense. I wonder if spell power will remain as a gem or will we be throwing out all those red gems for some yellow INT ones?
Reforging - I can't get excited about this, I'm sorry. Yes, it will mean that there is a bit more gear uncertainty and it will allow greater specialization of stats but stat-X is still going to be better than stat-Y and website-Z will tell you which item gets you the most of stat-X. I think it's an interesting system and can see it's benefits in leveling (where you grab what gear you can), but for end-game gearing I think it's just making a stat simplification process that bit more complicated again. The only result will be that some people won't know that this item is better than that one, it's not going to change the fact that one is better. Though this is just a grumpy old lock bemoaning new-fangled gear mechanics, nothing specific about locks here.
So that's the basics, there are a couple of other things to check out.
Again, I see this as a complicating element in a simplification process, not sure why it's there. That said, it could lead to some cool effects. Who knows what will be boosted for each lock tree, maybe more or bigger crits for destro, faster or more powerful DoTs for affliction, and demonology locks get to summon Kil'jaeden himself to make them a cup of tea. Whatever it is, it will have to be something that scales. If demo get tougher pets, then every boss mechanic that buffs players had better buff the pets as well or they're getting another bum deal.Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We'll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.
This is interesting, the only one we look to 'cap' at the moment is hit but to need a higher cap for higher tier bosses is a big change. Often gearing for lower tiers requires hit gems and talents but these fall away as gear gets better. It seems this will continue to be a balancing act throughout the expansion.Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.
A final note goes to existing gear. This may not be a big issue as, with luck, new gear will be gained pretty quickly. However, it may be that if you have good gear now (and with the emblem system, who doesn't?) then you'll keep a lot of it through the leveling process and into dungeons. Be careful that the items you have now don't become obvious healer items in the big change. Since you have no Mp5 stuff (I hope) you'll probably be ok, but that thing you have, with all that spirit... you never know!

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Talothan Mar 2nd 2010 12:03PM
You didn't mention the removal of spell ranks. Without LT1 we will have to use a max rank Life Tap to buff up. With more stamina flying around, I hope it won't be too much a hit though.
Baelyn Mar 2nd 2010 12:39PM
The LT Glyph will definitely get a rework, with no spirit on our gear it will be completely useless. It may not even be triggered by LT anymore, they have repurposed existing glyphs in the past, only time will tell.
Dominic Hobbs Mar 2nd 2010 1:26PM
You're right that the use of rank 1 Life Tap is going to be impacted by the removal of spell ranks but this is a pretty minor concern, and only really one for healers - especially those who have an issue with locks who Tap for mana. And I don't care about them.
What we have at the moment is a situation where a minor inconvenience for a healer (and yes, I have played a healer) can be made much more minor by the use of a lower rank. The only time it is worth doing this is when you don't need any mana but want to proc the glyph. As has been mentioned, the glyph is liable to be reworked but there's no reason to assume it won't still be around to give a combat benefit upon tapping. So we have a situation where a minor effort is offset by (essentially) no effort on the part of the lock to downrank. Minor trumps none so it's worth doing.
A single full tap is almost never an issue. The bigger issue is with the activation of effects like that of IDS where several taps are required, but then other classes are in this boat and they don't even have a tap to offset.
I am far more interested in the removal of spell ranks from a leveling point of view, I think it's great, but that's not really anything for a warlock post.
Zem Mar 2nd 2010 11:19AM
It would be so nice to have more demon pets and more demon summon spells so u can add more than just one demon to the fight.
Magma Mar 2nd 2010 11:29AM
Yeah..More demons please..Updated models for the old ones would be nice as well. Since every expansion the graphics get a bump, hunter pets stay at the top of the "good looking" pile but our pets stay the same.
Rowan Mar 2nd 2010 12:33PM
I'm hoping a part of the Mastery element allows us to summon a second pet, even if it's only for a short time. If it becomes permanent, maybe they just have their damage reduced. Either way, looking forward to it.
iammurlocftw Mar 2nd 2010 5:18PM
Titanic demon's grip: You may summon 2 pets at a time but while 2 pets are out each takes a 10% damage decrease
Rakah Mar 2nd 2010 11:35AM
i'd like to correct you on int since the mana gained per point is getting nerfed in cata to coincide with the other changes.
Ratskinmahoney Mar 2nd 2010 11:40AM
The point is that because we have comparable spellpower now, in cata we'll presumably have comparable intellect to other casters, and thus comparable mana pools. They may reduce mana per int, but not to the extent that all casters have lock-sized mana pools.
rudolpho Mar 2nd 2010 12:47PM
It would be really nice to have more stamina than intellect again and have much higher stam values than other casters.......
Drag Mar 2nd 2010 11:38AM
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Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for Paid-by-the-hour Pooper Scoopers
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Burden Mar 2nd 2010 1:06PM
They're so many that I sometimes think my eyes are playing tricks on me.
Hëx Mar 2nd 2010 1:21PM
You missed one:
Cataclysm: Stat and System changes for Murlocs
Nex Mar 2nd 2010 1:26PM
this is awesome actually.
why do the editors feel the need to 'explain' the stat changes for each individual class like we can't read the original post and use our brain a bit - not like any of the class editors added something new to the existing information.
quite a noob website written by pve tards. what can u expect from pve lovers anyway.
Burden Mar 2nd 2010 1:44PM
That is because PvE is as simple and dumb as these articles are.
Waiting for downvotes.
Nex Mar 2nd 2010 2:49PM
not a single decent PvP article here - ever.
one noob tried to attempt a 'dueling guide',
but failed so badly, cos he didn't know the basic 101 stuff,
like friendly healers can't heal u while u duel someone else,
and so many other basic things, that my eyes were bleeding.
macster Mar 2nd 2010 11:39AM
Beginning every headline "Cataclysm: Stat and system changes..." is making my RSS bookmark and iPhone page hell to read.
Lemming Mar 2nd 2010 11:58AM
What do you expect from WoW.com? They create 20 new articles for every one piece of actual news. They get paid by the word I'm guessing.
Celess Mar 3rd 2010 3:24AM
@Lemming
So why continue to gratify them with your traffic?
Hypocrisy at it's finest, ladies and gentlemen.
n1nesp1ne Mar 2nd 2010 11:51AM
I really, really don't like it when people act like just because a change will mean something to min/maxers, it will mean that to everyone else. I can't wait for reforging, because it will let me further customize my character in a fun way. I can lean towards the stats I find more fun. That's because I play the game for fun, not to mathematically calculate my more powerful stats.
Mastery is an incredibly simple concept and there is nothing complicated about it....... except for when it comes to min/maxing. The vast majority of the community, including the warlock community, are not min/maxers and don't really care.