World of Warcraft™

To something other than holy pallies? And to a lesser extent, maybe even another mail class that uses intellect mails.

I ask because I would love to see another spec using it. Lets break down the armor itemization.

Plate Mitigation: Prot War, Prot Pally, Blood DK (3)
Plate Strength: Fury War, Arms War, Ret Pally, Frost DK, Unholy DK (5)
Plate Intellect: Holy Pally (1)
Mail Agility: BM Hunter, MM Hunter, Survival Hunter, Enhance Shaman (4)
Mail Intellect: Ele Shaman, Resto Shaman (2)
Leather Agility: Brew Monk, Wind Monk, Cat Druid, Bear Druid, Combat Rogue, Asn Rogue, Sub Rogue (7)
Leather Intellect: Mist Monk, Moonkin Druid, Resto Druid (3)
Cloth Spirit: Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Shadow Priest (3)
Cloth Hit: Fire Mage, Frost Mage, Arcane Mage, Affliction Lock, Destro Lock, Demo Lock (6)

Maybe a new mail class like a Tinker or something that uses both agi and int mails, and a new spec for Mages called "Enchantment" that is allowed to use Intellect Plates and have abilities that turn Intellect and Spirit into mitigation stats kinda like what Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks do with Agility. They already have synergy with some of their mage spells like Mana Shield, Mage Ward and Mirror Image. Maybe they can get a few new spells and rely on some melee, instant cast spells like Arcane Barrage and procs to trigger fireballs.

Blizz needs to remove intellect plate. they've tried stuff internally in the past, but they can't find a good solution.

I'd love the solution of making Unholy DKs more like plate casters and give them a reason to take spellpower plate, but I worry that the art style would clash too much... also, how do you make Runic Power/Runes function to scale with intellect without breaking how it works for Blood/Frost DKs?

The bottomline is that we know they want to address, but adding in another plate class isn't the solution, because that's a terrible reason to add a class to the game and it introduces more problems than it solves.

Spellpower mail is fine.

I continue to think that one forumite's idea of removing Mail altogether and splitting its users between armor types would pay off in the long run. There are other, even more complete solutions, but this is one I think would work with least change involved.

I'd like to see a caster dk.

that'd be sweet. It'd be like a combo of blood and unholy magic. they would cast huge spells that suck up runic power, then use rune spells to regain it.

I could totally write up a whole lists of talents and spells.

oh wait, I wouldn't have to do talents cuz those are changed :P

The situation with intellect plate is an ongoing discussion among the designers, but we have yet to come up with a solution that's better than just continuing to make intellect plate.

Let Holy paladins wear Strength plate – This would require a lot of conversions. Does hit become Spirit? What happens to expertise? Do all Strength items convert or just actual armor pieces? Can paladins mix and match with Intellect jewelry and trinkets? Do Holy paladins also hit really hard in melee, or do they lose that ability? Does it make paladins too effective as hybrid classes if they can share much of their gear across three different roles?

Let Holy paladins wear mail – Our mail is designed to look like shaman or hunters, not paladins. It’s cruel not to let a paladin wear the paladin tier armor, and also weird that a given tier piece could be plate or mail even though it looks identical.

Let priests wear plate – We like the design for priests as cloth-wearers, we would not want to drop less cloth overall (since only mages and locks would need it at that point), and we don’t want priests to look like warriors, DKs or paladins.

Individually these aren't difficult problems, and we have the ability to solve each of them, but at the end of the day the designers don’t think any of those solutions are preferable to just keep on making Intellect plate for Holy paladins. Maybe someday there will be a new class that also uses Intellect plate.

You forgot the obvious answer of giving unholy DKs an int to str conversion and have us focus more on spell damage since we have extremely weak scaling with weapons anyway.

Another idea is to have a process that allows Holy paladins to forge mail to plate. Holy-fication will give the item new looks and new tier status while retaining same stats.

I hope for a day where the server can assess your group makeup and go "there isn't a single feral druid or rogue in this group, don't drop agi leather" or "there isn't a holy paladin" etc. That'd be my ideal feature in tuning out loot problems. That seems to be the bigger issue then anything. Especially in 10 man sizes.

That'd be the straightforward thing, the harder challenge would be to refine it further to go "You have only one person in raid on protector token and 5 on vanq and 4 on conq, lets refine the drop ratio to that comparable to raid comp"

Nothing worse then having protector token 5 weeks in a row with 1 person that can use it.

Everytime I do BH. What dropped? Oh you know int plate.

any holy pallies? No? Oh well.

I always thought letting Disc priests use plate as a talent specialization would be okay, there are enough cloth wearing classes and one or two more specs could be expanded to use Spirit to make that gear more relevant. In our 10-man, we have 1 holy paladin and once he's geared in 3 weeks or so, all of it goes to DE while we do have a Holy/Disc priest.

The prospect of int plate not matching cloth priest tier is a problem though, and I don't see how that could be solved easily - but on the other hand, priests and paladins tend to have similar themed sets which complement each other.

I hope for a day where the server can assess your group makeup and go "there isn't a single feral druid or rogue in this group, don't drop agi leather" or "there isn't a holy paladin" etc. That'd be my ideal feature in tuning out loot problems. That seems to be the bigger issue then anything. Especially in 10 man sizes.

That'd be the straightforward thing, the harder challenge would be to refine it further to go "You have only one person in raid on protector token and 5 on vanq and 4 on conq, lets refine the drop ratio to that comparable to raid comp"

Nothing worse then having protector token 5 weeks in a row with 1 person that can use it.

Everytime I do BH. What dropped? Oh you know int plate.

any holy pallies? No? Oh well.

I've been in BH runs where agility leather drops and there are no rogues or feral druids. It happens. I think the better solution is to change their loot dropping method to drop items that are actually useful to the people who killed the boss.

Maybe do something more akin to what they did with Druids, and give them a 4th spec as well-Inquisition- a ranged DPS spec. Would give that int plate a bit more mileage. It would be fun for the whole family.

01/26/2012 11:29 AMPosted by Bashiok

Individually these aren't difficult problems, and we have the ability to solve each of them, but at the end of the day the designers don’t think any of those solutions are preferable to just keep on making Intellect plate for Holy paladins. Maybe someday there will be a new class that also uses Intellect plate.

Perhaps the first option with an option to reforge some stats completely. For example reforging 100% of strength on armor to intellect, and 100% hit/expertise to spirit. The option could be given to resto/ele shamans and resto/balance druids as well. Making it so that when reforging things like agility, strength and intellect you would reforge 100% of the stat over to another one of the big three, then on top of that you could still reforge side stats on the same piece of gear and when reforging hit/expertise to spirit and vice versa you would get a 100% reforge as well. You could make it so when doing this it would not cost money. That seems like it would be an ok choice IMO. The other armor users like rogues, hunters, warriors and paladins wouldn't complain about healers taking their gear because now any of their armor type gear that drops they can roll on, except plate tanking gear of course.

Just spitballing here, but I see now downside.

The easiest solution I see is allowing ele/resto shaman to wear plate. The tier gear would of course be shaman looking, and reforging is in the game to fix any player concerns over any other visual issues.

I hope for a day where the server can assess your group makeup and go "there isn't a single feral druid or rogue in this group, don't drop agi leather" or "there isn't a holy paladin" etc. That'd be my ideal feature in tuning out loot problems. That seems to be the bigger issue then anything. Especially in 10 man sizes.

That'd be the straightforward thing, the harder challenge would be to refine it further to go "You have only one person in raid on protector token and 5 on vanq and 4 on conq, lets refine the drop ratio to that comparable to raid comp"

Nothing worse then having protector token 5 weeks in a row with 1 person that can use it.

This ^. While the system won't ever be perfect since we all want it drop the loot we need every single time, that is a marvelous idea that I'm sure crosses everyone's minds on a very frequent basis, I'd doubt that it hasn't crossed the devs minds, but I can't recall ever reading anything addressing that issue. The tier token situation is incredibly crippling for a 10man guild and it makes me cringe every time a protector token drops (that is our issue too), and it goes to our shaman's third spec while we have healers or tanks struggling to complete 2 set main spec tier for conqueror token.

Other suggestions:

Re-design Unholy DKs to wear Int plate, making them more "warlocky" than they are and using a similar SP to AP conversion to the one used by Enh Shamans.

About priests: Only Discipline could wear Plate, developing more of their identity as true masters of self discipline and protective healing.

Adding a full holy caster spec to Paladins, making them even more popular.

Adding a plate-spec to another class, like Force Mages that deal primarily physical damage, making them even more popular.

One thing is for sure: Now that Druids have four specs, every one is going to want one ;P

Another idea is to have a process that allows Holy paladins to forge mail to plate. Holy-fication will give the item new looks and new tier status while retaining same stats.

I personally don't want to have to go through an additional process when I earn gear. At first it wouldn't be so bad, but after having to do it every single time, I'm sure it be a chore.

Whenever this topic comes up, there's always the argument of making Holy Paladins wear str plate and somehow trying to integrate strength plate with a caster. Why isn't the reverse argument made to make Int plate usable by all Paladins? It seems that a similar set of rules could be crafted that enhancement shaman go through to only allow so much spell power based on their attack power, etc.

It could be a matter that the only source of attack power is gained via intellect--barring the weapon slot, of course for Ret--and expertise could be generated through talents and glyphs (we already have +10 expertise glyph). Spirit becomes hit, and without Meditation talent, there wouldn't be a concern of mana regen in combat leading to strong off heals (well, stronger than they already are).

Thoughts?

edit: You guys could always give us Shockadins! I'd love a ranged dps Pally using Int plate, similar to Boomkin/Resto Druids. I know there has been mention before of no +Holy resistance, but this won't be a problem in Mists of Pandaria, as it seems resistances are going anyway.

I don't even understand why shamans wear mail, plate would make even less sense.

Very true, but how much of what blizz does makes sense anyways. It would just fix the gear ratio issue, making three specs use the int plate, and simultaneously fixing the secondary problem of the int mail gear being for only 2 specs.\

Edit: In that sense, it's the same fix as having holy pallies drop down to mail gear, just without an uproar from the community "omg I can't wear plate anymore /yellscream etc.