Stats – Scaling Basics

Stat scaling is an interesting, if rarely discussed, subject. It’s the reason why stat weights vary from tier to tier, and why gearing can be such a headache at times.

For the most part, stats actually scale in a very understandable manner: linearly. For the math inept among us, something which is linear is merely a straight line of some sort which can be reduced to the equation y=mx; in this case, with y being dps gained, x being the specific stat in question, and m being some sort of coefficient depending on the stat’s worth. The more valuable a stat is, the greater m will be, and vice versa. M is essentially that stat’s weight – simply normalized depending on the AP:DPS ratio of your spec/gear level. If a stat scales linearly with itself, it doesn’t matter how much of that stat you already have – you’re still going to get Y dps for every X of that stat. Period.

It is important to note that, in this context, we’re talking absolute dps gained, not the relative amount. E.g, if 10 strength gives you 50 dps, and strength scales linearly (it does), then it will give you that same 50 dps regardless of pre-existing strength amount. That said, that 50 dps may be a 1% dps gain when you have 100 strength to begin with, and only a 0.5% dps gain when you have 200 strength to begin with. Just something to keep in mind.

With that out of the way, which stats are linear? Attack power, strength, crit rating, and mastery rating.

Attack power and strength should be givens. Of course they scale linearly. Theyboth increase the damage of each of your abilities by X, Y, and Z. Their value is not dependent on themselves; although, yes, it will increase/decrease depending on how much of other stats you have, that would only change how steep/flat the line is  – it would still be linear regardless. Equation wise, other stats will always influence the m, but if the stat in question also influences the m, then you’re no longer linear.

Crit rating might be  a bit more difficult to wrap one’s mind around. After all, everyone knows that going from 50% to 51% crit is less of a dps gain than going from 0% to 1% crit. That’s obvious – for simplicity’s sake, assume 100% of your damage is able to crit (which it is, at least for Frost) and assume that all of your abilities have a 2x crit modifier (which, ignoring the meta, it is). That means that going from 50% to 51% crit would be a 0.67% dps increase, whereas going from 0% to 1% crit is a 1% dps increase. You have to remember though; scaling comes down to absolute dps gains, not relative! In reality, that 0.67% gained is equal to the 1% gained, because you have a higher base dps amount at that 50% crit level (of course). The one thing which can cause the crit curve to become bent are when certain abilities have a small crit cap (meaning they have an increased amount of crit from talents/set bonus, or something like KM getting in the way).

Mastery rating, for us, works the same way as crit in terms of linearity.

But, of course, the real discussions comes in when you get to the nonlinear stats: hit rating, expertise rating, and haste rating.

Hit and expertise are fairly obvious in how they work. They scale linearly… up until a point. For hit, the gain will drastically slow at this “soft-cap”, until growth stops completely at the hard cap. For expertise, it just plains flat lines at the cap.

Haste… haste is where things get interesting, and it’s the main point of this whole (convoluted) post!

You see, haste doesn’t just have a single “soft cap”. It has a dozen of them! The first one comes at the point where you become GCD capped. Then the next one comes at the point where you eliminate all of the HoW from your rotation. Then the next one comes at the point where you eliminate all of the Blood Strikes/Festering Strikes from your rotation. Then the next one comes after you eliminate the next weakest damage-per-GCD ability from your rotation, and so on down the line. Eventually you’ll get to a point where you’re applying diseases then spamming Obliterate for Frost or DCx5/DT/SS for Unholy. But, wait, haste doesn’t stop there! It will always increases your (and your ghoul’s) attack speed, which makes it a perfectly potent stat on its own.

The best way to get an idea of haste is to look at some charts. Remember when looking at these that the weight of a stat is the slope of the line – this means that a soft cap doesn’t occur when two lines cross, but before then; when the gap between two lines starts to shrink (instead of stay constant/grow):

Frost 2H

As you can see, the first drop in haste – where it falls below another stat (mastery) – at around 500-600 rating. That hardly matters, however, largely because as matters currently stand the onely time you can pick up mastery is via reforging (which is why we go for it so badly!).

The interesting point is at approximately ~850 rating, and that’s when haste falls below strength. If you have less than this amount, then you’ve been gemming 20 haste in yellow and 10haste/10strength in red. At or above this amount, you should be gemming 20 strength in red and 10haste/10strength in yellow.

Frost DW

Frost DW is boring. Around ~600 haste rating, its slope (which, remember, is essentially it’s stat weight) begins to almost even out with crit. Haste is still ever so slightly superior – almost imperceptibly so, however, and they’re essentially equal at that point.

Unholy 2H

Unholy 2H is, amusingly enough, nearly as straight forward as Frost DW. The only inflection of notice is the one which comes around at ~450-500  haste rating, which is where strength surpasses it. Considering the amounts of haste on current gear, unless you’re a fresh 80, you’re almost assuredly way over that mark. Beyond that, there’s nothing to worry about – haste’s lead on crit and mastery is just outrageous.

All in all, the soft cap of haste… well, it’s just not a clearly defined concept.

Fortunately, pretty graphs sum it all up nicely!

Personally, I still believe haste would be better off just affecting attack attacks, ghouls, and diseases. It would easily keep up with crit (as it did all of Wrath) with that limited effect. Balancing it as is is, as can be seen, a nightmare, and that’s just from a numbers perspective. The effect on one’s playstyle from having to stack haste… is it fun?


94 Responses to Stats – Scaling Basics

  1. Mort says:

    Became a question over at the Eu DK forums if Frost presence is better than unholy presence.
    some people have said they did better with the opposite presence. your opinion?

    • Consider says:

      It all depends on the spec in question and the number of mobs present.

      Frost DW? Yes, Frost presence is always the best option.

      Frost 2H? Yes, if it’s one mob and you have something like 5% or more haste. If there are multiple mobs present, then FP wins, sure.

      Unholy? Yes, unquestionably. Just no doubt about it! If there are multiple mobs present, then FP likely wins, but it becomes a bit fuzzy.

      • Mort says:

        meant frost 2h. wasn’t to specific :3 my fault.

      • xtatik says:

        How many mobs need to be present and how for long for FP to outshine UHP for 2h Unholy?

        There used to be an option in Kahorie’s sim to tell it how many mobs are present. That seems like it would be perfect for testing such a thing, but I can’t find it in the cata sim.

      • Consider says:

        It’s under the scenario options.

        But to the question at hand: it depends on so many factors. So rarely is a fight “X mobs for Y seconds”. Usually when there are multiple mobs involved, they’re only there periodically, or whatever. It’s simply not as simple as “if there are greater than so-and-so many mobs present, do this”. So much in play.

        Honestly though, you don’t even need to know the specifics – with presences no longer costing runes, you’re best off switching from UP to FP “on the fly” in combat, before DND/Pesting, and then switching back immediately after you dump the generated RP, but that gets tricky for some people. Done right, as log as there’s a single extra mob, you’ll gain dps. It will be one of those things people will have to learn properly, although there’s not much to it (dump RP, swap pres, do AoEs, dump rp, swap pres).

      • Bermm says:

        Thanks for the explantion, just to make sure I understand what you are saying, is if I am at 850 Haste I should be running in FP instead of UP as a 2H Frost?

      • ODK says:

        Do you still get the damage improvement on stuff like diseases and D&D if you place it in unholy and switch to frost? then after the 10-15sec D&D and burnt blood boils/runic back to unholy?

        i believe thats what your saying right now, just makin sure im understanding you correctly….it seems as if things are calculated on the fly now (IE> Calculated every tick/swing/pulse) instead of ahead of time, is this correct? are there any exceptions or specific things to keep in mind about it?

      • Consider says:

        Pestilence will carry it through, while DnD will change if you do. You just swap to FP, DnD, pest, dump RP, kill a couple seconds until DnD is up, then switch back.

    • Anonymous says:


      so after I reached about 900 haste I don’t need to care about haste at all? Please clarify

  2. Frozen says:

    You’ve summed up the whole haste debate pretty damn well right there.

  3. Angvard says:

    Since you didn’t mention it at all, I get a higher value for Expertise with Kahories Simulator the more haste I have. At my current (37% Haste 3 Exp) Expertise gets higher EP than Crit. I am currently toying around with a few different reforges and did no serious math, just hoping for some further input.

    • Consider says:

      The more haste you have, yes, the more valuable expertise and hit becomes. Of course. But for a given amount of haste, hit/expertise are going to scale linearly (up until their respective caps) with themselves. If you increase/decrease the amount of haste, it just shifts the hit/expertise curve up or down appropriately, it doesn’t actually change it’s curve. The same goes for many stats. The more, say, crit you have, the stronger strength is. But strength is still going to be that linear line, just pushed up to some degree.

      Ultimately every stat scales with every other one, and some stats scale better with certain ones than with others. Of course. But it’s all still linear, and that’s the key thing… the three exceptions of hit, expertise, and haste aside.

      At any rate, more specifically at the point in hand – I could never get expertise surpassing crit (although it gets close, certainly). The only thing it would do is cause you to reforge crit to expertise on crit/haste pieces. I wouldn’t change up any item choices or what have you. Even if exp did ever beat crit, I have to imagine the margin is something minor like 2.20 to 2.15 or some such thing, and that would be an incredibly minimal gain (maybe the equivalent of 100 AP, if that) – and a flat out loss whenever a second (or more) mob was present.

      • Angvard says:

        With my stats I get a “sweet spot” at 17 expertise, where the EP for crit and expertise are identical. A whooping 55 dps single target gain by reforging 1.87% crit into expertise. It might be more beneficial in situations where a dodge or two in a row might cause some runes to sit unused (with UF or Bloodlust maybe). However as you already pointed out it is probably not worth it in a real raid.

    • Kortic says:

      That seems logical though. We cap expertise because of the lack of free GCD as frost dps. The more haste you get = even less free GCD (or even skipping low priority abilities) and hence the more important it becomes to never be dodged.

      Another excellent post Consider.

  4. Jonneh says:

    Just for fun consider, show everyone the 3.3 graph for crit before and after the hotfix ;x

    • Consider says:

      As if I have stuff like that still around =p. I could show what crit’s present value would be if the SS hotfix in question (the one which stopped the shadow portion from critting) never went live.

      All it does is shift crit’s line up. Way up, sure, but just a shift. It doesn’t bend it.

      A real interesting stat to look at would have been ArP!

      • Jonneh says:

        Just amusing to see how hard the hotfix nerf bat hits, usually harder than the ptr/beta nerfbat.

        A lesson to learn from all classes, when something on your own class feels too powerful, complain about it as loudly as you would if it were underpowered. At the end of the day, getting hotfixed like that has been the worst experience we’ve ever had:/

        And yeah, the line was wayyyyyy up there wasnt it!😀

  5. Zao says:

    It also gets interesting if Blizzard really implements the Hit scaling in higher tiers of raids.
    Since you’d then have different caps for hit, depending on which tier you are.

  6. Tarundrim says:

    Consider, the value of crit rating for Unholy seems really low, did you assume a non-scaling ghoul for this simulation?

  7. Abd says:

    Consider.. in the Frost topic at EJ forums you state bneath the BiS table to not gem pure haste in yellow sockets because of the soft cap. But in the gemming section you suggest to socket pure haste (+20) in yellow sockets.. so.. is it pure haste till the haste soft cap or…..?

    • Luescion says:

      This had me a bit confused when I just read over it, but before this post I took a little time to sim out on Kahorie’s a few different gemming scenarios and just based on stat scaling it changes.

      “Frost 2H


  8. BloodyFox says:

    So, Consider, what I think is missing here is: When do you reach the points where you eliminate HoW from your rotation? When FeS? And so on. Since haste is so valueable to us Unholies, I’m sure we’re going to reach the point where casting HoW becomes undesirable sooner or later, so what is your take on that?

    • Jonneh says:

      HoW goes whenever you don’t have a free global to cast it. I actually find it hard to find one sometimes now with RP from AMS and procs. That is with about 30% haste. (Not to mention that it is currently bugged like it used to be, refusing to actually fire if you have a longer Battle Shout on you – something for the bug section Consider!)

      Thats very rough, and just from my general experience. The point is there is always a chance you’ll have a free global, while running to a target or just proc starved. Not to mention more complicated intelligent player choices to make. I’m not sure if its a good DPS choice to do so, but if I have 30 RP, 4 stacks of SI and 1 of each rune on cooldown.. I’ve been tempted to HoW then even if its not the priority. You’re not wasting resources so its not a guaranteed DPS loss to do so like it used to be. I would argue that it makes alot more sense to get DT back up under such circumstances. An interesting thing to explore in math perhaps. If you have 0 RP and say.. both blood/frost and one unholy on CD. (again with 4 or less stacks) Is that a good time to BT, then SS twice as normal for your RP->DC->SI->DT sooner?

      It seems like a good choice again, but does the math pan out? Or is delaying an SS (or other rune strikes) for some other reason?

      • Jonneh says:

        Forgot to say, I doubt there is ever a point where FeS would be dropped. Death runes for one. Not using it means you need to take more Globals to get RP from those runes any other way for two. Again no numbers to support that, but as a player I feel like its too much of a staple to drop.

      • Consider says:

        There is. It’s a ridiculously high, unarguably unreachable point, but there’s still a point where you would do nothing but apply diseases, and spam SS (aside from DCx5+DT as soon as DT falls). In such a scenario, applying diseases by PS+IT every 60 seconds isn’t as great a dps loss than the difference between 5 SS and 5 FeS (which is how many FeS it would take to extend diseases 30 seconds, of course).

      • Consider says:

        The inclusion of that from the bug list isn’t unintentional. It’s how buffs have always functioned – just look at non-glyphed verse glyphed HoW! It might be silly, flawed design, but it’s design nonetheless. This is simply one of the first instances of it actually affecting normal game play.

        But, yeah, right on everything else. Specific point is impossible, and doesn’t really matter anyways – it’s not like we have a set priority; HoW is last anyways, so it’s not like you can accidentally use it when your haste says you shouldn’t – you would be too busy doing something else if you’re playing right.

        I’m not quite following what you’re asking, but that’s probably because I’m being dense! Of course you would BT in such a scenario. What alternative is there? >>

      • Jonneh says:

        I dunno really, just thinking out loud about the priority system tbh.

        Its likely the example is a bit too specific ;p

        I guess what I’m saying is, the point at which you are prioritising DC to get SI and DT back up.. does that extend to “prioritising RP generation” including perhaps delaying rune strikes (providing you’re not sitting on 2 runes of the same type)?

        Seems to me that so long as you never waste any rune cooldown time, its a safe bet that getting another stack of SI sooner, and therefore a DT a bit sooner, you’re doing the right thing. To prove it I guess you’d have to prove that doing that all the time never delayed a rune use ability to the point at which they were both off cooldown at the same time.

        Thats where I think the player intuition part kicks in for me, since such proof would become quite hard to map out accuracy in the middle of a fight as a split second choice.

        As an aside, I do have some trouble following my FeS’s in that sometimes I end up sitting on 4 Death runes within a short amount of time, which takes 4 seconds to spend, but it spends the two blood first THEN the two Frost. Quite minor, and tbh it only occurs when my runes are coming back so fast that I’m probably capped so far as resources are concerned.

        This is talking like, heroism, UF, DBW Haste proc.. One or several of these. Total insanity so far as haste is concerned!

        Is that enough of a reason for Death Rune use to prioritise one of a pair instead of the runes in order? Or am I just over-thinking stuff? Makes me cringe a bit watching BB DD UU instead of BD FD UU, seems to make more sense to get one of each on cooldown before two of one.

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  10. Magdalena of Turalyon says:

    Very interesting post! Like you, I’d like to see one on ArP as well. I remember seeing graphs which showed the stat scaling in an S-curve, which was simply ridiculous. One estimate told me that the last 3% of ArP gained was equal in value (value being potential DPS gained) than the first 30% for purely physical DPS specs.

    As for the Scourge Strike nerf… Yeah, don’t even get me started =/

  11. Vorga says:

    Thanks for the post. I have been reading your EJ posts. This background is helpful for understanding some of the stat discussions that take place there.

  12. Legatus says:

    I’m just curious if anyone has done the math for DW frost using 2 fast 1handers versus 2 slow 1handers since all the changes have ocurred

    The reason I ask is, I’ve been getting same if not slightly better results using herioc scourge axes compared to 2 reg BVB’s.
    The 277 axes give me better stats in Str, Haste, and Mastery but have the lower hit and 1.50 speed. My hit and Exp is capped and I have my haste at a soft cap of 900.
    This has also been giving me better results than 2h frost using Shadow’s Edge. However when I reforged my haste more into mastery on DW frost my dps seemed to drop a bit.
    Keeping my haste at 900 seems to be more effective in both DW and 2H frost specs regardless of weapons or presence I’m in.

    • Consider says:

      All else equal, slower is better, of course, but weapon speed has a stat weight like anything else. Just take the speed difference in seconds, multiply by ten, then multiply by the stat weight for it. If that number is greater than the combined value of the loss in stats/dps/whatever, then use it, and if it’s not, then use the faster weapon.

  13. v3x1 says:

    So is there a point haste % wise that we should use fp for single target over up? Also stance dancing is way too fun atm on some fights

    • Consider says:

      Huh? No, never. If anything, it would be the opposite – there’s a point haste % wise where Frost DW should use UP for single target over FP. What that point is, I don’t know off the top of my head, but it should exist in theory.

  14. Luescion says:


    This very well may be to I’m not adept to configuring Kahorie’s, but I’ve been playing around with it all morning swapping between the gemming you have available on your EJ topic for 2H Frost. I find I’m getting a large DPS decrease according to the simulator when I prioritize Hit > Exptertise > Haste > Master > Strength etc. When I use a priority similar to the DW Frost I’m getting better numbers, also Kahorie’s is predicting my Haste to be around 800 rating but in-game it’s reporting my gear as having around 550 rating.

    I imported my Armory and then changed which pieces the armory wasn’t updating for Kahorie’s and then worked out mastery. Any advise? Thanks in advance.

    Also I was curious that you advised Zerack’s DK Gear Optimizer in your 4.0.1 posts even though Zerack’s hasn’t been updated since March?

    • Mikami says:

      if you pull data out of the armory, it don’t show the reforged item stats, therefor you lost of rating.

      • Luescion says:

        I reforged them and still wasn’t receiving the results desired. However I instead opted for manually choosing each gear piece, and worked through it the slow version and I managed to get results similar to what Consider is talking about in this blog post. Over 800 Haste rating is a loss, exchanging Lightning Eye of Zul for Etched Dreadstones allowed me to keep hit cap and gain damage through the strength.

        I’d like to know how you create these flowcharts.

  15. Vinnicus says:

    Im actually at 31% haste right now, would it be worth bringing it down 1% by swapping back to a few 10 str 10 crit gems?

    • Vinnicus says:

      or even reforging a little haste away, as if Im reading correct its not terrible to be over 30% haste but once you hit near that mark crit is likely to go better in the place of stats that would take me above 30% haste?

  16. Jonneh says:

    @twitter update


    Wonder how long this haste-gives-you-resources thing will last in its current form. I just don’t think its a great idea. 30% haste from gear is just stupid, when it comes to raid buffs, heroism and procs/UF.. you’re just swamped. It feels more frantic that 3.3.5 as well, because of the 1 second global. I just feel like I’m having to spam the button to dps effectively.

    Seems stupid to make haste this powerful, they’d be much better off just reducing the effect it has on bringing you resources. At least then it’d still scale well but be impossible to get so much you’re just capping yourself out every time a trinket procs.

    Either that or they must have a pretty well laid out plan for seeing exactly how much haste they’ll be giving us access to. I’d say once you get above 20% you’re starting to feel the pinch of wall-to-wall GCDs, especially when you consider raid buffs and heroism/UF.

    • Sag says:

      What I don’t get is that Blizz included mastery to be a stat that people should build around and a knob that they can tweak to increase/decrease dps/power as needed, but there are several class-spec combos where the mastery is a crappy/not that great stat. Off of the top of my head:

      Ret pallies
      Resto Shaman
      Unholy Dks

      That doesn’t mean that mastery is absolutely horrible over all, but those classes won’t stack it over other more valuable stats, so how will that balance work?

      • Jonneh says:

        in a world where we can change most things about the stats our gear give us, where one stat will always be better than another.. I guess its just kinda catch 22!

      • Sag says:

        True, but seeing how well haste scales and how crappy mastery scales it makes me wonder how that will get balanced if the mastery is supposed to be the place where Blizz can easily adjust things.

        On that note, I’d love to see what these same curves look like for Rogues and kitty druids. Haste affecting energy regen, those guys are probably stacking the hell out of it and just pushing their hardest hitting button X5+finisher, crap isn’t that what combat already does?

    • Bactide says:

      For the past week I’ve honestly thought that I suddenly became absolutely horrible at this game. I sit at 32.5% haste, unbuffed, and it’s been a rollercoaster ride in terms of button mashing. I was shocked because I thought the whole idea of the new rune system was to add in some free GCDs so that we weren’t stuck with 3.3.5 DW Frost ability spam. So, it’s good to know that there can be a thing such as “too much haste” and that as Consider said 30%+ gets to be frustrating.

      I’m going to go on the assumption that we’re probably not supposed to exceed 20%ish haste in Cataclysm based on how it feels right now, and I’m hardly in full BiS gear. If that assumption is incorrect, I would suggest that the following changes:

      1) Rune regeneration from haste reduced by 33-50%.

      2) In order to counteract the large amount of value that haste would lose, and the overall loss of DPS, allow diseases to once again benefit from haste. This would also, consequently, be a buff to both Frozen Heart and Blightcaller although it would clearly have a bigger impact on Blightcaller.

      3) Change Blightcaller from 32% base + 4% per point to disease damage to 40% base + 5% per point to disease damage plus 10% base + 1% per point to minion (ghoul + gargoyle) damage.

      4) Make Sudden Doom proc from Scourge Strike, perhaps adjusting the chance to proc, only to completely eliminate the chance that Unholy DW comes back into the picture from the decreased focus on strikes (via reduced rune regen).

      The net effect would be to not completely nerf haste as a DPS stat, but simply to shift the damage away from spamming the hell out of rune abilities and allow us to actually have these free GCDs we’re talking about so that set bonuses and future skills and abilities weave in logically. Hasted diseases should never have been dropped in the first place.

      Again, if they have a plan to somehow limit our haste rating in Cataclysm, most of this is unimportant. But really the level 80 implementation of these changes has been horribly thought-out and I’m quite disappointed in it.

  17. Whatsthisidonteven says:

    I am just gonna leave this here
    *Touched by the Light now increases spell hit by 8%, up from 6%.
    3 Talent points(Virulence) vs Touched by the Light (free)
    Because paladin tanks are the only also magic using tanks hence they deserve to get stuff such as these.I am sure retribution will probably get the same buff in a later patch,but seriously someone would have thought that by now they would aknowledge that DK’s might need spell hit baked somewhere…

  18. Jonneh says:

    Can anyone tell if the vampire buff is actually affecting our pet’s dps? It seems like not to me, average damage per claw seems lower on BQ than on say Festergut.

    Kinda important to know! We’re gimped for similar fights in future now if such things done scale to our pet.

    • Blighted says:

      Just like how hunter and warlock pets haven’t ever received benefit, neither will unholy DKs. Fights like BQ, will always be fights that pet classes lose out on in the long run. Typically however, we will remain competitive, but you are correct, the reliance on our ghoul will ‘gimp’ us. If its that big of an issue for you, you can always run a second set of mastery gear and spec frost.

      • Jonneh says:

        It need not be the case however, since the new pet scaling design should allow for pet classes to receive benefit of these (de)buffs on their pets.

        Its something that could do with being mentioned and fed back. I don’t believe “change spec” should ever be a good thing to encourage in encounters, simply because mechanics exclude certain specs from performing well.

        The same could be said for fights where terrible pathing or something similar prevents pets from DPSing the target. Think Kologarn. Its a big worry imo, especially with the rise of smaller raids as definitive endgame progression. 1 dps out of 6 under performing because of unfavourable fight mechanics is quite a large percentage when compared to 1 in 16!

      • Sag says:

        I imagine there are work arounds that could be done to limit technical issues. I mean the dps increase from the bite would be nice, but I’d hate to get debuffed by something else and have that extend to the pet as well. Still I agree that when buffs determine the fight, pet classes shouldn’t be left out. On that note, what about fights like Thad, and the guy in mechanaar (BC) where the was a proximity debuff placed on you. How does that work with the pet, or is this a similar situation?

  19. Mulfred says:

    @ consider.
    I’m just happy someone beat me to the graphs. You’ve saved me a lot of time. Thank you.

  20. Valtiel says:

    The real question that springs to my mind here is: is this what Blizzard wants? Looking at the stats on gear in Cataclysm, getting such redicolous haste values won’t be that much of a problem. And the day they find out the Frost playstyle is PS IT OBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOB and UH goes PS IT SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS… they’re gonna change something again.

    I need a facepalm gif.

    • Haardrada says:

      Aside from the whole thing with 1% haste going from requiring 32 rating at 80 to 128 at 85, yeah.

      For comparison: Heroic T10 provides 294 haste rating, or about 9% haste. Normal T11 provides 566, or 4.42% at 85. 10-man T7 provides 131 rating, or exactly 4%.

      • Magdalena of Turalyon says:

        This, pretty much. I think (or at least, hope!) that Blizzard learned from the fiasco that was Armor Penetration scaling and will not let a stat get to the point where it becomes so ridiculous again.

        Now if only they’d ensure that DW is out of the question for Unholy permanently, with no danger for future tiers…..

      • Haardrada says:

        Change Sudden Doom from proccing off melee attacks to proccing off Scourge Strike. Moving Nerves of Cold Steel deeper into Frost wouldn’t be a bad idea either– swap it with Annihilation, maybe?

      • Valtiel says:

        Normal tier 11 has 566 haste. Cue heroic tier 14, and reforging, and lvl 85 epic gems, and get ready to watch the world burn.

      • Magdalena of Turalyon says:

        Honestly I think the simplest thing would be to simply ensure Sudden Doom procs solely off Two Handed weapons- otherwise we’ll reach a point where DW weapons scale too well and taking them is a must.

        Obviously moving Nerves of Cold Steel would help too, but it’s clear they want it and RPM to be an either/or choice between DW and Two Handed Frost, just like MoTFW and ToT.

  21. Todritter says:

    Nevermind rating =/= percentage that was a mistake in my part. It’s about 7 seconds my apologies for all the wasted posts

    • Branith says:

      Thats what you gte when you have half of WoW’s retarded nation in attendance. Lets face facts there are very few decent players in the game and even fewer successful and commited real life folks.

      In order for the QA to be any good there needs to be intelligent and good players who have the voice of the community but also are smart enough to phrase questions that are coherent and smart.

  22. Jonneh says:

    Does it make anyone else a bit sad that the best 2h so far is the Archaeology one?


    Grind grind grind and random drop so scrubs who don’t deserve it will get it before you😦

  23. ODK says:

    If you had 22 Expertise, the full rating on one item and lets say in this case, you could reforge up to 100% of the stat

    Would you choose to turn all of that expertise into haste or even crit Rating? or would you leave your expertise at a some level as the “lowest” you would allow it to go…

    At the molment im under the impression that if you can reforge it away, do so with as much of it as possible…


    • Consider says:

      Get rid of as much exp as you can, and dump it into haste (if possible) and crit (otherwise). Absolutely.

      • ODK says:

        But even all the way to 0? or to ~5? ~10? –at the molment im literally at 0 expertise, just curious if it was best way to go, im at 31% haste and 30% crit, hit capped and 0 expertise/mastry…

  24. Legatus says:

    Consider you should apply to work for Blizzard, they are hiring and it definetly seems you know what you are doing over those clowns.

  25. Jonneh says:

    Blizzcon live! :

    Ghostcrawler: If we do our job right, Mastery will be right up there with Haste and Crit


  26. Magdalena of Turalyon says:

    I’m watching the Q&A right now with bated breath- please please someone ask about Unholy DK mastery and Runic Empowerment (i.e. broken) vs. Runic Corruption (i.e. what it should be)!

    • Jonneh says:

      Someone asked, and phrased it so badly that we just got the over-done response about how its intended to mix up the rotation.

      • Leviatharan says:


      • Consider says:

        Yeah, the questions were kind of a let down, but what can you do! Not Blizzard’s fault, at any rate.

      • Jonneh says:

        the questions are always a let down tbh, it makes me rage cause you get very few cutting and worthwhile questions. Half of them are pointless crap that could be answered by reading mmo-c and patch notes. Sigh.

        Maybe next year we could do with a pre-blizzcon blog with questions we’d like to see answered, in hopes that someone with a clue might take something we really want talked about and put it to them.

        Seems so annoying to waste face time with devs to get answers to things that I could answer myself ;x

      • Haardrada says:


  27. Roth says:

    By far the most worthless Blizzcon in a long time.

    • Consider says:

      Without a new game/expansion or anything of the sort being announced, obviously wasn’t going to be as interesting as some others have been, but I still thought it was decent enough. QA was quite disheartening, but that’s ultimately just the fault of a few (odd) attendants!

      • Jonneh says:

        the guy who asked that thing you tweeted about.. I wanted to punch him. Seriously.

        RE be overpowered? Comparing it to the warrior sword specialisation and the old Windfury buff?

        are you _retarded_ ? Those were both passive GCDless free hits. RE is a proc that gives you resources for a single rune strike. Not exactly in the same school of abilities is it!


        The blood question.. god. That could have been worthwhile had he actually made a point about _any_ of the problems. Instead he just noobed it up with “i get kicked alot, buffs plz”. Like… stupidity? You kinda need to explain the problems you’re having, and why you feel that way so they can actually respond. Otherwise the answer is; because you’re bad.

        Lets make a pact Consider, I’ll go to Blizzcon next year if you do. Try and do some good for our class😦

  28. Raxx says:

    You are dealing with people who think Lore and Dressing up or dancing like toons in the game is mroe important than the gameplay. Of course the questions were retarded, retarded is the theme for Cataclysm, I mean, the lead villain has a snow plough on his face, how can you take that seriously?

  29. Anonymous says:

    Tsk tsk shoulda got an authenticator..
    Jk.. but that sucks

  30. Tiki says:

    Ex-ta-tremely useful for me Consider, seeing as my Kahorie’s is still borked (keeps throwing errors, related to gems and Silverlight storage, from what I can tell).

    I love you.

  31. Jonneh says:


    • Vuvuzela says:

      Unholy was miles ahead in lvl85 content compared to warriors right?

    • Bactide says:

      Blizzard really needs to take a look at our statistics. Primary stats should be primary stats. There is no reason that Strength, Agility, and Intellect shouldn’t be stats that everyone wants on their gear and not secondary to Crit/Haste/Mastery. Hit and Expertise, to cap, are obvious exceptions.

      I do not understand why they would nerf Unholy Might but do nothing to how ridiculously overpowered haste currently is. For once it would be nice for them to fix the problem and not just take the easy way out. Too much DPS? Better just cut down your attack power!

      Band-aids on broken arteries. That’s a surefire fix.


    • Kamil Hamid says:


      Ghouls now scale with crit? Ebon Plague no longer behaves like a troublesome brat wanting to run out at any second? Unholy’s mastery is now actually a threat to Haste’s supremacy?


  32. Mahdi says:

    So my friend pointed me to this information and at first glance I simply cannot understand how you came up with these graphs or what your basis is for stats scale linearly.

    As you said, linear scaling is y =mx + a.

    But as far as I know, there is no dmg in the game that emmulates that equation. All the dmg that I am aware of is interdependent linear variables.

    For example y = mx*z + a where z is some other variable that is not a constant.

    The simple example of this is a single melee attack. Its average damage, assuming hit and exp capped, is damage = AP/14 * Swing *(2*Crit% + (1-Crit%) = AP * Swing/14 * (1 + Crit%)

    This equation is of the form y = mxz + az which in my mind is not linear at all.

    Could you explain to me how you get the stats to behave linearly in an interdependent variable situation? Im assuming that you just have the variables set to a given value and then pretend its linear since you are forcing the other stats to remain constant but I do not understand how you could then gain any useful specific insight from that. I see that you might be able to see that at some point a stat may be better then another stat but by forcing a stat to remain constant you dont really learn anything about when specifically that would happen.

    Hopefully you can explain some of this to me.

    • Consider says:

      It’s not about stats scaling linearly. Obviously, because of all the factors involved, none do. It’s stats scaling linearly with themselves; i.e, all other stats/factors equal, if you increase/decrease a specific stat, your dps will increase/decrease in a linear manner regardless of whether you added or subtracted 50/100/1000 of that stat. This is incredibly valuable to know when it comes to stacking stats – Armor Penetration being the most notorious example, of course.

      • Mahdi says:

        That makes sense to me, and I would discuss against the term linear, but that is semantics and not very important. How did you create the graphs then? Did you assume some standard average amount to set the other variables to that you would have around at X gear level?

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  35. Azuwraith says:

    Seems I’m a bit late to the party, but just wanted to point out one small thing.

    (It’s also pretty late here, so please correct me if I’m missing something)

    Hit/Expertise scale linearly (Between the caps) except for refundable resource attacks in a GCD capped environment.

    Even then, the effect is very close to linear, and while it slows down slightly as you approach the cap, it’s not a drastic change.

    Roughly, over an X GCD period, Y misses (on a refundable resource attack) cost you your Y least desirable GCD abilities to be lost. As X becomes larger, and Y/X becomes smaller, this becomes more reliable, and the Y least desirable GCD abilities are the same ability, making this a linear effect.

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