Stat changes revealed

They've been talking about them since Blizzcon, and have been promising recently to put up a full disclosure. Today they finally did and WoWInsider has the full post.

In short:

• Stamina -- Non-plate wearers will have a lot more.
• Spirit -- Only found on healing gear.
• Intellect -- Grants spell power.
• MP5 -- Gone completely.
• Spell power -- Only on weapons, and just to make them clearly a caster item.
• Attack power -- Gone on most items.
• Parrry -- No longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attack.
• Resilience -- Only affects player damage and player crit damage, no impact on crit chance, mana drains, etc...
• Block Value -- Gone, 30% passive block value now when wearing a shield.
• Weapon Skill -- Gone completely.
• Gem Color -- Few stats changing. Hit will likely become a blue gem (it's yellow now).
• Defense -- Gone, becomes dodge, parry, or block rating.
• 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).

I'm very happy that weapon skill is being done away with as it was incredibly painful to level. In fact it was so painful that anyone trying to level it would look for any way possible to cheat the system. Many of those have been "fixed", but the underlying point is that the players hated it and Blizzard finally saw the light. Thank you!

The Defense removal is largely moot for me as I only tank on my Druid, who didn't have to worry about it thanks to Survival of the Fittest anyway. And since Druids don't get Parry or Block this is largely unimportant for us. However, notice how many fewer Druid tanks there are now than there were in BC? I see one only once in a great while, which is a crying shame. Fix it Blizzard!

Although it's not spoken to directly by what I quoted above, but Balance Druids will derive hit from Spirit. It says Spirit will only be found on healing gear, except for Balance gear, which will continue to be shared by Resto Druids. There is some level of cross over now, but not a spectacularly great deal as Balance gear has lots of crit on it and resto gear doesn't. Blizzard is going to simply make all the stats correct themselves behind the scenes which is fine with me as long as it works out properly. However I don't want to have to break out a calculator whenever I'm looking at a piece of gear and seeing if it's going to be an upgrade for me or not. I want the stats to be apparent and easily measurable against other stats.

And lastly reforging. Perhaps the most anxiously awaited change. I can not tell you how many times I've wanted to change stats on various pieces I've had! I'd love to change stats so I can reduce haste and increase crit, lets say. And although they haven't really told us how it's going to work yet, it sounds like we will be able to do just that. I imagine Blizzard will be dealing with reforging over the Summer when I expect the Beta will have started.

So far everything looks good.