Blizzard released a new Dev Watercooler addressing changes to secondary stats in Warlords of Draenor. In Warlords gear will have secondary stats and they will also have minor stats. Minor will be random and not guaranteed to be on all gear that drops. This is Blizzard’s way of creating a perpetual carrot for you to keep chasing, as you search for the holy grail of greaves. The entire list of secondary and minor stats is as follows.
- Secondary Stats
- Haste: (Unchanged) Increases attack speed, spell casting speed, and some resource generation
- Critical Strike: (Unchanged) Increases your chance to critically strike, dealing double damage
- Mastery: (Unchanged) Increases the effectiveness of your specialization-specific Mastery
- Multistrike: (New) Grants two chances for your damage and healing effects to fire an additional time, each at 30% effectiveness
- Versatility: (New) Increases damage and healing, and reduces damage taken
- Spirit: (Unchanged, healer-only) Increases mana regeneration rate
- Bonus Armor: (New, tank-only) Increases your armor
- Minor Stats
- Movement Speed: (New) Increases your movement speed
- Indestructible: (New) Causes the item to not take durability damage
- Leech: (New) Causes you to be healed for a portion of all damage and healing done
- Avoidance: (New) Reduces your damage taken from area-of-effect attacks.
One thing you’ll notice is that two previously mentioned secondary stats are not in the list. These are Readiness and Amplify. Readiness is the ability cooldown reduction that we get from trinkets like Assurance of Consequence. This could appear on trinkets and other items in Warlords, but as a secondary stat it proved to hard to balance and did not make the cut.
Amplify was a stat that multiplied the effects of other secondary stats. Blizzard realized that their design made this the “absolute best stat for everyone” and decided to jettison it rather than rework it.
Until the theorycrafters get some playtime and can see these stats in action, it’s impossible to know which secondary and minor stats will be best for Hunters. It’s also hard to know if some stats will be better for different specs.
Historically there has been on spec that rises above the rest each raid tier. In Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard has done a good job at keeping them all relatively close. Marskmanship is the current red-headed step gnome, but Beast Mastery and Survival each have areas where they shine.
Reforging is going away so if an item is missing Multistrike and that’s a stat you need then you’ll need to find an item with that stat. No more robbing Peter to pay Paul. One concern is that different specs could favor some stats over others. If that’s the case, and the specs are close in damage, then Hunters might need to have multiple gear sets.
This might not be a huge issue as a stats like Versatility will benefit all specs. Whether or not its the optimal stat remains to be seen. Multistrike is the one to keep an eye on here.
The minor stats will be random and not something you can count on getting. Movement Speed and Leech look to be the most useful. I’ll be curious to see how powerful they are. It could make for some interesting gear choices in Warlords.
Let’s say Multistrike is the best secondary stat for Hunters. You have an item with Crit and Multistrike, but then an item drops that has Crit and Haste and Leech. Is that second item the clear upgrade? We’ll have to see how this sorts out.
I don’t theorycraft, but I can’t imagine these new stats are easy to work with and it might be harder to identify BiS gear.
Warlord of Draenor is now in friends and family, so we should start hearing more about these stats and how they perform. Overall I like what they’re doing this time around.
