I love what I’m hearing about the new itemization from beta. A lot of it is still in flux, but there’s a core variable that isn’t: a number of formerly separate stats have been combined:

• critical strike = critical strike + spell critical strike
• hit rating = hit + spell hit
• haste rating = haste + spell haste
• spellpower = healing + spell damage

This is absolutely wonderful. If you’re wondering why they’re doing this or why it’s so important to the quality of PvE, let’s geek out a bit and look at each class, the kinds of gear it currently wants, and what just the spellpower (healing + spell damage) combine means in terms of how it’s going to make your PvE instances and raids happier.

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