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.

• Druid — leather melee 1/4, leather tank­ing 1/4, leather nuk­ing 1/4, leather heal­ing 1/4
• Hunter — mail agi phys­i­cal 3/3
• Mage — cloth nuk­ing 3/3
• Shaman — mail strength phys­i­cal 1/3, mail nuk­ing 1/3, mail heal­ing 1/3
• Pal­adin — plate melee 1/3, plate heal­ing 1/3, plate tank­ing 1/3
• Priest — cloth heal­ing 2/3, cloth nuk­ing 1/3
• Rogue — leather melee 3/3
• War­rior — plate melee 2/3, plate tank­ing 1/3
• War­lock — cloth nuk­ing 3/3
  

It really gets inter­est­ing when we reverse the index:

1. Plate melee — pal­adin 1/3, war­rior 2/3
2. Plate tank­ing — pal­adin 1/3, war­rior 1/3
3. Plate heal­ing — pal­adin 1/3
4. Mail agi phys­i­cal — hunter 3/3
5. Mail str phys­i­cal — shaman 1/3
6. Mail heal­ing — shaman 1/3
7. Mail nuk­ing — shaman 1/3
8. Leather melee — druid 1/4, rogue 3/3
9. Leather tank­ing — druid 1/4
10. Leather nuk­ing — druid 1/4
11. Leather heal­ing — druid 1/4
12. Cloth nuk­ing — mage 3/3, war­lock 3/3, priest 1/3
13. Cloth heal­ing — priest 2/3

Thir­teen total gear cat­e­gories, and a whop­ping nine of them have only one class next to them: plate heal­ing, mail agi, mail str, mail heal­ing, mail nuk­ing, leather tank­ing, leather nuk­ing, leather heal­ing, cloth heal­ing. This is all niche gear, because if you don’t have one spe­cific class, that loot isn’t use­ful. Even worse are the cat­e­gories that have one build of one class listed, of which there are seven, which is a nar­row niche.

Blizzard’s ulti­mate goal is that when a piece of loot drops in PvE, the play­ers should not sigh but instead be excited. Some­one should be look­ing at their gear and say­ing that “it’s an upgrade” or “maybe as a backup piece” or what­ever. The worst case sce­nario is that sim­ply by nature of the item, nobody in the raid can use it.

By reduc­ing the num­ber of weirdo niches as far as item­iza­tion goes, for exam­ple enhancement-shammies-only gear and holy-paladin-only gear, there will be less dis­ap­point­ment and more chances for joy on instance/raid runs.

This also dove­tails nicely with the new expanded 10-man pro­gres­sion track in Wrath. If you’re in a smaller guild, nar­row niche gear is not only more likely to be use­less, but it is more likely will always be use­less. Your guild will be sized for 10-man pro­gres­sion, you’re not going to have every spec of every build.

This is the goal with the new item­iza­tion. A larger per­cent­age of the items will be use­ful to a larger per­cent­age of char­ac­ters, which means hap­pier raids. Dps of many dif­fer­ent kinds will be inter­ested in the same rings, neck­laces, trin­kets and so on. Nuk­ers and heal­ers, liv­ing together. Fewer drops that nobody can use. It’s beautiful.

As an aside, if you’re think­ing that druids and sham­mies look kind of sad in that list, you won’t get an argu­ment from druids and sham­mies. You try gear­ing up a boomkin (leather nuk­ing) or an ele­men­tal shaman (mail nuk­ing) with­out going to pvp gear and tell me how that goes com­pared with gear­ing up a mage or a rogue, or even a ret­ri­bu­tion pally. Link me the gear you can get out of Kara as you try to enter the endgame. “Wow, I never seem to get any drops in here, let me go check wow­head. (does research) Oh I see, there just isn’t gear for me in here.”

Com­bined with the item stat changes, they’re also elim­i­nat­ing a nar­row niche through class redesign: enhance­ment sham­mies will share hunter loot and no longer need their own spe­cial loot. They’ll share weapons with the melee and share armor with the hunters. They did the same part­way through the Burn­ing Cru­sade with Ret­ri­bu­tion pal­adins, hav­ing them share item­iza­tion goals with the war­riors and (soon) deathknights. Three classes going for the same loot? It increases the chance that when plate drops, some­one will be happy. Good game design.

So let’s reex­am­ine the list after Wrath changes:

1. Plate melee — deathknight 1.5÷3, pal­adin 1/3, war­rior 2/3
2. Plate tank­ing — deathknight 1.5÷3, pal­adin 1/3, war­rior 1/3
3. Plate caster — pal­adin 1/3
4. Mail non-caster — hunter 3/3, shaman 1/3
5. Mail caster — shaman 2/3
6. Leather melee — druid 1/4, rogue 3/3
7. Leather tank­ing — druid 1/4
8. Leather caster — druid 2/4
9. Cloth caster — mage 3/3, war­lock 3/3, priest 3/3

Much bet­ter! Nine kinds of gear (down from 13), with four kinds that are niche (down from nine), and two that are nar­row niche (down from seven). Cloth, mail and leather cast­ers have tight­ened up con­sid­er­ably. So in Wrath, they’ve added a class and yet ended up with fewer kinds of gear, so PvE will be more fun. This is good work by Bliz­zard. Still a cou­ple of prob­lems, namely in pal­lies, sham­mies, and druids. Ah, you blessed hybrids. At least boomkin/trees and elemental/restoration sham­mies share gear, so while they’re still niches, at least they’re not nar­row niches anymore.

The sum­mary is: Bliz­zard is mak­ing PvE more fun with these changes. This a large part of the rea­son I’m excited about Wrath.

Tomor­row, I’ll talk about tak­ing it a step fur­ther with some out­landish design sug­ges­tions which are extremely unlikely to make it into the game.