Originally Posted by Tristanian
Simplifying stats does not solve the problem of gear diversity and it certainly will not stop BiS lists, as long as Blizzard tends to release 'gear me up' patches as unimaginative as the Coliseum. The change is being done purely for the purposes of spending less development time on itemization. Does anyone here honestly believe that regeneration or let's say int-to-spellpower conversion formulas will be become less "complicated" in Cataclysm ? I'm willing to bet that they will become even more complex, or worse there will be multiple formulas for the conversion of a simple stat to something more meaningful.
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I certainly don't think it solves the problems you've mentioned or stops BiS lists, but it does make some inroads into keeping those things from becoming obsolete at the drop of a hat, or patch. There have been MANY changes where certain stats have become "suddenly useful" when they hadn't been on the radar at all before. Will that go away? Probably not. Will it happen as often as it has/could in a system with as many secondary stats as we have now? It shouldn't.
As for gear diversity, it does address it a bit, but doesn't go so far as to solve problems like the "poster child" spell power plate issue. Cloth, on the other hand, is likely to see less variation than it currently has since stats like spirit and mp5 have such radically different weights in live currently across cloth-wearing/using classes. Many armour types probably won't see much change (caster mail and plate), but cloth is seriously bloated right now and caster leather suffers almost from too little variation (+hit caster leather anyone?). There are some issues left to solve from a stat weight standpoint to make this all work in reality, but it's a start. I also agree that it simplifies Blizzard's work when it comes to itemising gear, but that's not a bad thing to me (to some it is, I'm sure).
No, I don't see the formulas becoming less complicated when it comes to knowing exactly how much dps/hps/whatever a certain stat is worth. This type of stat simplification isn't really meant to obsolete those concepts either. The people who enjoy theorycrafting and planning their gear acquisitions out at every step (myself included) will continue to do that and have plenty of leeway to do so. Those that don't, however, will at least be confronted by less ambiguity with the general end-worth of a stat, which is what I believe is the goal (you have no idea how many times per day I have to answer questions from disc priests about spirit vs. mp5; if answering those gets reduced, my fingers will be happy).
I can't really explain what I mean very well, for some reason...think I'm still too tired
I guess we'll have to see just how far-reaching the changes are and just how much class redesign comes out of this. I have a few concerns with stat/effect scaling under a simplified system, personally, but the concept has me curious enough to see how it all works out.