Blizzard ever gonna make Int Plates useful?

#1 - Jan. 26, 2012, 2:37 p.m.

To something other than holy pallies? And to a lesser extent, maybe even another mail class that uses intellect mails.

I ask because I would love to see another spec using it. Lets break down the armor itemization.

Plate Mitigation: Prot War, Prot Pally, Blood DK (3)
Plate Strength: Fury War, Arms War, Ret Pally, Frost DK, Unholy DK (5)
Plate Intellect: Holy Pally (1)
Mail Agility: BM Hunter, MM Hunter, Survival Hunter, Enhance Shaman (4)
Mail Intellect: Ele Shaman, Resto Shaman (2)
Leather Agility: Brew Monk, Wind Monk, Cat Druid, Bear Druid, Combat Rogue, Asn Rogue, Sub Rogue (7)
Leather Intellect: Mist Monk, Moonkin Druid, Resto Druid (3)
Cloth Spirit: Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Shadow Priest (3)
Cloth Hit: Fire Mage, Frost Mage, Arcane Mage, Affliction Lock, Destro Lock, Demo Lock (6)

Maybe a new mail class like a Tinker or something that uses both agi and int mails, and a new spec for Mages called "Enchantment" that is allowed to use Intellect Plates and have abilities that turn Intellect and Spirit into mitigation stats kinda like what Guardian Druids and Brewmaster Monks do with Agility. They already have synergy with some of their mage spells like Mana Shield, Mage Ward and Mirror Image. Maybe they can get a few new spells and rely on some melee, instant cast spells like Arcane Barrage and procs to trigger fireballs.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#5 - Jan. 26, 2012, 7:29 p.m.

The situation with intellect plate is an ongoing discussion among the designers, but we have yet to come up with a solution that's better than just continuing to make intellect plate.

Let Holy paladins wear Strength plate – This would require a lot of conversions. Does hit become Spirit? What happens to expertise? Do all Strength items convert or just actual armor pieces? Can paladins mix and match with Intellect jewelry and trinkets? Do Holy paladins also hit really hard in melee, or do they lose that ability? Does it make paladins too effective as hybrid classes if they can share much of their gear across three different roles?

Let Holy paladins wear mail – Our mail is designed to look like shaman or hunters, not paladins. It’s cruel not to let a paladin wear the paladin tier armor, and also weird that a given tier piece could be plate or mail even though it looks identical.

Let priests wear plate – We like the design for priests as cloth-wearers, we would not want to drop less cloth overall (since only mages and locks would need it at that point), and we don’t want priests to look like warriors, DKs or paladins.
Individually these aren't difficult problems, and we have the ability to solve each of them, but at the end of the day the designers don’t think any of those solutions are preferable to just keep on making Intellect plate for Holy paladins. Maybe someday there will be a new class that also uses Intellect plate.