I'm Losing Hit Chance in Challenge Modes

#1 - Oct. 5, 2012, 5:12 p.m.

/edit

For those unaware, you are NOT supposed to lose Hit or Expertise in Challenge modes.

/endedit

Pretty what much the title says.

If you check my armory, you'll see I'm at 464 equipped item level.

Outside of a challenge mode, I have 3647 spirit. Inside, I have 3641.

As far as I can tell, that's because I'm being scaled down to 463 ilvl...except scaling down spirit means scaling down hit for Shadow Priests, Elemental Shamans, and Boomkins. This is especially problematic since humans get 3% extra spirit, making it definitely better than hit for us.

Please fix this. Don't scale down spirit if the character is Shadow, Elemental, or Balance. While it's not a big deal now, future patches with much higher ilvl gear definitely means those three specs will *require* a second set of gear for Challenge Modes. Which, while probably a good idea in general, definitely isn't intended to be mandatory.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#19 - Oct. 10, 2012, 2:13 a.m.

I know this thread’s a few days old now, but I’d like to clarify the cause for concern here so others are aware. Balkoth, we were able to track down a bug pertaining to item scaling in Challenge Modes, but it’s not related solely to classes that use a spirit -> hit conversion.

What you’re noticing is a bug specifically involving reforging. If you reforge out of crit/haste/mastery INTO hit or expertise, then when the crit/haste/mastery gets scaled down, you also lose a percentage of the reforged hit/expertise. So, it's not a class or spec issue -- it affects all players who have reforged into hit/spirit equally.

Given the way stat scaling and reforging mechanics work, this is kind of a tricky issue to fix, but we’re looking into it.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#48 - Oct. 10, 2012, 8:40 p.m.

I know this thread’s a few days old now, but I’d like to clarify the cause for concern here so others are aware. Balkoth, we were able to track down a bug pertaining to item scaling in Challenge Modes, but it’s not related solely to classes that use a spirit -> hit conversion.

What you’re noticing is a bug specifically involving reforging. If you reforge out of crit/haste/mastery INTO hit or expertise, then when the crit/haste/mastery gets scaled down, you also lose a percentage of the reforged hit/expertise. So, it's not a class or spec issue -- it affects all players who have reforged into hit/spirit equally.

Given the way stat scaling and reforging mechanics work, this is kind of a tricky issue to fix, but we’re looking into it.

Maybe take hit out of the equation altogether by either giving players a challenge mode buff that awards the hit cap one its own and just remove peoples hit from gear from their stats for the duration? Or modify the enemies so that special attacks can never miss enemies in challenge modes at all? After all most people are going to be hit capped for normal stuff by the time they do challenge modes.

The debate over hit as a compelling stat is a whole topic unto itself.

Under the current formula though, I don't think the solution is to make hit irrelevant in Challenge Modes. To min/max your character (which you need to do if you want to be really competitive), you'd want a full set of "no-hit" gear. It'd create a very different itemization problem, given that hit is factored into endgame set stat budgets.

Challenge modes should just normalize all our stats pertaining to our class. This would mean every player of that class would have the same stat sheet regardless of what they are wearing. Scaling always struck me as gimmicky and open to various glitches that would need to be looked at.

That doesn't feel as interesting. We scale the stats so you can't just straight up outgear Challenge Mode, but we still want you to have some ability to build an ideal set of gear based on the stats you choose.

The whole idea is to prevent outgearing while still making gear selection matter.