Chocolate Covered Broccoli

When a ret paladin sees some gear with armor penetration, most just think meh. It’s not the greatest stat for a ret pally, and it’s not the greatest stat for some other classes. As Prentice pointed out on an MMO Champion thread, “Regardless of how well ArP scales, the simple fact is that ArP only affects 35-40% of your total damage. Ret paladins already have the best armor penetration in the game in shape of Holy damage. 60-65% of our damage is holy and as such completely negates all armor the target has.”

By Ghostcrawler’s own admission, ArP wasn’t really that popular when Lich launched, and Blizzard realized the player base wasn’t willing to stomach a stat that wasn’t really all that sexy. So they buffed it. 3.1 brought about a 25% buff to ArP. Let’s liken this to you feeding your kids broccoli, but they refuse to eat it. You, in all of your parental wisdom, think maybe if you soak that broccoli in sweet chocolately goodness, then they will scarf down the veggies. When supervised, this isn’t that horrible of a compromise, but the danger comes when you walk away from the table and leave the syrup within reach.

Your child, when left unattended, might just grab the syrup and decide to gorge on it. With all of the iLvl 219+ ArP gear available in Wrath, that’s exactly what the players started to do. Not only have some players been grabbing ArP gear at every available opportunity, but they decided their addictions weren’t being met and have gemmed for it as well. As Ghostcrawler pointed out, it has led to some serious scaling issues for certain specs who have ignored all other stats.

Stop the Madness
When GC says, “though I also suspect it won’t (the ArP nerf) come as a surprise to many players,” he is absolutely right. We all know the minute we find a spec or stat that performs better than Blizzard wants, we almost always get a nerf. My problem is not the gaming community maximizing DPS with the stat. My problem is why would Blizzard be so upset with our use of ArP when, since Ulduar, they have shoved it down our throats. Blizzard buffed it, put it on an enormous amount of gear, and guess who is being punished? The players who geared up exactly how they were supposed to gear up. Unlike my comments on healing paladins who used an alternative spec, the ArP guys did exactly what they were told to do. Grab the gear with ArP and let Blizzard implement the buff. Now they are being told, “JUST KIDDING NOOB, way to blow your DKP muhahahaha!”

Even if none of us know exactly how the mastery system will work, it is likely the only real solution to issues like over scaling stats. Of all the changes coming in Cataclysm, the mastery stat will be the most game fixing. No longer will one stat be coveted by one spec and forsaken by another. ArP was a waste for ret paladins and I have heard enhancement shammies talk about its utter uselessness to them. Now everyone will be getting the stats they need from one stat and Blizzard looks poised to implement it without even more homogenization of the classes.

Am I the only one who thinks Cataclysm can’t possibly be released fast enough?

-Rhab