With the release of the World of Warcraft patch 3.0.2 many things change in the game. One of the biggest things that change are the base mechanics that are in effect in the game. These are the things that effect how our character interacts with creatures and other players. Many of these mechanics and the stats that affect them have been around since the beginning of the game.

For many players these changes are very confusing. Which piece of gear is going to be better than which other piece, which stat is better now and why. All these questions and more confuse most players. To be able to answer these questions a player needs to really understand the mechanics behind the game.

This article looks at the main stats that change with patch 3.0 so that players will be able to figure out and answer those important questions on their own. The key stats and mechanics that are changing are Spellpower, +Hit, +Crit, +Haste, and Spell Push Back.

Note: All the numbers used in this article are based on the utility RatingBuster which breaks down stats in game and provides real world numbers. It is a very useful tool for anyone looking to understand how item stats are going to effect their character.

Spell Push Back

One of the really big mechanic changes is the one to spell push back. Spell push back is the loss of casting time that players see when they are attacked while trying to cast a spell. Prior to patch 3.0.2 players could continue to be interpreted numerous times throughout casting a spell. This often made casting long spells in PvP a death sentence as players would never manage to complete them. A 3 second cast could quite often stretch out to 6 or more seconds before it completed. As of patch 3.0 the mechanic changes drastically to only allow two interrupts to the casting of a spell.

The first and second hit on a character while casting a spell will each inflict a 0.5 second push back on the spell cast. After those first two push backs though, the spell will continue without delay. For channeled spells the first two hits will remove 25% of the channeled time, but past that the spell will continue with interruption.

This change means that the longest a spell will take to cast is 1 second longer than its base cast time. This is a massive change to spell casters and could significantly upgrade their damage output while being attacked.

Spellpower

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Light's Justice Pre and Post Patch

Probably the biggest change for many players with the new mechanics is the removal of +Healing and +Spell Damage as stats. Both are being replaced by the new +Spellpower stat. For players that have been focusing on +Spell Damage gear such as mages, warlocks, shadow priests, etc, there will be very little change other than a name change to +Spellpower.

For players that have been focusing on +Healing gear such as priests, druids, and paladins there will be a huge change. The change will be in several parts. First, all of your +Healing gear will have it's +Healing numbers drop significantly and change to +Spellpower. The conversion factor to get the new +Spellpower number for gear is to divide the +Healing number by 1.88, or in other words the +Spellpower will be roughly 53% of what the +Healing was.

As a practical example currently the Light's Justice mace is a very common main hand healing weapon that has +382 healing. After the 3.0.2 patch it changed to having +204 spellpower. Also note that the +81 healing enchant on the weapon converted over to +43 spellpower. This clearly shows an equalization of the two stats, as the equivalent +Spell Damage weapon would be the Nathrezim Mindblade that also drops from Prince in Karazhan and has +203 spell damage.

The second part of the change is that all healing spells have had their coefficients changed to go up drastically from their old numbers. This is to counteract the fact that your total healing would otherwise go down. The change will ensure that even though you are now healing based on a much lower number, you will be able to heal for roughly the same amount.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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