Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
<Warning, this post is mathy. You do not need to know/understand any of this to succeed in Legion. This is purely for the curious math-oriented players who want to know how things work.>

Secondary stats are going to scale a little differently in Legion. There are a few goals here.


  • Get players to the 'feels good' level of secondary stats sooner. (A Fire Mage doesn't feel so good with 5% crit.)
  • Reduce the feeling of being nerfed as you level up.
  • Reduce the degree that players scale exponentially, especially at high gear levels.
  • Don't reduce the degree of stat customization that players have.
  • Ensure that players still can't get to crazy levels of stats that break the game, or reduce fun.


Using purely ballpark numbers, players in Warlords started their endgame experience with about 15% of their favorite stat, and 7.5% of the other stats, resulting in a total multiplier from secondary stats of about 1.54. By the end of the expansion, they had something like 50% of their favorite stat, and 20% of the other stats, resulting in a total multiplier from secondary stats of about 3.11. This effect is even more pronounced for tanks and healers, due to Bonus Armor and Spirit being an additional extra-strong multiplier. And since stats on gear scale exponentially with ilvl, that transition started off slow, then ramped up quickly near the end, spending very little time in the sweet spot in the middle.

For Legion, we'll be making some changes to these systems, in order to improve this situation. Here's what we've done in the latest Alpha build:


  • Conversion rates of Rating->% for secondary stats will not go up as much as they otherwise would, by a huge margin. The conversion rates will end up at 110 at less than half of what they otherwise would have, resulting in Legion dungeon blue gear providing over double the total secondary stat %s than it did in prior expansions.
  • Starting after ilvl 800, the exponential curve for secondary stats will be significantly reduced, nearly to being linear (this is per-item, not related to the character's average item level). Primary stats and Stamina will continue to scale exponentially with ilvl at the same rate as before. This will mean that players retain all of the same customization they had, but with secondary stat %s not scaling higher than they had before, by the end of the expansion.


The removal of multistrike also affects this, reducing how multiplicative the total system is, while further concentrating stats into the other 4. That will mean that in dungeon blues, a player may have 30% of their favorite stat, and 15% of the other stats, resulting in a multiplier of 1.78. By the end of the expansion, they may have 50% of their favorite stat, and 20% of the other stats, same as before, for a total multiplier of 2.59. The net result is that the multiplier difference between start and end is drastically reduced, and players spend the vast majority of the expansion in the ranges that feel best, while primary stats still scaling exponentially ensures that player power grows as needed to feel rewarding.

Feedback on how this feels once you get to start playing with a variety of gear levels will be especially valuable. Thanks!

EDIT: Clarified one part.
Edited by Celestalon 03/03/2016 05:33 AM
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/02/2016 05:34 PMPosted by Ninqjinq
Is this something already implemented that we will be able to get a feel for in lvl 110 dungeons or raid testing without lvl 110 being open yet in Alpha?


Yes, this is implemented in today's Alpha build.
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/02/2016 05:38 PMPosted by Ariellè
Has the way Armor increases with item level changed?

There were some tweaks in this build to armor coefficient by level, mostly to smooth out the 100 to 103 range, where there was previously a sharp drop in armor effectiveness.
Zugsworth
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/02/2016 05:51 PMPosted by Fierydemise
How will this be implemented for trinkets with scaling procs? Will this be implemented as a change to the prop point table above level 110 dungeon blues ilvl or something else?


The trinket's item level will determine the rate at which the secondary stat is scaled. Essentially, the proc will be subject to the same rules as if it passively existed on the item for its duration.
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/02/2016 05:43 PMPosted by Frostedmages
How exactly is the ilvl relationship with secondaries changing post ilvl 800? Feel free to post actual math.


I believe dataminers will find a new gametable with the exact coefficients for each ilvl.

EDIT: Yep, that's the one (see immediately following post).
Edited by Celestalon 03/03/2016 03:50 AM
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
A large enough ilvl difference has always been enough to beat different secondary stats, and that will only be a little moreso the case than before.

This change doesn't make higher ilvl gear less rewarding, just skews that reward toward the primary stats, so that the value of primaries (additive) and secondary (multiplicative) stay in sync, and secondaries don't scale out of control. It doesn't take much; the skewing is on the order of 0.66% per ilvl difference. But that exponential factor adds up over the course of an expansion, which this avoids.
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/02/2016 08:17 PMPosted by Zolvolt
With this change, will the ilevel difference before secondary stats don't matter be significantly smaller compared to live, or will it only be maybe one or two less than currently? (I know this is really general since is different for different specs)


It's small. Something like 5-15% less than it was before. So if that threshold for you was 10-15ilvls, it may be 9-13ilvls in Legion.

Players typically compare items within a relatively tight slice (probably within 20ilvls), where this change has a relatively minor impact. This change only has a large impact on a grand scale like over the course of a whole expansion.
Edited by Celestalon 03/03/2016 04:35 AM
Celestalon
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/03/2016 01:38 AMPosted by Twistedmind
The point I'm getting at is that if primary stats have no diminishing returns like secondaries, the ratio of primary to secondary will mean that THE BEST piece of gear at the end of the game will always simply be the highest ilevel.
Because your primary stat is just so much stronger than the secondary stat values.


Primary stats are of additive value. Secondary stats are of multiplicative value. This is why Primaries are more valuable toward the start of an expansion (raising your base damage early on, when you don't have much base damage), and Secondaries are more valuable toward the end of an expansion (when you've already got a high base damage, so it's more valuable to raise the multiplier on that high base damage). This change will make them more equal throughout the whole expansion. Regardless, we almost never make you choose between Primary and Secondaries.

03/03/2016 09:15 AMPosted by Sixthumbs
http://i.imgur.com/2LdyD3L.jpg


We're still tweaking the exact rating conversions and coefficients to get the desired effect. It's already changed a bit since that build was made (rating conversions will be 275/300/300/350 in the next build, instead of the 227/250/250/295 they are in the current alpha).

EDIT: Added further clarification.
Edited by Celestalon 03/03/2016 09:40 PM
Zugsworth
Game Designer
8 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/05/2016 05:58 AMPosted by Sixthumbs
The thing I realized then is, that a single-stat item has as much stats as an evenly distributed item on the same ilvl, and even more than an unevenly distributed item.

This was originally done to encourage players to diversify secondary stats -- the closer an item was to a single-stat secondary, the more it suffered from this penalty. We reevaluated the method we were doing this by in 6.2, finding that most people were just confused by it and it didn't affect balance in any significant way, so we changed it. Your secondary stat ratings should add up to a consistent value no matter what the combination is from here on out.
Zugsworth
Game Designer
7 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
03/31/2016 10:56 AMPosted by Sixthumbs
Ok, whats wrong with secondary budgeting on the current builds?

I've got items with 2k secondaries and others with 800 secondaries. Same itemlevel, same slot.


It's not a systemic problem, it is a problem with those items. Please report the affected items as a bug using the in-game tool or in the bug forum.
Sigma
Game Designer
7 years ago
Secondary Stat Scaling in Legion
That is why we reduced the conversions in this build, as people discovered above. We are going to continue keeping an eye on it, but to answer your question--yes, you will get closer to the "final" values, earlier on, this time. The further gain from increasing ilvls will be much less drastic than in the past.
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