One of the most interesting announcements to come out of Blizzcon was that the hit and expertise, as well as dodge and parry stats would be going away. While dodge and parry were kind of in a death spiral (I think they were favored by Warrior tanks only, and tolerated by DKs and total reforge-aways for Paladins) throughout Mists, hit and expertise were just as relevant as they've ever been.
The idea behind these stats was to make you do something other than just pick out your best stat and stack it to the rafters. It did accomplish that, but it was also another way to prevent getting a new piece of gear from feeling good. You might get an awesome new shoulder piece, but before you could equip it, you'd need to reforge that crit into expertise.
Reforging did serve to allow us to concentrate on our favorite stat, but the biggest benefit to it was making it easier to dance around the hit and expertise caps. But with hit and expertise gone (Casters, including Hunters, and Tanks will just always hit now, and melee will only have to worry about bosses parrying - though frankly, given that melee already has the disadvantage of having to move with the boss, I might just scrap that altogether,) Reforging would really only be to do that stat-maximizing, and while you can get some improvement in performance that way, for the most part Blizzard is happier to just have us deal with the stats that we get.
But with hit, expertise, dodge, and parry ratings gone, and Spirit (which was always in this weird space between secondary and primary stat) moving to healing-only rings, trinkets, necklaces and weapons (Shadow, Balance and Elemental will no longer need the hit rating it provides,) that leaves us with only three secondary stats: Crit, Haste, and Mastery.
Ah, but does it really?
We know that we're going to be getting new Tertiary Stats in Warlords of Draenor. These are meant to be less indicative of the real power of our gear, and more some fun flavor that gives us a small boost. I'm given to understand that the way it works is this:
Blackhand drops, say, the Normal-Mode version of Collar of the Blackrock Chief, a plate piece with Strength (well, actually Strength or Intellect, depending on your spec,) Stamina, Crit, and Mastery. Those four values (along with its armor value) remain fixed. But while it will usually be just those four stats, occasionally, you'll get a drop that's got +400 Lifesteal Rating.
But here's what I'm wondering about:
Blizzard has talked about a few other new stats, such as Cleave, Amplify, and Multistrike. While these could simply be other Tertiary Stats, I actually wonder if, instead, some will become new Secondary Stats - meaning that pieces of gear will be guaranteed to have them on them.
These new stats actually sort of exist in-game already, with the various Siege of Orgrimmar trinkets. For example, on my DK I have Thok's Tail Tip. In addition to a nice Strength proc, it also "amplifies your haste, mastery, spirit, and crit damage by 6%." I'm pretty sure this is just the written-out form of what the future Amplify stat will be.
I would actually love to see a lot of these stats become true secondary stats. Multistrike, for example, works not unlike the Shaman talent Echo of the Elements, which causes your spells to occasionally duplicate themselves (combined with the Elemental Mastery, you could get an absurd number of Lava Bursts off a single cast. You can already get four!)
This would solve a potential upcoming problem, too, which is that, without adding any new ones, we would only have crit, haste, and mastery on our gear. That means a piece of gear would be define more by what it is missing than by what it has (assuming we continue to have most pieces with two secondary stats.)
Amplify could be a good stat for specs that like lots of different things. Multistrike would probably be pretty powerful cross the board, but obviously the numbers would be tweaked in such a way to keep it from being too powerful. Cleave, to me, seems more like a Tertiary stat, given that it's very useful in AoE situations, but useless in single-target - I wouldn't want people to have to switch out gear depending on the fight.
While we learned a lot at Blizzcon, a lot of the more nitty-gritty stuff, such as class changes, remains to be announced. This gear revamp, along with the 91-100 spell bonuses we'll be getting, is something I eagerly look forward to.
EDIT: We'll, apparently I jumped the gun here, because I just found out it's been confirmed that Amplify, Multistrike and a stat called Readiness will all become new secondary stats.
All of these have appeared on trinkets in Siege of Orgrimmar, though the way they work could get tweaked.
Readiness will reduce the cooldown of certain abilities depending on the spec. The abilities will most likely be your long-term cooldowns, as opposed to rotational abilities. So, yes Ascendence, probably not Lava Burst.
Very exciting to see more diversity in stat options, and it will be particularly interesting to see how the interact with each other.
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