Apparently there's a new feature in the latest Alpha build. Every class specialization now has an "attunement," which increases the amount of a given secondary stat gained from any sources by a certain percent. For example, Assassination will have a Mastery attunement while Combat will, I believe, have a Haste one.
It's not clear whether attunement will be another stat, or if it is simply a passive that comes with the spec.
Either scenario is odd.
If it's a passive, then attunements will, by their nature, skew the value of certain secondary stats. And given which stat is chosen for each spec, it looks like they're mostly going with whatever has generally been considered the best stat for that spec, like in the examples for Rogues above. Yet given that we won't have reforging and gem sockets are becoming rarer, it seems like we should want to de-emphasize that "one stat to rule them all" design. I can squeeze a crapton of haste out of my Prot Paladin's gear these days, but with the upcoming gear changes, I'm going to want to see Mastery and the other stats propped up a little more so that I can live with haste-less gear. If this new attunement is passive, it would seem ill-advised to take a single piece of non-haste gear.
If it's a new stat, sort of replacing Amplify, I can actually see how it would be helpful. Naturally, every spec is going to gravitate toward certain stats (even if I still don't get why crit is so good for Frost DKs.) As well as they are designed, creating a mathematical system where every stat is equally good and scales up at the same rate is... complicated to say the rest. And given that reality, and the greater difficulty in tuning your gear toward that favored stat, Blizzard is going to have their work cut out for them to make gear upgrades attractive (you don't want the old Warrior saying "well, it's 24 iLevels up, but there's no crit, so pass.") In this case, Attunmenet the stat would work by spreading that favorable stat around. You'd be twice as likely to effectively find your best stat on gear.
But two big problems present themselves even with this better scenario:
One is that Blizzard might get it wrong. Sure, Blizzard knows their game, but look at Destruction, for example. Theoretically, Destro ought to be the crittyiest critter among the Warlocks, but currently they appear to prefer Mastery and Haste (which is nice, because my Demo lock's gear is tuned perfectly for his Destro off-set.) It'd be annoying if your coveted stat is now effectively rarer because Blizzard hasn't updated to all the new theory crafting.
The other problem is that this would make Attunement everyone's best stat. Or, if it's under tuned, it's a worthless stat.
As an alternative, it might be interesting to try a stat that keeps the same idea, but works slightly differently. This alternate Attunement would work like a more narrow Amplify, buffing only whichever secondary stat you have the most of.
This would make things a bit more interesting. A class or spec that likes to focus everything into one very powerful stat would find it attractive, but a spec like Beast Mastery, that likes a little bit of everything, would rather spread the love.
Anyway, for all we know this is just a band-aid fix for some tuning they're working on. So all this might be for nothing.
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