Friday, September 4, 2009

Armor Pen Nerf AKA FU MM Hunters <3 Blizzard

From Ghostcrawler:

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We're letting you know now so that this doesn't feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won't come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

So....

Sooooooo.....

Even though I haven't had the pleasure of reaching the hard cap for armor pen yet, I have enjoyed watching my DPS increase with every new piece of gear I get. There can be no doubt that ArPen has allowed MM Hunters to finally compete with SV again, but can Blizzard allow that? Of course not.

Yet another fucking straw.

2 comments:

Huzzah said...

Heck, if you think this is something, wait til Cataclysm. Armor pen goes AWAY. Spell power, Attack, Defense, blah, blah, blah, GONE. Or at least piled into Agility, Intellect, etc. ArmPen going down to 110% is a MINOR change.

Most peeps in mah guild are more concerned with heroic burnout, Ulduar burnout, and general burnout before we've even seen Arthas. Can't wait to see what Cataclysm brings tho. I could use some change up in Wrath so far.

Criven said...

Current estimates on dps loss aren't that terrible Neg.

Marks is apparently still leading survival post nerf so I wouldn't exactly be too worried about it.