The Standard WoW Forums

Profession Balance

C/Ped my discussion on professions over here, and ended up doing quite a bit more math to prove that JC is overpowered. Pasting that back here:


I *will* go ahead and do the math for everyone having epic gems. I'll use my current armory as a base for the math.

--
Socketed pieces + Bonus

Head
Obsidian Greathelm
B: 8 str

Shoulder
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders
Y: 4 crit

Chest
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece
R,Y:6 resil

Gloves
Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets
B: 4 crit

Waist
Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle
B: 6 str

Legs
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards
R,B: 6 str

Feet
Death Inured Sabatons
R,B: 6 hit



So, with rare gems, the max str we can get is

10 * 16 = 160 Str (A red in each socket, ignore the socket bonus)

With JC gems, the max Str we can get is
7 * 16 = 112 (Red gem in every socket that doesn't give a str bonus, and in the red on the legs)
3 * 27 = 81 (JC in the Head:B, Waist:B, and Legs:B)
6 + 6 + 8 = 20 (Socket bonuses)

213, a 53 str increase. The bonus is intended to be 32 (Without the socket bonuses it'd be 33, a perfectly viable number)


Stormjewels grant 20 str. Assuming that's right for epic gems, max without JC:

10 * 20 = 200 Str

With JC
7 * 20 = 140
3 * 27 = 81
6 + 6 + 8 = 20

241, an increase of 41, still over 25% more than other classes get.

But wait, I totally gave in on the idea of meta sockets. Assuming that we MUST activate a crit+Critdamage meta, that means we have to have 2 blues in the non-JC setup. Minimizing the impact puts a purple in the head and in the legs. The rare-gem setup drops from 160 str to 158, making JC a 55 str increase at rare-gem levels, and the epic-gem setup drops from 200 to 194, making JC a 47 str increase at epic-gem levels, or almost 50% more than the 32 attainable by other professions.


Once again, this is only really meaningful if you're stacking one stat to the extreme, but when you are the benefit from JC is significantly higher than that of any other profession. It will get better with epic gems but it still won't be balanced.


--

The results of posting this over there are a study in why I stopped reading the WoW Forums. A long time ago, I played a warlock. There were some things we'd proven, and for a while any time someone said, for example, "Use Curse of Weakness, Curse of Recklessness is too dangerous" I would post math to the contrary. After a while, I got tired of reproducing the math constantly, and just said, "X is wrong, Y is right." By the time I started doing that, I had so much of a following that it didn't matter WHAT I said, people would follow me, and even if I was wrong I had a horde of people saying "Listen to Psy, for he is right, because he was right before."

That sort of thinking, along the lines of, "I'm not going to back up my position with anything other than a gut feeling and some anger," along with the community's acceptance of it, really destroys the forums' usefulness.