General Overview of Legion Gearing and PVP Stat Templates

Swoops

Legend
Hey guys,

Seeing a lot of confusion and guessing out there as people try to figure out how gearing works in Legion. Understandable with such huge changes (and seemingly random stat differences), but there is some rhyme and reason to it. I'm still doing testing and figuring out some minor details of the system, but for now this should be a decent overview.


There are three main gearing factors that determine your stats in instanced PvP (in order of importance):
  1. Full template stats for filling every slot with eligible gear (there is a minimum item level starting with 30-39)
    • Every gear slot counts for the same proportion of your template stats. Taking off your bracers is the same stat loss as unequipping a 1H weapon.
  2. Stat bonus on top of template for only using your main armor type
  3. Small percentage gains for increasing your average item level over the "top" item level of the bracket.
Template Stats and ability adjustments for all classes and specs can be found here: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20747314610

Stats on gear and item quality don't matter at all. The white rings and necklace are BiS up through 40-49. Mist-Piercing Goggles aren't BiS for anyone that can gear up fully in their main armor type.

Enchants, set bonuses, trinkets, procs, Engineering on-use gear/enhancements and weapon enhancements (Sharpening Stones, Wizard Oil) are all disabled in instanced PVP. Elixirs/consumables still work in BGs.



Item Level

There are two important item levels for each bracket, I'll call them Min and Top because I'm creative:
  1. Minimum Item Level (min): The minimum item level that an individual piece of gear needs to count toward your PvP stat template.
    • In 39s, the min is 15. A piece of ilevel 14 gear is the same as an empty slot while ilevel 15 gear will give you full template stats.
    • Doesn't seem to exist in 10-19 and 20-29. Most likely explains why the bug with heirlooms at the patch launch didn't affect these brackets.
  2. Top Item Level (top): The average item level that you need to pass to start gaining stats above the template. In lower brackets this is the same as your heirlooms' item level - haven't confirmed the exact numbers for upper brackets yet.
    • You gain 0.1% more primary stats (Armor, Agi/Int/Str, Stam) for every point of average item level above this.
    • This scaling is a bit hard to pin down with decimals hidden at a couple different levels of calculations, but it appears to be affected by the stat adjustments in the PvP template. (i.e. WW monks get 85% Agility, and seem to gain around 0.085% Agility with each item level)
Average item level doesn't matter until you pass your top item level. A full set of minimum item level gear will give you the same stats as a full set of top item level gear.


Main Armor Type Bonus


All levels now get a bonus to their stats from only wearing your main armor type. It looks like it's around a 5% increase on stats gained from gear/template (i.e. everything above your naked base stats). Regardless of the exact number, it's a bigger increase than you'll get from item level scaling.

This is an all or nothing stat increase. Wearing one piece of cloth on a druid will be the same as wearing a full set of cloth.

This bonus affects both primary and secondary stats.

Starting with Legion, Shamans/Hunters get Mail and Warriors/Paladins get Plate starting at level 1 instead of level 40. They get bonus stats from their endgame armor type.

Quick and unnecessary refresher on armor types:

  • Cloth: Priest, Mage, Warlock
  • Leather: Druid, Monk, Rogue, Demon Hunter
  • Mail: Hunter, Shaman
  • Plate: Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior

Weapons


Weapons are a bit different because PvP stat templates don't normalize weapon speed. Any attacks that scale directly with weapon damage will benefit greatly from a slower weapon. Warriors, Rogues, Hunters, Enhance Shamans and Paladins will want to use the slowest weapon possible. Druid and Monk abilities scale with weapon DPS, so they can just use the highest item level options.

@StS Ralso put together a great guide on weapon choices here: http://www.xpoff.com/threads/weapons-and-how-to-swing-them-harder.69189/

Above level 30, you'll need to weigh the trade-off between stats and damage if the slowest available weapon is below the minimum item level.

Wands are also a special case. They currently count toward your template as a 2H weapon, so using a Wand and Off-hand gives you three gear slots worth of template stats (for the price of two!). Priests, Mages and Warlocks should all use the highest item level wand available.



Bracket Item Levels


Minimum and Top Item Level are consistent within brackets, with the top determined roughly by the x9 heirloom scaling. I'm almost positive it doesn't change with character level, I'll update this if anyone has evidence otherwise.


BracketMinTop
10-19024
20-29034
30-391544
40-492554
50-593582*
60-6945143*
70-79???183
80-8984443*
90-99150605
100-109(<359)710
*Unconfirmed - estimate based on heirloom ilevel at the top end of the bracket
I don't have any characters in the 70s right now to test the min there, I'll get that eventually. Also limited in well-geared 50+ twinks, looking for confirmation on the ilevel you need to hit to start scaling in some of the upper brackets.


TL;DR:


Equip decent-ish gear from your main armor type. Use a slow weapon if you're a Paladin, Warrior, Hunter, Enhance Shaman or DK and a wand if you're a Priest, Mage or Warlock. Boom, you're Good Enough-in-Slot.


I'll keep an eye out for changes and update things when I have more info.

Let me know if anything isn't clear or seems wrong...who knows what other secrets this system is hiding.
 
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Excellent post :)
 
Great post, Swoops :O

Kinda sad but it seems the invasion gear, at least the helmet is bis for a lot of F2Ps. Particular horde non-cloth armor classes, as well as paladins and warriors on alliance side :(

Have you tested protection warrior at all? I've noticed that while Shield Slam, Victory Rush, and Thunder Clap seemed to be based on AP (no bonus from slow weapon at all). Devastate does benefit from weapon differences but when I swapped out my heirloom caster mace (1.70?) for a 3.00 speed green sword, my damage went down. My conclusion is its damage is actually based on weapon damage. I don't see how this could be though with the new system. Any ideas? :eek:
 
Kinda sad but it seems the invasion gear, at least the helmet is bis for a lot of F2Ps. Particular horde non-cloth armor classes, as well as paladins and warriors on alliance side :(
Yeah, BiS invasion gear will be disappointing for people who miss out on it (or don't like how it looks :p). At least the stat difference isn't awful.

Have you tested protection warrior at all? I've noticed that while Shield Slam, Victory Rush, and Thunder Clap seemed to be based on AP (no bonus from slow weapon at all). Devastate does benefit from weapon differences but when I swapped out my heirloom caster mace (1.70?) for a 3.00 speed green sword, my damage went down. My conclusion is its damage is actually based on weapon damage. I don't see how this could be though with the new system. Any ideas? :eek:

Hmmm, weird. It was Brushwood Blade, right? Someone mentioned that on the thread about weapons, too. Checked Devastate with a 2.2 speed white, heirloom caster Mace (2.7), heirloom agility mace (2.8) and Brushwood Blade (3.0) on a level 12 or 13 warrior. Damage kept going up with speed through the agility mace, but Brushwood did less.

Saw something similar with a quick Outlaw Rogue test:
yRxQwJo.png

The calculation could be based on weapon damage somehow, with speed as just a good approximation. Not sure, for now I guess we can just call that item an exception.


A quick question. Any idea if the mighty 5 % bonus for your armor type works outside BG ? Thanks in advance.

Nope, doesn't work outside of BGs for low levels. It might still exist at 50+, it's been around for awhile with spells like http://www.wowhead.com/spell=86104/leather-specialization.
 
So a a piece of item with ilvl >24 is just as good as an item with ilvl 24 in the 10-19 bracket? Since items with lower ilvl than 24 will "count" as an ilvl 24 item?
 
So a a piece of item with ilvl >24 is just as good as an item with ilvl 24 in the 10-19 bracket? Since items with lower ilvl than 24 will "count" as an ilvl 24 item?

Items don't scale up at all now. Lower ilevel pieces count the same toward getting your template stats, but they still bring down your average item level. Average item level just doesn't matter until you go over 24.

Filling every slot with ilevel 5 whites will give you the same stats in BGs as wearing all ilevel 24 heirlooms and blues, but equipping the high ilevel rings and necklace with that gear won't increase your stats at all.

If you just want template stats (basically 99% of BiS), you're good equipping anything above the minimum item level (in 19s that's just filling every gear slot). You'll want the highest item level possible in every slot if you're going for those extra few stat points though.
 
This scaling is a bit hard to pin down with decimals hidden at a couple different levels of calculations

You can edit the DejaCharacterStats addon to show you more decimals. Just open DCSDecimals in notepad and on any stats you want 4 places behind the decimal just change this 2 to 4.

format("%.2f%%"

I think Blizz rounds to 4 for all calculations and they show you 2 behind decimal as default.
 
Thanks @Fx @Onlydreams @Snack, updating that.

You can edit the DejaCharacterStats addon to show you more decimals. Just open DCSDecimals in notepad and on any stats you want 4 places behind the decimal just change this 2 to 4.

Awesome, I'll poke around with that later. Noticed the other day that ilevel scaling is based on a more exact value than the integer average Deja shows by default.

Mainly trying to figure out how primaries are calculated. For example a Draenei WW Monk's agility is determined by some combination of base agility, template agility, heroic presence (racial bonus to main stat), the 85% agility modifier for WW, armor type bonus, and item level scaling. It just kinda hard to figure out where the modifiers come in at low levels since the numbers are small and you only hit a couple single stat boosts. Going to dig a bit deeper on it with my 99 either tonight or whenever I get around to it after launch.
 
It would be awesome if we were able to find every reachable breakpoint for the brackets and combine them with your info here.
 

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