Hello! I basically made this TI account just to post some F2P things no one seems to have picked up on or hasn't gotten the attention it deserves (I play both f2p and p2p).
Ok firstly it seems that Blizzard isn't touching the current enchants. They all already scale per expansion. Now some of them don't make much sense in WOD, however blizz doesn't care as the general trend is that they cannot be applied to ilevel 600 or above. Meaning they no longer affect end game. Out of sight, out of mind.
This means that all +armor kits / enchants receive a indirect buff. Look at current WOD armor values. A chest piece ranges from 5 to 10 armor. Those +16 armor kits are going to give some serious physical mitigation. +10 / 20 armor to cloak enchant and possibly(?) + 30 armor to shield if your lucky + bloodelf. Gloves / legs / boots / chest / cloak & shield....you will easily be doubling your total armor value.
Elixir of minor defense is still giving 50 armor. Grats, you just tripled your armor. Now blizz have mentioned that they are removing all combat benefits from professions right? All the evidence so far points to the combat benefits being removed for end game only (ilvl 600 + characters, lvl 90+). Just like all the current enchants (End game enchants are only ring / neck / cloak / weapons) . I believe it is highly probable that mixology will still exist for F2P's. Meaning that elixir is now 60-70(??) armor.
Now factor in p2p's using the major armor to cloak enchant (+90 armor). Playing pure physical damage classes is going to be rough....to say the least.
However! A very exciting possibility for f2ps (and p2p 20's) is that the sword 'Strike of the hydra' gets boosted into mega-stardom. Currently on WOD wowhead all weapons that have a pure armor debuff have been adjusted accordingly. For example the lvl 24 vibro blade lowered armor by 100 (garbage) and in WOD it lowers it by 5 (equally garbage). Any weapon that has a armor debuff combined with a poison effect (there's like 2 of them lvls 20-60) has been scaled differently. Strike of the hydra goes from -50 armor on live (garbage) to -46 armor in WOD (OMG AWESOME).
Strike of the Hydra - Item - World of Warcraft That's the wod version. Click on the debuff and scale it down to 20. Now scale scale it up to lvl 29. Minus 61 armor. If that goes live then warriors and ret paladins are going to destroy anyone that doesn't have a ton of +armor kits / enchants. -61 gives the possibility of negative armor which will be hilarious. Not only is it potentially -61 armor but the debuff helps your entire team, not just you.
Anyways I'll be testing this on beta for sure.
