A Dwarf Priest

I have already spoken briefly of changes to various game mechanics in WotLK (including the new spellpower stat).  This post serves as an extension to that information.

Spell hit, spell haste, and spell crit are each being lumped into singular stats with their melee counterparts.  For all intents and purposes for us, nothing really changes save their names: Hit, Haste, and Crit (respectively).

As we get higher in level, the amount of our various stats and ratings that are required to retain the same bonuses increases. It takes more hit value to increase our hit chance by 1%.  It takes more crit value to do the same.  It takes more haste to increase our spell casting speed by 1%. And so forth.  This isn’t a new concept; it’s always been the case.

Here is a breakdown of how our combat stats are changing:

Hit

The hit stat increases the chances your spells will land.

Rating needed to gain +1% hit:
At level 70: 12.62
At level 80: 26.23

The previous unmitigatable spell hit cap at 1% has been removed.  It now takes 17% hit for casters to be hit capped for raiding (before all race, talent, spell, and gear bonuses are figured in).  If you can get +17% hit, 100% of your spells will land on bosses and mobs up to and including those 3 levels higher than you (not taking into account spell school resistances).

New Hit Caps:
Equal in level to the mob: 4% hit is needed to reach the cap
Mob is 1 level higher: 5% hit needed
Mob is 2 levels higher: 6% hit needed
Mob is 3 levels higher (or a boss): 17% hit needed

Crit

The crit stat increases the chance that your spells hit friendly or hostile targets for bonus damage/healing (on applicable spells).  The amount of bonus damage/healing done is 50% (but can be increased higher with appropriate talents).

Rating needed to gain +1% crit:
At level 70: 22.08
At level 80: 45.91

Intellect affects your crit value as well. At level 70, you get +1% crit for every 80 points of intellect you have (0.0125 crit for every point of intellect).  At level 80, it is increased to 166.67 intellect for +1% crit (0.006 crit for every point of int).

In general, agility does also increase the crit stat. However, it will not do so for priests’ casting (Bug? Intentional?). It affects melee crit only.

Haste

Haste rating will increase the speed in which we cast spells.

To find how much a given spell’s casting time is reduced by, you use the following formula:

NewCastingTime = (BaseCastingTime)/(1 + ( %Haste / 100))

Your percent spell haste (or “%haste” in the formula above) is calculated with:

%Haste = (HasteRating / BaseHaste)

Your BaseHaste is the amount of haste rating needed to equal 1%, which varies by level.

Rating needed to gain +1% haste:
At level 70: 15.77
At level 80: 32.79

For every 1% haste, you could cast an extra spell in the time it would normally take to cast 100 spells (assuming all spells were the same length).

Resilience

Resilience is primarily a PvP stat.  For every 1% resilience you have:

• The chance you will take a critical hit is decreased by 1%.
• The amount of damage you take when receiving a critical hit is reduced by 2%.
• The amount of damage received from DoTs is reduced by 1%.
• The amount of mana that is Mana Burned or Mana Drained from you is reduced by 2%.

Rating needed to gain +1% resilience:

Level 70: 39.42
Level 80: 81.97

If you are in the beta and rolled a premade level 80 character, chances are you overestimated the value of the 360 or so resilience your premade gear had on it.   At level 70, that rating would have been almost 10% resilience.  At level 80, it is only 4.4%.

Base Mana

Base mana is the measure of how much mana you would have if your intellect was zero and you have no gear/buffs.  Base mana is based off of your level and class.

For priests:
Level 70: 2620
Level 80: 3863

Spells have changed from costing static values to costing a percent of your base mana (example: Devouring Plague costs 25% of our base mana.  At level 70, that is 665 mana.  At level 80, it is 966 mana).

Mana Regen

Mana regen is a measure of how much mana is returned to you while out of combat (based off of your spirit and intellect values). It is measured in the units of mana per 5 seconds, or more simply: MP5.

The basic formula for mana regen will remain as follows:
5 * BaseRegen * sqrt {Int} * Spi

The “BaseRegen” portion of the expression is a value that changes with level.

BaseRegen:
At level 70: 0.009327
At level 80: 0.005575

Up until two patches ago, the BaseRegen at level 80 was: 0.007125.  It was stealth-nerfed by ~25%.  There is a chance this could change again.