I completely disagree. I do not want to sit here and do math for a video game.

Thing is, procs typically aren't that hard for the really dedicated to develop mathematical models for. All you need to do is sit at a dummy and keep at it using one addon or another until you have a proc rate and an internal cooldown, and then you can plug it into a simulator or a spreadsheet (with coding which is, to be honest, beyond my skill) and then you have a mathematical rendering of how good or bad the proc is.

Not that I don't agree with the sentiment - that the game is too easy for the theorycrafters to pick at and arrive with Word From On High about what the One and Only One way to play the class is. However, having a set bonus provide a proc isn't going to do that too well, and I don't know what can.

Part of the problem, really, is that DPS don't do that much. They just deal damage and want that one number to be as high as possible. Nothing else really matters for a DPS toon. For a tank, you have to balance stats, keep mitigation, health, and threat all strong enough to do your job. Stacking Stamina and Dodge goes a long way, but it isn't the only thing you have to worry about in gearing a tank. Healers need both HPS and longevity in order to get the job done, but even if you had a healer with unlimited mana and heals twice as big as anyone else, they might not be all that good since healing is as much about getting the heals to the right people at the right times rather than getting them as big as possible. For a healer, the choice between haste and crit and spellpower actually does something more meaningful than just "This stat priority gives you more damage per second."

As long as all DPS toons need to do is DPS, clever folks will mathematically model any proc or complex bonus and that'll be the end of that.

They've already said that they don't want people having to use spreadsheets to decide whether something is an upgrade or not, hence the gear changes coming in Cataclysm.

And if you think that things can be made so complex that they can't be modelled by spreadsheets then you're very wrong and don't understand how modelling works. WoW is a computer program with set numbers and formulae, it's the easiest thing in the world to model, no matter how many random procs and other effects there are.

If they want people to stop modeling, they have to make player skill more of a factor. That's ultimately what I want to see - a sufficient influence of player skill to make "style" as important as raw stats.

That's going to require some major changes and major inventiveness on Blizz's part, though, so maybe I'm just dreaming.