Is reforging a hit or a miss?
by Anne Stickney 
Mar 12th 2012 at 7:00PM
It's always the same. Just when I get everything all sorted out neatly, a new piece of upgrade gear drops. If I win the gear, the next half-hour or so after raid is spent digging up gems, cutting them to the appropriate cut, then nabbing enchant mats and making sure the item is enchanted properly. And after all that is done and I put the gear on, I log out and back into the game so that the armory updates. Then I alt-tab out of the game and pull up my reforge site du jour (rogues, Shadowcraft is an amazing, amazing thing), put the window on my second monitor, tab back into the game and reforge it all.
And hopefully when I'm done with all of that, I'll have precisely enough hit to cap without going over, and all of that useless crit will be a thing of the past. It's not a hugely complicated process, but it is a process -- one that I repeat with each new piece of gear I obtain. I generally get far more out of reforging than I ever did with simple gemming and enchanting from the Wrath era. However, I also understand all these different stats and which ones are good, something a new player might not be aware of.
So is the reforging process a hit with this expansion or a miss?
And hopefully when I'm done with all of that, I'll have precisely enough hit to cap without going over, and all of that useless crit will be a thing of the past. It's not a hugely complicated process, but it is a process -- one that I repeat with each new piece of gear I obtain. I generally get far more out of reforging than I ever did with simple gemming and enchanting from the Wrath era. However, I also understand all these different stats and which ones are good, something a new player might not be aware of.
So is the reforging process a hit with this expansion or a miss?
I remember the days of Wrath and how complex it was to get gear. You wanted a specific piece of gear for a specific set of stats to reach a specific number. While you waited for that ideal piece of gear, you had to make do with whatever gear you happened to find and hope that the numbers added up. For example, rogues look for a specific amount of hit at all times. If you couldn't make it to the ideal hit number with gear alone, you had to gem for hit, as much as you could, in the hopes that you'd reach that ideal number.
Should that be something that's put into place? Should the reforgers perhaps make subtle recommendations to new players on what they ought to be after? Not an outright refusal to reforge, of course, but perhaps seeing a mage reforge all crit to stam could result in a snooty "... Are you sure about that?" from the ethereal reforgers.
In the end, though, I can't really argue with The Grumpy Elf's assessment -- we have never been so in control of our gear and the benefits we gain from it. Reforging is an incredibly useful tool that allows players to have a say in what their gear does for them, rather than simply hoping for that one ideal piece that never, ever seems to drop.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Sqtsquish Mar 12th 2012 7:05PM
crit to spirit or something like that u mean
j0ust Mar 12th 2012 7:07PM
"The only inherent problem with this is that the system, while admittedly easy to use from an interface standpoint, requires you to know the numbers and stats that you want to reforge for. And that requires either intimate and innate knowledge of your class or a trip out of the game altogether to a website where people research all this stuff. There is nothing in the game that tells a newbie assassination rogue, "Hey, you probably don't need crit at all.""
The thing is...chances are good that if you're bothering to reforge at all, you'll already know relative stat weights for your class.
Having said that, I use the addon Reforgenator. Because eyeballing the stats manually and tallying values across several pieces of gear is way too much for my simple brain to comprehend at once.
shatnerstorm2 Mar 12th 2012 8:48PM
I'm partial to ReforgeLite myself (which, contrary to what you might think, is actually *more* customizable/complex than Reforgenator). Either way, addons make reforging a lot less of a pain than doing it all manually.
VSUReaper Mar 12th 2012 9:33PM
I disagree with that joust - when I play my healer, all I know is crit is bad, haste is good.
I think suggestions or comments from the reforgers would be a good thing.
Homeschool Mar 12th 2012 9:51PM
They really ought to add a UI where - instead of individually reforging each individual piece - you click up and down arrows on each stat. It's fine to work the way it does, but getting stat caps right takes a calculator (at least) and if you're trying to optimize two stats simultaneously it can be downright nasty.
ScrubRogue Mar 13th 2012 2:46PM
I completely agree with Homeschool, imagine a reforge UI that you set your caps in (or better yet put a list of expected stats (pvp hit, spell hit, melee hit etc) and press a button...it figures out the various permutations and offers it up for x gold (more for many changes)
Click everything reforged just so.
I do this already with a reforge website but imagine it all done in one motion!
Twill Mar 12th 2012 7:07PM
It's a hit. But with it so is the gearing scheme of Cataclysm in general. Vast improvement.
My only issue is mastery on gear before level 80. It's odd. And yes, it exists. I'm not even sure if it does anything, but I think it does.
And to the trolls who still state that mastery doesn't exist before 80, I give you:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=55254
And guess what? You can reforge it at 78! :)
monotype Mar 12th 2012 7:20PM
I think that's a byproduct of the fact that the crafted 78-80 gear (what I fondly think of as the Northrend twink bracket) has randomized enchants, so some of the time, you'll end up with mastery on gear worn by players who haven't even unlocked it yet. I like it, though -- just finished leveling a protadin, and as soon as he hit 80, he had something like 80% CTC, thanks to the random pieces of mastery gear I'd picked up along the way.
(Not sure why the item you linked has a level 78 requirement, though, seeing as how that drops from Tides, and you can't even get into there before 80...)
Bluscrow Mar 12th 2012 7:24PM
Yeah, but you can't do Throne of the tides at level 78. And they are BoP.
Phredreeke Mar 12th 2012 7:43PM
Correction: You can't queue for Throne of the Tides (or Blackrock Caverns) in the dungeon finder at 78. You can still do the instance the "old school way" by running in at the entrance (in case of TotT you'd need someone to summon you though)
Hob Mar 12th 2012 9:54PM
You can get to Throne of the Tides without a summon. The northeastern edge of the Vashj'ir zone is very close to the edge of Dun Morogh. With 280 flying, you can fly through the Fatigue Zone and make it without dying. And you can fly over the entire zone and "discover" it, because you don't have to be underwater to get the exploration achievement.
You might drown on the way down if you don't have aquatic form / undead racial / underwater breathing potion. But that's a different problem.
Twill Mar 12th 2012 10:21PM
I had that item on my paladin at 78. I don't remember checking to see if my heals left a bubble. I do know mastery works for SOME specs pre-80 and not others (now, after some research. Shadow Priests for example (work)).
Twill Mar 12th 2012 10:25PM
"I think that's a byproduct of the fact that the crafted 78-80 gear (what I fondly think of as the Northrend twink bracket) "
Just FYI - They aren't crafted. All cloth/mail/leather/plate are BoE drops from Hyjal/Vashj'ir/TotT/BWD.
These are items requiring level 77-79 and range from ilevel 272 to 308. I've twinked 7 classes out with this gear, and its very fun. They all are reforge-able too :)
zEagleEye` Mar 13th 2012 9:48AM
@Monotype
Isn't Mastery only trained at level 80?
Are you saying that Mastery would work before you could even train for it?
Meatball Mar 12th 2012 7:09PM
Reforging is easily one of the best additions of Cataclysm. Hitting or staying under the Ht or Expertise cap in earlier expansions was always a pain with swapping gems and enchants around. Now it's just a simple trip down the street and fixed in 10 seconds.
Noyou Mar 12th 2012 8:42PM
I agree. Even if all you use reforging for is Hit- it's a wild success. Even from a casual standpoint- which I am, it makes a world of difference. I actually reforged my quest greens at 85 to mastery on my tank.
jfofla Mar 12th 2012 7:09PM
Reforging is great!
What's not to like about optimizing your gear?
gewalt Mar 12th 2012 9:39PM
the only way reforging could possibly not be a hit is if you were expecting a slider to choose "up to 40%" of a secondary stat, which is how they originally advertised it. but then it coyly changed to exactly 40%.
SINisterWyvern Mar 12th 2012 7:10PM
It's a great tool to truly maximize and get more out of the pieces you have in a "why won't this better piece of gear drop with true itemization for me" or "why does the only cloth waste this tier w/o spirit have mastery and crit on it?" However at the same time I feel like to truly max it out you HAVE to go out of game for it. Sure you can eyeball it and get approximate to hit and just do -worthless stat and +great stat on each piece seperately. But it's those small adjustments like actually decreasing crit on one piece of gear into say hit and gaining more crit than that on another piece by turning mastery into crit instead of mastery into hit and going over the cap.
For how it let's itemization work.. it's a hit. For how complicated it can be to truly min/max it's a miss.
razion Mar 12th 2012 7:11PM
As a raider, I don't like reforging. I know what they want the system to do, and it does a good job at it, but at the same time, for people who are min-maxing their gear, it just feels like I'm enchanting my gear for the second time. And in that respect, it just feels like another gold sink. And, well, for me, gold sinks aren't fun. I don't really like having to reforge all of my gear because I purchased a new piece of gear and suddenly all my stats are thrown out of whack from each other.
Before, I'd know what were upgrades straight-up usually by looking at them. Now-a-days, as a raider, I have to find programs like Wowreforge and AskMrRobot to do some serious number crunching just so I can be optimal. And sure, min-maxing isn't for everyone, and I'm not *forced* to do it, but because I'm a raider, it would seem counter-productive to just ignore it.
Maybe they should limit reforging to half of your armor or something--just enough so those weird off-pieces you have can be of use, but not enough so you're not forced to mess with all of it when you get a new piece.