Players who log on to World of Warcraft’s 7.1.5 test realm will no doubt have already noticed that secondary stats just aren’t what they used to be. The same amount of haste has you attacking slower, the same amount of mastery makes you less masterful, and so on. What gives? A new post on the official forums explains exactly why this is, and it all comes down to the problem that item level hasn’t been a clear enough indicator of what piece of gear is stronger than other gear.
According to the official post, if a player is passing up a 15+ item level upgrade just because of secondary stats, those stats are tuned to be too powerful. Thus, the goal is to make secondary stats provide less increase per rating point while also tuning up how much of the stats appear on items per level, so a big item level upgrade should always mean that you’re getting enough of the (random) secondary stats to make the upgrade worthwhile. In other words, you have one stat you should really be upgrading all the time, and that’s item level. (Of course, this could also be addressed by making secondaries not totally random and allowing players to adjust them… but let’s not go there.)
