Friday, January 22, 2010

Revisit: 10 man raiders, 251 4pc vs the 264 items

First, I would like to announce that tankspot has finally switched over to vB4. Visually some work still needs to be done but most of the features are working properly. This includes an RSS feed which one anonymous reader will be happy to hear about.

Preface: while writing this post I came to realize that wowhead is a little slow to update things and as a result certain drops from the second and third wings not showing up on searches because "they have not been seen on live servers yet" so when looking for items try the wowarmory search found here.

So it was brought up on tankspot, how good is 4pc if you are stuck using the 251 items vs buying the 264 badge items and getting the crafted legs.

Well first, STILL DO NOT BUY THE CHEST FROM FROST EMBLEMS! the 264 offset item you use with 264 4pc is the chest, which is BOE. It is worth the price and I highly recommend saving your badges because there is just so much good stuff from the vendor.

Looking at the 10 man drops vs the 251 set pieces, it is very clear the 10 man drops are made for DPS.

Helm:

The set has 8 more agi, 47 more stam, 88 crit instead of 80 haste, 8 less ArP, and 59 less AP.

Set wins.

Shoulders:

The set has 16 more agi, 26 more stam, 16 more crit, but 8 less ArP, 36 less AP, and one less socket.

The socket is still not enough to counter to lack of stam on a clear DPS piece, set up 2-0.

Chest:

The set has 12 more agi, 51 more stam, 96 crit instead of 99 haste, 1 more ArP, but 41 less AP, and one less socket.

Same as above, the socket cannot offset the stam deficit of a DPS piece, set up 3-0.

Gloves:

The set has 31 more stam, 8 more ArP, 63 haste instead of 63 crit, but 8 less AP, and one less socket.

This one is a toss up. If you happen to get the scourge ones to drop you can safely use those and save your badges until if and when you need the set gloves for a set bonus.

Legs(1):

The set has 24 more agi, 18 more stam, 80 expertise instead of 103 crit, 36 more ArP, but 47 less AP and one less socket.

This tier has a severe lack of hit and expertise compared to the past ones giving the set legs the edge.

Legs(2):

The set and offset legs have the same amount of stam and agi, it looks like these legs are the exception to the 10-man for DPS rule. In addition, the set legs have more AP (16 more) for a change, and it trades 96 ArP on the set for 96 haste on the off-set and 80 expertise on the set legs for 72 crit on the off-set. Again though this comes at the cost of a socket which makes the off-set better for pure survivability which includes more savage defense procs because of extra crit (still not sure where the trade off comes in on this because with the less expertise you wont be hitting as much so less change to crit so this last part might be inaccurate).

Conclusion:

Not considering any 264 items, you still want 4pc simply because all the 251 drops are designed for dps. There are 3 different ways I would do this in this order:
  • 4-pc with the second off-set legs gives you the best survivability
  • 5-pc set gives you a significant threat boost over the above option at the cost of a socket which is probably the better option
  • 4-pc set and off-set gloves if you just cannot get the off-set legs to drop (which unfortunately means once they do drop you basically wasted the badges buying the legs)
There is another reason I would use the legs instead of the set legs if you do not run 25 mans (besides the obvious chance of them dropping once the VOA boss is released):
Scanning that list reveals one BOE, the crafted legs. The thing is, this will probably cost about the same to craft (unless you have about 5 alts farming 2 badges a day from the daily and using them to buy the saronite) as it would cost to just buy the Sack of Wonder.

Comparing the Sack of Wonder and the 251 set legs against the crafted legs and the 251 set chest leaves us with this.

Dark, can you please just get to the part of this post we all want?
Ok, ok, fine!

Looking at those same lists, it reveals no helm better than the set helm for a strict 10-man raider, and the same goes with the shoulders. That leaves the badge gloves and the crafted legs.

Gloves:

The badge gloves have 13 more stam and agi, 18 more armor, 3 more AP, 80 more crit, and an extra socket, all for 7 less ArP, and 63 less haste.

Legs:

The crafted legs have 18 more stam and agi, 25 more armor, 9 AP, 4 ArP, 92 crit, and an extra socket all for 80 expertise.

Question 1: I want 4pc no matter what but I can only get 251 set items, which of the 3 is my best choice?

Looking at this, you guys can decide for yourself. My opinion is biased because you know how I feel about hit and expertise, but just so I can see myself writing, chest+4pc.

The three different breakdowns if you were interested:
  • Badge gloves vs Crafted legs, is 80 expertise worth: 5 stam, 5 agi, 7 armor, 6 AP, 11 ArP, 12 crit, and 63 haste? For me, yes, but for pure survivability, no.
  • Sack of Wonder vs Badge gloves, this one will probably cause some controversy, but since the badge gloves have already been knocked out, and I love my hit and expertise, I want to see how the chest stacks up vs the legs.
  • Sack of Wonder vs Crafted legs, that is equal to 20 expertise skill and about 3 and a quarter percent hit, I cannot say no to that unless I am at hard cap without it, which in this gear we will not be.
Question 2: Dark, shut up and listen, I DO NOT CARE ABOUT 4PC I just want the best gear. What do I gain by using the chest, legs, and gloves and only 2 pieces of the set?

Fair enough, considering this is the entire reason I wrote the article and it will be the easiest and shortest to answer makes it kind of anti-climatic.
  • Chest
  • Gloves
  • Legs
  • Combined: Is the 4pc set bonus, 83 ArP, and 63 haste worth 33 agi, 49 stam, 72 armor, 53 AP, 76 crit, 12 expertise, 100 hit, and 3 sockets.
Going back to my last post:
  • 277: Is the 4pc set bonus, 16 agi, and 82 ARP worth 60 stam (2 yellow sockets) and 66 haste?
  • 264: Is the 4pc set bonus, 16 agi, and 72 ARP worth 60 stam (2 yellow sockets) and 56 haste?
The answer in both those cases was yes because you only lost sockets, but with the different iLvls the passive stam difference makes it over 2K health in bear form if you use 3 stam gems. You also gained agi by using 4pc, in this case again because of the iLvl difference you are losing a significant amount. Also remember, you will still be able to use 1 264 item from the combined comparison so it is more like this.

One final note: hard modes will be out soon giving even 10 man raiders access to the 264 tier items. The hard mode versions of the dps loot ARE STILL dps loot. This combined with the new VOA boss dropping 264 gloves and legs (although in reality we still do not know how this will work) and you already using 251-helm and shoulders.... I think it would be a waste of gold to craft legs and badges buying either the gloves or the saronite for the legs if you have any plan on doing hard mode 10-ICC.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Armor Trinkets: Why is Unidentifiable Organ so good yet no one used Glyph in ToC?

Because kalon called me out on not posting enough!

So!, what suddenly made armor good again? Simply put, fight mechanics. Let us take a trip down memory lane back to ToGC25 and what killed tanks:
  • NRB: Bleed ticks+melee+impale+stomp in under a second, once you reach this threshold armor was actually better.
  • LJ: 10 stack fireballs not being interrupted
  • FC: Cat gear!
  • Twins: lots of magic damage
  • Anub: Enough HP to survive a melee+slash+ leaching swarm tick then armor became better
Now, lets look at ICC:
  • LM, Healer getting spiked = dead tank
  • LDW: I actually use double stam trinkets here
  • Gunship: I use DPS trinkets here actually if I do not go over, double stams if I do go over because of the bleeding throw
  • DBS: armor
  • Festergut: 3stack melee swings
  • Rotface: melee swings during explosion and healers moving
  • PP: again death to melee while healers are moving
  • Blood Prince Council: no real tank killer here, roll cooldowns when keleseth is empowered to let the healer get more heals on the warlock tank by having to worry less about you
  • Blood Queen: Again no real tank killer, if healers are moving when she lands you may need to hit cooldowns while they position
So, even if you do not have the Putricide trinket, glyph is still better than any combination of stam trinkets you can use on most fights. That said Heroic Satrina's/Jug's Vit is better than the badge stam trinket.

As for the organ itself, I have found the uptime to be TERRIBLE! On putricide it likes to drop every time he casts an experiment, on lanathil she turns to do her abilities enough that it does not stay up consistantly, same with slime spray on rotface. Festergut it is actually pretty good though. Any boss with a casted ability (shock vortex on council and bone spikes on morrowgar) will see a terrible uptime as well. The armor is good enough to negate that but I am extremly disapointed by the equip.

Finally I realized this turned into more of a "how to survive the tank killer abilities" post but whatever.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Raid! The Documentary!

A friend of mine I met through tankspot (who I have had the pleasure of meeting in real life, him and his wife make an amazing musical couple) Kevin Michael Johnson is finally embarking on a project he has been dreaming about for several years. I for one cannot wait for this to take shape so let me not ruin it by trying to explain it, I will just steal his words.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/84946011/the-raid-promo

http://www.youtube.com/user/jointheraid



Monday, January 18, 2010

Goodbye kal!

This is to important to just leave a comment buried in what will no doubt be hundreds of comments.

Another feral blog and good friend of mine Kalon, of thinktank, has hung up the keyboard.

So many good feral blogs have fallen this year, some to other games, and others who just stopped posting all together. You were the best feral resource the community had in recent months and I will miss our talks the most. Shame we never did get to do that podcast.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing and hope you enjoy the extra time you are going to have now to spend with the people who really matter, your wife and son. Hope to hear from ya soon even in your absence from wow.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

badge update

If you have done every single daily, and killed putricide in 10 and 25 last week, and did the daily and weekly today, Tuesday, you should have exactly 200 badges before you zone into your raid tonight.

Monday, January 4, 2010