On tier 12:

Frost DK Gear: Pre Heroic & Pre-Raid

This list is available over on EJ, but after they took it off the primary thread and gave me a heart attack, I decided to copy it over her for safe keeping.  It is still on the old thread but it might be harder to find for everyone there. 

[DW Pre-Heroic]

Slot	Item	Gemming	Reforging	Source
Head	[Helm of Easeful Death]	1x Chaotic, 1x 40str	Haste to Hit	Justice Points
Neck	[Gift of Nadun]	None	Haste to Hit	Ramkahen Exalted
Shoulders	[Pauldrons of the High Requiem]	1x 40str	None	Justice Points
Back	[Skin of Stone]	None	Crit to Expertise	Stonecore BoE
Chest	[Breastplate of Raging Fury]	2x 40str	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Wrists	[Terborus’s Rotating Bands]	1x 40str	None	Terborus; Deepholm
Hands	[Reaping Gauntlets]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Waist	[Belt of the Ferocious Wolf]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Exalted
Legs	[Greaves of Gallantry]	2x 40str	Haste to Expertise	Justice Points
Feet	[Waywatcher’s Boots]	1x 40str	Haste to Expertise	Hyjal Revered
Ring	[Gorsik’s Band of Shattering]	None	Haste to Expertise	Therazane Revered
Ring	[Galrond’s Band]	None	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Honored
Trinket	[Darkmoon Card: Hurricane]	None	None	BoE Craftable
Trinket	[Impatience of Youth]	None	None	Baradin/Hellscream Exalted
Main Hand	[Dragonscorn Mace]	None	None	Twilight Highlands Quest
Off Hand	[Sun Strike]	None	None	Rajh; Halls
Relic	[Notched Jawbone]	1x 40str	Hit to Crit	Honor Points

Although you can get the pvp rep with the dailies, I remain rather leery of them.  I’ll try them soon and we’ll see how it goes on a pvp server.  If I can’t even do my Therazane dailies unmolested (srsly guys, I just want to save Pebble, leave me alone)…

If you want to know what the ‘pre-raid’ list looks like as well, here you go:

[DW Pre-Raid]

Slot	Item	Gemming	Reforging	Source
Head	[Anomuran Helm]	1x Chaotic, 1x 40str	Crit to Exp	Ghur’sha; H Throne
Neck	[Gift of Nadun]	None	Haste to Mastery	Ramkahen Exalted
Shoulders	[Pauldrons of the High Requiem]	1x 40str	Hit to Haste	Justice Points
Back	[Skin of Stone]	None	Crit to Expertise	H Stonecore BoE
Chest	[Elementium Deathplate]	None	Crit to Expertise	BoE Craftable
Wrists	[Alpha Bracers]	1x 40str	None	Anraphet; H Halls
Hands	[Reaping Gauntlets]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Waist	[Belt of the Ferocious Wolf]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Exalted
Legs	[Alpheus Legguards]	2x 40str	Crit to Mastery	H Thrones BoE
Feet	[Greaves of Wu the Elder]	1x 40str	Hit to Mastery	Husam; H Lost City
Ring	[Nova Band]	None	Crit to Hit	Isiset; H Halls
Ring	[Skyshard Ring]	None	Crit to Mastery	Altarius; H Vortex
Trinket	[Darkmoon Card: Hurricane]	None	None	BoE Craftable
Trinket	[Impatience of Youth]	None	None	Baradin/Hellscream Exalted
Main Hand	[Cookie’s Tenderizer]	None	Hit to Expertise	Cookie; H Deadmines
Off Hand	[Cookie’s Tenderizer]	None	Hit to Expertise	Cookie; H Deadmines
Relic	[Conch of Thundering Waves]	1x 40str	Hit to Mastery	Ghur’sha; H Throne

I high reccomend the frost DPS thread over at EJ.  Even though it sometimes gets mathy, it’s answered pretty much all of my questions even for my pre-raiding needs.

Pure DPS “Off Spec” Gear?

I used all my writing mojo writing a post on the officer forums today.  Naturally this leaves me sitting here staring at a blank wordpress page…so I decided I could just copy and paste my forum post!

It’s not sensitive information (or juicy, soap opera-esque drama) so I think it’s safe enough to plaster across the interwebs.

The topic was offspec gear.  BoO uses DKP in 25 man raids, but if no one wishes to have an item for their main spec, then it goes to off spec rolls and costs 0 DKP.  The debate arose over whether or not a pure DPS class should be allowed to roll for off spec gear.  We’re leaving weapons out of the equation because they can be a slightly different kettle of fish, if you’re wondering.

Here, there, is my opinion on pure DPS classes rolling on off spec gear against the tanks and healers:

Healers and tanks both, due to the nature of raiding, sometimes HAVE to DPS in the raid. Either the fight requires a varying number of tanks, or the fight requires a varying number of healers. Also consider that as we get better at content, we need less healers…leading, potentially, to having to bench several of our healers as we PROGRESS in content.

That in mind, tanks and healers both have a legitimate claim to off set gear for a raid setting. If DPS were allowed to roll on “offspec” gear along side the tanks and healers, then this would drastically reduce the chance of them getting any offspec gear, leaving them-and the raid-at a disadvantage. I’m already competing for MAIN spec gear with the DPS as well as my fellow healers, due to the quirks of my class and spec (we can’t all be holy paladins). I don’t have DKP to spare, either. If the DPS claims their main spec loot, and then starts claiming their off spec loot…well, if I’m doing 3k on a boss fight later in my Ulduar10 DPS gear because the mage needed 3 robes for his 3 different specs…that’d be why. As a pure DPS you can DPS as Y spec in X spec ideal gear. The holy paladin can’t do jack shit in her healing gear as ret. I’m not sure how this disadvantage is less damaging to the raid than the pure DPS not being optimal for some fights. DPS has never been optimal for all fights. This is why you like to have variety in your raid group.

While some stats may not be OPTIMAL on certain gear, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically offspec and available gratis. I mean fuck, if you want to do that, then half of my gear was really offspec gear because it’s better for holy than for disc. And take my hunter-the quirks of a BM hunter mean that to get anywhere I’m wearing a lot of stuff that doesn’t have OPTIMAL stats.

I think that allowing DPS to roll on “off spec” gear is a path I don’t care to go down. For one thing, not everyone knows the ideal stats for certain specs and classes. Not everyone agrees with them, either. What seems like an obvious offspec piece to you might not seem that way to JimBob over there, leaving the officers with a lot of potential misunderstandings and hurt feelings to soothe.

Think back to the days before dual specs. You didn’t swap specs for this fight or that one. You just knew you were good for some fights and not so good for others. Not everyone has dual specs, either-they aren’t a necessity for raiding, as helpful as they are. I do not feel that content is so tightly tuned for non-hardmode raids that the DPS needs the best gear for multiple specs, not when the tanks and healers are just as if not more likely to use the same gear in any given encounter.

Friday Flowchart: Upgrading your holy paladin’s gear.

/shakes a fist at Bracers of Pale Illumination, which are in no way better than my 245 bracers

I Think You’re Confused, Blizz

If you walked into a Draenei dressed like this in the streets, would you think she is a priest?  No!  You’d go, what the fuck, since when are space goats warlocks?

Also, what’s with the mild belly baring, yet a very high neck?  Does that even remotely make sense?

WHERE ARE MY WINGS AND HALO, BLIZZARD?  WHERE?

I R PREEST, NOT FLOOR SMEAR WARLOCK!

I mean the chains could give an interesting twist to “discipline priest” I suppose…

Crit or haste?

In the first few months of WotLK raiding, when I went holy for the first time, you would have had to pry crit from my cold dead hands. I went the way of the holy/ret build back then, because holy/prot hadn’t yet seen the changes of 3.1 that made it the viable (and my preferred) spec that it is now. I think I went insane over the fact that Soul of the Dead NEVER dropped for us from Sapphiron, week after week, and I’m pretty sure that when it finally did and I snatched it up, I let out my biggest happy squeal of all time. Torch of Holy Fire? Screw that, I’m snatching The Turning Tide away from our warlocks.

These days, I’m tooting a very different horn. I love haste and I can’t get enough of it, so much that I’m sitting well above the recommended 675 soft cap for haste rating from gear. Because we don’t always run with a boomkin in 10s and very rarely have a ret paladin, I don’t get the buffs from those classes in regards to haste, so I try to keep as much as possible on my gear, and I eat haste buff food.

Why the change? Well for one thing, crit just isn’t as good as it used to be. Critical strikes don’t return as much mana as they used to, so that benefit has gone a little out of the window, not to mention that improved gear from Naxx to Ice Cream Social and epic gems mean that mana pools are higher than ever. I can’t remember the last time that I felt truly strained for mana or felt that I would run dry with no chance to recover, even when chain casting Holy Light on fights like Marrowgar or Festergut or … everything else in ICC. Crit is nice for having those BIG NUMBERS heals, but in many cases the crits are just overheals for a class that has high overhealing anyway (not that there’s a problem with this – as long as you have mana and things don’t die, who cares about overheal?). Just sticking with the critical strike rating that’s on spell plate and other pieces, and the amount that you’ll naturally get from nom nom noming intellect gems should be sufficient – I just don’t see the benefit in gemming for crit rating when you can easily get to 30% or more holy crit from gear.

Haste on the other hand, while it has diminishing returns, is something that you can’t really go wrong with having a little more of. The more haste, the more spells you can cast. If you’re starting harder content, it can be a real life saver in terms of how much throughput you can manage. While you have a chance of getting critical strike heals that will top someone off, with haste there is a guarantee that you’ll be able to quickly put out a second heal. For me it’s a more reliable tool for OHCRAP moments, and probably the only thing that facilitates surviving fears in 5 mans (but that’s a whole ‘nother rant). I feel more secure with having plenty of haste and knowing that my heals have a higher probability of landing in time – our limitation is really speed rather than throughput or longevity. Also, this is what casting looks like when you’re hopped up on haste:

For srs.

Of course, the exception to all of this is the FoL build, in which case you don’t want haste OR crit, you want MOAR SPELLPOWER. That’s a completely foreign territory for me, but maybe someday I’ll give it a try for fun and ~SCIENCE~.

Loot Ramble

Apparently if I bitch on my blog about not getting trophies, I get a trophy.  So excuse me while I bitch about it one more time, just in case. 

That said, I peeked at WoW-heroes and saw that I was…#30 in guild.  There are alts above me.  I am a victim of three things: random loot tables, fail dice rolls, and being too nice.

I am, for example, still wearing an ilevel 200 ring.  Rings have dropped.  Rings have dropped and even only had one or two other people rolling on them.  Did I roll, too?  Oh hell no.  That ring has mp5 on it…fuck if I’m going to roll against a shaman for an mp5 ring, no matter how much it trashed my other ring in all other stats. 

Said shaman would slap me aside the head for that, but there you go.

Getting gear as a priest is a lot harder than getting gear as a healing paladin, that’s for sure.  I kind of LOL at Josh, who bitches about rolling against 2 or 3 other people for tanking gear.  Honey, do you know how many mages we have?

And how many warlocks?

And how many other priests?

Can you shut the fuck up, please?

I do wonder, though, if maybe I should stomp on that behavior of mine and become more aggressive with loot.  It’s not good for your tank healers to lag behind in gear, now is it?  It is, by nature, a (somewhat) more solitary job than raid healing.  It might shed light on why I flail so hard if I don’t have Kotakh to toss supporting hots, for example.

Or…maybe not.  Maybe it’s just the nature of the beast-sometimes the tank will dip a wee bit lower than we like and heart attacks will be had regardless of healer gear.

Or maybe 3.3 will hit next week and I can just go loot hoover from the new 5 mans and it won’t matter anyway!

OMNOMNOM SP/Crit

For those of you who are mildly curious as to how my foray into high crit, low haste discing is going, Lyrandre’s stats look thus-ish self buffed:

2455 SP  (2580 w/Broodmother stacks-alas I no longer have my t8 4 pc bonus, QQ)
32% crit
6.28% haste
309 mp5

I’m in a mangled collection of  t8, t8.5, and t9.  Give me a raid with a crit chicken and I’m one happy critilicious priest.

Now I’m not prancing around in hard modes or anything, but this has been sound for normal 10 and 25man content.  10man Ulduar on Wednesday night was a bit of a mana stretch to heal, but we had one healer who was at a lower gear level and we pulled it off with minimal mishaps.   A couple of fights make me wish I was a holy paladin with beacon, which is a statement so deeply filled with irony that I actually weep inside.  I mean I was a holy paladin and I hated it. 

Anyway.

The penance cooldown is as obnoxious as ever, but I seem able to spam sufficient flash heals in between.  Lately Josh has been yelling at me because he blows shield wall at the same time I use Pain Suppression, but it’s really HIS fault for TRAINING me so well.  I can’t help it that our oh shit instincts kick in at the same time!

Sssh.

So last night I returned to Ulduar as DPS, though not on my hunter.  With a bit of wheedling I got in as shadow priest, complete with newly tweaked spec.  I was pretty consistent in topping 3k DPS, which for my nubbish state and gear still largely optimized for disc priesting, is pretty good.  Right?  Oh shut up and leave me to my delusions.

And the thing is that…well…I really likeshadow priesting.  Not more than I like healing, no.  But…about the same, really.  So in a sense I don’t mind our plethorea of priests the least little bit, because we are often shy DPS so I get to tag along anyway! 

Wee!

Something about the Thorim fight made my hand hurt, though.  So many targets.

O.o

You’d think after warrior tanking, that would be nothing!  Ah, well.

In trying to maximize my DPS gear, I am reminded for the billionth time that JUGGLING HIT IS A BITCH!  I’m either way over, or way under cap, and fuck if I’m using any damn hit gems.  I sense a lot of time sitting in game with Rawr open sorting through my gear collection in my future.  It’s even worse than def cap…

Healing gear is so much easier to optimize!

Priest: Int, Crit, and You

Yesterday there was a very good post up at Penance Priest.  Go on, go read it if you haven’t already. 

The first thing I did when I got home was to pop on Lyr and peek at my gear. 

You should power-on the intellect if and only if you are mana starved. It is a regen stat, and it is our best regen stat without question. If you end fights with half your mana and with shadowfiend off cooldown, you do not need more mana, and therefore you do not need to stack intellect. However, if you’re doing fights that require constant spamming of your biggest heals, and you struggle to last long enough, intellect is the clear choice.

In our 10 man Ulduars, I’ve gone back to being “disc raid heals”.  I support the tank healer, watch the OT, and take care of anyone in the Vibrating Crotch Pot or whatever it may be that fight.  Ignis, which can be a more mana-nomming fight for me, ran me OOM…at the very end of the fight.  Without shadowfiend (should have popped it at half, but I wasn’t watching my mana bar).  Hmmmmm.  Not bad, not bad at all.

I peeked at my gems and saw in some of my older gear…int gems.

Hmmmmm. 

A quick trip to the AH and I tossed those out for more SP gems.  Blues, if you’re wondering-I have epic gems only in my Uldaur25 stuff because those things don’t come cheap and I won’t use gbank supplies for that.    We’ll see what difference that makes.

My problems in Ulduar have not been mana ones lately.  They have been “oh god oh god oh god THE TANK IS DYING OH GOD” problems, at least, when I’m on full MT duty.  Yet I’m over the soft haste cap of 5%, sitting 7.59%.  Instead of stacking more haste-which I haven’t been able to get my hands on anyway-I’m going to lean more towards crit and SP.   I won’t need to cast heals quicker if I can cast bigger heals with more mitigation provided…in theory.  Switching to a heavier haste concept would also require a shift to a GHeal build, and I’m strangely allergic to GHeal.  Must be those years spent as a FoL spamming holy paladin.

I’ll even consider tweaking my disc build slightly for a crit talent I know I missed. 

Experiment OMG CRIT is a go!