How do you measure the value of an upgrade? The stats on the item? Gearscore rating? Perhaps a list made by a blogger?
No matter what system you use for determining your list of desired upgrades, before you do boot up your armory profile and consider this little bit of advice:
An upgrade is only as good as the piece it is replacing.
Take, if you will, the case of Tarsus’ gloves. They’re Tier 8 (Ulduar) set gear. I’m not still wearing them because they’re some sort of super itemized awesome piece – I’m wearing them because my Tier 9 options were downright underwhelming. Given the sparsity of hit on Tier 9 gear, that 49 hit rating was quite valuable – and they didn’t exactly have another option available. In terms of my list of priority – gloves were then at the bottom.
Now looking at what is available in Tier 10, I have other options. Specifically I have an attraction to the Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards, now that (come Tuesday) they have bonus armor on them. Having that clear of an upgrade over my existing gloves moves them substantially up the priority list (now at priority one, since that is my last piece of Non-Heroic Tier 8 gear).
Sometimes this is easier than others, as described in the example above. It is, however, more difficult when you have to weigh the impact on your entire gear set. For example, you could pick up Last Word – but it has no defense, no hit, no expertise – hell it doesn’t have anything on it by stamina and that proc. That is a pretty hefty hit when you compare it to my Sorthalis – I need to find some of those stats elsewhere before I can equip it. Down on the priority list it goes (despite replacing gear of lower Tier). I still need a weapon upgrade, but maybe I can stand to find some new boots first.
So, when weighing spending your DKP or just making up your list – remember that your tank is the sum of their parts and give some thought to your upgrades and prioritize. You never know, there might be another tank in your raid that needs that piece more than you and you need to know how generous you can be.
Filed under: Analysis, Gear, Raiding | Tags: 10-man, 25-man, Gear, Icecrown Citadel, Loot List, Patch 3.3
First off, I’m not going to go into the 5-man lootables. In case you missed it, Kadomi did a super job covering that stuff already.
What I am going to do is talk about Raid and Emblem loot (or at least what we know about it thus far). I’m not going to worry about “Heroic” versions of these items either. You’re not going to see them until, well, I guess February or March anyway.
I will never cease being amazed by the guys over at MMO Champion with this data. This effectively overwrites the listing I did last Friday, save for the 5 man loot.
I would like to note the distinct LACK of tanking swords. This can only be a good thing. Seriously.
Emblems
Chest Cataclysmic Chestguard
Hands Gauntlets of the Kraken
Waist Verdigris Chain Belt
Trinket Corroded Skeleton Key
25 Man Hard
Trinket Corpse Tongue Coin
25 Man Normal
Ranged Rowan’s Rifle of Silver Bullets
Chest Blightborne Warplate
Hands Taldaram’s Plated Fists
ShoulderBoneguard Commander’s Pauldrons
Waist Belt of Broken Bones
Wrist Bracers of Dark Reckoning
Finger Harbinger’s Bone Band
Neck Sepsis
Trinket Corpse Tongue Coin
10 Man Heroic
Axe(!!!!) Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King
Mace Bonebreaker Scepter
Shield Neverending Winter
Wrist Gargoyle Spit Bracers
Finger Abomination’s Bloody Ring
Trinket Unidentifiable Organ
10 Man Normal
Mace Bonebreaker Scepter
Shield Neverending Winter
Wrist Gargoyle Spit Bracers
Back Cloak of Many Skins
Finger Abomination’s Bloody Ring
Neck Marrowgar’s Scratching Choker
Trinket Unidentifiable Organ
Filed under: Gear, Lists, News, Raiding | Tags: Icecrown, Icecrown Citadel, Patch 3.3, spoiler, Tier 10, Trinket
This is no great surprise if you have been paying attention. But for those of you who haven’t, let me point you at some linkage:
- Here’s some maps: The Entryway, Frostwing Halls, The Plagueworks, The Crimson Halls, and The Frozen Throne. (No those aren’t entirely right… but there’s a lot of crossover.
- Here’s some pictures of the raid armor sets. Broken down by class:
- Here’s some spoiler-ific boss text.
- And a spoiler-ific Lich King related movie.
- Here’s a boss fight. And another. And another.
- Oh, and some jazz about tanking trinkets.
No loot yet to parse and list for you, but you know it’s coming.
Filed under: Gear, Strategy, Talents | Tags: devastate, Mathcraft, patch 3.2, Threat
I want to point more tanks over at Kadomi’s post from Tuesday concerning warrior ability use priority. It is a great summation of the information gleaned from this TankSpot thread. Make sure you read both the comments on Kadomi’s post and the responses to the thread, as there is significant dispute (which means time for real in game testing!)
In essence, this is all fall-out from this change in patch 3.2.0:
- Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped.
This obviously shakes up some things I’ve been doing, making me revisit a few assumptions – and that’s good. Needless to say, I need to put some serious thought into what to do to here. In the interests of science then, let me share this slice of cow brain with you. Maybe it will be helpful if you are doing your own tests.
- I want to try Glyph of Devastate, but I like my current glyphs of Vigilance, Heroic Strike, and Blocking. I feel like the logical choice for the swap out is Heroic Strike because I’m not precisely hurting on rage. My role lead says I need to work on my leading threat in any case, so this is probably something I should look at anyway.
- If it turns out to be true that Revenge is so much lower on the priority scale, should I take that one remaining point in Improved Revenge and put it somewhere else? If so, where? Cruelty? Puncture?
- I’m using a pretty fast weapon right now (1.6 Speed). If Devastate lags behind now, is there a slower weapon currently in game that would change the equation. I’m thinking the Burnished Quel’Serrar (2.0 Speed), but also potential future weapons in Icecrown. What’s the slowest speed on a 1-hander… 2.8?
Thanks to Axiom switching over to World of Logs, I have a pretty good base-line of numbers to test against. Heroic Northrend Beasts is still kicking our butts – so anything I can do to boost effectiveness my little part of helping on progression.
Any feed back from fellow tanks who have tested these changes in the field is, of course, appreciated.
Filed under: Gear, Media, News, Roleplaying | Tags: Gear, Patch 3.3, Tier 10
Following up on Monday’s love-fest for Tier 10, here is the screen shots of our plate armor, now broken down by race and gender – courtesy of the ever digging MMO-Champion.
First, the ladies:
And now the gents:
Did you see it? DID YOU?
Check out the Tauren models. Blizzard finally put holes in the helmet for our horns. I thought that Tier 8 would be the last time I would turn my helm graphic on. Man, was I ever wrong.
Here’s hoping that this is the beginning of theme. Elves and Trolls need some loving too. Maybe dwarves. Let’s face it, helms chop off and through a lot of things people took time or spent gold to customize. It’s about time they gave us helms that actually let us show that off.
Filed under: Analysis, Gear, Uncategorized | Tags: Gear, Raiding, Tier 10
So, now that we have a good sense of what the new Tier 10 set bonuses are, let me express a word of praise for the design of the Prot Warrior set bonuses:
- 2 Pieces (Tank): Your Shield Slam and Shockwave abilities deal 20% increased damage.
- 4 Pieces (Tank): Your Bloodrage ability no longer costs health to use, and now causes you to absorb damage equal to 20% of your maximum health.
To provide some context, here are Tier 8 and Tier 9
It is fairly easy to see the pattern here. The 2-piece set bonus is always something that generally increases threat. It’s hard to argue with something so basic and functional – though never something to write home about – not unlike getting that 3rd rank in Incite. By contrast, the 4-piece bonus is like an extra glyph slot, some secret new functionality to an already useful ability.
I’ve already talked about how I love the functionality of the Tier 8 4-piece bonus. I’ll not mince words, however, about the Tier 9 bonus. It’s terrible. Sure, you could pop Shield Block every 20 seconds for the bonus to your shield slam, but from a defensive point of view it adds no particular functionality because Shield Block is such a weak cooldown. The 2-piece bonus is actually even worse, in some ways, because Taunt has become so handicapped.
With that in mind, the Tier 10 4-piece bonus is a really awesome addition to the Warrior repertoire. Assuming the continued growth in health pools, it’s easy to imagine being able to produce a shield that can absorb 10k worth of damage every 30 seconds. That’s magic damage. That’s physical damage. It’s a lot of little hits. It’s a good chunk off of a large hit. I suspect it will stack with healer damage absorption. It scales very well with your gear. It’s hard to imagine a situation where this wouldn’t be useful, and easy to imagine a situation where it would be very useful (I’m thinking Heroic Gormok the Impaler here).
Now, bear in mind, these things have a way of changing on the PTR, so take this with a grain of salt. But until then, there’s something to smile about warriors – this is probably our best protection set-bonus yet.
I personally thing that the new Tier 10 looks awesome. As far as the texturing goes, it probably looks more like actual armor than most of the tier sets. There are some things I am sure we could quibble about, the fact that once again the Horde (red) version looks infinitely cooler than the Alliance version (blue). I just have one small, teensy problem.
I’m going to have to be correcting people about the animal on the shoulders.
It’s not a pig. It’s a boar.
You might want to practice saying it in the mirror, because it would seem that you’re going to be saying it for some time to come – or something like it. Apparently Blizzard has this crazy idea that Warriors should not have animals on their shoulders that could be un-ambiguously wild. First it was the Sheep/Goat/Ram thing. Now we have the Pig/Boar thing. What are we doing here? Putting on a production of Animal Farm? Seriously folks.
Druids? Nothing ambiguous about stags or moose.
Shamans? Nothing ambiguous about wolves.
Hunters? Nothing ambiguous about anything. Remember the giant blinking eyes on their shoulders?
But Warriors? We can’t even get a predator on our shoulders, let alone something that’s unabashedly un-domesticated.
So here’s some future inspiration Blizzard: How about something that makes us look like a Bear? Hell, even a badger would be preferably unambiguous, if probably stupid looking considering who is designing it. Or, you know what, how about no animals what-so-ever. History is replete with awesome looking examples of plate armor that have no animal symbolism.
I’m not picky, my blue worded friends. All I want is armor that doesn’t leave me open to ridicule. They have focus groups for this, but I’m sure if you just asked Ratshag he would be happy to inform you that there’s a pig on the shoulders. What can I say? The orc has taste.
I suppose at least I don’t have to worry about Saurfang eating me. Not that I wouldn’t wipe ten thousand times over just to have a chance to fight by the side of the greatest warrior who ever lived.
Oh wait. I do.
Man I love being Horde. Sometimes you really need pity the Alliance. You all miss so much awesome, it’s not even funny.
Courtesy of MMO Champion, once again!
Update: 8:16 AM EST – But wait! There’s More!
