Ulduar Itemization

[Bagar-]

So now that most of the tier stats are out, and off-tier pieces have been datamined or dropped on PTrs, I have to say that from my perspective, Ulduar gear is a downgrade.

Despite being 10 - 20 itemlevels higher than my naxx pieces, this shit is so misitemized I'm not even going to be picking up most of it.

Now granted, I'm a holy paladin, and stacking MP5 on our gear is just a way to keep our raw healing throughput at normal levels without directly nerfing our healing. I can see it, although I think it's stupid.

But I checked the shaman sets, and the fucking Elemental gear has MORE mp5 than the RESTO gear. The mage gear is so bogged down in spirit that it's fucking half useless. DPS gear is absolutely fucking loaded with haste and armor pen. It seems that just about every class is going to suffer from poorly itemized loot. Now for most classes, you're going to take it anyhow, because it'll still be better than the 1Level 213 stuff. As a holy paladin, I won't. I don't scale very well with spellpower, and I'm already haste capped. All I want is crit, and INT, and nearly every piece of this shit gear is a downgrade.

You want to stop ridiculous paladin healing throughput? Stack more INT, not MP5. Giving us MP5 is like giving warriors fucking agility. Sure, it works, just not as well as pretty much any other fucking stat. At least trade off all of the fucking haste for some god damned Crit. I'm rolling fucking 20% haste on my gear alone, that doesn't include 15% from JOTP, 5% from totems, and 3% from ret aura. The last fucking thing I need more of is that shit.

So I get it, you don't want to inflate current itemization and create a ridiculous level statistical distribution and balance with Icecrown gear. So why don't these idiots think about that before they load every fucking piece of Naxx gear with Hast / Crit / SP, creating a level of expected itemization that isn't maintainable or reasonable, and causing the better balanced Ulduar gear to actually be worse than existing pieces in many cases.


I know this might seem nitpicky or elitist, I just wish Blizzard had some god damned foresight. Anyone could have seen this coming, stacking perfect itemstats on Naxx gear but then not wanting to simply directly increase the levels of said stats, it would have been better to stick the shit gear in naxx and gradually upgrade, not vice fucking versa. Idiots.

Again, this is simply from a paladin (holy) and shaman (elemental) perspective, although mages seem to be getting the shaft with all the useless spirit (I've seen the new molten armor changes, they're bullshit). I can't speak for other classes, but I've definately also heard out ret paladin bitching as well.

/rant off

Hey, at least I get to wear a kilt again.

[Sargeras]

Awww, what happened to ret?

[Xouqoa]

I'd say the patch is still (at least) 2-3 weeks away. I wouldn't get your knickers all in a twist just yet. There is plenty of time for them to address issues like this.

[Gzette]

shoot, i just want new content. i haven't checked out the gear for my char (hunter), though I'm not fully decked in Naxx loot, so I'll take anything!

[Aardor]

There as been 1 melee dps dagger, like 3 offhand swords, and 0 mainhands. Hopefully they're far from done the itemizatiom.

[Fenna]

Sue Blizzard!

[Nick]

Care to link the Ulduar loot tables?

[Bagar-]

Awww, what happened to ret?

Honestly, it lasted about a month. I don't know, I just prefer healing.

I still play ret (although mostly Prot) a decent amount though for 10 man stuff.

Ret, when I played it, was a bit of an uphill battle to even par with rogues / warriors (as alliance, it didn't really happen anyhow) but my big problem was that I just frankly enjoyed healing more. So we recruited a full-time retadin who's been with us ever since. Ret's a dime a dozen these days and I feel bad for the vanguard Ret paladins who really led the way for Ret to be a respected and balanced spec. Same with Prot. It just wasn't my bag of chips.

As for Ulduar being weeks away - that's true, but I'm pretty sure the itemization is pretty final.

And don't get me wrong, I'm sick of Naxx, and greatly looking forward to Ulduar. I'm not even that pissy about loot since I finally get a legendary mace. I'm just annoyed that they lack the foresight to see that making Naxx gear superior to Ulduar gear is somewhat of a design flaw. I understand why, I just think it was a bit stupid 9 months ago when they were making the Naxx gear not to realize that it was too good to keep up with itempoint inflation.

As far as the (presumably) rogue weapon stuff: I think even Blizzard realizes that mainhanding a sword is a bad idea, so they're just making a shitload of offhand swords, and fist weapons for Combat/ enhancement shaman. Why there's no daggers I can't explain. One handed weapons seem a bit silly these days since only three specs (combat / prot pal / prot warrior) use swords, two specs (combat / enhancement) use fists, and one (mutilate) uses daggers. Whereas you have like 5 class / specs that use two handers. It's like the opposite of BC, where we would cringe every time a Cat's Edge or ROS mace dropped. Now we pray that we don't get any more Calamity's Grasps.

As far as linking the loot tables, WOR had them, but they weren't really consolidated. They just post them on their front page whenever a boss is being tested. Let me see if I can find an actual, somewhat complete, list.

[Bagar-]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?itemsets#0-2+1

There's some sets. Some of it seems a bit off / buggy, but I know those set bonuses are correct, and the stats are correct - at least for the paladin stuff.

Honestly, the non-hybrid classes got really nice stuff. I think this is their way of keeping Hybrids a bit lower on the totem pole, as it were. Like putting that much MP5 on elemental shaman stuff, or so much spirit on the boomkin stuff (although boomkins get a lot more out of spirit than shaman out of mp5, it's still not a desirable stat)

It also seems like a vast majority of the sockets are Blue, making non-jewelcrafters have to socket for less-desirable gems to get socket bonuses. Tanks excluded.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, I just expected to see clear upgrades to my Naxx stuff, like going from T4 to T5, and instead I see sidegrades at best for most of my slots.

[Nick]

Thanks for the link.

The mage gear looks great. If they rejigged a few of the gem slot colours I'd be absolutely happy. But as it stands that's some nice gear

[Zaelath]

All I heard was "I'm a meter whore".

If you want to whine about meters, pop into the holy priest channels ><

[Bagar-]

That's pretty unbased. Arguing that my class should have upgrades in the next tier dungeon has nothing to do with meters. Arguing that I should actually be able to upgrade my gear with the new gear without becoming statistically worse has nothing to do with the meters.

I'm not a big fan of meters when it comes to healing; they indicate nothing but class hierarchy. There's no skill involved with topping healing meters. It just means you're either a resto druid in a multi-tank fight (S3) or a COH priest in a raid healing intensive fight (Sapphirion), or you're a paladin when glyph of holy light was 20 yards range (lol).

Try again.

[Bagar-]

Which leads into an interesting, but probably pointless discussion: How do you rate a good healer?

With tanks, it's somewhat subjective, but you can tell when you've got a good tank and when you don't. When judging a tank, I tend to look more at how they preform on TRASH than actual boss fights, since generating TPS is disgustingly easy now. What is more important are reaction times, so I usually just go randomly pull mobs in Military and see if they catch on and grab shit off of me or not.

With a dps, it's pretty cut-and-dry. Are you gemming, gearing, speccing, and glyphing properly? If so and you aren't a retard, you should be competitive on meters with regard to current gear level.

But with a healer, it's a lot more subjective. My guild has a few healers I consider to be top notch, a few that are mediocre, and a few that I quite honestly have to babysit. You know the difference between each, but defining it is a bit tricky. You can only really tell when you've got a good healer versus a bad healer when shit goes wrong. Example: the other day during Gothik, we somehow aggroed a trash pull through the wall on Dead side. We pulled it off, because every healer on that side was top-notch. They knew exactly whom to heal and when, how to manage cooldowns and mana, and no one died (was on an Immortal run). Was very impressive. Then you've got the guy that you assign to heal a drake tank on Sarth3, and he lets the tank die because he poped Divine Plea while Shadron and Vesperon were both down at the same time. Or he dies to a void zone. Or I look at his healing report and all he's doing is flashing. Or he isn't keeping his Beacon up. That's the bad kind.

I've always got a pretty good idea of who I can rely on, and who I can't. It takes awhile to really judge a healer, but eventually, you know.

[Bubba Grizz]

I have only recently started tanking with my Druid. I have a lot of faith in my healers. They keep me alive but more so they keep the others alive as well when I have trouble getting aggro. I do great with one or two mobs but more than that I need to work on my ability to cycle through them and get aggro on each. (example: the fight in Naxx with the Dog and the Zombies) I'm still learning though.

We have a saying in our guild that goes like this, "If the Tank dies it is the Healers fault. If the Healer dies it is the Tanks fault. If the DPS die it is their own damn fault".

[Zaelath]

Which leads into an interesting, but probably pointless discussion: How do you rate a good healer?

With tanks, it's somewhat subjective, but you can tell when you've got a good tank and when you don't. When judging a tank, I tend to look more at how they preform on TRASH than actual boss fights, since generating TPS is disgustingly easy now. What is more important are reaction times, so I usually just go randomly pull mobs in Military and see if they catch on and grab shit off of me or not.

With a dps, it's pretty cut-and-dry. Are you gemming, gearing, speccing, and glyphing properly? If so and you aren't a retard, you should be competitive on meters with regard to current gear level.

But with a healer, it's a lot more subjective. My guild has a few healers I consider to be top notch, a few that are mediocre, and a few that I quite honestly have to babysit. You know the difference between each, but defining it is a bit tricky. You can only really tell when you've got a good healer versus a bad healer when shit goes wrong. Example: the other day during Gothik, we somehow aggroed a trash pull through the wall on Dead side. We pulled it off, because every healer on that side was top-notch. They knew exactly whom to heal and when, how to manage cooldowns and mana, and no one died (was on an Immortal run). Was very impressive. Then you've got the guy that you assign to heal a drake tank on Sarth3, and he lets the tank die because he poped Divine Plea while Shadron and Vesperon were both down at the same time. Or he dies to a void zone. Or I look at his healing report and all he's doing is flashing. Or he isn't keeping his Beacon up. That's the bad kind.

I've always got a pretty good idea of who I can rely on, and who I can't. It takes awhile to really judge a healer, but eventually, you know.

Bad healer: the paladin that my disc priest outhealed on Sarth 3D while we were both just healing the VW tanking the boss ><

As to meter whoring. They're changing the way mana regen works in 3.1 so you might find the "worse" items are better in long fights. /shrug, I've seen some pretty poor itemisation in various MMOs, but generally seems that every set that comes out in WoW, someone is whining that they're poorly itemised, then it works out better based on the other changes they're doing to the game at the same time.

[Fairweather Pure]

I've pretty much stopped playing WoW. Since I do not raid, duel spec has little impact on my character and the new content is simply not made for me. All the feral changes have just turned me off. I don't feel like re-equiping, re-gemming, and re-enchanting my character again.

The lack of expansions has taken it's toll on me. I have a level 52 alt that I keep to play with my dad and brothers once every 6 weeks or so. I finished level 80 months ago and there is zero incentive to log in at that level.

[Bagar-]

Which leads into an interesting, but probably pointless discussion: How do you rate a good healer?

With tanks, it's somewhat subjective, but you can tell when you've got a good tank and when you don't. When judging a tank, I tend to look more at how they preform on TRASH than actual boss fights, since generating TPS is disgustingly easy now. What is more important are reaction times, so I usually just go randomly pull mobs in Military and see if they catch on and grab shit off of me or not.

With a dps, it's pretty cut-and-dry. Are you gemming, gearing, speccing, and glyphing properly? If so and you aren't a retard, you should be competitive on meters with regard to current gear level.

But with a healer, it's a lot more subjective. My guild has a few healers I consider to be top notch, a few that are mediocre, and a few that I quite honestly have to babysit. You know the difference between each, but defining it is a bit tricky. You can only really tell when you've got a good healer versus a bad healer when shit goes wrong. Example: the other day during Gothik, we somehow aggroed a trash pull through the wall on Dead side. We pulled it off, because every healer on that side was top-notch. They knew exactly whom to heal and when, how to manage cooldowns and mana, and no one died (was on an Immortal run). Was very impressive. Then you've got the guy that you assign to heal a drake tank on Sarth3, and he lets the tank die because he poped Divine Plea while Shadron and Vesperon were both down at the same time. Or he dies to a void zone. Or I look at his healing report and all he's doing is flashing. Or he isn't keeping his Beacon up. That's the bad kind.

I've always got a pretty good idea of who I can rely on, and who I can't. It takes awhile to really judge a healer, but eventually, you know.

Bad healer: the paladin that my disc priest outhealed on Sarth 3D while we were both just healing the VW tanking the boss ><

As to meter whoring. They're changing the way mana regen works in 3.1 so you might find the "worse" items are better in long fights. /shrug, I've seen some pretty poor itemisation in various MMOs, but generally seems that every set that comes out in WoW, someone is whining that they're poorly itemised, then it works out better based on the other changes they're doing to the game at the same time.

The thing is, I don't mind stacking mana regen - Mp5 just happens to be the least valueable form of mana regen for the paladin class, as opposed to Crit and INT, which provide other benefits as well. Mp5 isn't a wasted stat, but it isn't far off.

I've never really bitched about paladin itemization, because there was always a linear progression. T4 < T5 <<< T6. No exceptions. Now I'm literally going to be using at least 4 pieces of my Naxx gear. Again, I'll reiterate that the original post was ranty and nitpicky. I'm honestly just glad to not have to do fucking naxxramas anymore. But it's the first time that in my MMO history that outdated gear is better than current content gear in every way possible, which makes no sense from a design perspective.

I'll also state that I think the Ulduar 10 man "Hard Mode" gear being worse than Naxx 25 man "regular" gear is stupid, but I'll still be doing the hardmodes for the sake of doing them, so whatever. But again, bad design philosophy when harder content gives worse rewards than easier content. And yes, the Ulduar 10 man hardmode achievements are significantly more difficult than simply doing 25 man Naxx. Although it's not like anyone doing Ulduar 10man hardmodes gives a shit about the gear anyhow, since you apparently have to have relevant 25 man gear to even do 10 man achievements (Helloo Sarth3 Drake 10man). Another poor design choice .

But in the end, I'm sure Ulduar will be fun, I'll enjoy it, and hell, I'll even probably end up picking up the new slightly worse gear for the hell of it. At least I get to wear a kilt again.

And yeah, if you as a Disc priest outhealed a holy paladin in any capacity, the holy paladin needs to reconsider what he's doing, and maybe stop breathing for awhile. Because he's a fucking failure. Don't get me wrong, Disc priests are great, but most of their "healing" comes from mitigation, not actual numbers that show up on meters. As I'm sure you're aware of .