Feb 14, 2008

Paladin Stuff

The item level difference between T5 and T6 is 13. The item level difference between T6 and the new Sunwell loot is 8 for the Tier stuff but at least 13 for the other. But it's not a new tier? Um, ok... And it looks like a chunk of it is BoP craftable. Awesome. Nothing says "excellent choice" like giving an otherwise worthless profession for paladins the best healing plate items in the game. Quality thinking there, sticking the only good stuff in the Sunwell. If you actually want a class to use a profession, give them real upgrades starting with 5-man content. Waiting until BT/SW is moronic at best.

Anyways, enough of the grumbling. Right now my goal is to get either the T6 shoulders or breastplate to get my 4-piece set bonus. From there, I'd like to pick up at least 109 haste in other pieces so I can take advantage of Bloodlust for 1 sec Flashes. Beyond that, I want to pick up a Libram of Mending, which is only 20 heroic badges. I think my current gear allows for more Lights than I have been using. For a number of the fights, I'll have a significant chunk of mana left over.

The haste pieces that would probably be best for me are [Blessed Band of Karabor]x2 and a couple of the new T6 pieces. Everything else seems less than ideally balanced. But again, this is all taking a backseat to getting at least the shoulders before the Sunwell comes out.

3 comments:

Christopher said...

I read your WI article, Val, and found it very informative. Not only do you thoroughly dispel the myths that a percent is a percent is a percent (in Blizzard-land, this has NEVER been the case), you break down the math to back it up. Bravo, bravo!

That being the case, you seem pretty torn about the new haste emphasis in 2.4. With the T6 gear getting eight pieces, but set bonuses still locked at 2 and 4, does that change your gearing path forward at all? If you got the T6 shoulders, for example, for the set bonus, and then found another piece of "New T6," would you add it to your armor or swap it out for something else, but keep the set bonus?

I'm curious to know your thoughts: does the new haste gear affect anyone who isn't raiding the 25-man content? Take groups that are primarily Karazhan and Zul'Aman, for example. First, is the new gear unattainable enough to be completely irrelevant to these people, and second, is it better to stick with +Heal/MP5/Holy Crit over hasted spells?

Can you explain the Libram of Mending to me? I still don't understand how 22 MP5 for 10 seconds (for a grand total of 44 mana!) has any benefit to anyone.

Valyre said...

I'm torn because all of the PTR items are just trickling in. I'm not sure if we have enough of the big picture to make any predictions yet. For example, like 5 healadin items have been added to WoWhead since Tuesday. Yeah, now multiple that by 4 healing classes. ;)

I want the shoulders because most S3'rs can't get them. They could have 0 stats on them and I'd still want them for that reason alone. lol But I'll sub the chest if I have to to get the +5% healing to Flash set bonus.

All of the new T6 has haste on it, and they seem better balanced stats-wise than the items that are in the game atm. They're also of a higher item level, so the non-haste stuff is moar better, too.

I'm a set collector by nature, so I'll probably try for all the pieces, just to say I have them. Right now there isn't any indicators as to who drops what uber, non-tier healadin items, so it's hard to say when they'll be available to me. I'll gear up with the best available stuff I can get my hands on at the time.

You can build a haste set out of ZA and heroic badge gear. There's a couple of downsides, though. First, most of the ZA stuff is off the last couple of bosses. Also at that level, the majority of haste healing gear is mail.

You also don't need haste doing 10-mans, and I'd be seriously sceered if my healing partner was all dolled up in it. You're giving up your mana regen so you can cast faster. But it takes a big chunk of haste to do that.

Right now I wouldn't recommend anyone with less than mostly T5 to try haste, just because it's not actually necessary below that level and you won't have enough mp5/crit extra before then to be able to switch over.

And even where we're at, I seriously question the viability of piecing together a bunch of stuff that's mostly lower level. Not with the uber gear (in its own right) that's coming out with Sunwell.

The Libram would play 2 roles. First, if I want to play with downranking Lights on a couple of bosses (Naj'entus/RoS/Mother/Council come to mind) the trick is to make it more mana efficient than Flash. 44 mana more than does that, and should let me get by with casting rank 5's instead of rank 4's like previously.

If I want to goof off with haste, it'll be nice to get some of that mana back. Also, in 2.4 the duration is increased to 30 sec. Just keeping Light's Grace going will give me a constant 22 mp5 stream. I'm not sure I've even giving up 22mp5 for haste, though, so it might be overkill.

I plan on sitting down this week and doing a full equipment comparison. :D

Christopher said...

So... is there anything for us lesser raiders to look forward to? Or are we pretty much left out in the cold on this one?