Gear Check/Advice Thread (All Specific Advice Requests Here)

Does Thok's talisman have a penalty for non str-dps? You know how they change the PPM for classes/specs a trinket (or cloak) is not intended for?

For your trinkets, I don't think Thok's is that great for Prot Pally. For now, probably best to stick with the Brutal Talisman. Either way, keep the Vial on at all times. It's the best. You say your HP feels a bit low. To go with it, I suggest looking at Stamina trinket options first.

Your better options are any version, LFR and above, of Rook's Unlucky Talisman or Curse of Hubris.

If you do any ToT, consider rolling for a chance at Soul Barrier.

If you really need the stamina but none of the above are dropping, get Lao-Chin's Liquid Courage. Don't let the low ilevel fool you, it's a powerful trinket. It has more stamina than the Brutal Talisman has expertise, and the 1 minute mastery cooldown is very useful. I personally started SoO normal with Lao-Chin's and Soul Barrier and had no health issues.

For your gems, I suggest first putting two Solid Serpent's Eyes into a couple blue slots. You're getting 480 stats either way, so you might as well get some more stamina.

Also, I notice you are gemming straight haste in red slots, but reforging for expertise. If you instead gemmed expertise/haste in some of those slots and reforged for haste, you'll pick up more socket bonuses for more stats overall. If you haven't already, I suggest trying Ask Mr Robot to optimize stats.

Klaudandus wrote:Does Thok's talisman have a penalty for non str-dps? You know how they change the PPM for classes/specs a trinket (or cloak) is not intended for?

Not that I know of.

For your trinkets, I don't think Thok's is that great for Prot Pally.

It lowers the haste required for 50% to about 19.5k /shrug

Chromeon: as the posters above have mentioned, you get more stamina relative to other stats on trinkets. If you're looking for the best place to increase your stamina, this is probably it. There's a post in the advanced theorycrafting section somewhere (don't have time to cross-reference it know, but from memory) as a jc, your best places for stamina are:
1) trinkets 2) jc gems 3) normal gems 4) enchants (like cloak)5) reforging - which you can't to stamina, but can get haste here

Reverse this list, and you get the best places to start stacking haste:
1) reforging 2) enchants 3) normal gems 4) jc gems and finally 1) trinkets

I think it would be worthwhile for you to think about a hybrid approach, mixing stamina and haste. There are some good posts about the optimisation of haste on sacred duty, which references that the haste rotation is relatively unforgiving for people who can't hit it spot on. Specifically, things like judgement and crusader strike clashes where you choose judgement will penalise you quite harshly. Padding out your hp pool will help give you a bit of insurance to make sure that these small mistakes don't translate into a death or wipe.

As you build your confidence with the rotation (and I'm talking about the transition from very strong player to expert specifically) you can start to really push for haste, if that feels comfortable for your raid team.

What you need to think about, as well as taking onboard the theorycrafting information, is how strong your raid team are. Do you have good healers that have quick reactions? How efficient are they at rolling cooldowns on tanks? Can you regularly rely on pain suppression or blessing of sacrifice? This should help inform you about whether you need to increase your hp pool, or need to go down the hp route?

When you get to a point where you're happy with the health you have, I think having Thok's in your bag will be very useful. It really does give a sizeable chunk of haste if you're going for the 50% cap. Perhaps also worth thinking about if you want to gear for 50% is running Heroic Horridon for the heroic Spark, if you can persuade a few Guildies to run that with you.

Probably haven't added too much to the posters above. But I will say in summary that having a wide selection of trinkets for different fights this tier is really useful. On encounters where my healers are busy, I'll go double stamina. For farm, I'll swap in the Brutal talisman with the Dps legendary cloak and a Spark (I don't have Thok's yet) or the 535 Xuen. For progress fights where I'm comfortable with me health, I'll go Vial and Spark. To get this sort of utility I make sure I'm getting all my expertise hard cap from my main gear.

Hello,i 've just looted http://www.wowhead.com/item=104421 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=104420 but i think i'll keep my current normal gear http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ravencrest/Babistsikos/simple.What do you guys think?

Babis wrote:What do you guys think?

I'd keep your tier shoulders for the 4pc and better stats, but I'd use the higher ilevel weapon. Theck's matlab thread in the advanced theory section should give you some numbers to evaluate the dps of different weapons. ilevel tends to mean much less for us than most other specs, but I tend to follow my gut and equip the highest ilevel one I can find.

So I need some help, My very very casual raidinggroup has merged with another group that is apperantly more hardcore then us and Im apperantly not keeping up with the curve.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/defias-brotherhood/Jetzy/simple Is my armory, Im working on the cloak, Im on the last quest so hopefully Ill get it this weekend. We apperantly only have AoE healers in the raid aswell, Im used to having a pocket healer paladin, so Im trying to get EF into my rotation better.
Any tips and tricks on how I can improve on some stuff?

You're in your ret gear, so hard to talk about that.

Your talents are fine. Your glyphs... Get rid of Glyph of HotR. It was already near-useless, but now that CS keeps Weakened Blows up, it's entirely pointless.

Glyph of Word of Glory beats Glyph of Alabaster Shield, assuming you keep EF up properly. Glyph of Focused Shield does as well, but of course only on single target fights, while it's a pretty big DPS loss on multi target fights. (Note that Council Fights that heal each other upon death count as single target fights, and the minor glyph of Focused Wrath is a DPS increase on those fights.)

As for keeping EF up, it's not as hard and fast as it is for SS. First, if you would normally WoG to get your health back up, because you're about to die, then of course, you should use EF. You're bad at tanking when you're a corpse on the floor.

After that, it's really a matter of preference. Some people repop EF when it's about to run out, even if they're not at 5 BoG yet. Others pop it the moment they're at 5 BoG and 5 HoPo, while yet others will wait for a moment of high vengeance. Yet others might sit on 5 BoG until they take a drop in health, and then use EF to get back up.

I finaly got my 2nd piece of Tier this weekend, but I had a question about it. Is the 2 piece bonus worth my 2% haste loss? It brings me from 43 to 41% haste.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=104821
http://www.wowhead.com/item=94508
http://www.wowhead.com/item=103989
http://www.wowhead.com/item=105111

Which of these should I keep?

Keep Vial equipped. That's your best trinket, any version.

If you need the Expertise from the Talisman to get to 15%, use it, if not, use Alacrity.

I suspect LFR Thok's isn't as good as the other two options, but I wouldn't vendor it just yet.

Been a while since I've asked for advise instead of doling it out, but since I'm looking at heroic modes soon, I could use it.

Armory

WoW Heroes (has log links)

1. Malkorok is a stingy bastard. I know he has my trinket somewhere.

2. I reeeeallly need to learn how to critically assess myself using logs. I suck at computer stuff (I grew up on a farm) so I'm not sure how to begin interpreting the data WOL presents. So... how do I use WOL?

3. I use AMR to get my reforge, choosing the medium stamina option, which results in using a few haste/stam gems, and heavy preference for stam trinkets. If I switched to high stamina, I would gain about 73k health (6.5% increase) while dropping 11.3% (down to 22.5%) haste. Is that a reasonable trade? I am getting some deaths from spike damage.

hm, i wasn't sure about posting this question, it seems more like one of the "first world problems"-Memes

i got Thoks tailtip yesterday. When equiping thoks and zandalari trinket i will get >50% haste, but that will unequip vial , which i personaly find is a great trinket. I'm happy to have it, especialy on fights like blackfuse where it seems i have a DP on every bossenrage (when an add dies), which is great, or now on progressing klaxxi where it seems that you can't have enough cd's (... it's anyway allways tanks fault when whiping at 8-10 minutes of the fight and dps has taken all battlerezzes and everyone expect you to tank kilruk with xaril debuf when there is no br left for a tank... sure ) This fight is just no fun with 2 paladin tanks.

i have some sort of BIS-List where i can use thoks and Vial but for this i'm missing a few pieces of gear and i'm sure it will take some time to get garosh legs

would you stay with vial or just go with the 50% hastecap, or would you switch it fight dependent as it isn't a problem with hit/exp caps as both don't have hit/exp on it and wouldn't get reforged?


@kal

1. i like the trinket too, my paladin tank buddy doesn't like it much, so i guess it's some kind of preference

2. most of the time i use the death overview, and twitch or xsplit local recordings ... just to have a look on deaths after a try when i didn't expected to die but died. Deathoverview shows you if you had a cooldown up and running while you died and a video shows you what was ready , all you can do then is ask yourself, "would i have survived when i poped a cooldown" and what is more importand at this point "why did i not use a cooldown at this thime" the result is sometimes "ok, i just failed" or "i had a good reason not to use a cooldown" which lead to " why did i not ask for an external cooldown" which can lead to "i was just lazy", "there was no external avilable" or "huh, i didn't expected that spike at the moment of this fight". Another good ingame addon to evaluate your death is deathnote. It shows you very good your buffs and debuffs before the boss send you to outer space.

as theck posted on his blog i tried warcraftlogs and i realy liked it, maybe you find it cool too, give it a try , i thinks it's more intuitive as WoL , my guild didn't switched fully because of the rankings (they are dps-nazis somehow XD)

3. some may find AMR is noobish (i came across a few players whith this opinion), but i think it's a great tool for a generall guidline or for quick calculations when swapping gear, and it's the only one who lets you calc gems and reforges i know. don't use it blindly. not sure but for some reason it allway suggests me to use the mastery enchant on boots where i find haste is better. also the reforges are not allways the way i prefer them. i use a combination of amr and reforge-light which works well for me.

Here are the amr values i'm currently using:

The reason for suggesting the mastery enchant on boots is the bonus movement speed, which is usually invaluable (unless you run PoJ)

Worldie wrote:The reason for suggesting the mastery enchant on boots is the bonus movement speed, which is usually invaluable (unless you run PoJ)

hm, i cannot think of a bossfight/tactic my guild is using where those runspeed would be important to me. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to use different lvl 15 talents this content, and SoL was the one to go for me, it's usefull on
* imerseus (whirl, get fast to the blobs where i'm designated),
* sha (close the stuff on the floor),
* IJ (when running to the bombs),
* Spoils (when i'm not concentrated and add dies faster than i expect it to die and i have to get to a new box fast),
* Siegecrafter (get back from my add to the boss again)

on all other bosses i don't realy mind my movement speed, havn't seen garosh yet but don't think movement speed is a real important thing for tanks there too

Mordred wrote:I finaly got my 2nd piece of Tier this weekend, but I had a question about it. Is the 2 piece bonus worth my 2% haste loss? It brings me from 43 to 41% haste.

2 piece is sort of ok. Depends on how often you spam Divine Protection. It's mostly a step on the way to get to 4 piece, though. I'd equip whichever of the two piece is higher ilvl. If they're the same and not upgraded yet, upgrade the Tier piece, since that's the one you'll be using eventually. If they're tied, it really depends on the stats they have, so hard to say.

Klaudandus wrote:http://www.wowhead.com/item=104821
http://www.wowhead.com/item=94508
http://www.wowhead.com/item=103989
http://www.wowhead.com/item=105111

Which of these should I keep?

Vial of Living Corruption is seriously good, so keep it equipped when you're tanking anything serious.

Alacrity of Xuen is annoying in that it gives you the Haste in such a big chunk instead of flattened out. I'm not sure of your current haste level, but it could place you seriously over the 50% "cap", which wastes most of the stats. In addition, a lot of players do not actually press buttons faster when they get random haste procs, as they're into a "rhytm", and if you don't either, then a random haste proc is not going to help you at all. The Strength does little for survivability.

That would make me advise Thok's Tail Tip as the second option. It does provide additional haste and mastery, which are survivability gains, and it's a decent boost to damage.

When you're not tanking anything serious, you could swap out Vial for something more DPS oriented. Since Brutal Talisman with it's expertise is hard to swap in, you can keep Alacrity as your DPS boost trinket.

Note that this advise assumes you have no issues hardcapping Expertise. If for whatever reason you are reforging or gemming expertise at the cost of Haste (not likely at current gear levels), then the Brutal Talisman would be a good option to keep around.

Kal wrote:3. I use AMR to get my reforge, choosing the medium stamina option, which results in using a few haste/stam gems, and heavy preference for stam trinkets. If I switched to high stamina, I would gain about 73k health (6.5% increase) while dropping 11.3% (down to 22.5%) haste. Is that a reasonable trade? I am getting some deaths from spike damage.

You can always Sim it, but that kind of assumes a perfect works. What Spike Damage is this? Is this Spike Damage that should have been mitigated through SotR? If so, no, more stamina is not likely to help you out more. Instead, more haste would more likely to save your butt, as you are faster back to the 3 HoPo after an emergency use. (You rotationally only spend HoPo when you're at 5, and have a generator coming off cooldown, so you can SotR/WoG, and then get yourself immediately back up to 3. Use of SotR/WoG during other times would be emergency use.) Naturally, that does require the player skill to match that decision, but if you're going heroics, that's a given.

If it's other random stuff, discuss it with your healers. Could it be prevented otherwise? Going for a slightly larger green bar can be the solution for your guild, but it's not a solo decision.

samsara wrote:hm, i wasn't sure about posting this question, it seems more like one of the "first world problems"-Memes

i got Thoks tailtip yesterday. When equiping thoks and zandalari trinket i will get >50% haste, but that will unequip vial , which i personaly find is a great trinket. I'm happy to have it, especialy on fights like blackfuse where it seems i have a DP on every bossenrage (when an add dies), which is great, or now on progressing klaxxi where it seems that you can't have enough cd's (... it's anyway allways tanks fault when whiping at 8-10 minutes of the fight and dps has taken all battlerezzes and everyone expect you to tank kilruk with xaril debuf when there is no br left for a tank... sure ) This fight is just no fun with 2 paladin tanks.

i have some sort of BIS-List where i can use thoks and Vial but for this i'm missing a few pieces of gear and i'm sure it will take some time to get garosh legs

would you stay with vial or just go with the 50% hastecap, or would you switch it fight dependent as it isn't a problem with hit/exp caps as both don't have hit/exp on it and wouldn't get reforged?

Unlike the Hit and Expertise caps, the 50% Haste "cap" is not an actual goal. It is not something we need to achieve, and actually not achieving it is better, as Haste above the 50% cap is a lot less useful than Haste below it, and you're not likely to get to exactly 21250 Haste Rating (after Thok's buff).

I'd run Vial and Thok, though Vial and Zandalari could work as well, depending on where your preference lies. If you're not tanking anything serious, then of course, have fun with Thok and Zandalari.

Hello,

My paladin tank recently dropped Curse of Hubris (LFR). Should I use it to replace my old Soul Barrier?

Even though Mr. Robot gives a higher score to the Hubris, it doesn't feel right for a paladin, since we don't have anything benefiting from crit. I have enough valor points to upgrade one of the two trinkets. Should I equip and upgrade the Hubris anyway? Or keep the Barrier until I drop, for example, the trinket from the Protectors? I mostly play Flex mode with my guild.

Thanks for your input.

It's a 500 stamina upgrade, which is quite a lot. The on use effect of the Soul Barrier is not really impressive at all, it was merely interesting for the base stamina it held.

I'd definitely upgrade to the Curse of Hubris, until you find yourself a better alternative.

@samsara, I'll suggest warcraftlogs to my guild, but I can't run it myself. My computer isn't up to that. Maybe the guy running WOL takes an interest, maybe not.

I have also heard some people call AMR noobish, but I think that's petty elitism. I think that even if a person was blindly following their default settings, they're on the right track towards improvement. My own consistent disagreement with it's recommendations is it's default to Windsong instead of Dancing Steel, which I prefer.

@Thels, the "more haste would more likely to save your butt" is exactly what I'm concerned about loosing, if I switch to stam gems. What I need to do is be able to definitively say when, how, and why I died, which I don't know how to glean from WOL, but I'm going to try Death Note again. That way I can say whether a death was from lack of heals (more stam) or lack of mitigation (more haste).

Skill-wise, I'm fairly good about using cooldowns and banking HoPo for emergencies. Of course, a thorough review of a log could prove otherwise, which is why I wish to step it up that way.

Thanks for all the feedback. Also, got LFR Vial last night to replace Soul Barrier. Not bad.

Kal wrote:I have also heard some people call AMR noobish, but I think that's petty elitism. I think that even if a person was blindly following their default settings, they're on the right track towards improvement. My own consistent disagreement with it's recommendations is it's default to Windsong instead of Dancing Steel, which I prefer.

There are some annoying things, though. For example, you can't say how many tier pieces you're interested in. When I'm messing around with a BiS list on my DK, it sometimes gives me zero pieces, and sometimes gives me four pieces. There's a setting that you can lock pieces, but how do I know which four of the five slots to use a set item in?

It's ok, but there's room for improvement. I usually don't really bother with AMR, though I consider Reforge Lite invaluable.

If what one is doing is using such a tool to do the math, using one's own stat weights, overriding defaults, ect. that's what I mean by not noobish. Before using AMR I was using WoWReforge. It's just a calculator.

To get a 4 piece Tier + 1 off-set BIS out of AMR (granted one accepts their upgrade value judgement based on, again, one's own stat values plugged in) set all 5 tier pieces slotted, then look at each slot upgrade potential. I got off-set legs as the most significant upgrade, detailed in my normal mode BIS post.

But you must realize that that's a rather clunky mechanic, and a "Enforce X tier pieces" option would make it a lot simpler?

What if you wanted the 2 set bonus, but didn't care much for the 4 set bonus? There would be 10 possible combinations.

At least they updated their engine to support forcing Hit/Expertise caps.

You can customize some parts, but other parts of AMR aren't customizable, and work with the ideas of the AMR staff. Ideas I often disagree with.

I was thinking my method of determining the best off-piece to go with 4 set was elegantly simple. Perhaps we're approaching it from two different perspectives? As for a two piece BiS, that method would certainly be clunky. My first thought would be to instead set all warforged off-set, then consider each slot's downgrade value, choosing the two that downgrade the least. It's possible that a different combination, say the 1st and 3rd least downgraded slots would be BiS, but that's getting into advanced gearing that I don't think AMR is intended for.

I don't think AMR is the best place to get a BiS list from anyway. What I'm primarily defending here is it's use as a gem/enchant/reforge calculator with one's own stat values. It's value judgement for individual upgrades relative to current gear also seems reliable to me, but that's something that can easily be verified or not by simming using other tools. For example a 528 Vial of Living Corruption over 530 Soul Barrier is an easy call that really doesn't need simmed, but I'll double check AMR when comparing either 559 Rossi's Rosin-Soaked Shoulderplates in place of 540 Tier shoulders, or 559 Partik's Purified Legplates in place of 553 Tier legs.

So, in my case, AMR is primarily a calculator, somewhat of a catalogue, and a "quick-sim" for when I don't have time to use Simulationcraft.

As for where it's use is on the Noob-Leet spectrum, I think that even if one blindly follows the default settings, the results are better than the average LFR member's gearing. By not calling it noobish to use it that way, I mean that there is no gate and I am not the gatekeeper. The line between casual and hardcore is getting blurred.

As a side note, I was concerned for a moment that I might be derailing the thread a bit with this tangent, but perhaps the context of gearing and advise makes this the place for it anyway? Either way, perhaps we should move this to a new AMR thread? The old one I found in a search is dated.

Hi all,

First, a link to my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/area-52/Schadret/advanced

Ok, so while I'm trying to learn how to use simcraft and interpret the results, I'm having a tough time determining if I should wear a few pieces I have sitting in the bank. We're early into heroic progression (have Immerseus, Norush and Nazgrim down).

I currently have the 4PC tier (all 561), but that includes the dodge legs.

Here's what I have in the bank:

Partik's Purified Legplates (Warforged 567) http://www.wowhead.com/item=105761
Corruption-Rotted Gauntlets (Heroic Warforged 580) http://www.wowhead.com/item=105413
Flex shoulder token (would upgrade to 548) http://www.wowhead.com/item=99594

So the questions I have are these

- Use the new legs and replace current warforged shoulders with Flex tier to maintain 4pc (thus not using 580 gloves)
- Use the new legs and gloves, dropping down to 2pc bonus
- Use the new gloves, and use flex shoulder in place of warforged to maintain 4pc bonus

One other thing, I also have heroic Bracers of Blind Hatred (574) http://www.wowhead.com/item=104460 but since they had +crit I didn't think much about using them, but maybe in combination with the above pieces they fit somewhere?

Thanks for any suggestions, and in the meantime I'm going to try and figure out simcraft to figure it out as well.

-Schad

First off, keep 4 piece. LFR tier pieces appear to compete with off-set warforged pieces, when considering the 4 piece bonus.

Second, it might feel strange using a crit piece, but the extra 13 ilevels from the heroic Blind Hatred bracers is worth it. You'll get 102 armor, 160 strength, 240 stamina, and after reforging, only 550 crit left on the piece, leaving 1,320 useful stats, only 278 less than the Bubble-Burst (1598 stats). 278 effective secondary stats lost versus all that armor, strength, and stamina gained. On it's own, this upgrade is worth it.

That narrows down your options to:

1. Offset Shoulders: Leaving as is on armory.
2. Offset Gloves: Replacing 567 offset Shoulders with 548 Tier, upgrading 561 Tier Gloves with 580 Offset.
3. Offset Legs: Replacing 567 offset Shoulders with 548 Tier, upgrading 561 Tier Legs with 567 Offset.

Option 3 seems weak right off, compared to 2. It's another example of 13 ilevels vs optimum stats, and I'm pretty sure 13 ilevels wins. Between 1 and 2, I think it's going to be really close, so this is where simming will decide. I'm betting Option 1 is best, actually, just a SWAG.