Gear Choices Pt. III – Best in Slot T8 Content
With Ulduar 25 non-hard clear it’s about time for me to put together a Best in Slot list. I’ll add some comments at the end of the post and mention some points you might consider when gearing up. Also I will include at least 2 items per slot, because I’m personally picking up half single target healing half group healing assignments, thus having different sets of gear is something I strongly suggest to every resto shaman.
Examples of gear sets:
- Pure throughput set: This set will focus heavily on SP and haste at the cost of some mana regen. Great to chainheal through heavy burst damage but some breaks or movement is required for replenishment to help with mana regen. This set gets worse the more spells you cast per minute (especially chain heal).
- Mana conservation set: This set will focus on MP5 and INT and really shines in every fight where you cast a lot of spells per minute and/or not a lot of movement/breaks are going to happen. Especially all fights that require a lot of chainheals over a long time (and thus not a lot Improved Water Shield procs can be expected) profit from this set.
- Single Target healing set: Favors pieces with crit, MP5, INT and SP. Heavily dependent on a high crit value and Improved water shield procs. whenever you heal a single target with RT LHW LHW or RT HW HW, you really profit from switching to this set.
- Balanced set: Last but not least, the most important and very balanced set. This is the set I’ll wear for new fights, trash and encounters that won’t profit from an “extreme” gear setup (=my proposed haste/mp5 sets). That set combines all gear that gives my the highest HEP values and a sweet 4pc bonus.
Defining HEP values: The lootrank list I used as a rough guideline doesn’t sport the same HEP values as my best in T7 content list (INT=7, SP=7, MP5=10, Haste=4, Crit=3). A great way to get very personalized HEP values is shaman_hep. This little program will spit out HEP values if you feed him a combat log. Whenever I ran the program it assigned higher values to crit and SP and lower values to haste and mp5 than I would have expected. The new stat weights reflect that (INT=0.8, SP=1, MP5=0.9, Haste=0.6, Crit=0.7).
Items are listed with highest HEP value first. Everything labeled as throughput comes without any mp5 opposed to all mp5 labeled items.
Head
Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Headpiece (throughput/Thorim25, Emblem of Conquest) or Steamworker’s Goggles (mp5/Flame Leviathan25)
Neck
Charm of Meticulous Timing (mp5/XT-00225 Hard) or Pendant of the Shallow Grave (throughput/Thorim10 Hard) or Life-Binder’s Locket (mp5/Malygos25 Key quest)
Shoulders
Pauldrons of the Combatant (best stats/Thorim25 Hard) or Amice of the Stoic Watch (crit/Auriaya25) or Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Shoulderpads (for Tier bonus + haste + mp5/Yogg-Saron25)
Cloak
Drape of the Sullen Goddess (mp5+crit/Freya25 Hard) or Pennant Cloak (throughput/Sartharion 2D 25) or Shroud of Alteration (mp5+haste/Ulduar25 Trash)
Chest
Chestguard of the Fallen God (throughput/Yogg-Saron25) or Breastplate of the Stoneshaper (throughput/XT-00210 Hard) or Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Tunic (mp5/Hodir25, Emblem of Conquest) or Quartz-studded Harness (mp5+haste/XT-00225)
Wrist
Bindings of Winter Gale (throughput/Hodir25 Hard) or Wristguards of the Firetender (mp5/Ignis25)
Hands
Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Handguards (throughput/Mimiron25), statwise Gloves of Whispering Winds (throughput/Freya10 Hard) are very similar but Tier8 gloves are by far the better choice as they help you keep or reach the 4pcT8 bonus
Belt
Blue Belt of Chaos (mp5/crafted) or Belt of the Fallen Wyrm (throughput/Razorscale25) or Windchill Binding (mp5/Emblem of Conquest)
Legs
Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Legguards (mp5/Freya25) or Leggings of the Stoneweaver (mp5+crit/Kologarn25)
Feet
Lightning Grounded Boots (mp5/crafted) or Greaves of the Earthbinder (mp5/Kologarn10) or Boots of the Forgotten Depths (mp5/Vezax25)
Ring
Signet of Manifested Pain (throughput/Kel’Thuzad25) or Fire Orchid Signet (mp5/Freya10 Hard) or Pyrelight Circle (throughput/Ignis25) or Ring of the Faithful Servant (mp5/Auriaya25) or Radiant Seal (mp5/Iron Council25) or Sanity’s Bond (mp5/Yogg-Saron25)
Main Hand
Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings (if you’re already collecting fragments: lucky guy!) or Constellus (mp5/Algalon25, other Ulduar25 Hard modes?) or Soulscribe (throughput/Yogg-Saron25) or Guiding Star (mp5/Razorscale25)
Shield
Wisdom’s Hold (throughput/Thorim25 Hard) or Voice of Reason (throughput/Kel’Thuzad25) or Ice Layered Barrier (mp5/Hodir10 Hard)
Trinket (in no particular order)
Pandora’s Plea (INT+SP proc/Mimiron25) or Illustration of the Dragon Soul (throughput/Sartharion25) or Show of Faith (SP+mp5 proc/Yogg-Saron25 Hard?) Eye of the Broodmother (throughput/Razorscale10) or Scale of Fates (throughput/Thorim25) or Sif’s Remembrance (SP+mp5 proc/Thorim10 Hard) or Soul of the Dead (crit+mana restore proc/Sapphiron25) or Mercurial Alchemist Stone (excellent if you mana pot/Alchemist) or Je’Tze’s Bell (SP+mp5 proc/BoE Naxxramas)
Totem
Steamcaller’s Totem (throughput/Flame Leviathan25) or Totem of Forest Growth (“mp5″/Emblem of Heroism) or Totem of Misery (Healing wave/Faerlina25)
Throughput items: The more items you equip without any mp5 on it the faster you’re going to run OOM. Try to balance you gear so you have maximal throughput but still end most encounters with around 20% mana left. Very important caveat for throughput items: I think every resto shaman should leave those items to caster DPS if they need them. Caster DPS don’t roll on mp5 gear so we should roll on the pure haste/crit gear only if no caster DPS needs it. Especially in Ulduar there are tons of other possibilities where a resto shaman can get mp5-free gear (Tier gear, Shields, Chest, Waist etc.) so Rings, Cloaks, Weapons and Neck pieces should really go to caster DPS first. And if you raid with a elemental shaman you should let him pick up mp5-free gear first as well.
Tier8: In most cases it makes sense to stick to 4pcT7 until you can get 4pcT8. 2pcT8 is no throughput bonus, but it will help on very mobile fight and to get a better flow into RT HW HW tank healing.
Which T8 piece not to wear: If you can kill Thorim25 Hard, Pauldrons of the Combatant are the strongest non-Tier piece. Before that happens, Chestguard of the Fallen God is a fantastic non-Tier piece. If you clear the instance: Don’t wear T8 chest, if you clear hard modes, don’t wear T8 shoulders.
Trinkets: I listed a ton of Trinkets, with a good reason: Trinket slots are excellent to balance out your gear. You got two new non-mp5 pieces? – Switch back in that mp5 trinket. You mana pot nearly every encounter? – Alchemist Stone will do a decent job. The next encounter doesn’t require much mana regen? – Switch back in those pure SP/haste trinkets. When rolling for trinkets, be a nice guy and leave good trinkets to caster DPS and focus on healer trinkets. If you want a ranking of healing trinkets, check out Daidalos’ spreadsheet or check his top4 HEP trinkets on EJ. The trinket I’d absolutely get is Pandora’s Plea, really great for a resto shaman, and if you watch the proc you can dish out super-charged Earth Shields.
Emblem of Conquest: Spend your Emblems of Conquest to complete your Tier set and maybe even start a T8 elemental/enhancement set. Legs and hands you can get for Emblem of Conquest are inferior to the Tier options . The belt and the neckpiece are both decent, but might not be a huge upgrade to what you’re already wearing.
Additional resources:
World of Matticus – Restoration Shaman – Best in Slot 3.1
EJ – TTT Shaman : Restoration – Best in Slot
Did I forget an Item? Did I include some horrible pieces? Do comment, dear reader.
A Coin of Ancestry
Looking For Multitudes
Toravon the Ice Watcher (25 player)
1500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems
Nice work. I’ve added this to my Elemental Resources page.
BobTurkey’s last blog post..How to gem your elemental shaman
Love how you broke down the different sets of resto gear. Excellent post.
thedoctor’s last blog post..Blood Break Up, Progression
I’d say that pretty well covers it. I might consider either the Leggings of the Weary Mystic (badges) or Leggings of the Tortured Earth (25-trash) on there as well, but that’s only because I tend to favor haste > crit for the most part – at least, once crit has reached a certain (arbitrary, but about 22-23% unbuffed for me) level where I feel like it’s hitting regularly enough.
Quartz-Studded Harness (XT-002/25) and Winter Spectacle Gloves (Maly25) still worth noting IMHO, should you be gearing more towards the MP5 / raid healing set.
Gear wise – and I’m mostly sure about this from my own research, but not 100% – I think that your XT-002 neck is a hard mode drop; The Freya Gloves I believe are 10-man hard (which is a good thing, as the arguable BIS ring is as well), but that’s really about it.
Sterling work as usual, Drug.
Manchego’s last blog post..My Little Peanut Selected Speedy for Children’s Week.
Yeah I corrected everything you pointed out, I’ll take a look at the list again this weekend, I did the biggest part of the list when I had a little break at work at a computer that loads one wowhead site per 5 minutes.
I won’t add the Winter Spectral Gloves. They are haste heavy, and as soon as you equip haste you’ll be casting a lot of chainheals. If you cast chainheals, 4pcT8 is absolutely crucial. And I just don’t see a reason to not wear the T8 gloves but the Winter Spectral Gloves instead. For the same reason I won’t add the two Leggings you mentioned. They are both haste heavy and for a haste heavy chainheal set 4pcT8 < < random haste-heavy pieces. The alternative I listed to the T8 Legs are crit heavy. I listed them because it is really ok to break up the 4pcT8 bonus for single target healing.
On the other hand I think not wearing the T8 chest is a very good choice, so I added the chest you mentioned. The only reason to wear the T8 chest is if you're guild has trouble with Yogg-saron over a long time and you want to get the 4pcT8 as soon as possible. Or if you really feel you need those 30mp5 from T8 chest.
@haste vs crit: If you ever run a combat log of an Ulduar run, please try out shaman_hep. I'd be extremly curious what HEP values would result for your healing style. For me it's sometimes crit > haste, sometimes crit = haste and sometimes haste < crit, and I think that isn’t such a bad estimate, as different healing assignements just call for different gear. But crit might have been a stat I understimated in the past (extremly good synergy as throughput and mana regen stat for riptide ans LHW/HW spot healing, which I do a lot).
For those of you who use the PAWN addon, I think these are the strings you can import to see the # on you tooltip. (I added some tiny numbers to reflect that stamina and spirit aren’t worthless, just worth worth very, very much less. Purist may wish to delete them. ) I also upped the red socket from 16 to 19 to reflect the Scarlet ruby. And I normalized the T7 to also be in terms of 1 SP being 1; since it is only the relative pawn value that matters.
( Pawn: v1: “Resto SU T7″: Intellect=1, Mana=0.03, YellowSocket=16, Spirit=0.01, Health=0.001, Hp5=0.01, SpellPower=1, Mp5=1.429, CritRating=0.428, HasteRating=0.572, MetaSocket=16, Armor=0.1, RedSocket=19, BlueSocket=16, Stamina=0.016 )
( Pawn: v1: “Resto SU T8″: Intellect=0.8, RedSocket=19, Stamina=0.016, CritRating=0.7, Mana=0.03, BlueSocket=16, MetaSocket=16, Armor=0.1, HasteRating=0.6, Health=0.001, Hp5=0.01, YellowSocket=16, SpellPower=1, Spirit=0.01, Mp5=0.9 )
In the T7 world/formula, 90 SP was about as valuable as 63 MP5, in T8 the formula shows it as equivalent to 100 MP5.
Could you explain what caused you to change the ratings from t7 to t8, so I can decide which to use in my very long transition? I.e. is it set bonuses? the fight/healing mix of Ulduar? For many reasons, including a better geared Holy Pally, I am far from BiS pre-Ulduar (2P T7, although I did successfully solo the AH boss to get Stonewearer to go with my Pigmented). I expect to get into some Ulduar pugs since I am a far better healer than anyone else on my realm … who isn’t logged in.
As I look for new gear, when should I start looking for upgrades based upon the newer formula? E.g., the night before 3.1, the T7 HEP was valid; the next day what was the case: the T7 still models my actual HEP (in Nax as well as Ulduar?) but make gear choices based upon the future (T8)? Should everyone be using the T8 ratios, or only people with t8 set bonuses? or only for Ulduar? or?
Yes, I have a math degree from long ago and am excessively interested in some minor numerical differences. Still, might as well use the best numbers out there.
My T7 numbers aren’t based on any complicated math, but just reading through EJ forums, taking what sounds most reasonable and adjust it with my own healing experience. The numbers I took for T7 content were just adapted values from T6 content, with INT value buffed to match actual patch situation.
T8 values on the other hand are a lot based on shaman_hep, a very nice program that will deliver PERSONAL HEP, if you give him a combat log to read.
@mp5: The value of mp5 decreases the more you gear up. This reflects the insane amount of INT on all high-end raiding gear, which will pretty much cover a good chunk of your mana regen. Also, you shouldn’t look at mp5/SP as a ratio. You need exactly as much INT/mp5 so you have a little bit of mana at the end of most fights. If you think you reached that number, stack SP/haste/crit all the way.
For personal HEP I absolutely advise everyone to use shaman_hep. My HEP for T8 are just rounded HEP values from many personal combat logs and the shaman_hep thread over at EJ. They reflect that shamans do a good job at single target healing and the many tank healing assignments I picked up. If your guild uses you as chainheal machine I’d change the values to 0.7 for crit and o.8 for haste.
Why Pennant cloak over Drape of the Spellweaver? http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46341