Gear Choices Pt. IV – BiS T9 (lazy edition)

Normally, I would write BiS lists for every Tier of content. In Tier9 Content, I’m months behind. I only very recently got my first two T9 Pieces and started looking into the matter. Starting point for some research should always be EJ, and that’s what I did. I was pleasantly surprised, when I found The BiS list very neat organized into 258 BiS and 245 BiS. This makes it very easy to apply the list to everyone who succeeds at 25 man hard modes as well to anyone in normal 25 man or 10 man content. Even HEP values are included, so you can do your own napkin math and calculate which pieces are huge upgrades and which aren’t.

Actually, the list is really THAT good, covers gemming and enchanting as well, so I don’t really see the point of doing an own BiS list or even worse, just copy&paste everything. So you’re gearing up in T9 Content, here is everything you’ll need:

TTT Shaman: Restoration BiS 245 and below

TTT Shaman: Restoration BiS 258+

There are a few things you’re going to learn from that list:

1. 4pcT9 is really bad. I actually completely missed that. Mainly because I was wearing 4pcT8 until two days ago. I always assumed I’d go 4pcT9 some day, instead of running shaman_hep with the combat log of a fellow resto shaman already sporting 4pcT9. Then I would have seen, that the 4 piece T9 bonus offers meager 10-13 HEP while 2 piece 2 Bonus is actually pretty strong 100-125 HEP. That’s the values the EJ threat suggests. I ran logs of fellow resto shaman wearing 4pcT9, I got slightly higher values for the 4 piece bonus, up to around 40-50ish HEP. But wearing the elemental helmet instead of the resto helmet alone will more than make up for not getting the 4 pc bonus. 5% crit just isn’t that great for CH. It doesn’t help mana regeneration that much (chances are already very high to crit with your CH) and more importantly, wearing 4pcT9 will make you miss out on A LOT of haste. And because CH scales extremely well with haste, this isn’t a good idea.
2. ELEMENTAL GEAR. If the 4 piece bonus of T9 is weak, this gives us space to wear a lot of non Tier pieces. If you’re not that much into raiding, 2pcT8 is a good idea. If you’re really raiding, get ELEMENTAL GEAR (especially head piece and shoulders). I actually got the elemental shoulders for healing a long time ago, because their extremely well itemized and I needed new shoulders to complete my 4pcT8 set.
3. Which Tier pieces do I wear? Resto: Chestpiece and Handguards. Elemental: Helmet and Shoulders (Helmet is a must, there are some decent alternatives for the shoulders though). Everything else: Go haste!
4. Yes, haste is THAT good. What does that mean? If you’re raiding and mana isn’t an issue, stick to good haste pieces. Get haste heavy pieces even if they’re leather or cloth, if no one else needs them. The EJ Thread suggests 1.5 as HEP value for haste, my own logs even suggest 1.6-1.7. This means gemming for haste. Haste buff food. And so forth.

Enjoy gearing up!