Mearis

While we had a thread where we discussed the horrible itemization that raid loot got, I want to bring up an opposite problem that instead casters have to face.

For reference, here is the priest T5 armor:

http://www.thottbot.com/i30163
http://www.thottbot.com/i30159

Here are the similar pieces of Frozen Shadoweave:
http://www.thottbot.com/i21869
http://www.thottbot.com/i21871

The Frozen Shadoweave is much much better than T5, what is depressing is seeing how much of the item budget is wasted on crit on what is meant to be priest damage gear. Shadoweave is absolutely perfectly tailored to a priests need.

Next, lets compare the BoE tailored stuff versus T5.
http://www.thottbot.com/i24266
vs
http://www.thottbot.com/i30161

They are pretty even, though IMO spellstrike is still better. It has hit, it has more +damage, and one extra gem slot.

again
http://www.thottbot.com/i24262
vs
http://www.thottbot.com/i30162

Spellstrike are clearly much better. If you favour more stamina, you can take the battlecast set instead, and it will still destroy t5.

The situation is slightly better for healing gear, but the BoE crafted tailoring set and the BoP mooncloth set are both much better than any of the tiered set, though the gap isn't nearly as severe.

What is the result of having such high quality items available too early? First, classes that have t5-like gear available now end up inevitably destroying the damage meters, due to gear disparity, but have very very little ability to 'grow' and get stronger.

This has horrible repercussions for damage, as the classes that dominate damage meters now might get their damage reigned in only because the itemization was causing a huge imbalance.

I pretty much had to give up a tradeskill to take up tailoring, so I don't speak out of jealousy, given that I am nearly finished with crafting my last piece, but how could people think that this set was a good idea? I understand they wanted to encourage crafting on mains, but pretty much all they accomplished is that right now every caster will end up being forced into tailoring.

 

• Lurchington

Certainly some similar ideas presented in Thoughts on Tailoring for those of you who were curious.

I have a primal-mooncloth Priest who made Truefaith Vestments, and will be making the primal mooncloth set. I guess I don't see the downside. The blacksmithing weapons are superior to the their equivalents, but not every melee class is jumping on them, and several GS casters are keeping their old professions and are doing fine.

 

LucidityAxel

The downside on the primal mooncloth BoP set is simple: lack of stamina. Glass-cannon healing is preferable on some encounters, but is a problem with encounters like Aran, Illhoof, and Gruul.

 

Gumibear

Right now my only motivation to get tiered gear is to wear it in town so I don't look like a clown outside raids.

I'd really like to see some upgrades to the tailoring gear. Perhaps BoP patterns could be obtained in SSC and TK that upgrade the current pieces. Then the current pieces could be toned down a bit, and I'd still have a nice carrot to chase while keeping a justification for my professions. Or maybe they could do the same thing, but instead of nerfing tailoring down to tiered gear, buff tiered gear up to tailoring gear. I'd like to smack the guy who decided to put spell penetration on some of the tier 5 pieces.

 

talzar

It seems to me that a lot of this could've been solved by making the BoP item required (Primal Nether in this case, but they could've invented something different) drop from bosses where the gear was comparible.

They sort of did it with the BoP blacksmithing weapons. Getting 12 primal nethers to make the iLvl 115 weapon is no small task and you get a weapon that's moderately better than what an entry-level (supposedly) raid boss drops (Axe of the Gronn Lords).

Basically what Blizzard has done is let crafters get a leg-up on the rest of us, being able to make items slightly better than what's attainable right now. This wouldn't have been a big deal if Gruul wasn't such a roadblock for a huge majority of raiding guilds, because we would be into SSC getting items that are compartively the same as the crafted stuff. But since most of us are stuck farming Karazhan and Maulgar every week, taking up Tailoring just for a few pieces of armor seems like it's "required." when really it should've just been "a nice perk."

 

Mearis

But those sets have a tonne of sockets, so if you are desperate for stamina, you can always socket those to give yourself massive HPs. I also tend to think that you are much better off focusing as much healing as possible into a few items, then stack stamina on remaining items to make up the deficit.

Casters instead can have the best of both worlds, using battlecast for when the extra HP is critical, and spellstrike every other time.

 

talzar

In regards to the crafted weapons argument. I know a lot of the people in my guild that want good weapons are simply getting arena ones. In a few weeks of casual PvP you can get an offhand and in a month you can pretty easily get a main hand.

Those that hate PvP or can't get on a good team have taken up blacksmithing.

 

Mearis

Yes! I don't understand why priest T5 has a hard-on for crit, and instead of featuring +shadow damage, it has +damage/healing, which is completely wasted for any priest itemization.

I doubt that any priest who is taking the T5 token is playing with a gimmicky smite DPS build, which is what that set is built towards.

 

• Lurchington

I think that was the intention, and it's not a bad one. If not for BoP gear, there's not a lot of use for more than one tailor per guild is there?

Perhaps, but I'm still not convinced that simply by having them your damage output skyrockets. You can get by with normal drops and not be lapped by a player of the same skill, or beaten by a more inattentive and lazy player.

 

• Snowy

For the T5, I'm not sure what the final proc rates on the bonuses are. The 2 pc is -150 mana off the cost of your next spell, and wowhead lists it as a 6% proc rate. The 4 pc is a chance every time your SWP deals damage to increase your dmg by 100 for 15 sec, and it lists it at (a very unrealistic) 40% proc rate.

But the way to go is to boost T4/T5 of course, but in addition make the set bonuses something you want to have for raiding.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

• Lurchington

I'm assuming they're splitting the difference between the two DPS specs: smite and shadow. Note that I'm not saying smite is something that should be really supported on a generic priest DPS set, but still.

 

Mearis

I understand, but I doubt that a raiding smite DPS priests exists. I mean, smite builds are tipically taken as a healing build that still allows you to have a decent damage output to grind or do some solo PvP. For serious PvE they are completely worthless, I imagine warlocks don't get an item set that caters to the serious hardcore raiding firestone-warlocks.

 

Natrozim

My only problem with the current tailoring sets, which I love because I want to specialize in glass cannon in Pve, is that it destroys my incentive for some loot in dungeons. I have never been to serpent shrine cavern yet but so far theirs NOTHING I want as a warlock, shadoweave/spellstrike/girdle of ruination are all much better then any raid loot.

What I would personally like is that, like blacksmiths, we could upgrade this gear in heroic instances (primal nethers) or serpent shrine cavern (Nether vortex has been reported off trash so far) to somehow give me a sense of progression still in raiding instances. Though, almost everyone so far barely has upgrades past kharazan/item level 115 blues I suppose right now with the current well known itemization issues.

boP patterns off bosses in SSK/TK that are somewhat upgrades to the current glass cannon tailoring sets would be nice like you suggested, and ya, please remove the dumn spell penetration on T5 pieces . I doubt I'll ever need more then the 20 spell penetration on my cloak enchant

 

• Ren

The tier 2 BS weapons-Deep Thunder/Mooncleaver specifically-are better than any arena 2H. Weapons also cost a lot of arena points that could be spent on other items. I agree that it may not be worth the cost for a rogue to pick up BS, but the investment is well worth it for any arena warrior.

 

• Lurchington

Well. I'd state it more as the hunter gear supporting Beast Mastery or Poisons

Joking.

Be that as it may, do other classes get seperate gear for seperate DPS specs? Aside from a balance Druid versus feral druid and elemental versus enhancement shaman. I mean, there's no real support for fury spec versus MS spec warriors is there? There's just a warrior DPS set and I don't hear much about how important MS dps is in raids.

 

Copernicus

The real itemization woe is the inability to respec Tailoring. There is also the annoyance of classes getting locked into a spec because of their tailoring choice. I know of Mages stuck in Frost and Shadow Priests piling up Mooncloth.

Other classes are also picking up various BoE crafting pieces to use instead of BoP drops. It makes sense- BoE stuff is the same itemlevel as Kara/Heroic/Reputation drops, so if you can get an item that's specialized for your character's needs, it's easier to get them that way usually.

 

javelin

Poor comparison between Warrior DPS and Priest DPS. While I can see where you're coming from, it's not really an appripriate comparison. I'll be honest, when I see a Warrior DPSing, unless they put up MS, I don't know if they're Arms of Fury, are the styles of HOW they DPS as vastly different from each other as a Holy smiter is fro ma Shadow Priest?

Holy is centered around large numbers made possible thorugh critical strikes, and the spell class generally has almost no resistances. Shadow damage's big 2 forms of DPS (SW:P and Mind Flay) are incapable of crits. Holy damage spells still get benefit from SR. With Shadow, crits may not generally be desirable all of the time because of aggro management issues. Mind you, with a good tank it shouldn't be a problem, but the arguement still stands.

A Holy smiter can heal without doing anything special with his DPS in the Tier 5 gear; he doesn't have to drop form or anything. For a raiding Shadow Priest, you're probably never expected to toss a heal anyway; if you're relegated to healing, it's probably over anyway, so all of that bonus healing on the DPS set is essentially wasted. Most of your Shadow Priests stay in the 5SR constantly, so the Spirit is essentially wasted on them when mana/5 would be far more valuable; the same doesn't generally hold true for Holy smiters.

It's just that the difference in styles and emphasis between Holy and Shadow DPS are so incredibly vast that it looks like ignorance on Blizzard's part to try and build a single set and say that it covers all the bases. What that set looks like to me is Blizzard's way of rewarding Holy Priests with a set of gear that they can use to grind with, not a set of gear you would willingly bring to a raid if your intent was maximizing the amount of DPS you do and thereby maximizing your benefit given to the raid.

I'd say that Priests DPS sets are a bit more easily associated with the Druid set differences; it's that vast.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should chellenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.--Mark Twain

 

Antoine

While it might not be as pronounced, warlocks have similar issues in the difference between Affliction and Destruction. As funny as it may seem, Destruction would be the counterpart for Holy - both of them like crits. Shadow and Affliction, on the other hand, have a much lower priority on crit%, making it feel like a "wasted" stat sometimes. (Yes, I know crit is good to have for ISB procs, but it's still not as important)

edit with the comparisons used below:
crit worth more for one spec (smite,fury, destro)
one spec doesn't make as good a use of certain itemization points (smite would never need spell penetration, MS and glancing weren't as big a deal, affliction needs less hit and much less crit)
Big numbers vs smaller but steadier (MS/Smite/Destro,shadow/fury/affliction)
One resource starved, one not as much (Smite, Destro and MS need more fuel (mp5, rage, heals) to go, shadow and affliction regen themselves and fury generates fuel quicker too)
One spec is the leader at the moment (fury/shadow/) - this one is debatable, there have been conflicting results even on extended fights.

 

• Sirloin

I am really hoping all the crafting professions get examined and retuned. You have tailoring, which offers the best possible item in like five different slots, and then you have leatherworking, which is horrible. By the time I got to 375LW (all three pieces of the LW set require 375) the only item that was an upgrade anymore was bracers, and it was a marginal one at that.

Above 350, every "rare" pattern I knew had to be crafted for free or even subsidized in the interest of skilling up.

Crafting professions need the following:
1) More useful patterns from 300-374. I used one LW crafted item from 61-69.
2) Powerful L70 recipes earned through elaborate or difficult quests.
3) More crafting materials that drop in Heroics. Not just nethers, like have all skinnable heroic mobs skin to a different type of leather.
4) Many more upgradeble items. Cool idea with Smithing. Everyone else needs this too.
5) More moneymakers that requirie nethers. Not just epic-patterns, give us more things like the armor patches that people actually need, and need a lot of.

My Steam Profile (Aether) Cherish the difference between 58° and 59°.

 

• Lurchington

It's not as different as you might think really.

Forgive my gloss over, as I was a priest back in molten core, but Fury warriors typically dual wield and attempt to amass a comparitively high hit rate (around 10%) and need enough crit to keep flurry uptime as high as possible. These builds are pretty decent about generating rage, and in their heyday, that's why they were capable as such high raid DPS. They do generally plink away, and the 31 point talent, deals damage based petty much entirely on AP. A large amount of damage comes from attacks that can glancing blow, so in the old days, +skill was very important.

An MS build uses a 2hander and is noted to be incredibly bursty, and needs next to no additional +hit and the 31 point talent is nowadays based on Weapon damage. Big crits are important with impale for extra crit damage, but aren't as important to overall DPS as it would be in maintaining flurry. AP is nice for bigger autoattacks and some bonus damage, but particularly for the additional rage generation. There are weapon specs within Arms that differentiate the builds more. But generally the sword spec for extra hits and the +crit specs are the important ones. Special attacks won't glance, so +skill wasn't as important.

Itemization for fury would be much heavier on +hit and crit, and if there was itemization support for "+gained rage" that'd be something I could see be on an MS set.

It roughly translates to your:

crit worth more for one spec (smite,fury)
one spec doesn't make as good a use of certain itemization points (smite would never need spell penetration, MS and glancing weren't as big a deal)
Big numbers vs smaller but steadier (MS/Smite,shadow/fury)
One resource starved, one not as much (Smite and MS need more fuel (mp5, rage) to go, shadow regens itself and fury generates fuel quicker too)
One spec is the leader at the moment (fury/shadow)

not exact, but certainly not so different as two completely different sets of stats (come on, spell hit versus melee hit?)

 

talzar

The only reason those two weapons can be seen as better is because they are 0.1 speed faster, so their top-end is a tad higher. Of course the two swords are nearly identical because they are the same speeds (3.6). As far as warriors are concerned, I'm just talking about PvE warriors that want decent iLvl 115 weapons for raiding and the arena 1hers are great. As far as saving your points for other gear, most of the arena gear wouldn't be preferred by pure PvErs other than some very specific fights where high HP is important because most of it allocates too many stat points towards Stamina and Resilience instead of str / agi / hit.

 

spronk

I think Blizzard underestimated how long it would take tailors to build out their own sets. Its quite possible they may simply nerf the tailored items slightly so people view T4/T5 as upgrades. Realistically I wouldn't expect any significant changes for 4-5 months, as first they need to tweak the raid content, then the item drops, then fix the really broken professions, and then finally re-visit tailoring. I doubt we'll see anything in 2.1.0 except perhaps the ability to respecialize.

For now, once you complete your tailoring set, make the spellstrike set, maybe battlecast set for high sta encounters, you only need to raid once in a while to see the content and have fun, not really for items. Basically just go into casual mode until Black Temple is out and we see what that entails.

 

Antoine

You have to make like a chinese gold farmer if you've tailored your full specialization set + spellstrike + battlecast + girdle at this point.

 

◊ Anias

The crafted progression is in it's infancy, but I view it to be generally a healthy thing for the game. Remember it didn't exist in any meaningful state in wow 1.0, so it's not surprising to me that it's a bit out of whack with the rest of the game atm.

That said, it's good to have gear that is available via a realisticly "guaranteed" path that is competitive with raiding gear, and the crafting team seem to do a better job designing items than the tiered content. That's the trouble of course. At the moment tier 4 and 5 are generally horribly designed. If they revamp the t4/t5 (ideally done by someone who plays that class in that role in pve) then it will be fine.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with crafted gear outpacing x percentage of pve/pvp gear - it gives a third axis upon which you can extend character progression, and also provides a nice dampening factor to "random loot woes". Both of those are good for the game, as they provide variety, and prevent people from feeling "locked out" by the luck of the drops.

Yes your guild may never see gorehowl, but your 2h interested classes can at least pvp or craft an alternative (you can replace gorehowl with whatever you like). Note that you shouldn't be able to replace everything (and similiarly, crafting should have some real gems that are simply better than the raid/pvp stuff) just so there's something uniquely amazing in each axis.

Still, given that you're giving up herbalism/mining (and a boatload of cash thereby) to take something like tailoring (which is ludicrously expensive to level), it's reasonable that you get something meaningful (and keep getting new somethings that are meaningful as content goes on - remember kids, herbalism keeps giving!)

 

Altima

I spent dkp on Voidheart Crown for looks. True story.

Deep underneath layers upon layers of cold calculations and theorycraft number crunches lies a child who just wants to look cool.

One has to wonder whether the tailored pieces are ugly by design.