The biggest problem I see with T4 right now is the lack of sockets. If we can't socket it, it's always a downgrade. Blizzard brought this problem on themselves with sockets. Every epic item should have sockets because an epic item without sockets is always worse than a blue 115 item with three level3 gems in it.
I don't want my T4 pants, not a single one of them because CoT revered pants are better for tanking, Innocent are better for healing and Venerated are better for farming. What do these 3 legs have in common over T4?
You guessed it, they all have 3 sockets

No sockets is kinda like passing on the ability to enchant an item for 3 more of a single stat.

I think a few of us realize blizzards track record, and that regular items in PvE will be comparable to the blacksmithing items. I could give up my Alch/Herb, for a superior weapon, or I just wait a little while, progress and pick up a similiar weapon down the road.

But I hope Blizzard comes to their senses and makes T4/T5 armor much better than anything you can craft, as the monsters that you need to kill to obtain these armor pieces are no easy feat. Where as anyone can craft Shadowweave/Spellstrike over time.

Not really, I had 3 level 60s and I switched all to tailoring before TBC, and once my main hit 70 it was fairly easy to power all the 60s to 350 tailoring. You only need level 60 and 350 tailoring for for specialization. Now I crank out 6 spellcloth every 4 days. On my server as well many people run heroics so a craft costs just 80-100g (nether fee basically).

The harder item to obtain is Primal Might since you have to be level 68 to specialize in alchemy, and even then you are not guaranteed 2 mights every transmute, plus the mats take much longer to farm than spellcloth/shadowcloth. Frankly its just simpler farming gold and buying mights off the AH/trade than transmuting it.

Ah, there's the difference. Antoine was my only character above 30 when TBC came out, and I only had 40g to my name.

Im curious why you compare to T5 which we know(?) will be revamped somewhat 'significantly', whereas T4 is perhaps abit less likely to get anything major.

Because if the gear is better than T5, it is obviously better than T4.

T4 for casters is far worst not just to epic crafted staff, but also to random non-socketed level 115 blues, because of how horrendously poorly the stats are allocated.

I want exactly zero pieces of t4, they are all downgrades to my existing gear. The only pieces of raid loot that I use are the Maulgar belt and the prince dagger.

As far as I've understood they're making socketed items better only, which sounds very misguided considering that socketed items are the only epics that are worth using. Looking at the non-socket T4 gloves/pants they are a complete joke.

They would have to make some pretty damn amazing changes, look at T4:

Gloves:
T4
http://www.thottbot.com/i29057

NON-socketed level 115 blue:
http://www.thottbot.com/i27889

Legs:
T4:
http://www.thottbot.com/i29059 - Magtheridon drop:

NON-socketed Level 115 blue:
http://www.thottbot.com/i27948

Head:
T4:
http://www.thottbot.com/i29058

vs:
http://www.thottbot.com/i31104

T4 is absolutely craptastic, and is almost strictly worst than blues for priests. The stats are completely wasted on crit, and the slots have +damage instead of +shadow damage.

There is zero reason for a priest to ever take T4 - the sad part is that T5 is nearly as bad, however, T5 *might* get revamped significantly.

I would disagree with regards to tailoring. The tailored specialisation sets are simply too good, full stop. They require no primal nethers or any other instance dropped item, and are entirely soloable or purchaseable from the auction house. They should not be comparable to tier 4 gear, never mind Tier 5, and at the moment, I find it hard to believe how they won't edge out tier 6. (It's also worth noting that the incredibly bad set bonuses for the tiered gear, compared with the amazing spell fire bonus, makes it very hard to break the set).
No other professions has the option of learning 3 store bought recipes to get 3 soloable pieces of gear that are currently massively ahead of even the cutting edge raiding guilds.

The basic recipes should be below tier 4 in quality, but above random blues. You should then be able to upgrade them using Primal Nethers to make them equal to tier 4 in quality or slightly ahead, like the other professions, and then again to tier 5 in the 25 player zones. That's how it's supposed to work - you aren't suppossed to *start* a raid zone with solo'ed gear better than anything that drops there.

It fundamentally breaks an aspect of the game that someone can happily solo items that are better than any raid dropped gear - even Karazhan gear should be better than the tailoring specilisation sets, based on the other professions.

I like the idea of tiered, upgradable gear based on progression. The "drops for the people of that profession" slot in the loot tables could be utilized here to regulate the actual amount of strong items made via Tailor + Raid drops if need be.

You understand that if they remove crit, spirit, and replace +damage/healing with +shadow damage on T4 you will end up with a godly set for priests.

Calculating on the whole set:

- 94 spirit = 94 stat points
- 42 spell crit = 42 stat points
- 167 healing = 75 stat points
- 167 spell damage = 142 stat points

This totals to 94 + 42 + 75 + 142 = 353 stat points. Making this into shadow damage will translate to 504 shadow damage. And this is only on 5 pieces and without sockets. If some points are spent on stamina and intellect or even mp5 this might make +shadow damage lower, but a simple translation of +spirit, +spell crit and all damage/healing to +shadow damage is not going to happen. I would love it too... but it won't :-)

I don't expect T4 to be perfect, but it should be better than any instance blue drop at the very least. If we min/maxed itemization, then it might be too good, but what I do expect is every piece of T4 should be significantly better than any instance drop.

Making the BoP tailored items require primal nethers would be a great start IMO. Nerf the tailored pieces slightly, and require a few nethers each to upgrade them back to the original stats.

Respeccing to tailoring is still worth it imo if you just farm most of the mats yourself, getting it to 300 is pretty easy, you just have to convince yourself not to buy mats when your getting close to making items.

Ive dropped Alchemy/herb aswell on Taja to get a crafted mace which I was quite pleased with, unless your the 'hardcore' guild crafter (alchemy is pretty common nowadays) its ok to spec out of. Tailoring doesnt require a second specialisation (like herb to alch or skinning to LW) so you can just keep picking herbs

I don't have any huge problem with tailoring gear being very powerful. What I do object to is the huge amount of extra, cost for the class thats the worst farmers in the game. As a raid speced holy priest I grind gold at about 1/2 - 1/4 of the speed of a similarly geared for pve mage. The 5 pieces of the tailoring set cost around 5000+ gold to make, at least atm on my server (60 primal mooncloth, 10 primal might, 10 Gems, 2 primal nether) not counting the cost to level. We also have maybe the second highest potion costs in the game behind the main tank and a proffesion slot used up on near essential tailoring, this is just for 1 pve set (either high stamina or optimal healing). Holy priests just aren't made to get these quantities of gold, whilst hunters for example who excel at farming don't have anything like these costs(unless they really chug the fel mana potions hard). Tailoring for me is like an extra alchemy in tbc.

Before prot warriors say "you have it easy", I feel for you guys too.

We really don't know what the Black Citadel will be like. It could be to shadowpriests what Molten Core was to fire mages. Priests may well need a secondary DPS build in this event - although I highly doubt they'd do this. Guess our warriors/druids aren't complaining that priests are passing on tier 4/5, though.

Your understanding of the itemization system is woeful.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Item_Values spells some of it out although incompletely.

Basically their is a power scaling effect of adding stats to an item. So an item with 8 str and 8 agi is equivalent to an item with 12 str. Not a item with 16 str. Tomorrow morning when the girlfriend is gone I'll redo the priest set and see how it would be as pure shadow.

Robe of the archmage didn't require Tailoring (to equip) =/ I know, because I had it on my alliance mage. Leveled her tailoring up, made the robe, dropped tailoring and releveled herbalism.

As I've said before, I'm not looking forward to gearing out Carlotta at 70 (51, atm cruising right along... AAAAHHHH the end is near.) my first instinct is to take tailoring/enchanting for the gear/ring enchants- but frankly I don't see how that's possible with only 1 character above level 17 horde side on *any* server much less my new home server. I need herbalism to survive =/

I think my plan for the moment is to get the non-tailoring required pieces first (spellstrike + belt), by way of double gathering professions and wallowing in gold.... glorious gold.... and hope they've changed either the tier sets or the tailoring sets by the time I'm done with that.

Otherwise it's off to tailoring for me /cry.

On the plus side, it makes it fairly easy for a guildless caster with enough gold on their hands to put together a raiding gear set that very few can argue with.

There's two issues at stake here which should be talked about separately. I'll delineate them, and state my views.

1) Tailoring BoP gear is better than raid gear. This is a philosophy point: some people think it's a good thing, some a bad thing. Very briefly, I believe it's a good thing, as it gives another progression axis, but it's not game breaking. BoP doesn't cover even half your slots.

2) Tailoring BoP gear is easier to obtain and better than other grear-crafting professions. This is far more serious. As far as I can tell, the other profession BoP gear requires nethers, which is the accepted bottleneck by Blizzard, and the majority of the playerbase. Tailoring gear should require roughly the same investment and give the same returns as analogous equipment (Ebon Netherscale, BS weapons, etc).

I think if you want to talk about the gear, you should address these two points separately.

It's not just BoP - it's also Bind on Equip Gear. Tailors can sell you a hat that's better in every respect compared to Tier 4.

Regarding your second point - it links to the first. There wouldn't be huge issues if the gear required the same items that the other professions require. But it doesn't, and that's what breaks it. It's incredibly easy to obtain, and pretty much can be got just by using your credit card. You can't seperate out the point, because the entire game is about risk versus reward - they are intertwined, and what is balanced at one level is not balanced at another.

Also, I think the final point is - the gear isn't just "a bit better", like the other professions. It's ridiculously, supremely overpowered compared to current raiding gear. Other professions give you items that are equivalent or slightly ahead of your current tier. Tailoring gives you items that make you wonder if even Tier 6 would ever replace them.

(Second final point - why does Tailoring give you a minimum of *5* Tier 5+ items incredibly easily whilst every other profession gives one or two at best? Again, that's not balanced. One or two is fine. Half your gear set is ludicrous. A warlock can his specialisation set (Chest, Boots, Shoulders), Girdle of Ruination (Belt), Spellstrike Set (Head, pants). That leaves the gloves and bracer slots free for normal armour upgrades.).

No, that is my second point. You're saying it wouldn't be a problem if it had the same requirements as other professions? In that case, point 1, that the gear is overpowered no matter the requirements, is untrue. If it is overpowered no matther the requirements, then, well, fixing the requirements doesn't do much and point 2 is moot.

Anyway, people go back and forth arguing in circles, and it needs to be cleaned up a bit I think.

-) Should tailoring, at any price, offer gear of this level, including a set for themselves and 2-3 of the best pieces in the game to others? (Keep in mind that spellstrike is BoE, but the bonus does not apply to non-tailors, making only the individual pieces attractive, not the set).

-) How badly balanced is the cloth "cooldown" bottleneck compared to the "nether" bottleneck? Obviously blizzard thought the 4 day cooldown per piece of cloth would slow down acquisition to a rate similar to nethers (which have no cooldown, you can keep running the various heroics), but in practice this hasn't been true and tailors have acquired their gear very quickly indeed (The BoE pieces require the same amount of nether as the armor from other professions, in additon to heavy reliance on a cooldown skill).

-) How badly balanced is the raw power of the gear compared to that from other professions?

Actually Bracers of Havok (crafted rare) are currently the best pure dps bracers in game right now, for a shadow priest at least. Attumen or Magtheridon gloves are raid armor drops I'm interested in currently.

Tailoring BOP epics are an itemization screw-up, as they show what happens if you offer "ideal" items too frequently or too early. They become impossible to upgrade.

Shadoweave vs. Corruptors:
http://www.thottbot.com/i21869
http://www.thottbot.com/i30215

Frozen Shadoweave, obviously, is far easier to obtain. As an Affliction 'Lock, it's also by far the more desirable item. They have the same number of sockets. Corruptor's wastes budget on crit I can't use. Shadoweave gets a bonus due to only being Shadow school, which is where 90-95% of my damage comes from. We're not just getting gear on-par with higher levels, we're getting gear that is almost on par ilvl-wise but optimized perfectly for the stats the player desires.

Players have always said they want itemization that makes sense (remember Spirit on Shadowcraft?), and ironically now that we're seeing the results of this, it's causing a problem. Tailors are having to ask themselves "Why bother even trying to get new gear, when nothing will match my playstyle anywhere near as well as my crafted sets?"

Having epic craftable gear is good, for all professions. Having them at their designated ilvl's is acceptable, since unless you have multiple Tailoring alts farming your cloth it will still represent a large investment in time and/or in-game money. When that crafted gear is so ideally optimized to the player's tastes compared to any other item in the game, then we have a problem.