My guild is currently wiping on huhu and a few of the shamans in my guild are getting sick of their well worn earthfury armour. They are busy eyeing up various bits of cloth and leather armour that drop in AQ40. I realise that for healing shamans there are limited choices for upgrades from tier 1.Indeed, having read this forum and others it seems a lot of shamans enter Naxx with plenty of tier 1 armour.

Whilst i can understand the appeal of cloth and leather pieces with plenty of +healing on (say Robes of the Guardian Saint and Bracers of Royal Redemption) it feels wrong to me when people wear non class armour (I realise that is a loaded statement as shamans can wear cloth and leather). It feels wrong, to me at least, because it seems like these people are forcing a role on their character that blizzard didn't intend. Priests are meant to be the ones with lots of +healing, the cloth armour and priest sets reflect this. Shamans are a support class, they can heal very well, but not quite as well as the main healing class; priests. Equally a "nature mage" build shaman could, i am sure, dps very well in an all cloth suit, but it feels backwards to me.

I realise i may be coming across with a "it's my loot, get your own" attitude but that isnt the point I am making. Do other shamans want cloth/leather armour and take the line "blizzard should make better mail armour" or do you accept that you are a hybrid class and can heal, but not quite as well as a pure healing class?

There is plenty of good mail armor out there, but people like to min/max their stats so most the cloth stuff has a ton better stats for healing. Personally I have always picked up my TS set, Stormcaller set, and various mail upgrades ... never really liked to go cloth or leather on anything. Just a personal preference.

oh for fuck's sake.

Let your priests who aren't on the verge of 8/8 trans get the very nice cloth pieces like Guardian Saint and Gloves of the Martyr. Certain Ten Storms pieces are excellent (gloves and bracers especially, but others too). 5/5 SC and 3/8 TS is what every shaman, IMO, should be striving for as they approach AQ. It's an incredibly versatile set that will only get better in 1.12 as they tweak the behavior of chain heal.

The only thing shamans lack as healers is an in-combat regen talent or set bonus. Obviously we also don't have HoTs, but in terms of direct healing, we're as capable as anyone.

I refuse to wear anything but mail, except on special cases (NR gear). I do like the survivability I get from mail, especially in AQ fights like Sartura. I currently wear a mashup of different mail pieces (T1/2/2.5 + Yauj shoulders), anything that is an upgrade in that slot gets bid on. I will however bid max dkp on Don Rigoberto's Lost Hat as hats on Tauren just look too good to not wear it ;)

Edit: what Gurg said...

To be brutally and utterly honest, I chuckle every time I see a shaman in cloth/leather and make a mental note to never, ever invite them into a group I run.

It shows an utter lack of understanding of the class and its role in a competant raid group. Mail healing gear is perfectly obtainable all the way through MC/BWL/ZG/AQ - not just in Naxx, I can't think of one EJ shaman that did not follow that pattern for upgrading gear, I also cannot think of one who would wear cloth/leather as their typical raiding gear.

This very weekend there was a slight mis-communication over pulling assignments on Sartura and I ended up tanking two of her adds after a heal, for 20s or so, now if I was in cloth or leather, I'd have been dead - and ironically would have pulled more heal aggro if I had min/max'd in cloth.

Shamans are a hybrid class and I am willing to bet the people saying that cloth/leather should go to shaman over a class that should get it, will be the people who will be complaining about the lack of a hybrid role for them. Incidently they will probably be the people wearing 5/8 EF as they enter the Dark Portal and wondering why the only sound they can hear is that of a thousand other players mocking them.

We really should have a post sticky'd detailing what kind of posts should be here and ones that really really have been done to death.

I agree with this up to a point.

Shaman are HIGH aggro healers, and we have earthshock. I can't ount the number of times I've pulled a mob/boss onto me instead od antoher healer. It may not have saved the raid, but it certainly delayed the wipe.

I will also say.....any huge +healing with tons of spirit on it item going ot a shaman speicficly fills me with rage. Equip your mana/5 and like it, damnit. Spirit is a bad, bad joke for both classes, though paladins espcially benifit from +healing.

If you want to equip leather/cloth..that's fine, especially for a paladin. You're not gonna pull aggro, you wear plate so even if you do no worries. For a shaman, pulling aggro is a fact of life, so downgrading seems like a good way to get yourself killed. Even though we mostly (hah!) heal in endgame raids I detest sidegrading to lower AC/stam gear.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times that having close to 7.5k armor buffed has saved my life and in turn benefitted the raid. Aside from surviving unintended aggro, it enables a playstyle that lets me contribute more to the raid than simply healing.

I personally subscribe to the "many sets of gear" philosophy. I have a maxed +healing set which includes several pieces of cloth and leather. There are plenty of fights where the only time I'm taking physical damage means we've wiped. However, to be ignorant of high survivability means you really aren't playing your hybrid properly, and along those lines, I have a fairly well optimized plate set as well. I find myself tweaking gear sets per encounter and even per trash (DK trash gets plate healing, gargoyles get spellpower, Noth gets a mix, Razuvious gets cloth, etc.).

Any cloth items that might be considered healing upgrades would be so situational that they're not even worth losing an inventory slot over. You're gaining a trivial amount of healing stats and losing a non-trivial amount of armor.

Also, cloth is for sissies.

Pre-Naxx, thats patently untrue. The best +healing plate boots in the game prior to Redemption give +33 healing (Redeemed Prophecy), whereas Boots of Pure Thought are a truly massive upgrade to +62 healing.

Right, I'm not going to argue that Geta and Robes of the Guardian Saint and such aren't better than TS/SC on a fight like Patchwerk or a handful of other fights. If they're going to be DE'd and you could use them situationally? Sure, why the hell not. But you have no business taking something that is useful to you in a fraction of situations over someone who'd use it as a full-time upgrade.

Personally, I have no inventory space to spare between Earthshatter, Stormcaller, FR, and NR sets. The last thing I need is cloth/leather too.

The closer we get to the expansion release date, the more statements like this make me laught. A lot.
I've had this discussion with a druid in my guild about cloth/leather. He wants to wear it? Go ahead. But none of the shaman will touch the crap unless they've got a crappy blue/green item (new recruit) that they need to upgrade for the time being. I like the fact that I live to the end of encounters.

I really don't understand the shaman in cloth hate around here.

Wearing 1 peice of leather and 1 peice of cloth, I sat at 868 healing before stepping foot into naxx. Roughly 5500 armor unbuffed. Talented HW rank 4 at that +heal hits for 983 to 1045. Thats ~430 hp/s and ~8.8 hp/mana. Pretty damned good.

There are many, many fights where the armor doesn't matter. In fact, for most encounters I use my lei of the lifegiver over either of my shields. On noth, or fankriss, I swap out my flowers for a shield in the case that I get hit by physical damage. Usually, its a non-issue, and I think letting cloth and leather rot when a shaman could pick it up for situational use is just plain stupid.

Yeah, I'm definitely not here to be its all lol paladin loot (or even suggest equal priority), but I guess my view is that pretty much every piece of gear I have is situational to a very real degree. I tend to think thats just the nature of hybrid classes, since our raid roles are very encounter dependent at this point.

That being said, I really do end up wearing my leather Lethon hat a lot more than Judgement Crown. So ugly :(

I now have 3 pieces of cloth in my bags. The Sylvan NR set. We're starting Huhuran tonight and I'm sitting at 195 unbuffed and I still need to get a cloak made and enchanted. Other than those 3 pieces everything is mail. I'm still at 5 EF, 3 TS and expect to switch to 5 TS, 3 EF as soon as I get the TS gloves. That will probably last me until I start getting Stormcaller, but since we're relatively new to AQ (been working on it 1 to 1.5 nights a week for a month) I won't have the rep for any of the SC pieces for a while. I don't end up tanking adds as often at Gurgthock, but it's a rare BWL clear that I don't end up with something actively trying to kill me. Since we've been doing Fankriss I've found that I often tank some adds long enough to get them off squishies and back to the warriors, so the mail absolutely necessary there.

I do not think you will ever see anyone imply that loot should rot that could have a use. The market on nexus fell out months ago, I saw someone selling 6 for 100g yesterday and it did not even grab my attention. With that in mind if an item will be useful it should be looted, always. Lei is a bad example as you got that item on your own. The criticism is of looting situational gear over classes who lack our freedom of choice when it comes to gear.

Well, we are talking about non-set cloth and leather in this thread. Maybe other guilds have priests and druids chomping at the bit for this stuff, but it gets defaulted to random druids and shamans in our guild.

That's an awfully narrow-minded point of view. I have a very thorough understanding of my class, and wear cloth and leather often. I'm not saying you should run around with 1200 armor and a staff, but swapping out a peice here and there for huge healing upgrades is beneficial for many encounters.

For my guild, we've had TONS of robes of the gaurdian saint. I saw 3 of them go to fairly new recruits before I even thought about picking them up. But one day, they dropped yet again, and no priests really wanted them. I took a look at the stats and for the first time really thought about it. The healing + mp5 combination is far superior to any mail chest piece in the game pre-earthshatter. The overall upgrade in healing stats was too much for me to pass up and I have never regretting picking them up since. On any fight where armor really matters I gladly switch out for TS/SC. (gluth is really boring as a kiting assistant shaman :(. ) as for not having inventory room, I never really need FR any more and my NR set composes of the emerald dragons ring, dreamscale BP, and boots of the endless moor.

How are you doing any extra repairs? Your inventory items don't take a durability hit when you die, and spirit ressing isn't exactly something I'm fond of.

I believe he means because he might be dying more in cloth than in mail.

I think it can be summed up as "don't take cloth/leather if someone from that armor class needs the item for primary use." Remember for priests, they only can wear cloth, they don't have the option to wear mail.

Having said that, if an item is going to be DE'ed, or nobody really wants it, then why not? I know a shaman who took the Empowered Leggings off Chromaggus.... because shamans were just having cruddy luck with leg drops, and no priests wanted them as we were awash in Trans legs. Loot decisions are never made in a vacuum, so you have to consider your guild, your class and yourself before deciding to go for a particular piece of loot.

Ah, yes. In any case, I would encourage the cloth and leather haters to run an experiment. Next time you do noth or fankriss, or any fight where you are in love with your AC -- take off your tunic and legs. See if your survivability decreases by much. It really isn't as noticable as you are theorizing.