Edit: Is it a coincidence that the easiest bosses in Naxx drop the pieces of Tier 3 that aren't taken by Tier 2.5 gear?
I'd say it was intentional. Allows you to keep the relative upgrades of the T2.5 vs T2 while making your first forays into Naxx. A lot of the T2.5 set bonuses are handy in Naxx (the shaman chain heal reduced cast time is godly on trash)
My guild is currently working on our T2.5 and have yet to get any T3. But some of my locks are thinking of skipping DC all together and going straight for PH. This seems like a poor move due to the 5 piece set bonus of DC. It seems more like a way to hold out on spending dkp.
From the perspective of warlocks who have both T2.5 and T3, how much would staying in Nem hinder you in Naxx?
Upgrades from tier 2.5 to tier 3 are overall pretty minor. Tier 3 pieces are plain better, but not by much, and they're a damned sight harder to obtain, ESPECIALLY anything beyond Bracers, Belts and Boots. Upgrading from Tier 2 to either 2.5 or 3 (or the general non-set cloth crap in those instances) is a massive jump in your DPS.
Edit: Is it a coincidence that the easiest bosses in Naxx drop the pieces of Tier 3 that aren't taken by Tier 2.5 gear?
I gotta agree with Bibdy here. Going from Tier 2.5 to Tier 3 isnt a large jump. Obviously the pieces are better, some are large jumps (Robes, Boots etc) whereas others are small jumps (Bracers pants).
NuType: Your warlocks would have to be nuts on passing up ANY of the Doomcaller pieces (maybe the boots can be passed on and maybe the pants if you have Fel Infused Leggings) But really not only are the Helm, shoulder, and robes vastly superior to T2 if you get those 3 you might as well put on full suit. Nemesis does nothing for any of the fights in Naxx cause other than maybe Noth and Thaddius threat really isnt a huge deal cause your either spreading your DPS amongst multiple targets (Noth, Gothik, Anub, Maexxna etc) or the fight just doesnt allow you to pull aggro (Patchwerk, Faerlina, Razuvious etc).
I think the argument of threat is no longer valid. Its efficiency that keeps warlocks out of raids. The doomcaller 5 piece makes you a more efficient warlock. Now what you do with it is all on individual skill.
2.5 to 3 are overall pretty minor but they are *still* upgrades. Its like Nemesis from Felheart.
My current game plan is to get 5/5 DC (damn you Ouro,damn yooooou) and tier 3 Belt/Bracers and leave it at that untill higher end bosses are on farm. Then collect hopefully collect 9/9 before expansion. Tier 3 will be *the* leveling set with its immense amount of +sta. The DC 5 set bonus is obviously super, but is eventually worth breaking once you get 5-6 pieces of PH. My only worry is that i won't be able to get 9/9 before expansion.
Plagueheart belt is one of the best warlock belts in the game atm,sure not as much damage as eyestalk but the immense stats more then make up for it. Likwise Plagueheart helm will be one of the last pieces i collect having only +1sta +1int +1 more then 2.5 helm.
Interesting bit of trivia: The warlock tier 3 set has the second highest amount of +sta (First being warrior) by like 20 points (3rd is Hunter at 178 versus warlock 198)
Money is not happiness. Yachts are not happiness. Hot women are not Happiness.
Being stinking rich on a yacht with hot women sure as hell is though.
I should have mentioned in my frist post that the 5/9 plauge heart stats I put up were from the same five pieces as dc. I never really was shooting for 9/9 PH. After all I feel some of the pieces are rather sub-par (bracers, gloves) and I'm still going to use my arcane acc and ebony flame until I can get soul harvester and c'thun gloves.
As for aggro it is really not that big of an issue for me being an alliance lock, plus on the handful of fights in naxx it does matter I can just adjust my gear or playstyle (eating fears on gluth comes to mind as a good example).
Maybe the guy who said to get both was on the right track :)
also, anyone know exactly how the 8 piece ph works with the new lifetap (assuming its 2/2 imp)?
My guild is currently working on our T2.5 and have yet to get any T3. But some of my locks are thinking of skipping DC all together and going straight for PH. This seems like a poor move due to the 5 piece set bonus of DC. It seems more like a way to hold out on spending dkp.
From the perspective of warlocks who have both T2.5 and T3, how much would staying in Nem hinder you in Naxx?
I went straight from Nemesis to Plagueheart but as we got more experienced in naxx fights the agro isn't really a concern except in very specific cases (First 2 minutes of Gluth being a notable exception, and maybe the first 20 seconds of Grobulus if you aren't paying attention to your damage). You shouldn't ever feel hindered by having Tier2 gear in Naxx, at least until the backbreaking dps fights (Loatheb and Gothik if you arent conflag). Blizzard programmed the fights in such a way it already hinders us badly, so the gear difference is more or less minimal, when you are 18th or 21st on damage in some fights even when working harder than most anyone in the raid.
Once I broke the 8 piece bonus on the Nemesis set I ended up picking up Bracers of Arcane Accuracy for cheap in BWL, as well as the Doomcaller robe. Doomcaller pants are more questionable since you have to get ZG enchants all over again for them.
The classes that really need to be getting Tier 2.5 sets are primarily Rogues if you plan on pushing a lot of the naxx armor drops to several warriors (a good idea), newer recruits that have less than tier 2 in those slots, and people like me who need placeholder items like the robes or pants which are annoying to get in naxx.
sorry to bump an old post. just trying to clear something up.
4 pieces: Increases damage caused by your Corruption by 12%.
Not sure on this one. Corruptions may actually be useful in Nax, that is not only to boost peenmeters on trash packs.
However, with this spec, keeping a corruption up, even with a generous 80% efficiency, grants a whooping +0.1% dps in a 10 minutes fight. You may as well fire a shadowbolt instead, and keep your brains off. Crit bonuses are just to good, and your cool 19% crit chance won't help dots. Or, are you ready to respec for something more dot friendly, and forget your big crits, your mana regeneration or your shadowbolter set ?
This is from http://www.skav.org/theorycraft/warlock_study_t3.php linked earlier in this post. Seems like +0.1% dps from this bonus is way off. Was this calculated with the bugged version of the bonus prior to 1.12.1? I think this bonus is worth breaking 5pc doomcaller on fights other than patchwerk/thaddius/loatheb. Shouldn't this bonus give a 3% bonus in dps if corruption is 25% of your dps? .12*25=3
And even higher since corruption is more than 25% according to my Recap mod.
I also think its wrong to assume -resistance has "no" affect in PvE. I dont think Blizzard has EVER commented on AQ40 gear and the -resistances on the set gear from that Dungeon. They have commented on so many other things regarding resistance of target but never in how the AQ gear affects it. All they have said is that a boss 3 levels higher than you has inert resistances that cannot be removed (some say 18 some say 24..doesnt matter). Frankly I think its all speculation as to what happens and no one has done any real amount of study on it to see what kind of difference it actually makes. Its of my opinion that there are bosses out there whose resistances exceed that of 100 or 120, which ones, I dont know, and not willing to argue but after carefully looking at the warlock Tier 2.5, I cant help but think there is a reason for -resistances other than PvP.
Spell penetration has 0 effect on any PvE encounter, barring a few fights in Molten Core and the gauntlet whelps in BWL.
No parsing, on *any* boss, has ever shown them to have resists above 75 beyond MC.
Spell penetration on raiding gear is a touchy subject for the mages here - poor Kel'Thuzad staff... :(
Loatheb has above average resists.
I have 16% hit (this is the hit cap for Mages vs. lvl 63's - I should have a 1% resist rate barring outside forces like innate enemy resistance) with talents and gear, and I still get a 2% - 2.5% resist rate on average - and this is over the course of a month.
Loatheb has well over 75 Fire Resistance (and probably over 95, because I wear Enigma Robes...in fact, I've taken to wearing Enigma Shoulderpads over Rime Covered Mantle for this fight, simply because of the additional spell penetration, and it does in fact help my resist rate).
I'm not talking about partial resists. I get full, straight up, 100% resists between 2-2.5% of the time with my 16% to hit on Loatheb on a consistent base (1 month worth of data).
I fail to see your guys point with the 15% mana efficiency on shadow bolt. Since the new life tap changes, 5/5 dc is obsolete. Stacking hit/crit and dmg is far better than that set bonus.
People choosing damage to an extreme degree over health are for the most part, delusional. This applies to many classes (even mages with endgame gear and still under 4k health wondering why they die so easy . . .)
Not to derail, but for a mage our itemization makes it difficult to obtain 4000 hp wearing strictly raid gear. With one statless ring I have 3880 hp so when I replace that with something else it will be obtainable. I can easily equip the Master Dragonslayer Neck and some other items to get 4300 in pvp, but the loss in pve isn't ideal. Part of the "problem" is our ZG enchants have no stamina on them, but it doesn't help that most of the hybrid geat in AQ/Naxx have low stamina (Eyestalk Waistcord, Rime Covered Mantle) with a few exceptions (Crystal Webbed Robe, Dark Storm Gauntlets). So we often decide between class gear with low stamina or hybrids with low stamina. Enigma was pretty well itemised in that regard though, and Frostfire has decent amounts of stamina as well so it's getting better. Tier 2 or below though, ouch.
The difference in the cloth portions of Plagueheart and Frostfire is only 36 stamina. Even Netherwind vs Nemesis only 55. The ZG enchants add another 20 in our favor but thats pretty much it, everything else is not class restricted loot. 4k health base on mages becomes possible at the end of collecting a full set of tier2 loot (including weapons, cloaks etc), and becomes trivial as you get tier2.5 and tier3.
However a lot of mages are focusing so much on non-set items with crappy or no stamina, I feel compelled to question their sanity, when they are giving up anywhere from 20 to 30 % of their health for about 5% more damage.
I'll have 5884 health without an imp (6684 with) out by the time I'm done with Naxx. And the mages? Most of them will still be hovering around 4000, maybe less.
I can go from 715 to 765 base spell damage, and even gain some crit (2%), but it costs me over 1000 health to do so. This ends up being a difference of 4% damage best case (unimpeded indefinite shadowbolt spam which can crit). Its even less for dots, around 2% damage. And this is even factoring in lifetap speeding up the attack cycle due to having more +dmg.
In addition most of those low stam high damage items have little to no mana/5 or spirit, primiarly to keep balance druids and shadowpriests from being overpowered (i.e. very useful in raids). This also affects the mages ability to evocate their mana back. The irony there is the high damage items are more useful for a warlock due to it making lifetap stronger, except for the fact that most of these items have around half to a third of the stamina of our sets.
Make a CT profile with comparable Crit/Hit/+Damage and comparable HP with a mage and a warlock. I'm sorry, but our gear blows chunks when it comes to getting stamina on it and the things we use.
There is no way to get 4k HP unbuffed with mage tier2 unless you sacrifice ring / neck slots for tank-items. I've actually been playing on with the idea of bidding the Nefarians Ring of Reckoning to get some stamina for my pvp-set. But I still rather leave it for our patchwerk gearing tanks who need every bit of stamina they can get their hands on.
I fail to see your guys point with the 15% mana efficiency on shadow bolt. Since the new life tap changes, 5/5 dc is obsolete. Stacking hit/crit and dmg is far better than that set bonus.
Not obsolete, just half as good, which is still fine with me because it was a pretty godly bonus before. Let y be the proportion of your time spent life tapping and x=100-y be the proportion spent doing damage without the bonus. Then x' = x / (x + y*0.85) is the time spent with the bonus. For me with no 5/5 DC, I estimate y to be about 15% with the new life tap. Thus x' = 0.85 / (0.85 + 0.15*0.85) = 0.86956. The DPS increase is x' / x * 100% ~= 2.3%. A 2.3% DPS increase isn't trivial and worth 30-35 damage for most warlocks who are otherwise well-geared.
By my simple country-chicken logic, 2.5 priority for warlocks, letting priests grab t3 and mages grab cross class is a very good arrangement for the initial loot distribution anyway. Assuming that on a long enough timeline you could theoretically get any piece of gear you wanted- 5/5 doomcallers is still a more useful set bonus than either 5/5 oracle or enigma; it seems like a nice niche position until your raid group is saturated with caster gear.
I'm not talking about partial resists. I get full, straight up, 100% resists between 2-2.5% of the time with my 16% to hit on Loatheb on a consistent base (1 month worth of data).
This phenomenon also causes full resists sometimes.
Edit: Is it a coincidence that the easiest bosses in Naxx drop the pieces of Tier 3 that aren't taken by Tier 2.5 gear?
razuvious is easier than patchwerk :)
doomcaller footwraps.
i have full dc + 3 piece ph.. i'll go for the ring when we get there for the corruption bonus... while saving for other items. (4h ring/saph trinket enchant)
personally think its not worth the dkp for what is a real minor upgrade if that. decreased mana cost seems to work great with the downtime that is lifetap.
However a lot of mages are focusing so much on non-set items with crappy or no stamina, I feel compelled to question their sanity, when they are giving up anywhere from 20 to 30 % of their health for about 5% more damage.
I'll have 5884 health without an imp (6684 with) out by the time I'm done with Naxx. And the mages? Most of them will still be hovering around 4000, maybe less.
I can go from 715 to 765 base spell damage, and even gain some crit (2%), but it costs me over 1000 health to do so. This ends up being a difference of 4% damage best case (unimpeded indefinite shadowbolt spam which can crit). Its even less for dots, around 2% damage. And this is even factoring in lifetap speeding up the attack cycle due to having more +dmg.
In addition most of those low stam high damage items have little to no mana/5 or spirit, primiarly to keep balance druids and shadowpriests from being overpowered (i.e. very useful in raids). This also affects the mages ability to evocate their mana back. The irony there is the high damage items are more useful for a warlock due to it making lifetap stronger, except for the fact that most of these items have around half to a third of the stamina of our sets.
There are a few causes of itemization favoring warlocks in this regard that you don't really mention. A good example is Warlock class belts.
ie: Mana Igniting Cord vs Nemesis Belt, Eyestalk Waistcord vs Plagueheart belt. Our tier 3 belt is decent, but most mages would kill for Nemesis / Plagueheart belts over those other two options available for us. There is also a favorable stamina distribution on +shadow items, this can be seen in items like Band of Dark Dominion vs Ring of Spell Power and Ebony Flame Gloves vs ? to name a couple more.
I'm not saying the mages running around with Rime mantle and such aren't gimping their stamina, they certainly are (I went the FF route for stam personally). But it's not all gear decisions on the part of the player. In the past Warlocks have always had better staminia itemization in both their hybrids and class pieces. Some of the differences may be small, but it adds up.
Make a CT profile with comparable Crit/Hit/+Damage and comparable HP with a mage and a warlock. I'm sorry, but our gear blows chunks when it comes to getting stamina on it and the things we use.
I never said the HP was comparable. I said tier2 and up mages can hit around 4k and the ones that aren't are giving up of 20% of their health (as well a sizeable chunk of mana and mana regen) for something like 6% more damage. The main STA difference are in the sets, something that is narrowing over time, and the difference in the ZG enchants (which get obsoleted in BC). Generally mages enjoy a 1 hit and 1.5 crit advantage over warlocks, with the other main trade off being we can spec 15% more health and mages can spec even more +hit.
This comparison isn't really complete since it does not include Spirit and Mana/5 for the mages. And comparing that to +dmg scaling lifetap, well thats a whole seperate problem (one which greatly diminishes our value of +crit).
09/20/06, 4:50 PM
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