Being at a point where I don't have a lot of things left to purchase with badges, I'm trying to figure out which piece(s) to purchase next.

I'm trying to determine where a combat fists spec will fall in comparison to swords. There is some good food for thought in the article regarding sword combat builds and hybrids involving swords in some way.. is it assumed or a 'given' that fists are inferior to a combat swords build or can one shed some light on this?

Also if fists are inferior (not saying they are, again, just trying to understand),
if one's crit % is weighing in on the light side, would it be wise to switch over to fists for the 5% boost in crit? Or wiser to stick to swords?


I've been playing with the spreadsheets and various tools available on the web and have seen a few different results in experimenting, but I figured it'd be best to ask so that I may get some human insight as to how it all might work out in a practical sense.

My Guild is in TK and SSC right now. I switched to Frost from 2/48/11more out of boredom than anything else....along with being tired of our BM Hunters topping me on the meters. ;-) What's interesting is I too have found that I almost always top our other mages on fights like VR and Solarian and I can usually top the Hunters now also.

I know Lhivera has always been a strong proponent of Frost Raiding There's so much randomness in any encounter that no amount of mathcraft can foresee everything. I've become a believer that Frost can match Fire (at least at my guilds level of progression)

Okay, thanks again for the info.

Should I then just stick with [Soul Cleaver] or maybe opt for a S2 Sword / Jin'Rohk? I also might be able to pick up a Felspine soon, so that's also an option for the future.

Well it looks like I'll need to level one to 70 and hit north rend before passing any more judgment.

you are getting confused as to the difference between 'expertise' and 'expertise rating'
6.5% boss dodge = 26 expertise
2/2 weapon expertise gives 10 expertise, racial gives 5 expertise, needing 11 more.
1 expertise is approx 4 'expertise rating', therefore you need 44 'expertise rating' for a total of 26 expertise

I think you might be wrong on herbalism being a weak profession in terms of having no DPS skill. While this does hold true, herbalists get Herbalism only items out of nodes, similar to the Fel Blossoms in BC. In WotLK, Fire Leaf drops from flowers, and it gives 400 AP for 10 seconds with a 60 second cooldown on the item. Also, since it isn't a potion, it doesn't fall under the potion sickness category, which means that it will provide an average 66.67 AP through fights. Furthermore, it provides a free heal (albeit, weak), and dead DPS does 0 DPS. The Mixology bonus of Alchemy provides 20-25% increased effect on flasks and elixirs that you can make. On the Flask of Endless Rage, which provides 180 AP for 2 hours, persists through death, the increased benefit is only 45 AP. This is of course assuming that Blizzard makes the ability reflect the tooltip, because from what I've read about Beta so far, Blizzard hasn't implemented this effect on flasks yet. Leatherworking still looks to be a dominant profession, even though drums are getting nerfed with the Tinnitus debuff, and they're now usable raid-wide. Since the WotLK leg armor kits are all personal use only, the non-leatherworkers are stuck with the Nethercobra armor kits. From what I've read, the latest armor kit provides 100 AP, and 36 Crit rating. This provides 5 more AP than the Mixology buff, as well as the 36 Crit rating. The highest skinning profession buff (Master of Anatomy) provides a passive 25 crit rating, which at current values is inferior to the Mixology buff. However, the most interesting one to me so far is Tailoring. There is a new Tailoring item called Swordguard Embroidery, which is usable only on your cloak, and provides 1000 Armor Penetration on some melee attacks. I don't know the proc rate of that, and I think it works similar to the Amani Charm of the Bloodletter, in that it procs and is then consumed by the attack, or if it lasts similar to WSC. I can't determine the exact value of this, because I don't have enough information on it. Blacksmithing provides no passive buffs as of yet, but from reading the tooltips (I haven't read anything on Beta Forums about this yet), Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves appears to allow socketing of your own only. This would allow an extra 40 Expertise/Agility/Hit/Haste or 280 Armor Penetration or whatever we would need to socket for (Since we don't know the weights of stats at 80 yet). Jewelcrafting provides an additional 49 Armor Penetration, 7 Agility, 7 Haste, 7 Hit, 7 Expertise, and 14 AP through the use of all the unique-equipped BoP gems. Engineering seems to be getting a few upgrades, but the profession remains mostly untouched, so it might provide the best in slot head again, but aside from that, the only thing it provides are glove upgrades, and the best I've seen is 340 Haste rating for 8 seconds, with an unknown cooldown length (Minimum 2 minutes from the tooltip). Thus, this seems inferior so far. Inscriptions for rogues has yet to be implemented as far as I have seen, so I can't determine the benefit of having an extra glyph. Aside from that, there appears to be a small DPS upgrade provided by Runic Blast (24-30 damage, unknown cooldown), which could have more powerful ranks or versions that haven't been implemented, but then again, it might not (Consumes an Ivory Ink, which is made from peacebloom, one of the starting herbs). Enchanting allows an additional 40 Haste or 80 AP from ring enchants. As of now, those are all of the professions that I have seen thus far. I won't make any judgments on the gear actually crafted by these professions until patterns from Leatherworking have been finalized, and again, I don't know what the weights will be at 80. However, the min/max professions as it appears now would probably be LW/BS, or LW/Jewelcrafting, or BS/Jewelcrafting, or possibly even something to do with Inscription or Enchanting, depending on stat allocation on gear. I'll make my final assessment when people far smarter than me with Beta keys can determine what stats at 80 will be the most valuable, and what stats we're seeing on rogue gear.

Actually I wouldn't like our armor to just come from tier pieces.
.. I never liked this tier idea that makes everybody look the same ..

If the sets were the only way to even think about tanking, something were wrong.

I want to have a choice on how to customize my character.

With all the changes to the Mage DPS talents I.E. Burnout, is 0/50/21 going to be the prominent raid spec, or Arcane still the way to go?

I made a post on the WoW forums a couple days ago stating that the 3 specs worked really well together and I wouldn't be surprised to see one of each spec in a raid (Frost, Fire, Arcane).

why is SWP rated higher than SWD in the max dps cicle? i think SWDs damage is just a bit lower than mb because of the t6 bonus (4 pieces) and the less dmg, isn't it?

explanation plz

Shenanigans!

Hello my name is imre, my nickname is yezebell and i am the eu / us forum op for the timed speedruns top 10.

i see you found the same idea. please feel free to add your wws there also if you find the time/interest in this.

links shouldnt be to hard to find.

cheers yezebell